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Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) work together to improve critical minerals mining and supply chains

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Let’s start with the Canadian announcement of this new science partnership, from a July 3, 2025 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada news release,

A ground-breaking Canadian and United Kingdom (UK) science partnership will bring researchers together to tackle critical minerals challenges.

Five research partnerships funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the UK Research and Innovation’s Natural Environment Research Council (UKRI’s NERC) will study ways to:

  • clean up toxic mine water,
  • develop new geological tools for extracting rare earth minerals, vital for magnets,
  • identify mineral-rich volcanic deposits,
  • drive sustainable mining practices by co-extracting critical minerals with gold and copper, and
  • make critical mineral supply chains recyclable and more secure.

The five partnerships announced today will receive approximately $250,000 of supplementary funding from NSERC, to complement their share of £1 million GBP International Science Partnerships funding through NERC. This expands total Canadian investments made by NSERC to over $4 million for the successful Canadian-led projects via Alliance grants.

This partnership between Canada and the UK follows their landmark agreement which was signed in March 2023 to cooperate on critical minerals (see UK-Canada critical minerals dialogue press release). 

These studies will support closer collaboration between Canada and the UK, and boost economic growth and job creation.

They will also protect national security interests by strengthening supply chains for critical minerals and reduce the environmental impact of mining.

Awarded Alliance Missions projects:

Microalgal biosorption of critical minerals from mining related tailing ponds – recovering key metals to better protect aquatic systems and water supplies

John Ashley Scott, Laurentian University
Andrea Hamilton, University of Strathclyde

Unlocking Canada’s rare earth element (REE) potential: a multidisciplinary approach to understand high-grade critical REE mineralization in northern Saskatchewan

Camille Partin, University of Saskatchewan
Eimear Deady, British Geological Survey

Geology, mineralogy, and genesis of critical mineral-bearing volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposits

Stephen Piercey, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Steven Hollis, University of Edinburgh

An integrated source to sink approach to characterizing critical metals enrichment in magmatic-hydrothermal deposits

Kyle Larson, The University of British Columbia
Katie McFall, University College London

Sustainability standards and traceability of critical minerals value-chains (Lumet)

Steven Young, University of Waterloo
Teresa Domenech, University College London

Professor Alejandro Adem, President, NSERC

“International partnerships like this one are essential to tackling global challenges such as critical mineral security. By combining Canada’s expertise with the UK’s, we can accelerate innovation and advance sustainable solutions to drive economic growth, resilience, and environmental responsibility.”

Professor Louise Heathwaite, Executive Chair, NERC

“We rely on critical minerals for our cars, our phones, our energy, our defense and many more areas of life. The new studies announced today will drive new technologies, advance sustainable mining and support economic growth.

“It will also build on our key partnership with Canada, enhancing collaboration, coordination, and sharing our knowledge and skills in this key area of research.”

The July 3, 2025 UK Research and Innovation press release on EurekAlert offers some insight into their government’s perspective on this scientific partnership, Note 1: The introductory lines and bulleted list are almost identical to the previous news release; it’s the following paragraphs that are of interest, Note 2: Links have been removed,

A groundbreaking UK and Canadian science partnership will bring researchers together to tackle critical minerals challenges.

Five research partnerships will study ways to:

  • clean up contaminated mine water
  • develop new geological tools for extracting rare earth minerals, vital for magnets
  • identify mineral-rich volcanic deposits
  • drive sustainable mining practices by co-extracting critical minerals with gold and copper
  • make critical mineral supply chains recyclable and more secure

Why this matters

This matters because:

  • critical minerals are raw materials essential for modern technologies, including electronics, renewable energy and defense systems
  • global demand and international competition for technology-critical mineral resources is expected to quadruple by 2040
  • ensuring responsible access to these minerals is vital for national security, clean energy and maintaining technological competitiveness

Key area of investment

Research into critical minerals is a key area of investment for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) which includes:

  • lithium for smartphones
  • gallium for semi-conductors and solar panels
  • cobalt for electronics

The five research partnerships announced today will receive a share of the £1 million International Science Partnerships Fund award through the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Enabling international collaborations

These partnerships expand five Alliance Missions grants funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), which is receiving approximately $250,000 Canadian dollars (CAD) of supplementary funding to enable the international collaborations.

In total, an investment of over $4 million CAD is being made to these successful projects.

This partnership between the UK and Canada follows their landmark agreement which was signed in March 2023 to cooperate on critical minerals.

See the UK and Canada critical minerals dialogue press release.

Driving sustainability of the sector

Researchers will study ways to reduce mining’s environmental footprint and enhance efficiency across critical mineral value chains, from exploration to recycling.

It also seeks to build a critical minerals circular economy, minimising reliance on traditional extraction methods, for example by:

  • mine reclamation
  • critical mineral recycling
  • reprocessing of residual mining waste

Research areas

Cleaning up contaminated mine water

This project aims to clean up contaminated mine water using a combination of calcium silicate (CS) and microalgae.

CS sequesters heavy metals like cobalt, nickel and copper, while microalgae help with long-term water remediation.

This approach is low-cost, scalable and environmentally friendly, removing harmful dissolved metals and recovering them for reuse.

Making permanent magnets

To meet net zero goals, this project will develop new geological models and exploration tools for rare earth element (REE) deposits in Saskatchewan, Canada.

REE are crucial for making permanent magnets in wind turbines and electric vehicles.

The research will help diversify the REE supply chain and ensure high environmental standards.

Metals in volcanic areas

This project studies the processes that make some regions rich in volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits, which are rich sources of:

  • copper
  • zinc
  • lead
  • silver
  • gold

The research aims to improve exploration and mining efficiency, focusing on the UK, Ireland, and Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Co-extracting gold and copper plus critical minerals

This project aims to understand how critical metals like tellurium, bismuth, antimony and platinum group metals can be efficiently extracted as by-products from copper and gold deposits in British Columbia, Canada.

The research will help improve extraction techniques, ensuring a stable supply and minimising environmental impact.

Boosting supply chains

Critical Minerals for Resilience and Sustainability (MINERS) aims to enhance the resilience and sustainability of critical minerals supply chains between the UK and Canada.

The project will identify whether there is an opportunity to reuse critical minerals are part of a circular economy and define policy levers to move away from unsustainable practices.

Using supply chain modelling, it will map current flows of critical minerals and assess resilience to shocks.

How this research will benefit the UK and Canada

These studies will support closer collaboration between Canada and the UK and boost economic growth and job creation.

They will also protect national security interests by strengthening supply chains for critical minerals and reduce the environmental impact of mining.

Accelerating innovation

Professor Alejandro Adem, President of NSERC, said:

International partnerships like this one are essential to tackling global challenges such as critical mineral security.

By combining Canada’s expertise with the UK’s, we can accelerate innovation and advance sustainable solutions to drive economic growth, resilience, and environmental responsibility.

Economic growth

Professor Louise Heathwaite, Executive Chair of NERC, said:

We currently rely on critical minerals for our cars, our phones, our energy, our defence and many more areas of life.

The new partnerships announced today will help drive new technologies, advance sustainable mining and support research and innovation outcomes that enable economic growth.

It will also build on our key partnership with Canada, enhancing collaboration, coordination, and sharing our knowledge and skills in this key area of research.

Further information

Current UKRI-funded investments on critical minerals

NERC Centre for Doctoral Training: mineral resources for energy transition

TARGET: Training and Research Group for Energy Transition Mineral Resources

Met4Tech: The Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centre in Technology Metals

UK centres to play vital role in boosting modern green industries

UK supply chains get safeguarding boost

Further details of the projects announced today

A Combined Geochemical and Biosorption Tool for Mine Water Clean-Up and Valorisation

Andrea Hamilton, University of Strathclyde, UK

John Ashley Scott, Laurentian University, Canada

Exploration and Geomodels for Rare Earth Element Pegmatite Targets

Eimear Deady, Alicja Lacinska, Holly Elliott, Monty Pearson, Nick Roberts, Richard Shaw, Victoria Loving, British Geological Survey, UK

Camille Partin, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

Metal Fertility and Transport in Volcanic-Hosted Hydrothermal Systems

Steven Hollis, The University of Edinburgh, UK

Hannah Grant, Mark Cooper, British Geological Survey, UK

Stephen Piercey, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Katie McFall, University College London, UK

Towards ‘Critical Geometallurgy’ of Post-Subduction Mineral Resources

Katie McFall, Emma Humphreys-Williams, Frances Cooper, University College London, UK

Kyle Larson, The University of British Columbia, Canada

Dan Smith, University of Leicester, UK

MINERS

Teresa Domenech, Paul Ekins, Xavier Lemaire, University College London, UK

Gavin Mudd, British Geological Survey, UK

Steven Young, University of Waterloo, Canada

…

As mentioned in both releases, there was an earlier agreement that presaged this 2025 funding announcement and there is a tonal difference between the two 2023 releases under Canada’s Justin Trudeau Liberal government and the UK’s Rishi Sundak Conservative government, respectively. First, the March 6, 2023 Natural Resources Canada news release,

Critical minerals are vital to almost every aspect of the modern world, from electronic equipment to renewable energy, to defence and electric vehicles. Their importance in the global net-zero transition means that they are increasingly sought-after: the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects that global demand for critical minerals will grow four-fold from 2020 to 2040 and beyond. It is clear that we must grow and secure the global supply of critical minerals, while ensuring the resilience and sustainability of our supply chains, which requires significant international collaboration. To further enhance this collaboration, Canada and the United Kingdom are pleased to announce the establishment of a Critical Minerals Supply Chains Dialogue.

Canada and the United Kingdom are committed to working together to tackle this challenge and seize the opportunities to support economic growth. We will therefore endeavour to collaborate closely to build resilient, sustainable, and transparent supply chains. We will work together to develop solutions to new global challenges including climate change, promote jobs and investment in both our countries, and deepen the already-strong ties between Canada and the United Kingdom.

Canada and the United Kingdom have each released national Critical Minerals Strategies, and there is a strong case for us to work in concert to achieve our aims. Both countries are committed to ensuring critical minerals markets are diverse, resilient, guided by fair market practices and underpinned by the highest environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, along with demonstrating respect for Indigenous peoples’ rights and local communities. Both countries will also seek to ensure that the supply chains that bring these minerals from mine to end product are transparent and innovation-driven, including a focus on recycling and mineral circularity. The United Kingdom-Canada Critical Minerals Supply Chains Dialogue will be established, building on the enduring ties between our nations, demonstrated through the UK-Canada Trade Continuity Agreement (and ongoing negotiations for a high ambition, bespoke bilateral Free Trade Agreement), the March 2022 Leaders’ statement on collaborating on economic resilience and critical minerals, our joint work through Five Eyes, and our joint membership in the Minerals Security Partnership, the IEA’s Critical Minerals Working Party and the Sustainable Critical Minerals Alliance.

We will deepen Canada and the United Kingdom’s engagement and cooperation on critical minerals supply chain resilience and trade, ESG credentials, and Research and Innovation. We will capitalise on the respective strengths of both countries, and our shared commitment to growing the sector to strengthen international critical minerals supply chains, promote economic security, and contribute to meeting net zero targets.

Canada is a global mining leader and home to advanced exploration projects for battery minerals and metals such as lithium and graphite, as well as rare earths and other critical minerals that are vital inputs for EVs and the clean technology sectors. With high ESG credentials and one of the lowest ESG risks across global mining projects, Canada is a leader in community engagement, conservation, governance and Canadian critical minerals are carbon competitive. Canadian nickel, cobalt, copper, aluminium, uranium, and potash are some of the least emissions intensive in the world. With clean electricity and a mining industry’s commitment to sustainability, Canada has a global reputation as a secure partner across the critical mineral value chains for batteries, EVs, and other advanced technologies for the net zero and digital transition.

The UK is home to strong mining and engineering sectors, and is a global centre for financing, standards and metals trading. It has mining and mineral processing expertise, including various industrial clusters and Europe’s leading mining school, and its own pockets of critical minerals wealth. British advanced manufacturers are customers for critical minerals and play an important role in their supply chains. The UK also has a role as an international dealmaker, leveraging its expertise in regulatory diplomacy, its extensive engagement in multilateral forums and its strong relationships with mineral-rich producer countries and consumer markets.

Through the United Kingdom-Canada Critical Minerals Supply Chains Dialogue, it is intended that both countries will work together to pursue the following shared objectives:

  • Promote and build secure and integrated UK-Canada critical mineral supply chains, including through information-sharing, facilitating investment, and building commercial relationships between Canadian and UK industries, and sharing supply chain resilience analysis.
  • Drive higher ESG performance across all elements of the critical minerals value chain, through government signalling, active promotion throughout our respective industries and close collaboration in multilateral fora.
  • Leverage the existing strengths of the two countries to promote skill-sharing and R&D between UK and Canadian industry, academia, and governments, along with other close international allies to spur supply chain innovation. This collaboration will build new linkages in upstream and midstream segments of critical mineral value chains, extending to downstream reuse and recycling.

Officials from Natural Resources Canada and Global Affairs Canada, and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and Department for Business and Trade (DBT) will work closely together and with other participants of the United Kingdom-Canada Critical Minerals Supply Chains Dialogue to lead this work and identify an initial set of priorities for our collaboration.

Now, the March 6, 2023 UK’s Department for International Trade/Department for Business and Trade press release,

The UK and Canada have agreed a landmark agreement to co-operate on critical minerals such as cobalt and lithium that are essential to the economy.

  • UK and Canada to sign agreement to bolster vital technologies such as smart phones, solar panels and electric vehicles.
  • Agree to work together on critical minerals research and make supply chains more resilient as demand for some minerals expected to rise 500% by 2040.
  • Agreement signed on Minister Nus Ghani’s five-day visit to Canada to meet counterparts and attend the International Mines Ministers Summit and the closing of the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The UK and Canada have agreed a landmark agreement [sic] to co-operate on critical minerals such as cobalt and lithium that are essential to the economy and used in almost all modern and green technologies, from solar panels to electric vehicles.

The partnership, to be launched today [Monday 6 March {2025}] by Business and Trade Minister Nusrat Ghani MP and Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson, will help make UK manufacturers of cutting-edge technologies more resilient to global shocks by promoting research and development between UK and Canadian businesses, driving innovation and growth.

The announcement comes on a five-day visit to Canada, during which time Minister Ghani will also meet Canadian government counterparts to discuss critical minerals and attend the International Mines Ministers Summit and the closing of the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Minister for Business and Trade, Nusrat Ghani MP, said:

Every single one of us depend on critical minerals to make the technology we use in our everyday lives. With a dash for minerals to meet national business needs, it is essential we work to build more resilient supply chains for critical minerals.

Through this Dialogue, we will work with one of our closest global allies in Canada to build and strengthen our supply chains and boost innovation, securing jobs and growing the UK economy in the process.

Canadian Minister of Natural Resources, The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, said:

Canada and the United Kingdom share similar goals and values.

By collaborating on the development of the critical mineral supply chains that we need to achieve our net-zero future, we can reinforce global energy security, advance the fight against climate change and ensure significant economic opportunity and support good jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.

Today’s announcement is a step forward toward a sustainable and secure clean energy ecosystem.

Canada is the UK’s 13th largest export partner, with UK companies exporting £14.1 billion worth of goods and services to Canada in the 12 months to September 2022. Canada represents a large opportunity for UK mining and engineering firms, with the country currently producing 60 minerals and metals at 200 mines and 6,500 quarries. [emphasis mine]

The Critical Minerals Statement of Intent and Dialogue will be launched by Minister Ghani at the 2023 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Convention. They also commit Canada and the UK to high environmental, social and governance standards in critical minerals supply chains.

Demand for certain critical minerals is expected to rise by as much as 500% by 2040, and the Statement and Dialogue are a part of the UK’s Critical Minerals Strategy to secure supply chains for these minerals and therefore the UK’s position in the growing markets for green technologies, such as hydrogen production and nuclear energy. A refreshed approach for delivering the Strategy is due to be published later this year [2023].

Yes, again, we are the staples economy, aka (also known as) the hewers of wood and drawers of water. Or, in the context of this 2023 UK press release, Canadians provide a good market for UK products while happily supplying the UK with the resources for those high value products, which they sell back to us thereby extracting both Canadian resources and more profit for the UK.

I gather Keir Starmer’s Labour government is taking a ‘softly, softly’ approach in comparison to the Sundak Conservative government’s more direct approach. Of course that ‘softly, softly’ approach features a press release, which lists approximately 19 UK researchers as opposed to five Canadian researchers. So, approximately 80% of the researchers are affiliated with UK institutions. Interesting.

Also interesting? No mention in any release of the Geological Survey of Canada as opposed to the mention of the British Geological Survey.

Robot skin that feels heat, pain, and pressure

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This June 17, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily announces research into developing robot skin that more closely mimics skin (human and otherwise),

Scientists have developed a low-cost, durable, highly-sensitive robotic ‘skin’ that can be added to robotic hands like a glove, enabling robots to detect information about their surroundings in a way that’s similar to humans.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and University College London (UCL), developed the flexible, conductive skin, which is easy to fabricate and can be melted down and formed into a wide range of complex shapes. The technology senses and processes a range of physical inputs, allowing robots to interact with the physical world in a more meaningful way.

…

A June 11, 2025 University of Cambridge news release (also on EurekAlert) by Sarah Collins, which originated the news item, describes what makes this work a breakthrough,

Unlike other solutions for robotic touch, which typically work via sensors embedded in small areas and require different sensors to detect different types of touch, the entirety of the electronic skin developed by the Cambridge and UCL researchers is a sensor, bringing it closer to our own sensor system: our skin.  

Although the robotic skin is not as sensitive as human skin, it can detect signals from over 860,000 tiny pathways in the material, enabling it to recognise different types of touch and pressure – like the tap of a finger, a hot or cold surface, damage caused by cutting or stabbing, or multiple points being touched at once – in a single material.

The researchers used a combination of physical tests and machine learning techniques to help the robotic skin ‘learn’ which of these pathways matter most, so it can sense different types of contact more efficiently.

In addition to potential future applications for humanoid robots or human prosthetics where a sense of touch is vital, the researchers say the robotic skin could be useful in industries as varied as the automotive sector or disaster relief. The results are reported in the journal Science Robotics.

Electronic skins work by converting physical information – like pressure or temperature – into electronic signals. In most cases, different types of sensors are needed for different types of touch – one type of sensor to detect pressure, another for temperature, and so on – which are then embedded into soft, flexible materials. However, the signals from these different sensors can interfere with each other, and the materials are easily damaged.

“Having different sensors for different types of touch leads to materials that are complex to make,” said lead author Dr David Hardman from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “We wanted to develop a solution that can detect multiple types of touch at once, but in a single material.”

“At the same time, we need something that’s cheap and durable, so that it’s suitable for widespread use,” said co-author Dr Thomas George Thuruthel from UCL.

Their solution uses one type of sensor that reacts differently to different types of touch, known as multi-modal sensing. While it’s challenging to separate out the cause of each signal, multi-modal sensing materials are easier to make and more robust.

The researchers melted down a soft, stretchy and electrically conductive gelatine-based hydrogel, and cast it into the shape of a human hand. They tested a range of different electrode configurations to determine which gave them the most useful information about different types of touch. From just 32 electrodes placed at the wrist, they were able to collect over 1.7 million pieces of information over the whole hand, thanks to the tiny pathways in the conductive material.

The skin was then tested on different types of touch: the researchers blasted it with a heat gun, pressed it with their fingers and a robotic arm, gently touched it with their fingers, and even cut it open with a scalpel. The team then used the data gathered during these tests to train a machine learning model so the hand would recognise what the different types of touch meant. 

“We’re able to squeeze a lot of information from these materials – they can take thousands of measurements very quickly,” said Hardman, who is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of co-author Professor Fumiya Iida. “They’re measuring lots of different things at once, over a large surface area.”

“We’re not quite at the level where the robotic skin is as good as human skin, but we think it’s better than anything else out there at the moment,” said Thuruthel. “Our method is flexible and easier to build than traditional sensors, and we’re able to calibrate it using human touch for a range of tasks.”

In future, the researchers are hoping to improve the durability of the electronic skin, and to carry out further tests on real-world robotic tasks.

The research was supported by Samsung Global Research Outreach Program, the Royal Society, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Fumiya Iida is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

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

Multimodal information structuring with single-layer soft skins and high-density electrical impedance tomography by David Hardman, Thomas George Thuruthel, and Fumiya Iida. Science Robotics 11 Jun 2025 Vol 10, Issue 103 DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adq2303

This paper is behind a paywall.

Nanocellulose: a cow dung story

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Canadian nanocellulose efforts are usually focused on its extraction from wood. Other countries have often focused on extraction from various fruits and vegetables. Cow dung or cow manure as a source is a first for this blog.

A May 7, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily announces nanocellulose extraction from cow manure,

A new technique to extract tiny cellulose strands from cow dung and turn them into manufacturing-grade cellulose, currently used to make everything from surgical masks to food packaging, has been developed by researchers from UCL [University College London] and Edinburgh Napier University.

The study, published in The Journal of Cleaner Production, describes the new ‘pressurised spinning’ innovation and its potential to create cellulose materials more cheaply and cleanly than some current manufacturing methods, using a waste product from the dairy farming industry, cow dung, as the raw material.

…

A May 7, 2025 University College London (UCL) press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides more information and a pun in the headline,

Feat of ‘dung-gineering’ turns cow manure into one of world’s most used materials

…

The advance is the first time that manufacturing-grade cellulose has been derived from animal waste and is a prime example of circular economy, which aims to minimise waste and pollution by reusing and repurposing resources wherever possible.

The researchers say that implementing the technology would be a win-win situation for manufacturers, dairy farmers and the environment.

Cellulose is one of the world’s most commonly used manufacturing materials. Found naturally in the cell walls of plants, it was first used to create synthetic materials in the mid-19th century, including the original material used in photographic film, celluloid.

Today it can be found in everything from cling film to surgical masks, paper products, textiles, foods and pharmaceuticals. Though it can be extracted organically, it is also often produced synthetically using toxic chemicals.

Pressurised spinning (or pressurised gyration) is a manufacturing technology that uses the forces of pressure and rotation simultaneously to spin fibres, beads, ribbons, meshes and films from a liquid jet of soft matter. The multiple award-winning technology was invented in 2013 by a team from UCL Mechanical Engineering led by Professor Mohan Edirisinghe.

Professor Edirisinghe, the senior author of the study, said: “Our initial question was whether it could be possible to extract the tiny fragments of cellulose present in cow manure, which is left over from the plants the animals have eaten, and fashion it into manufacturing-grade cellulose materials.

“Extracting the fragments from dung was relatively straightforward using mild chemical reactions and homogenisation, which we then turned into a liquid solution. But when we tried to turn the fragments into fibres using pressurised spinning technology, it didn’t work.

“By a process of trial and error, we figured out that using a horizontal rather than a vertical vessel containing surface nozzles and injecting the jet of liquid into still or flowing water caused cellulose fibres to form. We were then able to change the consistency of the liquid to create other forms, such as meshes, films and ribbons, each of which have different manufacturing applications.

“We’re still not quite sure why the process works, but the important thing is that it does. It will also be fairly easy to scale up using existing pressurised spinning technology, the vessels for which were designed and built in the UCL Mechanical Engineering workshop.”

The new technique, called horizontal nozzle-pressurised spinning, is an energy efficient process that doesn’t require the high voltages of other fibre production techniques such as electrospinning.

The team say that adapting existing pressurised spinning machines to the new process should be relatively straightforward. The greater challenge is likely to be the logistics of sourcing and transporting the raw material, cow dung, but that the environmental and commercial benefits of doing so would be significant.

Ms Yanqi Dai, first author of the study from UCL Mechanical Engineering, said: “Dairy farm waste such as cow manure is a threat to the environment and humans, especially through waterway pollution, the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when it decomposes, and the spread of pathogens. It is also often a burden on farmers to dispose of properly.

“Horizontal nozzle-pressurised spinning could be a huge boost to the global dairy farming industry, by putting this problematic waste product to good use and perhaps creating a new source of income.”

The research team is currently seeking opportunities to work with dairy farmers to take advantage of the technology and scale it up.

Animal waste is a growing problem globally. Research in 2019 estimated that the amount of animal waste is due to increase by 40% between 2003 and 2030 to at least five billion tons, with many farms producing more manure than they can legitimately use as fertiliser. This waste often finds its way into water, where it can have a devastating effect on ecosystems and even lead to disease in humans.

Core pressurised spinning research at UCL was made possible by grants awarded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

I have two links to the paper and a citation for it,

Harnessing cow manure waste for nanocellulose extraction and sustainable small-structure manufacturing (PDF) or journal by Yanqi Dai Dongyang Sun, Dominic O’Rourke, Sasireka Velusamy, Senthilarasu Sundaram, Mohan Edirisinghe. Journal of Cleaner Production Volume 509, 1 June 2025, 145530 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2025.145530 Creative Commons Licence: CC BY 4.0

This paper is open access.

Is your smart TV or your car spying on you?

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Simple answer: Yes.

Smart television sets (TVs)

A December 10, 2024 Universidad Carlos III de Madrid press release (also on EurekAlert) offers details about the data collected by smart TVs,

A scientific team from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), in collaboration with University College London (England) and the University of California, Davis (USA), has found that smart TVs send viewing data to their servers. This allows brands to generate detailed profiles of consumers’ habits and tailor advertisements based on their behaviour.

The research revealed that this technology captures screenshots or audio to identify the content displayed on the screen using Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology. This data is then periodically sent to specific servers, even when the TV is used as an external screen or connected to a laptop.

“Automatic Content Recognition works like a kind of visual Shazam, taking screenshots or audio to create a viewer profile based on their content consumption habits. This technology enables manufacturers’ platforms to profile users accurately, much like the internet does,” explains one of the study’s authors, Patricia Callejo, a professor in UC3M’s Department of Telematics Engineering and a fellow at the UC3M-Santander Big Data Institute. “In any case, this tracking—regardless of the usage mode—raises serious privacy concerns, especially when the TV is used solely as a monitor.”

The findings, presented in November [2024] at the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 2024, highlight the frequency with which these screenshots are transmitted to the servers of the brands analysed: Samsung and LG. Specifically, the research showed that Samsung TVs sent this information every minute, while LG devices did so every 15 seconds. “This gives us an idea of the intensity of the monitoring and shows that smart TV platforms collect large volumes of data on users, regardless of how they consume content—whether through traditional TV viewing or devices connected via HDMI, like laptops or gaming consoles,” Callejo emphasises.

To test the ability of TVs to block ACR tracking, the research team experimented with various privacy settings on smart TVs. The results demonstrated that, while users can voluntarily block the transmission of this data to servers, the default setting is for TVs to perform ACR. “The problem is that not all users are aware of this,” adds Callejo, who considers this lack of transparency in initial settings concerning. “Moreover, many users don’t know how to change the settings, meaning these devices function by default as tracking mechanisms for their activity.”

This research opens up new avenues for studying the tracking capabilities of cloud-connected devices that communicate with each other (commonly known as the Internet of Things, or IoT). It also suggests that manufacturers and regulators must urgently address the challenges that these new devices will present in the near future.

…

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

Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs by Gianluca Anselmi, Yash Vekaria, Alexander D’Souza, Patricia Callejo, Anna Maria Mandalari, Zubair Shafiq. IMC ’24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference Pages 622 – 634 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3646547.3689013 Published: 04 November 2024

This paper is open access.

Cars

This was on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Day Six radio programme and the segment is embedded in a January 19, 2025 article by Philip Drost, Note: A link has been removed,

When a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day [2025], authorities were quickly able to gather information, crediting Elon Musk and Tesla for sending them info about the car and its driver. 

But for some, it’s alarming to discover that kind of information is so readily available.

“Most carmakers are selling drivers’ personal information. That’s something that we know based on their privacy policies,” Zoë MacDonald, a writer and researcher focussing on online privacy and digital rights, told Day 6 host Brent Bambury.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said the Tesla CEO was able to provide key details about the truck’s driver, who authorities believe died by self-inflicted gun wound at the scene, and its movement leading up to the destination. 

With that data, they were able to determine that the explosives came from a device in the truck, not the vehicle itself.  

“We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself,” Musk wrote on X following the explosion.

To privacy experts, it’s another example of how your personal information can be used in ways you may not be aware of. And while this kind of data can useful in an investigation, it’s by no means the only way companies use the information.  

“This is unfortunately not surprising that they have this data,” said David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston.

“When you see it all together and know that a company has that information and continues at any point in time to hand it over to law enforcement, then you start to be a little uncomfortable, even if — in this case — it was a good thing for society.”

CBC News reached out to Tesla for comment but did not hear back before publication. 

…

I found this to be eye-opening, Note: A link has been removed,

MacDonald says the privacy concerns are a byproduct of all the technology new cars come with these days, including microphones, cameras, and sensors. The app that often accompanies a new car is collecting your information, too, she says.

The former writer for the Mozilla Foundation worked on a report in 2023 that examined vehicle privacy policies. For that study, MacDonald sifted through privacy policies from auto manufacturers. And she says the findings were staggering.

…

Most shocking of all is the information the car can learn from you, MacDonald says. It’s not just when you gas up or start your engine. Your vehicle can learn your sexual activity, disability status, and even your religious beliefs [emphasis mine].

MacDonald says it’s unclear how they car companies do this, because the information in the policies are so vague.

It can also collect biometric data, such as facial geometric features, iris scans, and fingerprints [emphasis mine].

…

This extends far past the driver. MacDonald says she read one privacy policy that required drivers to read out a statement every time someone entered the vehicle, to make them aware of the data the car collects, something that seems unlikely to go down before your Uber ride.

…

If that doesn’t bother you, then this might, Note: A link has been removed,

And car companies aren’t just keeping that information to themselves.

Confronted with these types of privacy concerns, many people simply say they have nothing to hide, Choffnes says. But when money is involved, they change their tune. 

According to an investigation from the New York Times in March of 2024, General Motors shared information on how people drive their cars with data brokers that create risk profiles for the insurance industry, which resulted in people’s insurance premiums going up [emphases mine]. General Motors has since said it has stopped sharing those details [emphasis mine].

“The issue with these kinds of services is that it’s not clear that it is being done in a correct or fair way, and that those costs are actually unfair to consumers,” said Choffnes. 

For example, if you make a hard stop to avoid an accident because of something the car in front of you did, the vehicle could register it as poor driving.

…

Drost’s January 19, 2025 article notes that the US Federal Trade Commission has proposed a five year moratorium to prevent General Motors from selling geolocation and driver behavior data to consumer report agencies. In the meantime,

“Cars are a privacy nightmare. And that is not a problem that Canadian consumers can solve or should solve or should have the burden to try to solve for themselves,” said MacDonald.

If you have the time, read Drost’s January 19, 2025 article and/or listen to the embedded radio segment.

Recording brain activity with flexible tentacle electrodes

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A September 4, 2024 news item on ScienceDaily announced some research in Switzerland that improves on electrodes used in brain implants, e.g., like Elon Musk’s company, Neuralink,

Neurostimulators, also known as brain pacemakers, send electrical impulses to specific areas of the brain via special electrodes. It is estimated that some 200,000 people worldwide are now benefiting from this technology, including those who suffer from Parkinson’s disease or from pathological muscle spasms. According to Mehmet Fatih Yanik, Professor of Neurotechnology at ETH Zurich, further research will greatly expand the potential applications: instead of using them exclusively to stimulate the brain, the electrodes can also be used to precisely record brain activity and analyse it for anomalies associated with neurological or psychiatric disorders. In a second step, it would be conceivable in future to treat these anomalies and disorders using electrical impulses.

…

A September 4, 2024 ETH Zurich press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides more technical detail about the work,

To this end, Yanik and his team have now developed a new type of electrode that enables more detailed and more precise recordings of brain activity over an extended period of time. These electrodes are made of bundles of extremely fine and flexible fibres of electrically conductive gold encapsulated in a polymer. Thanks to a process developed by the ETH Zurich researchers, these bundles can be inserted into the brain very slowly, which is why they do not cause any detectable damage to brain tissue.

This sets the new electrodes apart from rival technologies. Of these, perhaps the best known in the public sphere is the one from Neuralink, an Elon Musk company [emphasis mine]. In all such systems, including Neuralink’s, the electrodes are considerably wider. “The wider the probe, even if it is flexible, the greater the risk of damage to brain tissue,” Yanik explains. “Our electrodes are so fine that they can be threaded past the long processes that extend from the nerve cells in the brain. They are only around as thick as the nerve-cell processes themselves.”

The research team tested the new electrodes on the brains of rats using four bundles, each made up of 64 fibres. In principle, as Yanik explains, up to several hundred electrode fibres could be used to investigate the activity of an even greater number of brain cells. In the study, the electrodes were connected to a small recording device attached to the head of each rat, thereby enabling them to move freely.

No influence on brain activity

In the experiments, the research team was able to confirm that the probes are biocompatible and that they do not influence brain function. Because the electrodes are very close to the nerve cells, the signal quality is very good compared to other methods.

At the same time, the probes are suitable for long-term monitoring activities, with researchers recording signals from the same cells in the brains of animals for the entire duration of a ten-month experiment. Examinations showed that no brain-tissue damage occurred during this time. A further advantage is that the bundles can branch out in different directions, meaning that they can reach multiple brain areas.

Human testing to begin soon

In the study, the researcher used the new electrodes to track and analyse nerve-cell activity in various areas of the brains of rats over a period of several months. They were able to determine that nerve cells in different regions were “co-activated”. Scientists believe that this large-scale, synchronous interaction of brain cells plays a key role in the processing of complex information and memory formation. “The technology is of high interest for basic research that investigates these functions and their impairments in neurological and psychiatric disorders,” Yanik explains.

The group has teamed up with fellow researchers at the University College London in order to test diagnostic use of the new electrodes in the human brain. Specifically, the project involves epilepsy sufferers who do not respond to drug therapy. In such cases, neurosurgeons may remove a small part of the brain where the seizures originate. The idea is to use the group’s method to precisely localise the affected area of the brain prior to tissue removal.

Brain-machine interfaces

There are also plans to use the new electrodes to stimulate brain cells in humans. “This could aid the development of more effective therapies for people with neurological and psychiatric disorders”, says Yanik. In disorders such as depression, schizophrenia or OCD, there is often impairments in specific regions of the brain, which leads to problems in evaluation of information and decision making. Using the new electrodes, it might be possible to detect the pathological signals generated by the neural networks in the brain in advance, and then stimulate the brain in a way that would alleviate such disorders. Yanik also thinks that this technology may give rise to brain-machine interfaces for people with brain injuries. In such cases, the electrodes might be used to read their intentions and thereby, for example, to control prosthetics or a voice-output system.

A bundle of extremely fine electrode fibres in the brain (microscope image). (Image: Yasar TB et al. Nature Communications 2024, modified) Courtesy: ETH Zurich

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

Months-long tracking of neuronal ensembles spanning multiple brain areas with Ultra-Flexible Tentacle Electrodes by Tansel Baran Yasar, Peter Gombkoto, Alexei L. Vyssotski, Angeliki D. Vavladeli, Christopher M. Lewis, Bifeng Wu, Linus Meienberg, Valter Lundegardh, Fritjof Helmchen, Wolfger von der Behrens & Mehmet Fatih Yanik. Nature Communications volume 15, Article number: 4822 (2024) DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49226-9 Published online: 06 June 2024

This paper is open access.

Archaeomagnetism, anomalies in space, and 3,000-year-old Babylonian bricks

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While i don’t usually cover the topic of magnetic fields, this fascinating research required a combination of science and the humanities, a topic of some interest to me. First, there’s the news and then excerpts from Rae Hodge’s December 25, 2023 commentary “How 3,000-year-old Babylonian tablets help scientists unravel one of the weirdest mysteries in space” for Salon.

A December 19, 2023 University College London (UCL; also on EurekAlert but published December 18, 2023) explains how Babylonian artefacts led to a discovery about earth’s magnetic fields,

Ancient bricks inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings have yielded important insights into a mysterious anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field 3,000 years ago, according to a new study involving UCL researchers.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), describes how changes in the Earth’s magnetic field imprinted on iron oxide grains within ancient clay bricks, and how scientists were able to reconstruct these changes from the names of the kings inscribed on the bricks.

The team hopes that using this “archaeomagnetism,” which looks for signatures of the Earth’s magnetic field in archaeological items, will improve the history of Earth’s magnetic field, and can help better date artefacts that they previously couldn’t.

Co-author Professor Mark Altaweel (UCL Institute of Archaeology) said: “We often depend on dating methods such as radiocarbon dates to get a sense of chronology in ancient Mesopotamia. However, some of the most common cultural remains, such as bricks and ceramics, cannot typically be easily dated because they don’t contain organic material. This work now helps create an important dating baseline that allows others to benefit from absolute dating using archaeomagnetism.”

The Earth’s magnetic field weakens and strengthens over time, changes which imprint a distinct signature on hot minerals that are sensitive to the magnetic field. The team analysed the latent magnetic signature in grains of iron oxide minerals embedded in 32 clay bricks originating from archaeological sites throughout Mesopotamia, which now overlaps with modern day Iraq. The strength of the planet’s magnetic field was imprinted upon the minerals when they were first fired by the brickmakers thousands of years ago.

At the time they were made, each brick was inscribed with the name of the reigning king which archaeologists have dated to a range of likely timespans. Together, the imprinted name and the measured magnetic strength of the iron oxide grains offered a historical map of the changes to the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.

The researchers were able to confirm the existence of the “Levantine Iron Age geomagnetic Anomaly,” a period when Earth’s magnetic field was unusually strong around modern Iraq between about 1050 to 550 BCE for unclear reasons. Evidence of the anomaly has been detected as far away as China, Bulgaria and the Azores, but data from within the southern part of the Middle East itself had been sparse.

Lead author Professor Matthew Howland of Wichita State University said: “By comparing ancient artefacts to what we know about ancient conditions of the magnetic field, we can estimate the dates of any artifacts that were heated up in ancient times.”

To measure the iron oxide grains, the team carefully chipped tiny fragments from broken faces of the bricks and used a magnetometer to precisely measure the fragments.

By mapping out the changes in Earth’s magnetic field over time, this data also offers archaeologists a new tool to help date some ancient artefacts. The magnetic strength of iron oxide grains embedded within fired items can be measured and then matched up to the known strengths of Earth’s historic magnetic field. The reigns of kings lasted from years to decades, which offers better resolution than radiocarbon dating which only pinpoints an artefact’s date to within a few hundred years.

An additional benefit of the archaeomagnetic dating of the artefacts is it can help historians more precisely pinpoint the reigns of some of the ancient kings that have been somewhat ambiguous. Though the length and order of their reigns is well known, there has been disagreement within the archaeological community about the precise years they took the throne resulting from incomplete historical records. The researchers found that their technique lined up with an understanding of the kings’ reigns known to archaeologists as the “Low Chronology”.

The team also found that in five of their samples, taken during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II from 604 to 562 BCE, the Earth’s magnetic field seemed to change dramatically over a relatively short period of time, adding evidence to the hypothesis that rapid spikes in intensity are possible.

Co-author Professor Lisa Tauxe of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US) said: “The geomagnetic field is one of the most enigmatic phenomena in earth sciences. The well-dated archaeological remains of the rich Mesopotamian cultures, especially bricks inscribed with names of specific kings, provide an unprecedented opportunity to study changes in the field strength in high time resolution, tracking changes that occurred over several decades or even less.”

The research was carried out with funding from the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundatio

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

Exploring geomagnetic variations in ancient Mesopotamia: Archaeomagnetic study of inscribed bricks from the 3rd–1st millennia BCE by Matthew D. Howland, Lisa Tauxe, Shai Gordin, and Erez Ben-Yosef. PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) December 18, 2023 120 (52) e2313361120 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2313361120

This paper is behind a paywall.

The Humanities and their importance to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)

Rae Hodge’s December 25, 2023 commentary explains why magnetic fields might be of interest to a member of the general public (that’s me) and more about the interdisciplinarity, which drove the project, Note 1: This is a US-centric view but the situation in Canada (and I suspect elsewhere) is similar. Note 2: Links have been removed,

Among the most enigmatic mysteries of modern science are the strange anomalies which appear from time to time in the earth’s geomagnetic field. It can seem like the laws of physics behave differently in some places, with unnerving and bizarre results — spacecraft become glitchy, the Hubble Space Telescope can’t capture observations and satellite communications go on the fritz. Some astronauts orbiting past the anomalies report blinding flashes of light and sudden silence. They call one of these massive, growing anomalies the Bermuda Triangle of space — and even NASA [US National Aeronautics and Space Administration] is now tracking it. 

With all the precisely tuned prowess of modern tech turning its eye toward these geomagnetic oddities, you might not expect that some key scientific insights about them could be locked inside a batch of 3,000-year-old Babylonian cuneiform tablets. But that’s exactly what a recently published study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests. 

…

This newly discovered connection between ancient Mesopotamian writing and modern physics is more than an amusing academic fluke. It highlights just how much is at stake for 21st-century scientific progress when budget-slashing lawmakers, university administrators and private industry investors shovel funding into STEM field development while neglecting — and in some case, actively destroying — the humanities.

…

… Despite advances in the past five years or so, archaeomagnetism is still methodologically complex and often tedious work, often cautious data sifting to arrive at accurate interpretations. The more accurate of which come from analyzing layers upon layers of strata. 

But when combined with the expertise of the humanities — from historians and linguists, to religious scholars and anthropologists? Archaeomagnetism opens up new worlds of study across all disciplines. 

In fact, the team’s results show that the strength of the magnetic field in Mesopotamia was more than one and a half times stronger than it is in the area today, with a massive spike happening sometimes between 604 B.C. and 562 B.C. By combining the results of archaeomagnetic tests and the transcriptions of ancient languages on the bricks, the team was able to confirm this spike likely occurred during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II.

Hand in hand with the sciences, the LIAA [Levantine Iron Age Anomaly] trail was illuminated by historical accounts of descriptively similar events, recorded from ancient authors as far west as the Iberian peninsula and well into Asia. Archaeomagnetism has now allowed researchers to not only confirm the presence of the LIAA in ancient Mesopotamia from 1050 to 550 B.C. — itself a first for science — but offers cultural historians a new way to verify and apply context to a vast tide of early scientific information.

…

Hodge further explores the importance of interdisciplinary work, December 25, 2023 commentary, Note: Links have been removed,

The symbiotic interdependence between the humanities and sciences deepens further in the thicket of time when one considers that the original locations of the team’s fragments likely include the earliest known centers of astrology and mathematics in Sumeria, such as Nineveh near modern-day Mosul, Iraq. At the ancient city’s royal library of the Assyrian Empire, a site dating back to around 650 B.C., a trove of thousands of tablets were excavated in the mid-1800s containing precise astronomical data surpassing that found in any previous discovery.

Among those, the “The Plough Star” tablets bear inscriptions dating to 687 B.C. and are the first known instances of humans tracking lunar and planetary orbits through both the solar ecliptic and 17 constellations. The same trove yielded the awe-striking collection known as the Astronomical Diaries, currently held in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, originating from near modern-day Baghdad. The oldest of which dates to 652 B.C. The latest, 61 B.C.

Hermann Hunger and David Pingree, the foremost historians on their excavation, minced no words on their value to to modern science. 

“That someone in the middle of the eighth century BC conceived of such a scientific program and obtained support for it is truly astonishing; that it was designed so well is incredible; and that it was faithfully carried out for 700 years is miraculous,” they wrote.  

In his 2021 book, “A Scheme of Heaven,” data scientist Alexander Boxer cites the two historians and observes that the “enormity of this achievement” lay in the diaries’ preservation of a snapshot of celestial knowledge of the age which — paired with accounts of weather patterns, river water tables, grain prices and even political news — allow us to pinpoint historical events from thousands of years ago, in time-windows as narrow as just a day or two.

“Rivaled only by the extraordinary astronomical records from ancient China, the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries are one of, if not the longest continuous research program ever undertaken,” writes Boxer. 

The cuneiform tablets studied by the UCL team extend this interdisciplinary legacy of the sciences and humanities beautifully by allowing us to read not only the celestially relevant data of geomagnetic history, but by reaffirming the importance of early cultural studies. One fragment, for instance, is dedicated by Nebuchadnezzar II to a temple in Larsa. The site was devoted to carrying out astrological divination traditions, and it’s where we get our earliest clue about the authorship of the Astronomical Diaries. 

Charmingly, that clue appears in the court testimony of a temple official who gets scolded for sounding a false-alarm about an eclipse, embarrassing the temple scholars in front of the whole city.

…

These Neo-Assyrian and Old Babylonian astrologers gave us more than antics, though. In further records at Nineveh, they would ultimately help researchers at the University of Tsukuba [Japan] — some 2,700 years later — track what were likely massive solar magnetic storms in the area, enabled by geomagnetic disruptions that may be yet linked to the LIAA.

In their dutifully recorded daily observations, one astrologer records a “red cloud” while another tablet-writer observes that “red covers the sky” in Babylon.

“These were probably manifestations of what we call today stable auroral red arcs, consisting of light emitted by electrons in atmospheric oxygen atoms after being excited by intense magnetic fields,” the authors said. “These findings allow us to recreate the history of solar activity a century earlier than previously available records…This research can assist in our ability to predict future solar magnetic storms, which may damage satellites and other spacecraft.”

…

Hodge ends with an observation, from her December 25, 2023 commentary,

…

When universities short sell the arts and humanities, we humanities students might lose our poetry, but we can write more. The science folk, on the other hand, might cost themselves another 75 years of research and $70 billion in grants trying to re-invent the Babylonian wheel because the destruction of its historical blueprint was “an arts problem.”

If you have time, do read Hodge’s December 25, 2023 commentary.

Brain-inspired (neuromrophic) computing with twisted magnets and a patent for manufacturing permanent magnets without rare earths

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I have two news bits both of them concerned with magnets.

Patent for magnets that can be made without rare earths

I’m starting with the patent news first since this is (as the company notes in its news release) a “Landmark Patent Issued for Technology Critically Needed to Combat Chinese Monopoly.”

For those who don’t know, China supplies most of the rare earths used in computers, smart phones, and other devices. On general principles, having a single supplier dominate production of and access to a necessary material for devices that most of us rely on can raise tensions. Plus, you can’t mine for resources forever.

This December 19, 2023 Nanocrystal Technology LP news release heralds an exciting development (for the impatient, further down the page I have highlighted the salient sections),

Nanotechnology Discovery by 2023 Nobel Prize Winner Became Launch Pad to Create Permanent Magnets without Rare Earths from China

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, December 19, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — Integrated Nano-Magnetics Corp, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nanocrystal Technology LP, was awarded a patent for technology built upon a fundamental nanoscience discovery made by Aleksey Yekimov, its former Chief Scientific Officer.

This patent will enable the creation of strong permanent magnets which are critically needed for both industrial and military applications but cannot be manufactured without certain “rare earth” elements available mostly from China.

At a glittering awards ceremony held in Stockholm on December10, 2023, three scientists, Aleksey Yekimov, Louis Brus (Professor at Columbia University) and Moungi Bawendi (Professor at MIT) were honored with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of the “quantum dot” which is now fueling practical applications in tuning the colors of LEDs, increasing the resolution of TV screens, and improving MRI imaging.

As stated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, “Quantum dots are … bringing the greatest benefits to humankind. Researchers believe that in the future they could contribute to flexible electronics, tiny sensors, thinner solar cells, and encrypted quantum communications – so we have just started exploring the potential of these tiny particles.”

Aleksey Yekimov worked for over 19 years until his retirement as Chief Scientific Officer of Nanocrystals Technology LP, an R & D company in New York founded by two Indian-American entrepreneurs, Rameshwar Bhargava and Rajan Pillai.

Yekimov, who was born in Russia, had already received the highest scientific honors for his work before he immigrated to USA in 1999. Yekimov was greatly intrigued by Nanocrystal Technology’s research project and chose to join the company as its Chief Scientific Officer.

During its early years, the company worked on efficient light generation by doping host nanoparticles about the same size as a quantum dot with an additional impurity atom. Bhargava came up with the novel idea of incorporating a single impurity atom, a dopant, into a quantum dot sized host, and thus achieve an extraordinary change in the host material’s properties such as inducing strong permanent magnetism in weak, readily available paramagnetic materials. To get a sense of the scale at which nanotechnology works, and as vividly illustrated by the Nobel Foundation, the difference in size between a quantum dot and a soccer ball is about the same as the difference between a soccer ball and planet Earth.

Currently, strong permanent magnets are manufactured from “rare earths” available mostly in China which has established a near monopoly on the supply of rare-earth based strong permanent magnets. Permanent magnets are a fundamental building block for electro-mechanical devices such as motors found in all automobiles including electric vehicles, trucks and tractors, military tanks, wind turbines, aircraft engines, missiles, etc. They are also required for the efficient functioning of audio equipment such as speakers and cell phones as well as certain magnetic storage media.

The existing market for permanent magnets is $28 billion and is projected to reach $50 billion by 2030 in view of the huge increase in usage of electric vehicles. China’s overwhelming dominance in this field has become a matter of great concern to governments of all Western and other industrialized nations. As the Wall St. Journal put it, China’s now has a “stranglehold” on the economies and security of other countries.

The possibility of making permanent magnets without the use of any rare earths mined in China has intrigued leading physicists and chemists for nearly 30 years. On December 19, 2023, a U.S. patent with the title ‘’Strong Non Rare Earth Permanent Magnets from Double Doped Magnetic Nanoparticles” was granted to Integrated Nano-Magnetics Corp. [emphasis mine] Referring to this major accomplishment Bhargava said, “The pioneering work done by Yekimov, Brus and Bawendi has provided the foundation for us to make other discoveries in nanotechnology which will be of great benefit to the world.”

I was not able to find any company websites. The best I could find is a Nanocrystals Technology LinkedIn webpage and some limited corporate data for Integrated Nano-Magnetics on opencorporates.com.

Twisted magnets and brain-inspired computing

This research offers a pathway to neuromorphic (brainlike) computing with chiral (or twisted) magnets, which, as best as I understand it, do not require rare earths. From a November13, 2023 news item on ScienceDaily,

A form of brain-inspired computing that exploits the intrinsic physical properties of a material to dramatically reduce energy use is now a step closer to reality, thanks to a new study led by UCL [University College London] and Imperial College London [ICL] researchers.

In the new study, published in the journal Nature Materials, an international team of researchers used chiral (twisted) magnets as their computational medium and found that, by applying an external magnetic field and changing temperature, the physical properties of these materials could be adapted to suit different machine-learning tasks.

…

A November 9, 2023 UCL press release (also on EurekAlert but published November 13, 2023), which originated the news item, fill s in a few more details about the research,

Dr Oscar Lee (London Centre for Nanotechnology at UCL and UCL Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering), the lead author of the paper, said: “This work brings us a step closer to realising the full potential of physical reservoirs to create computers that not only require significantly less energy, but also adapt their computational properties to perform optimally across various tasks, just like our brains.

“The next step is to identify materials and device architectures that are commercially viable and scalable.”

Traditional computing consumes large amounts of electricity. This is partly because it has separate units for data storage and processing, meaning information has to be shuffled constantly between the two, wasting energy and producing heat. This is particularly a problem for machine learning, which requires vast datasets for processing. Training one large AI model can generate hundreds of tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Physical reservoir computing is one of several neuromorphic (or brain inspired) approaches that aims to remove the need for distinct memory and processing units, facilitating more efficient ways to process data. In addition to being a more sustainable alternative to conventional computing, physical reservoir computing could be integrated into existing circuitry to provide additional capabilities that are also energy efficient.

In the study, involving researchers in Japan and Germany, the team used a vector network analyser to determine the energy absorption of chiral magnets at different magnetic field strengths and temperatures ranging from -269 °C to room temperature.

They found that different magnetic phases of chiral magnets excelled at different types of computing task. The skyrmion phase, where magnetised particles are swirling in a vortex-like pattern, had a potent memory capacity apt for forecasting tasks. The conical phase, meanwhile, had little memory, but its non-linearity was ideal for transformation tasks and classification – for instance, identifying if an animal is a cat or dog.

Co-author Dr Jack Gartside, of Imperial College London, said: “Our collaborators at UCL in the group of Professor Hidekazu Kurebayashi recently identified a promising set of materials for powering unconventional computing. These materials are special as they can support an especially rich and varied range of magnetic textures. Working with the lead author Dr Oscar Lee, the Imperial College London group [led by Dr Gartside, Kilian Stenning and Professor Will Branford] designed a neuromorphic computing architecture to leverage the complex material properties to match the demands of a diverse set of challenging tasks. This gave great results, and showed how reconfiguring physical phases can directly tailor neuromorphic computing performance.”

The work also involved researchers at the University of Tokyo and Technische Universität München and was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Imperial College London President’s Excellence Fund for Frontier Research, Royal Academy of Engineering, the Japan Science and Technology Agency, Katsu Research Encouragement Award, Asahi Glass Foundation, and the DFG (German Research Foundation).

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

Task-adaptive physical reservoir computing by Oscar Lee, Tianyi Wei, Kilian D. Stenning, Jack C. Gartside, Dan Prestwood, Shinichiro Seki, Aisha Aqeel, Kosuke Karube, Naoya Kanazawa, Yasujiro Taguchi, Christian Back, Yoshinori Tokura, Will R. Branford & Hidekazu Kurebayashi. Nature Materials volume 23, pages 79–87 (2024) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01698-8 Published online: 13 November 2023 Issue Date: January 2024

This paper is open access.

Seaweed battery

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A supercapacitor is not a battery but it does have some similarities. (For the ‘seaweed curious’, there’s this somewhat related May 17, 2017 posting titled “Seaweed supercapacitors.” It doesn’t seem to be quite as popular as butterfly wings or a crustacean’s shell but seaweed does seem to have a following in the materials community. From an October 5, 2022 news item on Nanowerk,

Bristol-led team uses nanomaterials made from seaweed to create a strong battery separator, paving the way for greener and more efficient energy storage.

Sodium-metal batteries (SMBs) are one of the most promising high-energy and low-cost energy storage systems for the next-generation of large-scale applications. However, one of the major impediments to the development of SMBs is uncontrolled dendrite growth, which penetrate the battery’s separator and result in short-circuiting.

Building on previous work at the University of Bristol and in collaboration with Imperial College and University College London, the team has succeeded in making a separator from cellulose nanomaterials derived from brown seaweed.

…

An October 5, 2022 University of Bristol press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, gives some technical details, Note: A link has been removed,

The research, published in Advanced Materials, describes how fibres containing these seaweed-derived nanomaterials not only stop crystals from the sodium electrodes penetrating the separator, they also improve the performance of the batteries.

“The aim of a separator is to separate the functioning parts of a battery (the plus and the minus ends) and allow free transport of the charge. We have shown that seaweed-based materials can make the separator very strong and prevent it being punctured by metal structures made from sodium. It also allows for greater storage capacity and efficiency, increasing the lifetime of the batteries – something which is key to powering devices such as mobile phones for much longer,” said Jing Wang, first author and PhD student in the Bristol Composites Institute (BCI).

Dr Amaka Onyianta, also from the BCI, who created the cellulose nanomaterials and co-authored the research, said: “I was delighted to see that these nanomaterials are able to strengthen the separator materials and enhance our capability to move towards sodium-based batteries. This means we wouldn’t have to rely on scarce materials such as lithium, which is often mined unethically and uses a great deal of natural resources, such as water, to extract it.”

“This work really demonstrates that greener forms of energy storage are possible, without being destructive to the environment in their production,” said Professor Steve Eichhorn who led the research at the Bristol Composites Institute.

The next challenge is to upscale production of these materials and to supplant current lithium-based technology.

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

Stable Sodium Metal Batteries in Carbonate Electrolytes Achieved by Bifunctional, Sustainable Separators with Tailored Alignment by Jing Wang, Zhen Xu, Qicheng Zhang, Xin Song, Xuekun Lu, Zhenyu Zhang, Amaka J. Onyianta, Mengnan Wang, Maria-Magdalena Titirici, Stephen J. Eichhorn. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202206367 First published online: 20 September 2022

This paper is open access.

‘Ghost’ nannofossils and resilience

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Here are the ‘ghosts’,

Microscopic plankton cell-wall coverings preserved as “ghost” fossil impressions, pressed into the surface of ancient organic matter (183 million years old). The images show the impressions of a collapsed cell-wall covering (a coccosphere) on the surface of a fragment of ancient organic matter (left) with the individual plates (coccoliths) enlarged to show the exquisite preservation of sub-micron-scale structures (right). The blue image is inverted to give a virtual fossil cast, i.e., to show the original three-dimensional form. The original plates have been removed from the sediment by dissolution, leaving behind only the ghost imprints. S.M. Slater, P. Bown et al / Science journal

A May 19, 2022 news item on phys.org makes the announcement (Note: A link has been removed),

An international team of scientists from UCL (University College London), the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Natural History Museum (London) and the University of Florence have found a remarkable type of fossilization that has remained almost entirely overlooked until now.

The fossils are microscopic imprints, or “ghosts”, of single-celled plankton, called coccolithophores, that lived in the seas millions of years ago, and their discovery is changing our understanding of how plankton in the oceans are affected by climate change.

Coccolithophores are important in today’s oceans, providing much of the oxygen we breathe, supporting marine food webs, and locking carbon away in seafloor sediments. They are a type of microscopic plankton that surround their cells with hard calcareous plates, called coccoliths, and these are what normally fossilize in rocks.

Declines in the abundance of these fossils have been documented from multiple past global warming events, suggesting that these plankton were severely affected by climate change and ocean acidification. However, a study published today in the journal Science presents new global records of abundant ghost fossils from three Jurassic and Cretaceous warming events (94, 120 and 183 million years ago), suggesting that coccolithophores were more resilient to past climate change than was previously thought.

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A May 20, 2022 UCL press release (also on EurekAlert but published May 19, 2022), which originated the news item, provides more detail and quotes from some very excited academics,

“The discovery of these beautiful ghost fossils was completely unexpected”, says Dr. Sam Slater from the Swedish Museum of Natural History. “We initially found them preserved on the surfaces of fossilized pollen, and it quickly became apparent that they were abundant during intervals where normal coccolithophore fossils were rare or absent – this was a total surprise!”

Despite their microscopic size, coccolithophores can be hugely abundant in the present ocean, being visible from space as cloud-like blooms. After death, their calcareous exoskeletons sink to the seafloor, accumulating in vast numbers, forming rocks such as chalk.

“The preservation of these ghost nannofossils is truly remarkable,” says Professor Paul Bown (UCL). “The ghost fossils are extremely small ‒ their length is approximately five thousandths of a millimetre, 15 times narrower than the width of a human hair! ‒ but the detail of the original plates is still perfectly visible, pressed into the surfaces of ancient organic matter, even though the plates themselves have dissolved away”.

The ghost fossils formed while the sediments at the seafloor were being buried and turned into rock. As more mud was gradually deposited on top, the resulting pressure squashed the coccolith plates and other organic remains together, and the hard coccoliths were pressed into the surfaces of pollen, spores and other soft organic matter. Later, acidic waters within spaces in the rock dissolved away the coccoliths, leaving behind just their impressions – the ghosts.

“Normally, palaeontologists only search for the fossil coccoliths themselves, and if they don’t find any then they often assume that these ancient plankton communities collapsed,” explains Professor Vivi Vajda (Swedish Museum of Natural History). “These ghost fossils show us that sometimes the fossil record plays tricks on us and there are other ways that these calcareous nannoplankton may be preserved, which need to be taken into account when trying to understand responses to past climate change”.

Professor Silvia Danise (University of Florence) says: “Ghost nannofossils are likely common in the fossil record, but they have been overlooked due to their tiny size and cryptic mode of preservation. We think that this peculiar type of fossilization will be useful in the future, particularly when studying geological intervals where the original coccoliths are missing from the fossil record”.

The study focused on the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE), an interval of rapid global warming in the Early Jurassic (183 million years ago), caused by an increase in CO2-levels in the atmosphere from massive volcanism in the Southern Hemisphere. The researchers found ghost nannofossils associated with the T-OAE from the UK, Germany, Japan and New Zealand, but also from two similar global warming events in the Cretaceous: Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a (120 million years ago) from Sweden, and Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (94 million years ago) from Italy.

“The ghost fossils show that nannoplankton were abundant, diverse and thriving during past warming events in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, where previous records have assumed that plankton collapsed due to ocean acidification,” explains Professor Richard Twitchett (Natural History Museum, London). “These fossils are rewriting our understanding of how the calcareous nannoplankton respond to warming events.”

Finally, Dr. Sam Slater explains: “Our study shows that algal plankton were abundant during these past warming events and contributed to the expansion of marine dead zones, where seafloor oxygen-levels were too low for most species to survive. These conditions, with plankton blooms and dead zones, may become more widespread across our globally warming oceans.”

For the curious, there is also a May 19, 2022 American Association for the Advanced of Science (AAAS) news release about this discovery in Science, the journal they publish.

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

Global record of “ghost” nannofossils reveals plankton resilience to high CO2 and warming by Sam M. Slater, Paul Bown, Richard J. Twitchett, Silvia Danise, and Vivi Vajda. Science 19 May 2022 Vol 376, Issue 6595 pp. 853-856 DOI: 10.1126/science.abm7330

This paper is behind a paywall.

Antikythera: a new Berggruen Institute program and a 2,000 year old computer

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Starting with the new Antikythera program at the Berggruen Institute before moving onto the Antikythera itself, one of my favourite scientific mysteries.

Antikythera program at the Berggruen Institute

An October 5, 2022 Berggruen Institute news release (also received via email) announces a program exploring the impact of planetary-scale computation and invites applications for the program’s first ‘studio’,

Antikythera is convening over 75 philosophers, technologists, designers, and scientists in seminars, design research studios, and global salons to create new models that shift computation toward more viable long-term futures: https://antikythera.xyz/

Applications are now open for researchers to join Antikythera’s fully-funded five month Studio in 2023, launching at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles: https://antikythera.xyz/apply/

Today [October 5, 2022] the Berggruen Institute announced that it will incubate Antikythera, an initiative focused on understanding and shaping the impact of computation on philosophy, global society, and planetary systems. Antikythera will engage a wide range of thinkers at the intersections of software, speculative thought, governance, and design to explore computation’s ultimate pitfalls and potentials. Research will range from the significance of machine intelligence and the geopolitics of AI to new economic models and the long-term project of composing a healthy planetary society.

“Against a background of rising geopolitical tensions and an accelerating climate crisis, technology has outpaced our theory. As such, we are less interested in applying philosophy to the topic of computation than generating new ideas from a direct encounter with it.” said Benjamin Bratton, Professor at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the new program. “The purpose of Antikythera is to reorient the question “what is computation for?” and to model what it may become. That is a project that is not only technological but also philosophical, political, and ecological.”

Antikythera will begin this exploration with its Studio program, applications for which are now open at antikythera.xyz/apply/. The Studio program will take place over five months in spring 2023 and bring together researchers from across the world to work in multidisciplinary teams. These teams will work on speculative design proposals, and join 75+ Affiliate Researchers for workshops, talks, and design sprints that inform thinking and propositions around Antikythera’s core research topics. Affiliate Researchers will include philosophers, technologists, designers, scientists, and other thinkers and practitioners. Applications for the program are due November 11, 2022.

Program project outcomes will include new combinations of theory, cinema, software, and policy. The five initial research themes animating this work are:

• Synthetic Intelligence: the longer-term implications of machine intelligence, particularly as seen through the lens of artificial language

• Hemispherical Stacks: the multipolar geopolitics of planetary computation

• Recursive Simulations: the emergence of simulation as an epistemological technology, from scientific simulation to VR/AR

• Synthetic Catallaxy: the ongoing organization of computational economics, pricing, and planning

• Planetary Sapience: the evolutionary emergence of natural/artificial intelligence, and its role in composing a viable planetary condition

The program is named after the Antikythera Mechanism, the world’s first known computer, used more than 2,000 years ago to predict the movements of constellations and eclipses decades in advance. As an origin point for computation, it combined calculation, orientation and cosmology, dimensions of practice whose synergies may be crucial in setting our planetary future on a better course than it is on today.

Bratton continues, “The evolution of planetary intelligence has also meant centuries of destruction; its future must be radically different. We must ask, what future would make this past worth it? Taking the question seriously demands a different sort of speculative and practical philosophy and a corresponding sort of computation.”

Bratton is a philosopher of technology and Professor at the University of California, San Diego, and author of many books including The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press). His most recent book is The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World (Verso Books), exploring the implications for political philosophy of COVID-19. Associate directors are Ben Cerveny, technologist, speculative designer, and director of the Amsterdam-based Foundation for Public Code, and Stephanie Sherman, strategist, writer, and director of the MA Narrative Environments program at Central St. Martins, London. The Studio is directed by architect and creative director Nicolay Boyadjiev.

In addition to the Studio, program activities will include a series of invitation-only planning salons inviting philosophers, designers, technologists, strategists, and others to discuss how to best interpret and intervene in the future of planetary-scale computation, and the historic philosophical and geopolitical force that it represents. These salons began in London in October 2022 and will continue in locations across the world including in Berlin; Amsterdam; Los Angeles; San Francisco; New York; Mexico City; Seoul; and Venice.

The announcement of Antikythera at the Berggruen Institute follows the recent spinoff of the Transformations of the Human school, successfully incubated at the Institute from 2017-2021.

“Computational technology covering the planet represents one of the largest and most urgent philosophical opportunities of our time,” said Nicolas Berggruen, Chairman and Co-Founder of the Berggruen Institute. “It is with great pleasure that we invite Antikythera to join our work at the Institute. Together, we can develop new ways of thinking to support planetary flourishing in the years to come.”

Web: Antikythera.xyz
Social: Antikythera_xyz on Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin.
Email: contact@antikythera.xyz

Applications were opened on October, 4, 2022, the deadline is November 11, 2022 followed by interviews. Participants will be confirmed by December 11, 2022. Here are a few more details from the application portal,

Who should apply to the Studio?

Antikythera hopes to bring together a diverse cohort of researchers from different backgrounds, disciplines, perspectives, and levels of experience. The Antikythera research themes engage with global challenges that necessitate harnessing a diversity of thought and expertise. Anyone who is passionate about the research themes of the Antikythera program is strongly encouraged to apply. We accept applications from every discipline and background, from established to emerging researchers. Applicants do not need to meet any specific set of educational or professional experience.

Is the program free?

Yes, the program is free. You will be supported to cover the cost of housing, living expenses, and all program-related fieldwork travel along with a monthly stipend. Any other associated program costs will also be covered by the program.

Is the program in person and full-time?

Yes, the Studio program requires a full-time commitment (PhD students must also be on leave to participate). There is no part-time participation option. Though we understand this commitment may be challenging logistically for some individuals, we believe it is important for the Studio’s success. We will do our best to enable an environment that is comfortable and safe for participants from all backgrounds. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you may require any accommodations or have questions regarding the full-time, in-person nature of the program.

Do I need a Visa?

The Studio is a traveling program with time spent between the USA, Mexico, and South Korea. Applicable visa requirements set by these countries will apply and will vary depending on your nationality. We are aware that current visa appointment wait times may preclude some individuals who would require a brand new visa from being able to enter the US by January, and we are working to ensure access to the program for all (if not for January 2023, then for future Studio cohorts). We will therefore ask you to identify your country of origin and passport/visa status in the application form so we can work to enable your participation. Anyone who is passionate about the research themes of the Antikythera program is strongly encouraged to apply.

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For those who like to put a face to a name, you can find out more about the program and the people behind it on this page.

Antikythera, a 2000 year old computer & 100 year old mystery

As noted in the Berggruen Institute news release, the Antikythera Mechanism is considered the world’s first computer (as far as we know). The image below is one of the best known illustrations of the device as visualized by researchers,

Exploded model of the Cosmos gearing of the Antikythera Mechanism. ©2020 Tony Freeth.

Briefly, the Antikythera mechanism was discovered at the turn of the twentieth century in 1901 by sponge divers off the coast of Greece. Philip Chrysopoulos’s September 21, 2022 article for The Greek Reporter gives more details in an exuberant style (Note: Links have been removed),

… now—more than 120 years later—the astounding machine has been recreated once again, using 3-D imagery, by a brilliant group of researchers from University College London (UCL).

Not only is the recreation a thing of great beauty and amazing genius, but it has also made possible a new understanding of how it worked.

Since only eighty-two fragments of the original mechanism are extant—comprising only one-third of the entire calculator—this left researchers stymied as to its full capabilities.

Until this moment [in 2020 according to the copyright for the image], the front of the mechanism, containing most of the gears, has been a bit of a Holy Grail for marine archeologists and astronomers.

Professor Tony Freeth says in an article published in the periodical Scientific Reports: “Ours is the first model that conforms to all the physical evidence and matches the descriptions in the scientific inscriptions engraved on the mechanism itself.”

“The sun, moon and planets are displayed in an impressive tour de force of ancient Greek brilliance,” Freeth said.

The largest surviving piece of the mechanism, referred to by researchers as “Fragment A,” has bearings, pillars, and a block. Another piece, known as “Fragment D,” has a mysterious disk along with an extraordinarily intricate 63-toothed gear and a plate.

The inscriptions—just discovered recently by researchers—on the back cover of the mechanism have a description of the cosmos and the planets, shown by beads of various colors, and move on rings set around the inscriptions.

By employing the information gleaned from recent x-rays of the computer and their knowledge of ancient Greek mathematics, the UCL researchers have now shown that they can demonstrate how the mechanism determined the cycles of the planets Venus and Saturn.

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Evaggelos Vallianatos, author of many books on the Antikythera Mechanism writing at Greek Reporter said that it was much more than a mere mechanism. It was a sophisticated, mind-bogglingly complex astronomical computer, he said “and Greeks made it.”

They employed advanced astronomy, mathematics, metallurgy, and engineering to do so, constructing the astronomical device 2,200 years ago. These scientific facts of the computer’s age and its flowless high-tech nature profoundly disturbed some of the scientists who studied it.

A few Western scientists of the twentieth century were shocked by the Antikythera Mechanism, Vallianatos said. They called it an astrolabe for several decades and refused to call it a computer. The astrolabe, a Greek invention, is a useful instrument for calculating the position of the Sun and other prominent stars. Yet, its technology is rudimentary compared to that of the Antikythera device.

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In 2015, Kyriakos Efstathiou, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and head of the group which studied the Antikythera Mechanism said: “All of our research has shown that our ancestors used their deep knowledge of astronomy and technology to construct such mechanisms, and based only on this conclusion, the history of technology should be re-written because it sets its start many centuries back.”

The professor further explained that the Antikythera Mechanism is undoubtedly the first machine of antiquity which can be classified by the scientific term “computer,” because “it is a machine with an entry where we can import data, and this machine can bring and create results based on a scientific mathematical scale.

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In 2016, yet another astounding discovery was made when an inscription on the device was revealed—something like a label or a user’s manual for the device.

It included a discussion of the colors of eclipses, details used at the time in the making of astrological predictions, including the ability to see exact times of eclipses of the moon and the sun, as well as the correct movements of celestial bodies.

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Inscribed numbers 76, 19 and 223 show maker “was a Pythagorean”

On one side of the device lies a handle that begins the movement of the whole system. By turning the handle and rotating the gauges in the front and rear of the mechanism, the user could set a date that would reveal the astronomical phenomena that would potentially occur around the Earth.

Physicist Yiannis Bitsakis has said that today the NASA [US National Aeronautics and Space Adiministration] website can detail all the eclipses of the past and those that are to occur in the future. However, “what we do with computers today, was done with the Antikythera Mechanism about 2000 years ago,” he said.

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The stars and night heavens have been important to peoples around the world. (This September 18, 2020 posting highlights millennia old astronomy as practiced by indigenous peoples in North America, Australia, and elsewhere. There’s also this March 17, 2022 article “How did ancient civilizations make sense of the cosmos, and what did they get right?” by Susan Bell of University of Southern California on phys.org.)

I have covered the Antikythera in three previous postings (March 17, 2021, August 3, 2016, and October 2, 2012) with the 2021 posting being the most comprehensive and the one featuring Professor Tony Freeth’s latest breakthrough.

However, 2022 has blessed us with more as this April 11, 2022 article by Jennifer Ouellette for Ars Technica reveals (Note: Links have been removed)

The mysterious Antikythera mechanism—an ancient device believed to have been used for tracking the heavens—has fascinated scientists and the public alike since it was first recovered from a shipwreck over a century ago. Much progress has been made in recent years to reconstruct the surviving fragments and learn more about how the mechanism might have been used. And now, members of a team of Greek researchers believe they have pinpointed the start date for the Antikythera mechanism, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv repository. Knowing that “day zero” is critical to ensuring the accuracy of the device.

“Any measuring system, from a thermometer to the Antikythera mechanism, needs a calibration in order to [perform] its calculations correctly,” co-author Aristeidis Voulgaris of the Thessaloniki Directorate of Culture and Tourism in Greece told New Scientist. “Of course it wouldn’t have been perfect—it’s not a digital computer, it’s gears—but it would have been very good at predicting solar and lunar eclipses.”

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Last year, an interdisciplinary team at University College London (UCL) led by mechanical engineer Tony Freeth made global headlines with their computational model, revealing a dazzling display of the ancient Greek cosmos. The team is currently building a replica mechanism, moving gears and all, using modern machinery. The display is described in the inscriptions on the mechanism’s back cover, featuring planets moving on concentric rings with marker beads as indicators. X-rays of the front cover accurately represent the cycles of Venus and Saturn—462 and 442 years, respectively. 

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The Antikythera mechanism was likely built sometime between 200 BCE and 60 BCE. However, in February 2022, Freeth suggested that the famous Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes (sometimes referred to as the Leonardo da Vinci of antiquity) may have actually designed the mechanism, even if he didn’t personally build it. (Archimedes died in 212 BCE at the hands of a Roman soldier during the siege of Syracuse.) There are references in the writings of Cicero (106-43 BCE) to a device built by Archimedes for tracking the movement of the Sun, Moon, and five planets; it was a prized possession of the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus. According to Freeth, that description is remarkably similar to the Antikythera mechanism, suggesting it was not a one-of-a-kind device.

Voulgaris and his co-authors based their new analysis on a 223-month cycle called a Saros, represented by a spiral inset on the back of the device. The cycle covers the time it takes for the Sun, Moon, and Earth to return to their same positions and includes associated solar and lunar eclipses. Given our current knowledge about how the device likely functioned, as well as the inscriptions, the team believed the start date would coincide with an annular solar eclipse.

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“This is a very specific and unique date [December 22, 178 BCE],” Voulgaris said. “In one day, there occurred too many astronomical events for it to be coincidence. This date was a new moon, the new moon was at apogee, there was a solar eclipse, the Sun entered into the constellation Capricorn, it was the winter solstice.”

Others have made independent calculations and arrived at a different conclusion: the calibration date would more likely fall sometime in the summer of 204 BCE, although Voulgaris countered that this doesn’t explain why the winter solstice is engraved so prominently on the device.

“The eclipse predictions on the [device’s back] contain enough astronomical information to demonstrate conclusively that the 18-year series of lunar and solar eclipse predictions started in 204 BCE,” Alexander Jones of New York University told New Scientist, adding that there have been four independent calculations of this. “The reason such a dating is possible is because the Saros period is not a highly accurate equation of lunar and solar periodicities, so every time you push forward by 223 lunar months… the quality of the prediction degrades.”

Read Ouellette’s April 11, 2022 article for a pretty accessible description of the work involved in establishing the date. Here’s a link to and a citation for the latest attempt to date the Antikythera,

The Initial Calibration Date of the Antikythera Mechanism after the Saros spiral mechanical Apokatastasis by Aristeidis Voulgaris, Christophoros Mouratidis, Andreas Vossinakis. arXiv > physics > arXiv:2203.15045 Submission history: From: Aristeidis Voulgaris Mr [view email] [v1] Mon, 28 Mar 2022 19:17:57 UTC (1,545 KB)

It’s open access. The calculations are beyond me otherwise, it’s quite readable.

Getting back to the Berggruen Institute and its Antikythera program/studio, good luck to all the applicants (the Antikythera application portal).