The Weekly Wrap for Saturday, 26 May 2018

DEEP DIVE Space captures the human imagination like little else. And this week we've come across a slew of fascinating stories that reveal the full spectrum of humanity's designs in space; pure science, shrewd economics and geopolitical brinksmanship. Whatever the motivations it's clear that space is the, ahem, final frontier. An extraordinary new glimpse into the depths of our universe. PHOTO: ESA / Hubble / NASA Hello stranger We'll begin with a visitor. Last year an asteroid nicknamed "Oumuamua" caused a great deal of excitement as it travelled through our solar system. The word "alien" was splashed across the news in articles describing the first interstellar traveller observed in our neighbourhood. Sadly, it proved a fleeting joy for astronomers. But this week's related discovery should keep space buffs going for a while.  A paper published this week by the Royal Astronomical Society has revealed some fascinating information about asteroid BZ 509: it's also from outside the Solar System, it's stuck in orbit around Jupiter, and it's going the wrong way. But that's not even the best part. The curious asteroid BeeZed (another nickname) was initially discovered in 2014 but has provoked greater curiosity ever since Fathi Namouni (France) and Maria Helena Moreira (Brazil) began running simulations to determine BeeZed's possible trajectory around the gas giant. Most simulation exercises involve several hundred calculations; theirs consisted of millions. As a result Namouni and Moreira can now confidently aver that BeeZed has been in a stable orbit around our biggest planet for 4.5b years. That's remarkably close to the very birth of the solar system itself. Now begins the race to study it. Old dog, new tricks BeeZed wasn't the only reason why Jupiter made headlines this week. Xianzhe Jia at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor made the startling discovery of frozen water plumes bursting out from the underground seas on the jovian moon Europa. Even more surprising, the discovery was made thanks to images taken in 1989 (but with the aid of modern computing)! With the knowledge gleaned from the recent Cassini probe to Jupiter (and its survey of Enceladus, another of Jupiter's moons) the water plumes on Europa suggest that it may be the best hope of finding life within our own solar system. We'll be waiting with bated breath for the European Space Agency and NASA's twin missions to Jupiter in 2022. Questions and answers For three years another team at the University of Michigan has been tracking asteroid BP519 as it lurks around the outer edges of the solar system. It has a unique orbit, one that defies all understanding of mass within our immediate neighbourhood, as it appears to have been dragged out of an understandable plane by another source of gravity. The proposed answer? Planet nine. New credence has been delivered this week to the emerging notion that somewhere out there (hundreds of times further away from the sun that the rest of planets) lies a large planet, at least ten times the size of earth. But this reclusive old neighbour may be difficult to find - if it is far enough away, it won't reflect light from the sun. Looking up The bragging rights that come with successful forays into space are, in a word, astronomical. Which is why it's no surprise that China - as a rising superpower - has thrown its hat in the ring. This week Beijing launched a relay satellite named Queqiao ('Magpie Bridge' - the name of an old folktale) into orbit. It's the first step towards China's goal of landing a probe on the dark side of the Moon. Once operational, Queqiao will relay information to the eventual unmanned probe from Earth. But back on Earth the endeavour and idealism of the scientific community is often bogged down by political and economic realities. Take for example US President Donald Trump's desire to privatise the International Space Station. America spends upward of $3b each year on supporting the ISS. This is money that some within the administration believe could be better spent on Trump's scheme to send Americans back to the moon. There's also a bit of pride involved here: a great deal of America's expenditure on the ISS goes to Russia, for shuttling Americans aboard the ISS on its Soyuz spacecraft. No lasers, yet How our Earthly rivalries may one day play out in the heavens is a subject of active exploration by leading military powers. The "weaponisation of space" is an increasingly common phrase: the notion of a satellite-killer missile is no longer solely in the domain of science fiction. The reliance on global positioning satellites (not to mention the imagery from spy satellites) makes orbiting technology a major target for any future large-scale conflagration. Trump himself has toyed with the idea of creating a 'Space Force' - another branch of the armed services - although its yet to be seen whether there is any substance to the proposal. Blasting off, cashing in While nations one-up each other, private enterprises are rushing to cash in on the burgeoning market in space. First amongst these is SpaceX, which this week launched a pair of weather-tracking satellites from a launchpad in California. That makes 10 successful launches this year for Elon Musk's groundbreaking corporation. Bragging rights are one thing; the dazzling wealth to be made in space is another thing entirely. WORLDLYWISE The campaigns on either side have been fraught with scanadls. PHOTO: James Forde This weekend the Irish will vote to retain or repeal a constitutional amendment that effectively bans abortions within the republic. The Eighth Amendment recognises equal rights for both the unborn child and the mother; this limits legal abortions to situations in which the mother's life is endangered. It is widely viewed as the strictest control on abortion of any Western democracy because it forces women to deliver their child even in the case of rape. As such it has been a sticking point between women's rights campaigners for 35 years. Those campaigning to repeal the Eighth point to the fact that roughly 150,000 Irish women have travelled to the United Kingdom for an abortion in recent decades. The referendum has split the country, but the implications stretch much farther afield. Anti-abortion groups have funnelled money into the No campaign in order to preserve the laws; these mostly-religious organisations have assumed that a victory for their opponents would spark similar change all across the globe. Given the stakes involved both Google and Facebook have banned paid advertisements relating to the referendum; however the No group has found novel ways to get its ads out anyway.   Caught in the crossfire. PHOTO: EPA-EFE After months of threats, punitive actions and bluster it appears as though the trade dispute between China the United States is close to an end. While it never really reached the antipathetic heights of a trade war, its effects were still notable. Both Beijing and Washington have imposed higher tariffs on a number of each other's exports, however a breakthrough in talks over big ticket items has been fruitful for America. Chinese trade experts have agreed to purchase more American agricultural and energy products while also easing Chinese tariffs on American-made cars.  These concessions were extracted after some spectacular gun-barrel diplomacy that saw American authorities cripple the Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE overnight with a series of business bans. It's estimated that the telco lost as much as $3b while in exile; however its woes don't stop there. A board shakeup has been floated, and so has a sizeable fine - for evading US sanctions on Iran and North Korea. There are signs that this flareup may have brought the rest of the world closer, at the expense of American business interests. China and the EU are now collaborating on their responses to US tariffs, and Russia has issued a joint statement with Japan outlining their counter-tariffs on US products. As the ancient Sanskrit proverb goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. WHAT ELSE HAPPENED Police charge protestors in Tamil Nadu. PHOTO: AFP In India, demonstrations against a heavy-polluting copper plant were shut down by police; 13 people have died Donald Trump cancelled his meeting with Kim Jong-un after repeated US threats sparked a dispute Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by EU lawmakers over the Cambridge Analytica scandal; he apologised just days before tough new European data protections took effect Epidemiologists in the Congo battled to keep an ebola outbreak from spreading; unlike during the deadly 2014 outbreak they have a working vaccine The public inquiry into the 2016 Grenfell Tower tragedy opened in London; there were moving tributes from the survivors and families of the 72 people who perished Jurors in California ordered Samsung to pay Apple $553m in damages over the long-running design copying case Dutch investigators outlined proof that the missile that downed MH70 over Ukraine in 2014 originated from a Russian military brigade 15 people have been charged with sedition in Thailand for taking part in anti-junta protests on the fourth anniversary of the military coup that brought the country's leaders to power Authorities in Beijing proposed scrapping the current limits on family size (the one-child policy was increased to two in 2015) in order to reverse a declining birthrate  Giuseppe Conte rose into national prominence in Italy from complete obscurity after the 5-Star Movement tapped him as the country's next prime minister THE BEST OF TIMES... The namesake of a generation. PHOTO: Hannah Adcock Alice Sumo is an extraordinary woman. From her medical centre near the Liberian capital of Monrovia she has delivered thousands of local children. In a country with few midwives (one in three women gives birth unassisted) Alice has become something of a legend. A tireless devotee to Liberia's babies (having worked through two civil wars and the ebola crisis), a thousand of these babies have now become namesakes to her. The crowd of Alice's (Alex's and Ellis's for the boys) often visit the clinic to pay their thanks. Another powerful woman caught our attention this week: Stacey Abrams. She has just become the first African-American woman to be nominated by either major party in a gubernatorial race. In the deeply red state of Georgia, Abrams is hoping to take her winning streak (having trounced her primary opponent) all the way to the governor's mansion. Such a victory would be a significant achievement - if the Democrats win back as many house and senate seats in the November mid-terms as they hope to.  THE WORST OF TIMES... 60% of all living animals are livestock.  PHOTO: Daniel Beltra New research shows that our insatiable taste for mass-farmed cattle (and a booming birthrate) is quickly destroying the biodiversity of the planet. It's now argued that despite humans comprising just 0.01% of life on earth we have destroyed 80% of all the other species of wild mammals. In their place we've stocked up on cattle: they now make up more than half the mammals in existence today. Likewise, factory-farmed chickens now make up 70% of all birds on the planet.  Saudi Arabian authorities have once again jailed activists for agitating against the kingdom's draconian male guardianship laws. Amongst this latest wave of arrests were prominent human rights campaigners who pushed the government to drop a ban on women driving cars. It's clear that behind the slick public relations moves and Prince Mohammad bin Salman's promises of liberalisation, old habits die hard. P.S. Your weekend long read... Foreign Policy delves into one of history's most surprising (and laudable) decisions: South Africa's unilateral denuclearisation.  Quote of the week... “Do you ask the cost of a Michelangelo? You don't ask the price. Beauty has no price." - Domenico Dolce (of Dolce & Gabbana) on whether a $60,000 price-tag on his frocks is excessive. What we're reading... Meet the startup that is trying to solve a deceptively difficult problem: creating a scheduling assistant AI that isn't rubbish. This is a great long read from Wired. One last thing... If you haven't purchased an inkl plan as yet, we're offering you a month for just 99c. That's just 3 cents a day to read the world's best news coverage. Help us help the news help you. Tom Wharton for inkl.