Cuts To NASA And A Fast-Track For Deep Sea Mining

[MUSIC PLAYING] IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. The Trump administration recently proposed a 24% budget cut for NASA, and if it passes, it will be the largest slash to the agency’s budget in a single year ever. The proposal also includes cutting NASA’s science budget almost in half, and shifting the agency’s priorities to sending people to the moon and Mars.

So what’s at stake here? Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist in New York, is here to break it down and tell us more about this week in science. Sophie, welcome back.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Thank you.

IRA FLATOW: Now let’s get right into this. What kinds of cuts does this budget include? What’s on the chopping block here?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: So this budget would cut major NASA science programs. So for instance, the sending robots to other planets, like the rovers on Mars, would be in trouble. There’s a mission to bring rocks back from Mars. That would be in trouble. There was a proposed Space Station around the moon that would be at issue. And closer to Earth, the International Space Station would lose funds to send astronauts there and to have research done.

IRA FLATOW: These are like the jewels of the NASA space program, aren’t they?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yes. And there’s also the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is sort of considered the next big telescope after the James Webb Space Telescope. And that one is almost complete. It’s on track to be done soon, but this budget proposes removing any support to actually get it into space.

IRA FLATOW: So we’ve spent all this money to send rovers to Mars to collect samples that are waiting there, right, to be picked up?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That’s right. You can learn so much by bringing back rock samples from other bodies in space, samples from the moon or from an asteroid. And these Mars rocks could be really, really amazing sources of information for scientists here on Earth. And they’re just kind of sitting around, waiting for us to bring them back.

IRA FLATOW: So let’s be clear. If this budget passes, it’s going to fundamentally change NASA, right?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yes. This would be a major change in NASA’s priorities. And like you said, the biggest single-year cut to its budget.

But I don’t think we all need to be panicking quite yet because the budget, proposed budget has to get through Congress. And in the past, presidents have proposed cutting NASA’s budget, and Congress has restored it because NASA is a really popular agency. A lot of Americans are interested in science and space exploration. And so it’s still possible that these proposed cuts won’t necessarily go through.

IRA FLATOW: So if these cuts do go through, where does the money go to?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: So right now the focus is going to be shifting to getting humans to places in space, specifically to the moon and to Mars. That’s where it seems like the Trump administration wants NASA to put its priorities.

IRA FLATOW: But it’s canceling one of our major space programs to get to the moon, isn’t it?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yes. It’s canceling missions that are aimed at sending robots to the moon, for example. But the idea is that NASA should be focusing more on getting astronauts there.

IRA FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And I wonder who might be taking those astronauts there.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Well, Elon Musk has expressed that he’s interested in sending humans to Mars, in having humans colonize space and starting there. And so it’s possible that a mission to send humans to Mars would be using a SpaceX rocket. In fact, SpaceX is planning to send an uncrewed mission to Mars in 2026. And that would, if they got budgetary support from NASA, I’m sure they would be very pleased with that.

IRA FLATOW: All right. We’ll have to keep our eyes on that, as you say. See what happens in Congress. Onto other news, according to a new study, if you live in a big city, you might be sinking.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: If you live in a big city, you’re probably sinking. Almost–

IRA FLATOW: You’re probably sinking.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yeah. Researchers looked at almost every US city with a population of 600,000 or more, and they found 25 out of 28 are sinking by an average of a couple millimeters a year, and sometimes more.

IRA FLATOW: Wow. All the big cities you’re talking about. Well, why are they sinking?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: So one things that the researchers pinpointed was groundwater extraction. So when you pull water out of the ground, it doesn’t just shift the makeup under the ground, it also shifts what’s above it. And in cities where you’ve got these heavy buildings pressing down, this can create a measurable difference.

And then there’s also issues with things like after the last Ice Age when the ice retreated and the glaciers pulled back. Our land is still changing in response to that geologic event. So that’s playing a role for cities like New York and Washington, DC, which are near where used to have glacier cover.

But the biggest changes seem to be happening in Texas. Houston is the fastest sinking city out of all of these. About 42% of its land is sinking by a rate of more than 5 millimeters a year. And some of it is even twice as fast as that. And one of the issues there is that in Texas, there’s a lot of oil and gas extraction from under the ground. So just as groundwater extraction can cause changes, so can that.

IRA FLATOW: Well, they do big things in Texas. I guess they sink bigly there also.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yeah. Yes. Everything’s bigger in Texas.

IRA FLATOW: Right. Well, let’s switch gears a little bit, Sophie, because scientists are looking– this I found just crazy. They’re looking for hydrogen beneath mountains, right?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That’s right. Hydrogen would be an amazing energy source because it can burn as fuel without releasing greenhouse gas emissions. And rocks naturally create hydrogen. Certain minerals, when they interact with water, do. But the problem is they’re under the ground, and many of them are very, very deep.

But now researchers are saying, look, when mountain ranges form, some rock from deep underneath is brought up closer to the surface, where it can have this reaction with water and create hydrogen. So maybe under the mountains is where we should be looking for hydrogen.

IRA FLATOW: Is there enough hydrogen under there that makes it worthwhile to drill?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: We don’t know yet. And the other thing is, is there enough there that drilling wouldn’t be so bad for the environment that it would be counterproductive? So if the whole point of hydrogen is being clean fuel, we don’t want to have this drilling operation that would create enough pollution that it would no longer be clean.

IRA FLATOW: Speaking of atoms, physicists have just snapped the first photos of individual atoms. How do you do a close-up of an atom?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: With great difficulty. So in previous times, they’ve imaged atoms. But these are the first free-range atoms that they’ve captured. And the way they did it is they had a cloud of atoms kind of interacting with each other, allowed to move freely. And then they kind of froze it briefly by hitting it with lasers. And then they hit it with another laser to take the image of those frozen atoms before releasing them again. So that gave them the ability to capture these images.

IRA FLATOW: And what did they find out about the atoms, or if anything, when they captured the images.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Well, different types of atoms behave differently depending on how they interact with each other. So for a kind of particle called a boson, where all of the different particles have the same quantum mechanical state, they saw them behaving as quantum theory predicts, behaving like a wave and bunching together. And so this is a great example of quantum theory being illustrated in a real experimental case.

IRA FLATOW: So there’s not much practical stuff you can do with this, but it just, it verifies a theory.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yes. Yes. And it’s also, it’s just a great way to have experimental confirmation of things that are predicted by quantum theory. Yes.

IRA FLATOW: That’s interesting. Sophie, let’s move on to a new study that incorporates ancient Chinese poetry to study porpoises. You’ve got to tell me about this.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: This is so cool. So the Yangtze finless porpoise is an endangered species that lives in the Yangtze River. And researchers really want to be able to track its historical distribution. But the problem is, your historical records aren’t necessarily talking about the porpoises there, but your poems are. Poems you can track. You can say the person who wrote this poem lived in this specific area along this specific part of the river. And does their poem mention the porpoises?

It turns out more than 700 do. And about half of those poems mentioned where along the river the porpoises were. And that gave the researchers an idea of the porpoise’s historical range, which over the past 1,400 years, it seems to have shrunk by 65%.

IRA FLATOW: Wow. Wow. Have scientists used poetry like this before?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: In some cases, yes. Poetry can preserve a lot of information about an ancient culture, about the animals that were living in, say, ancient Greece. You can learn about that from reading an ancient epic poem. So this is not the first scientific use of poetry.

IRA FLATOW: Looking at some of those Grecian urns also.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yes, absolutely.

IRA FLATOW: Before we go, I hear you’ve got a musical quiz for me. What’s up with this?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yeah. I want you to try to identify the musical instrument that is playing this song.

[BUZZING SOUND]

IRA FLATOW: Whoa. It sounds like an ear hearing test.

[LAUGHTER]

No. What’s playing that song? I give up.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That song is being played on the bodies of cicadas.

IRA FLATOW: You mean the– they’re teaching the cicadas how to play that song?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: No. Researchers have transformed cicadas into cyborgs, and they’re playing them the way you would play a musical instrument. They basically found a way to control the organs that cicadas use to make noise, called tymbals. And, you’ve probably heard them during the summer making a racket outside.

IRA FLATOW: Right.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Apparently, the frequency or the pitch of the sound that the cicada’s making, it can be tuned by the frequency with which it’s flexing this organ called the tymbal. And researchers basically plugged electrodes into cicadas and controlled the tymbals and used them to play music.

IRA FLATOW: Are we looking for the first cicada insect band here you think?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: This might be. But the researchers have suggested that you could use these cyborg loudspeakers to send warning messages during an emergency. But I think the researchers were just listening to some cicadas and thought, huh, I’d like to do that.

IRA FLATOW: I think you’re right. I’m going to go with that, Sophie.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: [LAUGHS] Well, I mean, in the past, there’s been research to remote control cockroaches. You can also turn those into these living cyborgs. So that was also an influence on this research.

IRA FLATOW: I see the movie. I can see the movie now, Sophie. Thank you for joining us with all this great stuff you bring all the time.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: My pleasure. I’m always happy to play some cyborg music for you.

IRA FLATOW: Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist in New York.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Coming up after the break, the Trump administration is pushing for deep sea mining. And ocean geologist tells us what’s at stake.

SANDOR MULSOW: If they’re going to ravage the bottom of the sea in this area of the Clarion-Clipperton zone, we are talking about an area equivalent to the size of Mongolia.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

IRA FLATOW: President Trump recently signed an executive order to fast track deep sea mining. That would mean companies could dredge the sea floor to collect the nodules of cobalt, copper, rare Earth elements, and other minerals down there, which can be used to make things like electronics, solar panels, and wind turbines.

After the executive order dropped, a Canadian mining firm called The Metals Company submitted the very first application to mine in international waters, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, is now considering. This move has sparked a backlash from scientists and environmental groups and raised geopolitical concerns. Here to explain is Dr. Sandor Mulsow, marine geologist at the Austral University of Chile. Welcome to Science Friday.

SANDOR MULSOW: Thank you very much, Ira, and good evening, or good morning– I don’t what time this will be on the air– to all the people who are listening to Science Friday.

IRA FLATOW: Tell me, tell me why there’s such pushback against this. What is the danger about collecting these nodules in deep sea?

SANDOR MULSOW: The major danger, first of all, is they are not renewable. So once you take them out, that’s it. Because every single nodule, it grows very slowly, a few millimeters per million years. So right now, the size of the nodules that we collect, in average, they have maybe 10 to 20 million years old. So if you collect them, they are gone.

Right now, if you collect a few centimeters, let’s say 10 centimeters of the seafloor with the nodules, you are collecting sediments as old as 10,000 years old, because sedimentation rates in that part of the world after 5 kilometers of water depth is very slow. It’s 1 centimeter every 1,000 years. So when you remove sediments as old as 10,000 to 20,000 years, you are going to put on the surface of the water in the water column all the CO2 who has been stored for 10,000 to 20,000 years old. So that’s the major impact.

The size of a mine on the deep sea to make some kind of profit, it has to be at least 3,000 square kilometers of dredging. And now, if we do a comparison with land mines, which are not clean either, the biggest open copper pit mine is in Chile, which is Chuquicamata, where I’m coming from. But that mine is only 15 square kilometers, 200 smaller. And you can see this hole from satellite.

Can you imagine what will happen on the deep sea? And that is one miner. So if they’re going to ravage the bottom of the sea in this area of the Clarion-Clipperton zone, we are talking about an area equivalent to the size of Mongolia. So what are we solving? We are not solving anything. The only thing that we are solving is to make rich a few people, like The Metal Company.

IRA FLATOW: Who is supposed to be in charge of deep sea mining regulations?

SANDOR MULSOW: It should be in charge of the International Seabed Authority. This is an independent organization where 169 member states are represented there, and they are supposed to govern and deal with the licenses for exploration and exploitation in the international waters.

Since they are not a UN body, they are not bound to respond to the Secretary General in New York, Guterres. They have their own Secretary General. So they are like an independent. It’s a very murky water. So unfortunately, the United States, they never ratify this UN clause. So they can do whatever they want in international waters. And they have their own agency to provide and govern this mine in international waters. As you just mentioned, it was NOAA. Right now, we are in a conundrum because we are eroding the floor of the International Seabed Authority and the international law in general with this unilateral decision of the United States.

IRA FLATOW: So why would a Canadian company ask NOAA’s permission to drill in international waters then?

SANDOR MULSOW: Because the Canadian, they saw the loophole. If they do through the Americans, and you have a president right now who seems to be going with their own will, and the American, they signed the Convention of the Law of the Sea, but they did not ratify.

What does the difference between these two things? If you sign and you don’t ratify, that means that the executive power can take any decision on whatever it’s signed. But if they ratify the Convention of the Law of the Sea, it’s a different day, it’s a different signature, you need to ask your Congress for any activity that you want to do in that particular area that is governed by this international organization.

So unfortunately for the whole international community, we have nothing we can do.

IRA FLATOW: Is there great pushback amongst your scientific colleagues?

SANDOR MULSOW: Well, of course, most of the scientists that we know, they said, this is nonsense. We cannot go to deep sea mining. We don’t even the bathymetry of the place, how the seafloor looks like.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. I want to talk about climate change for a minute because as you’ve hinted, one of the reasons behind deep sea mining is we need materials for solar panels and wind turbines and EVs to take some pressure off the planet’s surface. That’s what they’re saying we need to do. That’s why we need to mine these nodules. What’s your response to that?

SANDOR MULSOW: It’s very simple. There is no need. The reason is because when you look at the grade of the elements that are so-called strategic and critical, the only one on the manganese nodules, which is more or less equivalent in quantity for the whole Clarion-Clipperton zone compared to land, is nickel. All the other ones are below wherever we have on land. We need to scrap huge amount of the ocean, not only the Clarion-Clipperton zone, to reach those levels.

But copper, iron, and manganese, they are very high in grade compared to land. They are not rare Earth. The rare Earth mineral, we need them more because we need the magnets, to build the magnets. Without magnets, there is no turbine. There is no anything. No automotive, no electric car.

But one thing that we never pay attention is when you do mine, one thing is to take the mineral from the rock because you need the element. This little pass from the rock to the element is called metallurgic. And the metallurgic, it produces huge amount of CO2.

So what are we solving? Nothing. To create 1 kilo of pure copper, which is simple, many countries are producing copper worldwide, you generate between 8 and 12 kilos of CO2. This is gas. Just imagine the volume. And for 1 kilo, 1 kilo of one of these rare Earth metals, we are talking about 15 to 20 kilograms of CO2.

One of the question is, why is China kind of looking like they control rare Earth minerals? Because nobody in the world wanted to do the metallurgy, which was so contaminated processes. So everybody sent the material to China. And you, China, you kill your people and just give us the rare Earth mineral.

Right now, the Chinese, they can do their own technology, right? So they don’t need to sell you the rare Earth mineral back. That’s when the Americans, the rest of the world realized, wow, we need to do the dirty job in our backyard now. You see? So the narrative is more complex.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. That’s why it’s called rare Earth, right? Not that the element’s rare. It’s rare, it’s tough to get it out of the ore, right?

SANDOR MULSOW: Exactly! They are tiny little elements in a huge formula of one mineral.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s talk about the current state of deep sea mining. How many contracts has the International Seabed Authority granted, and what countries are really pushing for it?

SANDOR MULSOW: Well, there are 19 countries. And there are 31 contracts, licenses for exploration. And they are everywhere– North, South Atlantic, North Pacific, Indian Ocean. And the one who is really pushing behind are entrepreneurs.

IRA FLATOW: Is this for exploitation or exploration?

SANDOR MULSOW: All of them are exploration.

IRA FLATOW: But The Metals Company that we talked about is for exploitation. They want to go down.

SANDOR MULSOW: Exactly.

IRA FLATOW: With all of this said, we’re talking about this, why would a country or a company wait for the ISA to greenlight a mining permit if the US could be willing to do it for you?

SANDOR MULSOW: Because nobody thought that anyone would go through Americans. As simple as that. So they all went through the common sense and consensus to do a very– any process of exploitation of the deep sea in international waters should follow international law. But with the president you have, he can step on the international law, and he’s doing it since day one. So there is no miracle in that.

But here, we have a real loophole because the NOAA can really issue licenses for mining in international waters. Let’s say, what if the 169 countries say, no, no, we are not going to do, well, we are going to be in a confrontation because the American will go to do the work in the Clarion-Clipperton zone. What the other country has to do? Send warships to the place. They’re not going to.

IRA FLATOW: Do you think other countries are going to follow suit and take advantage of this loophole?

SANDOR MULSOW: They are all looking around. They’re all looking what’s going to happen now in July or August, which is the annual meeting of the International Seabed Authority. I hope that I will be there because this is going to be historical. It will be laid out the future of international law. As simple as that.

IRA FLATOW: Right. Sandor, it seems issues with deep sea mining have really stalled for years as countries wait for the rules to set. But you’re saying the Trump administration, bypassing those rules?

SANDOR MULSOW: Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: Right.

SANDOR MULSOW: Doesn’t need any rules.

IRA FLATOW: And your greatest concern is that everyone else will take advantage.

SANDOR MULSOW: Exactly. Yeah. You’re listening to the people who follow you. They should think not only in today, in how we are going to do the next 10 days or 10 years, but just think. Just think in the future generation. What world are we going to leave to our kids?

The last boundary– there are nine boundaries who makes our planet, the planet we have, and to keep the life that we know. And we are screwing up already with six of them. The number seven is called ocean acidification. And with this thing, it will be exacerbated.

Remember I mentioned before we will release CO2 sequestered for thousands of years back to the water again.

IRA FLATOW: Right. Carbolic acid. You’re going to acidify.

SANDOR MULSOW: That’s right. Can you imagine two or three generations ahead?

IRA FLATOW: Sandor, when money is involved, who cares?

SANDOR MULSOW: You care, and I care. I think there are many people who cares. And we should care.

IRA FLATOW: We should care, and that’s why we’re talking about it. And that’s why I’m so happy you’ve come on to talk about it, Dr. Mulsow. So thank you for your work you are doing and for taking time to talk with us.

SANDOR MULSOW: Thank you very much, Ira.

IRA FLATOW: Dr. Sandor Mulsow is a marine geologist at the Austral University of Chile.

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And heads up that Monday, we’ve got something special on the feed– a brand new audio documentary series Flora has worked on with the Hypothesis Fund called The Leap. In the first episode, Flora talks to Nobel Prize Winner Kati Kariko about going all in on mRNA when the field was convinced it was a dead end.

KATALIN KARIKO: I have to say that when I mentioned to somebody that I make mRNA and I work with it, they usually felt sorry. If they were sympathetic or if they’re less sympathetic, they thought that I am crazy.

IRA FLATOW: That’s Monday on the podcast.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

That’s about all the time we have for now. A lot of people helped make this show happen.

SHOSHANNAH BUXBAUM: Shoshannah Buxbaum.

BETH RAMEY: Beth Ramey.

DANIELLE JOHNSON: Danielle Johnson.

JACI HIRSCHFELD: Jaci Hirschfeld.

IRA FLATOW: I’m Ira Flatow. Thanks for listening.

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