The Tree of Life mapped for flowering plants

by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

A new paper published today (April 24) in the journal Nature by an international team of 279 scientists led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew presents the most up-to-date understanding of the flowering plant tree of life.

Using 1.8 billion letters of genetic code from more than 9,500 species covering almost 8,000 known flowering plant genera (ca. 60%), this incredible achievement sheds new light on the evolutionary history of flowering plants and their rise to ecological dominance on Earth.

The study’s authors believe the data will aid future attempts to identify new species, refine plant classification, uncover new medicinal compounds, and conserve plants in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss.

The major milestone for plant science, led by Kew and involving 138 organizations internationally, was built on 15 times more data than any comparable studies of the flowering plant tree of life. Among the species sequenced for this study, more than 800 have never had their DNA sequenced before.

The sheer amount of data unlocked by this research, which would take a single computer 18 years to process, is a huge stride towards building a tree of life for all 330,000 known species of flowering plants—a massive undertaking by Kew’s Tree of Life Initiative.

Dr. Alexandre Zuntini, Research Fellow at RBG Kew, says, “Analyzing this unprecedented amount of data to decode the information hidden in millions of DNA sequences was a huge challenge. But it also offered the unique opportunity to reevaluate and extend our knowledge of the plant tree of life, opening a new window to explore the complexity of plant evolution.”

The Angiosperm Tree of Life was built on 15 times more data than comparable studies and was involved sequencing more than 9,500 different species of flowering plants. Credit: RBG Kew

Unlocking historic herbarium specimens for cutting-edge research

The flowering plant tree of life, much like our own family tree, enables us to understand how different species are related to each other. The tree of life is uncovered by comparing DNA sequences between different species to identify changes (mutations) that accumulate over time like a molecular fossil record.

Our understanding of the tree of life is improving rapidly in tandem with advances in DNA sequencing technology. For this study, new genomic techniques were developed to magnetically capture hundreds of genes and hundreds of thousands of letters of genetic code from every sample, orders of magnitude more than earlier methods.

A key advantage of the team’s approach is that it enables a wide diversity of plant material, old and new, to be sequenced, even when the DNA is badly damaged. The vast treasure troves of dried plant material in the world’s herbarium collections, which comprise nearly 400 million scientific specimens of plants, can now be studied genetically.

Using such specimens, the team successfully sequenced a sandwort specimen (Arenaria globiflora) collected nearly 200 years ago in Nepal and, despite the poor quality of its DNA, were able to place it in the tree of life.

The team even analyzed extinct plants, such has the Guadalupe Island olive (Hesperelaea palmeri), which has not been seen alive since 1875. In fact, 511 of the species sequenced are already at risk of extinction, according to the IUCN Red List, including three more like Hesperelaea that are already extinct.

Professor William Baker, Senior Research Leader–Tree of Life, says, “In many ways this novel approach has allowed us to collaborate with the botanists of the past by tapping into the wealth of data locked up in historic herbarium specimens, some of which were collected as far back as the early 19th century.

“Our illustrious predecessors such as Charles Darwin or Joseph Hooker could not have anticipated how important these specimens would be in genomic research today. DNA was not even discovered in their lifetimes!

“Our work shows just how important these incredible botanical museums are to ground-breaking studies of life on Earth. Who knows what other undiscovered science opportunities lie within them?”

Across all 9,506 species sequenced, more than 3,400 came from material sourced from 163 herbaria in 48 countries. Additional material from plant collections around the world (e.g., DNA banks, seeds, living collections) have been vital for filling key knowledge gaps to shed new light on the history of flowering plant evolution. The team also benefited from publicly available data for more than 1,900 species, highlighting value of the open science approach to future genomic research.

Illuminating Darwin’s abominable mystery

Flowering plants alone account for about 90% of all known plant life on land and are found virtually everywhere on the planet—from the steamiest tropics to the rocky outcrops of the Antarctic Peninsula. And yet, our understanding of how these plants came to dominate the scene soon after their origin has baffled scientists for generations, including Charles Darwin.

Flowering plants originated more than 140 million years ago after which they rapidly overtook other vascular plants including their closest living relatives—the gymnosperms (non-flowering plants that have naked seeds, such as cycads, conifers, and ginkgo).

Darwin was mystified by the seemingly sudden appearance of such diversity in the fossil record. In an 1879 letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker, his close confidant and Director of RBG Kew, he wrote, “The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery.”

Utilizing 200 fossils, the authors scaled their tree of life to time, revealing how flowering plants evolved across geological time. They found that early flowering plants did indeed explode in diversity, giving rise to more than 80% of the major lineages that exist today shortly after their origin.

However, this trend then declined to a steadier rate for the next 100 million years until another surge in diversification about 40 million years ago, coinciding with a global decline in temperatures. These new insights would have fascinated Darwin and will surely help today’s scientists grappling with the challenges of understanding how and why species diversify.

A truly global collaboration

Assembling a tree of life this extensive would have been impossible without Kew’s scientists collaborating with many partners across the globe. In total, 279 authors were involved in the research, representing many different nationalities from 138 organizations in 27 countries. They include the Genomics for Australian Plants (GAP) consortium who were early adopters of the team’s techniques and who worked in close collaboration with Kew to maximize the number of Australian plant species in the tree.

International collaborators also shared their unique botanical expertise, as well as many precious plant samples from around the world that could not be obtained without their help. The comprehensive nature of the tree is in no small part a result of this wonderful partnership.

Dr. Mabel Lum, Program Manager at Bioplatforms Australia and from the GAP consortium, says, “We are proud to be a major partner and collaborator in RBG Kew’s effort to build global research infrastructure to advance our understanding of flowering plant tree of life. This fruitful collaboration underscored our commitment to fostering innovation and collaboration in scientific research, providing a springboard for future discoveries that will help shape our understanding of the natural world for generations to come.”

Putting the plant tree of life to good use

The flowering plant tree of life has enormous potential in biodiversity research. This is because, just as one can predict the properties of an element based on its position in the periodic table, the location of a species in the tree of life allows us to predict its properties. The new data will thus be invaluable for enhancing many areas of science and beyond.

To enable this, the tree and all of the data that underpin it have been made openly and freely accessible to both the public and scientific community, including through the Kew Tree of Life Explorer. The study’s authors believe such open access is key to democratizing access to scientific data across the globe.

Open access will also help scientists to make the best use of the data, such as combining it with artificial intelligence to predict which plant species may include molecules with medicinal potential. Similarly, the tree of life can be used to better understand and predict how pests and diseases are going to affect the plants of the U.K. in the future. Ultimately, the authors note, the applications of this data will be driven by the ingenuity of the scientists accessing it.

Dr. Melanie-Jayne Howes, Senior Research Leader at RBG Kew who was not an author on the study but will make use of the data in her research, says, “Plant chemicals have inspired many pharmaceutical drugs, but still have great untapped potential to aid future drug discovery. The challenge is knowing which to investigate scientifically in the search for new medicines out of the ca. 330,000 flowering plant species.

“At Kew we are applying AI to predict which plant species contain chemicals with pharmaceutical potential for malaria. The availability of this vast new dataset offers exciting opportunities to enhance these predictions and hence accelerate drug discovery from plants for malaria and other diseases too.”

Remarkable species in the flowering plant tree of life

• Extinct due to feral goats: Hesperelaea palmeri, also known as Guadalupe Island olive (olivo de la Isla de Guadalupe). Sequenced from an herbarium specimen at Kew collected on Guadalupe Island, off Baja California, Mexico in 1875 by medical doctor Edward Palmer. A tree belonging to the olive family (Oleaceae), it is now extinct because of overgrazing by non-native goats.
• Oldest specimen sequenced: Arenaria globiflora, also known as Nepalese sandwort. Sequenced from an herbarium specimen at Kew collected in 1829 by Nathaniel Wallich. This remarkable specimen comes from a Himalayan mountain plant that grows at over 3,600m.
• Parasitic plant family mystery solved: Pilostyles aethiopica, member of the stemsucker family (Apodanthaceae). Sequenced from plant tissue collected in Zimbabwe in 2012 by Kew’s Sidonie Bellot. This weird parasite lives inside the branches of other plants and is only visible when it erupts into flower. Previously thought to be closely related to pumpkins and begonias (Cucurbitales), study found it sits in the group Malpighiales.
• Bizarre tropical tree reclassified: Medusanthera laxiflora, member of the buff-beech family (Stemonuraceae). Sequenced from an herbarium specimen at Kew collected in Indonesian New Guinea in 1993. This small tropical tree with bizarre pin fruits was previously classified alongside the holly family. New tree of life has reclassified its genus and family into a whole new order.
• Bamboo from Hooker’s 1850s Himalayan expedition: Cephalostachyum capitatum, member of the grass family (Poaceae). Sequenced from an herbarium specimen collected in India in 1850 by Joseph Hooker, RBG Kew’s second director, and his friend Thomas Thomson.
• Medicinal plant sequenced for the very first time: Alstonia spectabilis, also known as Kroti metan by Tetun people. Sequenced from an herbarium specimen at Kew collected in Papua New Guinea in 1954. This massive, 20m tall tree is found in the rainforests of SE Asia and Australia. Despite being medicinally important to the Tetun people of West Timor to treat malaria, as well as being a valuable source of timber, its DNA has never been sequenced before.

More information: Zuntini, A. R., Carruthers, T. et al, Phylogenomics and the rise of the angiosperms, Nature (2024). www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07324-0

Journal information: Nature 

Provided by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Dark Matter in the Universe, who is right?

What is the ratio of dark matter, dark energy, and visible matter? Here are two leading estimates:

Above estimates according to astrophysicists.

Above estimates according to the Plejaren.

A leader in US seaweed farming preaches, teaches and builds a wider network

by Thomas URBAIN

Bren Smith harvests algae grown in the ocean near Branford, Connecticut.

Bren Smith and his GreenWave organization are helping lay the foundations for a generation of seaweed-growing farmers in the United States, while working to build a network of producers and buyers.

Seen from a boat, GreenWave’s farm seems unimpressive—little more than lines of white and black buoys, a few hundred yards (meters) off the Connecticut coast.

But beneath the dark Atlantic waters, suspended from ropes tied between the buoys around six feet (two meters) down, seaweed in varying shades of brown undulates.

GreenWave, which uses no pesticides or herbicides, last year harvested more than 20 metric tons of kelp from this location and from another one a bit farther east.

While seaweed farming has been practiced for decades in Asia, such aquaculture is a relatively new phenomenon in the US.

Training others

Bren Smith, who is Canadian, worked in industrial fishing for years before turning to so-called regenerative aquaculture—cultivating marine resources while caring for their ecosystem and even helping it flourish.

Research shows that kelp absorbs more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than a land forest of comparable surface area, while providing nutrients and a habitat for other living organisms.

Once an crop is harvested, it is used primarily in food products, cosmetics or as natural fertilizer.

GreenWave also cultivates mussels and oysters, which help purify surrounding seawater.

Smith hoists up a rope covered with algae at his farm in Atlantic waters off the Connecticut coast.

But its ambition reaches far beyond the bounds of its sea “farm,” which has been kept intentionally small.

“We’re training the next generation of ocean farmers,” said Smith, author of the book “Eat Like a Fish: My Adventure as a Fisherman Turned Ocean Farmer.”

To do so, GreenWave has developed a suite of training tools, from brochures to videos. Nearly 8,000 people have profited from the training.

GreenWave helped “connect me to other farms and farmers and disseminate the knowledge that our industry is building,” said Ken Sparta, who has been growing seaweed on his Spartan Farms near Portland, Maine since 2019.

“I’m not sure where our industry would be without them, and it certainly wouldn’t be growing at this rate,” Sparta said.

‘Collaborate, not compete’

GreenWave also issues starter grants of up to $25,000 per project, thanks to a combination of private donations and public subsidies.

And it established the Seaweed Source platform, which brings producers together with buyers, with more than 65 companies now involved.

Crucially, GreenWave developed an inexpensive technique allowing harvested seaweed to be preserved for up to 10 months, whereas kelp generally begins deteriorating after only a few hours.

“We don’t do policy stuff,” said Smith, standing on the bridge of his small boat. “It’s just, like, what do you need to do to be successful?”

Smith harvests tons of algae every year without use of pesticides or herbicides, and he helps teach others how to do the same.

Despite seaweed’s proven ability to capture carbon dioxide, Smith has not yet tried to include carbon credits in his business model.

“It’s seeming like markets aren’t great at incentivizing carbon,” the 51-year-old told AFP.

Along with GreenWave co-founder Emily Stengel, Smith has had to confront the challenges of a warming climate.

“When Bren started farming, he would be out planting in maybe the end of October,” said Toby Sheppard Bloch, director of infrastructure at GreenWave.

“And in 2021, we were out planting at the end of December… We lost two months of growing season,” due to warming waters.

With harvests plummeting, “We realized that something had to change if we were going to continue to farm these waters,” said Bloch.

GreenWave had the idea of creating a seed bank—where seeds could get an early start before being put in the sea—which helped farmers gain two months of growing time.

They used electric wine coolers as a cheaper alternative to a laboratory cold room.

The seed bank is open to any farmer to use, and seeds can be deposited or taken out at any time.

“Our belief is, really, what we need to do is collaborate and not compete,” said Smith, wearing his trademark green cap.

“Let’s bring together fishermen and all these folks that are being impacted by climate change and move them into solutions and breathing life back into the ocean.”

source

Scientists can’t put puzzle pieces of our Solar system together

April 16th, 2024 (bold added for emphasis)

Space scientists led by the University of Leicester have combined evidence from simulations, observations and analysis of meteorites to recreate the orbital instability caused as the giant planets of our solar system moved into their current locations, known for 20 years as the Nice model.

The findings are published in the journal Science and presented at the European Geological Union General Assembly in Vienna.

At the beginning of the solar system, the giant planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—had more circular and more compact orbits than they do today. Previous research has established that orbital instability in the solar system changed that orbital configuration and caused smaller planetesimals to be dispersed. Many of these collided with the inner terrestrial planets in what scientists have termed the Late Heavy Bombardment.

Lead author Dr. Chrysa Avdellidou from the University of Leicester School of Physics and Astronomy said, “The question is, when did it happen? The orbits of these planets destabilized due to some dynamical processes and then took their final positions that we see today. Each timing has a different implication, and it has been a great matter of debate in the community.”

“What we have tried to do with this work is to not only do a pure dynamical study but combine different types of studies, linking observations, dynamical simulations, and studies of meteorites.”

They focused on a type of meteorite known as enstatite chondrites, which have a very similar composition to Earth and very similar isotopic ratios, which means they were formed in our neighborhood. By making spectroscopic observations using ground-based telescopes, they linked those meteorites to their source: a family of fragments in the asteroid belt known as Athor.

This suggests that Athor was originally much larger and formed closer to the sun and that it suffered a collision that reduced its size out of the asteroid belt.

To explain how Athor ended up in the asteroid belt, the scientists tested various scenarios using dynamical simulations, concluding that the most likely explanation was the gravitational instability that shifted the giant planets to their current orbits. Analysis of the meteorites showed that this occurred no earlier than 60 million years after the solar system began to form.

Previous evidence from asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit has also put constraints on how late this event occurred, with scientists concluding that the gravitational instability must have occurred between 60 and 100 million years after the birth of the solar system, 4.56 billion years ago.

Previous evidence has shown that Earth’s moon was formed during this period, with one hypothesis being that a planetesimal known as Theia collided with Earth, and debris from that collision formed the moon.

Timing of the orbital instability is important as it determines when some of the familiar features of our solar system would develop—and may even have had an impact on the habitability of our planet.

Dr. Avdellidou added, “It’s like you have a puzzle, you understand that something should have happened, and you try to put events in the correct order to make the picture that you see today. The novelty with the study is that we are not only doing pure dynamical simulations, or only experiments, or only telescopic observations.”

“There were once five inner planets in our solar system and not four, so that could have implications for other things, like how we form habitable planets. Questions like, when exactly did objects come delivering volatile organics to our planet to Earth and Mars?”

Marco Delbo, co-author of the study and Director of Research at Nice Observatory in France, said, “The timing is very important because a lot of planetesimals populated our solar system at the beginning. And the instability clears them, so if that happens 10 million years after the beginning of the solar system, you clear the planetesimals immediately, whereas if you do it after 60 million years, you have more time to bring materials to Earth and Mars.”

More information: Chrysa Avdellidou et al, Dating the Solar System’s giant planet orbital instability using enstatite meteorites, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adg8092

Journal information: Science 

Provided by University of Leicester

see also:

The Great Comet of 1680

Fly around in Ptaah’s Great Spacer

(turn up resolution (up to 8k HD) and turn down (or off) volume before playing) (also viewable in 3D)

Researchers have used the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to make the largest 3D map of our [local] universe and world-leading measurements of dark energy, the mysterious cause of its accelerating expansion. source. Longer 22 minute video on this endeavor.

See also, Plejaren Contact Report 031, where Billy takes a ride around our universe with Ptaah, in this:

Great spacer diagram

see also one of my favorite all-time posts:

Interstellar movie has nothing on this: Animated flight through our local Universe

Get to know your recurring novas

Sometime between now and September, a massive explosion 3,000 light years from Earth will flare up in the night sky, giving amateur astronomers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness this space oddity.

The binary star system in the constellation Corona Borealis—”northern crown”—is normally too dim to see with the naked eye.

But every 80 years or so, exchanges between its two stars, which are locked in a deadly embrace, spark a runaway nuclear explosion.

The light from the blast travels through the cosmos and makes it appear as if a new star—as bright as the North Star, according to NASA—has suddenly just popped up in our night sky for a few days.

It will be at least the third time that humans have witnessed this event, which was first discovered by Irish polymath John Birmingham in 1866, then reappeared in 1946.

The appropriately named Sumner Starrfield, an astronomer at Arizona State University, told AFP he was very excited to see the nova’s “outburst”.

After all, he has worked on T Coronae Borealis—also known as the “Blaze Star”—on and off since the 1960s.

Starrfield is currently rushing to finish a scientific paper predicting what astronomers will find out about the recurring nova whenever it shows up in the next five months.

“I could be today… but I hope it’s not,” he said with a laugh.

The white dwarf and red giant

There are only around 10 recurring novas in the Milky Way and surrounding galaxies, Starrfield explained.

Normal novas explode “maybe every 100,000 years,” he said. But recurrent novas repeat their outbursts on a human timeline because of a peculiar relationship between their two stars.

One is a cool dying star called a red giant, which has burnt through its hydrogen and has hugely expanded—a fate that is awaiting our own sun in around five billion years.

The other is a white dwarf, a later stage in the death of a star, after all the atmosphere has blown away and only the incredibly dense core remains.

Their size disparity is so huge that it takes T Coronae Borealis’s white dwarf 227 days to orbit its red giant, Starrfield said.

The two are so close that matter being ejected by the red giant collects near the surface of the white dwarf.

Once the mass roughly of Earth has built up on the white dwarf—which takes around 80 years—it heats up enough to kickstart a runaway thermonuclear reaction, Starrfield said.

This ends up in a “big explosion and within a few seconds the temperature goes up 100-200 million degrees” Celsius, said Joachim Krautter, a retired German astronomer who has studied the nova.

The James Webb space telescope will be just one of the many eyes that turn towards the outburst of T Coronae Borealis once it begins, Krautter told AFP.

But you do not need such advanced technology to witness this rare event—whenever it may happen.

“You simply have to go out and look in the direction of the Corona Borealis,” Krautter said.

Some lucky sky gazers are already preparing for the year’s biggest astronomic event on Monday, when a rare total solar eclipse will occur across a strip of the United States.

by Daniel Lawler

source

video

image

4.8 Magnitude Quake felt by entire Northeast US

Jaime Maussan: “My group, my institution has more evidence than the Pentagon…”

Meier Corroboration #225

In a world first, a cosmic ‘speed camera’ just revealed the staggering speed of neutron star jets

March 31st, 2024

How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it turns out, is about one-third the speed of light, as our team has just revealed in a new study published in Nature.

Energetic cosmic beams known as jets are seen throughout our universe. They are launched when material—mainly dust and gas—falls in towards any dense central object, such as a neutron star (an extremely dense remnant of a once-massive star) or a black hole.

The jets carry away some of the gravitational energy released by the infalling gas, recycling it back into the surroundings on far larger scales.

The most powerful jets in the universe come from the biggest black holes at the centers of galaxies. The energy output of these jets can affect the evolution of an entire galaxy, or even a galaxy cluster. This makes jets a critical, yet intriguing, component of our universe.

Interestingly, the jet speed we measured was close to the “escape speed” from a neutron star. On Earth, this escape speed is 11.2 kilometers per second—what rockets need to achieve to break free of Earth’s gravity. For a neutron star, that value is around half the speed of light.

full article by James Miller-Jones, The Conversation

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FIGU Bulletin Date: June 1996 (English Edition: February 1998)

DISCOVERIES IN SPACE

As early as December 1995, astronomers noticed a mysterious object in space which sent strong X-ray signals into the universe every hour, in a way similar to a light house. First mention regarding these suspiciously regular radio signals was offered in 1968, when British astronomers became capable of picking up such signals. Headlines at the time read “Contact Made with Little Green Men,” for everyone was convinced that only an extraterrestrial intelligence could transmit such signals in a regular pattern. It was not long, however, before theoretical astrophysicists found a less spectacular, yet no less fascinating explanation for the phenomenon, namely, that the signals were sent by a rapidly rotating remnant of a collapsed star, a pulsating radio star — a pulsar. Early in December 1995, astronomers discovered a new type of pulsar in the vicinity of the Milky Way’s center that emits light within the more energetic, shorter-waved X-ray range. Approximately every hour the pulsar sends out an enormous X-ray pulse. The pulsar was detected by a research satellite specifically constructed for the purpose of examining long-observed X-ray flashes, which occasionally and unexpectedly flare up in the universe only to immediately subside again.

The newly discovered pulsar initially sent its X-ray flashes at one-second intervals, then every few minutes, and after two days then once an hour. Thereafter it entered an odd pattern of behavior displaying several variations which were previously attributed to various celestial objects. Currently this pulsar is the strongest known X-ray source in the sky.

At this point, mystery surrounds the mechanism by which these rhythmic X-ray flashes occur; but this much we do know: This cosmic X-ray light house is a dual-star system comprising a small neutron star of immense mass and a lighter-weight companion star. It is presumed that the lighter star intermittently loses some of its matter, while the neutron star “siphons” it off. This process causes the material to accelerate to approximately 150,000 kilometers/ sec. [93,750 mps], or half the speed of light. Thereupon, the material crashes to the surface of the neutron star, generating a temperature of approximately 1 billion degrees Celsius [1.8 billion F], hot enough to discharge X-ray flashes one million times brighter than our sun.

Billy

Artists depiction of Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Credit: Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA

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Additional information:

March 3rd, 2012. CR 537

Billy:

I do not doubt it either. But something else: On the 27th of December 2004, a powerful flash of energy from outer space was registered, and already about 450 million years ago, the Earth was hit by a flash of energy, or a gamma ray, respectively, which was not very strong, but it did a lot of harm, as Quetzal explained to me. What I am interested in is what actually happens when a very strong flash of gamma lightning respectively gamma radiation hits the Earth, and how does such a flash of energy come about, if you can explain the whole thing a bit simply?

Ptaah:

31. Gamma ray flashes have an extremely destructive effect when they hit planets.

32. If, for example, the Earth were struck with the full energy of a gigantic flash of gamma radiation, the origin of which would be far less than 10 million light-years away, then the Earth’s atmosphere as well as all electrical and electronic equipment would be completely destroyed and all life would be wiped out.

33. The phenomena of such high-energy flashes, as you call them, have various causes; for example, gamma-ray bursts are caused by a nuclear collapse of massive suns, but also by the fusion of two neutron stars, or by the fusion of a neutron star with a black hole in an extragalactic star system.

December 2nd, 1987. CR 220

Billy:

Nice outlooks. So let’s talk about something else. I still have a question regarding neutron stars, which exhibit the greatest density in matter, as our scientists say. A thimble full of such a neutron star should weigh, as they say, about a billion (1,000,000,000) tons. I would like to ask whether they have not made a mistake in the weight, for I find a billion (1,000,000,000) tons somewhat steep.

Quetzal:

55. Nevertheless, it is of correctness.

56. However, it is to be rectified that neutron stars do not exhibit the densest and heaviest mass but rather other objects in the material Universe.

57. The matter of these tremendously heavier objects is also of a different kind than what is known to the earthly physical scientists and astrophysical scientists as well as astrophysical chemists.

Billy:

Aha, and what do you call these objects, and at the same time, does it concern stars?

Quetzal:

58. The second part of your question is to be affirmed in the way that, as a rule, it concerns former stars, so collapsed solar structures.

59. But still, such objects also exist in the form of still active suns.

60. We call the collapsed structures ‘Meton-Darthelos’, which translated into your language means ‘Dark Heavy Suns’.

61. We call the still active suns of this kind ‘Saten-Darthelos’, so ‘Radiant Heavy Suns’ or ‘Active Heavy Suns’.

62. These names correspond to traditions from very early times of our people.

Factory and warehouse rooftops offer untapped opportunity to help disadvantaged communities bridge solar energy divide

by Stanford University

Lower-income communities across the United States have long been much slower to adopt solar power than their affluent neighbors, even when local and federal agencies offer tax breaks and other financial incentives.

But, commercial and industrial rooftops, such as those atop retail buildings and factories, offer a big opportunity to reduce what researchers call the “solar equity gap,” according to a new study, published in Nature Energy and led by researchers at Stanford University.

“The solar equity gap is a serious problem in disadvantaged communities, in part because of income inequalities, but also because residential solar isn’t usually practical for people who don’t own their homes,” said Ram Rajagopal, senior author of the study and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and of electrical engineering at Stanford. “This new study shows that commercial and industrial properties have the capacity to host solar resources to fill in part of that gap.”

Untapped resources

First, the bad news. The researchers found that non-residential rooftops generate 38% less electricity in disadvantaged communities than in wealthier ones. That gap, which is mainly because of lower deployment in poorer areas, has widened over the past two decades. Nevertheless, this gap is significantly lower than that of residential solar in these neighborhoods.

The good news, the researchers say, is that non-residential buildings have large unused capacity to produce solar power for their own benefit and to supply the communities around them. In low-income communities, commercial enterprises may be more responsive to government incentives for solar power than households are. An earlier study by the same researchers found that residential customers in disadvantaged communities, who may have fewer financial resources and often don’t own their homes, show less response to tax breaks and other financial inducements.

“Using Stanford’s DeepSolar database, we estimated that solar arrays on non-residential buildings could meet more than a fifth of annual residential electricity demand in almost two-thirds of disadvantaged communities,” said Moritz Wussow, the study’s lead author.

“Also, the raw cost of that power would be less in many communities than the residential rates that local electric utilities charge,” said Wussow, who was a visiting student researcher in Rajagopal’s lab group in 2022 and 2023.

To quantify the distribution of non-residential solar power installations, the researchers used satellite images and artificial intelligence to identify the number and size of rooftop solar arrays in 72,739 census tracts across the United States. About one-third of those tracts are deemed disadvantaged by the U.S. government.

The team tracked non-residential solar deployment as well as the amount of unused rooftops that would be good candidates for solar installation from 2006 through 2016 and then again for 2022. They then calculated the average annual cost of producing solar electricity in each area, based on the amount of local sun exposure and other variables. The costs ranged from about 6.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in sun-drenched New Mexico to almost 11 cents in Alaska. But those costs were lower than residential electricity rates in many of those areas—even in many northern states.

Chad Zanocco, a co-author of the new study and a postdoctoral fellow in civil and environmental engineering, noted that getting the power to residential areas would include other costs, such as battery storage and the construction of microgrids.

“We estimate that battery storage would increase total system costs by about 50%, but even that would be practical in almost two-thirds of the disadvantaged communities we studied,” Zanocco said.

Economies of scale

If commercial and industrial solar arrays can feed their surplus electricity into local power grids, the researchers write, lower-income residents could gain access through community subscriptions rather than by building their own rooftop panels. Commercial and industrial sites also offer greater economies of scale, compared to individual household solar panels. Another big advantage is that non-residential power customers could also be highly sensitive to tax incentives and other government inducements, leading to greater adoption.

Further lowering barriers, the researchers noted, is the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which has provided billions of dollars for states and local communities for clean-energy infrastructure. That money has already reduced the cost of new microgrids.

“Beyond reducing carbon emissions and slowing climate change, increased access to solar power would offer tangible local benefits to lower-income communities,” said Zhecheng Wang, a co-author and a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

“This would promote local clean and low-cost energy generation, which would also increase the resilience from outages and reduce the pollution caused by fossil fuel power plants—many of which are located in low-income areas.”

More information: Exploring the potential of non-residential solar to tackle energy injustice, Nature Energy (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-024-01485-y. www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01485-y

Journal information: Nature Energy 

Provided by Stanford University