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Sometimes, space enthusiasts blind themselves with techno-optimism about all the potential cool technological things we can do and the benefits they can offer humanity. We conveniently ignore that there are trade-offs: if one group gets to utilize the water available on the lunar surface, that means another group doesn't get to. Recognizing and attempting to come up with a plan to deal with those sorts of trade-offs is the intent of a new paper by Marissa Herron and Therese Jones of NASA's Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, as well as Amanda Hernandez of BryceTech, a contractor based out of Virginia.

As you know, Colossal Biosciences, a company heavily funded by donors who include Paris Hilton and Tiger Woods, claims that it “de-extincted” the defunct dire wolf, and says it will have woolly mammoths on the ground within three years.  This claims are grossly misleading, as I pointed out in a recent Boston Globe op-ed. 

The press and much of the public, of course, reacted with joy at the notion that we could bring back charismatic extinct species, although here and there scientists like me would show why these claims are overblown, largely because the “de-extincted” species would represent only modern species that had had just a tiny handful of genetic edits making them resemble the extinct one.  Important adaptations in the extinct species, most notably those involving physiology and behavior (the latter would require edits to genes in the brain that we don’t know), would not appear in the de-extincted species.  As I wrote in my piece:

. . . . . most important, “de-extinction” is not de-extinction. The company says its claim to have de-extincted the dire wolf is legitimate because its edited pups meet some of the criteria for species “proxies” established in 2016 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But that claim is bogus. What Colossal has made is simply a gray wolf with a handful of genetic tweaks changing its size and color.

In the case of the mammoth, what we (may eventually) have is an Asian elephant with a handful of mammoth traits. And a handful of mammoth traits does not a mammoth make. I can paint my Ford Taurus bright red and even attach the Ferrari insignia to its hood, but it’s still a Ford Taurus, albeit with a handful of Ferrari traits. The Ferrari-ness of a Ferrari permeates every feature of a Ferrari’s engineering, just as the mammoth-ness of a mammoth permeates every feature of its biology. We know from ancient DNA studies that mammoths differ from Asian elephants at 1.4 million sites along its DNA, yet Colossal plans to mammoth-ize only a tiny fraction of these. Victoria Herridge, a mammoth expert, has described Colossal’s “mammoth” as nothing more than “an elephant in a fur coat.”

Now, according to a New Scientist article below (click headline to read archived version, or find it here), the chief scientific officer of Colossal has finally admitted, after claiming otherwise, that they really haven’t produced dire wolves. As we critics maintained, they’ve produced grey wolves with a few traits that might have been present in dire wolves. But even their admission of having distorted what they did is disingenuous, as they claim they never said what they in fact did say.

I’ve put an excerpt (indented) below:

Excerpt:

The dire wolf is “the world’s first successfully de-extincted animal”, Colossal Biosciences claimed on 7 April. And many people seemed to believe it. New Scientist was one of the few media outlets to reject the claim, pointing out that the animals created by Colossal are just grey wolves with a few gene edits.

Now, in a subsequent interview, Colossal’s chief scientist Beth Shapiro appears to agree. “It’s not possible to bring something back that is identical to a species that used to be alive. Our animals are grey wolves with 20 edits that are cloned,” she tells New Scientist. “And we’ve said that from the very beginning. Colloquially, they’re calling them dire wolves and that makes people angry.”

I haven’t seen the interview, but. . . .

Richard Grenyer at the University of Oxford says this is a major departure from what Colossal has said previously. “I read that as a clear statement of her view of what they did and didn’t do – and that what they didn’t do was bring back a dire wolf from extinction.”

“I think there is a serious inconsistency between the contents of the statement and the actions and publicity material – including the standard content of the website, not just [the] press briefing around the dire wolf – of the company,” he says.

For instance, the Colossal press release announcing the birth of the gene-edited wolves refers to them as “dire wolves” throughout. Shapiro defended this claim in an interview with New Scientist on 7 April.

“We are using the morphological species concept and saying, if they look like this animal, then they are the animal,” she said at the time.

I know of no biologist who adheres to the morphological species concept, and even if they do, they wouldn’t say “if they look like species X (with “like” being totally ambiguous), then they are members of species X. A superficial resemblance is not enough, and even then we don’t know what the real, extinct dire wolf looked like.

See my analogy with the Ferrari above, or, in a funny analogy in a NYT critique of Colossal, there’s this:

Calling the pups dire wolves, wrote the evolutionary biologist Rich Grenyer, is “like claiming to have brought Napoleon back from the dead by asking a short Frenchman to wear his hat.”

If you’ve followed Colossal’s statements, or gone to the de-extinction part of its website, the company is still claiming that it’s more or less bringing back species, though as I recall from earlier versions, they’ve walked back some of their claims. Now, for instance, they single out just six physical or physiological traits in the woolly mammoth that they’re trying to tweak, and they are still claiming that their efforts will make serious inroads on the problem of species extinction.

Here’s a kicker. Colossal engineered white coats into the three faux “dire wolves,” apparently because the animals (made famous by the t.v. series “Game of Thrones) were white on television. But. . .

It is actually unclear whether the gene-edited wolves look like dire wolves. For instance, there is some evidence dire wolves had reddish rather than white coats, according to Claudio Sillero at the University of Oxford.

And here’s one more claim that isn’t all what it seems to be:

Yet even when Sillero and other experts put out a statement saying the gene-edited grey wolves aren’t dire wolves, the company stuck to its guns. “[W]e stand by our decision to refer to Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi colloquially as dire wolves,” Colossal said in a statement on X. [JAC: Don’t bother looking up the tweet, as it’s no longer about dire wolves.]

But in her more recent interview with New Scientist, Shapiro claims Colossal made it clear from the start that the animals are just gene-edited grey wolves.

“We didn’t ever hide that that’s what it was. People were mad because we were calling them dire wolves,” she says. “Then they say to us, but they’re just grey wolves with 20 edits. But the point is we said that from the beginning. They’re grey wolves with 20 edits.”

Well, this is partly true. There were indeed 20 edits in the gray wolf genome, made in 14 genes, but five of those edits weren’t taken from the ancient DNA of the dire wolf; they were taken from mutations in dogs and gray wolves that resembled what Colossal thought dire wolves looked like. (We’re still not sure.) And among those five dog/wolf mutants were the color alleles that turned the faux wolves white.

On Colossal’s website, you can still see them claiming that they de-extincted the dire wolf:

Note Colossal’s claim that they “successfully restored a once-eradicated species”.  Now that is simply wrong. They used 15 edits taken from the dire wolf genome to produce a gray wolf that has only a tiny, tiny portion of dire wolf genome. Were I in Colossal, I’d simply drop the word “de-extinction.” But of course you don’t attract donor or make money by saying that you’re “tweaking an existing species to look like an extinct one.”

A new experiment encodes quantum information in the motion of the atoms and creates a state known as hyper-entanglement, in which two or more traits are linked among a pair of atoms.

A new experiment encodes quantum information in the motion of the atoms and creates a state known as hyper-entanglement, in which two or more traits are linked among a pair of atoms.

Researchers united insights from cellular biology, quantum computing, old-fashioned semiconductors and high-definition TVs to both create a revolutionary new quantum biosensor. In doing so, they shed light on a longstanding mystery in quantum materials.

Researchers united insights from cellular biology, quantum computing, old-fashioned semiconductors and high-definition TVs to both create a revolutionary new quantum biosensor. In doing so, they shed light on a longstanding mystery in quantum materials.

Diamond quantum sensors can be used to analyze the magnetization response of soft magnetic materials used in power electronics; report scientists based on collaborative research. Using a novel imaging technique, they developed quantum protocols to simultaneously image both the amplitude and phase of AC stray fields over a wide frequency range up to 2.3 MHz. Their results demonstrate that quantum sensing is a powerful tool for developing advanced magnetic materials across diverse applications.

Diamond quantum sensors can be used to analyze the magnetization response of soft magnetic materials used in power electronics; report scientists based on collaborative research. Using a novel imaging technique, they developed quantum protocols to simultaneously image both the amplitude and phase of AC stray fields over a wide frequency range up to 2.3 MHz. Their results demonstrate that quantum sensing is a powerful tool for developing advanced magnetic materials across diverse applications.

Blue phosphorescent OLEDs can now last as long as the green phosphorescent OLEDs already in devices, researchers have demonstrated, paving the way for further improving the energy efficiency of OLED screens.

Blue phosphorescent OLEDs can now last as long as the green phosphorescent OLEDs already in devices, researchers have demonstrated, paving the way for further improving the energy efficiency of OLED screens.

A research team has achieved a significant breakthrough in determining fundamental properties of atomic nuclei. The team conducted laser spectroscopy experiments on muonic helium-3. Muonic helium-3 is a special form of helium in which the atom s two electrons are replaced by a single, much heavier muon.

A research team has achieved a significant breakthrough in determining fundamental properties of atomic nuclei. The team conducted laser spectroscopy experiments on muonic helium-3. Muonic helium-3 is a special form of helium in which the atom s two electrons are replaced by a single, much heavier muon.

Whenever scientists present new research showing potential biosignatures on an exoplanet, follow-up articles spread like ripples on a pond. Mainstream media usually runs with it, which shows how the issue captures people's attention. The issue of life on other worlds is a compelling one. This is what happened recently with the exoplanet K2-18b.

A quantum computer with a million qubits would be able to crack the vital RSA encryption algorithm, and while such machines don't yet exist, that estimate could still fall further

Many people are worried about the health effects of ultra-processed foods and microplastics, but could these two issues actually be linked?

Trump continues to go after Harvard, ostensibly because of its pervasive antisemitism (granted, President Alan Garber says that the climate is still antisemitic and he himself has been a victim). However, Trump is punishing the wrong people for Harvard’s presumed crimes, and those include researchers whose grants have been cut or rescinded.

Now he’s taken an even more egregious step: threatening to ban the school’s ability to accept international students unless it coughs up a pile of information about all of Harvard’s foreign students.  Click the headline from April 17 below to read, or find the article archived here:

An excerpt:

The Trump administration on Thursday said it would halt Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation of the administration’s efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with the president’s agenda.

The administration notified Harvard about the decision — which could affect about a quarter of the school’s student body — after a back-and-forth in recent weeks over the legality of a sprawling records request as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation, according to three people with knowledge of the negotiations. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The latest move intensifies the administration’s attempt to upend the culture of higher education by directly subverting the ability of one of the nation’s premier universities to attract the best and brightest students from all over the world. That capability, across all of academia, has long been one of the greatest sources of academic, economic and scientific strength in America.

It is also likely to prompt a second legal challenge from Harvard, according to another person familiar with the school’s thinking who insisted on anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The university sued the Trump administration last month over the government’s attempt to impose changes to its curriculum, admissions policies and hiring practices.

“I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked,” a letter to the university from Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.

The Department of Homeland Security said the action applied to current and future students.

“Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” the department said in a news release after Ms. Noem posted the administration’s letter on social media later on Thursday.

Not only that, but current foreign students have to find another place to study, pronto. Do you think that’s easy? And of course Trump has a way to enforce this plan: all he has to do is revoke the visas of foreign students.

Granted, a lot of dosh is involved, as foreign students tend to pay full fare:

The administration’s decision is likely to have a significant effect on the university’s bottom line. Tuition at Harvard is $59,320 for the 2025-26 school year, and costs can rise to nearly $87,000 when room and board are included. International students tend to pay larger shares of education costs compared with other students. (Harvard notes it is need-blind for all students, regardless of nationality.)

You can read the letter from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem here, which lays out what Harvard has to cough up to prevent loss of its foreign students. It was apparently sent to the school

I don’t think Harvard responded by the April 30 deadline, and they have responded this way:

Harvard relayed those concerns to the administration on April 30. On the same day, the university’s executive vice president, Meredith Weenick, issued a public letter that vowed the school would provide the administration only with information “required by law” and urged students to “stay as focused as possible on your academic pursuits.”

The administration responded the following week, notifying Harvard that the school’s response did not satisfy Ms. Noem’s request, the people said. In the same message, the administration appeared to narrow its request by asking for information on international students who met any one of four criteria.

Noem then disqualified Harvard from the student visa program. I have just learned that Harvard has filed a lawsuit over this latest action and has filed a restraining order against the government (you can read the new suit here). I haven’t read it yet,  and though I’m not a lawyer, I think the university has a good case. Harvard is being singled out among all American universities in this way (some are even more antisemitic than Harvard) and the government’s dismissing of foreign applicants has never been done before. I’m not sure whether selective enforcement is grounds to sue, but you can be sure that Harvard will mount a case.

One quarter of Harvard’s students are foreign, and they are essential to Harvard being Harvard. Further, it’s inimical to scholarship to prevent students who want to study at Harvard from coming here, denying the world the ability to send people to an American university renowned for producing brilliant foreign scholars.

This morning, Steve Pinker published a long op-ed in the NYT on the “Harvard derangement syndrome” of the administration. Click on the headline below to read it, or find it archived here:

An excerpt (Steve first mentions all the pieces he’s written criticizing Harvard):

So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged. According to its critics, Harvard is a “national disgrace,” a “woke madrasa,” a “Maoist indoctrination camp,” a “ship of fools,” a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” a “cesspool of extremist riots” and an “Islamist outpost” in which the “dominant view on campus” is “destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization.”

And that’s before we get to President Trump’s opinion that Harvard is “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution,” a “Liberal mess” and a “threat to Democracy,” which has been “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders.”

This is not just trash talk. On top of its savage slashing of research funding across the board, the Trump administration has singled out Harvard to receive no federal grants at all. Not satisfied with these punishments, the administration just forbade Harvard from enrolling foreign students and has threatened to multiply the tax on its endowment as much as 15-fold, as well as to remove its tax-free nonprofit status.

Call it Harvard Derangement Syndrome. As the country’s oldest, richest and most famous university, Harvard has always attracted outsize attention. In the public imagination the university is both the epitome of higher learning and a natural magnet for grievances against elites.

He admits that Harvard still has problems:

Yet some of the enmity against Harvard has been earned. My colleagues and I have worried for years about the erosion of academic freedom here, exemplified by some notorious persecutions. In 2021 the biologist Carole Hooven was demonized and ostracized, effectively driving her out of Harvard, for explaining in an interview how biology defines male and female. Her cancellation was the last straw that led us to create the academic freedom council, but it was neither the first nor the last.

. . .The most painful indictment of Harvard is its alleged antisemitism — not the old-money WASP snobbery of Oliver Barrett III, but a spillover of anti-Zionist zealotry. A recent, long-awaited report detailed many troubling incidents. Jewish students have felt intimidated by anti-Israel protests that have disrupted classes, ceremonies and everyday campus life, often met with a confused response by the university. Members of the teaching staff have gratuitously injected pro-Palestinian activism into courses or university programming. Many Jewish students, particularly Israelis, reported being ostracized or demonized by their peers.

As with its other maladies, Harvard’s antisemitism has to be considered with a modicum of discernment. Yes, the problems are genuine. But “a bastion of rampant anti-Jew hatred” with the aim of “destroying the Jews as a first step to destroying Western civilization”? Oy gevalt!

I’m glad there’s some Yiddish in there.  He notes that withholding grant money hurts Jews than other groups, and is hypocritical given Trump’s past statements:

Just as clear is what won’twork: the Trump administration’s punitive defunding of science at Harvard. Contrary to a widespread misunderstanding, a federal grant is not alms to the university, nor may the executive branch dangle it to force grantees to do whatever it wants. It is a fee for a service — namely, a research project that the government decides (after fierce competitive review) would benefit the country. The grant pays for the people and equipment needed to carry out that research, which would not be done otherwise.

Mr. Trump’s strangling of this support will harm Jews more than any president in my lifetime. Many practicing and aspiring scientists are Jewish, and his funding embargo has them watching in horror as they are laid off, their labs are shut down or their dreams of a career in science go up in smoke. This is immensely more harmful than walking past a “Globalize the Intifada” sign. Worse still is the effect on the far larger number of gentiles in science, who are being told that their labs and careers are being snuffed out to advance Jewish interests. Likewise for the current patients whose experimental treatments will be halted, and the future patients who may be deprived of cures. None of this is good for the Jews.

The concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: “The Universities Are the Enemy.”

Indeed. It’s natural that a populist and delusional President will go after America’s most elite university.

. . . . Why does this matter? For all its foibles, Harvard (together with other universities) has made the world a better place, significantly so. Fifty-two faculty members have won Nobel Prizes and more than 5,800 patents are held by Harvard. Its researchers invented baking powder, the first organ transplant, the programmable computer, the defibrillator, the syphilis test and oral rehydration therapy (a cheap treatment that has saved tens of millions of lives). They developed the theory of nuclear stability that has saved the world from Armageddon. They invented the golf tee and the catcher’s mask. Harvard spawned “Sesame Street,” The National Lampoon, “The Simpsons,” Microsoft and Facebook.

Ongoing research at Harvard includes methane-tracking satellites, robotic catheters, next-generation batteries and wearable robotics for stroke victims. Federal grants are supporting research on metastasis, tumor suppression, radiation and chemotherapy in children, multidrug-resistant infections, pandemic prevention, dementia, anesthesia, toxin reduction in firefighting and the military, the physiological effects of spaceflight and battlefield wound care. Harvard’s technologists are pushing innovations in quantum computing, A.I., nanomaterials, biomechanics, foldable bridges for the military, hack-resistant computer networks and smart living environments for the elderly. One lab has developed what may be a cure for Type 1 diabetes.

Pinker feels that Harvard is capable of reforming itself, and in fact is now doing so. But even if some of the reforms coincide with those demanded by the Trump administration, it’s simply bad for the government to mold universities to its liking. Withholding grants and revoking the visas of foreign students will not cure Harvard of antisemitism.

Trump is violating the third of Haidt and Lukianoff’s “great untruths” which, ironically, are supposed to motivate young people, not universities:

“Life is a battle between good people and evil people.”

Read the whole op-ed, written with Pinker’s typical panache; he concludes that, for Harvard, the “appropriate treatment (as with other imperfect institutions) is to diagnose which parts need which remedies, not to cut its carotid and watch it bleed out.” Sadly, Trump has already wielded the knife.

h/t Greg Mayer

Our nearest neighbor is only slightly smaller than the Earth… but that’s just about the only thing the two planets have in common. Now, a recent NASA-funded study suggests that the interior of Venus may be equally strange as well.

Reader Ephraim Heller sends some lovely photos from his safari in Tanaznia in April 2025. Emphraim’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Today’s photos focus on lions (Panthera leo). [JAC: I especially love this one]:

Puzzlingly, many birds add human-made material to their nests with no obvious function – now there is evidence that these home improvements might ward off predators

The United States’ government is waging an all-out assault on Harvard University. The strategy, so far, has been:

• Cut most of the grants (present and future) for scientific and medical research, so that thousands of Harvard’s scientists, researchers and graduate students have to stop their work indefinitely. That includes research on life-saving medicine, on poorly understood natural phenomena, and on new technology. This also means that the university will have no money from these activities to pay salaries of its employees.
• Eliminate the tax-advantageous status of the university, so that the university is much more expensive to operate.
• Prohibit Harvard from having any international students (undergraduate and graduate) and other researchers, so that large numbers of existing scientific and medical research projects that still have funding will have to cease operation. This destroys the careers of thousands of brilliant people — and not just foreigners. Many US faculty and students are working with and depend upon these expelled researchers, and their work will stop too. It also means that Harvard’s budget for the next academic year will be crushed, since it is far too late to replace the tuition from international undergraduate students for the coming year.

The grounds for this war is that Harvard allegedly does not provide a safe environment for its Jewish students, and that Harvard refuses to let the government determine who it may and may not hire.

Now, maybe you can explain to me what this is really about. I’m confused what crimes these scientific researchers commited that justifies stripping them of their grants and derailing their research. I’m also unclear as to why many apolitical, hard-working young trainees in laboratories across the campus deserve to be ejected from their graduate and post-graduate careers and sent home, delaying or ruining their futures. [Few will be able to transfer to other US schools; with all the government cuts to US science, there’s no money to support them at other locations.] And I don’t really understand how such enormous damage and disruption to the lives and careers of ten thousand-ish scientists, researchers and graduate students at Harvard (including many who are Jewish) will actually improve the atmosphere for Harvard’s Jewish students.

As far as I can see, the government is merely using Jewish students as pawns, pretending to attack Harvard on their behalf while in truth harboring no honest concern for their well-being. The fact that the horrors and nastiness surrounding the Gaza war are being exploited by the government as cover for an assault on academic freedom and scientific research is deeply cynical and exceedingly ugly.

From the outside, where Harvard is highly respected — it is certainly among the top five universities in the world, however you rank them — this must look completely idiotic, as idiotic as France gutting the Sorbonne, or the UK eviscerating Oxford. But keep in mind that Harvard is by no means the only target here. The US government is cutting the country’s world-leading research in science, technology and medicine to the bone. If that’s what you want to do, then ruining Harvard makes perfect sense.

The country that benefits the most from this self-destructive behavior? China, obviously. As a friend of mine said, this isn’t merely like shooting yourself in the foot, it’s like shooting yourself in the head.

I suspect most readers will understand that I cannot blog as usual right now. To write good articles about quantum physics requires concentration and focus. When people’s careers and life’s work are being devastated all around me, that’s simply not possible.