International News 96
Scientists uncover a habitable planet where you may live until the age of 3,158.
Scientists have discovered a potentially habitable planet 100 light years away from Earth where the average life expectancy would be 3,158 years.
Two planets were discovered orbiting the star TOI-4306 by an international team of scientists, led by astrophysicist Laetitia Delrez.
TOI-4306 is about half as hot as our sun and 6.5 times smaller.
The first planet is called LP 890-9b or TOI-4306b. It is about 30 percent bigger than the Earth and completes an orbit around its star in just 2.7 days.
The current average life expectancy on Earth is 73.5 years. This would mean the average life expectancy on TOI-4306b, which has a much shorter year due to its very short orbit, would be 9,943.
That’s a hell of a lot of candles on your birthday cake.
This planet was initially identified by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS is a space mission that is dedicated to the search of exoplanets in nearby orbiting stars. Exoplanets are worlds outside of our solar system.
The researchers at the University of Liège used their ground-based SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) telescopes to confirm and characterise this planet. They also use that telescope to find any other planets that TESS might have missed.
The SPECULOOS telescopes are also equipped with highly sensitive infrared cameras, so it becomes very easy for them to observe these types of stars with high precision.
It is because of this that they were also able to detect another planet called LP 890-9c or SPECULOOS-2c.
This planet is about 40 percent larger than the Earth and has an orbital period of about 8.5 days. So if you happened to live on this planet, you could celebrate up to 3,158 birthdays.
What’s more, since TOI-4306 is such a cool star, it means that LP 890-9c could potentially be habitable, despite being closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun.
Francisco J. Pozuelos, one of the scientists who co-authored and helped publish the paper about these planets in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal, explained: “Although this planet orbits very close to its star, at a distance about 10 times shorter than that of Mercury around our sun, the amount of stellar irradiation it receives is still low, and could allow the presence of liquid water on the planet’s surface, provided it has a sufficient atmosphere.
“This is because the star LP 890-9 is about 6.5 times smaller than the sun and has a surface temperature half that of our star. This explains why LP 890-9c, despite being much closer to its star than the Earth is to the sun, could still have conditions that are suitable for life.”
This also means that these planets are perfect candidates for scientists to study and determine whether there are any possible traces of life in their atmospheres. LP 890-9c is currently the second most favourable target for study by the James Webb telescope.
California Wants Everybody To Buy an Electric Car, but Its Own Energy Grid Can’t Support It
Amid a heat wave, warnings were sent out not to recharge electric vehicles during peak hours.
A massive heatwave has come to California, so citizens of the Golden State may be enduring triple-digit temperatures for a week. The pressure the heat will throw onto the state’s power grid has prompted an emergency call for citizens to reduce electricity use during peak early evening hours. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency that temporarily eases some state regulations limiting operations of thermal power plants and portable generators.
Part of this call for citizens to reduce electricity consumption from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. also includes a request that citizens “avoid charging electric vehicles while the Flex Alert is in effect.” This request comes only a week after California leaders moved forward with a plan to ban most gasoline-powered vehicle sales in the state (with an exception for hybrid vehicles) by 2035.
Though it is true that such a ban will reduce emissions, switching to electric vehicles will over time dramatically increase the strain on California’s power grid. If everybody in California went out and bought electric vehicles tomorrow, it would probably be an energy disaster.
That’s probably not going to happen for a few reasons. California solely plans to ban sales, not all operations of gasoline-powered cars. Millions of Californians won’t and probably can’t afford to transition to electric vehicles within the next 13 years. Though California has the most electric vehicles registered of any state (550,000), that’s out of more than 14 million total vehicles, so still a drop in the bucket.
In that sense, the slow-but-steady adoption of electric vehicles should give the state the opportunity to actually plan for an increase in energy demand. On Wednesday, lawmakers voted to keep the nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, open until at least 2030. It had been scheduled to be decommissioned by 2025.
A 2017 report from the California Energy Commission which forecasted energy demand until 2030 did so by assuming an increase in the adoption of electric vehicles in the state. Their highest estimate assumes that 3.9 million of these vehicles on the road in California by 2030. The increase in electricity demand would thus be significant, jumping from less than 1,000-gigawatt hours in 2017 to about 16,000 by 2030. California consumes about 260 terawatt hours of electricity annually, according to U.S. Department of Energy statistics. It would be an increase in energy demand of around 6 per cent per year by 2030.
A single nuclear plant could handle a good chunk of this new demand, but the amount of energy generated would still be far less than needed to achieve California’s long-term goal of getting rid of gas-powered vehicles entirely and switching to electric.
The government shouldn’t be forcing people to purchase—or abstain from purchasing—certain types of vehicles in the first place. But beyond that, signalling to the public that the electricity grid is being overtaxed during the summer does not instil residents with confidence that California is prepared for the transition it’s trying to mandate.
Pubs closure warning: ‘My energy bill went to £35,000 from £13,000’
Pubs across the UK will be forced to close due to energy costs soaring by as much as 300%, brewery bosses have said.
Pubs | Leaders of six of the country’s largest breweries have called for “immediate government intervention” on sky-high energy bills this winter.
The landlord of one pub in Essex told the BBC that his energy costs had risen from about £13,000 a year to £35,000.
Pub owners said the energy crisis would cause “real and serious irreversible” damage to the industry without support.
In an open letter to the government, six pub and brewing groups – JW Lees, Carlsberg Marston’s, Admiral Taverns, Drake & Morgan, Greene King and St Austell Brewery – called for urgent intervention, including a support package and a cap on the price of energy for businesses.
Rocketing energy bills come at a time when the number of pubs in England and Wales is falling, hitting the lowest level on record – 39,970 in June, according to analysis.
Simon Cleary, who runs the Plough in Great Chesterford, Essex, said his gas and electricity bills had nearly tripled to £35,000 a year.
It means the pub now needs to generate a further £1,800 in takings per week to cover the costs.
“It really is that bad,” he told the BBC. “I think it’s going to be really tough unless there is intervention from the government.”
Mr Cleary said heating the pub in the winter made up the majority of his gas bill, with about 20% used for cooking food.
In a bid to try to reduce his electricity bill, the landlord has fitted LED bulbs. However, there is only so much energy he can save because fridges, freezers and the cooling system for the cellar need to be on all the time. “You cannot turn your cellar cooling off, you need it on even in the winter.”
He added: “Many pubs are very older buildings, few pubs have got cavity wall insulation. This pub was built in 1780. Back in those days nobody was thinking about conserving energy.”
Chris Jowsey, boss of Admiral Taverns which has 1,600 pubs, said his tenanted pubs now pay more in energy bills than they do in rent.
He told the BBC that one of his tenants told him he was leaving after 20 years due to his electricity bill going up 450% – an increase so large he couldn’t pass it on to pub customers.
Mr Jowsey said Admiral was investing in energy-saving equipment for pub cellars and to control how much energy fridges use. He also said the company was “looking very closely at a scheme to try and buy energy in bulk and to allow licensees to make use of our own scale”.
But he said: “Even when we went to the energy market in recent months, no-one was initially willing to supply even us, never mind an individual licensee and their pub.
“So we’re trying to do everything we can,” said Mr Jowsey. “But frankly, this is of such a scale that even we can’t support this on our own, we desperately need government intervention to help because actually the market is broken.”
The Department for Business, Energy and Industry said “no government” would be able to control the “global factors pushing up the price of energy and other business costs”.
“But we will continue to support the hospitality sector in navigating the months ahead,” a spokesman added. The government said it was providing a “50% business rates relief for businesses across the UK, freezing alcohol duty rates on beer, cider, wine and spirits and reducing employer national insurance”.
Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, warned the rise in energy bills would cause more damage to the industry than the pandemic did if it didn’t receive support in the next few weeks.
‘Waiting for a PM’
The government has previously said no new policies will be announced until the new prime minister is announced on 5 September.
But Mr Jowsey said: “I find it incredible that we have to wait for one person to get elected before we actually get some decisions and some policy which will protect not just jobs, not just people’s livelihoods, but also their homes – because remember most people that run pubs in this country actually live above the shop.”
Jonathan Reynolds, Labour’s shadow business secretary, said businesses couldn’t “afford another day of this zombie government”, saying his party would bring down costs for small firms by cutting business rates.
Nick Mackenzie, the boss of Greene King – one of the UK’s largest pub groups with over 3,100 pubs – said the company could face “the prospect of pubs being unable to pay their bills, jobs being lost and beloved locals across the country forced to close their doors”.
He added that would mean all the support given to pubs through the pandemic to stay in businesses “could be wasted”.
Meanwhile, William Lees Jones, of JW Lees, said the government needed to extend the energy cap to business as well as households.
He said with more fixed-price contracts coming up for renewal the “time to act is now”.
On Friday, the energy regulator Ofgem, which sets the price cap on household bills, said it would rise by 80% in October.
But unlike households, businesses aren’t covered by a regulated energy price cap, meaning bills are even higher.
Aside from bills, breweries also highlighted a possible shortage of carbon dioxide (CO2) which is used in the production of beer.
CF Industries, the UK’s largest CO2 producer, recently announced that it would temporarily stop production at one of its plants because rising energy prices made it too expensive to continue.
Artemis: NASA is preparing to start a new era of Moon exploration.
The American space agency is counting down the days until the launch of its massive new Moon rocket, the Space Launch System.
SLS is Nasa’s most powerful vehicle to date, and it will serve as the basis for the Artemis project, which intends to reintroduce humans to the lunar surface after a 50-year hiatus.
The rocket is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Monday at 08:33 local time (12:33 GMT; 13:33 BST).
Its mission will be to propel the Orion test capsule far from Earth.
This spacecraft will make a large arc around the Moon before returning home to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean in six weeks.
Orion is unmanned for this demonstration, but assuming all of the hardware functions correctly, astronauts will board a series of increasingly demanding missions beginning in 2024.
“Everything we’re doing with this Artemis I flight is through the prism of what can we prove out and what can we demonstrate that would bring down risk for the Artemis II crewed mission,” Nasa astronaut Randy Bresnik revealed.
The US space agency has multiple possibilities to fly SLS-Orion during the next week, but it will want to choose the one right in front of it.
At this time of year, the weather in Florida is quite volatile, with regular electrical storms passing over the spaceport.
Indeed, the lightning towers on the pad have been hit multiple times in recent days.
Monday is an excellent day to fly because circumstances are usually the calmest early in the morning.
“Basically, the start of the launch window, or right after 08:30 a.m., has an 80% likelihood of favourable weather,” meteorologist Melody Lovin said.
However, if technical concerns lead the launch to be delayed beyond the authorized two-hour window, the chance drops to 60% due to the possibility of showers. It is not permissible for the rocket to take off in the rain.
Is Artemis the Apollo of a new era?
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first tiny steps on the Moon in 1969, they heralded the beginning of a golden age of space exploration. The Apollo program altered our perceptions of our planet and ourselves. After 50 years, humanity has returned to the Moon’s orbit. And for those who were unable to experience the Apollo missions in person, Artemis is hoped to inspire a new generation.
The new missions will be unique. Nasa intends to land the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon, demonstrating that space exploration is available to all. And the lunar surface is only the beginning.
Up to 200,000 people are anticipated to crowd the beaches and causeways surrounding Kennedy. On Sunday, campervans began staking out the best spots.
The ascent should be spectacular.
SLS will launch with 39.1 meganewtons (8.8 million pounds) of thrust. That’s over 15% more than the Saturn V rockets that sent the Apollo astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
On takeoff, the SLS’s engines could power the equivalent of over 60 Concorde supersonic jets.
“This rocket will be bigger, louder, and more stunning than any you’ve seen before,” said Lorna Kenna, vice president of the Jacobs Space Operations Group, a major contractor at Kennedy.
“There’s nothing quite like feeling sound – not just hearing it, but feeling it wash over you.”
The mission’s main goal is revealed at the very end.
Engineers are particularly concerned about Orion’s heatshield’s ability to withstand the tremendous temperatures it would encounter during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Orion will be approaching at 38,000km/h (24,000mph), or 32 times the speed of sound.
“Even the strengthened carbon-carbon that protected the shuttle was only good for roughly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,600 degrees Celsius),” said Mike Hawes, the Orion programme manager at aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
“We’re now approaching more than 4,000 degrees (2,200C).
We’ve returned to the Apollo ablative substance known as Avocat.
It’s in sections with a gap filler, and testing is a top priority.”
This voyage is significant not only for Nasa but also for the European Space Agency.
It has given Orion the service module.
This is the portion at the back of the capsule that propels it through space. It’s an in-kind donation that Europe hopes will lead to its citizens being included in future Moon missions.
Missions to Artemis IX are currently in the works.
At that point, the Moon should have dwellings and roving vehicles for astronauts to use.
However, Artemis is eventually viewed as a testing ground for getting people to Mars.
“President Obama established a timeline for this. He stated the year 2033 “NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was recalled.
“Each successive administration has backed the effort, and I’m now told that the realistic timescale is the late 2030s, possibly 2040.”
Inflation: Why price rises are worse for some people than others
The cost of living is more than 10% higher than it was a year ago, the official figures say. But you may feel your bills have risen by a lot more.
That’s because your own personal inflation rate is driven by factors specific to you: if you’re someone who buys a lot of petrol, your weekly outgoings will have gone up a lot more than someone who cycles everywhere, for example.
Here are some ways that your individual experience of price rises may be at odds with what’s reported in the news.
It depends on what you’re buying
Inflation is measured by taking a typical “basket” of goods and services and seeing how much they’re going up in price.
The contents of that basket change each year as habits change. Pet collars, sports bras or canned pulses on your shopping list? The Official for National Statistics (ONS) which is responsible for calculating inflation statistics, says you’re on trend for 2022.
In the age of hybrid work, however, suits are out, and blazers, for the more sporadic trip to the office, are in instead. Individual bakery doughnuts are also out because people working from home are more likely to plump for multipacks instead apparently. Not everything you buy is reflected in the official inflation numbers; the more niche, the less likely it is to be monitored. And the things you’re buying may go up in price by more than what’s in the basket, or if you’re lucky by less.
It’s also a question of how much
It’s not just what’s in the ONS’s basket that’s re-evaluated at the start of every year – but how big a part that item plays in our day-to-day spending. Every item has a “weight” attached, so the changing price of petrol will have a much bigger impact than if the cost of tea goes up – simply because we spend a much bigger proportion of our income on petrol.
Sometimes that means there’s a bit of a lag. For example, at present, the ONS assumes that household energy bills make up about 3.5% of spending, which was accurate at the start of 2022. But with energy bills poised to at least double, they’re ultimately going to take up 7% or more of a typical household budget. That means the official rate of inflation may not be fully reflecting the impact of rising energy bills until next year.
On the other hand, the stats office has yet to decide how to account for the help given to households this autumn, which will offset some of the increase. The help won’t automatically be reflected in headline inflation numbers but it should help ease the pressure.
What type of home you have also matters
Inflation has been driven mainly by higher energy costs over the last year – but bills vary widely from household to household.
For the 86% of UK homes that are mainly heated by gas, bills have risen more sharply, than where heating is from oil or electricity.
Fuel efficiency makes a big difference too. Homes are rated on energy performance, from A to G, with A being the most efficient. Average fuel costs for a home in England with a D rating are a fifth higher than for those with an A-C rating. Those with a G rating may pay three times as much; those lofty but draughty period homes come with an invisible extra price tag.
It’s the basics that are going up
Between 2014 and 2021, the ONS reckons inflation was pretty much the same for people in all income groups.
But that’s changed this year, because the main items that are rising in price are staples: food as well as energy. That has a bigger impact on those with the lowest incomes. At the start of 2022, energy bills typically made up just 2% of the spending of the richest 10% of households’ spending. But for the poorest 10% of households energy made up 7% of their budgets. Even if that draughty mansion is expensive to heat, that might not represent as big a problem to the owner as a person on a low income in a small flat.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a thinktank, reckons that the least well-off households will consequently face an 18% inflation rate in October, compared to 11% for the richest 20%.
A rising income can cushion the blow
Even if prices are rising for everyone, the pain felt varies. And the only way to maintain living standards is to have more money coming in.
The average pay packet is failing to match the rising cost of living; the gap between the two is the biggest for at least two decades. The private sector – in particular hospitality, where staff shortages have been acute, and financial services – have typically seen bigger pay rises than the public sector. Those relying on the state pension or Universal Credit may see those rates go up by 10% – but they’ll have to wait for next spring.
So if you feel your money goes less far than a year ago, chances are, you’re far from alone.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of using “nuclear blackmail”
Ukraine war: Zelensky warns Russian soldiers at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
Russia seized the plant in March and has been accused of turning it into a base from where it hits nearby towns.
Both countries have traded blame for shelling it in recent days, prompting UN warnings of a nuclear disaster.
Mr Zelensky says any Russian soldier who shoots at or under the cover of the plant will be a “special target”.
The six-nuclear reactor Zaporizhzhia station is located in the city of Enerhodar, on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River (Dnipro in Ukrainian) in southern Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, seizing the plant within days. Moscow has kept Ukrainian personnel to operate the facility.
The UN has warned that continued hostilities around the station could lead to a nuclear disaster affecting much of Europe.
Russia has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing at the plant.
It says it seized control of the plant to prevent leaks of radioactive materials during fighting in the region.
During his video address late on Saturday, Mr Zelensky said Russia had engaged in “constant provocations” by firing on the plant and said forces stationed there had used it as a base to shell the cities of Nikopol and Marhanets – on the other bank of the river.
This was being done, the president said, to “blackmail our state and the entire free world”. But he stressed that “Russian blackmail only mobilises even more global efforts to confront terror”.
“Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the plant or shoots under cover of the plant must understand that he is becoming a special target for our intelligence, our special services, our army,” the president said.
He added that “every day” of Russia’s plant occupation “increases the radiation threat to Europe”.
Ukraine’s defence intelligence agency also accused Russia of a provocation by parking a Pion self-propelled heavy artillery piece outside a nearby town and painting a Ukrainian flag on it, in an attempt to discredit Kyiv.
On Thursday, foreign ministers from the G7 group of industrial democracies demanded that Russia withdraw from the site immediately.
Their warning echoed statements from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which called for an end to “all military activities that endanger nuclear security”.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that the situation at the plant could “lead to disaster”.
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