Hey readers, it's the 38th issue of the White Pill, and the first issue published on our new website, where we how have a whole section to continue dominating the coverage of frontiers in space, physics, engineering, and medicine. (For more info about the new site, read Solana's welcome note.) In this White Pill, topics include: the biggest Martian water ice deposit ever discovered, a solar powered plane concept for exploring Venus' middle atmosphere, space muffins, hydrofoil boats, VR spatial broadcasts, DNA origami, dominion, omnidirectional floors, MC Hammer, no-needle insulin, a FDA-approved AI-powered sensor that detects skin cancer, ancient Amazonian urbanization, Hans Holbein's 16th c. painting The Ambassadors, and more.
P.S. Please don’t forget, White Pill has a Twitter account. Follow, like, share, retweet, even quote tweet if you please.
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Martian water ice deposit. New data are giving researchers a high degree of confidence that the ESA's Mars Express orbiter, which has been circling Mars with its high-resolution cameras, radar devices, and spectrometers for over 20 years now, has identified the biggest water ice deposit ever discovered on the planet.
Melted, the water ice here — located under the Medusae Fossae Formation (MFF), a 620 mile- (1,000 km) long geological formation composed of a soft, deposit-like, highly erodable material, covering a wind-swept landscape of undulating hills, ridges, and valleys — would be enough to fill the Red Sea, or about 10x the volume of fresh water volume contained within the Great Lakes.
Mars' atmospheric pressure is less than a percent of Earth's; practically speaking, there is no atmosphere. Liquid water exposed to Martian surface conditions, if it doesn't freeze from the -80° F (-60° C) average temperature, immediately boils and evaporates. So you would need to create an atmosphere before melting all the MFF ice, if you wanted to create a big surface lake — and without a magnetic field to prevent solar wind from stripping the atmosphere away, I have no idea how you're ever going to keep an atmosphere on Mars.
Potential ice thickness at the MFF
But you could theoretically pressurize an airtight structure, like an underground cistern, to melt and store the water there, using the water as the basis for fuel (liquid hydrogen + liquid oxygen) and sustenance.
Maybe we could do that. But, miles to go, as Solana would say... (European Space Agency)
Venusian solar plane | Image: Geoffrey Landis
Venusian solar plane concept. Though still in its concept phase, NASA selected a proposal for a Venus sample return mission as part of its Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. The concept, under development by Geoffrey Landis and the NASA Glenn Research Center, would have a solar powered plane — much more feasible on Venus than Earth because Venus gets more solar energy — and a rover capable of launching a sample off the surface, which would then return to Earth.
The plane would explore the “middle atmosphere” of Venus — ranging from about 31 to 47 miles (50 to 75 km) above its surface — where it could explore the top of Venus' thick, highly reflective cloud cover, which is primarily composed of sulfuric acid droplets. It could also study the super-rotating winds in this part of the planet's atmosphere, which move even faster than the planet's rotation at speeds of up to 100 meters per second (about 224 mph, or 360 km/ hr). (Phys.org)
JAXA's SLIM on the lunar surface at an odd angle
SLIM slipped... Japan’s SLIM Moon probe landed safely, but I would still say sub-optimally, after all (last week, we weren't sure). JAXA released a new photo of the lander on the moon's surface, taken by a small rover it had carried with it to the moon. The picture shows that the lander made it safely down, very close to its target location. But it’s at a bit of an odd angle, which seems to be preventing it from using its solar panels. JAXA's hoping that once the angle of the sunlight changes, the probe will be able to power up. (Space.com) (@tobyliiiiiiiiii)
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Hydrofoil taxis. A Silicon Valley tech company called Navier is working on an electric, hydrofoil water taxi to ferry commuters across the San Francisco Bay, and will take some Stripe employees to work in an upcoming pilot partnership. Hydrofoil boats seem to glide above the water, which makes the experience of riding one much smoother and quieter; the hydrofoils allow the boats to go faster, too, as there's far less drag on the hull in the air than in the water. (Bloomberg)
VR spatial broadcasts. Say what you will about Apple's VR headset Vision Pro, but this demo (screencaps above) of a Formula One race spatial broadcast is a pretty compelling, or at least evocative, use case for the platform. Imagine a streaming VR app like this, for example, that provides subscription access to the NFL, MLB, NBA, etc. All that's left to do is to make a device for the app that doesn't get in the way of enjoying the games with your friends (unlike Apple's Vision Pro...). (@thealexbanks)
Let's get a few of these things up to the Mars colony
The Ark. SHERP is a Kyiv-headquartered company that produces quite a badass "amphibian utility task vehicle" called the ARK 3400 that can haul loads up to 7,500 lbs (3,400 kg) and seat up to 22 people; image above. I'm not sure what you and I, average consumers I presume, would need it for — other than having a blast driving over really bumpy stuff — but this video of the vehicle is cool. Get in loser, we're driving across a lake! (@Rainmaker1973)
DNA origami. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin folded DNA into the world’s first working nanoscale electromotor. It was created using a technique called DNA origami, which is exactly what it sounds like. They folded DNA into the shapes of an axle and motor blades, which rotate when an electric field is applied. This could be an important step towards building true nanomachines, which have all sorts of applications in fields ranging from medicine and pharmaceuticals to nanoelectronics and advanced materials. Cool. (Science Daily)
Dominion. There are new reports of a mosquito in Australia spreading a flesh eating bacteria, and an invasive species of fly that parasitizes baby Galapagos finches — also called Darwin’s finches because they helped him formulate the Theory of Evolution — that nearly always kills the poor birds. While not normally White Pill material, Owen wanted to include these items because they make the case for gene drives, as Mike Solana wrote about in his Dominion article (it's the canonical gene drive explainer, read it). Let’s stop pretending we can’t do anything and start wiping these bad guys out!!
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mRNA for treating ovarian cancer. Mutations in the tumor-suppressing gene p53 are a common precursor to cancer. This may be because p53 produces proteins that recognize "damage in the genetic material (DNA) of each cell... then prevents these abnormal cells from proliferating and activates repair mechanisms that rectify the damage. If this fails, it induces cell death.”
P53 is very good at preventing cancer. But if it gets mutated, that protection is gone. In ovarian cancer, about 96% of patients have a non-functioning p53 gene. So, recently, researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main tried their hand at a new cancer therapy tactic by injecting liposomes filled with mRNA produced by healthy p53 genes, which produce functional p53 proteins. When these liposomes were given to mice with ovarian cancer, tumors in the ovaries — and those metastasized elsewhere in the body — almost completely disappeared. Making the advance even more groundbreaking, they tweaked the chemical formula of the mRNA slightly to prevent the immune system from attacking it, extending its lifespan in the body from minutes up to two weeks. (MedicalXpress)
No-needle insulin. Getting insulin to patients has always required needles, because if you take it orally, it gets broken down by your stomach, which makes it useless. But a new approach could change that: capsules filled with nano-carriers in which insulin is encapsulated "protect the insulin from being broken down... keeping it safe until it reaches [the liver].” The coating gets broken down in the liver when blood sugar is high, releasing the insulin when and where it’s needed. In addition to being more convenient, dispensing with needles also greatly reduces the risk of hypoglycemia, a condition in diabetes where too much insulin causes a dangerous drop in blood sugar. And the best part, maybe, is that this stuff can be be taken in the form of sugar-free chocolate.
Human trials are scheduled for 2025. Let's go. (Science Daily)
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The Ambassadors | Hans Holbein (London, 1533)
Perhaps best known for his Henry VIII portrait, the German-born Hans Holbein was a Northern Renaissance painter distinctive for his meticulous detail, impressive photorealism, and his subjects' perplexingly convincing facial expressions. In 1533, he produced what at first appears to be a normal painting entitled The Ambassadors, but on closer examination, reveals a human skull stretched obliquely, like an extremely mismanaged Photoshop layer. Per the Cultural Tutor (one of the best follows on Twitter, you won't regret it), the skull is "an example of 'anamorphosis' — whereby an object is painted with warped proportions so that it appears distorted until it is viewed from a specific angle, at which point it suddenly looks normal."
But why did he put that there? Many of his other paintings — all, quite beautiful — seem concerned with his subjects' intriguing personalities, or the fine textures of their clothing. In their thread, the Cultural Tutor speculates:
The skull in The Ambassadors *literally* changes your view, forcing you to properly think about its strange and intrusive presence — no less strange or intrusive than death itself... In truth we will never know for sure. But whether Holbein was just playing around, making a philosophical point, or experimenting, he certainly succeeded in creating something special.
Dive into the entire thread here.
Ancient Amazonian urbanization. In recent years, large and extensive areas of ancient urbanization have been discovered in the Amazon rainforest — previously thought by archaeologists as too difficult to sustain anything so complex without more modern technology. Two takeaways: most of the Amazon rainforest is not pristine, but rather has undergone heavy human influence; and the few uncontacted primitive tribes almost certainly haven't been living that way since the Stone Age, but only since maybe 1500 or so. Crazy. (Science Alert)
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Touch grass this weekend.
-Brandon Gorrell
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