AUGUST 2018
INTO THE VOID
SCIENCE
Ben McAllister Hunting Dark Matter
Oxygen Anomaly In Ancient Rocks
Mitochondrial Donation Fighting Inherited Diseases
Cover Image
This colorful image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, celebrates the Earth-orbiting observatory’s 28th anniversary of viewing the heavens, giving us a window seat to the universe’s extraordinary stellar tapestry of birth and destruction. At the center of this image is a monster young star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun that is blasting powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust.
Into the void
Science
June 2018 / Issue #2
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Founder / Editor Cameron Costigan Editorial Contributors Dr Geetanjali Rangnekar Elizabeth Suk-Hang Lam Jesse Crowe Professional Proofreader Susan Dunn
About Us Science is all around us in the modern world but too many of us take it for granted. Our mission is to ‘Inspire the World with Science’ and to help people think of science as more than just another subject at school. Foreword - Cameron Costigan We run Into the Void Science from a deep desire to share science with the greater community, but we need your help. Running a magazine cost some real dollars and without your help, I am not sure how long we can continue. If you can, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Even a $1 a month commitment goes a long way to helping us.
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Bagnold Dunes, Mars
Image credit: NASA
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Mitochondrial Donation By Dr. Geetanjali Rangnekar
Conventional babies are concoctions born of the blending of genetic material from two people. This is not the case for a unique baby boy, who was born in April 2016 to Jordanian parents, conceived in Mexico, with the help of American doctors. What made this cross-continental effort revolutionary was that the baby had 99.9% of the genetic material of his parents, and 0.1% of the genetic material of a donor. But this small percentage is what made him healthy. The couple’s previous attempts at having children were cruelly truncated while still in the womb, or, lost at a very young age. This was because the woman carried certain deleterious genes (mutations) in her mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). This caused her children to develop Leigh’s disease, which is a debilitating and destructive disease that destroys the central nervous system, killing the sufferer. Given that mtDNA codes for 37 distinct genes, Leigh’s disease is just one of the possible manifestations of mutations that can occur in these genes. Mitochondria are known as the energy generators of cells. Every cell in the human body has an abundance of these specialised cell components, which reside in the gel-like liquid found inside cells called the cytosol. They are essential to the survival of cells, because, without the energy generated by these powerhouses, a cell cannot function appropriately and or at all, and may die. This is what occurs if a person has a mitochondrial disease. Unfortunately, this suite of diseases that fall under this categorisation is so myriad, that, at a time, one or multiple organs can be affected. Thus far, only 100 diseases have been identified. These include diseases that incapacitate the nerves of the eyes resulting in vision loss, cause heart failure or stroke-like episodes. There will undoubtedly be more to be uncovered. However, even the existing diseases have not been researched extensively enough which means that there are no current well-defined cures or treatments. However, medical science has devised a way to prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial diseases through assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs) known as mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRTs). There are two separate procedures that come under the umbrella term of MRT. The first is termed pronuclear transfer (PNT) and the second is called maternal spindle transfer (MST).
PNT involves the manipulation of zygotes or fertilised cells, formed when a sperm fertilises an egg. In PNT, two separate ‘types’ of zygotes are manipulated. Type one is produced by fertilising the egg of the intended mother with sperm from the intended farther. The second type is produced using an egg from a donor, who does not carry any mutations for mitochondrial disease in her egg cells, and fertilising this with the intended farther’s sperm. Before any of these fertilised eggs can develop into embryos, the genetic material of the egg donor is discarded from within the fertilised cell. Then, using the genetic material of the intended parents, and the fertilised cell produced from the donor as a casing, (which only contains her healthy mitochondria), a zygote is produced and implanted into the intended mother. On the other hand, MST involves tinkering with oocytes or immature egg cells obtained from the intended mother and healthy donor. The chromosomes contained within the oocytes, which carry all the maternal genetic information are found congregated to one side of the oocyte during a particular phase of cell division which makes them ripe for the plucking. The genetic material of the to-be-mother is inserted into the genetic material-free oocyte of the donor. This newly created healthy oocyte is then fertilised using the sperm from the to-be-father, to give a zygote, which is implanted into mother. There are two more lesser known methods called polar body transfer and germinal vesicle transfer, both of which are types of maternal spindle transfer, and involve manipulating the immature egg cells at various stages of its development. These techniques are still being researched more thoroughly before they can be approved for use. All this may sound terribly futuristic, and even scary, given the levels of genetic manipulation involved. But PNT and MST are already happening in the UK. These types of MRT were legalised via a parliamentary vote as recently as 2015. Two women, who carry mutations which could cause their babies to develop MERRF syndrome, which affects multiple organs, causing seizures, loss of muscle control and dementia, were selected to undergo MRT in Newcastle Fertility Centre early this year.
Progress like this might provide the impetus for other countries like Australia to consider legalising MRT. In fact, it is known that approximately 60 people in any given year will develop severe cases of mitochondrial disease, and many more will have to live with milder forms. This makes it an important health issue to consider. Hearteningly, on the 27th of June, the Senate Community Affairs References Committee made an independent recommendation that mitochondrial donation is allowed by law, taking the first important step to make Australia the second country in the world to allow this procedure. The experts who made up the committee concluded that the legalities could be eased by tasking the National Health and Medical Research Council—the Australian body responsible for providing advice on the ethics of all health and medical research— with investigating the safety of MRT in an Australian context. They also acknowledged the reproductive specialists in this country are more than capable of handling the intricacies of MRT. There are also independent organisations such as the Australian Mitochondrial Disease Foundation (AMDF), which do a lot to increase awareness of mitochondrial diseases and raise much-needed funds for research. The AMDF estimates that the healthcare costs for a child with mitochondrial disease can cost the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and hence the taxpayer, around 120 000 AUD per month. Similarly, the costs of medical tests, healthcare and disability services for adults too can be exponential. So, it would seem that it is now in the hands of the government as to whether and if so, how fast, they will act on this recommendation of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee in order to take ART in Australia into the future.
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Ben McAllister On the hunt for dark matter
This month we sat down with Famelab runner up Ben McAllister to discuss one of the biggest mysteries in science, Dark Matter. Q: Dark matter theory seems to be the holy grain of physics at the moment, but does it tie in with string theory? Good question – the composition of dark matter is certainly one of the big questions right now, so it would be nice if it tied in with some of the candidates for Grand Unified Theories, like string theory. As with lots of this fundamental physics stuff, it kind of depends who you ask, and what you mean by “dark matter” specifically. Certainly, axions (or particles similar to axions) are compatible with string theory. What I mean to say is, many string theorists have found that particles that look an awful lot like axions on paper arise naturally in their models. Q: There are many ‘WIMP’ (weakly interacting massive particle) projects going on around the world right now. Has there been one instance of a detection yet? Short answer, probably not (I’ll elaborate in a minute). Certainly, if we had a detection, that would be an enormous Nobel Prize-winning discovery. In part, this lack of WIMP detection is why some focus in the dark matter community is shifting away from WIMPs and onto the lower mass dark matter particle regime – which is where axions come in. Axions are much lighter than WIMPs, motivated by different theories, and detected in different ways. Axion searches are also comparatively young when compared with WIMP searches, so there is still a lot of parameter space to search through in the hopes of finding them. The reason I say “probably not” when referring to WIMP detections is that there is actually one kind of intriguing result. An experiment called DAMA/LIBRA has claimed to see a signal consistent with WIMP detection, but it’s kind of odd because it is in a region of the WIMP parameter space which has been thoroughly excluded by other experiments. At any rate, we should get to the bottom of this soon; an Australian experiment (known as SABRE) is currently under construction in Victoria, with the aim of directly testing the claims of DAMA/LIBRA. SABRE should help us determine if this DAMA/LIBRA signal is an anomaly or an actual hint of WIMP detection. Q: Sometimes the general public finds it hard to get behind big projects or ‘Blue Sky Research’ because there isn’t a foreseeable benefit. What is the one point you would make to someone to validate dark matter research? This is a great question – it is certainly true that it is sometimes hard to rustle up support for more fundamental research – which is kind of a shame, because if you ask me fundamental research is just about the most important kind! To me, it’s as simple as this: think about everything humans
have achieved so far. Electricity, computers, medicine, satellites, space travel etc. It’s incredible. We’ve accomplished all of this using only regular matter - using only the tiny fraction of the matter in the universe that we understand. Dark matter makes up more than 5/6 of all matter in the universe and we know almost nothing about it. Imagine what we could do with if we could harness it. To me, the idea that it is useless, or pointless is patently absurd. Even if we don’t find life-altering, paradigm-shifting applications for dark matter after discovery, it is absolutely critical that we investigate it, because how else would we know? In a broader sense fundamental research (which is to say: researchers digging around in areas where they aren’t immediately sure of the outcomes and applications but are simply exploring a glaring, nagging question or hole in our understanding) invariably leads to enormous societal advancement. James Clerk Maxwell was not trying to lay the foundations for the entire modern world’s understanding of electricity and magnetism when he discovered the laws of electromagnetism that bear his name, and Max Planck was not trying to discover the first quantum theory (which would go on to give us lasers, semiconductors and superconductors – all critical components in modern technology) when he set out investigating the relationship between light intensity and colour. These things just happened as a result of looking at the big, unanswered questions and getting down to work trying to answer them. So yes, this is something I’m quite passionate about – it’s absolutely critical that we try and tackle these enormous, seemingly arcane questions. It’s how we advance as a species. Q: In your sting analogy during your talk for Famelab you did not mention the gravitational effect of the Super Massive Blackhole that resided in the centre of all galaxies. Isn’t the ‘pull’ from this massively dense object enough to keep everything in place? To be clear, the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) is definitely included in the modelling of what the rotation curves should look like and amazingly we still find that much more mass is required. However, it’s a little more subtle than just modelling more or less mass at the centre of the galaxy. Gravitational attraction decreases as the square of the distance between objects. Even for a massive object like the SMBH at the galactic centre, the matter in the outer spiral arms of the galaxy will feel a much, much weaker pull from it than the matter near the centre, as it is much further away. This is why we expect the galactic rotation curves to look the way we expect them to, which is to say, we expect the matter
August 2018
on the outer arms to be moving slower than the matter near the centre, as it feels a much weaker gravitational attraction regardless of how much matter we stick in the centre. This would mean, in the string analogy, that the outer matter cannot move as quickly as the inner matter, as its “string” would break. Q: Favourite element on the periodic table? Probably one of the ones named after a cool scientist, like Curium, for Marie Curie, or Rutherfordium, for Ernest Rutherford. Failing that it’ll be one of the really, really heavy ones that don’t have a proper name yet, like “ununennium” element 119, just because it sounds cool. Q: If you had unlimited funding, describe the ultimate experiment you would create to verify dark matter? Three words: Bigger, Stronger Magnets. In most kinds of axion detection, a lot comes down to the strength (and physical size) of the magnetic field you can apply in the laboratory. This is because most axion detection experiments rely on the conversion of axions into photons, and the amount of conversion depends on the strength of the applied magnetic field and the volume of the detector. Large, superconducting magnets with high fields can get very, very pricey. Q: You were part of the Famelab finalists this year in Australia and to illustrate the amount of Dark Matter vs regular matter you made some wool puffballs. Is sewing a skill physicists require or did you have some help? I actually learned how to make those pom-pom tactile, 3D data representation things whilst volunteering at Scitech, a science museum in Perth (if you haven’t been, go check it out. it’s awesome). So, I kind of knew how to make them, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a lot of help from my girlfriend Lily, and our friends Grace, Nuala and Thomas. Thanks guys. Q: What inspired you as a teen to pursue science as your career? A couple of things! I was lucky enough to have access to some pretty great extra-curricular programs in school. I was involved in an after-school code and cypher club (super cool, right?) inspired by Alan Turing and the team at Bletchley Park cracking the Enigma Code in WWII (see the recent film “The Imitation Game” for more on this).
Rose, and it will surprise absolutely nobody to learn that I am and always have been an enormous, unapologetic Sci-Fi nerd. Q: Can you recommend a book or doco that would help people get their heads around dark matter? One of the best resources I’ve found is actually a short video from one of my favourite webcomics PhD Comics. The video is called “Dark Matters” and it’s great. You can check it out here: https://vimeo.com/22956103 10: Is there another competing theory? There are a few, but the most popular competing theories all rely on modifying our understanding of gravity in some way. This makes sense, seeing as all of our current observational evidence for dark matter is from gravitational interactions, eg galactic rotation curves, cluster interactions, gravitational strong lensing, etc. The dark matter hypothesis essentially says “we require more gravity for these things to behave the way they do, so there must be a lot more matter providing this gravity.” The modified gravity hypothesis says “we require more gravity for these things to behave the way they do, so our theory of gravity must be wrong.” This is a sensible approach to the problem, no doubt, but so far nobody has been able to write down a theory of modified gravity that is consistent with all of the observations, whereas the dark matter hypothesis IS consistent with all the observations. Not to mention that fact that we are pretty sure our model of gravity (being Einstein’s General Relativity) is quite good, given that it was able to predict things like planetary orbits within the solar system to ridiculous levels of precision – it seems a little hard to swallow that it could be so precise for some things but so so wildly wrong for others, like galactic rotation curves. Suffice to say, if someone can write down a modified gravity theory that is consistent with General Relativity for things like our solar system, and consistent with all the observational evidence for dark matter, people will start to pay attention. Until then, it’s all about the hunt for new particles, and the hunt is on.
Perhaps more impactful, we were really fortunate to have Professor Peter Quinn from WA’s own International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and some of his students come and visit for some after-school sessions on astronomy and astrophysics. This was really inspiring, and a major reason I chose physics as a major at uni. Of course, I also had a great physics teacher in school, Dr Holly
Ben McAllister: researcher at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems
Computational Chemistry By Elizabeth Suk-Hang Lam
What’s your impression of chemists? People with a white lab coat? People working with test tubes? People mixing colourful solutions in the lab? How about chemists experimenting with computers? While some chemists continue to work on the experimental aspect of chemistry with pipettes and chemicals, some chemists immerse themselves in programming codes and molecular simulations. The joint forces between both fields of chemists have brought great discoveries to chemistry! In fact, the emergence of various journals in the field has highlighted the growing importance of computational chemistry! So, what is computational chemistry? Back to Chem101, molecules break down into atoms, and atoms consist of electrons and the nucleus. The electrons revolving around the nucleus are what make molecules so special and unique in how they look and behave. Therefore, simulating electron movements tell us much about how the molecules behave. However, there are many electrons in a single molecule. A simple molecule, such as water, has already got 10 electrons! Getting to know how each electron behaves is an impossible task because it involves solving the fundamental equation from quantum mechanics, which is too complicated for problems in the molecular world! To tackle such difficulty, scientists come up with reasonable approximations. Instead of solving for the exact answers from quantum mechanics, chemists utilised computational power to obtain a good-enough answer numerically. This is like making any reasonable guesses and comparing the results from those guesses. When the results from consecutive guesses have insignificant differences, the guess is considered as the answer. Chemists view electrons as groups instead of treating them individually. One of the popular approaches is to treat electrons as electron density. This leads to the development of Density Functional Theory (DFT). The popularity of DFT is boosted by the announcement of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry where Walter Kohn and John Pople for their development of DFT and computational methods. Nowadays, DFT is one of the effective tools to describe the properties of atoms,
molecules and solids. So how do chemists calculate the structure of a molecule? A typical DFT input consists of three building blocks. First, the basis sets are the parameters that describe electrons in atoms or molecules. Second, the functionals are the approximated rules that electrons obey in the system. Third, the initial guess of the structure of the target molecule. Chemists start with a good guess of the molecular structure and calculate its energy. Since molecules tend to stay in the position with minimum energy, a computational program is set to search for the minimum energy for the structure. When the structure corresponds to the minimal energy is found, the molecule is said to be optimized. Chemists then carry out further calculations for molecular properties based on this optimized structures. While DFT generally makes good enough description for small molecules, it often gets too complicated when dealing with larger molecules like DNA and proteins. There comes molecular dynamics. Instead of looking into electrons, they speculate the molecules at an upper level. They use a set of equations to describe the forces between atoms in the molecule. Perhaps you may think computational chemistry is too abstract for everyone to get involved. This is certainly not the case. Researchers have built an online game that invites everyone to solve the difficult computational problems in science research. For example, by inviting players to solve molecular puzzles, researchers get insight on how proteins fold. With the advancement of artificial intelligence and machine learning, computational chemistry has entered another era. By developing a computational network, researchers have now built neural networks to search for molecules with specific properties and even make predictions. These neural networks allow a computer to teach itself without prior programming. This is now widely used in drug discovery research for pharmaceutical companies. It is envisaged with continuous improvements in computational power and technology, chemistry will flourish as with other scientific fields. Let’s look forward to the new advances and discoveries brought by computational chemistry in the future!
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3×10 Femtoseconds of Fame Real Scientists Explain Their Work
Recycling Carbon - ‘Carbon dioxide: problem today, commodity tomorrow’ Dr Russ Wakeham, Dr Jennifer Rudd, Dr Marco Taddei, Dr Mike Warwick, Dr Ali Hedayati, Dr Ewa Kazimierska, Dr Louise Hamdy, Dr Cathy Gowenlock, We are an outreach activity born out of the collaborative research environment in the Energy Safety Research Institute at Swansea University. Our aim is to show everyone how carbon (from carbon dioxide) can be recycled and reused in the same fashion as other household waste can be recycled. We use “bunch’ems” to model carbon dioxide and other molecules to enable participants to carry out chemistry themselves. Our outreach has taken us into schools, pubs, museums and careers fairs. At every event we’ve educated about global warming and demonstrated easy steps people can take to reduce their carbon footprint. Want more info? Check them out here - https://recyclingcarbon.wordpress.com/
Photograph courtesy of Severn Wye / Steven Parry Photography
Want to feature your work? Contact us! Hunting for a cure Dr. Emma Yhnell B.Sc. Ph.D. FHEA, Health and Care Research Wales Fellow Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute, Cardiff University Contact: YhnellE@cardiff.ac.uk Nearly 11 million people in the UK are living with a brain disease or disorder. That is equivalent to nearly four times the population of Wales! These numbers will inevitably grow with increased awareness, better diagnoses and the aging population. My research is focused on a disease called Huntington’s disease. Huntington’s disease affects approximately 1 in 10,000 people (although significantly more people are impacted due to caring responsibilities). It is a unique disease because we know that it is caused by a single faulty gene. This means that if you carry the gene for Huntington’s disease you will develop the disease and there is a 50% chance that you may pass the disease causing gene on to your children. My research aims to see if completing computer game ‘brain training’ can improve the quality of life for people affected by Huntington’s disease. I am also interested in the views of friends, family members and carers. The research that I am completing has implications for a wide range of other neurodegenerative conditions including dementia, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease and aims to reduce the socio-economic cost of treating and caring for people who are impacted by brain diseases.
Renewable energy Is it already too late? By Jesse Crowe ‘The Travelling Scientist’ A majority of the power currently used by humans comes from fossil fuels. Coal, oil, and natural gases form underground over millions of years, and we are digging them up and using them at an alarming rate. This is leading us toward two major problems. One is that these limited energy sources are rapidly disappearing, increasing energy prices and reducing energy security for our future. The other issue is that as we burn through these fossil fuels (literally), we are producing copious amounts of greenhouse gases that have a massive impact on climate change. This is promoting an increase in global temperature that could lead to a whole new set of problems. Fortunately, there is one solution that could solve both of these problems - renewable energy sources. We have the technology to harness the power of the sun, the seas, the wind and the trees for our daily use. These sources are not limited like fossil fuels, comparatively, they are infinite. So why hasn’t the world already made the change from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources? Fossil fuels are more energy dense than renewables. A barrel of oil or a bucket of coal can produce a lot of power compared to a good gust of wind or a sunny afternoon. A 2008 paper by Layton calculated that oil contains twenty quadrillion times more energy than solar power, so as long as these energy-rich fossil fuels are abundant, people want to utilise that energy. Further research is required to increase the efficiency of renewable energies if we want to make them our main source of power. Another problem is that even though renewable energy sources may be unlimited, they are not always reliable. You can’t harness the suns energy at night, and you can’t catch the wind on a still day. To solve this problem, researchers are currently developing more efficient methods of capturing and storing renewable energies when they are present so that there is a reliable and constant supply of power, regardless of the weather. The largest lithium-ion battery in the world in South Australia is a shining example of how energy can be
collected, stored and utilised easily, and it is likely that we will see more of these batteries being introduced around the world in the coming years. Besides these issues, renewable energy sources are much better, both for the environment and for ourselves, than the burning of fossil fuels. The pollution from coal, oil and natural gas is the biggest human contribution to climate change. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have been increasing steadily since the industrial revolution, and in the last 70 years alone the average concentration has increased by 25% (300ppm to 400ppm). This carbon dioxide can linger in the atmosphere for thousands of years, absorbing heat and warming up our environment. Renewable energy sources, on the other hand, produce far fewer greenhouse gases, greatly reducing the human impact on climate change. By switching to renewable energy sources, we could stop this atmospheric pollution before it gets out of hand. It is important to remember that fossil fuels are limited. They will run out one day soon, and when they do, we need to be prepared with alternative power sources. Furthermore, the pollution caused by fossil fuels is damaging our planet and everything living on it, something needs to change. By shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources in the near future, we will be reducing human impacts on climate change and setting ourselves up for a more sustainable future.
Check out Jesse’s latest science video by clicking on the picture below
Ancient Rocks Hint when Earth got Oxygen A new study supports the theory that oxygen first appeared in Earth’s lower atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago—making life as we know it possible. The sulfur record hidden in ancient rock marks the dramatic change in the planet’s atmosphere that gave rise to complex life—but rocks are local indicators. For the big picture, biogeochemists used water that flows over and erodes the rocks as a proxy. The balance of sulfur isotope anomalies in Archean rock, a marker of the “great oxygenation event,” can also be recognized and measured in the rivers that erode it, according to the new paper in Nature Geoscience. Researchers sampled water from two of the few places on Earth where Archean rock is exposed in abundance: at the Superior Craton in Canada and in South Africa and determined that while individual samples of rock may still show an imbalance (the anomalies) of sulfur isotopes, careful analysis of the water that diffuses and transports sulfur from thousands of miles of rock to the ocean shows that the contents are ultimately in alignment with bulk Earth’s sulfur signature. “Changes in chemistry can tell you something about the environment, and rocks can tell you whether there was oxygen at a particular time,” says Mark Torres, assistant professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Rice University. “Early in our history, sulfur isotope anomalies are all over the place. Then, roughly 2.7 billion years ago, they disappear and they never come back.” Sulfur is a marker because four stable isotopes, known by their molecular masses of 32, 33, 34, and 36, can show different behaviours when present in the atmosphere. “Most sulfur is mass 32, but there are small amounts of the other masses,” Torres says. Ultraviolet light from the sun reacted with sulfur gas and split it into separate compounds with heavier and lighter isotopes. Eventually, these compounds sunk into and remain in rock that formed at the time. “But there’s this weird thing: Really old rocks have more 33-sulfur in them than we would expect, based on the relative masses,” Torres
says. “Because 33 is one heavier than 32, we should easily be able to predict their relative abundances using physical chemistry. But, we find that 33 is way more abundant than expected. That’s why we call it an anomaly.” When oxygen appeared, it absorbed ultraviolet light and quenched the sulfur reaction, as seen in the rock. “That’s all well and good”, Torres says, “but the theory doesn’t account for anomalous sulfur that continued to leach from Archean rock into the surface water, be carried to the ocean and then condense into new rock that would also have the anomaly”. “This recycling of ancient rock was a way to perpetuate the anomaly even after oxygen had arisen,” he says. The researchers suspected persistence of the anomaly could blur understanding of the timing of oxygen’s rise by as much as 100 million years. It didn’t, they discovered, but it wasn’t easy. Researchers collected scores of samples from the Canadian sites to go along with South African samples they already had and checked their sulfur signature after eliminating the effects of contaminants from sulfurous acid rain, ice-melting road salt, and dust from local mining operations. But their final calculations showed a robust balance in 33-sulfur collected by river runoff over a wide area. “Our effort allows us to be confident we’ve got the timing for this great oxidation event, so now we can start to understand the mechanisms,” Torres says. “If you think about the whole scope of Earth’s history, 100 million years is small, but on the evolutionary timeline of organisms, it matters.” Researchers from Caltech are coauthors of the paper. The National Science Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and a Caltech GPS Division Discovery Award supported the work. Source: Rice University
UP CLOSE Human neural rosette primordial brain cells, differentiated from embryonic stem cells in the culture dish (used to study brain development and Huntington’s disease) Image Credit: Dr. Gist Croft. Lauren Pietila, Stephanie Tse, Dr. Szilvia Galgoczi, Maria Fenner, Dr. Ali Brivanlou
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