Authors: Kai Riemer, Professor of Information Technology and Organisation, University of Sydney and Sandra Peter, Director of Sydney Executive Plus, Business School, University of Sydney

The post We are not ‘in the singularity’ with AI. appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Authors: María-Luisa Chas-Amil, Catedrática de Economía Aplicada, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela and Julia María Touza, Professor of Environmental Economics, University of York

 

As the flames advanced towards the village of Bédar, in the Almería province of Andalusia, the mayor gave a desperate order to ring the church bells to warn residents. It was not enough. The July 9 Los Gallardos fire, which claimed 13 lives and burnt 7,000 hectares, was Spain’s third deadliest on record.

Most of the victims were retired foreigners living in isolated homes, who died trapped in their vehicles or fleeing on foot along dead-end paths in a landscape dominated by scrubland and rugged terrain, most of which is difficult to access.

High temperatures and extremely dry weather turn scrub, grasslands and bushes into highly flammable fuel. This, combined with complex terrain that makes fire spread faster and unpredictably, poses an enormous challenge for firefighting efforts.

Andalusian legislation requires local emergency plans for forest fires in high-risk areas, and self-protection plans for detached buildings and housing estates. However, there is a widespread problem with compliance and implementation of these measures.

Fires are changing

The disaster in Los Gallardos shows that this problem will only get worse, unless we take decisive and effective action that goes beyond the current dominant paradigm of simply extinguishing and resisting fire.

Where, when and how fires occur is changing. Highly destructive fires are on the rise, housing is expanding into the urban-forest interface. This exposes more homes to fire, and the the risk is increasing most quickly in scrubland and grassland areas, which are not typically associated with fire risk.

This is a major problem for communities that do not know how to respond to a risk they have not often been exposed to. We therefore need to urgently rethink how fire risk is managed.

Improving fire resilience

It is unsustainable to respond only after a disaster has happened. What we need are strategies based on preparedness, mitigation and adaptation. The following eight points are particularly important in achieving this.

1. Manage social vulnerability

Wildfires exacerbate the existing social vulnerabilities that affect people’s ability to anticipate, cope with, withstand and recover from them. In high-risk areas the population may consist of elderly people, people living alone in isolated homes, with financial constraints, or who do not know the local area well.

Fires also pose a risk to local economies. Businesses – including those that provide public services and infrastructure – can be vulnerable for a range of reasons, including flammable facilities, their location, or disruptions to supply chains, essential services and staff mobility.

Targeted planning can identify and address all of these vulnerabilities.

2. Adopt nature-based solutions

Nature-based solutions have not been fully integrated into fire risk management, even though they are widely recognised as essential parts of climate change adaptation and nature restoration.

Nature-based solutions include controlled grazing, the creation of less flammable habitats, green firebreaks, and the restoration of water networks to increase ambient humidity and create areas that slow the spread of fire. These measures also bring many additional benefits for the local population and economy.

3. Create (and update) emergency, self-protection and training plans

Local authorities must draw up emergency plans that the public can access. Isolated dwellings and housing estates must have their own coordinated plans. The plans should include fire hydrants and water supply points, accessible warning systems, access and evacuation routes, and protocols for vulnerable people.

But plans alone are not enough without training. There is also a need for ongoing programmes, tailored to each community, that train people to safely maintain their homes and surroundings, familiarise them with meeting points and shelter areas, and teach them to distinguish between lockdown and evacuation.

Drills are essential. Evacuation is not the same as fleeing, and emergency response must be planned and practised.

4. Promote collective action

Risk reduction is most effective when it is community-based, as this increases overall collective resilience. This means public authorities, community organisations, and the public and private sector must all work alongside one another.

The public should also be actively involved in the design of emergency plans. This builds legitimacy, improves the capacity to respond to fires, and fosters trust and a sense of shared responsibility for preventing fires.

5. Promote integrated and coordinated governance

Fire risk management cannot be the sole responsibility of forestry or firefighting services – it needs an integrated system. All agencies that act in the area must take fire risk into account when making decisions.

In practice, this means avoiding new construction and establishing specific building regulations in high-risk areas, creating buffer zones between different land uses, and promoting uses that help to maintain fire-resilient landscapes.

6. Incentivise risk management

Economic tools and behavioural insights can be leveraged to make self-protection measures and land management the easiest and most rewarding options. This includes nudges: interventions that are designed to encourage but not force people to make certain decisions.

One example of this is payments for environmental services, which financially incentivise land management practices that reduce wildfire risk.

The role of insurance is also evolving in the face of natural and climate-related risks. Instruments are being designed based on a proactive model that incentivises individual and collective risk-reduction behaviour.

7. Improve monitoring and advance warning systems

Up-to-date information on a fire’s development is essential. Real-time monitoring systems, sensors, satellite imagery, predictive models of fire behaviour and alert applications providing detailed information can all improve response capabilities and enable safer evacuations. Integrating these tools into local management plans is a necessary investment.

8. Encourage public and private investment in long-term preparedness

Investments in prevention and preparedness provide significant returns. Growing requirements – both regulatory and voluntary – for the private sector to disclose information on nature-related risks and dependencies are generating new demand for investment products (carbon and biodiversity credits, habitat banks, environmental impact bonds, and so on).

This growing private investment must now be channelled towards measures that strengthen both people’s and the landscape’s wildfire resilience. This is to supplement, not replace public investment.

The Los Gallardos blaze serves as a reminder that we need to fundamentally change the way we understand and manage fire risk. Investment in preparedness and coordinated planning between public authorities, the private sector and the general public could be the key to ensuring that, should the alarm bells ring again, the population is ready to respond.

 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.  Original article.

The post Eight lifesaving ways to improve wildfire risk management appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Author: Marta Sánchez López, Postdoctoral researcher at Research Centre for Basque Language and Texts (CNRS-IKER) – Université Bordeaux Montaigne. She also collaborates with the The Bilingual Mind Research Group (Gogo Elebiduna), University of the Basque Country. 

In our daily life, we perceive many different events around us with different participants involved, such as a woman dancing in a theater, or a man enjoying an ice cream. To produce and understand the sentences that express these events, it is crucial to identify the number of participants involved and the role that each one plays. As in a drama, we have to identify the role that each character has to understand the story.

Agents, patients and experiencers

In some events, there are two characters involved, as in the girl kicks the ball, with the girl and the ball; in others, instead, there is only one, as in the woman dances or the man falls down, with the woman or the man. Each of these participants has a different role. For example, the woman is an agent, because she is doing the action, just the opposite of the man, who is a patient, because he is the one affected. In the case of the girl has fun, this participant has the role of experiencer, the one who experiences the enjoyment.

In psycholinguistics, the mechanisms involved in the processing of agent, patient, and experiencer roles have been investigated through different experiments such as reading sentences while participants’ brain activity or eye-movements are recorded. In these studies, it has been found that agent and patient categories play a crucial role in language comprehension and production. These two roles are used when reading, listening to, and producing sentences, and different mechanisms are involved in their processing (e.g., ¹²³⁴⁵). Therefore, they form two different categories within the event role repertoire ⁶. They are two different characters within the drama. However, as I will discuss, there is no experimental evidence for a third character, the experiencer role.

One well-established result regarding the processing of agents and patients comes from experiments where participants are asked to read sentences while their brain activity is recorded by means of electrodes, known as EEG studies. Results of these studies show that the processing of patients elicited an N400 component (a negative brain response that occurs around 400 milliseconds after a stimulus is processed) compared to the processing of agents. This effect is associated with the processing of unexpected elements. For example, when processing the day was breezy so the boy went outside to fly, it is expected to read next a kite based on the preceding context; hence, if an airplane is read instead, as this is unexpected, then an N400 effect appears ⁷. Something similar happens with the processing of agents and patients: agents are expected, whereas patients unexpected.

Across languages, speakers tend to interpret the first ambiguous noun phrase of a sentence as an agent instead of as a patient, due to the agent preference ⁸: agents are preferred and are cognitively more salient than patients. Imagine that someone reads the sentence Mary falls down. Before encountering the verb, the reader cannot know whether Mary is an agent or a patient. However, as agents are preferred over patients, the reader interprets that it is an agent by default. Once the verb is reached, there are two options: confirm that Mary is an agent (the expected role) or recategorize it as a patient (the unexpected role). In Mary falls down, it is the second option, Mary is categorized as a patient, because the verb selects this role. This recategorization is reflected in an N400 component. This result shows that agents and patients have different processing mechanisms and that they form two different categories. Furthermore, this effect has been largely found in different languages such as, Basque (Isasi-Isasmendi et al., 2024), Spanish ⁹, German (Haupt et al., 2008), Hindi (Bickel et al., 2015), or Aïwoo (Sauppe et al., 2023), supporting its robustness.

Therefore, these experimental findings show that there is a preference toward agents over patients. The agent is the protagonist of the show, while the patient plays a secondary role.

What about experiencers?

Linguists have proposed that there are other roles within the event role repertoire, for example, the experiencer role ¹⁰.This role corresponds to the participant who experiences a mental state denoted by the verb. Participants of events like loving someone or enjoying an ice cream have this role. The experiencer is the participant who loves or enjoys.

But does experimental evidence show that the experiencer role is a specific role category within the event role repertoire, as agent and patient roles do?

In Sánchez-López (2026), I addressed this question. I investigated whether speakers use a third category, the experiencer role, when processing language. In three reading eye-tracking experiments and in one EEG experiment, I asked Spanish native speakers to read sentences, while their eye-movements and their brain activity were recorded.

In the first two eye-tracking experiments, I compared de processing of sentences with two participants with different combinations of agent, experiencer, and patient roles: (i) María golpea a Juan “Mary hits John”, with an agent (María) and a patient (Juan); (ii) María asusta a Juan “Mary frightens John”, with an agent (María) and an experiencer (Juan); and (iii) María ama a Juan “Mary loves John”, with an experiencer (María) and a patient (Juan).

These two experiments revealed that Spanish native speakers produced higher fixation times on verbs selecting agent-experiencer roles (ii), than on the other two sentence types (i, iii), independently of whether the subject was animate or inanimate (e.g., María/La situación asusta a Juan “Mary/The situation frightens John”). Interestingly, no processing differences were found between sentences selecting agent-patient (i) and experiencer-patient (iii). These findings show that the combination of agent-experiencer involves higher processing cost than other combinations.

But why is the agent-experiencer combination costlier than the others?

A possible explanation could be that the experiencer role is not a specific category within the event role repertoire. As Dowty ¹¹ proposed, agents and experiencers are both grouped within the same category, the one of the proto-agent. Based on this proposal, there are only two roles in the event role repertoire, proto-agent and proto-patient, and proto-agents always become subjects. Hence, in sentences like Mary frightens John, both participants are proto-agents. Since they are both possible candidates to become subject, a competition for subject assignment appears. This competition is reflected in higher processing cost compared to those sentences without competition, sentences with only one proto-agent participant (e.g., Mary hits John or Mary loves John).

To better understand this competition effect, imagine that the proto-agent is the hero of the story and the proto-patient is the villain. In a drama, if there is a hero, there is also a villain. If there are two heroes and no villain in the story, it would be unusual, and probably, it would take more time to understand the story, since this is not expected. Hence, the same happens with sentences like Mary frightens John, which have two proto-agents; this combination is unexpected and it entails higher processing cost than when there is only one proto-agent and one proto-patient.

In another reading experiment using both eye-tracking and EEG techniques, I compared the processing of the three roles, agent, experiencer, and patient again to determine whether this experiencer role behaves like the agent role or not. In these experiments, I used sentences with only one participant involved: (iv) María baila “Mary dances” with an agent, (v) María disfruta “Mary has fun” with an experiencer, and (vi) María se cae “Mary falls down” with a patient. The use of these sentences allowed a more direct comparison of the processing of these roles, since the three roles are subjects. The structure of all sentences is the same (one participant and the verb), and only the event role category changes.

Results revealed that participant looked more at sentences with agents and experiencers than at sentences with patients. Moreover, I found that participants exhibited a preference to interpret the first ambiguous noun phrase (i.e., María) as an agent/experiencer; hence, when they realized that it was a patient instead, an N400 component appeared. But this effect only appeared with patients, not with experiencers, showing that participants processed similarly agents and experiencers, and both different from patients.

What does this evidence show?

These results align with the hypothesis that there are only two role categories within the event role repertoire (Dowty, 1991): proto-agent and proto-patient. Therefore, when the sentences Mary dances or Mary has fun are processed, in both cases, Mary is interpreted as a proto-agent, whereas in Mary falls down, she is interpreted as a patient instead.

All in all, this evidence suggests that agents and experiencers belong to the same role category, the one of the proto-agent. Therefore, when we process language, it seems that we do not differentiate between agents and experiencers, rather we process them similarly. Experiencers are grouped together with agents, being the same character in the event, both proto-agents.

So, proto-agents are the protagonists of the story, the ones that spectators prefer to pay attention to, whereas proto-patients are the secondary characters who complement the story. Regarding experiencers, they do not play a different character in the story, instead, they are also the protagonists.

The post Doing and experiencing in language: how similar are they? appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Author: Subir Sarkar, Emeritus Professor, Department of Physics, University of Oxford

 

According to our best understanding, the universe is expanding – and is doing so at an accelerating rate. This is believed to be caused by something called the “cosmological constant”, which was first proposed by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity. In recent decades, it has become better known as dark energy, which is believed to make up about 70% of the universe.

Crucial to this realisation were studies of Type Ia supernovae – exploding white dwarf stars. These are thought to emit a specific amount of light, which allows astronomers to determine their distances very accurately and thereby track the expansion of the universe. This work was awarded the 2011 Nobel prize in physics.

The accelerating expansion of the universe is thought to be due to negative pressure, an unusual property of dark energy that allows it to overcome the attractive force of gravity. Yet the exact nature of dark energy remains a puzzle. It cannot be explained by our best theory for the fundamental building blocks of the universe – known as the standard model of particle physics.

However, it is an integral part of another theory, devised to explain how the large-scale universe came to be. This is the standard model of cosmology, also called the lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model.

Other observational evidence supporting the existence of dark energy includes fluctuations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the “afterglow of the Big Bang” – and the imprint of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) – sound waves from the early universe – in the distribution of galaxies.

But the ΛCDM model has come under increasing scrutiny as new data has emerged. A conference hosted by the UK’s Royal Society debated emerging cracks in the standard cosmological model. It has been noted that the model’s past successes may partly be due to “confirmation bias” – the unconscious tendency to favour information that supports our existing beliefs while giving less attention to information that challenges them.

Flawed framework?

Most cosmologists remain unconvinced by such criticism and are instead persuaded by the multiple lines of evidence that the universe’s expansion is accelerating.

However, all such analyses, for example of the CMB or BAO, are conducted using a special solution of Einstein’s equations called the FLRW (Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker) framework. This is a description of space-time that assumes the “cosmological principle”, namely that the universe is, on average, homogeneous and isotropic (looks the same in all directions).

However, our recent study found evidence to falsify the FLRW framework, presenting results showing that the universe is asymmetric, or lopsided. We believe this presents a fundamental challenge to dark energy by undermining the very basis for standard analyses of cosmological data.

The observation that the universe may be lopsided is known as the cosmic dipole anomaly. This anomaly cannot be fixed by tweaking parameters in the ΛCDM model. It requires starting again from scratch to build a model of the universe based on observations, rather than on a philosophical principle.

The Nobel prize winning astrophysicist Jim Peebles has said that the cosmic dipole anomaly is about as well established as another cosmological irregularity known as the Hubble tension. However, he notes, the cosmic dipole anomaly has received only a fraction of the interest heaped on the Hubble tension.

With my collaborators, Mohamed Rameez and his PhD student Animesh Sah at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, we have also shown that the acceleration of the expansion of the universe inferred from Type Ia supernovae is not the same in all directions.

The signal from supernovae is mainly aligned with a temperature difference in the afterglow of the Big Bang – the cosmic microwave background. This temperature difference, called the CMB dipole anisotropy, is believed to be due to the local motion of the solar system.

‘Tilted observers’

The acceleration inferred from supernovae cannot therefore be due to dark energy. Rather, it is probably an illusion, because we are “tilted observers”. This is because of Earth’s specific location in the cosmos, where our neighbouring galaxies are participating in a large-scale but localised streaming motion called the bulk flow.

The relationship between the intrinsic brightness of Type Ia supernovae and their distance has been crucial to the idea of dark energy. However, this relationship may not be as robust as was first assumed.

Astronomers in South Korea found evidence that the ages of the white dwarf stars that produce Type Ia supernovae (their progenitors) affect their brightness. However, this has been challenged by another team.

When we corrected for the dependence of the intrinsic brightness on the progenitor age, the indication is that the universe is decelerating, rather than accelerating.

This is just as is expected for a universe without dark energy. But it will come as a surprise to most cosmologists who believe that there is compelling independent evidence for ΛCDM, in particular from studies of the CMB. But CMB temperature fluctuations are not influenced by dark energy. Rather, they are related to the spatial curvature of the universe, the baryon density, and the dark matter density.

Whether dark energy is still a valid inference thus depends on whether the distribution of matter in the universe is indeed isotropic – exactly the same in all directions. Observations suggest otherwise. If these findings are confirmed, they could signal a paradigm shift in cosmology.

 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the Original article.

The post Cracks in the foundations of today’s cosmological model appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Author: José R. Pineda got his Ph.D. from University of Barcelona in 2006. Since 2007 he has worked for Institut Curie and The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. Currently he is a researcher of the EHU. He investigates the role of stem cells in physiologic and pathologic conditions.

For decades, Alzheimer’s research has been dominated by a seemingly intuitive idea: the disease is largely explained by the accumulation of abnormal proteins in the brain, primarily beta-amyloid and tau. However, while this view has been useful, it has fallen short in explaining certain fundamental aspects. One of the most striking is that Alzheimer’s affects women far more than men. This is not a minor difference: roughly two-thirds of cases occur in women, and the clinical progression tends to be faster and more severe. The work by López-López and colleagues addresses this imbalance from a different angle. Instead of focusing exclusively on protein accumulation, it shifts attention to the brain’s immune system—specifically to a molecular pathway known as interferon signaling. What the study proposes is that the brain’s immune response, far from being a mere bystander, could be a central driver of the disease, and one that operates differently in men and women ¹.

To understand the importance of this idea, it helps to briefly consider what interferons are. They are molecules that form part of the body’s first line of defense against infections, especially viruses. They activate genetic programs that help cells detect and neutralize threats. Under normal conditions, this system is essential for survival. The problem arises when it becomes chronically or inappropriately activated, as is the case in several inflammatory diseases ². So, the study begins with an analysis of human brain tissue from Alzheimer’s patients. Using transcriptomics (techniques that measure the activity of thousands of genes at once) the authors identified a clear pattern: in the brains of women with Alzheimer’s, genes associated with the interferon response were much more strongly activated than in men (Figure 1). This pattern was not explained by differences in disease severity, since both groups showed comparable levels of neuropathological damage. Instead, it points to an intrinsic difference in how the brain responds to the disease. This finding is significant because it suggests that women not only develop Alzheimer’s more often, but may do so through a partially distinct biological pathway. In other words, the same clinical diagnosis may conceal different underlying mechanisms depending on sex.

To move beyond correlation and explore causality, the researchers turned to animal models. They used genetically modified mice (APP/PS1), widely employed in Alzheimer’s research because they develop amyloid plaques similar to those seen in patients. Once again, the same pattern emerged: female mice showed much stronger activation of the interferon pathway, along with increased brain inflammation, neuronal damage, and functional impairment. An especially interesting point is that these differences were not limited to amyloid plaque levels. Indeed, female mice did have more plaques, but the study shows that neuronal damage and inflammation cannot be explained solely by amyloid accumulation. This supports a growing idea in the field: that Alzheimer’s toxicity depends not only on protein buildup, but also on how the brain responds to it. In this context, microglia (the brain’s resident immune cells) become key players. Cell-level analyses revealed that these cells are the main drivers of interferon activation. In essence, microglia detect signals of damage or stress and launch an inflammatory response which, if sustained over time, can ultimately harm neuronal tissue. To test whether this pathway is not only associated with disease but actually contributes to it, the authors performed direct manipulation experiments acutely activating interferon signaling in healthy animals using an immune stimulus. To do that, they did intraperitoneal administration of polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid (poly(I:C)) to induce inflammation, but also they performed crossings between the APP/PS1 mice and a microglia-specific Rela conditional knockout line (AD hiIFN). The result was striking: within hours to days, the brains of these animals began to show changes resembling Alzheimer’s pathology, including altered neuronal activity, synaptic disruption, and markers of axonal damage. This results suggest that activation of this pathway is not a secondary phenomenon, but may be sufficient to induce key features of the disease. In parallel, the researchers performed the inverse experiment: they chronically enhanced interferon signaling in microglia within APP/PS1 mice (an Alzheimer’s disease model). This led to a worsening of neurodegenerative features, even though, paradoxically, amyloid plaque levels did not increase—and in some cases even decreased. This last finding is particularly revealing because it challenges a widespread assumption: that fewer plaques necessarily means a healthier brain. Here, the opposite happens!! The animals had less amyloid burden, yet more neuronal damage and worse function. This points to inflammation, and specifically interferon signaling, as an independent driver of degeneration.

Next, the key question is whether this pathway can be targeted therapeutically. To address this, the study explores a pharmacological intervention aimed at the cGAS–STING pathway (a molecular system that senses cellular damage and triggers interferon production). Using a specific inhibitor (STING inhibitor C-176), the researchers demonstrated by RNA-seq and immunohistochemistry that the treatment was able to reduce interferon signaling in the brain. The results were consistent: inflammation decreased, neuronal integrity was better preserved, and cognitive performance improved in memory tests (very important from the therapeutic and functional perspective). More importantly, these effects were far more pronounced in females, which aligns with the idea that this pathway is more active in them and therefore more impactful when blocked. Notably, these improvements occurred without significant changes in amyloid plaque levels. Once again, the conclusion is clear: modulating the immune response may be as important as, or even more important than, targeting protein aggregates. Taken together, this work proposes a shift in how Alzheimer’s is understood. Rather than viewing it solely as a disease of protein accumulation, it suggests it is also—critically—a disorder of immune dysregulation. More specifically, one in which excessive interferon signaling plays a central role, particularly in women.

The practical implications are twofold. First, it opens the door to therapies that modulate immune pathways in the brain, something already feasible in other diseases using drugs that target similar mechanisms. Second, it highlights the importance of incorporating sex as a biological variable in both research and treatment design. What works in men may not work the same way in women, and vice versa. As with any preclinical study conducted in mice we must be cautious when extrapolating to humans: results in animal models do not always translate directly, and manipulating the immune system carries inherent risks, given its essential role in protecting against infections. However, the value of this work lies not only in its potential clinical applications, but in the conceptual framework it offers.

By identifying interferon signaling as a key factor in sex-specific vulnerability to Alzheimer’s, the study provides a mechanistic explanation for a long-observed but poorly understood phenomenon. Perhaps more importantly, it suggests that intervening in this pathway could alter disease progression even without changing classical amyloid pathology. In a field where many clinical trials have failed by focusing solely on plaque removal, this perspective is not just novel, it may be necessary to explore it in the future.

The post The hidden role of the immune system in female Alzheimer’s appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Auhtors: Samantha Lawler, Associate Professor, Astronomy, University of Regina and Aaron Boley, Professor, Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia

 

A giant mirror to create “sunlight on demand” was just approved by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), despite opposition from astronomers and the public, and real safety concerns.

The FCC approved the company Reflect Orbital to test one satellite, named Earendil-1, as a means of reflecting the sun’s rays back to Earth for extra solar energy and wide-area lighting. The light is expected to cover an area about five kilometres wide, and will require repointing every four minutes.

And this is just the start. Reflect Orbital plans to have more than 50,000 satellites in action by 2035, which they claim will be used across agricultural, emergency response and other industrial sectors.

There are many problems with this proposal, including impacts these satellites will have on human health and safety, as well as on astronomy and the low-Earth environment.

Flashes during mirror repointing could disrupt pilots and drivers. The light could also disrupt circadian rhythms of plants, animals and humans. Sensitive detectors in research telescopes, as well as star-tracking cameras on lower altitude satellites, could be overloaded and fried.

The FCC said that the “risks of harm raised on the record regarding Reflect Orbital’s solar reflector are unrelated to the Commission’s role in authorizing use of radiofrequency spectrum.”

‘Weird space stuff’

Satellite proposals for “emergent space activities” in low-Earth orbit are becoming increasingly outlandish. The proposals have become so weird, in fact, that the FCC recently published a document called “Spectrum Abundance for Weird Space Stuff.”

“Once the province of science fiction,” this document states, “American companies are now upgrading, relocating and servicing satellites; manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space; building private inhabitable spacecraft; and conducting private robotic missions to the surface of the Moon.”

Millions of orbital AI data centres are also planned. Corporations seem to be scrambling to launch anything that might persuade investors throw money at them: space advertising, hotels for billionaires, artificial meteor showers, space burials for cremated remains, solar-powered infrared beams to power data centres and a variety of orbital missiles.

The phrase “weird space stuff” is refreshingly truthful. So, how did we get here?

SpaceX controls orbit

There are close to 11,000 SpaceX Starlink satellites currently in orbit above our heads. Anyone who wants to launch into low-Earth orbit needs to carefully consider SpaceX operations, or directly co-ordinate with them.

Otherwise they risk collisions, like the near-miss between a Starlink and Chinese satellite in December 2025.

Even the Artemis I launch in 2022 and Artemis II launch in 2026 had small “cutout” windows in their launch timing to avoid satellites, including those belonging to Starlink.

Co-ordination is good. Forcing it because one corporation has effectively occupied low-Earth orbit is not. Indeed, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which was signed by more than 100 countries including the United States, China and Russia, states that, “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation.”

Whether SpaceX’s extensive use of Earth orbits violates this principle is now being tested in real time.

Copycat megaconstellations

In February, SpaceX filed with the FCC for one million more satellites, for “AI data centers.”

One million. That is 40 times as many satellites as have ever been launched — for a single megaconstellation consisting of completely untested technology that may not even work in space.

Not only did the FCC accept SpaceX’s filing, but they did so at ludicrous speed. Scientists worldwide then had just 30 days to model the effects with woefully incomplete information on masses, sizes, compositions and orbital distributions.

At the time of writing, four other copycat AI data centre proposals have been filed by rival companies, for tens of thousands of satellites each. And SpaceX just proposed another 100,000 satellites to interface with the million AI data centres that it already asked for.

Solar energy from space

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission was originally set up to regulate radio broadcasts. But it is now being asked to evaluate many non-radio effects, including orbital safety, which it may not have the required expertise for. It would make sense to move some of this evaluation to the U.S. Office of Space Commerce. However, recent budget cuts make that infeasible.

Consequently, the FCC will soon be asked to judge a daunting range of satellite proposals. They include a cluster of proposals to gather solar energy from space.

One idea is to send solar power down to earth through high energy beams. These could change atmospheric chemistry and kill birds and other wildlife that stray into the beam.

They would also require no-fly zones around receiving stations for airplanes and also satellites on lower altitude orbits (such as the orbits SpaceX just requested for 100,000 more Starlink satellites).

Environmental costs

While many of these projects claim to solve environmental problems by creating clean energy or capturing it in space, they function as a form of greenwashing.

The solar energy generated is only clean if you ignore the environmental costs of building, launching, maintaining and burning satellites up in Earth’s atmosphere. The daily operations of all these proposed systems will have huge environmental consequences.

There are companies that have tested plans for removing space debris from orbit. This is helpful for avoiding Kessler Syndrome — a runaway chain reaction of collisions. But where will the debris go once removed from orbit?

It will fall into Earth’s atmosphere, where it will deposit metal and possibly impact Earth’s surface. It is unclear who is responsible for any resulting damage or deaths.

For all humankind

The majority of satellites in orbit today are American, and the main federal agency regulating satellites is not set up to do that well. We are now seeing the consequences.

While outer space is effectively infinite, low-Earth orbit most definitely is not. Satellites orbit the Earth around once every 90 minutes. This means the collision potential between two objects in orbit is large.

The many satellites and rocket bodies that have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere over the last few years have already measurably altered it. Preliminary studies show that using Earth’s atmosphere as a crematorium for tens of thousands of satellites will have devastating effects on ozone and other atmospheric chemistry.

Astronomy is also under threat from some of the “weirder” ideas like space mirrors, solar sails and diffuse sky brightening from orbital debris.

An innovation challenge

We are not here to argue against satellites. Indeed, they provide a wide range of beneficial services to science and society. But each satellite comes with a cost that must be taken into account.

Ultimately, this is an innovation challenge. Unfettered growth and exploitation of any environment comes with serious consequences, including to the long-term sustainability of the operations that depend on that environment.

Doing more with less is the engineering challenge that needs to be met if we want to continue to use satellites in orbit.

 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Original article.

The post A giant space mirror to test ‘sunlight on demand.’ appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Author: Marta Irigoyen is a postdoctoral researcher at CIC bioGUNE

Chimeric antigen-specific receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy targeting B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA; BCMA-CAR T cells) has produced remarkable clinical responses in advanced multiple myeloma (MM), with a substantial fraction of patients achieving complete remission ¹. However, many patients relapse within months, largely due to insufficient CAR T-cell persistence, a recognized mechanism of acquired resistance ². A major barrier to durable responses is the tumor microenvironment (TME), which is profoundly reshaped by tumor metabolic reprogramming ³. In fact, many tumor types, specially MM, are highly dependent on glutamine (Gln) metabolism for cell survival and proliferation ⁴. Thus, Gln “addiction” depletes local Gln levels and availability, impairing antitumor T-cell effector functions and promoting immune escape.

Based on these observations, a team of researchers hypothesized ⁵ that Gln deprivation within the TME limits the efficacy of CAR T-cell therapies. Indeed, antigen-specific T cells fail to proliferate and to produce interferon gamma (IFN-γ) under Gln-restricted conditions. They therefore investigated whether enhancing Gln uptake via overexpression of the Human SLC1A5 (ASCT2) amino acid transporter could improve the metabolic fitness and the antitumor activity of BMCA-CAR T cells in MM.

To assess the functional impact of ASCT2 overexpression in T cells, the authors infected CD8⁺ and CD4⁺ T cells from mice with an expression vector containing Asct2. To assess the impact of enhanced Gln uptake on T-cell function, CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cells from mouse spleens were stimulated with anti-CD3/CD28 beads at varying Gln concentrations. Interestingly, Asct2 overexpression significantly improved T-cell proliferation and IFN-γ production. Similar enhancements were observed in CD8⁺ OT-I (these cells contained a transgenic TCR designed to recognize ovalbumin (OVA) peptide 257-264 on MHC class I, modeling thus cytotoxic T-cell responses) and CD4⁺ OT-II T cells (these cells contained a transgenic TCR designed to recognize OVA peptide 323-339 on MHC class II, modeling the helper T-cell responses). Thus, Asct2-overexpressing OT-I T cells showed increased cytotoxicity against B16OVA cells. B16OVA cells are a well established in vitro model for cancer immunotherapy, expressing ovalbumin in order to facilitate strong immune responses to tumor antigens. The authors found that, even at low Gln levels, Asct2-overexpressing CD4⁺ OT-II T cells were more efficient lysing B16OVA cells.

Next, to assess the potential of Asct2 overexpression to enhance ACT therapy in vivo, B16OVA tumor-bearing mice were treated with either control or Asct2 CD8⁺ OT-I T cells. Interestingly, 14 days after tumor injection they found lower levels of Gln in the interstitial fluid, confirming a Gln-deficient TME. Then, mice were subcutaneously injected with B16OVA cells and, 7 days later, treated with control or Asct2 CD8+ OT-I T cells. Remarkably, mice treated with Asct2 CD8⁺ OT-I T cells exhibited a delay in tumor growth as evidenced by tumor weight and survival rate analysis. Moreover, mice treated with Asct2 CD8+ OT-I T cells showed a higher number of IFN-γ–producing antigen-specific T cells in the spleen compared with control T cells.

Given the well-established Gln “addiction” of MM ⁶ and the consequent Gln depletion in the bone marrow (BM), the authors next evaluated whether Asct2 overexpression in BCMA-CAR T cells could improve Gln uptake and potentially benefit CAR T-cell immunotherapy in MM. Because MM expresses BCMA, they generated a murine anti–Bcma-CAR T-cell therapy effective against MM in vivo. They tested whether Asct2 overexpression could improve their efficacy in vivo and observed that Bcma-CAR cells exhibited robust proliferation and high IFN-γ secretion when stimulated with Bcma. Besides, subsequent co-culture experiments with Bcma-expressing MM cells confirmed that Bcma-CAR T cells selectively secreted IFN-γ, and displayed cytolytic activity against MM cells. Replacement of the GFP reporter with ASCT2 yielded BCMA-CAR/ASCT2 T cells with enhanced Gln transport capacity. In coculture assays, ASCT2-expressing BCMA-CAR T cells exhibited superior cytolytic activity against MM cells, particularly under low-Gln conditions.

To evaluate if Asct2 overexpression could enhance ACT immunotherapy with Bcma-CAR T cells in vivo, they used a murine model in which mice were challenged with MM cells and treated IV with CD8⁺ and CD4⁺Bcma-CAR T cells (1:1 ratio) or Asct2 Bcma-CAR T cells. Interestingly, Asct2 Bcma-CAR T cells significantly improved overall survival (OS) in mice challenged with tumors, achieving 90% survival at day 100 after treatment. Besides, fourteen days after CAR T-cell transfer, there was a significant reduction in tumor cells in the BM of both CAR T-cell–treated mice groups, being more significant in the BM of mice treated with Asct2 Bcma-CAR T cells compared with those treated with Bcma-CAR T cells. Moreover, there was a higher number of infiltrating CAR T cells in both the spleen and BM of mice receiving Asct2 Bcma-CAR T cells. Then, they next evaluated the antitumor effect of the Bcma-CAR T cells in a genetic MM preclinical model that closely mimics common genetic alterations observed in human MM and, similarly, treatment with Asct2 Bcma-CAR T cells significantly enhanced OS compared with conventional Bcma-CAR T cells.

Finally, the authors explored the clinical relevance of ASCT2 expression in MM. RNA-seq analysis of BM aspirates of untreated patients with MM compared ASCT2 expression levels in various B-cell subtypes obtained from healthy donors as previously described, showed a marked upregulation in MM cells compared with normal B-cell subsets, suggesting a potential prognostic relevance of ASCT2 expression in MM. Next, to explore the clinical relevance of ASCT2 overexpression in human CAR T cells, they created 2 lentiviral constructs encoding an antihuman BCMA-CAR. They prepared a conventional BCMA-CAR and the ASCT2 BCMA-CAR construct coexpressing ASCT2. Notably, ASCT2 BCMA-CAR T cells showed greater proliferation and higher IFN-γ production upon BCMA stimulation at various Gln concentrations, and they had a higher proportion of naïve stem cell memory and central memory subsets. To further demonstrate the importance of ASCT2, they performed cytotoxicity assays with BCMA-CAR T cells against tumor cells with different ASCT2 levels. Silencing ASCT2 in MM cells reduced Gln uptake and confirmed the functional importance of this transporter in tumor–immune metabolic competition.

In summary, Asct2 overexpression enhances T-cell and CAR T-cells metabolic fitness and effector function under Gln-restricted conditions. In both B16OVA melanoma and MM in vivo tumor models, this strategy improved antitumor immunity and increased overall survival. These findings support metabolic engineering of CAR T cells as a rational approach to overcome nutrient deprivation in the TME an to enhance durable tumor control.

The post Enhanced BCMA – CAR T-cell therapeutic efficacy in multiple myeloma appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Author: Jaume Navarro is an Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country

A few weeks after the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, many scientific institutions felt the need to issue public statements against that war. At the time, I was president of the Commission for the History of Physics within the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) and, as such, I took part in the discussions leading to the final declaration. The timing could not be better for historians of science to make a significant, albeit small, contribution: my commission was working on a project to seriously study the origins and development of IUPAP, which was about to celebrate its centenary. Paying attention to history was important so as to articulate a statement that would avoid past mistakes and incorporate positive experiences of the Union in its one-hundred-year history. Because, like other scientific international unions, IUPAP was born with an idea of peace in mind, yet it had to maneuver through times of war, both hot and cold.

It was after the tragedy of the Great War (1914-1918) that a new wave of internationalism in science took shape. If excessive nationalism had drawn Europe to its worse carnage in history, so the argument went, it was time for international institutions to collaborate in the construction of peace. And scientific research, understood as a cultural enterprise, was one such area in which collaboration rather than competition was to play a key role. In hindsight, one of the ironies of this search for peace was that the losers (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and what remained of a now highly unstable Ottoman Empire) both collectively and individually, were banned from taking part in the new international order. That meant not only that their national academies could not join the new international unions, but also that individual scientists from those countries were excluded from meetings and collaborations sponsored by the unions. This was particularly poignant in the case of physics.

Indeed, international collaboration had a somewhat long tradition in fields like astronomy or geodesy due to the global scale of some of their research projects. But physics, while the “king of the sciences” in the nineteenth century, had not seen the international cooperation of national academies in the same way. That partly explains why, with the creation of the International Research Council (IRC) by delegates of twelve nations in July 1919, the International Unions of Astronomy (IAU), Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) and Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) immediately approved their initial statutes, soon to be followed by the Mathematical Union (IMU) and the Union for Scientific Radio Telegraphy (URSI); yet, a union of physics would have to wait, both in form and, especially, in practice.

In 1922, a number of physicists from France, Belgium, Britain, the USA and a few other countries met in Paris and came up with a first draft of statutes for an International Union of Physics. It was the young American experimentalist, Robert A. Millikan, who pushed for a name that included both pure and applied physics. The main goals of the Union were the promotion of up-to-date scientific bibliographies, the coordination of fundamental units, and the organization or sponsorship of international conferences. Those present at the meeting to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Société française de physique (SFP) in Paris in December 1923 finally approved the statutes of IUPAP nominating the British and Nobel prize winner William H. Bragg as president, and Henri Abraham, professor of physics at the École Normale Supérieure, as secretary general. But it was informally agreed that the Union would remain basically dormant until it could be fully international; i.e., include German physicists.

By 1924, the vindictive philosophy of the IRC against the Central Powers was being challenged. The Council had grown and now included national academies from up to twenty countries, mostly neutral during the war and who did not see the need for such exclusionary policy. Also, an increasing number of individual scientists were pushing towards a more reconciliatory and inclusive internationalism. French and Belgian representatives were the most reticent to amend the statutes of the IRC and lift the foundational ban. So much so that real changes only came in 1931 when the IRC dissolved and the new International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) took its place. From then on, not only was internationalism a real possibility but also each individual scientific union was freer to organize itself as they saw fit.

In the 1920s, however, internationalism in physics materialized in other forms. Two are the best-known and most influential institutions on this aspect: the Solvay Conferences and Niels Bohr’s Institute for theoretical physics in Copenhagen. The former were the initiative of the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay to promote relatively small, truly international, by-invitation-only conferences to address pressing issues in both physics and chemistry. After the success of the first two meetings in physics in 1911 and 1913, the third and fourth Solvay meetings in 1921 and 1924 took part in the boycott against the Germans. But, by 1927, the mood had changed and the fifth Solvay conference in Brussels, which eventually became one of the most influential events in shaping the transformation of the early quantum physics into the new quantum mechanics, saw the presence of five German physicists: Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Max Born. In a way, that success was partly due to the tradition that Bohr had managed to create in his institute in Copenhagen. Indeed, Denmark had been a neutral country during the war and the Carlsberg Foundation had generously funded a research center for theoretical physics to keep Bohr in the country. Thanks to both elements, Copenhagen became the central point for physicists and mathematicians to meet and freely exchange ideas on the new quantum physics.

But let us go back to the early history of IUPAP because, while Bohr had played a significant role in bringing together physicists from both sides of the war, he was also partly responsible for the failure of IUPAP to take off. In 1931, Bragg resigned and Millikan was appointed president. His plan was to use his tenure as a springboard for American physicists to become more and more internationally relevant, as well as to materialize the inclusion of the German physical society into IUPAP. He expected to achieve both goals with the organization of a major international physics conference in Chicago in 1933, year in which the wind city was celebrating its centenary. With the presence of a large number of invited physicists IUPAP might finally formalize the German membership.

Millikan’s grand plan did not succeed. First, the recession after the crash of 1929 affected the organization of events during the “Century of Progress” celebrations and money to invite scientists from abroad was short. Second, IUPAP and all other unions had one national scientific institution representing the country. But Germany had two such societies, the Deutsche Physikalischer Gesellschaft (DPG) and Gesellschaft für Technische Physik (GTP), and the attempts by Millikan and, especially Abraham, who was still serving as secretary, in correspondence with Planck and other German representatives could not settle the question as to which German society was to represent the country in the Union. And, third, the political climate in Germany was changing and the nazi ideology taking hold of the country was certainly not keen on internationalism.

Chicago did finally organize a minor scientific meeting, but it was far from being the major event Millikan had envisaged to expand and consolidate IUPAP. Promoters of the Union did not, however, give up and decided to use a major physics conference organized by the British Institute of Physics and the Royal Society in both London and Cambridge in October 1934 as the place to formalize German membership. And as a sign to underline the true international character of the Union, they offered the presidency to Bohr as icon of internationalism. The correspondence between Millikan, Abraham, Bohr, Schrödinger and a few other physicists show an amusing yet sad chain of misunderstandings: Abraham and Bohr thought Millikan had accepted the presidency by misreading a telegram of the latter; but Bohr did not want to get involved unless the German membership was fully signed, not simply promised. And that never happened.

So, Millikan having resigned and Bohr having rejected the presidency, the soul of the dormant union was its long-serving secretary, Abraham, who worked hard to find a candidate to act as president while things were clarified. In 1937, the Swedish physicist and Nobel Prize winner Manne Siegbahn agreed to be the president of IUPAP, but the Union was still short of activities, cohesion and a clear goal. It was also the indefatigable Abraham who continued his search for ways to keep the Union alive. He proposed a conference in Copenhagen in 1938, with the support of Bohr, or in Stockholm, organized by Siegbahn or, even as late as late as May 1939 he was thinking of a conference in Paris for 1940. None of them ever materialized and World War II not only destroyed the hopes and dreams of having a fully functional and international Union of Pure and Applied Physics, but even more poignantly, ended with the life of its most ardent defendant: Abraham was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. As we shall see in the next installment, the Union reinvented itself after the war and had to learn how to navigate the new peace of the Cold War.

Further reading:

Lalli, R. and Navarro, J. (2024). Globalizing Physics: One Hundred Years of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. Oxford University Press. [Available in open access: https://academic.oup.com/book/58182]

The post International scientific institutions between war and peace. One hundred years of IUPAP (1) appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Authors: Sergi Muria Maldonado, Professor de Didàctica de les Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona; Anton Aubanell Pou, Professor de l’Institut de Formació Continuada i professor jubilat de Didàctica de les Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona, and Jordi Font González, Professor de Didàctica de les Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona

 

2026 marks 100 years since the death of Antoni Gaudí, the architect of the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. While the temple’s beauty is extraordinary in its own right, it becomes even more profound when we explore the numerical patterns that lie behind its striking forms.

By contemplating the mathematical principles that underpin its structure, the visual harmony of the whole takes on a new dimension, endowing it with a renewed functionality, balance and coherence.

Mathematician Claudi Alsina i Català deeply studied the mathematics of the Sagrada Família. He undertook his initial studies in this field at the University of Barcelona, and supervised the doctoral thesis of Jordi Faulí, the architect currently in charge of the temple’s ongoing construction.

In his memoirs, Alsina stated:

Many had wondered whether the design of the Sagrada Família contained some module or system of proportions that guided the building’s metric relationships. (…) One Saturday afternoon, sitting at my desk at home, with all the data and documents on this mysterious proportional system – if indeed it existed – I discovered it. The 7.5-metre module and the ratios between the divisors of 12 (1:4, 1:3, 1:2, 3:4, 2:3, 1) seemed to explain a great deal.

12: the magic number

It is no surprise that the number 12 plays a prominent role in the structure of the church. Gaudí conceived the Sagrada Família as a synthesis of architecture and religious symbolism, and the number 12 features heavily in the Bible: Jacob’s 12 sons, the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles and the crown of 12 stars in the Book of Revelation are just a few examples.

But its significance is not merely symbolic. From a mathematical point of view, 12 is a number particularly well-suited to establishing proportions, as it has many divisors. According to Alsina, the relationships between these divisors account for much of the basilica’s proportional system.

The 7.5-metre module

Drawing on Alsina’s work, we invite you to take a brief mathematical tour of the Sagrada Família.

The temple’s dimensions are based on the number 12 and a module of 7.5m. It is 90m long (7.5 × 12) and 60m wide (7.5 × 8). The width of the main nave is 45m (7.5 × 6).

In terms of height, the highest vault is that of the apse, at 75m (7.5 × 10), followed by the vault of the transept at 60 metres (7.5 × 8). The nave vault is 45m high (7.5 × 6), the side aisle 30m (7.5 × 4), and the choir 15m (7.5 × 2).

The Tower of Jesus Christ is the central and tallest of the cathedral. It stands at 172.5 metres (7.5 x 23), close to the height of the landmark hill of Montjuïc. It is crowned by a four-armed cross, 17m high and 13.5m wide. Surrounding this are the four Evangelist Spires, which reach a height of 135m (7.5 x 18).

The 138-metre high Tower of the Virgin Mary is the second tallest in the basilica. It is crowned by a 12-pointed star, which rests on three supporting arms. This star has a diameter of 7.5m, and is made up of a regular dodecahedron, with pyramid-shaped pentagonal points rising from each face. Its reflections of daylight and night-time illumination lend this star a unique beauty.

Polyhedral towers

Polyhedrons also feature prominently in the towers of the Sagrada Família. The four towers of the Glory façade are topped by dodecahedrons, the four towers of the Nativity façade by truncated irregular octahedrons, and the four towers of the Passion façade by truncated cubes.

On each of the 12 towers, a spire rises above these polyhedrons. Those dedicated to the evangelists are crowned with regular icosahedrons containing spotlights that illuminate the large cross that sits atop the Tower of Jesus Christ. Just above each icosahedron is a sculpture that symbolically depicts each evangelist. There are numerous star-shaped polyhedrons throughout the church, particularly on the Nativity façade.

A forest of towers

Catenary arches feature prominently as key structural elements of the church, as they are a highly effective way to transfer loads to the ground without the need for additional support. They can be seen in the system of sloping columns that support the vaults of the interior naves, the vaults and ceilings themselves, and the Nativity façade.

Inside the Sagrada Família, there are four different types of column. All are double-helix torsion columns – each has a rounded, star-shaped polygonal base, and is formed by the intersection of two opposing Solomonic columns. Above each one is a knot from which different branches emerge, similar to those of a tree, which very efficiently support the towers and the roof of the church.

The skylights in the roof are also one-sheet hyperboloids. Made up of straight lines, they are easy to construct, and optimise the capture and projection of light.

The symbolism of 7 and 33

The church has other deeply symbolic hidden features. Take, for instance, the canopy above the high altar, which forms a regular heptagon 5 metres in diameter, whose seven sides symbolise the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

On the Passion façade there is a magic square in which the sum of all rows, columns and diagonals is 33. It appears to be inspired by the magic square featured in the engraving Melancholia I by Albrecht Dürer.

The mathematics that underpins the Sagrada Família makes it all the more beautiful. While the building itself is a sight to behold, a deeper understanding of the principles behind it inspires even greater admiration for the enduring genius of Antoni Gaudí.

 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Original article.

The post The mathematical secrets of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.

Author: Tamara Cruz Tena, strategy consultant, CIC  energiGUNE

When energy storage is discussed in the context of the energy transition, the conversation almost invariably turns to electricity. Solar and wind power have made the temporal mismatch between energy production and energy demand one of the defining challenges of low-carbon energy systems, and technologies capable of storing electrical energy have consequently become central to discussions about decarbonization.

Yet this emphasis on electricity raises an interesting question. If a substantial fraction of the energy ultimately consumed by modern societies is required not as electricity but as thermal energy, should future energy systems necessarily store energy in electrical form?

The question may appear deceptively simple. Electricity plays a visible role in modern economies, powering everything from communications and transportation to industrial equipment and domestic appliances. Thermal energy, by contrast, often remains hidden within industrial processes, heating systems and manufacturing operations. Nevertheless, many of the activities that sustain modern societies depend primarily on heat rather than electricity.

Steelmaking, cement production, chemical manufacturing, food processing, paper production and numerous other industrial activities require thermal energy delivered under specific conditions of temperature, power and duration. In many cases, fossil fuels have historically fulfilled this role not because alternative energy sources were unavailable, but because combustion offers a relatively direct means of producing high-temperature thermal energy where and when it is required.

As renewable electricity becomes increasingly available, this situation may encourage a different way of thinking about energy storage. Rather than focusing exclusively on how electricity can be stored and later returned to the grid, it may also be worth considering whether part of that energy could instead be stored in forms intended for later thermal use.

Such an approach would not eliminate the need for batteries, nor would it necessarily be appropriate for every application. It does, however, suggest that thermal energy storage may represent a distinct scientific and engineering problem whose requirements differ from those associated with conventional electrical storage technologies.

Storing energy for later thermal use

At the heart of the discussion lies a relatively straightforward physical observation. Electrical energy can be converted into thermal energy with high efficiency through a variety of heating technologies. Once this conversion has taken place, the resulting energy may be stored within a material or chemical system and later recovered when thermal energy is required.

Importantly, what is stored is not temperature itself. Temperature is an intensive thermodynamic property and therefore cannot be accumulated in the same way as energy. Instead, thermal energy storage systems retain energy through changes in the state of a material, whether by increasing its temperature, inducing a phase transition or driving a reversible chemical reaction.

The simplest of these approaches is generally known as sensible heat storage. In such systems, energy is stored through an increase in the temperature of a material. Water provides the most familiar example, although industrial applications may employ molten salts, rocks, ceramics, graphite or other materials capable of operating under more demanding thermal conditions. The amount of energy stored depends on the mass of the storage medium, its heat capacity and the temperature interval over which it operates.

A second possibility involves latent heat storage, where energy is absorbed or released during a phase transition. Because phase transitions may involve substantial enthalpy changes while temperature remains relatively constant, these systems can store significant amounts of energy within comparatively narrow temperature ranges. This characteristic has made phase change materials attractive for applications in which thermal energy must be supplied near a particular operating temperature.

Even more ambitious concepts involve thermochemical storage. In these systems, thermal energy drives reversible chemical reactions, allowing energy to be stored in chemical form and later recovered when the reverse reaction occurs. Under certain conditions, such approaches could potentially enable storage over much longer timescales than conventional thermal systems, although their practical implementation remains associated with significant scientific and engineering challenges.

At first sight, these approaches may appear to offer relatively straightforward solutions. However, as is often the case in energy research, the situation becomes considerably more complicated once practical constraints are taken into account.

Materials operating at elevated temperatures may experience degradation through corrosion, thermal fatigue, creep, phase instability or other mechanisms whose importance depends on the operating conditions and storage medium. Repeated thermal cycling can gradually alter material properties, while large-scale systems introduce additional challenges related to heat transfer, containment and long-term reliability. In thermochemical systems, reaction kinetics, cycling stability and reactor design may become equally important considerations.

As a result, the central question is not whether thermal energy can be stored. It clearly can. The more difficult question is whether such storage can remain technically reliable, economically viable and operationally robust under the conditions required by industrial applications.

A maturity paradox

Interestingly, many of the technologies that could contribute to this objective are no longer at an early stage of development. Electric heat pumps, electric boilers, electric resistance heaters and several forms of sensible and latent thermal energy storage have reached relatively high levels of technological maturity. From a purely technological perspective, the challenge is therefore not always one of invention. In many cases, the relevant technologies already exist.

Yet this observation introduces a different question. If a number of these technologies are already mature, why does their future role remain difficult to assess?

Part of the answer may lie in the complexity of modern energy systems themselves. The behaviour of a heat pump, an electric boiler or a thermal storage unit can often be described in considerable detail. However, energy systems contain thousands of interacting components operating across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Incorporating detailed representations of thermal technologies into large-scale energy models may therefore become computationally challenging, particularly when such models are intended to optimize entire electricity, heating and industrial sectors simultaneously.

This creates an interesting tension. The physical behaviour of thermal technologies is often governed by complex thermodynamic processes, yet large-scale energy planning frequently requires simplified mathematical representations that remain computationally tractable. Determining how much detail can be removed without losing essential information remains an active area of research and may influence how the future role of thermal energy storage is assessed.

This distinction may help explain why thermal energy storage has attracted increasing scientific interest in recent years. A significant fraction of industrial energy demand is thermal rather than electrical, and many industrial processes require heat directly. Under such circumstances, converting electrical energy into thermal energy, storing it, and subsequently using it as heat may sometimes prove more practical than repeatedly converting energy between different forms.

Beyond storage

The implications extend beyond individual storage technologies. Some researchers have suggested that thermal energy storage could also contribute to system flexibility by partially decoupling heat demand from the instantaneous availability of renewable electricity. During periods of abundant renewable generation, electrical energy could be converted into thermal energy and stored for later use. If such approaches prove technically and economically viable at scale, they could potentially help reduce some of the temporal mismatches that arise in renewable-dominated energy systems.

Whether this possibility ultimately becomes significant remains uncertain. Industrial sectors differ substantially in their temperature requirements, operating schedules and process constraints. Storage technologies that appear promising in one context may prove less suitable in another. Likewise, systems that perform well under laboratory conditions may encounter unexpected limitations when deployed at industrial scales.

For this reason, thermal energy storage may be best understood not as a single technology but as a broad collection of approaches aimed at addressing a common problem. The details differ from one system to another, but the underlying question remains remarkably simple: if much of the energy consumed by modern societies is ultimately required in thermal form, what is the most effective way of ensuring that such energy remains available when it is needed?

Viewed from this perspective, the challenge is not simply one of storage. The objective of an energy system is not merely to retain energy for later use, but to ensure that energy remains available in a form compatible with the process that ultimately consumes it. In some cases that form may be electrical. In others, it may be thermal. Determining when each option is preferable remains an active area of research.

Whether any particular thermal energy storage technology ultimately becomes a major component of future energy systems remains unclear. What already appears increasingly difficult to ignore, however, is the observation from which the entire discussion emerges. A substantial fraction of the energy consumed by modern societies is required in thermal form. This fact alone may justify a closer examination of how such energy can be stored, transported and recovered efficiently. As researchers continue to investigate the materials, mechanisms and constraints involved, thermal energy storage may offer a useful reminder that decarbonization involves more than replacing one source of electricity with another. It may also require a deeper understanding of how energy itself is used.

The BRTA is a consortium that remains a step ahead of future socio-economic challenges worldwide and in the Basque Autonomous Community; it addresses them through research and technological development, thus projecting itself internationally. The BRTA centres collaborate to generate knowledge and transfer it to Basque society and industry so as to make them more innovative and competitive. The BRTA is an alliance of 17 R&D centres and cooperative research centres with the support of the Basque Government, the SPRI and the Chartered Provincial Councils of Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa.

References

1. Maruf, M. N. I., Morales-Espana, G., Sijm, J., Helistö, N., and Kiviluoma, J. (2021) Classification, potential role, and modeling of power-to-heat and thermal energy storage in energy systems: A review. arXiv. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.03960
2. CIC energiGUNE (2022) Thermal energy storage: a key factor in energy transition. Available at: https://cicenergigune.com/en/blog/thermal-energy-storage-key-energy-transition
3. International Energy Agency (2024) Energy Efficiency 2024. International Energy Agency. Available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-efficiency-2024

The post Why storing heat may be as important as storing electricity appeared first on Mapping Ignorance.