How Princess Kate Showed "Real Leadership" on an Important Issue Tied to Her Role Within the Royal Family
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Since returning to her role as a senior member of the Royal Family, Princess Kate has been widely praised for showing "inner steal." Following a cancer diagnosis in early 2024, the Princess of Wales underwent preventative chemotherapy. Now, Kate is being celebrated for showing "real leadership" by helping to effect change in an important area.
In 2023, Kate Middleton launched a Business Taskforce for Early Childhood, with a view to inspiring companies to change their policies regarding parental leave to help nurture families. As reported by Hello! magazine, Princess Kate's efforts appear to be paying off, as "Deloitte UK [is] changing its parental policies to give all parents 26 weeks full pay."
An organization called The Dad Shift is campaigning to change the law and allow fathers access to more paid parental leave. Co-founder Alex Lloyd-Hunter told Hello!, "Just last week we were outside Buckingham Palace hanging up baby grows spelling, 'Two weeks isn't enough,' so we're delighted to learn the Princess of Wales has been championing good paternity leave behind the scenes."
Lloyd-Hunter continued, "It's good to see more and more companies realizing that better paternity leave is in their interest and stepping up with generous policies. But the vast majority of smaller businesses can't afford to do this, and that means their employees are stuck with the worst paternity leave in Europe." The Dad Shift's co-founder suggested that the government needs to step in to "significantly improve our statutory offer so every father and non-birthing parent gets a decent amount of properly paid leave."
Celebrating Kate's contribution to the important issue, Lloyd-Hunter told the outlet, "The princess has shown real leadership on this issue—now it's time for ministers to follow her example."
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After a relentless six-month campaign, my parents conceded to my request and I received a 60 mm Tasco refractor for Christmas," Espenak wrote in his biography on Fred first became attracted to eclipses, when, at the age of 9, he witnessed a partial eclipse of the sun from the New York metropolitan area. Seven years later, on March 7, 1970, when the moon's dark shadow tracked along the Atlantic Seaboard, he was able to coerce his parents to borrow the family car where he traveled by himself to North Carolina and witnessed his very first total solar eclipse. Initially, he expected it to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but when totality ended, Fred knew he had to see another total eclipse. Indeed, that 1970 eclipse would be the first of 31 totalities he would journey to see during his lifetime. And yet, while Fred ultimately grew up to become a full-fledged astronomer, his professional research didn't actually involve eclipses. He earned his bachelor's degree in physics at Wagner College in Staten Island and later obtained his master's degree in Ohio at the University of Toledo, based on studies he did at Arizona's Kitt Peak Observatory of eruptive and flare stars among red dwarfs. Thanks to his background in physics and computer programing, Fred landed a job with a software company holding NASA contracts. That led to his writing data analysis programs for satellites and a stint as a telescope operator for NASA's International Ultraviolet Explorer spacecraft. From this, he was hired by the Infrared Astronomy Branch at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Fred's research focused largely on planetary atmospheres using an infrared spectrometer that he and his colleagues took first to Kitt Peak in Arizona and then to NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. He coauthored papers on winds on Titan, ethane in Jupiter's atmosphere, ozone on Mars, and hydrocarbons in the outer planets. Fred retired in 2009. But he truly made his mark as a tireless calculator of eclipses of both the sun and moon. Up until 1994, the U.S. Naval Observatory routinely issued special circulars in advance of major solar eclipses. When funding for these circulars came to an end, Fred picked up the eclipse baton and with the help of Canadian meteorologist Jay Anderson, produced their own eclipse circulars, funded under the auspices of NASA. Together, they published 13 circulars which contained timings, for hundreds of locations, predictions for what the moon's edge would look like, and maps that showed the path of totality. Distribution of these free circulars ended with Fred's retirement from NASA. But it didn't stop there. Fred then turned to private publishing as well as setting up three websites, and which to this day all remain invaluable resources with extensive information about numerous celestial phenomena, including detailed maps and timing of past and future lunar and solar eclipses. Fred gave public lectures on eclipses and astrophotography. Astronomical photographs taken by him have been published in National Geographic, Newsweek, Nature, and New Scientist. For his astronomy and solar eclipse outreach, the International Astronomical Union named Asteroid 14120 Espenak after him in 2003. Fred also teamed up with another remarkable eclipse calculator, his long-time mentor and friend, Jean Meeus of Belgium and together in 2006 they published the Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses, which covers all types of solar eclipses from 2000 BC to AD 3000, and the similar Five Millennium Canon of Lunar Eclipses in 2009. And many other eclipse guides — 30 in all — followed. 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I know you have taken a safe voyage and I hope to see you again someday. Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope and other publications.
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When the sun dies, could life survive on the Jupiter ocean moon Europa?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Can life survive in the solar system once the sun dies and becomes a red giant star? New research suggests there may be a narrow window of possibility for life to persist on the icy moons of the outer solar system. It's not exactly clear where the habitable zone of the red giant sun will be, but it could possibly reach the orbit of Jupiter. Although the planet itself won't be habitable because it will still be a giant ball of hydrogen and helium gas, Jupiter's moons might become promising homes for life. That's according to researchers at the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, who reported the theory in a paper accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In about 4.5 billion years, the sun will enter the final phase of its life. Its core of hydrogen fusion will expand and, in doing so, inflate the outer atmosphere of the star into gross proportions. It will swell and become a red giant star that will engulf Mercury and Venus and incinerate Earth. In the best-case scenario, all that will remain of our planet will be a lump of smoldering iron and nickel. In the worst-case scenario, it will be obliterated. The sun's habitable zone — the band where the influx of radiation is just right to support liquid water on the surface of a planet — will steadily march outward as the sun begins this new phase of life. Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa will get a lot of heat. Not only will the giant sun be bearing down on it, but Jupiter itself will become hotter and reflect more sunlight, which will provide its own source of heat to the little moon. The researchers found that the icy outer shell will sublimate and the oceans underneath will evaporate. The most sublimation will occur on the side of Europa facing Jupiter because it will receive the most heat. And because of circulation and convection, the equatorial bands that face opposite Jupiter will also suffer significant water loss. RELATED STORIES: —Good news for the alien life hunt: Buried oceans may be common on icy exoplanets —Jupiter's ocean moon Europa may have less oxygen than we thought —10 weird water worlds in the solar system and beyond However, northern and southern latitudes on the anti-Jupiter side of Europa will have a more modest rate of water loss. The researchers found that this could provide a tenuous atmosphere of water vapor that could persist for up to 200 million years. That's a blink of an eye compared with the opportunities life has had to thrive on Earth — but it's not nothing, and Europa may become the home for any life that remains in the solar system in that deep future. The researchers also found that we might be able to find biosignatures on (formerly) icy moons around red giant stars. We have yet to have any confirmed detections of exomoons, but there are several promising candidates. Future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope or the planned Habitable Worlds Observatory might have the resolving power to examine the atmospheric features of these moons. Although it might be an unlikely scenario to find life, it does widen the possible locations for our search, as there may yet be refuges around stars that are nearly dead.
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