Month: March 2023

The Science Behind a Shooting Star!

Falling stars, more commonly known as shooting stars, are meteors or other pieces of matter that burn up and disintegrate as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere and pass through it. Surprisingly, over 25 million meteors hit the Earth’s atmosphere every day.

It is important to understand the difference between the terms meteor and meteorite. The difference between the two is that a meteorite is a piece of matter, typically made of rock, that passes through the Earth’s atmosphere and hits its surface. Meteors are pieces of matter that burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere but never hit the ground. Essentially, meteorites are meteors that survive their fall through the Earth’s atmosphere.

What causes shooting stars? Everyone knows that there are many pieces of matter, such as rock or dust, floating through space. Some pieces of matter happen to pass near Earth and get caught by Earth’s gravitational field. However, some pieces of rock were already on a direct course to hit Earth. Once these small pieces of matter enter the Earth’s atmosphere, the meteor falls at an incredibly high speed, ranging from 25,000 mph to 160,000 mph on average. The speed of the fall against the gasses of the atmosphere creates intense friction. The friction causes the surface of the small piece of matter to burn up, which is called ablation. In fact, rapid heat generation is responsible for the light that we see from gazing across the night sky. Very small meteors burn up or vaporize before they can even hit the Earth’s surface. The larger meteors that survive the atmospheric friction hit the Earth’s surface and become meteorites. The meteors that survive are much smaller when they hit the ground because they burned during their fall.

But why do we call them shooting stars? Shooting star seems logical as a descriptor because stargazers see the streak of light produced as a meteor falls through the atmosphere. The streak of light allows us to see the meteor fall — or “shoot” — across the sky. We associate glowing in the sky with stars, so a burning meteor seems like a star moving across the sky.

Shooting stars are occurring all the time, even during the day. The best time to see one is at night since one can readily see the trail it leaves behind. It is also best to find a location away from cities and light pollution. The sky will be darkest in the countryside, away from man-produced lights. The darker the sky, the better chance one has of seeing one. Also, there’s an increased chance of seeing one during a meteor shower. A meteor shower consists of several pieces of a comet that have been left behind or broke off the comet. When the Earth passes through this field of debris, the pieces burn up in the atmosphere.

Dobrijevic, D. (2022, August 11). Meteor showers and shooting stars: Formation and history. Space.com. Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://www.space.com/meteor-showers-shooting-stars.html

Introductory Draft of Issue Brief

Regulating Medical Devices with AI Capabilities: Healthcare assistant or tyrant?

The rapid rise of innovative technology is augmenting human capabilities and replacing eons-old activities. Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven systems have particularly spread to more than half of the world’s population in ambient information and connectivity, with new advances constantly being made like DeepMind’s AlphaFold AI-based algorithm that solved a 50-year-old challenge in proteomics. As AI technology continues to evolve at an alarming rate, it’s being integrated with and deployed into a variety of sectors, such as the automotive, finance, manufacturing, retail, and, most notably, the healthcare industry where it has surged in popularity over the past few years. Indeed, medical AI promises to drive tremendous scientific breakthroughs, aid in diagnosis, treatment, and management of diseases, accelerate drug development and delivery, control costs, and support health equity. While some strongly praise this emerging power, others believe its a double-edged sword with potential risks that may bring considerable threats, including potential errors and patient harm; risks of bias and increased health inequalities; lack of transparency and trust; and vulnerability to hacking and data privacy breaches to name a few. Although these reservations likely won’t obstruct its adoption into healthcare in the long run, these are valid points that must be addressed appropriately to ward off exacerbated concerns. The regulatory framework governing these tools is complex. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates some AI-enabled products used in healthcare, and the agency plays an important role in ensuring the safety and effectiveness of those products under its jurisdiction. Right now, the agency is considering how to adapt its review process for AI-enabled medical devices that have the ability to evolve rapidly in response to new data, sometimes in ways that are difficult to anticipate. Ultimately, it will require a joint effort by key authorities like the FDA, Congress, technology developers, and the healthcare industry to ensure the safety and effectiveness of medical AI-enabled technology, maximizing the benefits while minimizing these risks at the same time.

Brinicles: The Icy Fingers of Death

On the 2011 British nature documentary series Frozen Planet, Alec Baldwin once described brinicles as “icy fingers of death” because of their deadly nature. Concretely speaking, brinicles are underwater stalactites, or hollow icicles, that form when cold saltwater freezes.

These underwater icicles are made possible by brine channels that form in the ice on the ocean’s surface. When sea ice forms in the Arctic and Antarctic, impurities like salt are forced out, which is why ice created from seawater isn’t as salty as the water from which it’s formed. As this salty water leaks from the sea ice, the surrounding water becomes more saline, increasing its density and lowering its freezing point temperature. This prevents the water from freezing to the ice and causes it to sink to the bottom. As this cold brine reaches warmer seawater below, the water freezes around it through heat transfer, creating a tubular-shaped ice known as a brinicle. When this sea stalactite reaches the seabed, a web of ice forms and spreads to its surroundings, freezing everything it touches — including any sea life it encounters, such as starfish and sea urchins — which is how brinicles earned themselves a reputation as “icy fingers of death.” Pools of super-cold brine may also form and remain beneath the site of brinicle formation. These so-called “black pools of death” can also be deadly to slow-moving, bottom-dwelling sea creatures that pass through them accidentally.

Fortunately, brinicles are not dangerous to humans, as we rarely travel beneath the ice sheets where they form. However, divers who study brinicles take precautions to avoid hypothermia or other cold water injuries.

Brine can be beneficial within the sea ice: it may warm and melt through the ice, moving heat from one part of the ice to the other. They also provide an ideal habitat for microscopic plants and animals, particularly diatoms (a type of algae) which sometimes stain the ice a dark brownish green.

If you thought underwater icicles were a surreal phenomenon, underwater lakes are even better. When the temperature of brine is not freezing, brine seeping into the ocean can form brine pools, with shorelines and all. Shockingly, brine lakes can range from 3 feet to 12 miles long in the Gulf of Mexico! These lakes are created by a process called salt tectonics, which refers to the movement of large salt deposits.

In 2011, the crew of Frozen Planet became the first to film a brinicle formation. They used time lapse photography to capture the event over the course of several hours. Their first attempt was unsuccessful, since large seals in the area knocked over their camera equipment and broke delicate, fledgling brinicle structures. See a short clip of their footage below.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, et al. “The Science of Brinicle: Ice Stalactites.” Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, 28 Apr. 2017, https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/brinciles-ice-stalactite/.

The Climate Change Crisis: A Reflection of its Reality

Over the past decade, the ongoing climate change crisis has been a highly-debated concern for many people. Individuals’ stances on this issue often differ based on what political party they align themselves with, as climate change and global warming were, and still are, very politically charged topics. In fact, in 2013, 85% of Democrats said that they believed that there was solid evidence supporting global warming, while only 48% of Republicans responded in this way. In 2022, however, roughly two-thirds of Democrats (65%) say addressing climate change should be a top priority for Biden and Congress, compared with just 11% of Republicans. Evidently, there’s a declining trend for support over the past few years, but why’s it the case? Although both parties differ on various topics prevalent in our community today, they agree that other “high-demanding” concerns like abortion rights, healthcare policy, immigration policy, and taxes to name a few outweigh the crisis. Some people believe that such issues are problems of the present and should be resolved as quickly as possible, while putting other long-term issues like the climate change crisis “on the back burner” to be dealt with at a later time. However, it’s crucial that we take steps beforehand towards alleviating its effects because who knows what life on earth will be like in the future if we don’t take rapid action to cut emissions.

97% of scientists say humans are the cause of global warming, mainly attributed to the increased burning of fossil fuels. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, there has been 40% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And right now, we are adding 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere on a daily basis. Given these harsh realities, President Biden outlined a bold plan a few years back — a Clean Energy Revolution — to address this threat and lead the world in addressing the climate emergency. There are nine key points to his plan: (1) take executive action to not just reverse all of the damage Trump has done, but go further and faster, (2) work with Congress to enact legislation that puts us on an irreversible path to achieve economy-wide net-zero emissions no later than 2050, (3) rally the world to urgent and additional action, (4) make investments in clean energy and innovation, (5) accelerate the deployment of clean technology throughout our economy, (6) make environmental justice a priority across all federal agencies, (7) hold polluters accountable, (8) create 10 million good-paying, middle-class, union jobs, and finally (9) fulfill our obligation to the communities and workers that have risked their lives to produce fossil fuels that made it possible for America to win world wars and become an industrial superpower. While creating such a plan is encouraging, not everyone will, of course, share similar views and be supportive of this initiative. And so, will President Biden’s declaration affirming the reality of the crisis be enough to convince the general populace to take action?

According to a recent Pew Research study done on Earth Day 2022, a 54% majority of adults under 30 believe the crisis should be a top priority, compared with smaller shares of Americans ages 30 to 49 (42%), ages 50 to 64 (36%) and ages 65 and older (39%). But why do older populations fail to realize the severity of the crisis? Some say that other health concerns consume their minds, while others argue that they are “on their deathbed” and, consequently, can’t do much.

In order to make any significant progress in reducing emissions to curb climate change, it is imperative that the general public become more informed about the topic, and recognize it as a serious threat to the human way of life — perhaps not right away, but definitely a threat to the quality of life experienced by our children and our children’s children. Moreover, people need to forget the polarizing politics associated with the issue. Once these things are accomplished, it will be possible for individuals to take action and collectively bring about a positive change. Additionally, once political stigma surrounding the issue is reduced and dissolved, policymakers will be able to move forward and carry out the necessary steps to pass legislation for a positive impact.

Take Antarctica as an example. Antarctica is rich in precious natural resources like ice, coal, metallic minerals, petroleum. A rise in global temperature has led to the warming of the Antarctic Peninsula, breaking the continent’s ice sheet and, consequently, decreasing the continent’s local species populations. Realistically speaking, human-caused issues put at risk the last pristine continent in the world, containing the world’s biggest source of freshwater, huge potential oil and natural gas reserves, and the key to determining how climate change will affect the world through rising sea levels.

Many organizations worldwide have already taken measures to combat the issue and alleviate the effects. For example, in the automotive industry, Tesla has already produced nearly 1.91 million electric vehicles since 2009, in accordance with its mission to “accelerate the world’s transition into sustainable energy.” Additionally, at least 92.7 billion solar panels have been installed across the world today, producing cleaner energy (i.e., electricity) that keeps us from burning fossil fuels. Some proposals for the future involve cooling Earth’s surface by spraying artificially-made, reflective particles into the planet’s atmosphere, scattering and reflecting sunlight back into space. Other proposals involve sowing the oceans with iron to cause large-scale phytoplankton growth, thereby removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Such methods could potentially work but require further research.

The climate change crisis is certainly a widely-overlooked issue in today’s world, though a minority does realize its importance and severity if left alone. Therefore, it’s of great importance that everyone is informed of its effects, especially our children who will carry on this mission into the future. All in all, everyone, regardless of political affiliation, has a responsibility to limit climate change, no matter how big or small of an impact it makes.

“Climate Change.” ITU, https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/backgrounders/Pages/climate-change.aspx.

Clement, Scott. “How Americans See Global Warming – in 8 Charts.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 26 Nov. 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/04/22/how-americans-see-global-warming-in-8-charts/.

Schaeffer, Katherine. “For Earth Day, Key Facts about Americans’ Views of Climate Change and Renewable Energy.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 22 Apr. 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/04/22/for-earth-day-key-facts-about-americans-views-of-climate-change-and-renewable-energy/.