These ancient fish swam with the dinosaurs. They may not survive us.
The river flows vast and soundless. It's December in southern Kazakhstan, and the landscape near the Syr Darya River is smudged in shades of brown and taupe—dormant grasses, silted floodplains, leafless trees. This is not the most picturesque stretch of riverbank, strewn as it is with food wrappers, bottles, a decomposing sedan. Overhead, the sun is obscured by a haze of coal- and woodsmoke. But when it comes to what Bernie Kuhajda is searching for, the spot feels perfect.
'This is the habitat we need,' says Kuhajda, an aquatic conservation biologist with the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute. He's hoping to find a species of sturgeon—the Syr Darya—that's native to these waters but hasn't been seen since the 1960s, after a series of Soviet dams was built throughout the river system. Those projects blocked access to the fish's spawning grounds and forever changed the flow of the Syr Darya, which drains from the high peaks of Kyrgyzstan into what is now the remnants of the Aral Sea. If the sturgeon somehow still exists, Kuhajda thinks this silty, shallow expanse of river is where it can be found.
(Critically endangered sturgeons threatened by proposed dams in Caucasus.)
Some months earlier, Kuhajda had been contacted by the conservation organization Re:Wild, which administers a program to search for what it calls lost species—creatures that haven't been seen for at least a decade and could be extinct, but there's not enough data to be conclusive. The officials at Re:Wild reached out to Kuhajda knowing that he was one of a very small collection of scientists who have ever laid eyes on the Syr Darya sturgeon. As a graduate student in the 1990s, he visited museums in London, Moscow, and St. Petersburg and videotaped 27 spindled specimens, bleached white from years of storage. 'They said, 'You're the expert,' ' Kuhajda says, remembering the call with Re:Wild. 'And I said, 'Well, I've seen them dead in a jar.' '
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
Mysteriously Magnetic Moon Rocks Might Have an Explosive Origin Story
Unlike Earth, the Moon doesn't have much of a magnetic field – and yet, a strange pile of rocks on the far side seems mysteriously magnetized. A new study suggests that a major cataclysm, over and done in under an hour, left a lasting imprint. A team led by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that a massive impact may have generated a huge amount of plasma that temporarily strengthened the Moon's tiny, ancient magnetic field. According to lead author Isaac Narrett, a planetary scientist at MIT, this theory could explain the presence of highly magnetic rocks detected on the Moon's far side in a region near the south pole. "There are large parts of lunar magnetism that are still unexplained," he says. "But the majority of the strong magnetic fields that are measured by orbiting spacecraft can be explained by this process – especially on the far side of the Moon." In 1959, the Soviet Luna 1 spacecraft conducted the first magnetic measurements of the Moon and found that unlike Earth, it did not have a strong, intrinsic magnetic field. Later research showed that the Moon had weak fields largely confined to the lunar crust, which seem to be created by interaction with charged solar particles. However, the analysis of samples brought back by astronauts on the Apollo missions showed that some rocks formed in magnetic fields that were much stronger. This led to the general consensus that while the Moon does not have an intrinsic magnetic field today, it once did. In a previous study, MIT planetary scientists simulated how a giant impact could have amplified solar-generated magnetic fields on the Moon. However, their results indicated that this would not generate a field strong enough to explain the highly magnetic measurements of surface rocks. In the new study, Narrett and associates took a different approach and assumed the Moon once had a dynamo that produced a weak lunar magnetic field. Given the size of the Moon's core, they estimated that such a field would have been about one-50th the strength of Earth's field today. They then simulated a large impact and the cloud of plasma that would result as the force of the impact vaporized material on the surface. They also ran simulations on how the resulting plasma would flow and interact with the Moon's existing magnetic field. This entire process would have been incredibly fast, lasting around 40 minutes from when the field was amplified to when it decayed back to baseline. This is consistent with the fact that one of the Moon's largest impact basins, Mare Imbrium, is located exactly opposite the far side southern polar region. According to their simulations, an impact powerful enough to create the Imbrium basin would have sent a pressure wave through the Moon that converged on the other side. The researchers suspect that this shock coincided with the plasma cloud amplifying the Moon's magnetic field. Rocks can contain records of the magnetic fields they formed under, thanks to the orientation of the electrons inside them. In this case, the shock waves could have temporarily disrupted electrons in the rocks at the point of convergence, and as they settled back down they could have taken a snapshot of the short-lived, strong magnetic field. "It's as if you throw a 52-card deck in the air, in a magnetic field, and each card has a compass needle," says study co-author and planetary scientist Benjamin Weiss at MIT. "When the cards settle back to the ground, they do so in a new orientation. That's essentially the magnetization process." According to the researchers, these findings have effectively settled the debate between the competing schools of thought. Instead of the Moon's magnetic field being the result of a dynamo or a massive impact, their results show that a combination of a dynamo and a large impact with a resulting shockwave could be responsible for the Moon's highly magnetized rocks, especially on the far side. This theory could be tested in the coming years as astronauts travel to the lunar south pole and collect rock samples, as part of the Artemis Program. The paper detailing their findings was published in Science Advances. Fiery Orange Gems From The Moon Reveal Secrets of Its Violent Past A Giant Hole Just Opened in The Sun – And It's Blasting Earth With Solar Wind The Universe's Largest Map Has Arrived, And You Can Stargaze Like Never Before
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Why Elon Musk's satellites are 'dropping like flies'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Elon Musk has no shortage of targets for his animosity: the media, "woke" progressives, the trans "agenda" and, most recently, his former best buddy Donald Trump. But one less expected Musk adversary is more powerful than them all: the Sun. SpaceX's vast network of Starlink internet service satellites are "dropping like flies", due to an extraterrestrial weather phenomenon caused by the Sun, said Futurism. And it's only set to get worse. The thousands of Starlink satellites orbiting our planet have given space scientists a "golden opportunity to study the effects" of the Sun's activity on the lifespan of these "minimalist, constellation-based spacecraft", said Futurism. And it appears that Musk's "space internet constellation" is "particularly prone to the effect of geomagnetic storms", triggered by eruptions from the Sun, said The Independent. These "ferocious solar storms", Nasa scientists have found, are causing many of Musk's low-orbit satellites to fall to Earth "faster than expected". The impact is particularly significant at the moment because the Sun is approaching the peak of an 11-year activity cycle, "known as the solar maximum", which provokes "large amounts of extreme space weather". The earlier than predicted satellite "re-entries" could "increase the chances of them not burning up properly in the Earth's atmosphere". and debris reaching the Earth. However, so far, the "only known instance" of this happening was in August 2024, when a piece of a Starlink satellite was discovered on a farm in Canada. The solar storm problem threatens one of Musk's biggest power grabs to date. When his engineers "bundled a batch of prototype satellites into a rocket's nose cone six years ago, there were fewer than 2,000 functional satellites in Earth's orbit". Now more than 7,000 of his satellites now surround Earth, "like a cloud of gnats", said The Atlantic. This is the most dominant any individual has been in the "orbital realm" since the late 1950s, when Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the Soviet engineer who developed Sputnik and its launch vehicle, was "the only guy in town" as far as satellites were concerned, space historian Jonathan McDowell told the magazine. But the Sun is an adversary not even Musk can overcome. Solar storm forecasting "has significantly improved over the past few years", Piyush Mehta, a US professor of aerospace engineering, wrote on The Conversation in 2022 but "there is only so much shielding that can be done in the face of a powerful geomagnetic storm". The Sun is "essential for life to go on," he said, but, like a child who often throws tantrums, "its ever-changing disposition make things challenging".
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
India to send first astronaut on mission to International Space Station
The first Indian astronaut to visit the International Space Station is due to blast off as part of an effort by the world's most populous nation to catch up with the US, Russia and China in human space flight missions. Shubhanshu Shukla, a 39-year-old air force fighter pilot, is is part of four-person mission launching on Tuesday from the US with the private company Axiom Space, which is using a SpaceX capsule. He will be the third astronaut of Indian origin to reach orbit, following Rakesh Sharma, who was part of a 1984 flight onboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft, and Kalpana Chawla, who was born in India but became a US citizen and flew on two space shuttle missions, including the 2003 Columbia flight that ended in disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated, killing all seven astronauts onboard. 'I truly believe that even though, as an individual, I am travelling to space, this is the journey of 1.4 billion people,' Shukla was quoted as saying by the Hindu newspaper this year. Shukla said he hoped to 'ignite the curiosity of an entire generation in my country'. India's department of space has called the trip a 'defining chapter' in its ambitious space exploration programme. The International Space Station mission (ISS) 'stands as a symbol of a confident, forward-looking nation ready to reclaim its place in the global space race', the agency said before the launch. 'His journey is more than just a flight – it's a signal that India is stepping boldly into a new era of space exploration.' New Delhi has paid more than $60m for the mission, according to Indian media reports. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, has announced plans to send a person to the moon by 2040. The Indian Space Research Organisation, meanwhile, is planning to launch its own human spaceflight mission, called Gaganyaan, or 'sky craft' in Hindi, in 2027. Shukla is a contender to be part of that trip. Shukla trained at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia in 2020, before undertaking further training at the ISRO's centre in Bengaluru. He has said the journey aboard the Axiom Mission 4, and the expected 14 days on the ISS, will provide 'invaluable' lessons to bring back home. Shukla will be led by the mission commander, Peggy Whitson, a former Nasa astronaut and an Axiom employee, and joined by the European Space Agency astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, of Hungary. Related: How space exploration can improve life on Earth | Leigh Phillips They will conduct 60 scientific studies, including microgravity research, earth observation, and life, biological and material sciences experiments. India's space programme has grown considerably in size and momentum in the last decade, matching the achievements of established powers at a much cheaper price. In August 2023, it became the fourth nation to land an unmanned craft on the moon after Russia, the US and China. Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
