AFP UK

Fewer than 10 of the pilot whales are still alive on Ocean Beach, in remote western Tasmania

Australian rescuers battled Friday to refloat the last surviving pilot whales from a mass stranding that killed nearly 200 of the animals on a surf-battered beach in Tasmania.

Fewer than 10 of the shiny black mammals are still alive on Ocean Beach, in remote western Tasmania, state wildlife services said.

About 30 of the animals were released into the ocean on Thursday, but some had beached themselves again, said Brendon Clark, incident controller with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service.

Under cool drizzle, marine wildlife experts began to wrap up a complex days-long rescue operation that started with a large pod of the animals, which are part of the dolphin family, stranding on the beach mid-week.

Three pilot whales had yet to be reached because of their remote location on the shore and the difficult tidal conditions, Clark told reporters at the scene.

“The priority still is the rescue and release of those remaining animals and any others that we identify that re-strand,” he said.

Next, Clark said, comes the task of disposing of the carcases.

– Carcasses –

Wildlife workers used a fork-lift truck to line up whale carcasses along the beach, their tails pointed to the frigid ocean. 

One small, young calf could be seen tied up alongside the larger adult pilot whales.

A long white line was looped around the tails of dozens of the animals to allow them to be towed en masse to disposal at sea.

Weather forecasts indicated the “best opportunity” for the operation would be on Sunday, Clark said.

If left in shallow waters or on the beach, the carcases could attract sharks and can carry disease. 

“We are making every effort to consolidate the carcasses at the moment into one spot and then push ahead with getting them offshore,” said Kris Carlyon, operations manager with the state wildlife services.

Once in the water the carcasses can attract predators or become a collision risk, Carlyon said, but experts hoped the winds and currents would push them out to sea, and some were expected to sink.

– Distress signals –

Two years ago, Macquarie Harbour was the scene of the country’s largest-ever mass stranding, involving almost 500 pilot whales.

More than 300 pilot whales died during that event, despite the efforts of dozens of volunteers who toiled for days in Tasmania’s freezing waters to free them.

Scientists still do not fully understand why mass strandings occur.  

Some have suggested pods go off track after feeding too close to shore.

Pilot whales — which can grow to more than six metres (20 feet) long — are also highly sociable, so they may follow pod-mates who stray into danger.

That sometimes occurs when old, sick or injured animals swim ashore and other pod members follow, trying to respond to the trapped whale’s distress signals.

Others believe gently sloping beaches like those found in Tasmania confuse the whales’ sonar, making them think they are in open waters.

The latest stranding came days after a dozen young male sperm whales were reported dead in a separate mass stranding on King Island — between Tasmania and the Australian mainland.

State officials said that incident may have been a case of “misadventure”.

Strandings are also common in nearby New Zealand.

There, around 300 animals beach themselves annually, according to official figures, and it is not unusual for groups of between 20 and 50 pilot whales to run aground.

But numbers can run into the hundreds when a “super pod” is involved. In 2017, there was a mass stranding of almost 700 pilot whales.

A man sits at his workstation within the Mission Operations Center for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spaceship, which is fast approaching its target

Bet the dinosaurs wish they’d thought of this.

NASA on Monday will attempt a feat humanity has never before accomplished: deliberately smacking a spacecraft into an asteroid to slightly deflect its orbit, in a key test of our ability to stop cosmic objects from devastating life on Earth.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spaceship launched from California last November and is fast approaching its target, which it will strike at roughly 14,000 miles per hour (23,000 kph).

To be sure, neither the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, nor the big brother it orbits, called Didymos, pose any threat as the pair loop the Sun, passing some seven million miles from Earth at nearest approach.

But the experiment is one NASA has deemed important to carry out before an actual need is discovered.

“This is an exciting time, not only for the agency, but in space history and in the history of humankind quite frankly,” Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer for NASA told reporters in a briefing Thursday.

If all goes to plan, impact between the car-sized spacecraft, and the 530-foot (160 meters, or two Statues of Liberty) asteroid should take place at 7:14pm Eastern Time (2314 GMT), and can be followed on a NASA livestream.

By striking Dimorphos head on, NASA hopes to push it into a smaller orbit, shaving ten minutes off the time it takes to encircle Didymos, which is currently 11 hours and 55 minutes — a change that will be detected by ground telescopes in the days that follow.

The proof-of-concept experiment will make a reality what has before only been attempted in science fiction — notably films such as “Armageddon” and “Don’t Look Up.” 

– Technically challenging –

As the craft propels itself through space, flying autonomously for the mission’s final phase like a self-guided missile, its main camera system, called DRACO, will start to beam down the very first pictures of Dimorphos.

“It’s going to start off as a little point of light and then eventually it’s going to zoom and fill the whole entire field of view,” said Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which hosts mission control in a recent briefing.

“These images will continue until they don’t,” added the planetary scientist.

Minutes later, a toaster-sized satellite called LICIACube, which separated from DART a couple of weeks earlier, will make a close pass of the site to capture images of the collision and the ejecta — the pulverized rock thrown off by impact.

LICIACube’s picture will be sent back in the weeks and months that follow. 

Also watching the event: an array of telescopes, both on Earth and in space — including the recently operational James Webb — which might be able to see a brightening cloud of dust.

Finally, a full picture of what the system looks like will be revealed when a European Space Agency mission four years down the line called Hera arrives to survey Dimorphos’s surface and measure its mass, which scientists can only guess at currently.

– Being prepared –

Very few of the billions of asteroids and comets in our solar system are considered potentially hazardous to our planet, and none in the next hundred or so years. 

But “I guarantee to you that if you wait long enough, there will be an object,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s chief scientist. 

We know that from the geological record — for example, the six-mile wide Chicxulub asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, plunging the world into a long winter that led to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs along with 75 percent of species.

An asteroid the size of Dimorphos, by contrast, would only cause a regional impact, such as devastating a city, albeit with a greater force than any nuclear bomb in history.

Scientists are also hoping to glean valuable new information that can inform them about the nature of asteroids more generally. 

How much momentum DART imparts on Dimorphos will depend on whether the asteroid is solid rock, or more like a “rubbish pile” of boulders bound by mutual gravity, a property that’s not yet known.

We also don’t know its actual shape: whether it’s more like a dog bone or a donut, but NASA engineers are confident DART’s SmartNav guidance system will hit its target.

If it misses, NASA will have another shot in two years’ time, with the spaceship containing just enough fuel for another pass.

But if it succeeds, then it’s a first step towards a world capable of defending itself from a future existential threat, said Chabot. 

In this handout photo courtesy of the US Air Force a 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron aircrew from Keesler Air Force Base, Missouri, flies a data collection mission into Hurricane Fiona on September 22, 2022

The beach chairs and umbrellas were put away, storefronts were covered and a lighthouse illuminated racing clouds overhead as Bermuda braced Thursday for Hurricane Fiona, a powerful Category 4 storm that has left a trail of destruction in the Caribbean.

Wind and waves were picking up as darkness fell over the British territory, and Bermudians rushed to the safety of their sturdy homes ahead of the storm, whose center will pass more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the west-northwest of the island early Friday, according to the Bermuda Weather Service. 

Fiona remained a Category 4 storm, the second-highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale, though Accuweather forecasters said it could be downgraded to a Category 3 as it passes Bermuda around 5:00 am (0800 GMT).

With a storm of that strength and size, residents were taking no chances. 

“This storm is going to be worse than the last one,” Richard Hartley, owner of the Torwood Home store in the capital, Hamilton, told AFP as he and his wife covered the shop’s cedar-lined windows with metal sheets. 

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the Fiona was packing maximum sustained winds of near 130 miles per hour, with higher gusts.

Hurricane force winds extend more than 70 miles from the storm’s eye, and tropical storm force winds up to 200 miles, the NHC said, predicting up to four inches (10 centimeters) of rain and “large and destructive” waves and storm surge. 

The island of some 64,000 people is no stranger to hurricanes — but it is also tiny, just 21 square miles (54 square kilometers), and one of the most remote places in the world, 640 miles from its closest neighbor, the United States.

That means there is nowhere to evacuate to when a big storm hits.

“You have to live with it because you live here, you can’t run anywhere because it’s just a little island,” said JoeAnn Scott, a shopworker in Hamilton.

Bermudians try to “enjoy it as it comes,” she said. “And pray and pray. That’s what we do, pray and party,” she added with a laugh. 

At Bermuda’s famed Horseshoe Bay Beach, where onlookers came to assess the pounding waves and stretch their legs ahead of a long night inside, resident Gina Maughan said the island would be ready. 

“It’s always interesting to come down and see the surf,” she said, watching two kitesurfers soar into the air. 

“These guys are a little crazy,” she added.

– Construction ‘built to last’ –

Because of the island’s isolation, preparations are taken seriously.

Many boats were taken out of the water earlier in the week, outdoor furniture was moved inside, and the storm shutters bordering windows on most houses were checked. 

Public schools will be closed on Friday, and the government announced that an emergency shelter will be opened. Buses and ferries had stopped running by late Thursday.

The Royal Bermuda Regiment was on standby to help with clearing operations, and National Security Minister Michael Weeks implored residents to stay inside until the all clear was given.

“Please Bermuda, no driving around, no venturing out to take pictures, no reckless behavior,” he told a press conference.

In addition to laying in supplies of candles and food, some Bermudians were also drawing buckets of water and filling bathtubs from the tanks at the side of their homes ahead of expected power outages.

There is no fresh water source on the island, so all buildings have white, lime-washed roofs that are used to catch rainwater that is directed into tanks and pumped into homes as the main water supply. 

Bermuda, whose economy is fueled by international finance and tourism, is wealthy compared to most Caribbean countries, and structures must be built to strict planning codes to withstand storms. Some have done so for centuries. 

“The construction is really built to last, and we don’t see the devastation ever that the Caribbean has experienced over the years,” shop owner Hartley’s wife, Elaine Murray, said.

Fiona killed four people in Puerto Rico earlier this week, according to US media, while one death was reported in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and another in the Dominican Republic. 

President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, a US territory that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.

In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones.

Farther north in Bermuda, islanders were calm. 

“I’ve been through a lot of hurricanes, so no, I’m not worried,” said resident Rochelle Jones.

But if things do go wrong, Bermudians will “all come out together and we help each other,” she said. 

A man boards up a store in Hamilton, Bermuda on September 22, 2022 as Hurricane Fiona churns towards the Atlantic island

The beach chairs and umbrellas were put away, storefronts were covered and a lighthouse illuminated racing clouds overhead as Bermuda braced Thursday for Hurricane Fiona, a powerful Category 4 storm that has left a trail of destruction in the Caribbean.

Wind and waves were picking up as darkness fell over the British territory, and Bermudians rushed to the safety of their sturdy homes ahead of the storm, whose center will pass more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the west-northwest of the island early Friday, according to the Bermuda Weather Service. 

Fiona remained a Category 4 storm, the second-highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale, though Accuweather forecasters said it could be downgraded to a Category 3 as it passes Bermuda around 5:00 am (0700 GMT).

With a storm of that strength and size, residents were taking no chances. 

“This storm is going to be worse than the last one,” Richard Hartley, owner of the Torwood Home store in the capital, Hamilton, told AFP as he and his wife covered the shop’s cedar-lined windows with metal sheets. 

“The wind is going to come straight in from the south. So this corner is very exposed to the winds,” he explained.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the Fiona was packing maximum sustained winds of near 130 miles per hour, with higher gusts.

Hurricane force winds extend more than 70 miles from the storm’s eye, and tropical storm force winds up to 200 miles, the NHC said, predicting up to four inches (10 centimeters) of rain and “large and destructive” waves and storm surge. 

The island of some 64,000 people is no stranger to hurricanes — but it is also tiny, just 21 square miles (54 square kilometers), and one of the most remote places in the world, 640 miles from its closest neighbor, the United States.

That means there is nowhere to evacuate to when a big storm hits.

“You have to live with it because you live here, you can’t run anywhere because it’s just a little island,” said JoeAnn Scott, a shopworker in Hamilton.

Bermudians try to “enjoy it as it comes,” she said. “And pray and pray. That’s what we do, pray and party,” she added with a laugh. 

At Bermuda’s famed Horseshoe Bay Beach, where onlookers came to assess the pounding waves and stretch their legs ahead of a long night inside, resident Gina Maughan said the island would be ready. 

“It’s always interesting to come down and see the surf,” she said, watching two kitesurfers soar into the air. 

“These guys are a little crazy,” she added.

– Construction ‘built to last’ –

Because of the island’s isolation, preparations are taken seriously.

Many of the boats docked at Bermuda’s Dinghy Club and Yacht Club were taken out of the water earlier in the week, outdoor furniture at homes and restaurants was taken inside, and the storm shutters bordering windows on most houses were closed. 

Public schools will be closed on Friday, and the government announced that an emergency shelter will be opened and buses will stop running Thursday evening. 

The Royal Bermuda Regiment was on standby to help with clearing operations, and National Security Minister Michael Weeks implored residents to stay inside until the all clear was given.

“Please Bermuda, no driving around, no venturing out to take pictures, no reckless behavior,” he told a press conference.

In addition to laying in supplies of candles and food, some Bermudians were also drawing buckets of water and filling bathtubs from the tanks at the side of their homes ahead of expected power outages.

There is no fresh water source on the island, so all buildings have white, lime-washed roofs that are used to catch rainwater that is directed into tanks and pumped into homes as the main water supply. 

Bermuda, whose economy is fueled by international finance and tourism, is wealthy compared to most Caribbean countries, and structures must be built to strict planning codes to withstand storms. Some have done so for centuries. 

“The construction is really built to last, and we don’t see the devastation ever that the Caribbean has experienced over the years,” shop owner Hartley’s wife, Elaine Murray, said.

Fiona killed four people in Puerto Rico earlier this week, according to US media, while one death was reported in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and another in the Dominican Republic. 

President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, a US territory that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.

In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones.

Farther north in Bermuda, islanders were calm. 

“I’ve been through a lot of hurricanes, so no, I’m not worried,” said resident Rochelle Jones.

But if things do go wrong, Bermudians will “all come out together and we help each other,” she said. 

A man boards up a store in Hamilton, Bermuda on September 22, 2022 as Hurricane Fiona churns towards the Atlantic island

The beach chairs and umbrellas were put away, storefronts were covered and a lighthouse illuminated racing clouds overhead as Bermuda braced Thursday for Hurricane Fiona, a powerful Category 4 storm that has left a trail of destruction in the Caribbean.

Wind and waves were picking up as darkness fell over the British territory, and Bermudians rushed to the safety of their sturdy homes ahead of the storm, whose center will pass more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the west-northwest of the island early Friday, according to the Bermuda Weather Service. 

Fiona remained a Category 4 storm, the second-highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale, though Accuweather forecasters said it could be downgraded to a Category 3 as it passes Bermuda around 5:00 am (0700 GMT).

With a storm of that strength and size, residents were taking no chances. 

“This storm is going to be worse than the last one,” Richard Hartley, owner of the Torwood Home store in the capital, Hamilton, told AFP as he and his wife covered the shop’s cedar-lined windows with metal sheets. 

“The wind is going to come straight in from the south. So this corner is very exposed to the winds,” he explained.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the Fiona was packing maximum sustained winds of near 130 miles per hour, with higher gusts.

Hurricane force winds extend more than 70 miles from the storm’s eye, and tropical storm force winds up to 200 miles, the NHC said, predicting up to four inches (10 centimeters) of rain and “large and destructive” waves and storm surge. 

The island of some 64,000 people is no stranger to hurricanes — but it is also tiny, just 21 square miles (54 square kilometers), and one of the most remote places in the world, 640 miles from its closest neighbor, the United States.

That means there is nowhere to evacuate to when a big storm hits.

“You have to live with it because you live here, you can’t run anywhere because it’s just a little island,” said JoeAnn Scott, a shopworker in Hamilton.

Bermudians try to “enjoy it as it comes,” she said. “And pray and pray. That’s what we do, pray and party,” she added with a laugh. 

At Bermuda’s famed Horseshoe Bay Beach, where onlookers came to assess the pounding waves and stretch their legs ahead of a long night inside, resident Gina Maughan said the island would be ready. 

“It’s always interesting to come down and see the surf,” she said, watching two kitesurfers soar into the air. 

“These guys are a little crazy,” she added.

– Construction ‘built to last’ –

Because of the island’s isolation, preparations are taken seriously.

Many of the boats docked at Bermuda’s Dinghy Club and Yacht Club were taken out of the water earlier in the week, outdoor furniture at homes and restaurants was taken inside, and the storm shutters bordering windows on most houses were closed. 

Public schools will be closed on Friday, and the government announced that an emergency shelter will be opened and buses will stop running Thursday evening. 

The Royal Bermuda Regiment was on standby to help with clearing operations, and National Security Minister Michael Weeks implored residents to stay inside until the all clear was given.

“Please Bermuda, no driving around, no venturing out to take pictures, no reckless behavior,” he told a press conference.

In addition to laying in supplies of candles and food, some Bermudians were also drawing buckets of water and filling bathtubs from the tanks at the side of their homes ahead of expected power outages.

There is no fresh water source on the island, so all buildings have white, lime-washed roofs that are used to catch rainwater that is directed into tanks and pumped into homes as the main water supply. 

Bermuda, whose economy is fueled by international finance and tourism, is wealthy compared to most Caribbean countries, and structures must be built to strict planning codes to withstand storms. Some have done so for centuries. 

“The construction is really built to last, and we don’t see the devastation ever that the Caribbean has experienced over the years,” shop owner Hartley’s wife, Elaine Murray, said.

Fiona killed four people in Puerto Rico earlier this week, according to US media, while one death was reported in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and another in the Dominican Republic. 

President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, a US territory that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.

In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones.

Farther north in Bermuda, islanders were calm. 

“I’ve been through a lot of hurricanes, so no, I’m not worried,” said resident Rochelle Jones.

But if things do go wrong, Bermudians will “all come out together and we help each other,” she said. 

Japan's Hayabusa-2 probe collected rocks and dust from the asteroid Ryugu and returned that sample to Earth

Specks of dust retrieved by a Japanese space probe from an asteroid some 300 million kilometres from Earth have revealed a surprising component: a drop of water, scientists said Friday.

The discovery offers new support for the theory that life on Earth was seeded from outer space.

The findings are in the latest research to be published from the analysis of 5.4 grams of rocks and dust gathered by the Hayabusa-2 probe from the asteroid Ryugu.

“This drop of water has great meaning,” lead scientist Tomoki Nakamura of Tohoku University told reporters ahead of the research’s publication in the journal Science on Friday.

“Many researchers believe that water was brought (from outer space) but we actually discovered water in Ryugu, an asteroid near Earth, for the first time.”

Hayabusa-2 was launched in 2014 on its mission to Ryugu, and returned to Earth’s orbit two years ago to drop off a capsule containing the sample.

The precious cargo has already yielded several insights, including organic material that showed some of the building blocks of life on Earth, amino acids, may have been formed in space.

The research published Friday says the team found a drop of fluid in the Ryugu sample “which was carbonated water containing salt and organic matter”, Nakamura said.

That bolsters the theory that asteroids like Ryugu, or its larger parent asteroid, could have “provided water, which contains salt and organic matter” in collisions with Earth, Nakamura said.

“We have discovered evidence that this (process) may have been directly linked to, for example, the origin of the oceans or organic matter on Earth.”

Nakamura’s team, comprising about 150 researchers — including 30 from the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and China — is one of the largest teams analysing the sample from Ryugu.

The sample has been divided among different scientific teams to maximise the chance of new discoveries.

Kensei Kobayashi, an astrobiology expert and professor emeritus at Yokohama National University who is not part of the research group, hailed the discovery.

“The fact that water was discovered in the sample itself is surprising,” given its fragility and the chances of it being destroyed in outer space, he told AFP.

“It does suggest that the asteroid contained water — in the form of fluid and not just ice — and organic matter may have been generated in that water.”

A man boards up a store in Hamilton, Bermuda on September 22, 2022 as Hurricane Fiona churns towards the Atlantic island

Bermudians covered storefronts and stocked up on candles, food and water while Hurricane Fiona churned towards the Atlantic island Thursday as a powerful Category 4 storm, after leaving a trail of destruction across the Caribbean.

The Bermuda Weather Service said the center of Fiona was forecast to pass more than 110 miles (180 kilometers) to the west of the British territory on Friday morning at around 5:00 am (0700 GMT), but with a storm of that strength and size, residents were taking no chances. 

“This storm is going to be worse than the last one,” Richard Hartley, owner of the Torwood Home store in the capital, Hamilton, told AFP as he and his wife covered the shop’s cedar-lined windows with metal sheets. 

“The wind is going to come straight in from the south. So this corner is very exposed to the winds,” he explained.

Fiona is a Category 4 hurricane, the second highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale. The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the storm was packing maximum sustained winds of near 130 miles per hour, with higher gusts.

Hurricane force winds extend more than 70 miles from the storm’s eye, and tropical storm force winds up to 200 miles, the NHC said.

A hurricane warning was in effect in Bermuda Thursday morning, with the NHC predicting up to four inches (10 centimeters) of rain and “large and destructive” waves and storm surge. 

The British territory of some 64,000 people is no stranger to hurricanes — but it is also tiny, just 21 square miles and one of the most remote places in the world, 640 miles from its closest neighbor, the United States.

That means there is nowhere to evacuate to when a big storm hits.

“You have to live with it because you live here, you can’t run anywhere because it’s just a little island,” said JoeAnn Scott, a shopworker in Hamilton.

Bermudians try to “enjoy it as it comes,” she said. “And pray and pray. That’s what we do, pray and party,” she added with a laugh. 

– Construction ‘built to last’ –

Because of the island’s isolation, preparations are taken seriously even when widespread damage is not expected.

Many of the boats docked at Bermuda’s Dinghy Club and Yacht Club were taken out of the water earlier in the week, outdoor furniture at homes and restaurants was taken inside, and the storm shutters bordering windows on most houses were checked. 

Public schools will be closed on Friday, and the government announced that buses will stop running later Thursday afternoon. The Royal Bermuda Regiment was on standby to help with clearing operations.

In addition to laying in supplies of candles and food, some Bermudians were also drawing buckets of water from the tanks at the side of their homes.

There is no fresh water source on the island, so all buildings have white, lime-washed roofs that are used to catch rainwater that is directed into tanks as the main water supply. It is then pumped into homes using electricity. 

Bermuda, whose economy is fueled by international finance and tourism, is wealthy compared to most Caribbean countries, and structures must be built to strict planning codes to withstand storms. Some have done so for centuries. 

“The construction is really built to last, and we don’t see the devastation ever that the Caribbean has experienced over the years,” shop owner Hartley’s wife, Elaine Murray, said.

Fiona killed four people in Puerto Rico earlier this week, according to US media, while one death was reported in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and another in the Dominican Republic. 

President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, a US territory that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.

In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones.

Farther north in Bermuda, residents continued to watch Fiona closely in case the storm veers further east in the coming hours — but islanders were calm. 

“I’ve been through a lot of hurricanes, so no, I’m not worried,” said resident Rochelle Jones.

But if things do go wrong, Bermudians will “all come out together and we help each other,” she said. 

An aerial view of the Tigris river and the old western side of Iraq's northern city of Mosul

More than 90 percent of harmful air pollution in the Middle East and parts of North Africa comes from fossil fuels, according to research Thursday that showed the region “permanently exceeded” dangerous air quality levels.

The World Health Organization this year said the MENA region had some of the poorest air quality on Earth. 

The long-standing assumption was that the smog choking most of the region’s cities was primarily composed of desert sand, given their location on the world’s “dust belt” where there are frequently more than 20 major sand storms each year. 

In 2017, an international team of researchers set off on an epic voyage across the eastern Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal and around the Gulf, using specialised equipment to analyse air quality and particulate matter on shore. 

They found that the vast majority of small particles — which can penetrate deep into the lungs, resulting in greater health risk — were manmade, mainly from the production and use of fossil fuels. 

Writing in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, they showed how the region is blanketed in particularly harmful compounds such as sulphur dioxide, which is a direct result of oil extraction.

Emissions from container vessels in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world also contributed to the smog. 

“We have refineries such as those in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that are a big source of air pollution as well as ships on the Red Sea, and in the Suez Canal region,” said Jos Lelieveld, lead study author from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.

“So the combination of all of these means that the air is much more polluted than what most people hope it to be.”

The team used health and mortality metrics to calculate the number of excess deaths caused by air pollution in the MENA region annually.

The percentage of fossil-fuel driven mortality varied between nations, with 5.9 percent of deaths in Cyprus attributable to air pollution versus 15.9 in Kuwait.

This is a far higher mortality rate than in other industrialised regions. The US and Germany, for example, have 3 percent and 3.7 percent mortality due to air pollution, respectively.

Region-wide, the team calculated that air pollution from fossil fuel use caused one in eight deaths, noting that air quality there “permanently exceeded” WHO guidelines.

“It is very comparable with things that are really of great concern, for example, tobacco smoking and high cholesterol, which are major health risks in the region,” Lelieveld told AFP.

“And the realisation of this in the region is practically zero.”

He said that while governments in the region counted on fossil fuel production for the majority of their income, the time would come when the health costs due to pollution compounded growing pressure to decarbonise their economies. 

“They’re not stupid, they know that fossil fuels will end at some point,” said Lelieveld.

“I’m hoping this is an additional incentive.”

Photovoltaic panels fitted on rooftop, the blue-and-white train moves on an 18-metre long testing track in Soshanguve township

For years, students in a South African township have seen their parents struggle to use trains for daily commutes, the railways frequently hobbled by power outages and cable thefts.

To respond to the crisis, a group of 20 teenagers invented South Africa’s first fully solar-powered train.

Photovoltaic panels fitted to the roof, the angular blue-and-white test train moves on an 18-metre-long (60 feet) test track in Soshanguve township north of the capital Pretoria. 

Trains are the cheapest mode of transport in South Africa, used mostly by the poor and working class.

“Our parents… no longer use trains (because of) cable theft… and load shedding,” said Ronnie Masindi, 18, referring to rolling blackouts caused by failures at old and poorly maintained coal-powered plants.

The state power company Eskom started imposing on-and-off power rationing 15 years ago to prevent a total national blackout. 

The power outages, known locally as load-shedding, have worsened over the years disrupting commerce and industry, including rail services.

Infrastructure operator Transnet has struggled to keep rail traffic flowing smoothly since the economic challenges of the pandemic fuelled a surge in cable theft.

By 2020, rail use among public transport users was down almost two-thirds compared to 2013, according to the National Households Travel Survey with many commuters turning to more expensive minibus taxis.

Masindi said they decided to “create and build a solar-powered train that uses solar to move instead of (mains) electricity”. 

The journey has not been without its challenges. 

A lack of funding delayed production of the prototype locomotive, and the government later chipped in.

“It was not a straight line,” said another student, Lethabo Nkadimeng, 17. “It was like taking a hike to the highest peak of the mountain.”

The train, which can run at 30 kilometres (20 miles) per hour, was showcased at a recent universities innovation event.

For now, the prototype can run for 10 return trips on the track installed on the grounds of a school. 

It will be used for further research, and eventually presented as a model the government could adopt. 

Fitted with car seats and a flat-screen TV to entertain passengers, it took the students two years to build. 

“What we have realised is, if we you give township learners space, resources and a little mentorship they can do anything that any learner can do around the world,” said Kgomotso Maimane, the project’s supervising teacher.

The hot gas bubble is thought to orbit slightly outside the orange ring

Astronomers said Thursday they have spotted a hot bubble of gas spinning clockwise around the black hole at the centre of our galaxy at “mind blowing” speeds.

The detection of the bubble, which only survived for a few hours, is hoped to provide insight into how these invisible, insatiable, galactic monsters work.

The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* lurks in the middle of the Milky Way some 27,000 light years from Earth, and its immense pull gives our home galaxy its characteristic swirl.

The first-ever image of Sagittarius A* was revealed in May by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, which links radio dishes around the world aiming to detect light as it disappears into the maw of black holes.

One of those dishes, the ALMA radio telescope in Chile’s Andes mountains, picked up something “really puzzling” in the Sagittarius A* data, said Maciek Wielgus, an astrophysicist at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.

Just minutes before ALMA’s radio data collection began, the Chandra Space Telescope observed a “huge spike” in X-rays, Wielgus told AFP.

This burst of energy, thought to be similar to solar flares on the Sun, sent a hot bubble of gas swirling around the black hole, according to a new study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The gas bubble, also known as a hot spot, had an orbit similar to Mercury’s trip around the Sun, the study’s lead author Wielgus said.

But while it takes Mercury 88 days to make that trip, the bubble did it in just 70 minutes. That means it travelled at around 30 percent of the speed of light.

“So it’s an absolutely, ridiculously fast-spinning bubble,” Wielgus said, calling it “mind blowing”.

– A MAD theory –

The scientists were able to track the bubble through their data for around one and half hours — it was unlikely to have survived more than a couple of orbits before being destroyed.

Wielgus said the observation supported a theory known as MAD. “MAD like crazy, but also MAD like magnetically arrested discs,” he said.

The phenomenon is thought to happen when there is such a strong magnetic field at the mouth of a black hole that it stops material from being sucked inside.

But the matter keeps piling up, building up to a “flux eruption”, Wielgus said, which snaps the magnetic fields and causes a burst of energy.

By learning how these magnetic fields work, scientists hope to build a model of the forces that control black holes, which remain shrouded in mystery.

Magnetic fields could also help indicate how fast black holes spin — which could be particularly interesting for Sagittarius A*.

While Sagittarius A* is four million times the mass of our Sun, it only shines with the power of about 100 suns, “which is extremely unimpressive for a supermassive black hole, Wielgus said.

“It’s the weakest supermassive black hole that we’ve seen in the universe — we’ve only seen it because it is very close to us.”

But it is probably a good thing that our galaxy has a “starving black hole” at its centre, Wielgus said. 

“Living next to a quasar,” which can shine with the power of billions of suns, “would be a terrible thing,” he added.