An exoplanet smaller than Neptune with its own atmosphere has been discovered in the Neptunian Desert around its star by an international collaboration of astronomers, with the University of Warwick taking a leading role.
The rogue planet was identified in the new research, led by Dr Richard West including Professor Peter Wheatley, Dr Daniel Bayliss and Dr James McCormac from the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at the University of Warwick.
NGTS is situated at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in the heart of the Atacama Desert, Chile. It is a collaboration between UK Universities Warwick, Leicester, Cambridge, and Queen's University Belfast, together with Observatoire de Genève, DLR Berlin and Universidad de Chile.
NGTS-4b, also nick-named 'The Forbidden Planet' by researchers, is a planet smaller than Neptune but three times the size of Earth.
It has a mass of 20 Earth masses, and a radius 20% smaller than Neptune, and is 1000 degrees Celsius. It orbits around the star in only 1.3 days -- the equivalent of Earth's orbit around the sun of one year.
It is the first exoplanet of its kind to have been found in the Neptunian Desert.
The Neptunian Desert is the region close to stars where no Neptune-sized planets are found. This area receives strong irradiation from the star, meaning the planets do not retain their gaseous atmosphere as they evaporate leaving just a rocky core. However NGTS-4b still has its atmosphere of gas.
When looking for new planets astronomers look for a dip in the light of a star -- this the planet orbiting it and blocking the light. Usually only dips of 1% and more are picked up by ground-based searches, but the NGTS telescopes can pick up a dip of just 0.2%
Researchers believe the planet may have moved into the Neptunian Desert recently, in the last one million years, or it was very big and the atmosphere is still evaporating.
Dr Richard West, from the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick comments:
"This planet must be tough -- it is right in the zone where we expected Neptune-sized planets could not survive. It is truly remarkable that we found a transiting planet via a star dimming by less than 0.2% -- this has never been done before by telescopes on the ground, and it was great to find after working on this project for a year.
"We are now scouring out data to see if we can see any more planets in the Neptune Desert -- perhaps the desert is greener than was once thought."
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Materials provided by University of Warwick. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
This article originally appeared in the May 20, 2019 issue of SpaceNews magazine.
Although NASA’s new goal of landing humans on the moon in five years may sound aggressive, most of the hardware needed to carry out that mission is already, or soon will be, under development.
The Space Launch System and Orion have been in the works for years and, despite delays, should be ready to transport astronauts to the moon by 2024. NASA is currently evaluating proposals for the first element of a now-minimized Gateway, the Power and Propulsion Element, and plans to award a contract by the summer. The only other element of that initial Gateway, a modest habitat and docking node, will likely be based on habitation module concepts several companies are currently developing.
The exception is the one component that is arguably the most essential part of a lunar landing: the lunar lander itself.
Jeff Bezos unveils a full-sized model of its Blue Moon lander May 9 at the Washington Convention center hours after the conclusion of the Satellite 2019 conference there. Credit: Blue Origin
Prior to Vice President Mike Pence’s March 26 speech announcing the 2024 lunar landing goal, NASA was slowly ramping up planning for crewed lunar landers. Earlier this year, NASA solicited proposals for studies of two lander elements, a descent stage and a transfer vehicle to move the lander from the Gateway to a low lunar orbit. Those proposals were due to NASA the day before Pence’s fateful speech.
NASA shifted gears after the speech, announcing a week later it would seek proposals for an ascent stage as well. In late April it changed its mind again: it now wanted proposals for entire lander systems — ascent stage, descent stage and transfer vehicle — with a formal solicitation expected by this summer. To meet the 2024 deadline, both the agency and industry say there’s no time to waste.
Two companies, two landers
Fortunately for NASA, there is a wide range of ideas of how to develop such landers — and how to unveil them. At one extreme was what Blue Origin did to show off its Blue Moon lunar lander. The company invited the media and other guests, from NASA officials and planetary scientists to Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, to a ballroom at the Washington Convention Center May 9, hours after the conclusion of the Satellite 2019 conference there.
Inside the ballroom was blue mood lighting, starscapes on the walls, and a stage with a curtain across it. On that stage soon appeared company founder Jeff Bezos, who spent a half-hour talking about his vision for humanity’s future in space along with the desire to build infrastructure to enable that vision, like the New Shepard and New Glenn launch vehicles.
“The moon also needs infrastructure,” he said. “Let me show you something.” The curtain rose, revealing a full-sized model of an updated version of the Blue Moon lander the company first discussed more than two years ago. In its current iteration, Blue Moon can carry 3.6 metric tons to the lunar surface using a new rocket engine called the BE-7 the company is developing, powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
Bezos narrated a tour of the mock-up, even using a crane-mounted camera to peer down on the top of the lander, a deck on which payloads would be mounted. He ticked off some of its technical specs, such as optical communications for gigabit data rates and terrain relative navigation for precise landings. “This is an incredible vehicle,” he said, “and it’s going to the moon.”
When Blue Origin first started discussing Blue Moon, they described it as a cargo lander only, and the version on display was designed for just that. However, the company also has a larger version of the lander with “stretched” propellant tanks capable of taking 6.5 tons of cargo to the surface. In his presentation, Bezos showed an illustration of an ascent stage on top of the lander for carrying astronauts. Another illustration featured that larger lander with an ascent stage on the moon, with astronauts walking on the surface nearby.
A company official, speaking on background after the event, confirmed that Blue Origin is planning to develop its own ascent stage for Blue Moon. The company foresees having the initial descent stage ready to fly in 2023, with the stretched version, along with the ascent stage, tested and ready to carry astronauts in 2024.
Bezos endorsed the 2024 deadline and suggested that it could meet it because of the head start it had on Blue Moon. “I love this. It’s the right thing to do,” he said of the 2024 goal announced in Pence’s speech. “We can help meet that timeline, but only because we started three years ago.”
This illustration is Lockheed Martin’s concept of a two-stage crewed lunar lander that NASA could use to go to the surface of the moon. The accent module is derived from the Orion spacecraft to ensure quicker development. Credit: Lockheed Martin
About a month before Bezos unveiled his full-sized Blue Moon mock-up, Lockheed Martin discussed its own concepts for lunar landers. In a small conference room at the 35th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs April 10, company officials, without the benefit of special guests or full-sized mockups, talked about how they planned to leverage Orion technology for a 2024 lunar lander.
The concept they presented was not their first lunar lander idea. Six months earlier, they described a giant single-stage reusable lunar lander that could carry four people and operate for two weeks on the surface. The rush to 2024, though, superseded that more ambitious design for a smaller two-stage lander that could be built quickly.
“We looked at what’s the fastest we could go,” said Tim Cichan, space exploration architect at Lockheed Martin, and concluded a two-stage lander could be ready by 2024. But, he added, “It’s going to be a challenge.”
The descent stage is based on concepts Lockheed Martin submitted to NASA in March in the call for proposals for descent stages, about which the company offered few details. The upper stage would make extensive use of elements of Orion, including the human-rated pressure vessel and a build-to-print version of the propulsion system for Orion’s service module.
The lander is part of an overall architecture very close to what NASA has since described for achieving the 2024 lunar landing, including the development of a minimal Gateway. The lander would be launched to the Gateway on commercial rockets, with the crew to follow on an SLS/Orion mission.
While Lockheed’s lander makes use of Orion technology, it still requires time to build. Based on the schedules for producing Orion capsules, Rob Chambers, director of human spaceflight strategy and business development at Lockheed Martin, noted it takes about four years from when the company starts production on an Orion spacecraft to when it’s ready for launch.
That means that work needs to start on the lander by early 2020 so it can launch to the Gateway in early 2024 to support a landing later in the year. “By the end of this year there needs to be materials starting to show up and folks on contract to begin building to print what exists today that we can safely leverage,” he said. “We need to be bending metal next year.”
How to buy a lunar lander
The accelerated goal for returning humans to the moon not only shapes how the landers will be designed but also how they will be acquired. Prior to Pence’s speech, NASA envisioned companies developing the three elements of the lander separately, with NASA overseeing the overall architecture and integrating the components.
“Initially we thought we’d keep it as three pieces and NASA would integrate them,” NASA human spaceflight chief Bill Gerstenmaier said at a town hall meeting at NASA Headquarters May 14. “Then we thought, nope, for speed it’s better that we let the commercial sector do that.” Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
With the new 2024 deadline, NASA plans to cede more control to industry. The revised solicitation for lunar landers will request integrated concepts, giving companies the flexibility to procure alternative approaches rather than NASA’s original three-stage lander concept.
“Initially we thought we’d keep it as three pieces and NASA would integrate them,” Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said at a town hall meeting at NASA Headquarters May 14. “Then we thought, nope, for speed it’s better that we let the commercial sector do that.” Doing so, he added, gives companies the flexibility to come up with a design that meets NASA’s objectives and schedule.
NASA is also likely to depart from a conventional cost-plus contract for the lunar lander. “We would, in essence, be buying a service to take our astronauts from the Gateway down to the moon and back,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the town hall. “We’re looking to those service providers to create the absolute best ideas that they have.”
That town hall took place a day after the White House released its budget amendment for NASA, seeking $1.6 billion in additional funding for NASA in 2020. Of that total, $1 billion would go toward lunar lander development, specifically “an integrated commercial lunar lander.”
Gerstenmaier said at the town hall meeting he’d like to have the funding in place as soon as possible after the fiscal year starts Oct. 1 so “we can start laying in place the contracts that actually start building hardware that gives us a lander.”
That could be difficult, since NASA is likely to start the fiscal year on a continuing resolution (CR) that keeps the agency at 2019 funding levels and prevents the start of new programs. Bridenstine, speaking May 14 at the Humans to Mars Summit, said there may be “opportunities” to include language in any CR giving NASA the flexibility to start lunar lander and related projects. “But that goes well above my pay grade,” he added.
NASA announced May 16 that it selected 11 companies — including Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin — to design descent modules and transfer stages, based on the proposals those companies submitted back in March. The awards, for studies and prototype hardware, have a total value of only $45.5 million, with companies expected to contribute about 20 percent of the costs.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, speaking May 14 at the Humans to Mars Summit, said there may be “opportunities” to include language in a stop-gap spending bill giving NASA the flexibility to start lunar lander and related projects. “But that goes well above my pay grade,” he added. Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
NASA used the announcement to emphasize that buying lunar landers would not be business as usual. “To accelerate our return to the moon, we are challenging our traditional ways of doing business,” said Marshall Smith, director for human lunar exploration program at NASA Headquarters. “We will streamline everything from procurement to partnerships to hardware development and even operations.”
Testifying before the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee May 8, Gerstenmaier said the approach NASA uses for crewed landers may depend on how well companies do with smaller robotic landers through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
“Depending on how well that works,” he said, “we can get a chance to judge how ready industry is to go take on the challenges of human-class landers.”
To meet the 2024 deadline, though, NASA may have no other option than to give industry that challenge of building the spacecraft that will land astronauts on the moon.
As helpful as SpaceX's Starlink satellites may be, they could be a pain for astronomers. The Harvard-Smithsonian Center's Jonathan McDowell and others have observed that the internet satellites are bright enough to cause a "problem" for astronomy, and the eventual constellation of roughly 12,000 satellites could complicate humanity's view of the night sky. It would triple the number of satellites in orbit, CNETnoted, forcing telescope operators to account for the objects.
The issue isn't as bad as initially feared, when the satellites hadn't finished orienting their solar panels and were thus extra bright (you can see a video of this below). The vehicles are only intended to last five years in orbit before descending to a fiery death in the atmosphere, for that matter, so this may only be a temporary issue. Elon Musk has maintained that the Starlink constellation "won't be seen by anyone" unless they're going out of their way to look.
Still, the executive was aware of the potential pitfalls and vowed to do something about it. SpaceX would ensure that Starlink "had no material effect" on astronomy, Musk said, adding that he'd asked the team to reduce the albedo (reflectivity) of the satellites going forward. He was even receptive to the idea of mounting telescopes on Starlink bodies to provide a clearer view of space. While these moves won't completely ease the minds of sky watchers, the company is at least aware of its potential impact in an era where a crowded orbit and space debris are very real issues.
As helpful as SpaceX's Starlink satellites may be, they could be a pain for astronomers. The Harvard-Smithsonian Center's Jonathan McDowell and others have observed that the internet satellites are bright enough to cause a "problem" for astronomy, and the eventual constellation of roughly 12,000 satellites could complicate humanity's view of the night sky. It would triple the number of satellites in orbit, CNETnoted, forcing telescope operators to account for the objects.
The issue isn't as bad as initially feared, when the satellites hadn't finished orienting their solar panels and were thus extra bright (you can see a video of this below). The vehicles are only intended to last five years in orbit before descending to a fiery death in the atmosphere, for that matter, so this may only be a temporary issue. Elon Musk has maintained that the Starlink constellation "won't be seen by anyone" unless they're going out of their way to look.
Still, the executive was aware of the potential pitfalls and vowed to do something about it. SpaceX would ensure that Starlink "had no material effect" on astronomy, Musk said, adding that he'd asked the team to reduce the albedo (reflectivity) of the satellites going forward. He was even receptive to the idea of mounting telescopes on Starlink bodies to provide a clearer view of space. While these moves won't completely ease the minds of sky watchers, the company is at least aware of its potential impact in an era where a crowded orbit and space debris are very real issues.
Tobias Schneider and Florian Reetz. Credit: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)
For decades, physicists, engineers and mathematicians have failed to explain a remarkable phenomenon in fluid mechanics: the natural tendency of turbulence in fluids to move from disordered chaos to perfectly parallel patterns of oblique turbulent bands. This transition from a state of chaotic turbulence to a highly structured pattern was observed by many scientists, but never understood.
At EPFL's Emerging Complexity in Physical Systems Laboratory, Tobias Schneider and his team have identified the mechanism that explains this phenomenon. Their findings have been published in Nature Communications.
From chaos to order
The equations used to describe the large variety of phenomena occurring in fluid flows are well known. These equations capture the fundamental laws of physics that govern fluid dynamics, a subject taught to all physics and engineering students from undergraduate level onwards.
But when turbulence comes into play, the solutions to the equations become non-linear, complex and chaotic. This makes it impossible, for example, to predict weather over an extended time horizon. Yet turbulence has a surprising tendency to move from chaos to a highly structured pattern of turbulent and laminar bands. This is a remarkable phenomenon, yet the underlying mechanism remained hidden in the equations until now.
Here's what happens: when a fluid is placed between two parallel plates, each moving in an opposite direction, turbulence is created. At first, the turbulence is chaotic, then it self-organizes to form regular oblique bands, separated by zones of calm (or laminar flows). No obvious mechanism selects the oblique orientation of the bands or determines the wavelength of the periodic pattern.
Credit: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Concealed in simple equations
Schneider and his team solved the mystery. "As the physicist Richard Feynman predicted, the solution was not to be found in new equations, but rather within the equation that was already available to us," explains Schneider. "Until now, researchers didn't have powerful enough mathematical tools to verify this."
The researchers combined one such tool, known as dynamical systems theory, with existing theories on pattern formation in fluids and advanced numerical simulations. They calculated specific equilibrium solutions for each step of the process, enabling them to explain the transition from the chaotic to the structured state.
"We can now describe the initial instability mechanism that creates the oblique pattern," explains Florian Reetz, the study's lead author. "We have thus solved one of the most fundamental problems in our field. The methods we developed will help clarify the chaotic dynamics of turbulent-laminar patterns in many flow problems. They may one day allow us to better control flows."
An important phenomenon
In fluid mechanics, stripe pattern formation is important because it shows how turbulent and laminar flows are in constant competition with each other to determine the final state of the fluid, i.e., turbulent or laminar. This competition arises whenever turbulence forms, such as when air flows over a car. The turbulence starts in a small area on the car's roof, but then it spreads—because turbulence is stronger than laminar flow in this particular case. The final state is therefore turbulent.
When the stripe pattern forms, it means that the laminar and turbulent flows are equal in strength. However, this is very difficult to observe in nature, outside of the controlled conditions of a laboratory. This fact points to the significance of the EPFL researchers' success in explaining a fundamental property of turbulence. Not only do their findings account for a phenomenon that can be observed in a laboratory, but they could help to better understand and control flow-related phenomena occurring in nature as well.
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SpaceX has created a brand new website dedicated to its Starlink satellite constellation, a prelude to offering Internet service to consumers after as few as six launches.
Additionally, Starlink.com reiterated CEO Elon Musk’s estimate that SpaceX will conduct 2-6 dedicated Starlink launches – carrying at least 60 satellites each – in 2019 alone. In other words, a best-case satellite deployment scenario could mean that SpaceX will be able to start offering Starlink service to consumers “in the Northern U.S. and Canadian latitudes” as early as this year, while commercial offerings would thus be all but guaranteed in 2020. A step further, SpaceX believes it will be able to offer coverage of the entirety of the populated world after as few as 24 launches (~1500 Starlink satellites).
“Starlink is targeted to offer service in the Northern U.S. and Canadian latitudes after six launches, rapidly expanding to global coverage of the populated world after an expected 24 launches. SpaceX is targeting two to six Starlink launches by the end of this year.” — SpaceX, Starlink.com
This quiet announcement of SpaceX’s expected initial operational capability (IOC) confirms that the company’s plans to offer communications services to consumers are just as ambitious as its 60-satellite, 18.5 ton (~40,000 lb) Starlink launch debut. Assuming an average of 60 Starlink satellites per launch, SpaceX wants to begin serving customers in the US and Canada as soon as ~360 spacecraft are in orbit, a milestone that could occur as early as late 2019. Sometime in the first half of 2020 is arguably far more likely, but the fact alone that service could be offered in 2019 illustrates just how far SpaceX is ahead of its competitors, of which only OneWeb seems to pose an actual threat.
On February 27th, OneWeb launched its first six satellites – down from a planned ten, already ~20 satellites short of a ‘full’ launch – as a mix between its first orbital test and the first launch of operational spacecraft. OneWeb’s initial constellation will feature 648 satellites, potentially rising to 900 and eventually ~2000 in the years to come, pending commercial success and investor interest. The company currently has plans to begin a monthly launch campaign of ~20 Soyuz rockets no earlier than than August or September 2019, likely completing the first phase of its constellation sometime in 2021.
“OneWeb and its satellite manufacturing partner Airbus Defence and Space have crammed 10 gigabits per second of capacity into spacecraft the size of dishwashers. Tom Enders, Airbus Group’s outgoing CEO, said Feb. 14 that OneWeb satellites cost $1 million each to produce, and that the companies will be able to complete 350 to 400 satellites annually from their joint venture OneWeb Satellite’s $85 million Florida factory opening in April. The first batches of Florida-built satellites should be delivered to OneWeb toward the end of the third quarter, Airbus spokesman Guilhem Boltz said.”
Assuming SpaceX aims to launch one dedicated 60-satellite Starlink mission every 6-8 weeks, the company could easily have a constellation of more than 600 satellites in orbit by the end of 2020. Compared to OneWeb, each Starlink satellite weighs about 40% more (~150 kg vs. ~230 kg) but also offers almost double the usable throughput (~17-20 Gbps vs. OneWeb’s ~10 Gbps). In short, SpaceX should be able to offer the same capacity of coverage and service as soon – if not far sooner – than OneWeb, while constellation hopefuls like Telesat, LeoSat, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper are likely 2-5 years away from launching their first satellites, let alone offering service.
Starlink satellites deploy their solar arrays in this official visualization. (SpaceX)
SpaceX’s foray into satellite design
Aside from revealing SpaceX’s tentative schedule for its Starlink service offerings, Starlink.com included excellent, surprisingly detailed renders of satellite hardware, ranging from Dragon-heritage star trackers to the world’s first flightworthy ion thrusters powered by krypton. These renders simply confirm what was already clear: SpaceX has gone against the grain of traditional satellite design at almost every turn, producing a bus (the general structure and form factor) that is unlike almost anything that came before it.
A general overview of Starlink’s bus, launch stacking, and solar array. (SpaceX)Starlink’s star trackers (left; used for precise pointing and positioning) and what are likely four gyros, also used for pointing and orientation. (SpaceX)One of Starlink’s krypton ion thrusters is tested at SpaceX’s satellite production facilities. (SpaceX)
As a complete layperson to spacecraft design, it’s hard to describe SpaceX’s first internally designed satellite bus as anything less than elegant. Thanks to their uniquely flat form factor, the satellites can be packed into a Falcon 9 fairing with extreme efficiency, making SpaceX’s first dedicated Starlink launch the company’s heaviest payload ever at more than 18.5 tons (~40,000 lb). For comparison, OneWeb plans to launch approximately 30×150 kg satellites per Soyuz 2.1 launch with a traditional cylindrical adapter, itself weighing ~1000 kg.
For Starlink, the method the 60 satellites use to securely attach to each other remains a minor mystery, only hinted at by photos and renders that show three metal rings/connectors per satellite. However it works, it appears that SpaceX has found a way to launch and deploy dozens of fairly large spacecraft while wasting little to no mass on a dedicated dispenser. Altogether, it appears that SpaceX has already begun to surpass the technological capabilities of its competitors, while also taking large risks with highly innovative, largely unprecedented design choices. All of those characteristics will help as SpaceX pushes to deploy Starlink and begin serving customers as quickly as possible.
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SpaceX wants to offer Starlink internet to consumers after just six launches
PASADENA, Calif. — The engineer’s mantra, said Frances Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, is: “Keep it simple, stupid.” But Dr. Arnold, who last year became just the fifth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is the opposite of stupid, and her stories sometimes turn rococo.
Take the happy images on her office Wall of Triumph. Here’s a picture of a beaming President Obama, congratulating Dr. Arnold in 2013 for winning the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
That must have been a fun event! Sure, Dr. Arnold said. Except for the part where the minibus that delivered the medal recipients to the event caught fire as it pulled up to the White House door. The cabin filled with smoke, passengers were gasping and crying and staggering toward the exit, the younger ones carrying the older ones — and all were greeted by a phalanx of Secret Service agents, guns aimed at the medalists’ heads.
“They must have thought we were terrorists,” Dr. Arnold said. “We were convinced they were going to shoot us.”
Okay. How about this charming picture of Dr. Arnold with the Queen of England in 2015?
Another fun story! When Dr. Arnold and her 16-year-old son, Joe Lange, landed in London after a 12-hour flight from California, the border agent asked what brought them to the United Kingdom. Dr. Arnold, who was “feeling very hot-stuff,” announced she was going to a reception that evening to meet the Queen.
Is that so? the agent said skeptically, eyeing her slightly disheveled appearance. And you are?
A chemical engineer.
And what, pray tell, is next on your agenda?
Next I’m off to an awards ceremony at the president’s palace in Italy, Dr. Arnold replied.
Madam, the agent said, if you are going to Buckingham Palace, you must have an invitation. May I see it, please?
Oh, I don’t have it on me, Dr. Arnold said. It’s packed away in my suitcase.
That’s it, the agent said, shutting his ledger book and grabbing her and Joe’s passports. Come with me, please.
Mother and son spent the next two and a half hours in detention while their story was verified and barely made it to the reception on time.
“They thought I was a kook,” Dr. Arnold said. “Apparently a lot of 60-year-old women say they’re going to meet the Queen.”
Both stories encapsulate another of Dr. Arnold’s maxims: “Give up the thought that you have control. You don’t. The best you can do is adapt, anticipate, be flexible, sense the environment and respond.”
Or maybe not respond. “Joe said to me afterward, ‘Mom, next time why don’t you keep your mouth shut.’”
An engineer’s dream
Image
Dr. Arnold receiving the Nobel Prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in December 2018 in Stockholm.CreditHenrik Montgomery/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
As it happens, Dr. Arnold, 62, has built a spectacularly successful career on her willingness to cede control in the laboratory to a force much greater than any armed guard or head of state: evolution.
Dr. Arnold won fame and the Nobel Prize for developing a technique called directed evolution, a way of generating a host of novel enzymes and other biomolecules that can be put to any number of uses — detoxifying a chemical spill, or example, or disrupting the mating dance of an agricultural pest. Or removing laundry stains in eco-friendly cold water, or making drugs without relying on eco-hostile metal catalysts.
Rather than seeking to design new proteins rationally, piece by carefully calculated piece — as many protein chemists have tried and mostly failed to do — the Arnold approach lets basic evolutionary algorithms do the work of protein composition and protein upgrades.
The recipe is indeed an engineer’s dream: simple.
You start with a protein that already has some features you’re interested in, such as stability in high heat or a knack for clipping apart fats. Using a standard lab trick such as polymerase chain reaction, you randomly mutate the gene that encodes the protein.
Then you look for slight improvements in the resulting protein — a quickened pace of activity, say, or a vague inclination to carry out a task it wasn’t performing before, or a willingness to operate under conditions it deplored in the past.
You mutate the improved version again and screen the output for even better performance. Repeat as needed. You do your experiments with the help of a bacterial workhorse such as E. coli, or with an exotic microbe isolated from hot springs in Iceland where temperatures can exceed 175 degrees F.
You consciously treat proteins and their carrier microbes exactly as people unconsciously treat disease microbes when blasting them willy-nilly with antibiotics: You encourage the microbes to rise to the challenge, adapt, survive.
Through directed evolution, Dr. Arnold’s lab has generated microbes that do what organisms in nature have never been known to do. Some of them, for instance, stitch together carbon, the element that defines life, and silicon, the stuff of sand, glass and computer chips but heretofore not of life (unless you are a Horta, the rock-shaped beings who famously mind-melded with Mr. Spock on “Star Trek”).
“We showed for the first time that living organisms can use their own machinery to bring carbon and silicon together to form a bond,” said Jennifer Kan, a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Arnold’s lab who performed the experiments. “We didn’t even have to nag the protein too hard to get it to do it.”
“In the lab, we’re discovering that nature can do chemistry we never dreamed was possible,” Dr. Arnold said. “We’re adding whole swathes of the periodic table to the chemistry of the biological world.”
Diana Kormos-Buchwald, who directs the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and is a close friend of Dr. Arnold, said, “Frances essentially invented the field of evolutionary chemistry. Instead of analyzing materials and trying to produce them through standard chemical synthesis, she found a way to use nature itself to populate the landscape of all possible variants of biologically or chemically important molecules.”
Dr. Arnold has another favorite mantra: “Nature doesn’t care about your calculations.” Analyzing the evolved mutations that proved most effective at tweaking a protein’s performance, the Arnold team found the changes in all sorts of unpredictable places.
“It was far from the active site of the protein, or it was on the surface,” she said. “It was where everybody said it wouldn’t matter but it did matter. I gleefully took the results to the biochemists and said, ‘Nyeh nyeh nyeh, you can’t predict that but I found it, and I’ll do it over and over again.’ That really pissed them off.”
In exploring the outer realms of biochemical bondage, Dr. Arnold is driven by more than intellectual curiosity. (Really, why didn’t nature take advantage of our planet’s abundance of silicon to gin up an earthly version of the Horta?)
As a “card-carrying engineer” with an undergraduate degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton, and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Arnold also is motivated by a desire to make useful things.
And because she is an ardent environmentalist, useful means good for the planet.
Directed evolution methods can yield specialized enzymes that will carry out desired reactions far more cleanly and efficiently compared to standard chemical processes, with their reliance on solvents, plastics and precious metals.
“All my projects are about sustainability, bioremediation, making things in a cleaner fashion,” Dr. Arnold said. “I get these students who come in and say, I want to help people. I say, people get plenty of help. Why don’t you help the planet?”
She has started a number of companies, including a business heartily endorsed by Jane Goodall called Provivi, which is devising techniques for synthesizing insect mating pheromones cleanly, cheaply and on an industrial scale, with the goal of fending off agricultural pests through confusion rather than extermination.
In April, Dr. Arnold and three of her former postdocs filed the papers for a start-up called Aralez Bio, which will apply the principles of directed evolution to produce customized amino acids for drug companies.
As currently configured, the pharmaceutical industry is astonishingly “not green,” said Christina Boville, the chief scientific officer of the new venture.
“They produce 100 times more waste than product,” she said. “We think we can do much better, and our technology actually works.”
The young entrepreneurs have reason for optimism: The failure rate for start-ups is something like 90 percent, but the three companies that Dr. Arnold has founded since 2005 are all still in business.
‘Why would I give up?’
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Dr. Arnold with her sons Joseph Lange, left, and James Bailey at Caltech last fall. Another son, William Lange, died in an accident in 2016. CreditDamian Dovarganes/Associated Press
Dr. Arnold is sui generis. She projects a charismatic self-confidence rare in anybody, especially a woman — the legacy, perhaps, of growing up as the only daughter among five children.
“I was more of a boy than the boys,” she said.
And smart, to the point of taking high school courses while she was still in grade school. But Dr. Arnold somehow manages to stay on the right side of swaggering.
“She is a unique combination of warm and caring, while also rigorous and no b.s.,” said Mikhail Shapiro, a Caltech professor of chemical engineering who has known Dr. Arnold since 2005, when he sought her help as a first-year graduate student. “I consider her a role model.”
She has notes of both the military and the counterculture. Her grandfather was a three-star general, and her father was a nuclear physicist and in the reserves. But she rebelled against her parents so ferociously that she moved out on her own in Pittsburgh when she was 14, supporting herself by working as a waitress, a taxi driver, in jazz clubs and in pizza parlors.
“You name it, I’ve done it,” she said. Her parents were thrilled when she told them she wanted to go to Princeton, and they happily paid the bills. For all their political and philosophical arguments, Dr. Arnold and her father remained close until his death in 2015.
“We fought all the time,” she said. “But he understood me.”
She has traveled and lived around the world, crisscrossed South America and Indonesia on her own, motorcycled through Europe and Turkey. She speaks five languages and plays guitar, piano and pipe organ.
Dr. Arnold is fast becoming a celebrity. In November she’ll join boldfaced types such as Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeff Bezos for a Portraits of America ceremony at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
In her office, she has crates overflowing with awards and “literally a thousand invitations” to give talks around the world.
Caltech, where Dr. Arnold has worked for nearly her entire career, has 38 Nobel laureates to its credit, but she is the first woman among them.
“I don’t mind being a celebrity,” she said, because “I photograph better than I look in reality,” which is a lie.
Her friends say she is an outstanding cook. In the acre of garden surrounding her elegantly comfortable 1948 California ranch house near Pasadena, she grows enough food not only for herself but for the local food banks, too: tangerines, oranges, blueberries, lemons, kumquats, artichokes, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs and spices.
Yes, a charmed life, except — terrible things have happened to her.
Her first marriage, to biochemical engineer Jay Bailey, fell apart in the early 1990s, and he died of colon cancer in 2001. In 2004, Dr. Arnold was diagnosed with breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes, and she underwent 18 months of grueling surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, all while raising three young boys and working 60-hour weeks.
“I used to have a photographic memory,” she said. “Chemo knocked that out.”
In 2010, Dr. Arnold’s common-law husband, the cosmologist Andrew Lange, committed suicide, leaving behind a crater of emotional devastation so deep that Dr. Arnold still struggles to forgive him.
Worse by far was the accidental death in 2016 of her middle son, William Lange, at the age of 20, an event that Dr. Arnold says she is not yet ready to talk about.
“Frances did not have an easy life,” said Viviana Gradinaru, a Caltech neuroscientist and close friend of Dr. Arnold. “But despite everything, she got the Nobel Prize.”
Dr. Arnold grows impatient when people express awe at the strength of her spine.
“Nobody is guaranteed an easy life,” she said. “Look at the people in Syria. I have friends who are Holocaust survivors. What was I supposed to do — give up, say I can’t go on? No. I had other children. I had a group of young people in the lab. Why would I give up?”
First, you learn that you have no control. And then you straighten up, fetch your invitation, and go to meet the Queen.
