Category: technology

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 5, 2025 • 8:15 am

Athayde Tonhasca Júnior has returned with an edifying text-and-photo essay on animals and wind turbines.  His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

Ecofriendly hazards  

In November 1883, Nature magazine informed its readers about The Vienna International Electric Exhibition, where electric motors, electric clocks, telegraphic equipment, telephones, railway signalling and other wonders of the modern world were to be presented to the public. One novelty was missed by Nature‘s correspondent: the windmill installed by the Austrian engineer Josef Friedländer (1836-1905) in the exhibition grounds. Friedländer’s contraption drove a dynamo that fed electricity into a series of batteries, which in turn powered electrical tools, lamps and a threshing machine. The little-known Austrian engineer is believed to have assembled the first ever engine that generated electricity from the wind (Bruyerre, 2022).

Poster advertising Vienna’s International Electrical Exhibition, 1883 © Wikimedia Commons:

Wind technology evolved rapidly since 1883, but it took the 1970s’ oil crisis for wind power to be considered a viable alternative or supplement to carbon-based energy sources. The first wind farm in the world, consisting of 20 turbines, was installed in the American state of New Hampshire in 1980. From then on, the wind industry never looked back. Wind now meets about 10% of US’s electricity needs and 20% of Europe’s, and demand around the world is growing rapidly. It’s no wonder. Wind is a renewable energy source, with a much smaller impact on the environment than fossil fuel alternatives: for one thing, wind turbines do not produce greenhouse gases.

The San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm in California, USA, comprises 3,218 units © Ken Lund, Wikimedia Commons:

Alas, just like trusted and popular medications, diets and political choices, the planet’s thousands of wind turbines have side effects.

Volant creatures who venture into the path of massive blades rotating at high speeds can’t have bright life prospects. Indeed, wind turbines do kill many birds and bats. And one aspect of turbine maintenance suggests a considerably larger number of victims of other kinds. If rotor blades are not cleaned regularly, the turbine’s power output may drop by 25%. The culprits of this reduced performance are promptly identified on a stationary turbine: insects, thousands of them, who ended up splattered against the blades, interfering with their aerodynamics (Corten & Veldkamp, 2001).

(a) A blade cleaner in action, (b) insect detritus on a blade’s leading edge © Voigt, 2021:

Migrating insects are the most likely victims because they usually travel way above the flight boundary layer, which is the space above ground where regular activities such as feeding, mating and nesting take place. Seasonal migrants such as the monarch (Danaus plexippus) and painted lady (Vanessa cardui) butterflies, who travel long distances at high altitudes, are particularly vulnerable if turbines are installed along their routes. Other forms of translocations also increase insects’ exposure to the dangerous blades. Some species fly to a topographic summit such as the top of a hill to meet the opposite sex and mate. This phenomenon, known as hill-toping, is common among species of flies, butterflies, dragonflies, wasps and beetles that occur naturally at low densities. By flying to the same conspicuous meeting point, these insects don’t waste time and energy looking for sparsely scattered mates. Lamentably, hill tops are exactly the type of place suitable for wind turbines.

Typical wind turbine heights and worldwide power capacity since 1990. Turbine shapes are compared to insects’ flight boundary layer (FBL) and to the turbulent surface layer that insects attempt to overcome during migration © Thess & Lengsfeld, 2022:

Even though numbers vary widely depending on local conditions, wind turbines do dispatch many birds and bats. But the important question is: are the numbers killed large enough to make a difference? Cats, buildings and cars, in that order, kill far more birds than do wind turbines (Ritchie, 2024), but people and organisations who keep an eye on birds’ welfare don’t seem to rank those factors as main threats. As for insects, wind turbines wipe out quite a few of them, but it’s impossible to gauge impact without a measure of proportion. About 3.5 trillion insects (3,200 tons of biomass) migrate above southern Britain annually (Hu et al., 2016); for hoverflies alone, up to 4 billion of them (80 tons of biomass) travel from Europe to Britain every season (Wotton et al., 2019). In East China, ~9.3 trillion nocturnal insects (15,000 tons of biomass) migrate at heights of up to 1 km over a 600 km-wide area every year (Huang et al., 2024). Would wind turbines significantly dent those figures? Probably not. But we don’t know.

Death by collision may not be substantial, but that’s not the only concern about wind turbines. They have an indirect but sizable impact on mammals, birds of prey and other wildlife without killing them. Noise, vibration, blade rotation and flickering lights prompt some animals to move away from onshore windfarm areas (Tolvanen et al., 2023). Avoidance may have cascading effects; in India, the abundance and activity of predatory birds were reduced near a wind farm, resulting in increased densities of the superb large fan-throated lizard (Sarada superba) (Thaker et al., 2018).

The superb large fan-throated lizard is not a NIMBY. Areas with wind turbines had lower abundance of predatory birds, lower frequency of raptor attacks on ground-dwelling prey and higher densities of lizards © Rushikesh Deshmukh, Wikimedia Commons:

We know very little about indirect outcomes on insects. Nonetheless, we do know that wind turbines cause a range of local environmental disturbances such as artificial lights, noise, vibration and changes in temperature and wind patterns – all known to affect some insect species at different levels (Weschler & Tronstad, 2024, and references therein). Thus, it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect insects and other invertebrates to carry on unscathed by turbines.

Wind turbines influence the environment by mixing the air and increasing turbulence (a), changing humidity patterns (b), increasing carbon dioxide respiration (c), warming near-surface air temperatures at night (d), reducing wind speed at hub height (e), light pollution (f), audible noise (g), and infrasound (h) © Weschler & Tronstad, 2024:

 

Any impact of wind turbines on wildlife is going to become more severe just because there will be a lot more of them. Reaching the 20 C limit set up in the Paris Climate Agreement will require nearly complete shifting to low-carbon sources and renewable energy. If that’s to be done with wind and solar power, which are the leading instruments for offsetting fossil fuels, the world may have to dispose of over 11 million hectares of land to accommodate wind and solar farms (Kiesecker et al., 2019).

Wind is a clean, readily available and unlimited source of energy, so wind turbines – together with solar panels – are deemed essential for reducing emissions and mitigating the effects of climate change in the short run. Even still, we can’t gloss over their known and potential risks. By addressing these, we can find mitigation measures. This has been done for birds and bats: avoiding migration corridors and breeding spots, stopping blade rotation when bats and birds are most active, painting one blade black to make the rotating blades more visible, using acoustic deterrents and illuminating turbines with ultraviolet light or painting them purple are among the measures proposed – even though not all have been tested. Insects, who account for the bulk of the planet’s animal biodiversity and are crucial for so many ecological services, have been all but neglected in these investigations. That’s regrettable, as we are missing the opportunity of learning effective techniques to reduce the effects of a warmer planet in more biodiversity-friendly ways.

The world’s longest truck

October 18, 2024 • 1:35 pm

It’s Friday, and you may have noticed that I haven’t done a lot of braining lately, and put up virtually no science posts. That’s because I am going through another bout of insomnia (it’s now five nights since I had a decent sleep), and it’s hard to concentrate on anything. So bear with me; I do my best. Instead of something intellectual, science-y, or literary this Friday, have a look at the world’s longest truck.

It’s in Australia, of course, where there are long stretches of straight road that can be navigated by “road trains”.

“Nutcracker” drones set two Guinness world records

December 24, 2023 • 1:30 pm

Here’s something to get you in the mood while you leave milk and cookies for Santa (no wonder he’s so fat!).  This video, showing a Christmas-themed drone show, was posted only five days ago, but has already accumulated 3.4 million views.

The YouTube notes:

This Christmas season, Sky Elements attempted two GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ titles with ur 1,500 drone Nutcracker Christmas show. Will it be enough to set the new records for Largest Aerial Image and Largest Fictional Character (Nutcracker)? All while telling the story of the famous Nutcracker ballet? This record-breaking Christmas drone show is one you don’t want to miss. The show features a beautiful Christmas tree and lights, as well as the famous battle between the Nutcracker and the Rat King. Finally, there is an appearance from the lovely Sugar Plum Fairy, and the jolly Santa Claus.

Fireworks are now obsolete when you can do something like this.

The DART mission was a success: orbit perturbed!

October 12, 2022 • 11:00 am

We’ve had several posts on September 26th’s DART mission—the one in which NASA crashed a small spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos at 14,000 miles per hour. The object was to perturb Dimorphos’s orbit around a larger asteroid, Didymos. (DART stands for “Double Asteroid Redirection Test”.) The perturbation was effected by transferring momentum from the DART spacecraft (which crashed in a satisfying cloud of dust) to Dimorphos.

The ultimate goal of this program is to see if we can deflect a comet or asteroid heading towards Earth, staving off the immense destruction that a collision could cause. And, judging by DART, it’s at least possible.

As usual, my old friend and former NASA employee Jim Batterson gives us the details:

Earth Global Defense Test Results (DART Experiment)

Jim “Bat” Batterson

When the NASA/APL (Applied Physics Lab) spacecraft successfully impacted the small asteroid, Dimorphos on September 26, some WEIT readers wanted to know when we would know if it achieved its full mission – an actual perturbation of Dimorphos’ orbit.

 In the post-impact press conference later that day, the mission engineering leadership estimated that the answer would come in a couple of weeks or so as Earth-based telescopes took careful measurements of Dimorphus’ orbital path around its larger companion asteroid, Didymos.  They were right!  Yesterday afternoon, NASA held a press conference at NASA Headquarters in which mission leaders gave us the answer:  the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos changed significantly – from 11hrs 55min to 11hrs 23min – a 32 minute change.

Here’s the full press conference, an hour long:

The first 30 minutes comprises what I thought was a very informative presentation from three lead project scientists; the final 30 minutes consists of the scientists answering questions from the global press.  They explain in pretty good detail how the orbital change was measured and what these results mean.

Here’s one last video that APL [Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, which partnered in the venture] put out on a summary sheet. The 40-second video compresses the final pics from the DART spacecraft and is really exciting to me. The final frame before blackout due to collision is only 51 ft across, which means the bigger boulders are about ten feet across and the visible small rubble is a foot in size or even smaller.  Incredible technology.

Click on the screenshot below to go to the summary sheet and video. This is the moment before impact:

 

 

Guest post: Some post-DART thoughts

September 28, 2022 • 10:00 am

Two days ago, Jim Batterson, an old friend and college classmate who worked for NASA for many years, wrote a precis of the DART mission designed to knock a small asteroid out of its orbit around a bigger asteroid.  He and I were two of the many who watched the “near live” impact of the spacecraft on Dimorphos, and we were both thrilled. Here’s the last 18 seconds before impact:

Here, from Facebook, is a telescopic view from Earth of the moment the spacecraft hit Dimorphos (credit: Atlas Project):

 

After I mentioned to Jim that this was the first time we tried to perturb an orbit with a spacecraft, he sent me his thoughts on the mission and reminded me of a few instances of other impacts or landings on celestial bodies, though these didn’t have the same goal as DART.  With his permission I submit Jim’s thoughts for your approval.

Some Post-DART Mission Thoughts 

Jim Batterson

Now that the excitement and really spectacular success of the DART asteroid rendezvous and impact is in the rearview mirror, I want to remind readers of some earlier space missions that were akin to DART in an engineering sense.

Much of what NASA does in space missions is “engineering in the service of science”.  That is, NASA scientist and engineers, in consultation with scientists from around the world, are responsible for managing and assuring the design of appropriate missions, building (often unique) scientific instruments, and developing the rockets and spacecraft to fly those instruments to a point in space (sometimes on a planet or simply in a planetary atmosphere) where collected data is returned for analysis to scientists on Earth.  Comet rendezvous missions are traditionally “pure science” missions to gather unique data on the composition of comets, as it’s thought that a better understanding of comets will lead to a better understanding the formation and early years of our solar system.

DART was a different type of mission, not only in its focus on an asteroid rather than a comet, but also in that it kept its engineering mission for planetary defense pretty clean and did not try to add in a large suite of scientific instruments to gather data.  That said, there have been several comet flybys over years and two comet impacts

The impacts were these:

Deep Impact by NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). Upon rendezvousing with the Comet Temple-1 on July 4, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft launched an impactor craft that smashed into the comet’s nucleus.  The debris cloud and crater were then photographed and analyzed by instruments on the mother ship. Here’s a NASA photo with this caption:

This spectacular image of comet Tempel 1 was taken 67 seconds after it obliterated Deep Impact’s impactor spacecraft. The image was taken by the high-resolution camera on the mission’s flyby craft. Scattered light from the collision saturated the camera’s detector, creating the bright splash seen here. Linear spokes of light radiate away from the impact site, while reflected sunlight illuminates most of the comet surface. The image reveals topographic features, including ridges, scalloped edges and possibly impact craters formed long ago.

Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

The Rosetta/Philae mission was carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2014. Upon rendezvous with Comet 67P after an almost eleven-year journey through space, the Rosetta spacecraft launched a lander (Philae) whose purpose was to soft-land on the comet and drill into its surface, gathering data on the comet’s interior. ESA was partly successful as Philae did make it to the surface. But some of its propulsion equipment failed to operate properly to slow it down completely, so it suffered a hard landing and bounced, leaving Philae in a crevice. This prevented it from accessing sunlight needed to recharge its batteries.  Sadly, the subsurface data couldn’t be collected.

However, it did survive to take some incredible photos on the actual surface of a comet nucleus. I think that this was still an extraordinary accomplishment. You can see the photos here.

[JAC: I’ll present one example, a fantastic selfie taken by Philae as it sat in the crevice. The caption is

“The Philae lander of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission is safely on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as these first two images from the lander’s CIVA camera confirm. One of the lander’s three feet can be seen in the foreground. The view is a two-image mosaic taken on Nov. 12, 2014.”]

DART didn’t even pretend to be about collecting basic science data, but rather was about using engineering expertise developed over our spacefaring years to help the protect our planet. This was an important proof of a “concept mission” in which the concept was that, if an asteroid were given a proper nudge, its trajectory could be changed enough to move it from a collision course with Earth to a harmless close encounter. This was a test or experiment to gather engineering data. It is a high-school physics problem to show that it works in theory, but would it work in the real world?

I think that one of big engineering challenges for the DART test was navigating and guiding using the light from the two-asteroid system and then, a few minutes before scheduled impact, to autonomously focus on and keep the smaller, dimmer asteroid as its target.  This was especially challenging because the engineers had no real knowledge of the reflective characteristics or shape of either body. It turned out, as we all saw in the final couple of minutes of approach, that both bodies were non-spherical with lots of surface irregularities, which scatter sunlight in all directions and cast shadows. But the software had been designed with enough robustness to deal with these non-ideal bodies.

For folks who want to learn more about Near-Earth Objects, I recommend Donald Yeomans’ 2013 book, Near-Earth Objects: FindingThem Before They Find Us (Princeton) as an excellent summary the general reader.

Russians destroy world’s largest airplane in Kyiv

May 19, 2022 • 12:45 pm

This article was in the April 22 issue of the New York Times, but has languished among my 1,737 draft posts. And compared to the toll of human lives following the Russian invasion, this can only be a footnote. But it’s an intriguing footnote, for it describes how a Russian hit on Antonov airport near Kyiv, in Ukraine, destroyed the world’s largest aircraft. That would be a plane manufactured in the Ukraine when it was part of Russia and flown (as a cargo plane) by Ukrainian pilots.

That plane would be the  Antonov An-225 Mriya. How big was it? Let Wikipedia give the stats:

With a maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes (705 short tons), the An-225 held several records, including heaviest aircraft ever built and largest wingspan of any aircraft in operational service. The Mriya attracted a high degree of public interest, attaining a global following due to its size and its uniqueness. People frequently visited airports to see its scheduled arrivals and departures.

. . . Initially, the An-225 had a maximum gross weight of 600 t (660 short tons; 590 long tons), but from 2000 to 2001, the aircraft underwent modifications at a cost of US$20 million, such as the addition of a reinforced floor, which increased the maximum gross weight to 640 t (710 short tons; 630 long tons).

Both the earlier and later takeoff weights establish the An-225 as the world’s heaviest aircraft, being heavier than the double-deck Airbus A380. It is surpassed in other size-related categories, but Airbus claims to have improved upon the An-225’s maximum landing weight by landing an A380 at 591.7 tonnes (1,304,000 lb) during tests, and the Hughes H-4 Hercules, known as the Spruce Goose, has a greater wingspan and a greater overall height, but the Spruce Goose is 20% shorter and overall lighter, due to the materials used in its construction. In addition, the H-4 only flew once and for less than a minute, making the An-225 the largest aircraft in the world to fly multiple times.

And from the NYT:

At 276 feet long and six stories high, the plane, designated AN-225, was bigger than any other in the sky. It boasted 32 landing wheels and a wingspan of 290 feet. Its maximum takeoff weight stood at a staggering 1.4 million pounds, far more than a fully loaded 747. Its nose cone flipped up so that big objects, like turbine blades or even smaller jets, could be slid into its cavernous belly.

Here’s why people would watch it take off:

And look at its main landing gear!

Six engines, six contrails:

A Russian missile scored a direct hit on Mriya’s hanger, turning it to fragments. Here’s a video about that:

The NYT describes the sorrow attending the destruction of this one-of-a-kind plane, especially from its pilot:

In the case of Mriya, which took a direct hit during the pivotal battle at that airport, the damage to the aircraft has stirred an incredible outpouring of what can only be described as grief. Heartbroken airplane buffs around the world are getting Mriya tattoos. A sad cartoon has been circulating, with tears streaming out of Mriya’s eyes.

“If I were not a man,” he said, “I would cry.”

The plane after it was hit.  The NYT says that “All might not be lost, though. The Ukrainian government, knowing the power of Mriya’s symbolism, has vowed to rebuild her with war reparations it hopes to squeeze from Russia.”  I wouldn’t hold my breath.

From the NYT: Haluneko finally worked up the courage to visit the plane to see the damage to the plane he flew many times:

And another photo from the NYT: of Halunenko with his beloved plane:

And another epic takeoff for you plane buffs:

Indigenous electrical wiring in New Zealand

February 10, 2022 • 10:30 am

There are apparently a lot of Kiwis who agree with my view that Mātauranga Māori (“MM”), or Maori “ways of knowing”, should not be given coequal status with modern science in science classes. (It should be taught mostly as anthropology or history, with the bits of “practical knowledge” perhaps interpolated in science class.)  This is a losing battle, I know, as are most battles against forms of wokeness, but as a scientist I want to at least make my views known and try to keep science teaching on the rails. Forcing MM—a mixture of legend, theology, morality, mythology, and practical knowledge—into science class constitutes a form of “valorizing the oppressed” by giving them certain rights that make no sense in today’s world. Teaching Māori legends and myths (including creationism) as real science in biology or physics class is one of those “rights” that needs to be ditched.

Nearly every day I get emails from upset Kiwis, some with Māori heritage, who agree with me. After all, no sensible person wants to see science education in their country be watered down this way. But almost all of these people are afraid to speak up publicly or use their names. That’s because questioning the scientific nature of MM is considered a big no-no in New Zealand, and you can lose your job for it. The Royal Society of New Zealand, for instance, is still investigating two of its members for taking the stand I described above.  The disaffected Kiwis write me because I can give voice to their concerns without getting them in trouble.

Another Kiwi sent me the figure below, along with an email. I have permission to quote so long as names aren’t used. Note that this person is a lover of his country and an admirer of the Māori.

From the email:

This week I was doing some electrical updates, and thought I should first check the NZ regulations for wiring (colors, etc). All very straightforward, and the project was a success. Nonetheless, in light of some of your (absolutely correct) commentary on NZ recently, I thought you might be interested in the attached page from the regulations.  All I can say is ….. wha ????

Having lived overseas for a while, I really cannot comment very knowledgeably on New Zealand’s directions. The day to day celebration of Māori culture, and the things that make NZ so unique, are great, and even my own family use many Māori words in everyday speech that I would not have recognized in my childhood.
But the extension into other areas, such as your observations about science education, and this document I shared, add zero value and smack of opportunistic woke-ism. I simply don’t believe that a young Māori looking to become an electrician would find that path easier by thinking of electrical ground as the realm of some mythological entity.
I put a red box around the relevant bit from the New Zealand Electrical Code of Practice :

Note that there is nothing helpful or practical in this addition; what it does is analogize the practical instructions for wiring with certain terms from MM. No serious harm is done with this, but I think it shows the fealty to MM that permeates nearly every aspect of NZ life—including wiring. It is in fact kind of funny, but also sad, because it valorizes mythology by adding it to advice for electricians.

I have to add, though, that the person who sent me this stuff has good things to say about his country’s government, and I agree. Not only did they do fantastically well against Covid, but they’re doing a really good job trying to conserve their beleaguered wildlife using modern (not MM) conservation techniques. It’s a beautiful country with lovely people, and I hope to return before too long.

The last bit of the email I got:

Jacinda Arden’s leadership in the early years of her Prime Minstership have been exemplary in terms of standing against COVID and terrorist actions, with a consistency of message and direction sorely lacking in the US and UK.  And for COVID, the result is undeniable:  NZ’s total deaths over 2 years are comparable to a single day in Massachusetts with its similar population. But the challenge for her now is the transition to a re-opened country, and coping with an increasingly frustrated, impatient populace. And it is sorely costing her the polls.