Researchers Track Gaza's Destruction from Space, and other stories
Welcome to Ramin’s Space, the newsletter from science writer Ramin Skibba. You can read more about the newsletter here. If you like it, please consider subscribing and sharing this post.
How do we best tell stories about science, space and technology, including communicating the search for alien life, at a time when trust in journalists is low and trust in scientists has dropped? It’s a question I’ve been thinking about lately. I suppose the most important thing is to remind people that journalists and scientists are people too, with different skills and perspectives of the world, and they’re doing their best during these challenging times, just like everyone else.
I remember participating in astrophysics workshops in Jerusalem in 2004 and 2007, while I was an early-career scientist. I met many influential dark matter, galaxy, and cosmology researchers there. We worked a walkable distance from the Old City of Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. I spent a day off visiting the B’Tselem human rights group and accompanied Israeli, Palestinian, and international activists at the Qalandia checkpoint near Ramallah.
I enjoyed the workshops, learning from and sharing ideas with experts from around the world, followed by boisterous scientific and political discussions over dinners with hummus, baba ghanoush and falafel. One speaker there was Avi Loeb, and if I recall, he spoke about the growth of stars in the early universe. Since then, his research focus shifted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, a field led by groundbreaking scientists like Jill Tarter, and the late Carl Sagan and Frank Drake.
Some 20 years later, I and other journalists as well as outreach-focused astronomers recently participated in a virtual NASA-organized workshop called Communicating Discoveries in the Search for Life in the Universe. Loeb wasn’t there, but his name came up a lot, like an invisible elephant in the room. He’s been doing important work, like with his Galileo Project, but he’s also controversial, getting more media attention than Tarter while proposing that rare space objects like the strange comet ’Oumuamua could be alien spacecraft. I’m all for airing provocative and bold ideas, but let’s do so while being clear about the evidence available—and about our enduring desire to determine whether we Earthlings are alone in the universe.
I suppose the point of all this is that sometimes scientists won’t have a consensus, whether it’s about the hunt for E.T. and habitable planets or whether it’s how to respond to climate change and pandemics. The science of astronomical observation is pretty clear, just as it is of global warming and the COVID-19 virus, but how we choose to act on that science can be complex, something needing ongoing, open discussion with a broad range of experts.
Tracking the destruction of Gaza from space
I’m proud to publish my first post-WIRED freelance piece, a short feature for Undark magazine.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has clearly taken a grim and deadly turn, following Hamas’s grisly attack on October 7 and the Israeli military’s devastation of Gaza. The 31,000 Palestinian death toll could grow considerably if the collective starvation of the 2 million residents continues. And now the IDF seems poised to invade Rafah, the last refuge of the 25-mile besieged enclave.
In this piece, I present researchers who’ve been tracking Israel’s leveling of Gaza with different kinds of satellite imagery. They’ve found that the majority (about 54%) of all Gazan buildings have been damaged or destroyed, including civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools, as well as numerous apartments and homes. At least satellites can offer a somewhat independent source of evidence, separate from claims by official and military accounts.
In other writing…
The butterfly redemption
Insects have been in decline for years. It’s the “windshield phenomenon,” where road trips won’t end with windows covered with spattered bugs anymore. Sadly many species of butterflies have been struggling, too, but I like this hopeful story, by Brian Payton in Hakai magazine, about scientists, volunteers, and incarcerated women in Washington and Oregon, trying to aid the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly.
What do we owe zoo animals?
This is a good take on Flaco, the escaped owl that died a couple weeks ago in New York. Sabrina Imbler, writing in Defector, puts the owl’s plight in perspective, while citing Emma Marris’s excellent NYT piece about the ethics of zoos, a couple years ago.
Memento mori
Do we really need Amazon’s AlexaLLM to bring to life the disembodied voices of family members after they die? I’m skeptical. And how would one’s personal data be used or exploited? As Tamara Kneese writes in The Baffler, generative AI tools have so far been “riddled with problems regarding labor, scams, ethics, and privacy.”
We act like our AI future is inevitable, but like with any potentially transformative technology, the future is how we shape it. The decisions made today by OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and other companies affect what happens tomorrow. (I say “potentially” because executives at these same companies are now tamping down generative AI expectations, aware that the hype has grown too far, and the bubble could burst.)
What I’m reading: The Doll’s Alphabet, disturbing and fascinating short stories by Camilla Grudova.
Looking back: One year ago, I wrote this book review/interview with Erika Nesvold in WIRED about what the future of ethical space exploration could or should look like.
More about me: I’m a science writer and journalist based in the Bay Area. I was WIRED magazine’s space writer until December 2023, and before that I worked as a freelance writer and an astrophysicist. You can find me at my website, raminskibba.net, and on Twitter and Bluesky. 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.