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    Russia's Nord Stream gas pipelines to Europe suffer mysterious leaks

    Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, key gas pipelines between Russia and Europe, have sprung large leaks within hours of each other, sparking fears of deliberate sabotage

    Humans

    27 September 2022

    By Matthew Sparkes

    Two key gas pipelines designed to bring Russian gas to Europe have developed leaks within hours of each other, prompting speculation about sabotage. The Nord Stream pipes, which run under the Baltic Sea, have at times been a focal point of diplomatic tensions around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. European Union leaders have previously accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of leveraging energy supplies in response to strong sanctions from Europe and the US.
    The Danish Energy Agency said in a statement that two leaks have been detected on Nord Stream 1 – one in Danish territory and one in Swedish – and one was also found on Nord Stream 2. The agency raised its alert level to orange, the second highest.
    Kristoffer Böttzauw, the agency’s director, said in a statement: “Breakage of gas pipelines is extremely rare, and therefore we see reason to raise the preparedness level as a result of the incidents we have seen over the past 24 hours. We want to ensure thorough monitoring of Denmark’s critical infrastructure in order to strengthen security of supply going forward.”

    Reports suggest that the leaks are large holes, rather than small cracks.Advertisement
    A European security source told Reuters there were indications that the leaks were caused by “deliberate damage”. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said, “It’s hard to imagine that these are coincidences. We can’t rule out sabotage.”
    The gas leak at Nord Stream 2 seen from a Danish fighter jetDanish Defence Command
    Denmark has imposed a prohibition area around the leaks, banning all ships and aircraft from getting within 5 nautical miles. It says there is a risk of ignition and ships could lose buoyancy due to the escaping gas.
    The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway said in a statement on Monday that it had recently received a number of warnings from oil and gas companies about unidentified drones and aircraft flying close to offshore facilities. The organisation also issued a reminder that there is an exclusion zone with a radius of 500 metres around all offshore oil and gas facilities, and it says encroaching on them could be punishable by law. But it said it did not wish to speculate about the causes of the Nord Stream leaks.
    Anthony King at the University of Warwick, UK, says the development is odd, and that sabotage and accident were both possibilities.
    “The Russians have the capability to carry out something like this – and they regularly threaten the internet fibres in the Atlantic to show that they could cut them if necessary. So it could be the Russians,” he says. “But I don’t see what they’d gain – they want to sell gas. It may indeed be an accident.”

    A spokesperson for the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences told New Scientist that it detected two large and distinctive spikes in seismic activity under the Baltic Sea on Monday, one at 00:03 UTC and one at 17:03 UTC. This was followed by “much stronger” than usual seismic noise than before the spikes. “We have no information on the cause of the spikes and the noise,” they say.
    Each of the two affected pipelines actually comprises two pipelines, made up of approximately 100,000 sections, each 12 metres long. None of the pipelines was in operation at the time the leaks were discovered, but they all still contained pressurised gas. Environmental impact documents relating to the network reportedly point to the pipes being 26.8 millimetres thick and covered in anti-corrosion material and steel-reinforced concrete.
    Nord Stream 2 hadn’t yet been put into normal operation, but was filled with 177 million cubic metres of natural gas. Scientists are divided on how great the effect of that gas leaking will be on the atmosphere, and on climate change.

    Joe von Fischer at Colorado State University says that the effect of the leaks on levels of atmospheric methane would be low because the methane will become carbon dioxide, which is less potent as a greenhouse gas, as it rises through the water. “When methane is released at the bottom of a deep body of water, nearly all of it is oxidised by methanotrophic bacteria in the water column,” he says.
    But Grant Allen at the University of Manchester, UK, says that the amount of gas rising might change the picture. “My intuition, and this is only intuition, is that those leaks are so big that a column of bubbles going up to the surface is so pure and so intense that nature isn’t going to have a chance to to act on it,” he says. “You can see how violently it’s coming out. I suspect this event is going to be all over in the timescale of hours.”
    Allen estimates that the contents of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline alone would create the equivalent methane emissions as 124,000 average UK homes do each year.
    The pipelines aren’t the first pieces of energy infrastructure to be affected since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Fighting around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant – Europe’s largest nuclear plant – and Chernobyl have caused experts to warn of the prospect of an accidental release of radioactive material in recent months.

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    Two provocative new novels inject some fantasy into the sci-fi outlook

    Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage and Christopher Priest’s Expect Me Tomorrow use fantasy to address real issues. Will this perspective energise people to do something about the future, asks Sally Adee

    Humans

    21 September 2022

    By Sally Adee

    Real glaciology is at the core of Christopher Priest’s climate fantasyCokada/Getty Images
    Bliss Montage
    Ling Ma (Text Publishing)

    IN LING MA’S Bliss Montage, the discomforts that define everyday reality are stretched and deformed until they detonate like a balloon that has been twisted too tightly.
    Ma, whose 2018 novel, Severance, won the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, uses short stories to work through the barbed scenarios in her latest book. These include a frenemy so diabolical she can make you disappear, a woman who marries … More

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    Don't Miss: Galwad, a multimedia climate-responsibility experience

    New Scientist’s weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss

    Humans

    21 September 2022

    KIRSTEN MCTERNAN
    Watch
    Galwad is a week-long mix of live performance and multimedia. Telling the time-travelling story of Efa (Alexandria Riley, pictured above), it ends with a live broadcast and a drama set in Wales in 2052. See the finale on Sky Arts on 2 October.
    Read
    Tales from a Robotic World by Dario Floreano and Nicola Nosengo mixes speculation, fact and fiction to create a future where robotic tech brings love, companionship and well-organised traffic to the world. On sale from 27 September.

    Read
    The Thousand Earths by Stephen Baxter dovetails the story of … More

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    Luck may influence us more than nurture, so let's give parents a break

    Emerging research suggests that, alongside genes and environment, much of who we become is down to chance occurrences in the developing brain. Does that mean parents are off the hook?

    Humans

    | Leader

    21 September 2022

    A-photographyy/Shutterstock
    DO YOU have your mother’s DIY skills, your father’s sense of humour or your granddad’s love of cooking? What or who is to blame for your short temper, your inability to draw or your hatred of radishes?
    Whether the differences between people are down to nature or nurture, genes or environment, has long divided scientists and philosophers alike. Now, it appears we have all been overlooking a third factor: sheer chance.
    It turns out that random fluctuations of molecules inside our developing brain cells may play a role in their eventual wiring diagram, swaying developmental outcomes such as how extroverted, … More

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    Vesper review: Exquisite dystopian sci-fi has a Brothers Grimm edge

    Set on an Earth where the ecosystem has collapsed, this ravishing sci-fi film is centred on Vesper, a young girl struggling to find a cure for her paralysed father

    Humans

    21 September 2022

    By Davide Abbatescianni
    Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) struggles to survive on an Earth with a ruined ecosystemIFC Films
    Vesper
    Directed by Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper
    General release in US cinemas; UK cinemas to be announced
    FOR a good example of what European science fiction has to offer, you need look no further than Vesper, a beautifully crafted film that premiered at the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary film festival in July.
    It is set in a dystopian world where Earth’s ecosystems have totally collapsed as a result of an unspecified catastrophe. Many people now have … More

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    DNA records reveal mass migration from Europe into Anglo-Saxon Britain

    In some parts of England in Anglo-Saxon times, more than three-quarters of the population’s ancestry could be traced to recent migration from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands

    Humans

    21 September 2022

    By Clare Wilson
    The analysis of a grave at Issendorf cemetery in GermanyLandesmuseum Hannover
    In Anglo-Saxon times, more than three-quarters of the ancestry of people in parts of England was from recent north European migrants.
    The finding, which comes from sequencing the DNA of people buried in the UK and mainland Europe during this time period, may settle an ongoing debate about just how much migration happened in Anglo-Saxon times, says Duncan Sayer at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK.
    The traditional view, based on written records and archaeological finds, is there was an influx of Europeans into Britain in Anglo-Saxon times – classed as from the end of Roman Empire control, at about AD 400, until 1066.Advertisement
    But more recently, there has been debate over just how many people migrated.
    There could have been just small numbers of migrants, who then spread aspects of their culture, such as their buildings and pottery styles. “There are many respectable historians who think there was very little migration, says Robin Fleming at Boston College in Massachusetts.

    To learn more, Sayer’s team sequenced the DNA of 460 people who were buried in graves between AD 200 and 1300, of whom 278 were from England.
    This showed that during the 7th century AD, people buried in the east of England could trace 76 per cent of their ancestry to recent migration from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
    This would be equivalent to someone having three of their four grandparents born in Europe, says Sayer’s colleague, Stephan Schiffels at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
    Bodies taken from graves further to the west of England had a lower proportion of their ancestry from Europe, implying that the migrants first made their homes in the east.
    Fleming says the findings confirm there was mass migration from Europe into some parts of Britain. “This does something a lot of us have been looking for.”
    “This brings the idea of migration back onto the table again,” says Sayer.
    Journal reference: Nature , DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05247-2

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    Nature, nurture, luck: Why you are more than just genes and upbringing

    Your genes and environment play a big part in forming you, but there is an unexplored third element at play too: luck. The chance events that shape your brain in the womb may influence who you become as much as your genetics, and perhaps even more than the effect of parenting

    Humans

    21 September 2022

    By Clare Wilson
    Chance events in the developing brain may be important for shaping who you becomeJiri Hera/Shutterstock
    BATMAN became a vigilante after seeing his parents murdered. Wonder Woman’s crime-fighting abilities are thanks to her supernatural creation and childhood of athletic training. Many of us mortals have origin stories too, albeit less dramatic ones. You may feel, for instance, you have inherited cleverness from your mother or confidence from your father, or a love of cooking from fun times in the kitchen with grandparents.
    One of the most fascinating questions about what makes us the way we are is how much of our personalities, abilities and interests is down to our genes and how much to our early environment – nature or nurture. But there is a third influence that has, until recently, gone under the radar: randomness. Specifically, chance events that affect nerve cells as the brain is developing. That is a colossal oversight. The latest research suggests that the role of this randomness in shaping who we are could be far greater than environmental factors, and in some cases as much as genetic ones. If so, we should really see ourselves as the product of nature, nurture and “noise”.
    This isn’t just of interest to neuroscientists: it has profound implications for us all. We could stop fretting quite so much about our parenting choices and – sorry, Freud – we may also have to allocate less blame to our own parents for how we have turned out. “We have a tendency to develop narrative explanations for differences we see in people,” says Benjamin de Bivort … More

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    A protogalaxy in the Milky Way may be our galaxy’s original nucleus

    The Milky Way left its “poor old heart” in and around the constellation Sagittarius, astronomers report. New data from the Gaia spacecraft reveal the full extent of what seems to be the galaxy’s original nucleus — the ancient stellar population that the rest of the Milky Way grew around — which came together more than 12.5 billion years ago.

    “People have long speculated that such a vast population [of old stars] should exist in the center of our Milky Way, and Gaia now shows that there they are,” says astronomer Hans-Walter Rix of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

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    The Milky Way’s ancient heart is a round protogalaxy that spans nearly 18,000 light-years and possesses roughly 100 million times the mass of the sun in stars, or about 0.2 percent of the Milky Way’s current stellar mass, Rix and colleagues report in a study posted September 7 at arXiv.org.

    “This study really helps to firm up our understanding of this very, very, very young stage in the Milky Way’s life,” says Vasily Belokurov, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the work. “Not much is really known about this period of the Milky Way’s life,” he says. “We’ve seen glimpses of this population before,” but the new study gives “a bird’s-eye view of the whole structure.”

    Most stars in the Milky Way’s central region abound with metals, because the stars originated in a crowded metropolis that earlier stellar generations had enriched with those metals through supernova explosions. But Rix and his colleagues wanted to find the exceptions to the rule, stars so metal-poor they must have been born well before the rest of the galaxy’s stellar denizens came along — what Rix calls “a needle-in-a-haystack exercise.”

    His team turned to data from the Gaia spacecraft, which launched in 2013 on a mission to chart the Milky Way (SN: 6/13/22). The astronomers searched about 2 million stars within a broad region around the galaxy’s center, which lies in the constellation Sagittarius, looking for stars with metal-to-hydrogen ratios no more than 3 percent of the sun’s.

    The astronomers then examined how those stars move through space, retaining only the ones that don’t dart off into the vast halo of metal-poor stars engulfing the Milky Way’s disk. The end result: a sample of 18,000 ancient stars that represents the kernel around which the entire galaxy blossomed, the researchers say. By accounting for stars obscured by dust, Rix estimates that the protogalaxy is between 50 million and 200 million times as massive as the sun.

    “That’s the original core,” Rix says, and it harbors the Milky Way’s oldest stars, which he says probably have ages exceeding 12.5 billion years. The protogalaxy formed when several large clumps of stars and gas conglomerated long ago, before the Milky Way’s first disk — the so-called thick disk — arose (SN: 3/23/22).

    The protogalaxy is compact, which means little has disturbed it since its formation. Smaller galaxies have crashed into the Milky Way, augmenting its mass, but “we didn’t have any later mergers that deeply penetrated into the core and shook it up, because then the core would be larger now,” Rix says.

    The new data on the protogalaxy even capture the Milky Way’s initial spin-up — its transition from an object that didn’t rotate into one that now does. The oldest stars in the proto–Milky Way barely revolve around the galaxy’s center but dive in and out of it instead, whereas slightly younger stars show more and more movement around the galactic center. “This is the Milky Way trying to become a disk galaxy,” says Belokurov, who saw the same spin-up in research that he and a colleague reported in July.

    Today, the Milky Way is a giant galaxy that spins rapidly — each hour our solar system speeds through 900,000 kilometers of space as we race around the galaxy’s center. But the new study shows that the Milky Way got its start as a modest protogalaxy whose stars still shine today, stars that astronomers can now scrutinize for further clues to the galaxy’s birth and early evolution. More