Florida Tech withdraws from Cape Canaveral rocket-noise study, citing its narrow scope
This $10,019 study, which the Cape Canaveral City Council approved in April, called for Florida Tech to install sensors — including sound level meters, accelerometers and air quality monitors — at a handful of buildings across Cape Canaveral and collect data before, during and after rocket launches.
But upon further review, Florida Tech withdrew because "the $10,000 cost and narrow purview are insufficient to appropriately examine the issues at hand," university spokesperson Wes Sumner said.
Specifically, Sumer said a more robust study using more sensors in more locations — including weather sensors — would better address the complexities at play.
Cape Canaveral: Is there a launch today? Upcoming SpaceX, NASA, ULA rocket launch schedule at Cape Canaveral
"Florida Tech initially estimates that cost for an appropriately detailed study could be $100,000 or more. The ongoing work from faculty at (Brigham Young University) into the acoustics of rockets, for example, which has produced multiple journal articles, alludes to the broader effort needed for more meaningful, impactful data," Sumner said in an email.
Why study rocket launch acoustics? In a news post, City Hall staffers said Cape Canaveral residents are concerned about the possibility of long-term structural damages such as cracking, foundation settling and shattered windows — particularly in light of increasing launch rates and rocket sizes. Florida's Space Coast remains on track to crack the 100-launch barrier for this first time this year.
"The City's goal in pursuing this research was to determine the long-term impacts on the built environment of repeated rocket launches with ever more powerful launch vehicles, and we still wish to accomplish this," Zachary Eichholz, chief resilience manager for the city of Cape Canaveral, said in an email.
"It is currently exploring alternative means to conduct this research, including future initiatives with FIT and other research teams at other universities," Eichholz said.
Last week, U.S. Air Force officials collected environmental comments during public hearings in Titusville, Cape Canaveral and Cocoa about SpaceX's proposal to start launching up to 76 Starship-Super Heavy rocket systems per year — with up to 152 sonic-boom-producing landings — at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Those Starship-Super Heavy future liftoffs from Launch Complex 37 would occur 9 miles from Cape Canaveral's closest condominium and 10.4 miles from City Hall, Eichholz said. SpaceX did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.
Space Force, SpaceX, NASA conducting bigger study in CA
In terms of scope, a far-larger research collaboration is tracking rocket sonic-boom data this year near Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This study involves the Space Force, BYU, California State University-Bakersfield, SpaceX, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration.
A network of about 25 monitoring stations is dispatched across 500 square miles of California's central coast, collecting data to create a three-dimensional sound map.
"It's like trying to catch lightning in a bottle," Kent Gee, who chairs BYU's Department of Physics and Astronomy, said in a Space Force press release. "All launches generate sonic booms; however, their audibility to the public is influenced by several factors, including the launch trajectory, the size of the rocket, and atmospheric conditions.'
Specifically, the California coastal region's multiple "microclimates" add to the complexities, and Gee said launches with nearly identical flight paths can produce vastly different noise levels on the ground. The press release said this variability "has sent researchers on a quest to unravel the complex interplay between rocket trajectories, weather conditions, and topography."
Air Force shares Starship-Super Heavy sound details
An Air Force 176-page draft environmental impact statement said Starship-Super Heavy noise would represent "a community annoyance" for residential neighborhoods in Cocoa Beach, Cape Canaveral, Titusville and Merritt Island — particularly during Super Heavy booster landings.
During last week's public hearings, mention was made of SpaceX's proposed actions to reduce noise impacts using sound suppression technology:
A water deluge system would spray large volumes of water onto the launch pad during liftoff, absorbing acoustic energy and converting it to steam — significantly reducing sound intensity.
Flame trenches beneath the launch pad would redirect and disperse exhaust and sound energy away from sensitive areas.
In addition, SpaceX will coordinate with Space Launch Delta 45 to alert the public in advance of launches and potential sonic booms via websites and social media.
If a sonic boom causes suspected property damage, Air Force meeting materials said building owners could launch a formal claims process by contacting the Space Launch Delta 45 public affairs office. Compensation would be provided in accordance with FAA regulations, the Commercial Space Launch Act and other relevant law and policy.
For the latest news from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space. Another easy way: Click here to sign up for our weekly Space newsletter.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at Rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
Space is important to us and that's why we're working to bring you top coverage of the industry and Florida launches. Journalism like this takes time and resources. Please support it with a subscription here.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Florida Tech withdraws from rocket-noise study with city of Cape Canaveral
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Washington Post
10 minutes ago
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We've made sharks into monsters
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Researchers quietly planned a major test to dim sunlight, records show
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An experiment in Sweden's Arctic region that sought to release reflective particles in the stratosphere was canceled in 2021 after Indigenous people and environmentalists accused Harvard University of sidelining them. The entire program, known as SCoPEx, was terminated last year. "It's absolutely imperative to engage with both local communities and broader publics around not just the work that is being proposed or is being planned, but also the broader implications of that work," said Jinnah, the UC Santa Cruz professor, who served on the advisory board for SCoPEx. That view isn't universally shared in the solar geoengineering research community. Some scientists believe that the perils of climate change are too dire to not pursue the technology, which they say can be safely tested in well-designed experiments, such as the one in Alameda. "If we really were serious about the idea that to do any controversial topic needs some kind of large-scale consensus before we can research the topic, I think that means we don't research topics," David Keith, a geophysical sciences professor at the University of Chicago, said at a think tank discussion last month. Keith previously helped lead the canceled Harvard experiment. The trove of documents shows that officials with the Marine Cloud Brightening Program were in contact with officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the consulting firm Accenture as the researchers prepared for the much larger ocean test — even before the small field test had begun on the retired aircraft carrier USS Hornet. They had hoped to gain access to U.S. government ships, planes and research funding for the major experiment at sea. (NOAA did not respond to a request for comment.) After local backlash doomed the Alameda test, the team acknowledged that those federal resources were likely out of reach. The prospect of U.S. backing became more distant with the reelection of Trump, who opposes federal support for measures to limit global warming. (The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.) The program's donors include cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen, the philanthropist Rachel Pritzker and Chris Sacca, a venture capitalist who has appeared on Shark Tank and other TV shows. (Pritzker and Sacca didn't respond to requests for comment.) Larsen said research of marine cloud brightening is needed due to questions about the effectiveness and impacts of the technology. "At a time when scientists are facing political attacks and drastic funding cuts, we need to complement a rapid energy transition with more research into a broad range of potential climate solutions," he wrote in an email to E&E News. The 2023 research plan shows that the experiments in Alameda and at sea would have cost between $10 million and $20 million, with "large uncertainties" due to operational or government funding challenges and the potential to expand the "field studies to multiple geographic locations." They would require "significant cash at the outset" and continued support over several years, the plan said. It was submitted as part of a funding request to the Quadrature Climate Foundation, a charity associated with the London-based hedge fund Quadrature Capital. The Quadrature foundation told E&E News it had given nearly $11.9 million to SilverLining and $5 million to the University of Washington for research on solar geoengineering, which is also known as solar radiation management, or SRM. "Public and philanthropic institutions have a role in developing the knowledge needed to assess approaches like SRM," Greg De Temmerman, the foundation's chief science officer, said in a statement. The goal is to ensure that decisions about the potential use of the technologies "are made responsibly, transparently, and in the public interest." For more than a dozen years, the University of Washington has been studying marine cloud brightening to see if the potential cooling effects are worth the risks, the research team told Quadrature. "The MCB Program was formed in 2012 and operated as a largely unfunded collaboration until 2019, when modest philanthropic funding supported the commencement of dedicated effort," the plan said. The source of the program's initial financial support isn't named in the document. But the timing coincides with the establishment of SilverLining, which is six years old. SilverLining reported more than $3.6 million in revenues in 2023, the most recent year for which its tax filings are publicly available. The group does not disclose its full list of donors, although charities linked to former Democratic New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the late Gordon Moore, a co-founder of the chipmaker Intel, have reported six-figure contributions to the group. (The Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust didn't respond to a request for comment.) 'The Moore Foundation is not involved in the Marine Cloud Brightening Program," said Holly Potter, a spokesperson for the charity, adding that 'solar geoengineering research in not a focus of the foundation's work.' The program pitched Quadrature and other donors on the idea that its need for private philanthropy was only temporary. Public support would eventually arrive for solar geoengineering research, the team argued. In a 2021 update for supporters, the team said it had received $1 million over two years from NOAA and the Department of Energy for modeling studies and had begun work on the modified snow-making machine that the researchers would later test in Alameda. That technology is also being used in a field trial along the Great Barrier Reef that's funded in part by the Australian government. At the same time, the donor report acknowledged the potential for "public perception challenges" like those that would later short-circuit the Alameda field test. "The MCB Program is well-positioned both in terms of its government ties, scientific analogues and careful positioning to move forward successfully, but this remains a risk." The plan for Alameda included elements to engage the public. The deck of the USS Hornet, which is now a naval museum, remained open to visitors. But the team relied on museum staff to manage relations with Alameda leaders and carefully controlled the information it provided to the public, according to the documents provided by the University of Washington that included communications among the program leaders. "We think it's safest to get air quality review help and are pursuing that in advance of engaging, but I'd avoid scaring them overly," said an Aug. 23, 2023, text message before a meeting with Hornet officials. "We want them to work largely on the assumption that things are a go." No names were attached to the messages. Then in November 2023, a climate solutions reporter from National Public Radio was planning to visit the headquarters of SRI for a story about the importance of aerosols research. A communications strategist who worked for SilverLining at the time emailed the team a clear directive: "There will be no mention of the study taking place in Alameda," wrote Jesus Chavez, the founder of the public relations firm Singularity Media, in bold, underlined text. (Chavez didn't respond to a request for comment.) At the same time, the program was closely coordinating with government scientists, documents show. The head of NOAA's chemical sciences division was one of three "VIPs' who were scheduled to visit the headquarters of SRI for a demonstration of a cloud-making machine, according to a December 2023 email from Wanser of SilverLining. Other guests included a dean from the University of Washington and an official from the private investment office of billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, a long-time supporter of geoengineering research. (Gates Ventures didn't respond to a request for comment.) 'The focus of this event is on the spray technology and the science driving its requirements, validation and possible uses,' Wanser wrote to the team. The same month, the program detailed its progress toward the Alameda experiment in another donor report. 'The science plan for the study has been shared with our colleagues at NOAA and DOE,' said a draft of the report. A Department of Energy spokesperson acknowledged funding University of Washington 'research on how ambient aerosols affect clouds,' but said the agency hadn't supported "deliberate field deployment of aerosols into the environment.' On April 1, 2024, the day before the Alameda experiment was launched, the program and its consultants appeared to be laying the groundwork for additional geoengineering tests, which an adviser said would likely need the support of federal officials. Leaders from SilverLining, SRI and Accenture were invited to attend the discussion 'to kick off the next phase of our work together' in the consulting firm's 33rd floor offices in Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in San Francisco, a calendar invitation shows. Officials from the University of Washington and NOAA were also given the option to join. That evening, the calendar notifications show, everyone was invited to a happy hour and dinner. Accenture, SRI, the University of Washington and NOAA didn't directly respond to questions about the events. Wanser of SilverLining said in an email that the San Francisco meeting "was completely separate" from the cloud brightening program, even though it included many of the same researchers. The following afternoon, team members and Accenture executives planned to give a sprayer demonstration to Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune and board chair of the think tanks Third Way and the Breakthrough Institute, and Michael Brune, a former executive director of the Sierra Club, according to another scheduling document. It was an important moment for the team. The same technology that was being tested on the aircraft carrier's deck would also be deployed in the much larger open-ocean experiment, the research plan shows. "I was impressed with the team that was putting it together," Brune said in an interview. He attended the demo as an adviser to Larson, the crypto entrepreneur who has donated to SilverLining via the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Brune, who lives in Alameda, said he wasn't aware of the larger experiment until E&E News contacted him. "The engagement with leaders here in Alameda was subpar, and the controversy was pretty predictable," he added. In May 2024, city officials halted the experiment after complaining about the secrecy surrounding it. They also accused the organizers of violating the Hornet's lease, which was only intended to allow museum-related activities. (The Hornet didn't respond to a request for comment.) At a city council meeting the following month, Mayor Ashcraft said she wanted "a deeper understanding of the unintended consequences … not just of this small-scale experiment, but of the science, of this technology [and] where it's leading to." Then she and the other four council members voted unanimously to block the program from resuming its experiment. Between April 2024 and the city council's vote that June, the research team scrambled to limit public backlash against the test. By then, the controversy had attracted national and local media attention. The information request from E&E News sought roughly 14 months of text messages from or to Doherty and Robert Wood, another University of Washington researcher, that included or mentioned their collaborators at SilverLining or SRI. Some of the text messages that were shared by the university did not specify the sender, and Doherty and Wood did not respond to questions about them. In one text message chain on May 15, 2024, one person suggested SilverLining would pay to keep the Hornet museum closed when the tests were running "to give us some breathing space." The sender added, "for risk management and the project [it's] an easy call, and we can cover it." But an unidentified second person responded that "the community could actually find it additionally problematic that the project kept the Hornet shut down." The team members sent each other letters from people who supported the program, including one from science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, whose 2020 novel Ministry of the Future featured a rogue nation that unilaterally implemented planetary-scale solar geoengineering. "The truth is that in the coming decades we are going to have to cope with climate change in many ways involving both technologies and social decisions," he wrote to the city council on May 29, 2024. The Alameda experiment "has the advantage of exploring a mitigation method that is potentially very significant, while also being localized, modular, and reversible. These are qualities that aren't often attributed to geoengineering." After the council vote, SilverLining hired a new public relations firm, Berlin Rosen, to handle the media attention. It also discussed organizing local events to recruit potential allies, emails show. Wanser, SilverLining's executive director, wrote in a June 6, 2024, email to the research team that the program was considering "another run at a proposal to the city post-election, with, hopefully, a build up of local support and education in the interim." Ashcraft, the mayor, said in an email to E&E News that she is "not aware of any additional outreach with the community" by the researchers, adding that they hadn't engaged with her or city staff since the vote. Meanwhile, even before Trump returned to office, the team had begun acknowledging that its mistakes in Alameda had decreased the likelihood of gaining government support for solar geoengineering research. Access to federal aircraft "isn't going to happen any time soon," Doherty, the program director, wrote to Wanser and other team members on June 14, 2024. The studies that the program is pursuing are scientifically sound and would be unlikely to alter weather patterns — even for the Puerto Rico-sized test, said Daniele Visioni, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Cornell University. Nearly 30 percent of the planet is already covered by clouds, he noted. That doesn't mean the team was wise to closely guard its plans, said Visioni, who last year helped author ethical guidelines for solar geoengineering research. "There's a difference between what they should have been required to do and what it would have been smart for them to do, from a transparent perspective, to gain the public's trust," he said. Solve the daily Crossword
WIRED
40 minutes ago
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A ‘Grand Unified Theory' of Math Just Got a Little Bit Closer
Jul 27, 2025 7:00 AM By extending the scope of a key insight behind Fermat's Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a unifying theory of mathematics. Illustration: Nash Weerasekera for Quanta Magazine The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1994, an earthquake of a proof shook up the mathematical world. The mathematician Andrew Wiles had finally settled Fermat's Last Theorem, a central problem in number theory that had remained open for over three centuries. The proof didn't just enthral mathematicians—it made the front page of The New York Times. But to accomplish it, Wiles (with help from the mathematician Richard Taylor) first had to prove a more subtle intermediate statement—one with implications that extended beyond Fermat's puzzle. This intermediate proof involved showing that an important kind of equation called an elliptic curve can always be tied to a completely different mathematical object called a modular form. Wiles and Taylor had essentially unlocked a portal between disparate mathematical realms, revealing that each looks like a distorted mirror image of the other. If mathematicians want to understand something about an elliptic curve, Wiles and Taylor showed, they can move into the world of modular forms, find and study their object's mirror image, then carry their conclusions back with them. This connection between worlds, called 'modularity,' didn't just enable Wiles to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Mathematicians soon used it to make progress on all sorts of previously intractable problems. Modularity also forms the foundation of the Langlands program, a sweeping set of conjectures aimed at developing a 'grand unified theory' of mathematics. If the conjectures are true, then all sorts of equations beyond elliptic curves will be similarly tethered to objects in their mirror realm. Mathematicians will be able to jump between the worlds as they please to answer even more questions. But proving the correspondence between elliptic curves and modular forms has been incredibly difficult. Many researchers thought that establishing some of these more complicated correspondences would be impossible. Now, a team of four mathematicians has proved them wrong. In February, the quartet finally succeeded in extending the modularity connection from elliptic curves to more complicated equations called abelian surfaces. The team—Frank Calegari of the University of Chicago, George Boxer and Toby Gee of Imperial College London, and Vincent Pilloni of the French National Center for Scientific Research—proved that every abelian surface belonging to a certain major class can always be associated to a modular form. Toby Gee, Frank Calegari, and Vincent Pilloni, along with George Boxer (not pictured), spent nearly a decade on the proof. Photographs: Courtesy of Toby Gee; Jayne Ion; MC 'We mostly believe that all the conjectures are true, but it's so exciting to see it actually realized,' said Ana Caraiani, a mathematician at Imperial College London. 'And in a case that you really thought was going to be out of reach.' It's just the beginning of a hunt that will take years—mathematicians ultimately want to show modularity for every abelian surface. But the result can already help answer many open questions, just as proving modularity for elliptic curves opened up all sorts of new research directions. Through the Looking Glass The elliptic curve is a particularly fundamental type of equation that uses just two variables— x and y . If you graph its solutions, you'll see what appear to be simple curves. But these solutions are interrelated in rich and complicated ways, and they show up in many of number theory's most important questions. The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, for instance—one of the toughest open problems in math, with a $1 million reward for whoever proves it first—is about the nature of solutions to elliptic curves. Elliptic curves can be hard to study directly. So sometimes mathematicians prefer to approach them from a different angle. That's where modular forms come in. A modular form is a highly symmetric function that appears in an ostensibly separate area of mathematical study called analysis. Because they exhibit so many nice symmetries, modular forms can be easier to work with. At first, these objects seem as though they shouldn't be related. But Taylor and Wiles' proof revealed that every elliptic curve corresponds to a specific modular form. They have certain properties in common—for instance, a set of numbers that describes the solutions to an elliptic curve will also crop up in its associated modular form. Mathematicians can therefore use modular forms to gain new insights into elliptic curves. But mathematicians think Taylor and Wiles' modularity theorem is just one instance of a universal fact. There's a much more general class of objects beyond elliptic curves. And all of these objects should also have a partner in the broader world of symmetric functions like modular forms. This, in essence, is what the Langlands program is all about. An elliptic curve has only two variables— x and y —so it can be graphed on a flat sheet of paper. But if you add another variable, z , you get a curvy surface that lives in three-dimensional space. This more complicated object is called an abelian surface, and as with elliptic curves, its solutions have an ornate structure that mathematicians want to understand. It seemed natural that abelian surfaces should correspond to more complicated types of modular forms. But the extra variable makes them much harder to construct and their solutions much harder to find. Proving that they, too, satisfy a modularity theorem seemed completely out of reach. 'It was a known problem not to think about, because people have thought about it and got stuck,' Gee said. But Boxer, Calegari, Gee, and Pilloni wanted to try. Finding a Bridge All four mathematicians were involved in research on the Langlands program, and they wanted to prove one of these conjectures for 'an object that actually turns up in real life, rather than some weird thing,' Calegari said. Not only do abelian surfaces show up in real life—the real life of a mathematician, that is—but proving a modularity theorem about them would open new mathematical doors. 'There are lots of things you can do if you have this statement that you have no chance of doing otherwise,' Calegari said. 'After a coffee, we would always joke that we had to go back to the mine.' The mathematicians started working together in 2016, hoping to follow the same steps that Taylor and Wiles had in their proof about elliptic curves. But every one of those steps was much more complicated for abelian surfaces. So they focused on a particular type of abelian surface, called an ordinary abelian surface, that was easier to work with. For any such surface, there's a set of numbers that describes the structure of its solutions. If they could show that the same set of numbers could also be derived from a modular form, they'd be done. The numbers would serve as a unique tag, allowing them to pair each of their abelian surfaces with a modular form. The problem was that while these numbers are straightforward to compute for a given abelian surface, mathematicians don't know how to construct a modular form with the exact same tag. Modular forms are simply too difficult to build when the requirements are so constrained. 'The objects you're looking for, you don't really know they exist,' Pilloni said. Instead, the mathematicians showed that it would be enough to construct a modular form whose numbers matched those of the abelian surface in a weaker sense. The modular form's numbers only had to be equivalent in the realm of what's known as clock arithmetic. Imagine a clock: If the hour hand starts at 10 and four hours pass, the clock will point to 2. But clock arithmetic can be done with any number, not just (as in the case of real-world clocks) the number 12. Boxer, Calegari, Gee, and Pilloni only needed to show that their two sets of numbers matched when they used a clock that goes up to 3. This meant that, for a given abelian surface, the mathematicians had more flexibility when it came to building the associated modular form. But even this proved too difficult. Then they stumbled on a trove of modular forms whose corresponding numbers were easy to calculate—so long as they defined their numbers according to a clock that goes up to 2. But the abelian surface needed one that goes up to 3. The mathematicians had an idea of how to roughly bridge these two different clocks. But they didn't know how to make the connection airtight so they could find a true match for the abelian surface in the world of modular forms. Then a new piece of mathematics appeared that turned out to be just what they needed. Lue Pan's work in a seemingly disparate area of number theory turned out to be essential. Photograph: Will Crow/ Princeton University Surprise Help In 2020, a number theorist named Lue Pan posted a proof about modular forms that didn't initially seem connected to the quartet's problem. But they soon recognized that the techniques he'd developed were surprisingly relevant. 'I didn't expect that,' Pan said. After years of regular meetings, mostly on Zoom, the mathematicians started to make progress adapting Pan's techniques, but major hurdles remained. Then, in the summer of 2023, Boxer, Gee, and Pilloni saw a conference in Bonn, Germany, as the perfect opportunity to come together. The only problem was that Calegari was supposed to travel to China at the same time to give a talk. But a difficult visit to the Chinese consulate in Chicago made him reconsider. 'Eight hours later, my visa was rejected and my car was towed,' he said. He decided to scrap the China talk and join his collaborators in Germany. Gee secured the team a room in the basement of the Hausdorff Research Institute, where they were unlikely to be disturbed by itinerant mathematicians. There, they spent an entire week working on Pan's theorem, one 12-hour day after the next, only coming up to ground level occasionally for caffeine. 'After a coffee, we would always joke that we had to go back to the mine,' Pilloni said. The grind paid off. 'There were many twists to come later,' Calegari said, 'but at the end of that week I thought we more or less had it.' It took another year and a half to turn Calegari's conviction into a 230-page proof, which they posted online in February. Putting all the pieces together, they'd proved that any ordinary abelian surface has an associated modular form. Their new portal could one day be as powerful as Taylor and Wiles' result, revealing more about abelian surfaces than anyone thought possible. But first, the team will have to extend their result to non-ordinary abelian surfaces. They've teamed up with Pan to continue the hunt. 'Ten years from now, I'd be surprised if we haven't found almost all of them,' Gee said. The work has also allowed mathematicians to formulate new conjectures—such as an analogue of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture that involves abelian surfaces instead of elliptic curves. 'Now we at least know that the analogue makes sense' for these ordinary surfaces, said Andrew Sutherland, a mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'Previously we did not know that.' 'Lots of things that I had dreamed we would be able to one day prove are now within reach because of this theorem,' he added. 'It changes things.' Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.
