The White Pill: F*** Pancreatic Cancer
The White Pill: F*** Pancreatic Cancer
white pill #5 // pancreatic cancer takes multiple Ls, there have been some huge cosmic explosions recently, why you need to be seafloodmaxxing, and more
Hello anon, it’s your regularly scheduled time to take the White Pill. By law we are required to inform you that taking the White Pill may result in excellent vibes, mind-bending visions, positive feelings about the future, and temporarily forgetting that Twitter exists. So step out of the PvP WWW for 20 minutes to enjoy our digest of evocative links in space, energy, medicine, and tech. No lead story this week, but a ton of good space stuff. Also say hi to lead editors Brandon and Nick in the comments.
First, some excellent news
AI showing potential to predict pancreatic cancer. Roughly 95% of people who get diagnosed with pancreatic cancer eventually die from it; every year it kills upwards of 45,000 Americans. One of the reasons it’s so deadly? Patients with early stage pancreatic cancer often show no symptoms, so it’s typically not detected until relatively late, when it’s much harder to treat. It now appears, however, this dismal status quo could change, thanks to a research group led by computational biologist Chris Sander. Using a deep learning algorithm, the group was able to identify patients at high risk of pancreatic cancer based on pre-existing clinical records. Widespread use of this tool by general practitioners would increase the chances of early diagnosis, and thus could reduce pancreatic cancer’s presently astronomical mortality rate. Excellent news. (Nature Medicine)
Cancer researchers have successfully tested a unique cancer vaccine on pancreatic cancer. The team created personalized vaccines based on the unique genetic makeup of patients' tumors, using mRNA technology similar to BioNTech’s COVID vaccine. Despite being early days and the study being quite small, this marks the first significant success of an mRNA vaccine in treating pancreatic cancer, making it a promising milestone in the quest for effective cancer vaccines. Excellent news. (New York Times)
First RSV vaccine approved. The FDA approved its first vaccine for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), which kills up to 10,000 elderly Americans every year. The newly greenlit vaccine belongs to pharmaceutical giant GSK, which already has over a million doses at the ready and will start shipping them before this winter’s uptick in RSV infections. Additionally, Pfizer is awaiting approval for a different RSV vaccine that can be used to treat both the elderly and pregnant women, as newborns are also a high-risk group for the virus. On that same note, Sanofi and AstraZeneca are awaiting approval for a monoclonal antibody treatment designed to confer vaccine-like protection on newborns. If all goes as planned, rolling out these drugs will prevent thousands of elderly Americans from dying each year, and may indirectly save the lives of many newborns by easing the load on pediatric ICUs. Excellent news. (WaPo)
Space and astronomy
New biggest cosmic explosion detected. Eight billion light years away, there’s a fireball that’s 100 times the size of our solar system and two trillion times brighter than our sun. Ongoing for three years now, this unimaginably awesome explosion — probably created by a supermassive black hole consuming a “massive dump of material” that had previously been in orbit around it — has been ongoing for three months. Note: the picture above is not this explosion. (Insider)
Jupiter-sized planet swallowed by dying star. For nearly two millennia after the death of Aristotle, educated men of the Western world believed the heavens were changeless and eternal. Then Tycho Brahe discovered a new star with a piece of string. Or, so we thought — until we realized he’d actually witnessed the death, not birth, of a star. We have since learned that when stars die, they grow 100 times brighter (hence Brahe’s “new star”) and 1,000,000 times bigger, the latter of which we always knew had to mean nearby planets were swallowed up by the supernova. But it wasn’t until 451 years after Brahe witnessed his civilization-altering supernova that we were able to actually watch a planet be engulfed by one. Then, on May 3, 2023, scientists from Harvard, MIT, and CalTech told the world they’d seen exactly this: a “a hot, Jupiter-sized world that spiraled close, then was pulled into the dying star’s atmosphere, and, finally, into its core,” about 12,000 light-years away. A postdoc involved with the study said this:
If some other civilization was observing us from 10,000 light-years away while the sun was engulfing the Earth, they would see the sun suddenly brighten as it ejects some material, then form dust around it, before settling back to what it was.
In response to which a Futurism author wrote: “While this isn't exactly a rosy outlook, it's good to know where we're headed in a few billion years, right?” Fortunately, we’re here to swat away the blackpill bullshit. When Earth is swallowed by the Sun, the civilization watching the supernova suddenly brighten from 10,000 miles away will be humanity, and our distant descendants will weep with awe and gratitude for the death of the planet where it all began. (Futurism)
New habitable-zone Earth-likes spotted. Astronomers have spotted two planets slightly larger than Earth orbiting a red dwarf star at a distance enabling the presence of liquid water. Red dwarfs are cooler than the Sun, but periodically emit violent discharges of UV/X-ray radiation capable of annihilating the atmospheres of nearby planets. Thus, further study is needed to determine whether these two planets are truly habitable. If so, our next challenge would be figuring out how to traverse the 137 light years separating our solar system from theirs. (Space.com)
We’re about to start manufacturing drugs in outer space. In a few weeks, Varda Space Industries will launch a “manufacturing satellite,” or “space factory,” into orbit. A partnership with Rocket Labs USA, the plan is for a “Rocket Lab-designed and built Photon spacecraft” to provide “power, communications, propulsion, and attitude control to Varda’s 120kg capsule that will produce pharmaceutical products in microgravity and return them to Earth.” Varda’s manufacturing focus is small molecule therapeutics — such as Ritonavir, an active ingredient in COVID and HIV medications — which “can have higher efficacy when produced in microgravity.” (Twitter) (Press Release)
And more:
Zoom in on this moon. New super duper high res pic of the moon, from Andrew McCarthy. You can even buy it! (@AJamesMcCarthy)
NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s recent images suggest signs of a previously unseen deep, fast-moving river on Mars (see above), part of a waterway network flowing into the Jezero Crater, its exploration site for over two years. (NASA)
An international team of astronomers just announced their discovery of 62 new moons orbiting Saturn? Putting the total number of Saturns moons over 100? Come again? (UBC Science)
Wednesday’s launch of 51 Starlink satellites mark SpaceX’s 200th straight successful Falcon family rocket mission. (Spaceflight Now)
Also, just a reminder that Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain in the solar system (h/t @MAstronomers). Standing tall at 13.6 miles up, its peak sits at nearly three times the height of Mount Everest, it has a diameter of 370 miles (roughly equivalent to the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco), and if it were placed in the US, it would cover the entire state of Arizona. If a passenger plane wanted to fly over it, it would have to fly higher than the International Space Station’s orbit around earth. Behold —
Back on Earth…
We need to be seafloodmaxxing. What if we could: create a new Mediterranean Sea in the middle of the Sahara Desert — spawning a massive, vibrant ecosystem and bolstering regional food security? It’s called seaflooding, and the Sahara Desert isn’t the only place it’s feasible. Buckle up for a mind-bending read. (@tomaspueyo)
Researchers discover new microbes that can degrade plastic at low temperatures. Most studies on biodegradable plastics report microbial degradation at temperatures above 20℃, which is a problem, as the result is energy-intensive (and thus costly) industrial recycling. New research has revealed 19 microbial strains, isolated from alpine and arctic soils, capable of degrading several types of plastic at only 15 ℃.(Twitter)