Rocket Launches With Lunar Landers From 2 Private Companies

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And I’m Flora Lichtman.

IRA FLATOW: Later, in the wake of the fires in Los Angeles, we’ll look at the science of urban fires and how to plan for them.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Plus, a novel about astronauts living on the International Space Station wins the Booker Prize. But first, a quick look at the news this week. Ira, what caught your eye?

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, there was something really hard to believe that I discovered, and that is out of every 10 new cars sold in Norway, 9 are electric.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, and they’re aiming to make it 100% electric by the end of this year. I mean, and this is in a country that’s known for its oil and gas production.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So how did they pull it off?

IRA FLATOW: It’s the old story of slow and steady. They set a goal back in 2017, and they didn’t ban gas cars, no, but they did tax them, gas and diesel fuel, and this is the good part. They offered a bunch of incentives to buy electric cars. They gave you free parking, discount on tolls. They even waived the VAT and import taxes. And the best part? You can even drive in the bus lane on the highway.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I’m sold.

IRA FLATOW: So if you put it all together, that comes to about one third of all the cars on the road are electric, and I think that’s pretty impressive. So what impressed you this week, Flora?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, a story I really liked came from our friends at the show Radiolab. So they teamed up with the International Astronomical Union, and they ran this contest to name one of Earth’s quasi moons, which I learned is apparently not a moon but also not not a moon. It’s like a hunk of rock that orbits the sun but is close enough to a planet to seem like a moon. So anyway, they picked one near Earth that has a name that is not so catchy. It’s like a string of a bunch of digits. And they held this contest, and they got thousands of name submissions from people across the world. And this week, their panel picked a winner.

IRA FLATOW: And, drum roll, please?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Cardea.

IRA FLATOW: Cardea.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Cardea, which is the Roman goddess of doorways and transitions, a kind of guardian of thresholds and protection, which I love. It seems like a perfect fit.

IRA FLATOW: That is cool. That’s a very creative choice. And speaking of moons, what a segue. Joining us now for even more space news and other stories of the week is Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos in Washington. Welcome back, Jason.

JASON DINH: Thanks for having me.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s get right into the news about moons. This was a very busy week in space flight. On Thursday, a SpaceX test of its Starship system exploded shortly after launch. And that explosion is still under investigation, but it’s believed to have been caused by a propellant leak. But another really exciting launch, also from SpaceX, was a rocket carrying not one but two moon missions. Tell us about that.

JASON DINH: Yeah, SpaceX launched this rocket carrying two landers that are headed to the moon. One belongs to a US company, and another belongs to a Japanese company. They took off from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Wednesday morning, and after about an hour, the two separated and are now taking different paths to the moon.

The Japanese lander, from a group called ispace, is going to gather soil, test the system that would cultivate food using algae, and test another system that splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. And the American lander, from a group called Firefly Aerospace, is doing science with NASA. Some of the technologies they’re testing include satellite navigation, computers adapted to radiation, and self-cleaning glass that wipes away sharp, abrasive lunar debris.

IRA FLATOW: Oh, that’s cool. So are these competitors on the same vehicle?

JASON DINH: No, they’re not competitors. They don’t see it that way. They’re actually doing very different things. They’re landing on different spots in the moon. They just shared this rocket to save costs.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, they hitchhiked. OK, what’s the timeline here? When do they actually get to the moon?

JASON DINH: The American lander is scheduled to touch down in early March, and the Japanese one expects to touch down in late May or early June. And once they’re there, both plan to spend about two weeks operating.

IRA FLATOW: OK, let’s go back to Earth for a moment for big food news. The FDA is moving to ban a common food dye. Tell us about that.

JASON DINH: Yeah, this happened on Wednesday. The FDA banned the use of red dye number 3 in food, beverages, and drugs. What this means is that, starting in 2027, companies are going to have to start removing red dye from their products. Now, this is a petroleum-based food coloring that’s used in all sorts of products you might have in your pantry, including certain candy corn, strawberry ice cream, and even bacon bits. And some companies have already started replacing red 3 with more natural dyes from beets or insects.

Health advocates say that this decision was really long overdue. The ban comes more than three decades after red 3 was first found to cause cancer in male lab rats, and the FDA banned red 3 from cosmetics and topical drugs way back in 1990. Other places like Europe, Australia, and New Zealand have banned it from food, too, but these countries did make one kind of amusing exception, which are maraschino cherries that are candied or used in cocktails.

IRA FLATOW: Oh, maraschino cherries. So how solid is the evidence here? Do we really know if this dye is potentially harmful? It would seem so.

JASON DINH: So the FDA is obliged to not approve any food additives that are cancerous to humans or nonhuman animals, which is why that rat study is important. They did downplay the risk to humans in their announcements. So while there is a known cancer risk in male lab rats, they said that they haven’t found that in any other animal, including humans.

Some critics and advocates do argue that maybe the only reason there’s no known cancer risk in humans is that food-safety research has been historically underfunded. So just because there’s no known risk doesn’t necessarily mean that that risk doesn’t exist. It’s possible that it’s just been undiscovered.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, I’m reminded of other food colorings and colorations and dyes that have been banned in the past.

All right, let’s go on to other health news this week. There’s a new study out looking at potential cases of dementia in the future. Tell us about that one.

JASON DINH: This paper was published in the journal Nature Medicine, and it projected that by 2060, new cases of dementia will double to a million new cases per year, and among Black Americans, it’s going to triple. If the projections bear out, that would mean 12 million Americans with dementia in 2060, which is up from 6 million Americans now.

There are a few reasons for this. So the first and more minor one is that dementia risk from this study was higher than the previous estimates. The study found that, after turning 55, the risk of developing dementia at some point in your life is 42%, and that risk increases with age. But the real main driver of this trend is that our population is aging by 2060. Some of the youngest baby boomers are going to be in their 90s, and many millennials are going to be in their 70s. So a huge portion of our population are going to be at the old ages where the risk of dementia is greatest.

IRA FLATOW: So are they talking about anything people can do to lessen their own risks of dementia?

JASON DINH: Totally. There are ways to manage risk factors. The researchers suggest improving heart health through medicine or lifestyle changes, preventing and treating strokes, and wearing hearing aids once you need them. Being able to hear keeps you socially and cognitively engaged.

IRA FLATOW: Cool. This next one, I know there’s AI in everything these days, but now it appears it’s in snake antivenom design. Wow. Who knew?

JASON DINH: Yeah, this is a really cool study. It was published in Nature this week, and these researchers used AI to design proteins that could be used in antivenoms. These proteins were designed to latch on to specific toxins in the venom and prevent them from harming cells and tissues.

The way the process worked is that the AI designed a protein. The researchers manufactured it, and then they injected it into mice that were given otherwise lethal doses of venom toxins, and these AI proteins ended up saving those mice’s lives. It’s a proof of concept that the researchers say could one day be applied to devise a new treatment for snake bites, and that’s actually quite important because while snake antivenoms exist, the technology is pretty archaic. They literally milk a snake for venom, inject it into a horse or another large animal, and then harvest the antibodies that that animal produces.

These AI-designed proteins are, in theory, quicker and more cost effective to produce. They circumvent the need to use animals. And some researchers even told reporters that they think the proteins might not need to be refrigerated, which means that they can be stored and used in remote, hot, tropical places where snakebites still pose significant health risks.

IRA FLATOW: Wow. That’s a win-win-win. I mean, now, if you can use this to design proteins for the antivenom, could you also use it to design other kinds of drugs or pharmaceuticals?

JASON DINH: 100%. This is all part of a larger movement to use AI to predict protein structures and functions in ways that we couldn’t have fathomed even years ago. It builds off of the AI protein research that won last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. And David Baker, who was one of those Nobel laureates, is actually the senior author of this paper.

The authors very explicitly say in their paper that, beyond snakebites, these results show how AI could be used to democratize drug discovery, especially for places that are strapped for resources and for diseases that have been historically neglected.

IRA FLATOW: All right, we’re going to end with something, one of our famous Science Friday stories we like to talk about on a Friday night, and this one is research into tattoos of ancient mummies. Am I getting this right?

JASON DINH: You’re totally right. Researchers just applied the technology used to study dinosaur fossils to visualize tattoos on a thousand-year-old mummies in Peru. I don’t know if any of you have ink like I do, but if you do, you’re probably aware that your tattoo fades and bleeds over time, and that’s a real challenge for scientists trying to visualize ancient skin art.

The technique these researchers use allowed them to see these tattoos through that fade and through that ink bleed. It’s called laser-stimulated fluorescence. Essentially, they shine a laser on the mummy, so the skin glows, and that creates a sharp contrast with the black ink. They used that technology to look at a wide range of tattoos, some that were geometric shapes, some that were based on nature, like vines, animals, and scales.

And the big surprise was that the tattoo lines were shockingly thin. They were 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters wide, which is finer than the lines that most modern tattoo needles lay down today. The authors think that they were laid down using a very fine instrument, like a cactus needle or a sharpened animal bone, but there’s still disagreement from outside experts on that.

The bigger picture here is that by learning who was tattooed, what those tattoos depicted, and how they were laid down can reveal the deeper cultural meaning of skin art– so whether it’s aesthetic, therapeutic, ritual, or a class signal. The smaller picture is that all of us with tattoos can now hope that we become mummified so a thousand years from now, scientists can gape at our really cool skin art.

IRA FLATOW: Well, there’s no way to top that ending, Jason, so I hope you get your wish on that one. Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos in Washington, thank you for being with us today.

JASON DINH: Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure.

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