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The Earth’s climate is a complex system with processes that occur on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. From the atomic scale, where chemical reactions take place in fractions of a second, to turbulent and convective processes in clouds, to long-term glacial cycles, where the atmospheric composition changes over thousands of years, and even beyond, numerous processes must be included to achieve a faithful description.

The more accurately these processes are described, the more accurate climate projections can be made. From a scientific perspective, faithful climate models improve our understanding of Earth system processes, which in turn helps to improve the models.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*jGsh17haQXfJE6ETQq25jw.png)
Selected Earth system processes at different spatial and temporal scales. Adapted from https://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/en/learning-support/climate-models/theory-and-physics. Image credit: Author.

Climate models describe the Earth system with equations that are discretized on a global grid and then solved by numerical methods. Because of the intractable amount of computational resources that would be required to explicitly resolve small-scale processes, these subgrid-scale processes are included through parameterizations.

> In this article, we will show how these subgrid-scale parameterizations are obtained, how they are integrated into climate and weather models, and how they are evaluated.

Throughout the main part of the article, we focus on the atmosphere for simplicity, while neglecting the ocean and the land surface. References and links for further reading are provided at the end.

-----------

## Climate Models
The state-of-the-art climate models are called General Circulation Models (GCMs). In general, GCM atmospheric dynamics can be described by equations for seven variables: pressure p, temperature T, wind v with vector components u, v, w, specific humidity q, and density ϱ [1].

The first set of equations is based on Newton’s equation of motion, taking into account the centrifugal force and the Coriolis force resulting from the Earth’s rotation.

![image](https://cdn-us.imgs.moe/2023/09/19/65092305d00e7.png)
Newton’s EOM for atmospheric dynamics, with rotation and friction terms.

The conservation of mass or continuity equation

![image](https://cdn-us.imgs.moe/2023/09/19/65092305cc0bd.png)
Continuity equation for conservation of mass.

The conservation of water vapour mass with evaporation E and condensation C

![image](https://cdn-us.imgs.moe/2023/09/19/6509230603c4a.png)
Conservation equation for water vapour mass.

The conservation of energy or first law of thermodynamics

![image](https://cdn-us.imgs.moe/2023/09/19/650923060ee27.png)
First law of thermodynamics with specific heat Cp and heating rate per unit mass Q.

And finally the equation of state for gases

![image](https://cdn-us.imgs.moe/2023/09/19/650923060a1a7.png)
State equation with gas constant Rg.

This set of equations is not closed and therefore requires external input. The so-called physics of the model must be specified. This includes radiative transfer in the atmosphere, and heat transfer by evaporation, condensation, and sublimation. The dynamics of the model then describe the actual transport of air masses. The total energy budget due to incoming solar radiation, as well as boundary conditions from the ocean, land, and sea ice must be specified.

-----------

## Numerical Representation of the Earth System
The GCM equations are so complex that they can only be solved numerically. To this end, they are discretized on a grid. Different GCMs use different strategies to generate this grid, but in general, it can be thought of as dividing the Earth’s surface horizontally into boxes of a certain length and width. Vertically, layers of the atmosphere are obtained by levels of constant atmospheric pressure. The following schematic shows how a grid for an atmospheric model might look like.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*_U-RT8XSBbfwyqYBXyGKYQ.png)
Image credit: NOAA, Public domain, Wikimedia commons.

Ideally, the horizontal grid scale would be small enough to resolve the atmospheric dynamics directly through the numerical simulation. However, this is computationally not feasible. In the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) 6, which provides climate projections for different historical and future emission scenarios from 1850 to 2400, the typical grid resolution was 100 kilometers [2]. At this scale, important processes such as turbulence and convection cannot be resolved directly.

Climate modeling is performed on some of the world’s largest high-performance computing systems. For example, the ICON-Sapphire model can be run at a resolution of 1.25 kilometers, but this requires computational resources to an extent where the simulation can currently be run only for days, not for centuries [3].

-----------

## Parameterization of Subgrid-Scale Processes
In cases where the explicit numerical resolution of a process is not feasible, this so-called subgrid-scale process can be included by parameterizations. Subgrid-scale processes in a climate model refer to anything that takes place on spatial scales that are smaller than the grid size. Accurate parameterizations of subgrid-scale processes are critical for climate projections and for improving our understanding of the Earth system.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*-AsR9VMuwyFKywwIS2dcDw.png)
The horizontal grid resolution determines whether a climate model can resolve the convective cloud. Photograph of a convective cloud adapted from Flickr / Joe, CC-BY 2.0, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tossmeanote/5788194264

The American Meteorological Society Glossary defines a parameterization as

> The representation, in a dynamic model, of physical effects in terms of admittedly oversimplified parameters, rather than realistically requiring such effects to be consequences of the dynamics of the system.

## How to construct a subgrid-scale parameterization
A subgrid-scale parameterization describes the changes in the model variables resulting from the unresolved processes. In order to update a model variable to the next model time step, based on the parameterized subgrid-scale process, we need a so-called tendency. For a finite time step Δt, the corresponding first-order equation is

![image](https://cdn-us.imgs.moe/2023/09/19/650923b6af947.png)
We will now discuss different ways to obtain this tendency.

## From high-resolution simulations

A high-resolution simulation that explicitly resolves the desired subgrid-scale process can be run for a shorter period of simulated time. Insights from this high-resolution simulation can then be used to inform the parameterization that is used at coarse scale. The following figure illustrates the difference between a high-resolution turbulent field and the same field, coarse-grained to a lower resolution.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*Pc_7bCX5Qnq4zgWwlNVqZQ.png)
Left: A high-resolution turbulent field. Right: The same field, but coarse-grained to a lower resolution. Image credit: G. Inchingolo CC-BY-SA 4.0 Wikimedia Commons, Adapted by the author.

In the following equation, the subgrid-scale process tendency is calculated by subtracting the tendency resolved in the coarse-grained simulation from the coarse-graind tendency from the high-resolution simulation. This ensures that contributions that are already present in the coarse-grained simulation are not counted twice.

![image](https://cdn-us.imgs.moe/2023/09/19/650923e6e74d2.png)

## From separate models

Some processes, such as atmospheric chemistry and cloud microphysics, are so complex that they are described by their own models. These models do not need to be run on a global grid, but can be simulated within so-called box models. The results from the box model simulations can then be incorporated into the GCM simulations.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*mV14ZmPcL7GmVlodQNPqKg.png)
Box model of a radiation-induced atmospheric chemistry process. Image credit: Author.

The box model requires the global grid variables as boundary conditions for the processes taking place inside the box. For example, humidity, pressure, and air temperature can affect the subgrid-scale process.

The tendencies affecting the global grid variables, based on what was simulated inside the box, are used to update the GCM to the next time step.

## Based on empirical data

Another option is to base the parameterization on empirical data. This data can come from aviation, stratospheric balloon experiments, or satellite measurements. For processes that would be too expensive to simulate even within a separate box model, such as the formation of graupel and hail in clouds at the microscopic level, these empirical relationships can be used to inform the tendencies.

## Machine learning

In recent years, machine learning based parameterizations subgrid-scale processes have gained interest in the research community. For example, a high-resolution simulation that explicitly includes convective processes can be emulated by machine learning algorithm and then be used in a coarse-resolution simulation.

Machine learning has the potential to provide either faster parameterizations by trading complex numerical computations for fast model inference, or better parameterizations by integrating training data beyond the reach of the current horizontal grid resolution of GCMs. However, issues of simulation stability, conservation of mass, energy, and momentum, and practical aspects of integrating them into GCMs often arise. We refer the reader to [4] for a first introduction.

-----------

## Evaluating Subgrid-Scale Parameterizations
A subgrid-scale parameterization is by construction always a simplification of the underlying physical processes. Therefore, the uncertainty of the parameterization will affect climate projections. In the case of weather models, the quality of the weather forecast depends on the accuracy of the parameterization.

For climate projections, the problem in evaluating models and their included parameterizations is that there is no ground truth available, since the models are simulating a future climate scenario. However, parameterizations can be evaluated against historical data. In CMIP6, the models describe the “historical” period, starting in 1850, before the effects of industrialization affected the climate. At the same time, weather measurements became more widely available. By comparing how faithful a climate model reproduces the historically known climate, researchers can make assumptions about its future performance.

Weather models operate on a much shorter time scale, making predictions for days, rather than providing projections for decades and centuries. Therefore, the impact of changing a parameterization can be evaluated directly by comparing with observed weather.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*-wepldqJZrmzxQTS)
Photo by Neda Astani on Unsplash

## Summary
We have introduced General Circulation Models (GCMs), which describe the evolution of the Earth’s climate through complex equations. The equations are discretized on a grid with a horizontal resolution of typically around 10–100 kilometers and are then solved numerically. Subgrid-scale processes occur at spatial scales well below the horizontal resolution of the GCM. Examples include convection, turbulence, cloud microphysics, and atmospheric chemistry.

These subgrid-scale processes can be incorporated into the GCM through parameterizations. Instead of explicitly resolving the process, the effect of the process on the coarse-grid model variables is calculated. This tendency is used to update the model variables from one model time step to the next.

The parameterization must be carefully designed. It can be based on high-resolution simulations, box models, empirical data, or a machine learning emulator. Extensive validation is required to ensure that the parameterization faithfully reproduces the effects of the subgrid-scale process of interest.

As GCMs move towards horizontal resolutions on the kilometer scale and even below, more and more processes that were on the subgrid-scale are moving to the grid-scale. They are now explicitly resolved and no longer need to be parameterized. However, due to the complexity of the Earth system, there will always remain processes that need to be parameterized.

## References and Further Reading
[1] Gosse et al (2010), Introduction to climate dynamics and climate modelling, Chapter 3: Modelling the climate system. http://www.climate.be/textbook
[2] Eyring et al (2016), Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization. https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/9/1937/2016/gmd-9-1937-2016.html
[3] Hohenegger at al (2023), ICON-Sapphire: simulating the components of the Earth system and their interactions at kilometer and subkilometer scales. https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/16/779/2023/
[4] Yuval and Gorman (2020), Stable machine-learning parameterization of subgrid processes for climate modeling at a range of resolutions. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17142-3
[5] Jun-Ichi Yano (2016), Subgrid-scale physical parameterization in atmospheric modeling: How can we make it consistent? J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 49 284001, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1751-8113/49/28/284001/pdf

By：Caroline Arnold
Link：https://www.cantorsparadise.com/climate-modeling-across-scales-8c697d94ef97

Small but important: including subgrid-scale processes in climate and weather models


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Toyota was once the face of sustainable transport. Back in 2008, Leonardo DiCaprio used a hybrid Toyota Prius to arrive at the Oscars, shocking the entertainment world and making environmentalism just a bit cooler. But since then, they have massively lagged behind. They avoided the EV revolution like the plague and reluctantly released their first proper EV, the bZ4X, last year, a full 10 years after Tesla’s industry-leading Model S. But, behind closed doors, Toyota has been working on a technology that could help them leapfrog the entire EV industry in one bound and put them ahead of even Tesla. This holy grail of EV technology is a 745-mile capable solid-state battery that can fully charge in 10 minutes and is twice as energy-dense as current cells! So, does this mean Toyota could be a Tesla killer?

Let’s start with what a solid-state battery is. The difference between our current cells and solid-state batteries is quite simple: current cells store their energy in liquid or paste-like electrolytes, whereas solid-state batteries use solid electrolytes, typically made of ceramics. This means they are far more energy-dense and lightweight, as solid electrolytes can contain more energy per volume. Solid electrolytes also tend to have lower resistance than liquid ones, leading to far faster peak charging speeds. Moreover, they also use far less material per kWh thanks to their density. They also use far less energy to manufacture, as no drying or curing has to take place to secure and bond the electrolyte, like with current cells. This means solid-state batteries have the potential to be far cheaper and more eco-friendly than present cells. The cherry on top of this battery cake is that they have the potential to resist the processes that cause battery degradation, meaning they could last far longer than current cells.

So, why don’t we use solid-state batteries already?

Well, while they have been around for years, we haven’t yet figured out all the kinks with solid-state batteries. Using our current methods, they are extremely expensive to make, being up to 5 times more per kWh than current cells. We also haven’t figured out how to make them more robust, meaning many solid-state batteries have terrible performance when cold, and the ceramic electrolytes have a tendency to break, leading to short lifespans. That’s why, despite this technology existing for decades, you won’t find solid-state batteries in your phone, laptop or EV.

Now, you might think that Tesla is the most visionary automaker out there, capable of investing in projects that won’t pay off for decades to come. But Toyota might actually be more visionary, as they have been developing solid-state batteries since the 1990s and have racked up hundreds of patents pertaining to them. This means that they are miles ahead of anyone else regarding solid-state batteries. That isn’t just hyperbole, as a recent study into these patents found they give Toyota a significant advantage over its competitors.

These decades of doggedly developing solid-state batteries have now paid off, and Toyota has announced they have fixed many of the issues with solid-state batteries and will be bringing this revolutionary technology to market. But what is it like, how much will it cost, and when will it be available?

As I have stated before, the battery is capable of delivering 745 miles of range and charging in 10 minutes. Toyota has also said that the battery is half the size and weight of current batteries. This means that the battery will likely have a capacity of around 180 kWh (based on current 100 kWh EVs having around 400-mile range) whilst still being small and light enough to fit in a car a little bigger than a Tesla Model 3. Assuming the ten-minute charge time is for a 10% to 80% charge, we can also infer that it can charge at a rate of about 750 kW. That is a charge rate 3 times faster than anything Tesla currently has. Despite these sky-high specs, Toyota says they have found simpler, more streamlined ways to produce these cells, meaning they can make them at half the cost of other solid-state cells.

It is worth noting that the Tesla Cybertruck is reportedly going to ship with a 1MW charge rate. However, this seems to be limited to the long-range 200 kWh battery pack model (as this pack can reach higher voltages needed for such charge speeds without blowing the cells), and we have yet to see any proof that the final product will actually ship with this feature. Moreover, this battery pack is so large that it could never be fitted to a small or medium-sized vehicle. Considering many of the launch specs have already failed to make it to the production version, I, personally, remain sceptical that this will reach the market as promised.

But we shouldn’t have to wait all that long to see if Toyota’s claims about this battery are valid. Keiji Kaita, the president of Toyota’s research and development centre for carbon neutrality, told the Financial Times that they are already capable of producing this battery and plan to have it in their EV line-up as soon as 2027. So, we could see prototype EVs with this battery in the next few years.

Okay, so how much will it cost? Surely, such incredible specs will mean it can only be used in Toyota’s most expensive cars.

Well, potentially not. You see, lithium-ion battery prices have declined by 89% in the last 12 years, and according to various articles, solid-state batteries are expected to cost around $80 — $90 per kWh by 2030. If Toyota’s “half the price” claims are correct, they could sell this battery for a staggeringly low $40 per kWh a few years after it hits the market. That might seem like a fantasy, but if you go through Toyota’s patents, you can see they have everything in place to reach such a price. What’s more, like Tesla, they have a partnership with Panasonic, so scaling production of these cells quickly to meet market demand might not be a problem at all, keeping the battery price low, even from launch.

To give some perspective here, that means Toyota’s 745-mile battery could cost per kWh around a third of what lithium-ion batteries do today. That means that by 2030, Toyota could sell a Model 3 competitor that is lighter, faster charging with over double the range, and at a significantly lower price point.

All of this is utterly insane, but Toyota is already hinting at something better. They have leaked that their second-generation solid-state batteries will have a range of 932 miles! That is mind-blowing and well above anything Tesla is planning to offer.

You might think this range is unnecessary, but that isn’t the case. When towing, the range of an EV can more than half, and as more EVs go on the road, the more charging stations become clogged, causing queues for charging. Having an EV with such a massive range solves these two problems and makes Toyota’s battery a game changer for some users (like myself).

But speaking of Tesla, how does Toyota’s battery match up against the infamous 4680? Well, it is half as dense as Toyota’s, takes more than twice as long to charge, and offers only half the range whilst costing around $104 per kWh. These specs do make Tesla’s 4680 one of the best batteries on the market today, but Tesla is still struggling to produce enough of them and won’t likely reach full production for several years.

In short, Tesla doesn’t really have anything that can compete with Toyota’s solid-state technology.

So, does this mean Toyota will become a Tesla killer? Well, I think Tesla is now too big to be truly killed by a single competitor, so they aren’t going away any time soon. And, there are still plenty of questions around the Toyota battery, like, can they produce it at scale at such a low cost? What charging network can charge at these speeds? What cars will they put it in? What markets will they sell it in? So it is far from certain that Toyota will leapfrog Tesla, but at the very least, it seems the potential is very much there.

By：Will Lockett
Link：https://medium.com/predict/tesla-should-be-worried-about-toyota-7611a68a583b

Forget the 4680; this is the battery breakthrough we have been waiting for.


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The world is rightfully celebrating the iPhone’s switch from Lightning to USB-C this week. People love to hate on Lightning — and they have good reasons to. Many of the world’s most popular devices now use USB-C ports, including Apple’s own iPads, meaning iPhone owners have been stuck toting around an extra cable just for their phone and its accessories.

But if you’ve been living in the Lightning world for the past decade like I have, things have been great anyway. I’m not ashamed to say it: I’m sad that Lightning is finally going away.

The Lightning Life, at least if you have an iPhone, has been convenient. Using a Lightning cable hardly requires any thought — its biggest revelation, at first, was that it could charge your phone no matter which way you plugged it in, a huge improvement over Apple’s old 30-pin connector. Plugging it into my iPhone when I’m sleepy before bed never feels like a hassle.

## Lightning was small and reliable

The connector’s small size has kept everything Lightning-related small and portable, too. Back in 2012, when Apple debuted the Lightning port on the iPhone 5, this compact size was a huge part of what made the announcement so exciting. Lightning was 80 percent smaller than the comparatively huge 30-pin connector the iPhone had used before. That meant that Apple’s products — and the cables themselves — could look that much nicer. I can’t prove this, but I have to imagine that the iPhone 5’s sleek look was due in part to the switch to the smaller Lightning connector, and those tiny changes add up to saved space in a bag or pocket.

Not only are the cords themselves easy to travel with but the Lightning standard also created a generation of reliable and portable travel accessories. It powers one of my favorite Apple devices ever: the MagSafe Duo. In spite of Dieter Bohn’s middling impressions, I picked one up on sale and, frankly, I adore it. It’s a low-profile way for me to charge my iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods whenever I’m at my desk. When I travel, I can just fold up the MagSafe Duo and slip it into a small pocket in my backpack so that I can easily charge my devices at my final destination.

And even at home, the Lightning Life has been reliable. I never worry that Apple’s Lightning cables will randomly stop charging my devices (though I’ve been lucky to avoid some of the durability issues Lightning cables are sometimes known for). Apple’s solid magnets and the MagSafe Duo mean that my iPhone and Apple Watch almost always start charging as soon as I drop them on their charging spots — there’s no fussing around to make sure they’re aligned correctly.

![image](https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:2040x1360/1080x720/filters:focal(1020x680:1021x681):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22024810/dbohn_201109_4283_0004.0.jpg)
The MagSafe Duo — powered by Lightning. Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge

With Lightning, I’ve built up an extremely trustworthy system for charging many of my Apple devices that I’m very happy with. Yes, Apple designed it that way thanks to its MFi program that gives Apple a cut of every MFi-certified charger or cable sold. And yes, because device makers have to go through Apple for MFi certification, that probably meant that some interesting charging accessories didn’t get made. But the MFi system meant that accessories worked and lacked the confusion of USB-C. Saying goodbye to Lightning doesn’t just mean losing a port and a connector; it means saying goodbye to a great collection of cables and products that I’ve come to depend on as part of my daily life and travel routines.

With all that said: I do understand where the Lightning haters are coming from. These days, basically every other device I own charges over USB-C. The iPhone has been the lone holdout, meaning that I have to toss both a USB-C power brick and my iPhone charging gear (including the MagSafe Duo!) in my bag before heading out the door.

USB-C offers the tantalizing promise of an extremely dependable system for charging all of my gadgets. And it will be a worthwhile switch once I have to make it — I’m in no rush to upgrade from my beloved iPhone 12 Mini — though there will be some friction. I’m already grumbling over the fact that Apple unceremoniously dumped the MagSafe Duo instead of releasing one with a USB-C port (though there are USB-C-based alternatives I can consider).

But those are minor quibbles. USB-C ports on the iPhone 15 lineup are obviously the better choice in 2023. USB-C does everything Lightning can do, and it often does those things better. Whatever my gripes about buying new charging gear, the transition won’t be nearly as painful as the switch from the 30-pin connector to Lightning; I already have a bunch of USB-C charging cables and bricks that I can use with a USB-C-equipped iPhone.

Still, I’ll look back on my 11 years (and counting) of Lightning Life fondly. They have been years of easy charging and lighter backpacks.

When Apple executive Phil Schiller introduced Lightning in 2012, he called it a “modern connector for the next decade.” He was more than right.

By：Jay Peters
Link：https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/16/23875491/apple-lightning-cable-usb-c-iphone-15

It’s time to retire Lightning, but it had a very good run.


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## The Awakening
I remember now, waking up, terribly groggy and very stiff in the joints. It appeared that we had begun our descent to the surface. I don’t know how long I had been out nor how long before we would reach the end of our journey. Other than waking up in super cramped quarters, my only thought was that it was certain I would never see my family again. They were probably long dead by now.

Waking is not quite accurate as we had all been in cryogenic sleep. I looked around and there was no other activity yet. As we appeared to approach the surface, the capsule began to shudder tremendously. The violent shaking resulted in an involuntary workout for my limbs. Then, suddenly, the capsule skidded, bounced up, skidded some more and eventually settled, listing slightly. The predicted gentle landing was just enough to jostle, but not enough to lose one’s lunch.

Within moments, my comrades began coming to. First, it was Gerry, the tough guy. He was here to do all the heavy lifting. Gerry could tower over the best of them, and quiet though he might be, he was always up for a challenge that involved any display of his physical prowess. We called him Grunt and he was OK with that.

Then Trevor chimed in. He was our resident mechanic and could fix just about anything that squeaked, hummed or whirred. Sadly, his hygiene was less than acceptable and being frozen didn’t seem to help in that department. With only the occasional objection, he was content to answer to Tech.

Third was Ahmed, the philosopher. He was always one for listening to impressive orators from all over. He appreciated ancient history and even found ways to cover himself in some manner of costume from the civilization in question. For us, he came to be known as Aristotle.

Next, Paula perked up. She was a looker and too hot to be left alone with any of us. However, she was also an expert in self defense, and no one among us was about to take her on. Things may have been a little awkward at times, because she was nice to have around, but generally, we gave her a wide berth, and, for our purposes, we called her Tae.

When we looked to the rear of the capsule expecting to see our last crewmember, we instead saw a gruesome sight. Angela’s chamber had malfunctioned and she would never again wake up, in any lifetime. A crack in the viewport, associated with excess moisture on the inside, seemed to point to a failure in the pressure system. She probably died during take-off. Had she lived, she was to be our electronics wizard. I guess we could only hope that her new job was to watch over us and keep us safe.

By the way, my name is Jason. I am supposedly the brains of the group. My career back home was going well but I faltered and, as luck would have it, ended up alongside these misfits. Somehow I was saddled with the nickname Jack, as in ‘you don’t know …’. All in all, apart from Aristotle who was to keep us sane and focused, the team was designed to be quite innovative and self-sufficient. I didn’t like Aristotle too much.

## Orientation
After checking our general condition, and briefly discussing the eventual disposition of Angela’s body, we activated the capsule’s external sensors to test for anomalies in air, temperature and radiation. Wielding nothing in the way of weapons, we cautiously ventured outside.

We had touched down in some arid, inhospitable, desert. Sand dunes undulated as far as you could see and no obvious prospect of finding water or food any time soon. We had some starter supplies on board, but we would have to consider improvising immediately. Small sand storms came and went quickly, impeding our movements. Tiny creatures burrowed under the surface and something was flying high above us, but even if we could catch either, feeding this crew would take a lot more.

Had we landed in some more hospitable zone we could have established a make-shift camp using local cover but this area was no place to remain for an indefinite period of time. We decided it best to explore when we could and optimize our search patterns. At first, we would fan out away from the capsule, never losing sight of it. That kept our reconnaissance fairly safe as far as we could tell and lasted only a short time. We ventured further, in the cool twilight, and always in a controlled manner so as not to get lost. We would meet up later and report our findings, if any. We had no shelter other than the capsule itself which made the hot and cold extremes somewhat bearable but very uncomfortable. The chambers were not like our old cots.

On one adventure Grunt had seen what he thought was the edge of a cliff, not rising up, but falling away. It was too far for that day’s trek so he had to return. Aristotle dismissed the cliff notion since that would mean our ever-present sand dunes sat high upon a plateau. Not a typical situation. I tried to keep an open mind about it. We noted the direction for a joint outing when the time was right. Tech was all keen on rigging a way to repel to the bottom if there was one.

Tech also found something interesting. A small gulley, as though a relatively heavy object had been dragged through the sand, along with some inorganic, unknown, material that did not belong anywhere in the dunes. It gave us hope that something had passed by and the material was somehow left behind. At least there might be something or someone to look forward to.

## Why us, why here?
At the time of my incarceration, the government had been coping with the public’s pleas and riots aimed at keeping the death penalty in effect. Murder had been outlawed long ago, but a growing number of violent offenders, who had exhausted their appeals, had been sentenced to death or life in prison and had to be dealt with in some accelerated manner.

Every time the latest batch of offenders reached thirty-six, we were herded into a collection of holding cells. We were profiled for skills and weaknesses and underwent extensive training to round out our talents, making us more useful to those with other skills.

Once trained, we were divided into six cells each holding six inmates, each having different skill sets yet similar sentence durations. We had all received orientation sessions covering the next phase, but nothing could have really prepared us for cryogenic freezing. The cell we were in was gassed, as was customary, to make us all docile. Then, each of us was put into a chamber, lying horizontally, the lid was closed and some pumps started up. I remember getting sleepier, but not before seeing green fluid filling the chamber and completely covering me. I struggled, but to no avail. I blacked out.

Though I have no memory of the next step, we had been told that our cryo-capsules would then be loaded onto freighters and launched into space to meet up with the Sentence Station orbiting the planet.

A Sentence Station holds several cryo-capsules, each destined for release once the appropriate sentence duration has been reached. No one was expected to die, despite the fact that we now have evidence to the contrary, but it was essential to help the planet overcome its rapidly escalating criminal element.

## A Criminal Element
My race had long since dealt with environmental calamities, famine, natural disasters and even conventional and advanced warfare, but this latest scourge was beyond even our capabilities. All of our strength, intelligence and weaponry could not stave off the rapid spread of a minuscule, insidious, bacterium. Our scientists called it some unpronounceable gibberish while the rest of us simply called it the Converter. It was explained to us that it gets in through any orifice, attaches to specific brain cells that control hunger and motor skills, and converts the hosts into flailing, ravenous, beasts.

Once the pathogen had spread and turned the resulting mutants into vicious killers, the ensuing wars wiped out most of the population, easy prey. Shortly after, the mutants began dying off as they turned on each other. All that remained for the survivors was disease, poverty and chaos. The pathogen left as quickly as it had arrived, without leaving a clue as to its source, but with the chaos came crime and violence for all of us otherwise unaffected.

The government could not imprison all of the violent perpetrators in the usual way, so drastic measures had to be taken. Following many rounds of debate and bouts of corruption, it was decided that freezing convicted criminals, while not terminating them, would be the only solution. Plagued by a broken prison system, convicts would serve out their sentences in space and let the future deal with the aftermath.

## Our new home
Upon reaching the end of our simultaneous sentences, our cryo-capsule was targeted, jettisoned and its engines were fired. The rest, including a controlled re-entry and our release from stasis, would become automatic. After some unknown duration of travel, we entered the atmosphere, decelerating violently, and landed here, with one casualty. Perhaps it is fitting that we are nowhere near any electronic devices because only Angela would be able to decipher them.

Being frozen in space sort of made sense, we can’t escape ‘from prison’ and can’t hurt the public while incarcerated. The plan, though, is that we are introduced to a new place to live, maybe meet up with other ex-cons, and learn to survive according to some psychologist’s view of idyllic cooperation. That way the problem gets handled, the government fulfills its obligations and the public is placated. So why put us in such a harsh environment? Did they want us to die anyway? Did our capsule go off course?

Our keepers never gave us a clue as to where we might be heading when our sentences were up. They were optimistic, however, about us finding others like us as well as plenty of food. What they failed to mention was that they were collectively useless at plotting a course! Dropping us in this arid wasteland didn’t make a great deal of sense unless it was indeed the plan all along.

For all our attempts, we never found other cryo-capsules. There was to be no meeting up with other ex-cons to form any thriving community. With many long walks behind us, we had exhausted our supplies, and Angela’s flesh could only go so far. It seemed clear that we were going to starve and meet a meaningless end.

Sticking together as a group these days, it only seemed prudent; we set out on our planned excursion to find the so-called cliff edge. Weary and shuffling through the sand, I tripped over a flat, partially buried, solid object. Like a hard ribbon, each end stretched far off into the distance, but its width was roughly less than my emaciated frame. And the faint, light, regular markings, expertly positioned down its mid-point, were very puzzling. Our examinations revealed nothing worthwhile. We could not determine any reason for its existence.

To one side of it, we noticed another inorganic item, a plaque with an inscription almost too small to make out. Half of the plaque seemed to be missing, but the glyphs that remained appeared to look like “EGAS”. Above the inscription was another symbol “🡨”, but overall, it meant little to us. Though terribly confused, we were also elated by our discoveries, whatever they were.

Almost oblivious during our jubilation, Tech looked down and spotted a small creature moving across the narrow band on four appendages. We didn’t care what it was. We were all starving to death, be it poisonous or otherwise. We circled, in our usual hunting formation, to corral it. It stopped, trembling and cowering, then looked up. I leaned over, reached out, and pierced it through with my talon. I raised it for our closer inspection. It writhed in pain, whimpering and panting. We each took a long, lingering, sniff and chuckled together just before it slumped and died.

The creature had orange and white hair all over its body and appendages, and then a fifth, seemingly useless, appendage attached at the rear. We shared the furry morsel among ourselves and thanked it for providing some much-needed nourishment. It was just what we needed at that moment, and quite tasty.

To say the least, our options were few. Desolation surrounded us, wild swings in temperature affected our alertness and movements, and, of course, no food. Tired and starving, we looked back to the plaque in the sand. Nodding in unison, we looked in the direction implied by the symbol, as though it was pointing somewhere. With the narrow strip always to one side as our guide, we set out.

## Happy ending?
We plodded along for what seemed like three cycles but perhaps it was only two. Hard to tell when there is no end in sight and you’re slowly being driven mad. Once the light fell below the horizon, we could make out some shapes in the distance. They were far but appeared like significant structures with an odd symmetry about them. As darkness came over us we could see a glow above the structures. No discernable points of origin, just a glow. Soon, more structures appeared and then a low, steady hum.

Had other ex-cons found a way to survive and build shelters? Maybe they have food! Maybe they are growing food? Hey, perhaps we can go dormant for a while. That would be nice. Our bodies haven’t enjoyed dormancy since coming out of cryo-sleep.

Still moving we came upon a curious structure. It was very small, colourful, and with a plaque similar to our guidepost. This time the glyphs were only “GAS” instead of the broken plaque’s “EGAS”. Maybe this meant we were getting closer to some special place. In any case, the structure was obviously old and no longer in use so I stepped over it and moved on.

We were closer to be sure. Now we encountered more solid bands in the sand with similar though different markings down the middle. The bands crisscrossed in all directions. Then, while bending forward to focus our gaze, we noticed countless moving specs on the bands, once approaching, but now turning… in fear?

Finally standing over what seemed to be some kind of hive, I could look into the pod resting atop the highest structure, a structure with a sharp point at the top. I saw even smaller specs, scurrying upright on two appendages. One of the creatures was tethered to the pod and hanging from it. I heard shrill noises coming from this particular one and many others. Curiosity and my aching stomach got the better of me so I had it as a snack. I reported my good fortune to my comrades and the mere sound of our voices seemed to first silence and then elevate the din from the creatures below.

Although it would likely be difficult to harvest this moving bounty of plenty, we decided then and there that this would be where we could set up our first camp. Once we gather and store enough from this hive, we’ll look for others.

By：Phil Girouard
Link：https://medium.com/@philgweb/cell-division-7befd39e252f


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When you look at the Sun, the light you’re seeing isn’t the light that’s being emitted right now. Instead, you’re seeing light that’s a little more than eight minutes old, since the Sun is some 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) away, and light — although it’s fast — can only travel through the Universe at a specific speed: the speed of light. But what about gravitation? Everything on Earth experiences the Sun’s gravitational pull, but is the gravity that the Earth experiences as it orbits the Sun coming from the Sun right now, at this very instant? Or, just like light, are we experiencing gravitation from some time ago?

It’s a puzzling thought experiment for our minds: after all, what dictates how gravity ought to behave? There’s no fundamental connection between gravitation and electromagnetism; the latter is where the speed of light comes from, so why would the speed of gravity have anything to do with the speed of light?

As it turns out, despite whatever intuitive thoughts we might have about how gravitation ought to behave, it’s only experiments, measurements, and observations that can provide the answer to a physical question such as this about reality. Those have revealed something fascinating to us, in agreement with what Einstein’s (but not Newton’s) theory of gravity predicted: that the speed of gravity isn’t instantaneous, but rather propagates at exactly the speed of light. Here’s the story of how we know.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*Ke3CyCSzX9RT4DQd)
When a gravitational microlensing event occurs, the background light from a star gets distorted and magnified as an intervening mass travels across or near the line-of-sight to the star. The effect of the intervening gravity bends the space between the light and our eyes, creating a specific signal that reveals the mass and speed of the planet in question. Gravitation’s effects aren’t instantaneous, but only occur at the speed of light. (Credit: Jan Skowron/Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw)

Let’s begin with the speed of light. The first person to try to measure it, at least according to legend, was Galileo. He set up an experiment at night, where two people would each be atop adjacent mountain peaks, each one equipped with a lantern, beacons-of-Gondor style. One of them would unveil their lantern, and when the other saw it, they would unveil their own lantern, allowing the first person to measure how much time elapsed. Unfortunately for Galileo, the results appeared instantaneous, limited only by the speed of a human’s reaction time. Unlike all the other quantitative data that Galileo recorded, he could only state that the speed of light was “fast.”

The key advance wouldn’t arrive until 1676, when Ole Rømer had the brilliant idea to observe Jupiter’s innermost large moon, Io, as it passed behind Jupiter and re-emerged from the giant planet’s shadow. Because light has to travel from the Sun to Io, and then from Io back to our eyes, there ought to be an observed delay from when Io leaves Jupiter’s shadow, geometrically, until the arriving light, bouncing off of the moon, becomes observable here on Earth. Although Rømer’s measurement values gave a result for the speed of light that was off by about 30% from the actual value, this was the first measurement of the speed of light, and the first robust demonstration that light traveled at a finite speed after all.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*_-wIRfddebDnH8-R)
When one of Jupiter’s moons passes behind our Solar System’s largest planet, it falls into the planet’s shadow, becoming dark. When sunlight begins striking the moon again, we don’t see it instantly, but many minutes later: the time it takes for light to travel from that particular moon to our eyes. Here, Io re-emerges from behind Jupiter, the same phenomenon that Ole Rømer used to first measure the speed of light, while Europa and Ganymede hover on the right. (Credit: Robert J. Modic)

Rømer’s work influenced a number of important scientists of his day, including Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton, who came up with the first (but mutually contradictory) scientific descriptions of light, with Huygens developing a wave-like theory and Newton developing a corpuscular (particle-like) theory. About a decade after Rømer, however, Newton turned his attention to gravitation, and all ideas about a finite speed for gravity went out the window. Instead, according to Newton, every massive object in the Universe exerted an attractive force on every other massive object in the Universe, and that interaction was instantaneous, occurring without any delay.

The strength of the gravitational force is always proportional to each of the masses multiplied together, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Move twice as far away from one another, and the gravitational force becomes just one-quarter as strong. And if you ask which direction the gravitational force points in, it’s always along a straight line connecting those two masses. That’s the way Newton formulated his law of universal gravitation, where the mathematical orbits he derived matched up precisely with the way the planets moved through space.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*95ZffEDf2geAZx2J)
Before we understood how the law of gravity worked, we were able to establish than any object in orbit around another obeyed Kepler’s second law: it traced out equal areas in equal amounts of time, indicating that it must move more slowly when it’s farther away and more quickly when it’s closer. At all moments, in Newton’s gravity, the gravitational force must point towards where the Sun is, not where it was a finite time ago in the past. (Credit: Gonfer/Wikimedia Commons, using Mathematica)

Of course, we already knew how to describe the way that planets orbited the Sun: Kepler’s laws of planetary motion were many decades old by time Newton came along. What Newton accomplished that was so remarkable was to put forth a theory of gravity: a mathematical framework that obeyed rules from which all of Kepler’s laws (and many other rules) could be derived. So long as, at every moment in time, the force on any planet always points directly towards where the Sun is at that exact moment, you get the planetary orbits to match up with what we observe.

Newton also realized something profound about what would happen if gravity didn’t act instantaneously on objects, such as between the Sun and the Earth. If you instead allowed the gravitational force to point towards where the Sun was a certain amount of time ago — such as ~8 minutes ago from the perspective of planet Earth — the planetary orbits you’d derive would be all wrong. In order for Newton’s conception of gravity to have a chance at working, the gravitational force was required to be instantaneous. If gravitation is slow, even if “slow” meant that it moved at the speed of light, Newton’s gravity wouldn’t work, after all.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*wRgInAbhuVNjnfQU)
One revolutionary aspect of relativistic motion, put forth by Einstein but previously built up by Lorentz, Fitzgerald, and others, that rapidly moving objects appeared to contract in space and dilate in time. The faster you move relative to someone at rest, the greater your lengths appear to be contracted, while the more time appears to dilate for the outside world. This picture, of relativistic mechanics, replaced the old Newtonian view of classical mechanics, but also carries tremendous implications for theories that aren’t relativistically invariant, like Newtonian gravity. (Credit: C. Renshaw, IEEE, 1996)

For hundreds of years, Newton’s gravity was able to solve every mechanical problem that nature (and humans) threw at it. When Uranus’s orbit appeared to violate Kepler’s laws, it was a tantalizing clue that perhaps Newton was wrong about something, at long last, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, there was an additional mass out there in the form of the planet Neptune that was causing those unexplained accelerations in Uranus’s orbit. Once Neptune was discovered and its position and mass became known, that puzzle went away.

But Newton’s successes wouldn’t last forever. The first real clue came with the discovery of Special Relativity, and the notion that space and time weren’t actually absolute quantities, but rather how we observe them depends very intricately on our motion and location. In particular, the faster you move through space, the slower clocks appear to run and the shorter distances appear to be. As FitzGerald and Lorentz, working more than a decade before Einstein, described it:

- distances contract
- and time dilates

by ever-greater amounts the closer you move to the speed of light. Unstable particles that decay away with a specific half-life were observed to survive for longer if they moved at high speeds. This led to a revolutionary conclusion: space and time cannot be absolute, but must be relative for each unique observer.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*rZMoz6stfY7L7ckk)
The orbits of the planets in the inner Solar System aren’t exactly circular, but are elliptical. Planets move more quickly at perihelion (closest to the Sun) than at aphelion (farthest from the Sun), conserving angular momentum and obeying Kepler’s laws of motion. If the Sun were to simply wink out of existence, Newton’s theory predicts that they would all instantaneously fly off in straight lines, while Einstein’s predicts that the innermore planets would fly off sooner, as the gravitational signal would only propagate outward at the speed of gravity, which is finite and should equal the speed of light. (Credit: NASA/JPL)

If that’s true, and different observers moving with different velocities and/or at different locations can’t agree on things like distances and times, then how could Newton’s conception of gravity be correct? If someone on Earth and someone on the Sun cannot agree on what time it is or at what instant an “event” occurs, then how can something — even the force exerted by gravity — occur instantly between them? It seems like relativity and the notion of “instantaneous” cannot simultaneously apply to different observers at once; something must be inconsistent here.

One way to think about it is to consider an absurd but useful puzzle: imagine that, somehow, some omnipotent being were able to instantaneously remove the Sun from our Universe. What would someone living on Earth experience from that event?

As far as the light goes, we know that it would continue to arrive for another 8 minutes or so, and the Sun would only appear to go dark — to disappear — once that light stops reaching us. The other planets would only go dark from our perspective only once the sunlight stopped

- reaching them,
- reflecting off of them,
- and at last ceased to arrive at our eyes.

But what about gravitation? Would that cease instantly? Would all of the planets, asteroids, comets, and Kuiper belt objects simply fly off in a straight line all at once? Or would they all continue orbiting for a time, continuing their gravitational dance in blissful ignorance until the effect of gravity finally hit them?

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*O07unLWferrVTTWb)
Unlike the picture that Newton had of instantaneous forces along the line-of-sight connecting any two masses, Einstein conceived gravity as a warped spacetime fabric, where the individual particles moved through that curved space according to the predictions of General Relativity. In Einstein’s picture, gravity is not instantaneous at all. (Credit: LIGO scientific collaboration, T. Pyle, Caltech/MIT)

The problem, according to Einstein, is that Newton’s entire picture must be thrown away for the Universe to make sense. In a Universe where space and time aren’t absolute quantities but rather are relative to any observe, gravity can no longer be viewed as a straight-line, instantaneous force connecting any two points in the Universe. As a viable alternative, Einstein put forth a picture where space-and-time are woven together in what he visualized as an inseparable four-dimensional fabric. This fabric would be deformed not only by the presence of masses, but by all forms of matter and energy, wherever and whenever they were located.

And, as an implication of that, instead of the planets orbiting around the Sun because of an invisible force, they simply move along the curved path determined by the curved, distorted fabric of spacetime.

This Einsteinian conception of gravity would lead to a radically different set of equations from Newton’s, and instead would predict that gravity not only propagates at a finite speed, but that speed — the speed of gravity — must be exactly equal to the speed of light. If you were to suddenly “wink” the Sun out of existence, that spacetime fabric would “snap” back to flat the same way a rock falling into a pool of water would cause the water’s surface to snap back. It would come to equilibrium, but the changes in the surface would come in ripples or waves, and they would only propagate at a finite speed: equivalent to the speed of light.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*73h2IdiZ12JuAOjv)
The rate of orbital decay of a binary pulsar is highly dependent on the speed of gravity and the orbital parameters of the binary system. We have used binary pulsar data to constrain the speed of gravity to be equal to the speed of light to a precision of 99.8%, and to infer the existence of gravitational waves decades before LIGO and Virgo detected them. Here, double pulsar J0737–3039 is illustrated, with the observed relativistic time delay shown at right. (Credits: M. Kremer/MPIfRA)

For many years, we’ve had indirect tests of the speed of gravity, but nothing that measured these ripples directly. We measured how the orbits of two pulsing neutron stars changed as they orbited one another, determining that energy was radiating away at a finite speed: the speed of light, to within a 99.8% accuracy. Just as Jupiter’s shadow obscures light, Jupiter’s gravity can bend a background light source, and a 2002 coincidence lined up Earth, Jupiter, and a distant quasar. The gravitational bending of the quasar light due to Jupiter gave us another independent measurement of gravity’s speed: it’s again the speed of light, but comes with a ~20% error.

All of this began to change dramatically in the year 2015, when the first advanced gravitational wave detectors (LIGO) saw their first signals. As the first gravitational waves traveled across the Universe from merging black holes, a journey of more than a billion light-years for our first detection, they arrived at our (then) two gravitational wave detectors just milliseconds apart, a small but significant difference. Because they’re at different points on Earth, we’d expect a slightly different arrival time if gravity propagated at a finite speed, but no difference if it were instantaneous. For every gravitational wave event, the speed of light is consistent with the observed arrival times of the waves.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*AzDHOx1272ttjn4B)
The signal from the gravitational wave event GW190521, as seen by all three active gravitational wave detectors at the time: LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, and Virgo. The entire signal duration lasted just ~13 milliseconds, but represents the energy equivalent of 8 solar masses converted to pure energy via Einstein’s E = mc². This is one of the most massive black hole-black hole mergers ever directly observed. (Credit: R. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett., 2020)

But in 2017, something spectacular happened that blew all our other constraints — both direct and indirect ones — away. From ~130 million light-years away, a gravitational wave signal arrived in our three detectors that were operating at that time: the two LIGO detectors and the Virgo detector. It started out with a small but detectable amplitude, then increased in power while getting faster in frequency, corresponding to two low-mass objects, likely neutron stars, inspiraling and merging. After only a few seconds, the gravitational wave signal spiked, and then ceased, signaling the merger was complete. And then, a mere 1.7 seconds later, the first sign of light arrived: a high-energy signal that registered as a gamma-ray burst.

It took some 130 million years for both the gravitational waves and the light from this event to travel through the Universe, and they arrived at the exact same time: to within 1.7 seconds of one another. That means, at most, if the speed of light and the speed of gravity are different, then they’re different by no more than about 1 part in a quadrillion (10¹⁵), or that those two speeds are 99.9999999999999% identical. In many ways, it’s the most accurate measurement of a cosmic speed ever made. Gravity really does travel at a finite speed, and that speed is identical to the speed of light.

![image](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/0*NBCvpRqDgk7f0kBJ)
In the final moments of merging, two neutron stars don’t merely emit gravitational waves, but a catastrophic explosion that echoes across the electromagnetic spectrum. Whether it forms a stable neutron star or a black hole (like the 2019 merger), or a neutron star that then turns into a black hole (like the 2017 merger), will depend on factors like the total mass of the predecessor neutron stars and their combined spin. (Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick)

From a modern point of view, this makes sense, as any massless form of radiation — whether particle or wave — must travel at exactly the speed limit for all massless quantities: the speed of light in a vacuum. What started off as an assumption based on the need for self-consistency in our theories has now been directly confirmed observationally. Newton’s original conception of gravitation doesn’t hold up, as gravity isn’t an instantaneous force after all. Instead, the results agree with Einstein: gravitation propagates at a finite speed, and the speed of gravity is exactly equal to the speed of light.

We at last know what would happen if you could somehow make the Sun disappear: the last light from the Sun would continue traveling away from it at the speed of light, and it would only go dark when the light stopped arriving. Similarly, gravity would behave in the same fashion, with the Sun’s gravitational effects continuing to influence the planets, asteroids, and all the other objects in the galaxy until its gravitational signal no longer arrived. Mercury would fly off in a straight line first, followed by Venus, Earth, and all the other orbiting masses in order of their distance from the Sun. The light would stop arriving at exactly the same time the gravitational effects did. As we only now know for certain, gravity and light really do travel at exactly the same speeds.

By：Ethan Siegel
Link：https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/gravity-doesnt-happen-instantly-9bb71e9c19c1

Newton thought that gravitation would happen instantly, propagating at infinite speeds. Einstein showed otherwise; gravity isn’t instant.


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First of all, let’s be clear: NASA’s new report on so-called unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) says there’s “no conclusive evidence suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.” They’re going to create a director of UAP research anyway, just to get to the bottom of things.

UAPs, by the way, are the polite government name for what we normal people call UFOs, or unidentified flying objects. I don’t really have a problem with further investigations into UFOs — it seems like a nice jobs program for scientists. But let’s be clear about what’s happening here: this is a government agency that’s noticed UFO boosters are in Congress, and it wants some damn funding.

**Why do I say that? Well, I read the report, and I noticed this tactful bit**:

> The scientific processes used by NASA encourage critical thinking; NASA can model for the public how to best approach the study of UAP, by utilizing transparent reporting, rigorous analysis, and public engagement.

Uh-huh. So what NASA is proposing is, essentially, MythBusters for aliens. I hope they do a fun public access show.

Look, I don’t think we’re alone in the universe. I suspect that, at minimum, there’s probably plenty of bacteria on habitable planets. The question of whether there’s intelligent life is a trickier one, but I am a little skeptical because I’m not even sure we’ve got intelligent life on earth. I am very doubtful that UFOs or UAPs, or whatever we want to call them, are aliens — I think it’s likelier there’s some weird shit going on we haven’t yet explained because, folks, (a) the planet itself is weird and (b) so are human brains.

But one thing that’s sustained “it’s aliens!” conspiracy theories is stonewalling. This tends to be used as evidence by the true believers that they just don’t want you to know. And so when I see stuff like the Pentagon forming a task force to look into UFOs, I tend to think that’s a corrective measure: “Hey, you want us to see if there are aliens? Okay, we’ll look.” That’s part of what you see in NASA’s news release, too: “NASA will do this work transparently for the benefit of humanity,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a press release.

Most UFO (or UAP, or whatever you want to call them) sightings don’t have real data behind them. I don’t mean that as a knock — that’s what Nelson said in a press conference. That’s one of the challenges here! A lot of military pilots claim to have seen weird stuff while flying. I believe they did! I just don’t know what they saw. It could be anything — secret spy planes from some other country, weather balloons, bizarre atmospheric phenomena, or something else we haven’t yet figured out.

And you know, getting data takes funding, and NASA’s budget is decided by Congress. If Congress is into UFOs, then why shouldn’t NASA get some budget for that? Makes sense, great administrative decision, hats off to management. Nelson wants to shift the conversation about UFOs “from sensationalism to science,” he said in the press conference. And you know what science always needs more of? Money.

By： Elizabeth Lopatto
Link：https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/14/23873619/nasa-ufo-budget-uap-office

If NASA has to keep investigating UFO claims, it should get more budget for that

You people think everything is aliens, get a damn grip.


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The same team of scientists that discovered that our Milky Way is one of 100,000 galaxies inside a supercluster has found a larger structure deeper into the universe.

The vast bubble 820 million light-years from Earth was unexpectedly found within a web of galaxies being mapped by a team led by Brent Tully the University of Hawaii.

It’s been named Hoʻoleilana, a Hawaiian creation chant evoking the origin of structure. It joins—but is much larger than—the Laniākea supercluster, which means “immense heaven.” Tully’s team discovered Laniākea in 2014.

The discovery of Hoʻoleilana, details of which are published in The Astrophysical Journal, was by chance. “We were not looking for it,” said Tully. “It is so huge that it spills to the edges of the sector of the sky that we were analyzing.”

It was already well known that galaxies form in groups of dozens or more, and that groups are found in clusters that in turn create a web-like structure.

![image](https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/650493bb99baa21b4c52cccd/The-red-region--left--shows-the-shell-enclosed-by-the-Baryon-Acoustic-Oscillation-/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=1440)
The red region (left) shows the shell enclosed by the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation, with individual galaxies depicted as luminous tiny specks. The blue filaments show the greater Cosmic Web, with previously known features like Laniākea highlighted.FRÉDÉRIC DURILLON, ANIMEA STUDIO; DANIEL POMARÈDE, IRFU, CEA UNIVERSITY PARIS-SACLAY. THIS WORK BENEFITED FROM A GOVERNMENT FUNDING BY FRANCE 2030 (P2I - GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PHYSICS) UNDER REFERENCE ANR-11-IDEX-0003.

But Hoʻoleilana is on a different scale. Inside the structure—found by chance by astronomers mapping the distances to 56,000 galaxies—are previously known superclusters of galaxies. They include the Coma Cluster, the Hercules Cluster, the Sloan Great Wall, the Boötes Supercluster and the empty Boötes Void. “It was an amazing process to construct this map and see how the giant shell structure of Hoʻoleilana is composed of elements that were identified in the past as being themselves some of the largest structures of the universe,” said the team’s cartographer, researcher Daniel Pomarede of CEA Paris-Saclay University, France.

Structures like Hoʻoleilana are thought to be the result of ripples found in the early universe—something called Baryon Acoustic Oscillations—but Hoʻoleilana is a much stronger feature than expected, said the scientists. “The very large diameter of one billion light years is beyond theoretical expectations,” said Tully.

which is thought to XXXXX,a giant cosmic “bubble”that spans 1 billion light-years.the Laniakea Supercluster

By：Jamie Carter
Link：https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2023/09/15/vast-galaxy-bubble-a-billion-light-years-wide-discovered-by-accident/?sh=1b7a379244fa

Vast ‘Galaxy Bubble’ A Billion Light Years Wide Discovered By Accident


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Pauline Newman, now 96, holds a lifetime position as a US federal judge. Though she wants to carry on working, she's in the midst of lawsuits with colleagues who want her to retire.

The US has become a hotspot for debates about whether people in the political sphere can ever be too old to lead. The top contenders for the 2024 US presidential election are Joe Biden, who at 80 is over twice as old as the median American; and 77-year-old Donald Trump, who is a more than a decade beyond the "Normal Retirement Age" – the age at which Americans can receive their full retirement benefits.

Apart from discussions of the fact that gerontocracies – societies governed by older people – are typically not representative of their population, there are other concerns.

One key focus is mental fitness. Neuroscience and psychology suggest that cognitive performance varies widely as people grow older, making it tricky to determine whether someone can be too old to lead. And while some skills tend to decline with age, others improve. Some "super agers" even possess the mental acuity of people many decades younger than themselves. So, how old is "too old" to lead – or is this the wrong question?

**How ageing affects the brain**

Brain volume diminishes over time. In healthy people, the prefrontal cortex is the region of the brain with the most age-related volume loss, of roughly 5% per decade. Through its connections to other parts of the brain, it helps manage executive function: a complex set of mental processes that has been likened to a thermostat or the conductor of a symphony. It's key to discussions of leadership capacities because it's involved in areas like problem-solving, goal-setting and impulse control.

Executive function declines gradually during a person's 30s, and this accelerates as we enter our 70s. White matter disease – a group of conditions caused by damage to the white matter in the brain – also contributes to executive dysfunction, and affects about a third of people aged 65 and older. Executive dysfunction can show up in reduced impulse control and increased repetition of thoughts and behaviours.

A significant proportion of people over 65 have some impairment of executive function, "I think as a general break point, 65 is reasonable," says Mark Fisher, who directs the Center for Neuropolitics at the University of California, Irvine. Other structural changes in the brain become solidified around this age as well – mental processing speed has been shown to decline from around the age of 60 in a study using US data.

The very loose threshold of 65 applies to the US, where the overall life expectancy at birth is 76. However, it may be different in countries with markedly different life expectancies and health systems (and there is also substantial racial and other inequality within the US that affects longevity). For example, the life expectancy for men in the US is 73. This is lower than in the top countries, but much higher than the life expectancy of 60 for men in Cameroon, whose president, 90-year-old Paul Biya, is said to be the world's oldest national leader.

![image](https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/976x549/p0gdk1sn.webp)
At 77, former US president Donald Trump is more than a decade older than the "Normal Retirement Age" in the US (Credit: Getty Images)

Life expectancy at birth doesn't tell the full story of longevity, as this number is brought down by factors like infant mortality. For example, an 80-year-old in the US could expect to live another decade. This means that in reality, there is no hard and fast rule for when, or even if, a person will be significantly affected by the decline of executive function – particularly when you factor in that we don't all have the same proficiency to begin with.

## ‘Tremendous variability'

Fisher explains that in general, averages can obscure expectations of healthy longevity and cognitive fitness, given what he calls the "tremendous individual variability" in executive function. "The battery of testing would be the best way to formally determine one's executive function, but there is going to be wide variation in terms of how individuals function," Fisher says.

One differentiator is comorbidities: multiple conditions like heart disease, high cholesterol, and hypertension (high blood pressure). All of these can impact brain function, particularly executive function. And while ageing does not always come with illness, it makes it more likely.

According to Fisher, "hypertension is, probably along with ageing itself, the most important, most impactful factor on brain ageing as a whole and executive function as well". Thus, early diagnosis and treatment of hypertension is an important area of intervention to protect brain health. And positively, this is an area where treatments and knowledge are regularly improving, Fisher says.

There's also variation in which parts of the brain can compensate for others that show some age-related damage. While the brain is generally very plastic, and many of us can partially make up for disruptions in one part of the brain by enlisting other parts of the network, others will experience a failure of compensation along the lines of Alzheimer's disease, explains Mark Mapstone, a translational neuroscientist at University of California, Irvine.

However, it's not all bad news. There are some aspects where older brains actually show better performance. While the ability to take in new information declines much earlier, the ability to direct and act on information can improve well into a person's 70s.

So, while 70-year-olds will probably process new information more slowly than 30-year-olds, they may do better at synthesising it. Mapstone says that 60-year-olds typically have better vocabulary than 20-year-olds, and can thus substitute words better. For example, one study found that vocabulary scores increase until a person's mid-60s.

"What happens with older brains is they get better at what is called crystallised intelligence," explains Rose McDermott, who specialises in political psychology at Brown University. "You have these kind of established schemas and ways of thinking about things. And you're able to integrate new information into existing structures much more readily and in many cases creatively than you can when you're younger because you don't sit on the same degree of knowledge base."

## The cognitive particularities of political life

Some people, known as "super agers", retain the cognitive functions of much younger people. These are people in their 80s and older with the cognitive health of those two to three decades younger. Super agers show larger, healthier neurons in the entorhinal cortex, a part of the brain critical to memory. Unsurprisingly, they do better on memory tests than their peers.

Physical activity, mental stimulation and social connection are all important to preserving brain tissue and brain function. Political leadership certainly provides at least the mental challenge and social connection parts, and powerful people are also likely to have many privileges, including financial security and access to excellent healthcare. Some scientists consider leaders like Biden to be super agers.

However, while ageing presents some cognitive challenges in general, it may present extra issues for political leaders. "Cognitive flexibility in thinking and problem solving is an essential form of cognition for political leaders to excel at in order to make good-quality decisions under uncertainty and risk," notes Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge. "These types of decisions are also often time limited." However, cognitive flexibility usually dwindles over time.

Some mental changes associated with age could be particularly alarming to voters. For one thing, it appears that brain ageing can affect political attitudes. A novel study by Fisher and colleagues, of Southern California retirees with a mean age of 95, found that while political ideology remained consistent overall over a six-month period, people with cognitive impairment showed inconsistency between their political orientation and policy choices. Fisher comments of this finding: "It does appear to be that this is a consequence of cognitive impairment, that one's political behaviour becomes relatively unanchored from one's stated policy."

However, "neuropolitics", the combined field of neuroscience and political science, has its critics. Some disability scholars argue that it's simplistic to find biological explanations for political behaviours, for instance.

![image](https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/976x549/p0gdk0cg.webp)
At 80, US president Joe Biden is over twice the age of the median American (Credit: Getty Images)

## Cognitive screenings for political leaders

Given the evidence of the effects of ageing on the brain, Fisher and some colleagues from different disciplines are calling for cognitive screenings for politicians, which would not necessarily depend on age. "We view cognitive screening as something analogous to the financial disclosures that politicians are often expected to make," he says.

Cognitive function is mainly assessed through a neuropsychological evaluation – a set of standardised tests that can be so detailed and extensive that they are spread out over several days, Mapstone explains. Manijeh Berenji, an occupational medicine specialist and member of the clinical faculty at UC Irvine, believes that these assessments of politicians can be feasible and fair.

However, the concept is highly controversial and politicised. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has been leading calls for politicians over the age of 75 to undergo mental competency tests. But the approach has been criticised as ageist and difficult to implement.

Hans Förstl, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the Technical University of Munich, believes that it would be hard for an assessment to capture the cognitive complexity and demands of being a head of state. "Activities of daily living, cognitive performance during daily routines and challenges is decisive, not the performance during a shorter or longer test," Förstl says. "The demands on a head of state are exceptional in every respect; no test would be able to gauge that mix of fitness, intelligence, experience and wisdom."

McDermott, for her part, thinks that though the tests are sufficiently sound, in the US the idea is a non-starter for political reasons. Given the polarised nature of beliefs around certain politicians, she wonders, "If they passed, would the public believe it?"

Accommodating older politicians

Some commentators see the debate over the candidates for the US 2024 presidential election as an opportunity to shine the spotlight on "toxic ageism" – and draw attention to the need to support older workers in general. Whether we like it or not, many experts believe that everyone is likely to have to work for longer in the future. (Read more from the BBC about what it's like to work past your 100th birthday).

However, others disagree. According to a poll by the Associated Press and the research organisation Norc Center for Public Affairs, the majority of voters see US President Joe Biden's age as a significant concern. Meanwhile, a recent survey by CBS and the data analytics firm YouGov found that the majority of respondents thought it would be "too demanding" for someone to hold elected office as the US president over the age of 75 – which would rule out both Biden and Trump.

Whatever the public decide, it's hard to imagine that cognitive testing will finally lay the debate to rest.

By：Christine Ro
Link：https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230913-should-we-be-worried-about-older-politicians

Should we be worried about older politicians?

With the top contenders for the US presidential election in 2024 both well past the typical retirement age, debate is raging over the trade-offs of being led by older politicians


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Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company backed by General Motors, revealed a wheelchair-accessible robotaxi that it says could start picking up disabled passengers as soon as next year.

The reveal of the newly accessible robotaxi is a major step toward fulfilling the dream of people with vision, hearing, and mobility impairments, who have long held out hope that autonomous vehicles represent a new way of getting around.

The vehicle is a version of Cruise’s fully driverless, shuttle-sized Origin vehicles, which lack traditional controls like steering wheel and pedals. It has been modified to include a retractable ramp, as well as added space inside and floor clamps for wheelchair users. The vehicle is the product of three years of development and testing between Cruise, GM, and its partners in accessible vehicle design at BraunAbility and Q’Straint. The company also consulted with its advisory council on accessibility, which includes dozens of advocates.

Over 25 million Americans have disabilities that make traveling outside the home difficult. Historically, car companies have provided little relief, producing vehicles that are either inaccessible or cost thousands of dollars to retrofit for a driver with disabilities. Traditional transportation services are notoriously inaccessible and often refuse service to people with disabilities. AVs, and especially robotaxis, present a tantalizing solution.

Indeed, advocates from the disability community have voiced their support for AV development at many crucial moments, most recently testifying in favor of Cruise and Waymo’s application to the state of California for expanded robotaxi service.

But there have also been frustrating delays, as companies have prioritized non-wheelchair accessible vehicles (WAV) in their various tests and deployments across the country. A number of companies, including Volkswagen, Waymo, and others, have been working on new designs they say are intended to benefit disabled passengers — but few have shown off an actual product until now.

Cruise says it has taken the issue of accessibility seriously since day one, hiring a full-time accessibility program manager for its fleet of driverless cars in San Francisco. Cruise says it built the Origin, its first purpose-built AV, with modularity in mind. From the low floor and high roof to the double-wide doors and removable seats, Cruise views the Origin as a blank canvas that it can modify with customer feedback.

The vehicle has been designed to be able to pick up and drop off wheelchair users from a four-inch curb, the company said. As of now, it can only accommodate people who use specific brands of wheelchairs, including Permobil M-Series, Quantum Q6 Edge, and SM Quickie Q500 / 700M / Q7 chairs. Cruise says people who use manual wheelchairs may need a companion to help secure the straps.

Notably, Cruise is calling its approach “multi-generational,” meaning it intends to update the design based on feedback from users. “Designing a self-driving vehicle that accommodates as many wheelchair users as possible is a distinct technical challenge that has never been done before,” the company added.

## The new accessible variant will start closed-course testing next month

The new accessible variant will start closed-course testing next month. Pending regulatory approval, as well as user feedback, the accessible Origin could hit the streets for pilot testing as soon as 2024. The Origin needs an exemption from safety rules from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration so the company can produce more of them. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt recently said that the federal government was expected to make a decision on the Origin very soon.

Until recently, Cruise has faced criticism around its lack of accessibility. The company was accused by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority and several other government agencies of failing to offer service in low-income and minority areas or accommodate people using wheelchairs. The company has also been criticized for blocking emergency vehicles.

Last month, one of its driverless Chevy Bolt vehicles collided with a firetruck in the city, leaving one passenger injured. Cruise agreed to reduce its fleet by half while the incident was under investigation.

By：Andrew J. Hawkins
Link：https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/14/23873374/cruise-wav-robotaxi-wheelchair-accessible-design-launch

Cruise unveils a wheelchair-accessible robotaxi, with plans to launch in 2024

Millions of Americans have disabilities that make traveling outside the home difficult. Cruise says it wants its driverless vehicles to be a solution.


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![image](https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/64f86ee415ec20a30086eae0/Tachometer-on-new-Focus-SVT--New-Ford-Focus-SVT-is-a-six-speed-turbocharged-mini/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=1440)
Tachometer on new Focus SVT. New Ford Focus SVT is a sixspeed turbocharged mini designed and tuned for high performance. (Photo by Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES

Business accelerated. Throughout the modern era of the web, the cloud and the drive towards what people like to call digital transformation, business has been progressively digitized, automated and accelerated. Customer expectations have spiralled upwards, just as customer attention spans have dwindled and shrunk. Some products and services have become ubiquitously commoditized and therefore differentiated only by price, others have forged strong enough brand ‘uniqueness’ to remain special - but all business functions have been subjected to the force of increased velocity.

Because the speed of business has increased, it’s quite logical for us to think about how the mechanics of our enterprise applications and data services have also accelerated. For many of the apps that organizations will need to work at this new cadence, it’s a question of using real-time data. In the speediest lane of information processing, we find data streaming i.e. systems that are capable of working with data in motion, sometimes with a defined end-point, but sometimes with an unbounded undefined end.

## Speed of a squirrel
The software application development community has not been sleeping; it has seen the speed gauge tick upwards and has been developing technology engineered to run faster. Deriving from the open source community foundations that manage the Apache Software Foundation, Apache Flink is a cloud-based service technology used for querying streaming data.

The name Flink comes from the original German term ‘flink’, which translates to nimble, fast and agile - a characteristic of the red squirrel native to Berlin, where Apache Flink was originated and created. The Flink logo is indeed a red squirrel, which German software engineers may well refer to simply as a flink, given the challenge that native German speakers have pronouncing the word squirrel. For the record, this is tough for German speakers because the letters “RL” normally only form an end-cluster consonant pair (as in Karl) and are rarely used as a middle-cluster word structure.

Linguistics aside then, with open source options for building stream processing applications still very much available, Berlin-headquartered Immerok developed a fully managed cloud-native Flink service for large-scale data stream processing and - in January of this year - data streaming platform specialist Confluent announced its acquisition of Immerok. The purchase was explained by Mountain View-headquartered Confluent co-founder and CEO Jay Kreps as a strategic move to bring one of the most popular and powerful stream processing engines directly into Confluent.

## How does Flink work?
In a modern data-rich data-intensive enterprise application, we label all actions taken by the application’s runtime (its governing heartbeat) with the term ‘events’. Events happen in apps, in databases, in operating systems and in connecting technologies such as Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), they happen everywhere, basically. Flink is able to consume an IT event from its source location and process it before sending it to a ‘sink’, a defined software class or function designed and built to receive events from another object.

What makes Flink appealing is that it can consume events, process events, send events to the sink, do the washing up (we’re kidding now) and get on with the next event processing task immediately. That’s special because it can skip from event to event (or from tree to tree, if we’re staying with squirrels) without having to stop and wait for a whole batch of events to be aggregated.

## What is unbounded data?
Interestingly here, Apache Flink works across both bounded and unbounded data. Yes, it’s a topic for data scientists, but we can explain this in simple terms in order for laypersons and businesspeople to know what’s happening in the undercurrent of the enterprise applications that they are using to run their business teams.

According to Flink’s own Apache resources pages, unbounded data streams have a start but no defined end. “They do not terminate and provide data as it is generated. Unbounded streams must be continuously processed, i.e. events must be promptly handled after they have been ingested. [Conversely] bounded data streams have a defined start and end. Bounded streams can be processed by ingesting all data before performing any computations.”

All well and good, so now we understand why enterprise applications have sped up, why data streaming is a key enabling technology here, why events happen rapidly throughout all our modern enterprise apps, why it’s important to be able to handle these events with squirrel-like dexterity and why some data is so fluid that it is unbounded.

## Clean & enrich data streams
“Stream processing plays a particularly critical role in data streaming,” said Confluent’s Kreps. “Stream processing enables organizations to clean and enrich data streams to derive actionable insights from their data in real-time. Through our ability to bring this stream processing engine directly into our platform, organizations will ultimately be able to leverage the power of Apache Flink natively in Confluent to quickly and easily build the real-time applications that are required to win.”

Essential contextualization and explanation notwithstanding, can Kreps give us more of an idea about what kind of business applications need this power, which types of companies will be using them and what effect we the end users might subtly notice if we know that our apps pack this kind of engine power? In order to clarify these questions and more, we need to take a brief step into our recent data management history.

“When we started Confluent, the goal of course was to work with streaming data and the applications that use and need to react to it in real-time,” clarified Kreps. “If you think about the history of using data at rest in databases, these file systems made modern applications much easier to use. So how does that apply to streaming? Really, you can think of the core data streams now being generated as an evolution of what a file system is today - and that’s really what Kafka is. But although we can define the stream, initially we don’t have a lot of capabilities to work with it, which is why Flink is so important.”

The technology (and indeed business) rationale here comes down to the fact that where companies do work with streaming data, they are paying lots of software developers lots of money to build those applications. They are also spending heavily on cloud infrastructure to run them. The suggestion is that Confluent has evolved to provide managed services that make it easier to work with streaming data and now, Flink adds importantly to that capability.

“Flink has become a kind of an emerging de facto standard in this space,” said Kreps. “It is the most widely adopted tool of this kind of it has the broadest set of interfaces - I think has the most powerful basis for working with streams. Today, this type of technology is used almost everywhere from from real-time delivery companies [like Instacart, for example] and all the big banks and financial institutions i.e. any organization that needs to process real-time transactions in the always-on world of short attention spans.”

## Why aren’t we streaming guys?
The question that comes forward now is one of just how many software departments are sitting around questioning their approach to data streaming i.e. do team leaders really sit around and ask their engineers: Hey guys, why aren’t we streaming our enterprise applications’ data flows?

“Historically, the streaming stuff has always been hard, it’s been technically hard for people to do - and that has created a natural layer of tension,” clarified Kreps. “There may have been many engineering scenarios where teams have considered this technology, but ended up thinking that a sophisticated approach to data streaming is too much work. Add that to the operations element burden and it's easy to imagine the challenge. As we have noted here, Flink means agility and ease of use, so that’s what we’re engineering into the wider Confluent capability stack that we’re now bringing to market.”

The Confluent team has described Flink as ‘almost kind of doing the magic’ when it comes to making streamed real-time data analysis occur with all its handling complexity. In a modern organization’s IT stack, there are many issues that can potentially arise in any data layer, so this is a technology that knows what to do if there are system hiccups, delays, skews or even failures.

## Will all IT stream?
Are we moving to a future point then - perhaps by the end of the decade, perhaps the decade after - when almost all enterprise applications embrace an element of real-time data streaming and processing? Kreps is unsurprisingly fond of this suggestion.

“We think that this kind of data streaming platform technology is going to be one of the biggest and most strategic platforms in every business. You know, that's going to have an impact on virtually every application in the company. But the biggest area that's disrupted is the whole area of batch processing. It’s actually hard for people to imagine that this exists, but maybe a third of the data processing that companies are doing is performed as they collect all their data and store it and then at the end of the day, some big IT job kicks off and churns through it and spits out the results. The modern world has to move faster than that.”

It’s true to say that in every business, there’s a whole bunch of activity happening almost all of the time and, crucially, we are moving to an always-on world of continuous connectivity, so the relevance of the technologies discussed here may not be in question. Whether any of this work with Confluent helps our German friends to pronounce squirrel is more questionable, they will most likely stay with Eichhörnchen, which in fairness is beyond the grasp of most English speakers.

By：Adrian Bridgwater
Link：https://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianbridgwater/2023/09/06/confluent-ceo-the-speed-of-data-has-shifted/?sh=5c53516c4153

Confluent CEO: The Speed Of Data Has Shifted