The James Webb Space Telescope has gotten the first sniff of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet in another solar system.
“It’s incontrovertible. It’s there. It’s definitely there,” says planetary scientist and study coauthor Peter Gao of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. “There have been hints of carbon dioxide in previous observations, but never confirmed to such an extent.”
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The planet, dubbed WASP-39b, is huge and puffy. It’s a bit wider than Jupiter and about as massive as Saturn. And it orbits its star every four Earth days, making it scorching hot. Those features make it a terrible place to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life ( SN: 4/19/16 ). But that combination of puffy atmosphere and frequent passes in front of its star makes it easy to observe, a perfect planet to put the new telescope through its paces.
James Webb, or JWST, launched in December 2021 and released its first images in July 2022 ( SN: 7/11/22 ). For about eight hours in July, the telescope observed starlight that filtered through the planet’s thick atmosphere as the planet crossed between its star and JWST. As it did, molecules of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere absorbed specific wavelengths of that starlight.
Previous observations of WASP-39b with NASA’s now-defunct Spitzer Space Telescope had detected just a whiff of absorption at that same wavelength. But it wasn’t enough to convince astronomers that carbon dioxide was really there.
“I would not have bet more than a beer, at most a six pack, on that weird tentative hint of carbon dioxide from Spitzer,” says astronomer Nicolas Cowan of McGill University in Montreal, who was not involved with the new study. The JWST detection, on the other hand, “is rock solid,” he says. “I wouldn’t bet my firstborn because I love him too much. But I would bet a nice vacation.”
The JWST data also showed an extra bit of absorption at wavelengths close to those absorbed by carbon dioxide. “It’s a mystery molecule,” says astronomer Natalie Batalha of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the team behind the observation. “We have several suspects that we are interrogating.”
The spectrum of light that filtered through the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-39 b shows strong evidence for containing carbon dioxide. The large bump in the middle of the spectrum shows that the planet’s atmosphere absorbed light with wavelengths around 4.3 micrometers — a clear sign of CO 2 . A smaller bump (shown as three dots above the best-fit line) to the left of the CO 2 , around 4 micrometers, could represent a mystery molecule.
The amount of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet’s atmosphere can reveal details about how the planet formed ( SN: 5/11/18 ). If the planet was bombarded with asteroids, that could have brought in more carbon and enriched the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. If radiation from the star stripped away some of the planet atmosphere’s lighter elements, that could make it appear richer in carbon dioxide too.
Despite needing a telescope as powerful as JWST to detect it, carbon dioxide might be in atmospheres all over the galaxy, hiding in plain sight. “Carbon dioxide is one of the few molecules that is present in the atmospheres of all solar system planets that have atmospheres,” Batalha says. “It’s your front-line molecule.”
Eventually, astronomers hope to use JWST to find carbon dioxide and other molecules in the atmospheres of small rocky planets, like the ones orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 ( SN: 12/13/17 ). Some of those planets, at just the right distances from their star to sustain liquid water, might be good places to look for signs of life. It’s yet to be seen whether JWST will detect those signs of life, but it will be able to detect carbon dioxide.
“My first thought when I saw these data was, ‘Wow, this is gonna work,’” Batalha says.
Lisa Grossman is the astronomy writer. She has a degree in astronomy from Cornell University and a graduate certificate in science writing from University of California, Santa Cruz. She lives near Boston.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education.
It was the juice that tipped him off. At lunch, Ícaro de A.T. Pires found the flavor of his grape juice muted, flattened into just water with sugar. There was no grape goodness. “I stopped eating lunch and went to the bathroom to try to smell the toothpaste and shampoo,” says Pires, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Hospital IPO in Curitiba, Brazil. “I realized then that I couldn’t smell anything.”
Pires was about three days into COVID-19 symptoms when his sense of smell vanished, an absence that left a mark on his days. On a trip to the beach two months later, he couldn’t smell the sea. “This was always a smell that brought me good memories and sensations,” Pires says. “The fact that I didn’t feel it made me realize how many things in my day weren’t as fun as before. Smell can connect to our emotions like no other sense can.”
As SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, ripped across the globe, it stole the sense of smell away from millions of people, leaving them with a condition called anosmia. Early in the pandemic, when Pires’ juice turned to water, that olfactory theft became one of the quickest ways to signal a COVID-19 infection. With time, most people who lost smell recover the sense. Pires, for one, has slowly regained a large part of his sense of smell. But that’s not the case for everyone.
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About 5.6 percent of people with post–COVID-19 smell loss (or the closely related taste loss) are still not able to smell or taste normally six months later , a recent analysis of 18 studies suggests. The number, reported in the July 30 British Medical Journal , seems small. But when considering the estimated 550 million cases and counting of COVID-19 around the world, it adds up.
Scientists are searching for ways to hasten olfactory healing. Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have a better idea of how many people are affected and how long it seems to last. Yet when it comes to ways to rewire the sense of smell, the state of the science isn’t coming up roses.
A method called olfactory training, or smell training, has shown promise, but big questions remain about how it works and for whom. The technique has been around for a while; the coronavirus isn’t the first ailment to snatch away smell. But with newfound pressure from people affected by COVID-19, olfactory training and a host of other newer treatments are now getting a lot more attention.
The pandemic has brought increased attention to smell loss. “If we have to provide a silver lining, COVID is pushing the science at a speed that’s never happened before,” says Valentina Parma, an olfactory researcher and assistant director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “But,” she cautions, “we are really far from a solution.”
Compared with sight or hearing, the sense of smell can seem like an afterthought. But losing it can affect people deeply. “Your world really changes if you lose the sense of smell, in ways that are usually worse,” Parma says. The smell of a baby’s head, a buttery curry or the sharp salty sea can all add emotional meaning to experiences. Smells can also warn of danger, such as the rotten egg stench that signals a natural gas leak.
As an ear, nose and throat doctor, Pires recalls a deaf patient who lost her sense of smell after COVID-19 and enrolled in a clinical trial that he and colleagues conducted on smell training. She worked in a perfumery company — her sense of smell was crucial to her job and her life. “At the first appointment, she said, with tears in her eyes, that it felt like she wasn’t living,” Pires recalls.
Unlike the cells that detect color or sound, the cells that sense smell can replenish themselves. Stem cells in the nose are constantly pumping out new smell-sensing cells. Called olfactory sensory neurons, these cells are dotted with molecular nets that snag specific odor molecules that waft into the nose. Once activated, these cells send messages through the skull and into the brain.
Because of their nasal neighborhood, olfactory sensory neurons are exposed to the hazards of the environment. “They may be covered with a little layer of mucus, but they’re sitting out there being constantly bombarded with bacteria and viruses and pollutants and who knows what else,” says Steven Munger, a chemosensory neuroscientist at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville.
Exactly how SARS-CoV-2 damages the smell system isn’t clear. But recent studies suggest the virus’s assault is indirect. The virus can infect and kill nose support cells called sustentacular cells, which are thought to help keep olfactory neurons happy and fed by delivering glucose and maintaining the right salt balance. That attack can inflame the olfactory epithelium, the layers of cells that line parts of the nasal cavity.
Once this tissue is riled up, the olfactory sensory neurons get wonky , even though the cells themselves haven’t been attacked. After an infection and ensuing inflammation, these neurons slow down the production of their odor-catching nets, a decrease that could blind themselves to odor molecules, scientists reported in the March 17 Cell .
With time, the inflammation settles down, and the olfactory sensory neurons can get back to their usual jobs, researchers suspect. “We do think that for post-viral smell disorders, the most common way to recover function is going to be spontaneous recovery,” Munger says. But in some people, this process doesn’t happen quickly, if ever.
That’s where smell training comes in.
One of the only therapies that exists, smell training is quite simple — a good old-fashioned nose workout. It involves deeply smelling four scents (usually rose, eucalyptus, lemon and cloves) for 30 seconds apiece, twice a day for months.
In one study, 40 people who had smell disorders came away from the training with improved smelling abilities , on average, compared with 16 people who didn’t do the training, olfactory researcher Thomas Hummel and his colleagues reported in the March 2009 Laryngoscope .
Since then, the bulk of studies has shown that the method helps between 30 and 60 percent of the people who try it, says Hummel, of Technische Universität Dresden in Germany. His view is that the method can help some people, “but it does not work in everybody.”
One of the nice things is that there are no harmful side effects, Hummel says. That’s “the charming side of it.” But to do the training correctly takes discipline and stamina. “If you don’t do it regularly, and you give up after 14 days, this is futile,” he says.
Pires in his recent trial had hoped to speed up the process, which usually takes three months, by adding four more odors to the regimen. For four weeks, 80 participants received either four or eight smells. Both groups improved, but there was no difference between the two groups , the researchers reported July 21 in the American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy .
It’s not known how the technique works in the people it seems to help. It could be that it focuses people’s attention on faint smells; it could be stimulating the growth of replacement cells; it could be strengthening some pathways in the brain. Data from other animals suggest that such training can increase the number of olfactory sensory neurons, Hummel says.
Overall, this nose boot camp may be a possible approach for people to try, but big questions remain about how it works and for whom, Munger says. “In my view, it’s very important to be up front with patients about the very real possibility this therapy may not lead to a restoration of smell, even if they and their doctor feel it is worth trying,” he says. “I am not trying to discourage people here, but I also think we need to be very careful not to give unwarranted promises.”
Smell training doesn’t come with harmful biological side effects, but it can induce frustration if it doesn’t work, Parma says. In her practice, “I have been talking to a lot of people who say, ‘I did it every day for six months, twice a day for 10 minutes. I met in groups with other people, so we kept each other accountable, and I did that for six months. And it didn’t work for me.’” She adds, “I would want to address the frustration that this induces in patients.”
Other potential treatments are coming under scrutiny, such as steroids, omega-3 supplements, growth factors and vitamins A and E, all of which might encourage the recovery of the nasal epithelium.
More futuristic remedies are also in early stages of research. These include epithelial transplants designed to boost olfactory stem cells, treatments with platelet-rich plasma to curb inflammation and promote healing, and even an “electronic nose” that would detect odor molecules and stimulate the brain directly. This cyborg-smelling system takes inspiration from cochlear implants for hearing and retinal implants for vision.
People routinely undervalue the sense of smell. Some people rated the ability to smell as less important than various creature comforts, hair and even the little left toe, a recent survey found.
For many people, the sense of smell is appreciated only after it’s gone, Parma says, an apathy that’s illustrated in stark terms by a recent study of about 400 people. The vast majority of respondents — nearly 85 percent — would rather give up their sense of smell than sight or hearing. About 19 percent of respondents said they would prefer to give up their sense of smell than their cell phone. The survey results “dramatically illustrate the negligible value people place on their sense of smell,” researchers wrote in the March Brain Sciences .
Even as a doctor who treats people with smell loss, Pires has a newfound fondness for a good whiff. “Having lost it for a while made me appreciate it even more.”
Laura Sanders is the neuroscience writer. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Southern California.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education.
The underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on January 15, 2022, generated tsunamis that may have started out as a mound of water 90 meters tall.
The massive Tonga eruption generated a set of planet-circling tsunamis that may have started out as a single mound of water roughly the height of the Statue of Liberty.
What’s more, the explosive eruption triggered an immense atmospheric shock wave that spawned a second set of especially fast-moving tsunamis , a rare phenomenon that can complicate early warnings for these oft-destructive waves, researchers report in the October Ocean Engineering .
As the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai undersea volcano erupted in the South Pacific in January, it displaced a large volume of water upward, says Mohammad Heidarzadeh, a civil engineer at the University of Bath in England ( SN: 1/21/22 ). The water in that colossal mound later “ran downhill,” as fluids tend to do, to generate the initial set of tsunamis.
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To estimate the original size of the mound, Heidarzadeh and his team used computer simulations, as well as data from deep-ocean instruments and coastal tide gauges within about 1,500 kilometers of the eruption, many of them in or near New Zealand. The arrival times of tsunami waves, as well as their sizes, at those locations were key pieces of data, Heidarzadeh says.
The team analyzed nine possibilities for the initial wave, each of which was shaped like a baseball pitcher’s mound and had a distinct height and diameter. The best fit to the real-world data came from a mound of water a whopping 90 meters tall and 12 kilometers in diameter, the researchers report.
That initial wave would have contained an estimated 6.6 cubic kilometers of water. “This was a really large tsunami,” Heidarzadeh says.
Despite starting out about nine times as tall as the tsunami that devastated the Tohoku region of Japan in 2011, the Tongan tsunamis killed only five people and caused about $90 million in damage, largely because of their remote source ( SN: 2/10/12 ).
Another unusual aspect of the Tongan eruption is the second set of tsunamis generated by a strong atmospheric pressure wave.
That pressure pulse resulted from a steam explosion that occurred when a large volume of seawater infiltrated the hot magma chamber beneath the erupting volcano. As the pressure wave raced across the ocean’s surface at speeds exceeding 300 meters per second, it pushed water ahead of it, creating tsunamis, Heidarzadeh explains.
Along many coastlines, including some in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, these pressure wave–generated tsunamis arrived hours ahead of the gravity-driven waves spreading from the 90-meter-tall mound of water. Gravity-driven tsunami waves typically travel across the deepest parts of the ocean, far from continents, at speeds between 100 and 220 meters per second. When the waves reach shallow waters near shore, the waves slow, water stacks up and then strikes shore, where destruction occurs.
Those quicker-than-expected arrival times — plus the fact that the pressure-wave tsunamis for the Tongan eruption were comparable in size with the gravity-driven ones — could complicate early warnings for these tsunamis. That’s concerning, Heiderzadeh says.
One way to address the issue would be to install instruments that measure atmospheric pressure with the deep-sea equipment already in place to detect tsunamis, says Hermann Fritz, a tsunami scientist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
With that setup, scientists would be able to discern if a passing tsunami is associated with a pressure pulse, thus providing a clue in real time about how fast the tsunami wave might be traveling.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education.
Sea urchin skeletons may owe some of their strength to a common geometric design.
Components of the skeletons of common sea urchins ( Paracentrotus lividus ) follow a similar pattern to that found in honeycombs and dragonfly wings, researchers report in the August Journal of the Royal Society Interface . Studying this recurring natural order could inspire the creation of strong yet lightweight new materials.
Urchin skeletons display “an incredible diversity of structures at the microscale, varying from fully ordered to entirely chaotic,” says marine biologist and biomimetic consultant Valentina Perricone. These structures may help the animals maintain their shape when faced with predator attacks and environmental stresses.
While using a scanning electron microscope to study urchin skeleton tubercules — sites where the spines attach that withstand strong mechanical forces — Perricone spotted “a curious regularity.” Tubercules seem to follow a type of common natural order called a Voronoi pattern, she and her colleagues found.
Using math, a Voronoi pattern is created by a process that divides a region into polygon-shaped cells that are built around points within them called seeds ( SN: 9/23/18 ). The cells follow the nearest neighbor rule: Every spot inside a cell is nearer to that cell’s seed than to any other seed. Also, the boundary that separates two cells is equidistant from both their seeds.
A computer-generated Voronoi pattern had an 82 percent match with the pattern found in sea urchin skeletons. This arrangement, the team suspects, yields a strong yet lightweight skeletal structure. The pattern “can be interpreted as an evolutionary solution” that “optimizes the skeleton,” says Perricone, of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” in Aversa, Italy.
Urchins, dragonflies and bees aren’t the only beneficiaries of Voronoi architecture. “We are developing a library of bioinspired, Voronoi-based structures” that could “serve as lightweight and resistant solutions” for materials design, Perricone says. These, she hopes, could inspire new developments in materials science, aerospace, architecture and construction.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education.
Buckled terrain on the seafloor just off the coast of West Africa may have been formed by a 400-meter-long asteroid crashing into the ocean at about the same time as the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs (illustrated).
MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images Plus
Chicxulub, the asteroid that wiped out most dinosaurs, might have had a little sibling.
Off the coast of West Africa, hundreds of meters beneath the seafloor, scientists have identified what appears to be the remains of an 8.5-kilometer-wide impact crater , which they’ve named Nadir. The team estimates that the crater formed roughly around the same time that another asteroid — Chicxulub , the dinosaur killer — slammed into modern day Mexico ( SN: 1/25/17 ). If confirmed, it could mean that nonbird dinosaurs met their demise by a one-two punch of asteroids, researchers report in the Aug. 17 Science Advances .
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“The idea that [Chicxulub] had help — for want of a better phrase — would have really added insult to serious injury,” says study coauthor Veronica Bray, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Nearly 200 impact craters have been discovered on Earth ( SN: 12/18/18 ), the vast majority of which are on land. That’s because impact craters at sea gradually become buried under sediment, Bray says, which makes the Nadir structure a valuable scientific find, regardless of its birthdate.
Geologist Uisdean Nicholson of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh happened upon the structure while analyzing data collected by seismic waves transmitted underground to detect physical structures offshore of Guinea. Lurking beneath the seafloor — and under nearly 1 kilometer of water — he discerned a bowl-shaped structure with a broken-up, terraced floor and a pronounced central peak — features expected of a large impact.
Based on the structure’s dimensions, Bray, Nicholson and their colleagues calculate that, if an asteroid was responsible for the terrain, it would probably have been over 400 meters wide. What’s more, the researchers estimate that the impact would have rocked the ground like a magnitude 7 earthquake and stirred tsunamis hundreds of meters high.
Despite that fallout, the Nadir impact would have been far less devastating than the one from the roughly 10-kilometer-wide Chicxulub asteroid, says Michael Rampino, a geologist from New York University who was not involved in the study. “It certainly wouldn’t have had global effects,” he says.
Using geologic layers adjacent to Nadir, some with ages obtained by past studies, the team estimated the structure to have formed around the end of the Cretaceous period — 66 million years ago. The Nadir asteroid may even have formed a pair with the Chicxulub asteroid, the two having been ripped apart by gravitational forces during a previous Earth flyby, the researchers speculate.
But the study’s conclusions have some experts wary. “It looks like an impact crater, but it could also be something else,” says geologist Philippe Claeys of Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, who was not involved in the research. Confirming that the structure is an impact crater will require drilling for solid evidence, such as shocked quartz, he says. Alternative explanations for the structure’s identity include a collapsed volcanic caldera or a squeezed body of salt called a salt diapir.
The Nadir structure’s age is another uncertainty. The seismic data shows it appears to have formed sometime near the end the Cretaceous period or maybe a little later, Claeys says. “But that’s around the best they can say.” Drilling in the crater for minerals that contain radioactive elements could provide a more precise date of formation, Rampino says.
It’s not the first time that scientists have investigated whether Chicxulub had an accomplice. Some studies have suggested that the Boltysh crater in Ukraine may have formed at the same time as Chicxulub , though researchers have since determined that Boltysh formed 650,000 years later .
Bray and her colleagues are currently negotiating for funding to collect samples from the crater, with aspirations to drill in 2024. That will hopefully settle some of the debate surrounding Nadir’s origins, Bray says, though new questions will probably arise too. “If we do prove that this is the sister of the dinosaur killer, then how many other siblings are there?”
S.P. Kelley and E. Gurov. Boltysh, another end-Cretaceous impact . Meteoritics & Planetary Science . Vol. 37, January 26, 2010, p. 1031. doi: 10.1111/j.1945-5100.2002.tb00875.x.
Nikk Ogasa is a staff writer who focuses on the physical sciences for Science News . He has a master’s degree in geology from McGill University, and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education.
Online news stories about people’s encounters with spiders, such as this harmless jumping spider, frequently contain misinformation or sensationalized language, a new study finds.
Even spiders, it seems, have fallen victim to misinformation.
Media reports about people’s encounters with spiders tend to be full of falsehoods with a distinctly negative spin. An analysis of a decade’s worth of newspaper stories from dozens of countries finds that nearly half of the reports contain errors , arachnologist Catherine Scott and colleagues report August 22 in Current Biology .
“The vast majority of the spider content out there is about them being scary and hurting people,” says Scott, of McGill University in Montreal. In reality, they note, “spiders almost never bite people.”
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Of the roughly 50,000 known spider species, vanishingly few are dangerous. Instead, many spiders benefit us by eating insects like mosquitoes that are harmful to people. Even with the rare exceptions like brown recluse and black widow spiders, bites are extremely uncommon, Scott says. Some stories about bites blamed spiders that don’t occur in the area, and others reported symptoms that don’t match symptoms of actual bites. “So many stories about spider bites included no evidence whatsoever that there was any spider involved,” they say.
To conduct the study, Scott and their colleagues analyzed over 5,000 online newspaper stories about humans and spiders from 2010 to 2020 across 81 countries. In addition to errors, the team determined that 43 percent of the stories were sensationalized, often using words like nasty, killer , agony and nightmare . International and national newspapers were more likely to sensationalize spiders than regional outlets. Stories that included a spider expert were less sensationalistic, though there was no such effect from other experts, including doctors.
If people knew the truth about spiders, they could spend less time blaming them for bites and killing them with pesticides that are toxic to many other species, including humans, Scott says. Clearing up the misinformation would be good for spiders, too — especially the one in your house that doesn’t get squashed out of fear. Spiders in general stand to benefit, the researchers conclude, because news helps shape public opinion, which can influence decisions about wildlife conservation.
“Spiders are kind of unique in that they seem to be really good at capturing people’s attention,” says arachnologist Lisa Taylor at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved in the study. “If that attention is paired with real information about how fascinating they are, rather than sensationalistic misinformation, then I think spiders are well-suited to serve as tiny ambassadors for wildlife in general.”
Betsy Mason is a freelance science journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is coauthor of All Over the Map and the cartography website Map Dragons .
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education.
