Please RT. This link will help find the nearest foodbank in the United States. There is a search bar by zip code that provides a list of food pantries nearby.
Remote
Mike Malaska
@mike_malaska@deepspace.social
mastodon 4.7.3Planetary scientist, organic chemist, astrobiologist, field scientist. Works at Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. Champion of Titan exploration. Fascinated by life in Deep Ice. Studies the mysterious labyrinths and dissolution geology (karst) on Titan. Opinions expressed are my own. He/Him.
#PlanetaryScience
#astrobiology
#chemistry
#geomorphology
#geology
#karst
#cryosphere
#OceanWorlds
#DeepIce
#PlanetaryCaves
1378 Followers
370 Following
36 Posts
Joined November 11, 2022
Gain-of-function (GOF) research.
It's back in the news, and I've got indirect experience in this.
It is part of the "lab leak" hypothesis for the origin of COVID. There are some really key takeaways, but nobody's discussing those. I will.
But first, what is Gain-of-Function research and why should we do it?
Gain-of-Function research is where you take an infective disease causing agent and deliberately try to make it resistant to treatments.
Why would you do this?
[Thread]
Replying to
@azonenberg@ioc.exchange Titan has low gravity, thick cold nitrogen based atmosphere. And the cave should be dead calm. This is a perfect application!
Zap 'em and fling 'em!
Poll time!
Here is a quote from NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (see: @mike_malaska@deepspace.social):
“If we wake up and we see our rival’s taikonauts on the moon before we’re able to return, the blow to American exceptionalism will be so damaging, the shock wave will be felt around the world.”
If China beat the US to the Moon, how would you feel personally?
Replying to
That also means that Enceladus flyby, or Orbilander mission, is a precursor mission.
There will always be that need to drill all the way down to the deep subsurface ocean to get that chemical inventory.
The deep drill mission won't happen in my lifetime. But we are building the cathedral.
Replying to
A key is understanding how things dissolve.
For boring solids, like salt or sugar dissolving in water, the more you heat the water, the more stuff (most salts {with NaCl being exception}, sugar) can go into solution. Cool it, and you can crystallize it out.
Fun edible demo? make your own rock candy by crystallizing out sugar
Instructions here: https://wearenotmartha.com/make-your-own-rock-candy/
But...calcium carbonate (and other carbonates) are weird.
Replying to
Calcium carbonate has a complex equilibrium that depends on CO2 dissolving in water to make carbonate anion.
Bottom line: the MORE CO2 dissolved, the MORE Calcium carbonate will dissolve in water.
Those fun cave formations? Saturated CaCO3 waters full of CO2 drip into a cave. The CO2 escapes the water, lowers CaCO3 solubiility, now super-saturated CaCO3 (limestone) precipitates out. Cave formations!!!
Straws, stalactites, stalagmites (bounce), helictites, rimstones, etc.
Replying to
4) Those hot solutions percolated through the layers, emplacing extracted borate minerals into little weak gaps or cracks between layers. (As you can see in pic below).
(This would be commercially mined later for borate. "Twenty Mule Team" fame.)
5) Later faulting, shifting, shrink-swelling made those mud layers go all over the place. In this location it looks like the layers were almost vertical. So some old ripple marks in lakebed muds are hanging there like a framed picture hung on a wall.
Replying to
You can also imagine a whole set of missions that will build these comparative datasets:
Titan Dragonfly surface organics of Titan
Titan orbiter (something similar to proposed Oceanus T-mass instrument)
Titan shallow drill to get to organic deposits over deep time
Deep cryobot mission to Titan subsurface ocean
Titan surface mission to Menrva crater ejecta to get ancient deep ocean inventory.
(We know Titan does de novo organic synthesis)
Others include:
Replying to
The authors did a neat job of putting this all together to show us the HOW and WHY this happens in our oceans. In a sterile world, this might happen a bit as we'd expect from inorganic chemistry.
On Earth, with abundant microbes, we get this feedback of microbial growth, metabolism, and localized CO2 concentration that promotes dissolution of descending carbonates faster and shallower than expected, helping sequester CO2 away into the deeper ocean reservoirs.
Thanks, microbes!
[/end thread]
Replying to
We'll get to the BIG DEAL first: Why is it important?
Earth Ocean is BIG. Massive reservoir for stuff. Atmospheric gases in equilibrium. On the plus side, CO2 can get sucked down, scrubbed from atmosphere. On the negative side, if this doesn't happen and it comes back out, that's bad.
So oceans buffer temperatures and gases (like CO2).
Figuring out the HOW carbonates, CO2 balance out and move and where they go in the ocean is part of the big climate budget.
This article looks at the HOW.
Replying to
So where else in our Solar System could we see something like this?
Definitely Mars..There were lakes, and areas that got re-eroded to reveal lakeshore deposits.
And very likely Titan, too. Fine organic dusts or grains and even some water ice grains in the mix could make lakeshore sediments. Induration from evaporite cementation, pressure of overlying sediments, or even co-crystal formation. There might be some lifting or shifting that could turn up or down layers, too.
Replying to
The exact location of this is along crossover trail starting from Zabriski Point, going down Grower Gulch, then up and over the ridge that is beneath the massive straight face of Manly Beacon, just as you drop into Golden Canyon.
(Golden Canyon is where several Star Wars scenes were shot.)
Replying to
6) And then finally, stream and gulley formation whooshed away some of the overlying layersand revealed this beautiful examole of lithified ripple marks.
(It was fun to touch and feel the ancient ripple pattern.)
If you look down to lower left corner of the first image, you can just bareley see another set of ripple marks with a different orientation.
All these little slabs and layers are near vertical here, so it is not just one slab that flooped over. It is a whole set.
Replying to
...it turns out even more CaCO3 dissolves than you'd expect.
At some point in the deep ocean, it is so cold and so high pressure, that CaCO3 will dissolve, in tropical waters that is about 4 km down, in polar waters about 1 km down.
But in practice, it seems that more and faster and shallower calcium dissolution is happening than you'd expect.
But....why???
And it turns out, like all fun geology, it's pretty much driven by BIOLOGY. Specifically, little microbes.
Replying to
As particle rich calcite laden "snow" comes down from the upper ocean, there are little microbes riding on it. The authors did experiments that shows that those microbes are metabolizing, making locally high (at microbe scale) CO2 concentrations, little acidic waters, maybe some other chemical byproducts that help Ca solubility too.
That helps local dissolution which dissolves the calcite that can then LIGHTENS the particles so they fall slower.
Replying to
Slow particles have active microbes, but not much water flow, so aerobic respiration (needing O2 dissolved in water) kinda shuts down. Slow diffusion of O2 restricts microbial growth. Local CO2 release from local microbial growth kinda weak. Not much dissolution.
Fast speed has another problem. Great delivery of O2 to microbes, but any local CO2 (acidic) release is whooshed and diluted away by fast moving water. Great growth, but not much dissolution.
Replying to
The authors showed these wild non-intuitive effects that make sense when you tease it out.
Slower sinking particles dissolve sorta slow.
Medium speed sinking particles (10 meters a day drop) dissolve very fast
Faster sinking particles dissolve slow again.
There is definitely a Goldilocks effect going on. What drives it?
Replying to
In the ocean as you go deeper, CO2 capacity goes up.
Gas solubility goes up in colder water.
And gas solubility goes up in water at higher pressure.
So both those effects let more CO2 go into water, and then let more CaCO3 dissolve. (see 3rd post).
So you'd think that any CaCO3 in form of calcite (aragonite even more soluble because it's not the most stable form) would dissolve as you go deeper.
But....
Old Town Cemetary, Hillsborough, North Carolina. Taken May 28, 2026.
Replying to
The implication of this is that the key delivery of missions is the full and complete organic inventory so that it can be compared to other organic inventory datasets from other places and other worlds.
As a specific example, an astrobiology mission to Enceladus that does onboard processingusing AI and returns a "yes! We have evidence for life and ONLY send back the data that supports that may win the battle (yay!!), but lose the war (booooo!!!).
You need as full a dataset as possible.
Replying to
Right there in the middle you have the perfect optimum:
Fast enough delivery of dissolved oxygen to support good microbial metabolism (and CO2 release) but not so fast that the CO2 released gets flushed away. You can local high concentrations that just dissolve up any calcite (or aragonite).
Replying to
@michael_w_busch whoa..."anyone can suggest a name"...is not quite correct. There needs to be some justification WHY something needs to be named. A reason that feature is important, a publication that specifically calls out that feature.
(...says the guy who got "Gandalf Colles" named on Titan.)
((...because we described it as the type feature for "hummocky terrain".))
(((...and we were probably wrong.)))
((((....and what Gandalf Colles might be is WAY more interesting.))))
Replying to
@mastodonmigration@mastodon.online To be fair though, a lot of the commercialization decisions pre-dated Isaacman.
I think the hope back then was to try to kick start space economy even though NASA was dangling the money.
Replying to
@OneInterestingFact @GetzlerChem OK. That's a really good point. NaCl itself is an exception.
Lemme fix that....
Replying to
@chgowiz@dice.camp So, as a side bet, do you think if Chinna beat us to the moon that US would double-down on their efforts to establish a base there? Would the American taxpayers and voters feel the continued urgency?
Replying to
@Artemis201 Oh! Yes! It is! Thank you for finding that!
Gonna credit you with the catch!
Replying to
@azonenberg@ioc.exchange titan atmosphere mostly nitrogen, about 95%. It does have methane, but only about 5% at surface. (It drops a bit much higher up)
But all that methane makes all thosr the atmospheric organic molecules that eventually pile up on the surface.
Which gets you to...caves!