Health risks of space radiation for astronauts
Welcome to Ramin’s Space, the newsletter from journalist and writer Ramin Skibba, which you can read about here. If you like it, please consider subscribing and sharing this post. Thank you to my new subscribers, too.
New space radiation limits needed for NASA astronauts
Space radiation could be a big problem for the next generation of astronauts. Spending a year at the space station isn’t so bad, but a trip to Mars would put you past the recommended limit, risking cancer. A new report calls for a maximum on the amount of space radiation people can be exposed to, but there will be some who exceed that threshold, and I worry about their health. Here’s my take on the situation for Scientific American.
Digging into our Milky Way's history
How did our galaxy come to look the way it does today? Answering that question involves searching for clues, including subtle structures of flocks of stars. For this piece in Knowable magazine, I talked to Amina Helmi, a galactic archaeologist, who pieces together the last 10 billion years, including a giant collision with another galaxy that took aeons to recover from.
Tests of general relativity with gravitational waves can go awry
Before 2015, no one knew for sure that gravitational waves could ever be detected. But now physicists are frequently spotting them, enabling new studies that put Einstein's theory of general relativity. But I point out in this Inside Science story that it’s too easy to misinterpret uncertainties and end up with an anomalous claim of a violation of relativity. Scientists were embarrassed when they erroneously claimed evidence for neutrinos traveling faster than light in 2011, and no one wants to repeat that.
In other writing…
The nature of plastics
What exactly are plastics and what does it mean that they’re now so ubiquitous, throughout our lives, ingested in our bodies, clogging up the seas, and proliferating throughout our planet? I recommend this eloquent essay by Meera Subramanian in Orion magazine.
How a sharp-eyed scientist became biology’s image detective
The biologist Elizabeth Bik investigates research misconduct by manually looking for image duplicates in scientific papers, a particularly harmful form of plagiarism. I enjoyed this profile by Ingfei Chen in the New Yorker.
Evolution of the dad
Among most mammalian species, fathers don’t do much besides provide sperm. Humans are the exception. For Father’s Day, Elizabeth Preston wrote this piece in Knowable magazine, where she talked to anthropologists about how engaged human fathers became the norm. Personally, I believe we’ll one day come to expect dads and moms to contribute equally to parenting.
The spacecraft that changed how I see the universe
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, named after the Italian physicist, has for years been revealing parts of the gamma ray universe, including stars’ explosive deaths and black holes feeding on nearby matter. Fascinating essay by Liz Kruesi in National Geographic about this telescope and why it’s important to her.
What it means to be wild
What’s the role of wild animals in a human world? In this piece for bioGraphic magazine, Ashley Braun reviews Emma Marris’s new book, Wild Souls, which explores our complex relationships with — and responsibility for — wild animals. Ethical dilemmas abound, and there are no easy answers.
Notes on a year without strangers
As life begins to gradually return to normal in parts of the US, it’s important to reflect on this challenging pandemic and think about how we’ll move forward. I like this personal essay by Elisa Gabbert in Harper’s magazine.
What I’m reading: Andrew Bacevich’s new book, After the Apocalypse, which looks to at the US’s post-COVID future in historical context and reminds us to avoid “American exceptionalism.” I’m also reading the new Malcolm X biography by Les and Tamara Payne (and I also recommend this biography by Manning Marable.)
Looking back: Five years ago this month, I published my first investigative story, exploring debates in California about BPA and other chemicals in plastics, in the San Jose Mercury News.
More about me: I’m an astrophysicist turned science writer and freelance journalist based in San Diego. You can find me at my website, raminskibba.net and on Twitter @raminskibba. I’m also former president of the San Diego Science Writers Association (SANDSWA) and on the board of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), though the opinions I express are mine alone. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you’re welcome to subscribe too.