2 February 2026
Welcome, glad you are reading this.
Mwaniriziddwa, musanyufu nti osoma bino.
[Over 10 million people speak Luganda in Uganda.]
Subscribe to the SciSchmooze at Bay Area Science. Heck, sign up your friends too. It’s free.
Reid, Christina, Jeremy, and Victor are leaving for the Moon next Sunday. Their spacecraft will loop around the Moon twice and return to Earth on or about February 19th. However, those dates could be pushed back out of an abundance of caution.
Here is a video introduction to the crew and their mission.
Watch the mission unfold live on the NASA YouTube Channel. The previous Moon mission, Apollo 17, was over 53 years ago. One threat from back then still exists: cosmic radiation.
Shocking News
Google denied the Bay Area Skeptics access to their community facility – The Huddle in Mountain View – for SkeptiCamp 2026 because they posted articles (mostly SciSchmooze articles) about vaccines – and vaccines are “controversial.” I searched all Bay Area Skeptics articles in the last 12 months that contained a reference to the Trump Administration’s vaccine policies. Every article is factual and free of rhetorical exaggeration. Here are links to all 17 articles i found: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
¿Has Google abandoned their support of science over pseudoscience, or are they instead concerned that the articles criticized the Trump Administration’s public health policies. It is true that articles over the last 12 months from the SciSchmooze and articles from other sources repeatedly addressed the Administration’s ‘war on science.’
The Bay Area Skeptics is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) educational organization. They reserved The Huddle early last year for their SkeptiCamp 2025 which was well-attended and upset no one. That was then.
Consider emailing the Google Visitor Experience Team at visit@google.com to share your opinion. ¿Will Google change its ruling? In a more perfect world, yes, if they hear from you and you and you and …..
As a side note, the Federal Government now has 10,000 fewer Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics than before Trump took office in 2025. [¿Is this information controversial?]
A FEW LOCAL STANDOUTS
Saildrone manufactures unmanned surface vehicles that gather scientific data. Their impressive facility is on Alameda Island. Unfortunately they do not conduct tours.
The largest camera ever (in the Solar System) was built at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The 3.2 gigapixel camera is a key component of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. It is 1.65 meters in diameter, 3.7 meters long, and weighs 3 tonnes.
And there’s Longshot, a company with facilities in both Alameda and Oakland. They want to shoot satellites into space with a 10 kilometer ‘gun.’ Take the time to read this fun article about Longshot by Joe Salas.
THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK – My Picks
There is so much happening this week. Below are just a few that are close to the Bay and intended for a non-professional audience. There are many more presentations this week, some for more technical programs or for programs a little farther out. Check out the full listing at the Bay Area Science Calendar.
SETI Live: Back to the Moon Livestream, Monday 1pm
Live Longer, Live Better: Technology & Aging Tuesday 5:30, Commonwealth Club, S.F., $
Algorithms of Love – Dating in the Digital World Livestream & in Person, Wednesday 1pm
What If the Ocean Is at a Tipping Point? Thursday 7 pm, ExplOratorium, S.F, $
Searching for Technological Life in the Universe Friday 8pm, San Mateo
Foothills Family Nature Walk – Saturday 11 am, Los Altos
BIOLOGY / ETHOLOGY
¿One more Domain of biological organisms? Make room for Sukunaarchaeum. These tiny organisms were found living inside Citharistes regius, a single-celled dinoflagellate (a type of plankton). It has everything needed to reproduce, i.e. DNA and RNA that code for all the machinery needed to replicate its genome and build proteins, its cell wall, etc. What it lacks is any mechanism for creating energy, such as mitochondria. Apparently it ingests energy from its host dinoflagellate, perhaps in the form of ATP: adenosine triphosphate. Viruses on the other hand cannot replicate anything. Viruses use the host cell’s machinery for building new copies of itself. It appears we must add Sukunaarchaea to the other Domains: Viruses, Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryota (that’s where we fit in). Stay tuned!
We humans perceive color by the differential responses of 3 chemically different photoreceptors in the retina, each ‘tuned’ to a separate frequency of light. Octopus eyes have only a single photoreceptor which technically makes them colorblind. However, they obviously can perceive colors since they often match their skin color to the color of their surroundings. Our best understanding: Their horizontal pupils cause a chromatic aberration of the images on their retina; much like a prism splits light into its composite colors. Their brains are able to use the nature of the aberrations to extract color information.
CLIMATE
Last year the Department of Energy secretly assembled a committee of climate deniers who published a 151-page report in July. The report claimed carbon dioxide is good for the planet, that the rise in ocean levels is not accelerating, and that computer models predicting higher temperatures are faulty. The Environmental Protection Agency cited the report to justify repealing the endangerment finding that had been used to justify the fight against climate change.
A federal judge just ruled the report was illegal. A 1972 law makes it illegal for agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for the purposes of policymaking. The law was signed by President Nixon.
FUN NERDY VIDEOS
Amazing Galaxy Cluster – @Astro_Alexandra – Alexandra Doten – 1 min
Most Efficient Animal Travel – Cleo Abram – 1 min
Cutting NIH Research – Jessica Knurick – 2 mins
Pluto Images Revisited – Oxford University – Carly Howett – 2 mins
Saildrone research – NOAA Fisheries – 4.5 mins
Microplastics and Health – Your Local Epidemiologist – Matt Willis – 5 mins
Fruits, Vegetables, & Science – The Right Chemistry – Joe Schwarcz – 5 mins
Spintronics is Almost Here – Sabine Hossenfelder – 5.5 mins
LongShot, Oakland – 8 mins
The First Clothing – PBS Eons – Kallie Moore – 9 mins
Science Breakthroughs of 2025 – Science Magazine – 10.5 mins
Three-Parent Babies – SciShow – Niba – 12.5 mins
Evolutionary History of Color Vision – SciShow – Hank Green – 14 mins
CRISPR’s Successor Could Be Awesome – SciShow – Jaida Elcock – 20 mins
Tales from the Periodic Table – Ron Hipschman – 22.5 mins
¿Is Dark Matter Real? – Abigail James – 25 mins
Medicine’s Most Controversial Book – SciShow – Danielle Bainbridge – 57 mins
Have a great week
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
― Neil Armstrong (1930 – 2012) American astronaut and aeronautical engineer.
“We are going to the moon that is not very far.
Man has so much farther to go within himself.”
― Anaïs Nin (1903 – 1977) French-born American writer.