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Science community celebrates Project Hail Mary (movie) for its ‘hard science’

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Project Hail Mary (movie) opened today, March 20, 2026 and it has caused a stir in the science community. Concurrently, the Artemis II rocket has begun its slow journey to the launch pad in preparation for its April 1, 2026 launch, from a March 20, 2026 Canadian Press news item on CTV news,

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NASA says rollout operations at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida began early Friday after being briefly delayed by high winds.

Officials say the trek to the pad is expected to take up to 12 hours.

The mission has been delayed a few times since February due to hydrogen fuel leaks and helium flow problems, but is scheduled to launch April 1.

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You can find out more about the Artemis II mission here on the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) website. Meanwhile, Jennifer M. Dooren’s March 20, 2026 article on the NASA website brings movie and Artemis II together, Note: Links have been removed,

Real-life space exploration and big-screen science fiction will converge on Friday. As NASA prepares to launch Artemis II, the first crewed mission under the agency’s Artemis program and another step toward sending the first astronauts – Americans – to Mars, the fictional film “Project Hail Mary” premiere will take audiences on a journey into deep space.

The agency provided guidance throughout filming, and also is participating in activities related to the release of the film to connect the agency’s missions, innovations, and discoveries to the public through pop culture.

“Space exploration captures the public’s imagination, and collaboration between science and storytelling brings that sense of discovery to a wider audience,” said Will Boyington, associate administrator for the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Inspiring the next generation, whether through rocket launches or sci-fi movies, helps build the talent and support that underpin American leadership in space.”

NASA’s communications personnel provided informal consultation about human spaceflight and science during the making of the movie, and experts from the agency in astrobiology and astrophysics, which are major themes in “Project Hail Mary,” answered questions about these topics during the making of the film. Agency advisors are listed in the credits.

On the movie set, the agency provided an in-person consultation between NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren and actor Ryan Gosling, who plays an astronaut in the movie. NASA also facilitated brand use guidance and clearance for the agency’s “meatball” and “worm” logos featured in the film. 

NASA’s activities related to the movie even reached beyond Earth. In between conducting research and demonstrating new technologies, Expedition 74 crew members living and working aboard the International Space Station, including NASA astronauts Chris Williams, Jessica Meir, and Jack Hathaway, screened “Project Hail Mary” while in orbit.

Artemis II crew members, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who will help make what once was science fiction a reality through their upcoming deep space launch, are expected to have an opportunity to view “Project Hail Mary” while in quarantine. They are preparing to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.

Sara Webb (Course Director, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia) wrote a March 18, 2026 essay “Project Hail Mary is packed with hard science. An astrophysicist breaks it down” that focuses on what the filmmakers got right and notes some of the areas where fiction held sway, Note: Links have been removed,

As an astrophysicist, my world revolves around the wonders of space and the mysteries of the universe. This means I can be a tough critic of science fiction books and films that explore these topics.

But when I walked out of a recent preview screening of the film adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2021 science fiction novel Project Hail Mary, I had tears of joy in my eyes. The filmmakers had done justice not just to the original story, but also to the science at the heart of it.

The story revolves around Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, who awakes from a coma with no memory and no idea why he’s on a space ship 11.9 light years away from Earth. As his memories slowly start to return, the truth becomes clear. The Sun is dying, and he is our only saving grace.

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A dying sun

In Project Hail Mary the Sun is dying due to an alien organism that has spread around our part of the Milky Way.

Firstly, could an organism spread from one solar system to another? According to some scientists, yes. It’s a theory called panspermia.

We have no hard evidence to prove it right now. But the theory isn’t completely wild. We know material from solar systems can be transported great distances – we ourselves have witnessed as least three interstellar visitors enter and fly through our Solar System.

If life forms could survive the harshness of space and live on such rocky bodies, it’s possible this is how life could spread. But that life would likely be basic organisms.

As for the organism at the centre of this movie, astrophage, its mechanics and behaviour sit rightly in the wonderful world of science fiction [emphasis mine].

The size of space

The idea of humans travelling between stars feels like an almost impossible challenge.

In our galaxy alone there are more than 400 billion stars, but only roughly 100 of them are within 20 light years of Earth.

Project Hail Mary focuses it’s attention on one of those systems, known as Tau Ceti, sitting 11.9 light years away.

If we were to travel to this star with the fastest spacecraft humans have ever flown in, the Apollo 10 module, travelling at more than 39,900 kilometres per hour, it would take us 320,000 years. In a story where the Sun is dying now, there is no time for that. So how does Project Hail Mary overcome this problem?

Enter special relativity.

Special relativity is one of the most paradigm-shifting theories of modern history. Developed by Albert Einstein in 1905, it equated mass and energy as one and the same. It best known by the famous E = mc2 formula.

What Einstein was able to work our mathematically, and we’ve later proved observationally, is that the closer to the speed of light something travels, the slower the time it experiences in its reference frame.

It’s called a Lorentz transformation – and it allows us to determine the time experienced in a reference frame different to our own, say travelling close to the speed of light.

The movie doesn’t give a full physics lesson on this, but rather uses visual cues, including correct mathematics worked out by Grace on a whiteboard to demonstrate this time change.

What Grace determines is that he’s only been in a coma for four years due to the effects of time dilation on a ship travelling that fast. Which is scientifically spot on.

We have to talk about the aliens

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As you can see Webb’s March 18, 2026 essay is engaging and accessible to those of us who don’t have physics degrees.

Both Science magazine and Nature magazine have Project Hail Mary articles.Perri Thaler’s March 19, 2026 article for Science magazine presents a Q&A (question and answer) with Wendy Freedman, University of Chicago astronomer who studies the evolution of the universe,

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Q: How scientifically accurate is the movie?

A: What really struck me was how well it represented how science is done and how a scientist approaches problems. You have a leading actor, Ryan Gosling, playing an actual scientist, not an evil man with a white lab coat. He’s a human being. He’s thoughtful and he’s confronted with real challenges that he has to solve. He collaborates, and science is a very collaborative enterprise, so I really like the way science was portrayed in the movie. Lots of speculative ideas, but also lots of real science and a real approach to science.

Q: If you were Ryland Grace, would you approach the problem differently?

A: He approaches things very thoughtfully, methodically. Here’s an idea, a hypothesis, and let’s test it. If it doesn’t work out, well, what went wrong? What else can we do? In terms of basic approach, I’d be very similar, I think.

Q: Was there a specific concept that you noticed in a scene that made you nerd out because the filmmakers got it right or got it wrong?

A:  I love that relativity was part of the plot, and that the equipment he had for trying to understand the basis of the life form was a very realistic portrayal of science. The microbiology, chemistry, physics, and astrophysics were all great.

Q: How do you feel about the idea of non–water-based life?

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I was able to access Thaler’s March 19, 2026 article but it was one of those ‘you have x articles for free’ deals.

Alexandra Witze’s March 19, 2026 article for Nature magazine includes insights from a scientist who consulted on the film, Note: Links have been removed,

The film Project Hail Mary — which opens widely on Friday — has one of the best opening scenes on the silver screen in recent years. A man wakes up, disoriented and with a fuzzy memory, next to two dead bodies. We find out that he’s a scientist-turned-astronaut on a spaceship headed for a star beyond our Solar System, and those dead bodies are his crewmates. He’s all alone, and it’s now up to him to save life on Earth.

The gripping sci-fi plot comes from the mind of Andy Weir, the author of the 2021 book [Project Hail Mary] of the same name. Weir has become known for stories like this, in which quick-witted loners have to ‘science’ the heck out of situations to save the day. He made his career with the 2011 book The Martian, in which protagonist Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon in the film version) survives being stranded on Mars by, among other things, learning to grow potatoes in the red planet’s soil.

Weir famously steeps his books in science, going so far as to do calculations on orbital mechanics and stellar astrophysics to ensure that the stories are as realistic as they can be while still being fiction. That all-out nerdery has earned him many fans, says Andy Howell, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who advised Weir on the science in Project Hail Mary. “I’ve talked to so many scientists who are like, ‘this is great’”, Howell says, but also engineers, physics students and others.

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Realistic fiction

Without giving away too much of the plot, Project Hail Mary is about a man, Ryland Grace (played by Ryan Gosling), who embarks on interstellar travel to understand why the Sun is dying. Like Watney in The Martian, he has to summon knowledge from a raft of different types of science — molecular biology, neutrino physics and more — to solve his crisis.

“It’s a great blend of some ideas that have been around, but a fresh take on them — and then some completely new ideas,” says Howell, who also runs a YouTube channel called Science vs. Cinema.

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Take astrophage, a fictional space microorganism that underpins much of the plot. Weir conceived of it as ‘black matter’ that can absorb huge amounts of stellar radiation and then re-emit the energy to enable interstellar travel. Astrophage doesn’t exist in our world, but Weir made sure it had biology and chemistry that could exist in the Galaxy.

In the film, Grace grapples with the nature of astrophage, which is devouring the Sun, and how it does or doesn’t meet scientists’ notions of extraterrestrial life. It’s reminiscent of debates over how to recognize the signatures of life beyond Earth — for instance, gases in planets’ atmospheres that might have been generated by living organisms.

Building worlds

How astronomers in the film (and book) discover that the Sun is dimming is also grounded in reality. On Howell’s advice, Project Hail Mary gives a shout-out to the amateur astronomers who regularly monitor fluctuations in stars’ brightnesses. In 2019, astronomy enthusiasts spotted the mysterious dimming of the red-giant star Betelgeuse; fortunately, it turned out to be caused by the star belching dust, rather than an astrophage attack.

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In order to access the entire article you will need to login or create an account.

Astrophysicist Jacqueline McCleary presents a (slightly) more skeptical approach to the science while retaining enthusiasm for the film in Cody Mello-Klein’s March 19, 2026 article for Northeastern (University) News.

Josh Weiss’ March 20, 2026 article (‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Andy Weir On Changes From Book, That [SPOILER] Cameo, And What He’s Writing Next) for Forbes magazine (which I found on Yahoo! News), focuses on some of the filmmaking choices, as well as, the science and the author’s future plans.

One small fun fact (for those who live in British Columbia). From a University of British Columbia May 26, 2023 – July 26, 2023 online book club notice

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An astronaut awakens to find he’s the only survivor on a small spaceship that’s light years away from any humans. Unfortunately, he can’t remember a thing, including his assignment. Yet if he fails, the Earth and humanity are doomed. A story of survival, Project Hail Mary by author Andy Weir is an enthralling thriller replete with science and speculation — and even a UBC character in the mix [emphasis mine].

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Enjoy the movie!

Nanomaterials used to measure nuclear reaction in radioactive nuclei produced in neutron star collisions

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There seems to be renewed interest in nuclear science as measured by the frequency of the research I’m stumbling across and as evidenced by this March 18, 2025 news item on phys.org,

Physicists have measured a nuclear reaction that can occur in neutron star collisions, providing direct experimental data for a process that had previously only been theorized. The study, led by the University of Surrey, provides new insight into how the universe’s heaviest elements are forged—and could even drive advancements in nuclear reactor physics.

Working in collaboration with the University of York, the University of Seville, and TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle accelerator centre, the breakthrough marks the first-ever measurement of a weak r-process reaction cross-section using a radioactive ion beam, in this case studying the 94Sr(α,n)97Zr reaction. This is where a radioactive form of strontium (strontium-94) absorbs an alpha particle (a helium nucleus), then emits a neutron and transforms into zirconium-97.

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I’ve highlighted the mention of nanomaterials in the March 18, 2025 University of Surrey press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item,

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Dr Matthew Williams, lead author of the study from the University of Surrey, said: 

“The weak r-process plays a crucial role in the formation of heavy elements, which astronomers have observed in ancient stars – celestial fossils that carry the chemical fingerprints of perhaps only one prior cataclysmic event, like a supernovae or neutron star merger. Until now, our understanding of how these elements form has relied on theoretical predictions, but this experiment provides the first real-world data to test those models that involve radioactive nuclei.” 

The experiment was enabled by the use of novel helium targets. Since helium is a noble gas, meaning it is neither reactive nor solid, researchers at the University of Seville developed an innovative nano-material target, embedding helium inside ultra-thin silicon films to form billions of microscopic helium bubbles, each only a few 10s of nanometres across. 

Using TRIUMF’s advanced radioactive ion beam technology, the team accelerated short-lived strontium-94 isotopes into these targets, allowing them to measure the nuclear reaction under conditions similar to those found in extreme cosmic environments.  

Dr Williams said: 

“This is a major achievement for astrophysics and nuclear physics, and the first-time nanomaterials have been used in this way, opening exciting new possibilities for nuclear research.  

“Beyond astrophysics, understanding how radioactive nuclei behave is crucial for improving nuclear reactor design. These types of nuclei are constantly produced in nuclear reactors, but until recently, studying their reactions has been extremely difficult. Reactor physics depends on this kind of data to predict how often components need replacing, how long they’ll last and how to design more efficient, modern systems.” 

The next phase of research will apply the findings to astrophysical models, helping scientists to better understand the origins of the heaviest known elements. As researchers continue to explore these processes, their work could deepen our understanding of both the extreme physics of neutron star collisions and practical applications in nuclear technology. 

Here’s a citation and a link to the paper,

First Measurement of a Weak 𝑟-Process Reaction on a Radioactive Nucleus by M. Williams, C. Angus, A. M. Laird, B. Davids, C. Aa. Diget, A. Fernandez, E. J. Williams, A. N. Andreye, H. Asch, A. A. Avaa, G. Bartram, S. Chakraborty, I. Dillmann, K. Directo, D. T. Doherty, E. Geerlof, C. J. Griffin, A. Grimes, G. Hackman, J. Henderson, K. Hudson, D. Hufschmidt, J. Jeong, M. C. Jiménez de Haro, V. Karayonchev,, A. Katrusiak, A. Lennarz, G. Lotay, B. Marlow, M. S. Martin, S. Molló, F. Montes, J. R. Murias, J. O’Neill, K. Pak6, C. Paxman, L. Pedro-Botet, A. Psaltis, E. Raleigh-Smith, D. Rhodes, J. S. Rojo, M. Satrazani, T. Sauvage, C. Shenton, C. E. Svensson, D. Tam, L. Wagner, and D. Yates. Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 112701– Published 17 March, 2025 Vol. 134, Iss. 11 — 21 March 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.112701

This paper is behind a paywall.

The physics of the multiverse of madness

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The Dr. Strange movie (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness released May 6, 2022) has inspired an essay on physics. From a May 9, 2022 news item on phys.org

If you’re a fan of science fiction films, you’ll likely be familiar with the idea of alternate universes—hypothetical planes of existence with different versions of ourselves. As far from reality as it sounds, it is a question that scientists have contemplated. So just how well does the fiction stack up with the science?

The many-worlds interpretation is one idea in physics that supports the concept of multiple universes existing. It stems from the way we comprehend quantum mechanics, which defy the rules of our regular world. While it’s impossible to test and is considered an interpretation rather than a scientific theory, many physicists think it could be possible.

“When you look at the regular world, things are measurable and predictable—if you drop a ball off a roof, it will fall to the ground. But when you look on a very small scale in quantum mechanics, the rules stop applying. Instead of being predictable, it becomes about probabilities,” says Sarah Martell, Associate Professor at the School of Physics, UNSW Science.

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A May 9, 2022 University of New South Wales (UNSW; Australia) press release originated the news item,

The fundamental quantum equation – called a wave function – shows a particle inhabiting many possible positions, with different probabilities assigned to each. If you were to attempt to observe the particle to determine its position – known in physics as ‘collapsing’ the wave function – you’ll find it in just one place. But the particle actually inhabits all the positions allowed by the wave function.

This interpretation of quantum mechanics is important, as it helps explain some of the quantum paradoxes that logic can’t answer, like why a particle can be in two places at once. While it might seem impossible to us, since we experience time and space as fixed, mathematically it adds up.

“When you make a measurement in quantum physics, you’re only measuring one of the possibilities. We can work with that mathematically, but it’s philosophically uncomfortable that the world stops being predictable,” A/Prof. Martell says.

“If you don’t get hung up on the philosophy, you simply move on with your physics. But what if the other possibility were true? That’s where this idea of the multiverse comes in.”

The quantum multiverse

Like it is depicted in many science fiction films, the many-worlds interpretation suggests our reality is just one of many. The universe supposedly splits or branches into other universes any time we take action – whether it’s a molecule moving, what you decide to eat or your choice of career. 

In physics, this is best explained through the thought experiment of Schrodinger’s cat. In the many-worlds interpretation, when the box is opened, the observer and the possibly alive cat split into an observer looking at a box with a deceased cat and one looking at a box with a live cat.

“A version of you measures one result, and a version of you measures the other result. That way, you don’t have to explain why a particular probability resulted. It’s just everything that could happen, does happen, somewhere,” A/Prof. Martell says.

“This is the logic often depicted in science fiction, like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, where five different Spider-Man exist in different universes based on the idea there was a different event that set up each one’s progress and timeline.”

This interpretation suggests that our decisions in this universe have implications for other versions of ourselves living in parallel worlds. But what about the possibility of interacting with these hypothetical alternate universes?

According to the many-worlds interpretation, humans wouldn’t be able to interact with parallel universes as they do in films – although science fiction has creative licence to do so.

“It’s a device used all the time in comic books, but it’s not something that physics would have anything to say about,” A/Prof. Martell says. “But I love science fiction for the creativity and the way that little science facts can become the motivation for a character or the essential crisis in a story with characters like Doctor Strange.”

“If for nothing else, science fiction can help make science more accessible, and the more we get people talking about science, the better,” A/Prof. Martell says.

“I think we do ourselves a lot of good by putting hooks out there that people can grab. So, if we can get people interested in science through popular culture, they’ll be more interested in the science we do.” 

The university also offers a course as this October 6, 2020 UNSW press release reveals,

From the morality plays in Star Trek, to the grim futures in Black Mirror, fiction can help explore our hopes – and fears – of the role science might play in our futures.

But sci-fi can be more than just a source of entertainment. When fiction gets the science right (or right enough), sci-fi can also be used to make science accessible to broader audiences. 

“Sci-fi can help relate science and technology to the lived human experience,” says Dr Maria Cunningham, a radio astronomer and senior lecturer in UNSW Science’s School of Physics. 

“Storytelling can make complex theories easier to visualise, understand and remember.”

Dr Cunningham – a sci-fi fan herself – convenes ‘Brave New World’: a course on science fact and fiction aimed at students from a non-scientific background. The course explores the relationship between literature, science, and society, using case studies like Futurama and MacGyver.

She says her own interest in sci-fi long predates her career in science.

“Fiction can help get people interested in science – sometimes without them even knowing it,” says Dr Cunningham.

“Sci-fi has the potential to increase the science literacy of the general population.”

Here, Dr Cunningham shares three tricky physics concepts best explained through science fiction (spoilers ahead).

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Cunningham goes on to discuss the Universal Speed Limit, Time Dilation, and, yes, the Many Worlds Interpretation.

The course, “Brave New World: Science Fiction, Science Fact and the Future – GENS4015” is still offered but do check the link to make sure it takes you to the latest version (I found 2023). One more thing, it is offered wholly on the internet.

Jean-Pierre Luminet awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga prize for Popularizing Science

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Before getting to the news about Jean-Pierre Luminet, astrophysicist, poet, sculptor, and more, there’s the prize itself.

Established in 1951, a scant five years after UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) was founded in 1945, the Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science is the organization’s oldest prize. Here’s more from the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science webpage,

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The UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science is an international award to reward exceptional contributions made by individuals in communicating science to society and promoting the popularization of science. It is awarded to persons who have had a distinguished career as writer, editor, lecturer, radio, television, or web programme director, or film producer in helping interpret science, research and technology to the public. UNESCO Kalinga Prize winners know the potential power of science, technology, and research in improving public welfare, enriching the cultural heritage of nations and providing solutions to societal problems on the local, regional and global level.

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The UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science is UNESCO’s oldest prize, created in 1951 following a donation from Mr Bijoyanand Patnaik, Founder and President of the Kalinga Foundation(link is external) Trust in India. Today, the Prize is funded by the Kalinga Foundation Trust(link is external), the Government of the State of Orissa, India(link is external), and the Government of India (Department of Science and Technology(link is external)).

Jean-Pierre Luminet

From the November 4, 2021 UNESCO press release (also received via email),

French scientist and author Jean-Pierre Luminet will be awarded the 2021 UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science. The prize-giving ceremony will take place online on 5 November as part of the celebration of World Science Day for Peace and Development.

An independent international jury selected Jean-Pierre Luminet recognizing his longstanding commitment to the popularization of science. Mr Luminet is a distinguished astrophysicist and cosmologist who has been promoting the values of scientific research through a wide variety of media: he has created popular science books and novels, beautifully illustrated exhibition catalogues, poetry, audiovisual materials for children and documentaries, notably “Du Big Bang au vivant” with Hubert Reeves. He is also an artist, engraver and sculptor and has collaborated with composers on musicals inspired by the sounds of the Universe.

His publications are model examples for communicating science to the public. Their scientific content is precise, rigorous and always state-of-the-art. He has written seven “scientific novels”, including “Le Secret de Copernic”, published in 2006. His recent book “Le destin de l’univers : trous noirs et énergie sombre”, about black holes and dark energy, was written for the general public and was praised for its outstanding scientific, historical, and literary qualities. Jean-Pierre Luminet’s work has been translated into a many languages including Chinese and Korean.

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There is a page for Luminet in both the French language and English language wikipedias. If you have the language skills, you might want to check out the French language essay as I found it to be more stylishly written.

Compare,

De par ses activités de poète, essayiste, romancier et scénariste, dans une œuvre voulant lier science, histoire, musique et art, il est également Officier des Arts et des Lettres.

With,

… Luminet has written fifteen science books,[4] seven historical novels,[4] TV documentaries,[5] and six poetry collections. He is an artist, an engraver, a sculptor, and a musician.

My rough translation of the French,

As a poet, essayaist, novelist, and a screenwriter in a body of work that brings together science, history, music and art, he is truly someone who has enriched the French cultural inheritance (which is what it means to be an Officer of Arts and Letters or Officier des Arts et des Lettres; see English language entry for Ordre des Arts et des Lettres).

In any event, congratulations to M. Luminet.

Loop quantum cosmology connects the tiniest with the biggest in a cosmic tango

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Caption: Tiny quantum fluctuations in the early universe explain two major mysteries about the large-scale structure of the universe, in a cosmic tango of the very small and the very large. A new study by researchers at Penn State used the theory of quantum loop gravity to account for these mysteries, which Einstein’s theory of general relativity considers anomalous.. Credit: Dani Zemba, Penn State

A July 29, 2020 news item on ScienceDaily announces a study showing that quantum loop cosmology can account for some large-scale mysteries,

While [1] Einstein’s theory of general relativity can explain a large array of fascinating astrophysical and cosmological phenomena, some aspects of the properties of the universe at the largest-scales remain a mystery. A new study using loop quantum cosmology — a theory that uses quantum mechanics to extend gravitational physics beyond Einstein’s theory of general relativity — accounts for two major mysteries. While the differences in the theories occur at the tiniest of scales — much smaller than even a proton — they have consequences at the largest of accessible scales in the universe. The study, which appears online July 29 [2020] in the journal Physical Review Letters, also provides new predictions about the universe that future satellite missions could test.

A July 29, 2020 Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) news release (also on EurekAlert) by Gail McCormick, which originated the news item, describes how this work helped us avoid a crisis in cosmology,

While [2] a zoomed-out picture of the universe looks fairly uniform, it does have a large-scale structure, for example because galaxies and dark matter are not uniformly distributed throughout the universe. The origin of this structure has been traced back to the tiny inhomogeneities observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)–radiation that was emitted when the universe was 380 thousand years young that we can still see today. But the CMB itself has three puzzling features that are considered anomalies because they are difficult to explain using known physics.

“While [3] seeing one of these anomalies may not be that statistically remarkable, seeing two or more together suggests we live in an exceptional universe,” said Donghui Jeong, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and an author of the paper. “A recent study in the journal Nature Astronomy proposed an explanation for one of these anomalies that raised so many additional concerns, they flagged a ‘possible crisis in cosmology‘ [emphasis mine].’ Using quantum loop cosmology, however, we have resolved two of these anomalies naturally, avoiding that potential crisis.”

Research over the last three decades has greatly improved our understanding of the early universe, including how the inhomogeneities in the CMB were produced in the first place. These inhomogeneities are a result of inevitable quantum fluctuations in the early universe. During a highly accelerated phase of expansion at very early times–known as inflation–these primordial, miniscule fluctuations were stretched under gravity’s influence and seeded the observed inhomogeneities in the CMB.

“To understand how primordial seeds arose, we need a closer look at the early universe, where Einstein’s theory of general relativity breaks down,” said Abhay Ashtekar, Evan Pugh Professor of Physics, holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Physics, and director of the Penn State Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos. “The standard inflationary paradigm based on general relativity treats space time as a smooth continuum. Consider a shirt that appears like a two-dimensional surface, but on closer inspection you can see that it is woven by densely packed one-dimensional threads. In this way, the fabric of space time is really woven by quantum threads. In accounting for these threads, loop quantum cosmology allows us to go beyond the continuum described by general relativity where Einstein’s physics breaks down–for example beyond the Big Bang.”

The researchers’ previous investigation into the early universe replaced the idea of a Big Bang singularity, where the universe emerged from nothing, with the Big Bounce, where the current expanding universe emerged from a super-compressed mass that was created when the universe contracted in its preceding phase. They found that all of the large-scale structures of the universe accounted for by general relativity are equally explained by inflation after this Big Bounce using equations of loop quantum cosmology.

In the new study, the researchers determined that inflation under loop quantum cosmology also resolves two of the major anomalies that appear under general relativity.

“The primordial fluctuations we are talking about occur at the incredibly small Planck scale,” said Brajesh Gupt, a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State at the time of the research and currently at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. “A Planck length is about 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the radius of a proton. But corrections to inflation at this unimaginably small scale simultaneously explain two of the anomalies at the largest scales in the universe, in a cosmic tango of the very small and the very large.”

The researchers also produced new predictions about a fundamental cosmological parameter and primordial gravitational waves that could be tested during future satellite missions, including LiteBird and Cosmic Origins Explorer, which will continue improve our understanding of the early universe.

That’s a lot of ‘while’. I’ve done this sort of thing, too, and whenever I come across it later; it’s painful.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Alleviating the Tension in the Cosmic Microwave Background Using Planck-Scale Physics by Abhay Ashtekar, Brajesh Gupt, Donghui Jeong, and V. Sreenath. Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 051302 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.051302 Published 29 July 2020 © 2020 American Physical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

My name is Steve and I’m a sub auroral ion drift

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Photo: The Aurora Named STEVE Couresty: NASA Goddard

That stunning image is one of a series, many of which were taken by amateur photographers as noted in a March 14, 2018 US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA)/Goddard Space Flight Center news release (also on EurekAlert) by Kasha Patel about how STEVE was discovered,

Notanee Bourassa knew that what he was seeing in the night sky was not normal. Bourassa, an IT technician in Regina, Canada, trekked outside of his home on July 25, 2016, around midnight with his two younger children to show them a beautiful moving light display in the sky — an aurora borealis. He often sky gazes until the early hours of the morning to photograph the aurora with his Nikon camera, but this was his first expedition with his children. When a thin purple ribbon of light appeared and starting glowing, Bourassa immediately snapped pictures until the light particles disappeared 20 minutes later. Having watched the northern lights for almost 30 years since he was a teenager, he knew this wasn’t an aurora. It was something else.

From 2015 to 2016, citizen scientists — people like Bourassa who are excited about a science field but don’t necessarily have a formal educational background — shared 30 reports of these mysterious lights in online forums and with a team of scientists that run a project called Aurorasaurus. The citizen science project, funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, tracks the aurora borealis through user-submitted reports and tweets.

The Aurorasaurus team, led by Liz MacDonald, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, conferred to determine the identity of this mysterious phenomenon. MacDonald and her colleague Eric Donovan at the University of Calgary in Canada talked with the main contributors of these images, amateur photographers in a Facebook group called Alberta Aurora Chasers, which included Bourassa and lead administrator Chris Ratzlaff. Ratzlaff gave the phenomenon a fun, new name, Steve, and it stuck.

But people still didn’t know what it was.

Scientists’ understanding of Steve changed that night Bourassa snapped his pictures. Bourassa wasn’t the only one observing Steve. Ground-based cameras called all-sky cameras, run by the University of Calgary and University of California, Berkeley, took pictures of large areas of the sky and captured Steve and the auroral display far to the north. From space, ESA’s (the European Space Agency) Swarm satellite just happened to be passing over the exact area at the same time and documented Steve.

For the first time, scientists had ground and satellite views of Steve. Scientists have now learned, despite its ordinary name, that Steve may be an extraordinary puzzle piece in painting a better picture of how Earth’s magnetic fields function and interact with charged particles in space. The findings are published in a study released today in Science Advances.

“This is a light display that we can observe over thousands of kilometers from the ground,” said MacDonald. “It corresponds to something happening way out in space. Gathering more data points on STEVE will help us understand more about its behavior and its influence on space weather.”

The study highlights one key quality of Steve: Steve is not a normal aurora. Auroras occur globally in an oval shape, last hours and appear primarily in greens, blues and reds. Citizen science reports showed Steve is purple with a green picket fence structure that waves. It is a line with a beginning and end. People have observed Steve for 20 minutes to 1 hour before it disappears.

If anything, auroras and Steve are different flavors of an ice cream, said MacDonald. They are both created in generally the same way: Charged particles from the Sun interact with Earth’s magnetic field lines.

The uniqueness of Steve is in the details. While Steve goes through the same large-scale creation process as an aurora, it travels along different magnetic field lines than the aurora. All-sky cameras showed that Steve appears at much lower latitudes. That means the charged particles that create Steve connect to magnetic field lines that are closer to Earth’s equator, hence why Steve is often seen in southern Canada.

Perhaps the biggest surprise about Steve appeared in the satellite data. The data showed that Steve comprises a fast moving stream of extremely hot particles called a sub auroral ion drift, or SAID. Scientists have studied SAIDs since the 1970s but never knew there was an accompanying visual effect. The Swarm satellite recorded information on the charged particles’ speeds and temperatures, but does not have an imager aboard.

“People have studied a lot of SAIDs, but we never knew it had a visible light. Now our cameras are sensitive enough to pick it up and people’s eyes and intellect were critical in noticing its importance,” said Donovan, a co-author of the study. Donovan led the all-sky camera network and his Calgary colleagues lead the electric field instruments on the Swarm satellite.

Steve is an important discovery because of its location in the sub auroral zone, an area of lower latitude than where most auroras appear that is not well researched. For one, with this discovery, scientists now know there are unknown chemical processes taking place in the sub auroral zone that can lead to this light emission.

Second, Steve consistently appears in the presence of auroras, which usually occur at a higher latitude area called the auroral zone. That means there is something happening in near-Earth space that leads to both an aurora and Steve. Steve might be the only visual clue that exists to show a chemical or physical connection between the higher latitude auroral zone and lower latitude sub auroral zone, said MacDonald.

“Steve can help us understand how the chemical and physical processes in Earth’s upper atmosphere can sometimes have local noticeable effects in lower parts of Earth’s atmosphere,” said MacDonald. “This provides good insight on how Earth’s system works as a whole.”

The team can learn a lot about Steve with additional ground and satellite reports, but recording Steve from the ground and space simultaneously is a rare occurrence. Each Swarm satellite orbits Earth every 90 minutes and Steve only lasts up to an hour in a specific area. If the satellite misses Steve as it circles Earth, Steve will probably be gone by the time that same satellite crosses the spot again.

In the end, capturing Steve becomes a game of perseverance and probability.

“It is my hope that with our timely reporting of sightings, researchers can study the data so we can together unravel the mystery of Steve’s origin, creation, physics and sporadic nature,” said Bourassa. “This is exciting because the more I learn about it, the more questions I have.”

As for the name “Steve” given by the citizen scientists? The team is keeping it as an homage to its initial name and discoverers. But now it is STEVE, short for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.

Other collaborators on this work are: the University of Calgary, New Mexico Consortium, Boston University, Lancaster University, Athabasca University, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook group.

If you live in an area where you may see STEVE or an aurora, submit your pictures and reports to Aurorasaurus through aurorasaurus.org or the free iOS and Android mobile apps. To learn how to spot STEVE, click here.

There is a video with MacDonald describing the work and featuring more images,

Katherine Kornei’s March 14, 2018 article for sciencemag.org adds more detail about the work,

…

Citizen scientists first began posting about Steve on social media several years ago. Across New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, they reported an unusual sight in the night sky: a purplish line that arced across the heavens for about an hour at a time, visible at lower latitudes than classical aurorae, mostly in the spring and fall. … “It’s similar to a contrail but doesn’t disperse,” says Notanee Bourassa, an aurora photographer in Saskatchewan province in Canada [Regina as mentioned in the news release is the capital of the province of Saskatchewan].

Traditional aurorae are often green, because oxygen atoms present in Earth’s atmosphere emit that color light when they’re bombarded by charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field. They also appear as a diffuse glow—rather than a distinct line—on the northern or southern horizon. Without a scientific theory to explain the new sight, a group of citizen scientists led by aurora enthusiast Chris Ratzlaff of Canada’s Alberta province [usually referred to as Canada’s province of Alberta or simply, the province of Alberta] playfully dubbed it Steve, after a line in the 2006 children’s movie Over the Hedge.

Aurorae have been studied for decades, but people may have missed Steve because their cameras weren’t sensitive enough, says Elizabeth MacDonald, a space physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and leader of the new research. MacDonald and her team have used data from a European satellite called Swarm-A to study Steve in its native environment, about 200 kilometers up in the atmosphere. Swarm-A’s instruments revealed that the charged particles in Steve had a temperature of about 6000°C, “impressively hot” compared with the nearby atmosphere, MacDonald says. And those ions were flowing from east to west at nearly 6 kilometers per second, …

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

New science in plain sight: Citizen scientists lead to the discovery of optical structure in the upper atmosphere by Elizabeth A. MacDonald, Eric Donovan, Yukitoshi Nishimura, Nathan A. Case, D. Megan Gillies, Bea Gallardo-Lacourt, William E. Archer, Emma L. Spanswick, Notanee Bourassa, Martin Connors, Matthew Heavner, Brian Jackel, Burcu Kosar, David J. Knudsen, Chris Ratzlaff, and Ian Schofield. Science Advances 14 Mar 2018:
Vol. 4, no. 3, eaaq0030 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaq0030

This paper is open access. You’ll note that Notanee Bourassa is listed as an author. For more about Bourassa, there’s his Twitter feed (@DJHardwired) and his YouTube Channel. BTW, his Twitter bio notes that he’s “Recently heartbroken,” as well as, “Seasoned human male. Expert storm chaser, aurora photographer, drone flyer and on-air FM radio DJ.” Make of that what you will.

Sounding out the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system

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It’s been a while since a data sonification story has come this way. Like my first posting on the topic (Feb. 7, 2014) this is another astrophysics ‘piece of music’. From the University of Toronto (Canada) and Thought Café (a Canadian animation studio),

For those who’d like a little text, here’s more from a May 10, 2017 University of Toronto news release (also on EurekAlert) by Don Campbell,

When NASA announced its discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system back in February [2017] it caused quite a stir, and with good reason. Three of its seven Earth-sized planets lay in the star’s habitable zone, meaning they may harbour suitable conditions for life.

But one of the major puzzles from the original research describing the system was that it seemed to be unstable.

“If you simulate the system, the planets start crashing into one another in less than a million years,” says Dan Tamayo, a postdoc at U of T Scarborough’s Centre for Planetary Science.

“This may seem like a long time, but it’s really just an astronomical blink of an eye. It would be very lucky for us to discover TRAPPIST-1 right before it fell apart, so there must be a reason why it remains stable.”

Tamayo and his colleagues seem to have found a reason why. In research published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, they describe the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system as being in something called a “resonant chain” that can strongly stabilize the system.

In resonant configurations, planets’ orbital periods form ratios of whole numbers. It’s a very technical principle, but a good example is how Neptune orbits the Sun three times in the amount of time it takes Pluto to orbit twice. This is a good thing for Pluto because otherwise it wouldn’t exist. Since the two planets’ orbits intersect, if things were random they would collide, but because of resonance, the locations of the planets relative to one another keeps repeating.

“There’s a rhythmic repeating pattern that ensures the system remains stable over a long period of time,” says Matt Russo, a post-doc at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) who has been working on creative ways to visualize the system.

TRAPPIST-1 takes this principle to a whole other level with all seven planets being in a chain of resonances. To illustrate this remarkable configuration, Tamayo, Russo and colleague Andrew Santaguida created an animation in which the planets play a piano note every time they pass in front of their host star, and a drum beat every time a planet overtakes its nearest neighbour.

Because the planets’ periods are simple ratios of each other, their motion creates a steady repeating pattern that is similar to how we play music. Simple frequency ratios are also what makes two notes sound pleasing when played together.

Speeding up the planets’ orbital frequencies into the human hearing range produces an astrophysical symphony of sorts, but one that’s playing out more than 40 light years away.

“Most planetary systems are like bands of amateur musicians playing their parts at different speeds,” says Russo. “TRAPPIST-1 is different; it’s a super-group with all seven members synchronizing their parts in nearly perfect time.”

But even synchronized orbits don’t necessarily survive very long, notes Tamayo. For technical reasons, chaos theory also requires precise orbital alignments to ensure systems remain stable. This can explain why the simulations done in the original discovery paper quickly resulted in the planets colliding with one another.

“It’s not that the system is doomed, it’s that stable configurations are very exact,” he says. “We can’t measure all the orbital parameters well enough at the moment, so the simulated systems kept resulting in collisions because the setups weren’t precise.”

In order to overcome this Tamayo and his team looked at the system not as it is today, but how it may have originally formed. When the system was being born out of a disk of gas, the planets should have migrated relative to one another, allowing the system to naturally settle into a stable resonant configuration.

“This means that early on, each planet’s orbit was tuned to make it harmonious with its neighbours, in the same way that instruments are tuned by a band before it begins to play,” says Russo. “That’s why the animation produces such beautiful music.”

The team tested the simulations using the supercomputing cluster at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) and found that the majority they generated remained stable for as long as they could possibly run it. This was about 100 times longer than it took for the simulations in the original research paper describing TRAPPIST-1 to go berserk.

“It seems somehow poetic that this special configuration that can generate such remarkable music can also be responsible for the system surviving to the present day,” says Tamayo.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Convergent Migration Renders TRAPPIST-1 Long-lived by Daniel Tamayo, Hanno Rein, Cristobal Petrovich, and Norman Murray. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 840, Number 2 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.496153 Published 2017 May 10

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

This paper is open access.

Planets beyond the solar system at Vancouver’s (Canada) Nov. 25, 2014* Café Scientifique

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Vancouver’s next Café Scientifique is being held in the back room of the The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.], Vancouver, Canada), on Nov. 25,  2014. Here’s the meeting description (from the Nov. 17, 2014 announcement),

… Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Aaron Boley. The title of his talk is:

More Than Science Fiction: Planets beyond the Solar System

For centuries we have relied on only the Solar System for understanding our origins. To dream of distant worlds was a mixture of reasoning, conjecture, and science fiction. Now, thousands of planets have been discovered outside of the Solar System, and we continue to learn more about the Solar System itself. In this talk, we will explore the wide variety of planetary systems that have so far been observed in the Galaxy. These new worlds, both alien and familiar, challenge our theories, but also give us new information for unlocking planet formation’s secrets.

You can find out more about Dr. Aaron Boley, astrophysicist, on his eponymous website where you’ll also find a link to Simulation movies such as this,

 Uploaded on Oct 27, 2010

The protoplanetary disk around a young, isolated star evolves over 16,000 years. Bright, dense spiral arms of gas and dust gradually develop and then collapse into denser clumps that could form planets. NCSA/NASA/A. Boley (Univ. of Florida)

* The event date in the headline was corrected to read: Nov. 25, 2014.