Sinking Cities, Waving Cuttlefish and Falling Spacecraft
A spacecraft is set to fall from the skies, 28 U.S. cities slowly sink, and a new study pinpoints how the overindulgence of the wealthy contributes to massive warming.
Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific American
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s catch up on some of the science news you may have missed last week.
First, a space-junk update. By the time you listen to this a Soviet-era spacecraft may or may not have crash-landed on Earth. Kosmos-482, which the U.S.S.R. launched back in 1972, was meant to follow the successful probes Venera 7 and Venera 8 in landing on and studying Venus. But a suspected engine malfunction meant that Kosmos-482 never achieved enough velocity to escape Earth’s orbit. It’s been orbiting our planet ever since and losing altitude along the way.
Some of Kosmos-482 already fell back down to Earth decades ago, but one last big chunk has held on for more than half a century. Last week researchers said Kosmos-482 would probably make its uncontrolled descent over the weekend. Its potential landing zone stretched from 52 degrees north to 52 degrees south latitude, which covers pretty much everywhere except for Antarctica and, like, places where you can see the northern lights. There’s a chance that the 1,000-ish pound [495 kg] lander, which was designed to withstand Venus’s atmosphere, will hit Earth in one piece. That could be bad if it happens to crash in a populated area, but it’s statistically more likely to hit the ocean or some uninhabited patch of land. And there’s still a chance the craft will break up into smaller pieces in the friction of our atmosphere or even burn up entirely. We’ll update you on how everything went down next week, or you can check ScientificAmerican.com for the latest space news.
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Now, the sky may not be falling, but our biggest cities are sinking. A study published last Thursday in the journal Nature Cities found that all of the 28 most populated cities in the U.S. are sinking, regardless of how far inland they are. In 25 of those cities, the researchers say, at least two-thirds of their respective area is losing height.
The researchers called out Houston as the fastest-sinking city, with more than a third of its area going down by upwards of five millimeters [about 0.2 inches] each year. Around 12 percent of the city is sinking twice as fast as that, and some spots are dropping by five whole centimeters [roughly two inches] a year.
While natural forces and the sheer heft of buildings can play a role, according to the researchers behind the study, the extraction of groundwater is largely responsible for all of this sinkage. The researchers tied the removal of groundwater for human use to as much as 80 percent of the sinking they observed. They noted that in Texas, gas and oil extraction likely exacerbates this problem.
One obvious consequence of a city sinking is that it makes the area more prone to flooding. But the study also sounds the alarm on the unique risks brought on by uneven sink rates within a city. If some areas are sinking faster than others, that raises the likelihood that structures like building foundations and rail lines will start to tilt. The researchers noted in a press release that increases in water needs and population, along with climate-change-induced droughts, are expected to add to the problem, making it crucial that cities start adapting to these risks now.
If you’re looking for someone to blame for that—for the climate-change-related part, anyway—consider your millionaire or billionaire of choice: A study published last Wednesday in Nature Climate Change concluded that the wealthiest 10 percent of the global population is responsible for two-thirds of climate-change-related warming as a result of their consumption and investments. The top 1 percent of people are responsible for one-fifth of all warming all on their own. If you’re in the top 10 percent, you’re an estimated six times more responsible for droughts in the Amazon than the average person is. According to a recent article in Forbes, a net worth of at least $970,000 puts you in that percentile in the United States, while one-percenters have net worths of at least $11.6 million.
If you’re looking at your own robust bank account and feeling a little hot under the collar about this study. It does point out a major area for improvement: investments. The authors concluded that the richest among us primarily contribute to climate change through investments tied to high-carbon industries. So if you haven’t cleaned up your stock portfolio, now’s a great time to do so. As long as you’re not, say, flying a private jet everywhere—or worse, taking jaunts into space for fun—then that should make a big difference. And hey if you are doing those things, girl stop.
We’ll wrap up with a fun story that takes us under the sea.
In an unpublished study recently posted to the preprint server bioRxiv, scientists claim that cuttlefish wave to one another to communicate. The researchers observed four distinct arm waves: “up,” “side,” “crown” and “roll.” These movements are a bit more complicated than our one- or two-armed human gestures. In the “roll” move the cuttlefish tucks all its arms beneath its head as if it’s about to try to somersault forward. The “side” signal has it move its arms to one side of its body. The “crown” looks a bit like someone steepling their fingers—if their fingers were several squishy tentacles. The “up” sign is complicated, with some arms extended up and others twisting in front of the cuttlefish.
The scientists observed cuttlefish trading these signals back and forth and occasionally responding to one signal with a different one. That makes them suspect these moves are a form of communication. What’s even wilder is that when the scientists recorded cuttlefish signing with an underwater microphone and played the same vibrations for another cuttlefish, that second individual would start signing. So the creatures could be sensing the vibrations of this sign language, in addition to seeing visual cues. Researchers will have to directly connect these signals with certain behaviors or actions to prove that this is actually communication, but for now it is pretty cute.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. Before I let you go I just wanted to plug our ongoing listener survey real quick. We’re looking to learn more about you—yes, you—so we can keep making this show better and better. You can find the survey at ScienceQuickly.com/survey. It should only take you a couple of minutes, and folks who submit their answers this month will be entered to win some Scientific American swag. More importantly, you’ll really be helping out me and the rest of the Science Quickly team. So make sure to check out ScienceQuickly.com/survey whenever you get the chance.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
