Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that kept it reel, fertilized the land, established Martian law, and cooked up an extraterrestrial tempest in a teapot.
First, ever wondered how cities are represented in Soviet propaganda? Look no further. Then: the path to civilization runs through the bums of birds, what the first Martian settlers could learn from unions, and VORTEX CRYSTALS FROM OUTER SPACE.
Before we get started, I wanted to give a little heads-up that I’m currently attending the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) annual meeting in Phoenix, which is a gathering of people who think science is good and should ideally get better. I think it will be especially interesting this year given the ongoing damage that the Trump administration is inflicting on the science sector in the United States, a trend with global implications.
Next Saturday, we will run a special edition of the Abstract with pictures, interviews, and some of my other takeaways from the meeting. Have a great week until then!
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
Soviet Propaganda: A City Guide
Tamm, Mikhail et al. “City representation in Soviet propaganda and geographical biases in cultural data.” Nature Cities.
Certain cities loom large in our collective imagination, not only as distinct skylines but as symbols of specific ideals and values. A fascinating new study explores this idea through the lens of Soviet propaganda by analyzing which major cities show up the most, and least, in popular ‘Novosti Dnya’ (News of the day) newsreels from 1954 to 1986.
“Cultural representations typically contain illuminating biases,” said researchers led by Mikhail V. Tamm of Tallinn University in Estonia. “For example, geographical locations are unequally portrayed in media, creating a distorted representation of the world. Identifying and measuring such biases is crucial to understanding both the data and the socio-cultural processes behind them.”
“Newsreels—short news films shown in cinemas before the evening’s feature film—were influential means of depicting the world for the cinema-goers in the twentieth century, visualizing events, individuals and places that the spectators could read about in the newspapers,” the team continued. “Throughout almost all history of the Soviet Union, the production system and censorship made sure that newsreels reflected the policies of the leadership.”
In other words, these newsreels were designed to communicate the innate “social, economic, political and cultural superiority of the communist system,” according to the study. It’s perhaps no surprise that the Soviet Union’s two most iconic cities—the modern capital Moscow and the past capital St. Petersburg—were disproportionately represented based on a population analysis.
Moscow was visually displayed or mentioned 2,831 times in the team’s newsreel sample, while St. Petersburg trailed at a distance with 339 mentions. These heavy-hitters were followed by Kyiv (95), Riga (73), Minsk (72), and Volgograd (62). Meanwhile, the most-commonly displayed foreign cities (from a Soviet perspective) were led by satellite state capitals Warsaw (64), Berlin (62), and Prague (51), followed by Paris (39), New York City (29), and Tokyo (16).
“Contrary to the messaging of the official Soviet ideology, which emphasized equality of nations and anticolonial movement, the silently sold Soviet worldview is heavily centered on Europe being in the role of a privileged or hierarchically higher ‘Other,’ Tamm and his colleagues noted.
“We found that this profound East–West asymmetry is surprisingly underreported in the post-colonial studies of the USSR.”
The team also found overrepresentation in cities with major construction projects, such as the Siberian cities Bratsk and Krasnoyarsk, while other “heartland” regions like the Donbas in Ukraine and Rostov oblast in Russia were given short shrift because they lacked “clear ideological importance beyond their industrial role.”
“Finally, in some cases places are overmentioned seemingly just because it is convenient (close to Moscow) or pleasant (Baltic and Black Sea coasts) to film there,” the team concluded.
Anyway, what a cool and random topic to study. While it is niche, the study offers an opportunity to reflect on the thousands of visual messages we absorb every day and the larger portrait they paint.
In other news…
You’re guano want to read this study
Bongers, Jacob L. et al. “Seabirds shaped the expansion of pre-Inca society in Peru.” PLOS One.
Seabird excrement is a cheat code to civilization, according to a new study that directly linked the guano trade to flourishing empires of Peru’s Chincha Valley.
“Recent research suggests that guano fertilization may have begun by at least 1000 CE in Tarapacá, northern Chile, yet the origins and regional importance of this fertilizer are poorly understood,” said researchers led by Jacob L. Bongers of the University of Sydney. “Using archaeological, historical, and isotopic data from the Chincha Valley, Peru, we ask: to what extent did seabird guano shape the development of pre-Hispanic societies in the Andes?”
Answer: A lot. Guano, which is sometimes called “white gold” because it is so valuable as a fertilizer, was essential to ensuring an abundance of crops like maize, making it “a potentially widespread driving force of social change among pre-Hispanic societies.”
The primary guano-producing bird species (left to right) – the Peruvian booby (Sula variegata), the Peruvian pelican (Pelecanus thagus), and the Guanay cormorant (Leucocarbo bougainvilliorum). Image: Diego H. (left and right) and Claude Kolwelter (center), iNaturalist.org. Licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
“Our multidisciplinary dataset provides strong support for pre-Inca seabird guano fertilization, an effective agricultural practice for boosting crop production that is more commonly associated with industrial societies,” the team concluded. In short, it’s good shit.
In addition to these Inca precursors, the researchers noted that the Inca also prized guano, outlawing the killing of guano birds “under penalty of death.” As the saying goes, an eye for a bird bum.
You’ve reached Mars, please hold
Ferguson, Alexander H. Ferdinand and Haqq-Misra, Jacob. “Cooperative sovereignty on Mars: Lessons from the International Telecommunication Union and Universal Postal Union.” Acta Astronautica.
After years of hyping Mars, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk pivoted away from the red planet this week because it is “much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city.” But the dream of human settlements on Mars lives on in a new study that uses, of all things, the International Telecommunication Union and the Universal Postal Union as case studies for our Martian future.
“We proceed from the assumption that future Martian settlers, whether national or corporate, will be primarily driven by self-interest, competition, and a desire for strategic or economic advantage,” said authors Alexander H. Ferdinand Ferguson and Jacob Haqq-Misra of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. “We do not assume an inherent desire for equitable sharing.”
“However, we argue that the Martian environment itself imposes a unique and brutal logic that compels cooperation on a foundational technical level,” they added. “On Earth, non-cooperation on technical standards typically leads to inefficiency; on Mars, it can lead to catastrophic, mission-ending failure.”
The study goes on to point to the two expansive unions as “powerful historical precedents” for establishing clear standards between independent actors that are operating without a central territorial government which they say is “one of the challenges Mars settlements will face.”
Who knows if the rubber will ever meet the regolith on these ideas, but I’m personally more comfortable looking to international telecom and postal unions for guidance on governance than space billionaires.
Behold the Jovian vortex crystals
Benzeggouta, Djihane et al. “A laboratory model for Jovian polar vortex crystals.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
This week in science from the enchanted spellbook, astronomers have concocted miniature vortex crystals from outer space right here on Earth. Though they sound like hex ingredients, these crystals are actually enormous cyclonic storms that rage at Jupiter’s poles, which cluster together into intricate patterns of equilateral triangles, inspiring the distinctive name.
Now, scientists led by Djihane Benzeggouta of Aix Marseille University have “experimentally reproduced long-lived vortex crystals like those at Jupiter’s poles” in fluid tanks with a mix of fresh and saltwater, according to the new work.
An explanation of the experiment and observations of its vortex crystals. Image: Benzeggouta, Djihane et al.
“We present an experimental model in which three similar cyclonic vortices are released into the upper layer of a rotating, two-layer stratified fluid system with a free upper surface, and spontaneously organize into a stable, long-lived vortex crystal,” the team said. “Long-lived” in this case means that the crystals persisted for hundreds of rotations, translating to several minutes.
“Achieving the spontaneous emergence of vortices and crystals from background turbulence remains the ultimate goal,” the researchers concluded.
And on some basic level, isn’t the emergence of crystals from background turbulence the ultimate goal for us all?
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
