fortytwomagazine – for those who wonder

Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Nota (ESA/STScI, STScI/AURA)

The sun is a fixture in our sky. But how did it get there? And was it always alone in our solar system? Maria Lugaro, astrophysicist and Teamleader of Project Radiostar seeks to answer these questions. She and her team try to map out the history of our solar system by analyzing radioactive nuclei. In this interview she gives some insight in her research and explains what it tells us about our place in the universe.

42: What is the focus of your research at Project Radiostar? 

Maria Lugaro: We analyze radioactive nuclei to learn more about the formation of the Sun and the time that led up to it.  It’s a special type of nuclei because they decay. That makes them very interesting because they turn into another nucleus and they release energy when they do that. They don’t just sit there as they are forever, at some point they change into another nucleus. And that’s the kind of tracers that we want to use with this project, because they change into another nucleus with a certain typical time.

Maybe people would be familiar with carbon dating which is used to date human artefacts, for example human bones. Because if I know how much carbon 14 should have been there, but I only measure half of it then 5,000 years must’ve passed. The idea is quite simple.

We want to use  radioactive nuclei in the same way to measure time intervals that are related to the birth of the Sun. It’s exactly the same method, but we apply it to something much further back in time. 

What is Carbon Dating?

Carbon Dating is a scientific process to determine the age of organic material. Scientists use a radioactive isotope of carbon called c14. Plants and animals exchange carbon either with the atmosphere, or through their diet. While they are alive, they have the same amount of carbon in them as their surroundings. Once they’re dead, this exchange stops. Because c14 is radioactive and therefore unstable, it slowly decays and turns into another nucleus. This means the number of c14 nuclei continues to dwindle. Since we know how long it takes for c14 to decay, we can use the ratio between c14 and more stable forms of carbon to determine how long something has been dead.

Where do you find these nuclei? Human artefacts or  bones can be found in the ground, we can’t go to the Sun and pick up nuclei.

Luckily, we have meteorites. Meteorites contain solids that formed very early, right around the time the Sun was born. In fact, we used these solids to determine that the Sun is 4.67 billion years old. But this was 4.6 billion years ago and we’re looking at nuclei that decay in one million years so the original nuclei aren’t there anymore. However, we can see the nuclei they became. 

For example, aluminium 26 is a radioactive isotope. It decays in a million years. But we know that it was present when the Sun formed, because it becomes magnesium 26. And in some of these solids, there’s a lot of magnesium 26. It doesn’t make sense for there to be so much magnesium unless it was aluminium first.

It’s amazing how high the precision is. Here is a piece of rock, you put it in a laboratory with a mass spectrometer and you count how many atoms of magnesium 26 there are. 

Can you give us an idea of what these timescales we are talking about?

We’re looking at nuclei that decay in millions of years. Star formation is a process that takes millions of years. So if we have clocks that are sensitive to millions of years, we can measure timescales related to the formation of our star. 

What is so interesting, is that we’re looking at timescales that are very different in scale. People often don’t even consider the 10, 20 million years of star formation in their models, they just assume it’s instantaneous. We have to go back in time 4.6 billion years. And within that, we need to study something that is relatively short. We have to go into detail into these little slivers of time, relatively speaking. The age of the whole Milky Way is 13 billion years, and we are interested in something that happened within 30 million years. You have to be very, very detailed.  That’s why these nuclear isotopes are so useful, because they have exactly that timescale.

What’s the importance of using more than one nucleus?

We have to go back in time about 6 billion years, we have to try to understand the production of these nuclei, how they decay. The analysis of nuclei that are about 6 billion years old is prone to errors. To make sure our theories are correct, we use several nuclei to cross-check. I think this is the strength of the project. We have 19 of these nuclei and they all have different ranges. Each of them is like a little clock. Some of them have similar timelines. Some of them have similar origins. I’m not happy with just one number. I want to have at least two or three numbers. Only then can I start believing something. 

What type of information are you hoping to gain from these nuclei? 

I’ll give you a very practical example. We derived how long before the formation of the Sun a rare stellar event happened that produced three of these radioactive nuclei. We were able to find the time that passed between this event and the formation of the Sun. Then we have to wait about 200 million years for the Sun to form. But 200 million years is pretty long, so we tried to find something closer to the birth of the Sun. We have another two or three nuclei, but they’re from lower mass stars, which are quite common. This time we find 20, 30 million years between when they were produced and the birth of the Sun. So now we’re getting closer and I can say the birth of the sun couldn’t have taken longer than 20 or 30 million years. 

What is interesting is that we keep on looking at more nuclei, but we haven’t been able to find any nuclei that strongly suggest the process of forming the Sun could have taken 2 million years. That’s very important because 2 million years is very short. That only happens when you have a very small group of stars forming together. That makes us  think that the sun must have formed in a very large group with a big family, with grandparents, parents, siblings. Lots of generations together. It wasn’t just 50 stars. It was probably thousands. This is how we’re trying to map out and connect timescales to the actual physical environment.

What challenges are you facing at the moment?

We don’t do observations in our group. We want to model the production of radioactive nuclei in stars and how they distribute in the galaxy, because that’s our starting point. Then we compare the model with the meteoretic data. And we have the problem that the nuclei are produced in stars, and when stars die they throw the nuclei out. But these nuclei decay. So while they are transported somewhere, you lose them at the same time. That makes it a very complicated picture to paint. We did a lot of statistical modelling because in the end, it’s statistics to try to see a distribution of the things from different sources, but we are trying to do it a bit better. And hopefully we get closer to the confidence I’d like to achieve. 

The other thing that we are looking at, the stars that I talked about so far, they were not part of the family. They took billions of years to evolve, they exploded and then they contributed to the formation of the family. But then what happened within the family? Because if it had parents, grandparents, and siblings they could’ve affected each other. Within this family situation, nuclei could have been produced. We are looking at these nuclei and we are specifically looking into massive stars, supernovas, that exploded.  Say, some grandparents died before the Sun was born. They could have thrown out radioactive nuclei. When massive stars form, most of them are in a couple. So when they evolve, they affect each other. Right now, no one is looking at the production of radioactive nuclei when you have two stars together. That could change the picture a lot. 

Project Radiostar is going on for one more year. What do you hope to have achieved by the end of it?

I would like to really be able to say: This is the time that passed from the beginning of the process of forming the Sun to the formation of the Sun. My main problem now is the statistical problems. That’s why I still have doubts about a few parts. My other goal is that ideally we discover the origin of aluminium 26 in the solar system, because then we can tell if it’s normal or not to have these isotopes in the nuclei. At the moment we have no idea if most stars that are forming have these nuclei or not. There are too many ideas, but which is the right one? Each of these ideas have implications on other theories of stars and planets. My hope is to be able to narrow them down a little bit. This is super ambitious, but who knows. It will be impossible to build a scenario that is final, but I want to build a scenario that is consistent with all the radioactive nuclei. Lots of people tried to explain the aluminum 26 and they didn’t consider the other 18 nuclei. 

What is something you wish everyone knew about this topic? 

Well, I think it is important to understand that we want to clarify our place in the galaxy. Are we alone? That’s a classic question. And to answer these questions we need a lot of different scientific disciplines. They have to be addressed from many points of views. I think it’s very important that younger people know that they can still make a contribution. That we haven’t solved everything. Sometimes you get this impression that everything is answered. But that’s actually not the case at all. If you feel that urge to be curious, you’re welcome to join the scientific community!

By David Krebs

Image Credit: NASA/ESA

EN

Summer is here and while some of us might travel to the nearest beach to relax, billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos are exploring a whole new tourist destination: the edge of space. But that’s not all that happened in July: an iconic telescope came back to life and new data from Marsquakes revealed secrets of the red planet’s insides.

Space Tourism

MIT technology Review critically reports on Richard Branson’s flight to the edge of space on July 11th on board of a spaceplane made by his company Virgin Galactic. Pointing out the criticism the “two billionaires racing to space amid a pandemic” received, the article also highlights the event’s potential to make space travel more accessible.

Jeff Bezos left Earth just a few days later on July 20th. He was accompanied by his brother Mark Bezoz and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen on the inaugural flight of his company Blue Origin. The Washington Post published a dedicated article on the 4th passenger, 82-year-old Wally Funk. Aviation pioneer and member of the Mercury 13, she had been training and waiting for her chance to go to space since the 1960s. 

Hubble out of trouble

The space telescope Hubble is finally back online. It had been out of order since June 13th and engineers had been trying to fix a computer glitch that caused the error for over a month.

The BBC reminds us that Hubble has been our eye in space for over three decades already. Although its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is supposed to be sent up to space this year, scientists hope that Hubble will keep sending amazing pictures for a few more years to come.

Mars’ candy-like layers

Just like the candy bar, our red neighbour is made up of several layers. The New York Times vulgarizes the scientific findings of three recently published papers. Using culinary language, such as “volcanic chocolate” to describe the planet’s crust or “rigid toffee-like filling” for its core, certainly helps to imagine what is going on inside Mars.

With a more scientific tone, the article explains how scientists used data from NASA’s InSight lander to conduct the first interplanetary seismic survey in human history. So-called Marsquakes give important insights into the  properties and dimensions of the different layers.

DE

Der Sommer ist da, und während einige von uns vielleicht an den nächsten Strand fahren, erkunden die Milliardäre Richard Branson und Jeff Bezos ein ganz neues Urlaubsziel: das Weltall. Aber das ist noch nicht alles, was im Juli passiert ist: Das berühmte Weltraumteleskop Hubble wurde wieder zum Leben erweckt und neue Daten von Marsbeben enthüllten Geheimnisse über das Innere des roten Planeten.

Weltraumtourismus

Die MIT Technology Review berichtet kritisch über Richard Bransons Flug an den Rand des Weltraums. Er verließ am 11. Juli an Bord eines Raumschiffs seiner Firma Virgin Galactic die Erde. Der Artikel verweist einerseits auf kritische Stimmen, die dem Milliardär,  vorwerfen inmitten einer Pandemie ins All fliegen. Auf der anderen Seite, wird aber auch das Potenzial des Ereignisses hervorgehoben, die Raumfahrt zugänglicher zu machen.

Jeff Bezos verließ die Erdatmosphäre nur wenige Tage später, am 20. Juli. Er wurde von seinem Bruder Mark Bezoz und dem 18-jährigen Oliver Daemen auf dem Eröffnungsflug seines Unternehmens Blue Origin begleitet. In NZZ Akzent, dem Podcast der Neuen Züricher Zeitung, stellt Wissenschaftsredaktorin Ruth Fulterer den vierten Passagier vor: die 82-jährige Wally Funk. Die Luftfahrtpionierin und Mitglied der Mercury 13 hatte seit den 1960er Jahren trainiert und auf ihre Chance gewartet, ins All zu fliegen.

Hubble ist wieder online!

Das Weltraumteleskop Hubble ist endlich wieder in Betrieb. Es war seit dem 13. Juni offline. NASA-Ingenieure hatten über einen Monat lang versucht, eine Computerpanne zu beheben, die den Fehler verursacht hatte. 

Die BBC erinnert uns daran, dass Hubble bereits seit über drei Jahrzehnten unser Auge im Weltraum ist. Obwohl sein Nachfolger, das James-Webb-Weltraumteleskop, dieses Jahr ins All geschickt werden soll, hoffen Wissenschaftler:innen, dass Hubble noch ein paar Jahre lang faszinierende Bilder liefern wird.

Wie sieht Mars von innen aus?

Genau wie der Schokoriegel besteht unser roter Nachbar aus mehreren Schichten. Die New York Times nutzt kulinarische Begriffe, um die neuesten geologischen Erkenntnisse von drei kürzlich veröffentlichten Arbeiten zu veranschaulichen. So kann man sich die Mars-Kruste aus vulkanischer Schokolade vorstellen und die Konsistenz des Kerns als starre, toffeeähnliche Füllung.

In einem wissenschaftlicheren Ton erklärt der Artikel, wie Forscher:innen die Daten der NASA-Sonde InSight nutzten, um die erste interplanetare seismische Untersuchung in der Geschichte der Menschheit durchzuführen. Sogenannte Marsbeben liefern wichtige Erkenntnisse über die Eigenschaften und Dicken der verschiedenen Schichten. 

Von Ella Steiner

Richard: So I’m Richard East and I’m having a slightly contrived conversation with Pierre Martin-Dussaud through which we hope to give our readers an idea about what loop quantum gravity (LQG) is and the problems it attempts to solve.

In line with this, I would say there are two simply irreconcilable perspectives in modern physics. The first is the perspective of things at the ‘large scale’ determined by general relativity as broadly described by Einstein in 1915. The second perspective is things at the ‘small scale,’ defined by quantum mechanics, which emerged formally as a field at the 5th Solvay conference in 1927. The problem centres around the fact that the very elements we, as physicists, try to work with when applying these theories are conceptually nothing alike. To understand this better, I think we first have to look at what these two theories actually say.

Pierre: Let’s start with the large scale. When it emerged as a modern science, physics was really a science of motion: which house will my cannonball fall on? Where in the sky will Jupiter be in 6 months? The underlying metaphysics is that there are bodies which exist within some immaterial medium (space) and some universal clock (time) that makes bodies move forward. This framework was a revolution in itself, and it proved extremely powerful. It took a long time before we realised it’s actually wrong. The first revision of the paradigm was special relativity (1905). Contrary to everyday-life intuition, there is no universal way to distinguish space from time. The motion of bodies can only be described consistently within a medium that mixes up the previously separated notions of space and time; thus wisely dubbed space-time. The second revision is general relativity (1915). In a sense, it is much more dramatic because it says that space-time is not a passive stage upon which motion is happening. Instead, space-time itself is moving! We say it’s dynamic. These dynamics are what we experience every day as gravity: things fall. We used to think that gravity was just a force acting within space-time, but we now understand that gravity and space-time are two sides of the same story: there can’t be one without the other.

To understand this better, you have to look at one of Einstein’s original thought experiments. Imagine you are in a windowless pod: Could you tell if you were floating in space or free-falling under the pull of gravity? Ask yourself what test you could do in the pod with the objects around you to tell? The problem is they are all either floating or in free fall with you, and objects of different weights still fall at the same speed (remember Galileo dropping different weights in Pisa?). As these two experiences of floating and falling are locally identical, we arrive at the principle of general relativity. It’s important to know that this is different from other forces. In a pod of magnetic objects, and this may not be obvious, you could tell if you were being pulled towards something magnetic or floating. The more magnetic objects are, the stronger the pull (unlike with gravity, where all things fall at the same rate). This means that there are tests that could tell you from inside the pod what was really happening, which is why there is no magnetic equivalent of general relativity.

“Gravity is not a force at all”

The reason gravity is like this is because – it’s not a force at all! To understand what this means, imagine taking two cannonballs being fired from two cannons. Let’s point one 20 degrees left of the other, so they are firing in different directions. Now imagine after firing them we found that after some long-distance they collided. How could this be? It looks like some force brought them together (like gravity). The explanation is as follows: We are firing our cannons on a tiny planet, and their paths follow a spherical surface – then it seems obvious that they would collide. Just imagine two aeroplanes taking off at 20 degrees from each other and flying around the earth without changing direction – of course, they will meet at some point. If we then abstract this idea a little further, we can discuss gravity in general. Here the ‘gravitational force’ is the result of the curvature of the universe itself. What Einstein showed us is that the degree of this curvature in any region is determined by the mass of the objects there – so objects of higher mass curve space-time more and that’s why their gravitational ‘pull’ seems stronger. Just imagine firing those cannons again. The smaller the little planet (so, the more curved the surface) we are on, the more quickly the cannonballs will meet – which if we didn’t realise we were on a curved surface, would look like the balls were being pulled together faster. In this way, gravity is not a force in space-time; it is the shape of space-time.

Richard: Okay, so now let’s change perspective and zoom into small-scale physics. We are now looking at quantum mechanics, which for most people is usually familiar through Schrödinger’s famous cat paradox. The idea is that Schrödinger has put a cat in a box with a vial of poison that will be released as soon as a radioactive isotope decays. This decay is realised when some atom, which is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons (the building blocks of atoms) splits up in some way. This in itself, while a strange thing to do, isn’t the strangest part of the situation presented by Schrödinger’s thought experiment. The strange part is that quantum mechanics informs us that the ‘state’ of a situation can, over time, become a superposition of other states (like the cat being alive or the cat being dead). However, when we check or ‘measure’ what is going on, we only find one of the states in the superposition, and which state we find is entirely probabilistic. So what is truly weird with Schrödinger’s cat experiment is the decay of an isotope being quantum mechanical. The state of the isotope is initially un-decayed when we close the box, but with each passing moment, the state inside the box is becoming a superposition of the state where the atom is and isn’t decayed. Until we open the box and check or ‘measure’ the cat’s state, it remains in a superposition of being both alive and dead!

Richard East

A PhD at the Université Grenoble Alpes. Previously studied at the universities of Manchester and Oxford. Working on the application of diagrammatic techniques from quantum information to condensed matter and quantum gravity

Now, those paying extra close attention will, of course, point out that though our description makes it sound like the cat is alive or dead, we are just stating what we don’t know. In reality, we might say, inside the box, one of the circumstances exists: The cat is alive, or it is dead. The problem is that many experiments have shown that this cannot be the case. They say that the measurement outcomes are ‘contextual,’ which means they logically cannot have predetermined fixed properties – that is to say, the cat’s state cannot be certain before we check inside the box if our theory corresponds with broader experimental evidence!

So what is the quantum mechanical perspective of the world? It is of ‘states’ evolving smoothly through time (think of our cat moving into a superposition of being alive and dead) and sharp, discontinuous measurements where things ‘collapse’ into one of the possible measurement outcomes (think of opening the box and seeing the alive or dead cat). In opposition to general relativity, in quantum mechanics, we are talking about a world that often contains discontinuous probabilistic changes – things are not always smooth and are not always deterministic.

Pierre: Now we remain with a theory in each hand. On the one hand, we have quantum mechanics that deals with very small objects, like atoms or photons. On the other hand, we have general relativity, which looks after big objects like stars and galaxies. Both theories have been confirmed in many experiments with excellent accuracy. So, where is the catch? As we’ve been alluding to, what troubles physicists is that the physical principles and the mathematics of both theories are very different. They don’t fit well within the same framework of thinking. To put it in a nutshell, general relativity says that space-time is just like matter (it moves) and is completely deterministic. But quantum mechanics says the matter has to be “quantum”. Hence, space-time should be quantum as well and is absolutely not deterministic, which doesn’t agree with general relativity at all. Because of this, many physicists think that general relativity is just an approximation, valid on a large scale. Still, at a more fundamental level, if you zoom in, you would realise that space-time has a quantum behaviour. Finding the quantum structure of space-time: this is the ambition of scientists working on quantum gravity.

„We collapse space-time itself“

Richard: So we’re now at the point that we’ve decided on a particular order of precedence here. We’ve come to the conclusion that the notions of quantum mechanics are more primitive and we should work primarily with its concepts while trying to extend our theory to include gravity. This is exactly what loop quantum gravity tries to do, and it does this by quantising space-time itself. To understand the approach, consider that when I talked about quantum mechanics before, I talked about states in terms of Schrödinger’s poor cat and us as experimentalists: Where was space-time? It was in the background. Quantum mechanics was happening in space-time. If we want to fuse quantum mechanics and gravity, we should view these properties of space-time as fundamentally quantum mechanical measurements, too! We take particular possible volumes, angles, and areas that make up reality at the smallest scale, and we say that these too must be associated with particular quantum states.

As we now know, since these are now quantum states, they aren’t necessarily bound to only one particular set of measurements being true. We can be in a superposition of them – only when we measure a specific volume, a certain area, and so on does a measurement become determined as the state of reality at that moment (like the cat being alive or dead when we check inside the box). In this way, when we measure, we don’t just collapse a particular experimental system sitting in space-time: We collapse space-time itself!

However, for the sake of completeness, it should be said that loop quantum gravity isn’t the only approach to merging gravity and quantum mechanics. One example of a popular alternative approach is provided by string theory, which aims not only to describe how gravity and quantum mechanics function together but also to be a ‘theory of everything’. It aspires to fuse all the known fundamental interactions known to physicists into a single framework. Loop quantum gravity is a more humble endeavour seeking solely to solve how gravity and quantum mechanics can be described in the same terms. Loosely, string theory postulates that reality is made of ‘string’ like objects in space-time, which means that gravity can be understood alongside other forces. Loop quantum gravity, on the other hand, is a theory of space-time in which the quantisation of space-time itself leads to the quantisation of gravity. At present, neither theory has been verified by experiment, so modern theoretical physics is divided on which approach to take.

Pierre Martin-Dussaud

PhD at Aix-Marseille University. Post-doc at Penn State University. Working on the quantum information structure of space-time

Pierre: Focussing once again on Loop quantum gravity, the next logical question is: What does it mean to measure space-time? It means pulling out a ruler or a clock and taking note of the values they show. Nothing revolutionary so far. But if you try to do the same with very tiny rulers and very precise clocks, LQG predicts that the measured values only take integer values of some fundamental unit. Between two graduations, between a tick and a tock, there is no middle term; your eyes irremediably fall over one side or the other. It means that space-time has a granular structure that physicists call discreteness. Like the pixels of your screen, which are tiny squares with only three possible colours (red, green, blue), the grains of space would be tiny tetrahedra with different possible “spins” on their faces. We have to be careful, as this has not been observed yet, but those of us studying loop quantum gravity believe it to be true.

This would mean that life would not be a continuous evolution but a succession of fixed pictures, like in a film, with 10^44 frames per second! Granular both in space and time, space-time as a whole spreads out as a foam, which we call a spin-foam. Because it is quantum mechanical, spin-foams don’t describe a unique deterministic history of the universe but rather probabilities of many possible histories. Loop quantum gravity theoretically enables us to compute such probabilities. The hiccup is the extreme complexity of actually performing such a computation. We’re interested in answering if we could use quantum computers to perform these calculations by merging ideas from quantum gravity and quantum information. Quantum computing, however, is a subject for another time…

By Richard East

@Metropolitan Arts Museum

DE

Der Weltraum fasziniert uns. Während irdische Dinge in unserer Zeit weitgehend erforscht scheinen, gibt uns der Weltraum immer neue Rätsel und Mysterien auf. Seine Weite ist für uns nicht fassbar, seine Regeln weitgehend unbekannt, und so scheint er der letzte Ort zu sein, an dem Magie noch möglich ist.

In unserem Interesse für den Weltraum schauen wir allzu oft in die Zukunft: Wann wird der Rover Perseverance vom Mars zur Erde zurückkehren, wann werden Menschen zum Mars fliegen können und wann werden wir mehr über andere Galaxien erfahren, wann auf außerirdisches Leben treffen? Doch auch die Vergangenheit ist spannend. Denn wie alle Wissenschaften ist auch die Astronomie ein Joint Effort: Sie gründet auf einer langen Tradition verschiedener Epochen und Kulturen. Einen großen Beitrag zu unserem heutigen Kenntnisstand hat nicht nur die griechische Antike, sondern auch das islamische Mittelalter geleistet.

Arabische Astronomie im Dialog mit der griechischen Antike

Antike griechische Philosophen und Denker wie Platon (gest. 348 oder 347 v.Chr.) und Aristoteles (gest. 322 v.Chr.) sind Vorläufer und Grundsteinleger vieler wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen unserer Zeit. Aristoteles entwickelte eine Form der Logik, Platons Politeia wird immer wieder in philosophischen und politikwissenschaftlichen Seminaren diskutiert und der hippokratische Eid ist auch heute noch jedem ein Begriff. Im Bereich der Astronomie wurden wichtige Überlegungen insbesondere von Aristoteles und Ptolemäus (gest. 170) angestellt.

Die Rolle der arabischen Gelehrten des islamischen Mittelalters als Bewahrer und Überlieferer philosophischer, medizinischer und astronomischer Texte des antiken Griechenlands ist in der Wissenschaft längst bekannt. Während sich Europa im dunklen Mittelalter befand und Wissenschaft dort von der Kirche häufig blockiert wurde, florierte sie in Gebieten unter islamischer Herrschaft. Besagte Texte wurden von arabischen Gelehrten aus dem Griechischen ins Arabische übersetzt. So blieben sie erhalten, wurden später – wie der Judentum-Forscher Moritz Steinschneider 1893 erstmals aufwarf oft von jüdischen Autoren – ins Hebräische und Lateinische übersetzt und fanden so schließlich Eingang in die europäische Wissenschaft der Renaissance.

Dabei wurde in der Vergangenheit aber oft die Originalität arabischer Gelehrter des islamischen Mittelalters unterschätzt. Griechische Texte wurden von ihnen nämlich nicht nur übersetzt, sondern auch kommentiert, kritisiert und weiterentwickelt. Ein verbreitetes Genre jener Zeit ist beispielsweise die šukūk (arab. Zweifel) Literatur. Hier werden die Überlegungen der antiken Griechen wiedergegeben, deren Schwachstellen und Widersprüche aufgezeigt und verbesserte Modelle vorgeschlagen.

An der vom abbasidischen Kalifen al-Maʾmūn (gest. 833) in Bagdad gegründeten Akademie mit dem Namen Haus der Weisheit (Bayt al-Ḥikmah) produzierten Gelehrte verschiedener Religionen unzählige Übersetzungen, Kommentare und Abhandlungen. Andere, wie beispielsweise Nasṭūlus (10. Jhd.), entwickelten nach antikem griechischem Vorbild Instrumente zur Darstellung der Bewegungen der Himmelskörper (Astrolabien), von denen einige bis heute erhalten sind. Der persische Gelehrte Naṣīr ad-Dīn aṭ-Ṭūsī (gest. 1274) baute ein Observatorium in Maraghah (im heutigen Iran) und verbesserte das Planetenmodell von Ptolemäus. Der Damaszener Ibn aš-Šāṭir (gest. 1375) entwickelte auf Basis von aṭ-Ṭūsī ein vollkommen konzentrisches Planetenmodell mit der Erde als gemeinsamen Mittelpunkt.

Die Rolle des Islams: Astronomie ohne Astrologie

Ibn aš-Šāṭir war nicht nur Astronom und Mathematiker, sondern auch religiöser Zeitmesser an der Umayyaden-Moschee in Damaskus. Seine Werke enthalten wie die vieler seiner Kollegen religiöse Formeln wie Gott weiß es am besten (Allāhu aʿlam). Wie George Saliba, Professor für Arabisch und Islamwissenschaft an der Amerikanischen Universität Beirut, in seiner Monographie Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance beschreibt, hatte der Islam eine teilweise wissenschaftsfördernde Wirkung. Seine Rolle steht damit im Gegensatz zu der des Christentums jener Zeit in Europa. Ein möglicher Grund: Die muslimische Religion war auf astronomische Erkenntnisse angewiesen, beispielsweise um den Zeitpunkt von religiösen Feiertagen und Gebeten bestimmen zu können. So wurden zum Beispiel Tafeln für die Ermittlung der Sichtbarkeit des Mondes entwickelt. Das ist wichtig, da im muslimischen Kalender mit der ersten Sichtung der neuen Mondsichel ein neuer Monat beginnt. Die Tafeln halfen daher unter anderem auch, zu ermitteln, wann der Fastenmonat Ramadan beginnt. Auch für die Bestimmung der Gebetsrichtung (arab. qibla) bedurfte man mathematischer und wissenschaftlicher Methoden.

Professor Saliba sieht den Islam als Ursache für eine weitere Neuerung in der Astronomie: Während im antiken Griechenland diese Wissenschaft unter anderem auch betrieben wurde, um den Einfluss der Himmelskörper auf menschliches Handeln bestimmen und so zukünftige Ereignisse vorhersagen zu können (Astrologie), beschränkten sich viele arabische Astronomen auf die Beschreibung und mathematische Erklärung der beobachtbaren Bewegungen der Himmelskörper, ohne deren Einfluss auf menschliches Handeln anzunehmen. Diese Beschränkung könnte ihren Ursprung in islamischer Doktrin haben. Würde nämlich angenommen, Menschen seien in ihrem Handeln von den Bewegungen der Himmelskörper beeinflusst, könnte sie das von der Verantwortung für ihr Handeln freisprechen. Das Einhalten religiöser Pflichten könnte dann nicht mehr verlangt, Verstöße nicht mehr geahndet werden – die Autorität der Religion würde Schaden nehmen. Professor Saliba nimmt an, deshalb sei die antike griechische Astronomie bei vielen islamischen Astronomen des Mittelalters von ihren astrologischen Elementen befreit worden. Das brachte sie der heutigen Wissenschaft der Astronomie näher.

Hat Kopernikus abgeschrieben?

Ein sehr eindrückliches Beispiel für den möglichen Einfluss der arabischen Astronomie des islamischen Mittelalters auf die Wissenschaft der europäischen Renaissance zeigt sich im Vergleich verschiedener arabischer Modelle mit jenen von Kopernikus (1473-1543). Laut Professor Saliba war es der Mathematiker und Wissenschaftshistoriker Otto Neugebauer, der im Jahr 1957 als erstes erkannte, dass das lunare Modell, das von Ibn aš-Šāṭir im Jahr 1375 entwickelt wurde, mit dem von Kopernikus in Commentariolus (1543) vorgeschlagenen beinahe identisch ist. Auf die entsprechende Handschrift von Ibn aš-Šāṭir war er von dem an der Amerikanischen Universität Beirut lehrenden Mathematikprofessor Edward Kennedy hingewiesen worden, dessen Schüler Victor Roberts wiederum nach Neugebauers Entdeckung die Parallelen der zwei Modelle in seinem Artikel The Solar and Lunar Theory of Ibn ash-Shāṭir: A Pre-Copernican Copernican Model darstellt.

Aṭ-Ṭūsī entwarf ein Modell, in dem ein kleinerer Zirkel innerhalb eines Zirkels der doppelten Größe in entgegengesetzter Richtung so kreist, dass die Ränder der beiden sich stets an einem Punkt berühren. So gelang es ihm, aus der gleichförmigen Bewegung von Kreisen die lineare Bewegung eines Punktes zu generieren (genannt Tusi Couple). Kopernikus nutzte dasselbe Modell in seinem Werk De Revolutionibus orbitum celestium.

Der deutsche Wissenschaftshistoriker Willy Hartner teilte im Jahr 1973 seine Entdeckung, dass die lateinischen Buchstaben, die Kopernikus zur Bezeichnung der geometrischen Punkte in seinem Modell verwendete, den von aṭ-Ṭūsī verwendeten arabischen Buchstaben fast ausnahmslos entsprechen. Das macht es sehr wahrscheinlich, dass Kopernikus von aṭ-Ṭūsī “abgeschrieben” hat. Michael Mosonovsky, Professor für Maschinenbau an der Universität Wisconsin, geht noch einen Schritt weiter: Er identifiziert ein hebräisches Manuskript des ursprünglich sephardisch-jüdischen Philosophen Abner von Burgos (gest. 1347) als mögliches Zwischenglied in der Überlieferung, das nach demselben Prinzip die entsprechenden Buchstaben des hebräischen Alphabets für dieselben Punkte verwendet.

Ein revolutionäres Element gibt es jedoch bei Kopernikus. Schließlich beruhten die vorherrschenden Modelle und Berechnungen der griechischen Antike und des islamischen Mittelalters, obwohl sie praktische Beobachtungen erstaunlich gut theoretisch fassen konnten, auf der gravierenden Fehlannahme, die Erde sei der Mittelpunkt des Universums. Mit der Durchsetzung seines heliozentrischen Planetenmodells revolutionierte Kopernikus die Wissenschaft der Astronomie. Wie gezeigt, könnten bei der Ausformulierung dieses Modells die Überlegungen arabischer Astronomen aber eine große Rolle gespielt haben.

Arabische Astronomie in Europa

Inzwischen gibt es zahlreiche Publikationen zu den Ähnlichkeiten zwischen Kopernikus und seinen arabischen Vordenkern, die Parallelen der beschriebenen Modelle sind in der Wissenschaft bekannt. Ob Kopernikus aber tatsächlich von Ibn aš-Šāṭir und aṭ-Ṭūsī Kenntnis hatte und ihre Modelle übernahm oder unabhängig von ihnen zu demselben Schluss gekommen ist, lässt sich nicht zweifelsfrei klären.

Obwohl keine lateinische Übersetzung ihrer Werke aus der Zeit von Kopernikus bekannt ist, sind viele Wege denkbar, auf denen ihn ihr Wissen erreicht haben könnte. Professor Saliba weist darauf hin, dass beispielsweise viele Menschen nach der Eroberung Konstantinopels durch die Osmanen im Jahr 1453 und dem Fall des Oströmischen Reiches (Byzanz) gen Westen flüchteten. Es sei aufgrund der räumlichen Nähe von Byzanz zum abbasidischen Kalifat anzunehmen, dass diese zuvor mit den arabischen Lehren in Kontakt gekommen waren. Außerdem seien manche aus religiösen Gründen oder auf der Suche nach Wissen in den arabischen Raum gereist. Das so erlangte Wissen hätten sie auf Griechisch reproduziert und schließlich nach Europa gebracht. Peter E. Pormann, Professor für Altphilologie und Griechisch-Arabische Studien an der Universität Manchester, gibt in seiner Rezension zu Professor Salibas Buch außerdem zu bedenken, Kopernikus sei auch in Italien gewesen, wo seinerzeit griechisch-arabische Handschriften produziert und diplomatische Beziehungen mit muslimischen Herrschern unterhalten wurden. Er könne auch dort von den arabischen Lehren erfahren haben.

Heute sind sich die meisten Forscher jedenfalls einig, dass die arabische Astronomie des islamischen Mittelalters nicht nur als Bewahrer und Überlieferer der antiken griechischen Astronomie, sondern auch als Kritiker und Weiterentwickler derselben einen großen Beitrag zur Astronomie der europäischen Renaissance und somit auch zur modernen Astronomie geleistet hat. Von der griechischen Antike über das islamische Mittelalter, jüdische Übersetzer und die europäische Renaissance bis zur Modernen: Unser heutiger Forschungsstand ist das Ergebnis eines Joint Efforts.

Von Tilman Wiesbeck

ENGL

Space fascinates us. Its vastness is elusive to us, its rules largely unknown, and so it is the last place where magic still seems possible. While everything on earth appears to have been explored by this point, outer space keeps presenting us with new riddles and mysteries.

In our interest in space, we all too often look to the future: When will the Mars rover Perseverance return to Earth, when will humans be able to fly to Mars, and when will we learn more about other galaxies, when encounter extraterrestrial life? But the past is thrilling, too. Like all science, astronomy is a joint effort: it is based on a long tradition of different eras and cultures. Ancient Greece and the Islamic Middle Ages have made a major contribution to our current state of knowledge.

Arabic Astronomy in Dialogue with Greek Antiquity

Ancient Greek philosophers and thinkers such as Plato (d. 348 or 347 B.C.) and Aristotle (d. 322 B.C.) laid the foundation for many scientific disciplines. Aristotle developed a form of logic, Plato’s Politeia is still being discussed time and again in philosophical and political science seminars, and the Hippocratic Oath remains a familiar concept. In astronomy, essential considerations were made, in particular by Aristotle and Ptolemy (d. 170).

The role of Arabic scholars as preservers and transmitters of philosophical, medical, and astronomical texts of ancient Greece during the Islamic Middle Ages has been long known to the scientific community. While Europe lived through the Dark Ages and science was often restricted by the Church, it flourished in areas under Islamic rule. Said texts were translated from Greek into Arabic by Arabic scholars. Thus they were preserved, later translated into Hebrew and Latin – often by Jewish authors, as was first pointed out by Moritz Steinschneider, a scholar of Judaism, in 1893 – and as a result, found their way into European scholarship during the Renaissance.

In the past, however, the originality of Arabic scholars of the Islamic Middle Ages has often been underestimated. Greek texts were not only translated by them but also commented on, criticized, and further developed. A typical genre of that time, for example, was the šukūk (ar. doubt) literature. Here, the reflections of the ancient Greeks were reproduced, their weaknesses and contradictions pointed out, and improved models proposed.

At the academy founded by the Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn (d. 833) in Baghdad, called the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Ḥikmah), scholars of various religions produced innumerable translations, commentaries, and treatises. Others, such as Nasṭūlus (10th century), developed instruments for depicting the movements of the celestial bodies (astrolabes) based on ancient Greek models, some of which are still preserved to this day. The Persian scholar Naṣīr ad-Dīn aṭ-Ṭūsī (d. 1274) built an observatory in Maraghah (in present-day Iran) and improved Ptolemy’s planetary model. Based on aṭ-Ṭūsī, the Damascene Ibn aš-Šāṭir (d. 1375) developed a perfectly concentric planetary model with the Earth as the common center.

The Role of Islam: Astronomy without Astrology

Not only was Ibn aš-Šāṭir an astronomer and mathematician, he also worked as the religious timekeeper at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.  Like those of many of his colleagues, his works contain religious formulas such as God knows best (Allāhu aʿlam). As George Saliba, professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut, describes in his monograph Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, Islam had in part an effect of promoting science. Its role thus contrasts with that of Christianity during this time in Europe. One possible reason is that the Muslim religion depended on astronomical knowledge: they needed it to determine the timing of religious holidays and prayers. Tables were developed for determining the visibility of the moon, for instance. In the Muslim calendar, a new month begins with the first sighting of the new crescent moon. The tables, therefore, helped to determine the beginning of the fasting month of Ramadan. Mathematical and scientific methods were also needed to determine the direction of prayer (ar. qibla).

Professor Saliba sees Islam as the cause of another innovation in astronomy: While the science was also used to determine an influence of celestial bodies on human activity and thus to predict future events (astrology) in ancient Greece, many Arabic astronomers limited themselves to the description and mathematical explanation of the observable movements of the bodies without assuming their influence on human activity. This restriction could have its origin in Islamic doctrine.  The assumption that the movements of the celestial bodies influence people’s actions could absolve them from responsibility for these actions. Then, the observance of religious duties would no longer be mandatory; violations could not be punished – the authority of religion would take harm. Professor Saliba assumes that this is why ancient Greek astronomy was stripped of its astrological elements by many Islamic astronomers of the Middle Ages. This way it was brought closer to the modern science of astronomy.

Did Copernicus copy?

An impressive example of the possible influence of the Islamic Middle Ages on the science of the European Renaissance can be seen when comparing various Arabic models with those of Copernicus (1473-1543). According to Professor Saliba, it was Otto Neugebauer, mathematician and historian of science, who first recognized in 1957 that the lunar model developed by Ibn aš-Šāṭir in 1375 is almost identical to the one proposed by Copernicus in his Commentariolus in the 16^th century. The corresponding manuscript of Ibn aš-Šāṭir had been pointed out to him by Edward Kennedy, a mathematics professor teaching at the American University of Beirut, whose student Victor Roberts, in turn, after Neugebauer’s discovery delineated the parallels of the two models in his article The Solar and Lunar Theory of Ibn ash-Shāṭir: A Pre-Copernican Copernican Model.

Aṭ-Ṭūsī had designed a model in which a smaller circle orbits within a circle of twice its size in the opposite direction, so that the edges of the two always touch at a point. This way, he succeeded in generating a linear motion of a point from the uniform motion of circles (called Tusi Couple). Copernicus used the same model in his work De Revolutionibus orbitum celestium (1543).

In 1973, German historian of science Willy Hartner shared his discovery that the Latin letters Copernicus used to designate the geometric points in his model are almost identical to the Arabic letters used by aṭ-Ṭūsī. This makes it very likely that Copernicus “copied” from aṭ-Ṭūsī. Michael Mosonovsky, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, goes one step further: he identified a Hebrew manuscript by the originally Sephardic Jewish philosopher Abner of Burgos (d. 1347) as a possible intermediate link to the tradition, that uses the corresponding letters of the Hebrew alphabet in the same way.

However, there is one revolutionary element in Copernicus. After all, the prevailing models and calculations of ancient Greece and the Islamic Middle Ages, although surprisingly good at theoretically accounting for practical observations, were based on the grave misconception that the Earth was the center of the universe. By enforcing his heliocentric planetary model, Copernicus revolutionized the science of astronomy. However, the considerations of Arabic astronomers may have played a major role in the exact formulation of this model.

Arabic Astronomy in Europe

In the meantime, much has been published on the similarities between Copernicus and his Arabic predecessors, and the parallels of the described models are well known in science. But whether Copernicus actually had knowledge of Ibn aš-Šāṭir and aṭ-Ṭūsī and adopted their models or came to the same conclusion independently cannot be clarified beyond doubt.

Although we know of no Latin translation of their works from the time of Copernicus, there are many possible ways their knowledge could have reached him. Professor Saliba points out, for example, that many people fled west after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the subsequent fall of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). Due to the proximity of Byzantium to the Abbasid caliphate, it can be assumed that they had previously come into contact with Arabic science. In addition, some traveled to the Arabic realm for religious reasons or in search of knowledge. They would have reproduced the knowledge thus acquired in Greek and finally brought it to Europe, Saliba claims. In his review of Professor Saliba’s book, Peter E. Pormann, Professor of Classics and Graeco-Arabic Studies at the University of Manchester, points out that Copernicus had also been to Italy, where Greek-Arabic manuscripts were produced and diplomatic relations with Muslim rulers were maintained.

Today, however, most scholars agree that the Arabic astronomy of the Islamic Middle Ages made a great contribution to the astronomy of the European Renaissance and thus also to modern astronomy, not only as preservers and transmitters of ancient Greek astronomy but also as critics and further developers of the same. From ancient Greece through the Islamic Middle Ages, Jewish translators, and the European Renaissance to the modern era: our current state of research results from a joint effort.

Written and translated by Tilman Wiesbeck

Baloon launch in Kiruna in 2006    @SSC (Swedish Space Corporation)

DE

Was haben Rentiere und wiederverwendbare Raketen gemeinsam? Kann Folie im Weltraum die Klimakrise lösen? Und freuen sich Mars-Rover eigentlich, wenn sie einander bei der Arbeit begegnen? Das Teleskop der Presseschau für den Juni schweift vom Polarkreis über Fragen der Sonneneinstrahlung hin zum Roten Planeten.

Schweden will Weltraumbahnhof werden

Spätestens seit Elon Musk mit SpaceX in die private Raumfahrt eingestiegen ist, scheint das öffentliche Interesse an der kommerziellen Raumfahrt explodiert zu sein. Jetzt wollen auch die Schweden mitmischen – und zwar im „Esrange Space Center“, einem von der ESA aufgegebenen Weltraumforschungszentrum mitten in der schwedischen Tundra. Wie die New York Times berichtet, wird die Anlage in der Stadt Kiruna gerade zum Testgelände mit Start- und Landeplätzen für wiederverwendbare Raketen umgebaut, 2022 sollen die ersten Flüge abheben. Damit ist Schweden das erste europäische Land, das in den Wettbewerb um die kommerzielle Raumfahrt einsteigt. Und Standort des ersten Raketenstartgelände in Europa überhaupt – bislang schießt die ESA ihre nicht-wiederverwendbaren Ariane-Raketen von Französisch-Guyana aus ins All.

Um die Forschungsobjekte zu schützen, ist das Testgelände streng bewacht und mit kilometerlangen Zäunen umgeben – was einige Rentiere nicht zu stören scheint. Immer wieder überwinden sie die Zäune und streifen über das Hochsicherheitsgebiet.

Ein kosmischer Sonnenschirm

Es ist kein Geheimnis: Unzählige technische Innovationen, die uns das Leben erleichtern, stammen aus der Raumfahrtforschung. Nun soll eine solche Innovation auch Hoffnung in der Lösung eines sehr irdischen Problems stiften – der Klimakrise.

Dreh- und Angelpunkt des Vorhabens ist ein sogenannter Lagrange-Punkt: eine Stelle im Kosmos, an der sich die Anziehungskraft der Erde und der Sonne aufheben. Deshalb könnte man an exakt dieser Position laut neuester Forschungen dank der günstigen physikalischen Eigenschaften mithilfe von 31.000 kleinen Raumsonden eine dünne Folie spannen. Die Vorrichtung würde zwei Prozent des Sonnenlichts filtern – das wäre Berechnungen zufolge gerade genug, um die prognostizierte Erderwärmung auszugleichen. An diesem Geoingeneering-Projekt forscht unter anderem der Bremer Satelliten-Bauer OHB. Die Reaktionen auf den kosmischen Sonnenschirm sind gemischt, solche sogenannten Techno-Fixes seien in der Praxis zu schwer umsetzbar, heißt es. Gegner wollen die Erderwärmung durch CO2 lieber gleich an der Wurzel – also auf der Erde – eindämmen, statt ein gewaltiges Projekt ins Weltall zu schießen, wenn es für alles andere zu spät ist.

Mehr über Geoengineering und 9 weitere Perspektiven auf die Klimakrise findet ihr in unserem fortytwomagazine #4 , “Klima im Wandel”.

Zwei Rover auf dem Mars sind besser als einer

„Ni Hao Huo Xing“ bedeutet „Hallo Mars“ auf Chinesisch und war der allgegenwärtige Slogan in Chinas Medien, als vor zwei Wochen der „Tianwen-1“ nach zehn Monaten Flugzeit auf dem Mars aufsetzte. Seine wertvolle Fracht, der Rover „Zhurong“, benannt nach dem chinesischen Feuergott, soll nun drei Monate lang Messungen auf dem Roten Planeten durchführen. Während der Landeanflug der US-Marssonde im Februar noch zum weltweiten Live-Streaming-Event wurde, blieb die chinesische Raumfahrtbehörde CNSA dem Economist zufolge zurückhaltend. Zu groß war die Sorge vor einem medienwirksamen Scheitern der komplizierten Landung. Nach dem gelungenen Manöver und lobenden Worten von Staatschef Xi Jinping dürfen begeisterte Mars-Beobachter nun abwarten, ob „Zhurong“ seinen US-Kollegen „Perseverance“ treffen wird. Und sich die Frage stellen: Was tun die beiden Mars-Rover, wenn sie in der Einsamkeit des Weltalls einen der ihren treffen?

Von Lisa Zahrobsky

ENGL

What do reindeer and reusable rockets have in common? Can foil in space solve the climate crisis? And are Mars rovers actually happy when they meet each other at work? The telescope of the June press review wanders from the Arctic Circle to questions of solar radiation on to the Red Planet.

Sweden wants to become a spaceport

Latest since Elon Musk entered private spaceflight with SpaceX, public interest in commercial spaceflight seems to have exploded. Now the Swedes want to get in on the action, too – at the “Esrange Space Center,” a space research center abandoned by the ESA in the middle of the Swedish tundra. As the New York Times reports, the facility in the city of Kiruna is currently being converted into a test site with launch and landing pads for reusable rockets, and the first flights are scheduled to take off in 2022. This will make Sweden the first European country to enter the commercial spaceflight competition. Additionally, the new center will become the first-ever rocket launch site in Europe – until now, ESA has been shooting its non-reusable Ariane rockets into space from French Guyana.

The test site is strictly guarded and surrounded by kilometer-long fences, protecting the research objects – which doesn’t seem to bother some reindeer. Time and time again, they jump over the fences and roam the high-security area.

A cosmic parasol

It’s no secret: countless technical innovations that improve our lives have originated in space research. Now such innovation is also expected to provide hope in solving a very earthly problem – the climate crisis.

At the core of the project is a so-called Lagrange point: a place in the cosmos where the Earth’s and the Sun’s gravitational pull cancel each other out. According to the latest research, thanks to Lagrange point’s favorable physical properties a thin foil could be stretched at exactly this position with the help of 31,000 small space probes. The device would filter two percent of the Sun’s radiation, which would be just enough to offset the predicted scale of global warming, calculations predict. Among others, Bremen-based satellite constructor OHB is conducting research into this geoengineering endeavour. Reactions to the cosmic parasol have been mixed; so-called techno-fixes are said to be too difficult to realize. Opponents would rather curb global warming caused by CO2 at its root – on Earth – instead of launching a massive project into space as a last-minute resort..

For more on geoengineering and 9 other perspectives on the climate crisis, see our 42 magazine #4 , “Changing Climate”.

Two rovers on Mars are better than one

“Ni Hao Huo Xing” means “Hello Mars” in Chinese and was the ubiquitous slogan in China’s media when “Tianwen-1” touched down on Mars two weeks ago after ten months of travel. Its precious cargo, the rover “Zhurong,” named after the Chinese god of fire, will now spend three months gathering information on the Red Planet. While the landing approach of the U.S. Mars probe in February still became a worldwide live-streaming event, the Chinese space agency CNSA remained cautious, according to the Economist. There was too much concern about a failure of the complicated landing and the media attention such a disaster would attract. After the successful maneuver and words of praise from the head of state Xi Jinping, enthusiastic Mars observers are now wondering whether “Zhurong” will meet its U.S. colleague “Perseverance”. The question needs to be raised:What will the two Mars rovers do when they meet one of their own in the solitude of space?

Written & translated by Lisa Zahrobsky

0 1 1 0 © Max Dauven

The bitcoin boom has initiated a digital Gold Rush and has also put focus on blockchain technology. But what is blockchain actually? Prof. Gilbert Fridgen explains blockchain in this interview, since blockchain offers – apart from its potential for investing and financing – surprising opportunities for a modern society.

Prof. Fridgen – blockchain seems to be the defining technology of digital transformation. Bitcoin and other crypto currencies have truly caused a Gold Rush in the last few years. We would like to investigate the technology on which those are based – the blockchain – and its potential for business. Prof. Fridgen, what is blockchain?

To put it simply, the blockchain is a network between many computers all over the world. It is different from a bank which has just one big server in its seat; the blockchain is a decentralised system with devices strewn all over the world. Just imagine the blockchain as a notebook everybody carries in their bag. But in this case, it is a notebook with special features. Whenever someone writes anything down in their book, the writing appears in everyone’s book and once I’ve written something down in my book, I cannot erase it anymore.

These features set the possibilities for crypto currencies. When I want to transfer money to you I’ll write it in my notebook and everybody can see that I have transferred you some money. The transaction becomes transparent. If you want to forward part of that money, everybody who has got a notebook can see that you are able to transfer the money because you got it from me before that. That is what you call “common truth”.

So transparency is the keyword. What opportunities does blockchain offer for society, apart from crypto currencies?

You can write a lot more than just a crypto currency on the pages of your “notebook”. The idea of the common truth is the base. Smart Contracts are the next step. These are contracts which become valid because of the features the blockchain inherits: Everybody can see the digital transactions, therefore they are transparent. Through that transparency, it is possible for them to be controlled, and via control and acknowledge, they become valid. Due to this common validity, the intermediary between two or more parties becomes obsolete. That is the interesting part.

Why is that so?

Suddenly I am able to make contracts and transactions without the need for a third party. The blockchain as a network validates a transaction or a contract on its own. For example, I do not need a bank for me to coordinate and execute my transactions any longer. That offers a lot of new possibilities – also for society.

So, will banks become obsolete in the future?

No. Banks have become aware of blockchain and crypto currencies very early on, also because they saw their positions as mediators threatened. The banks feared people no longer needing a provider for financial services. It is in fact true that in the future, some transactional processes may be executed without banks at all or at least with less barriers. However, banks provide a lot more services for society and for their clients than just financial transactions. The blockchain will not be able to substitute personal contact between humans, for example when one needs financial advice or wants to plan their pension. What is interesting about the blockchain are the cases in which there is currently no intermediary at all.

There is still a lot of control via third parties: legislature, union of states, management – at what point do we lack an intermediary?

For the most part those are fields in which there are arguments against an intermediary due to geographic or organisational reasons. One of the big fields is the International Trade Finance. There is definitely a chance for the blockchain in that department since international trade is still very much executed on paper. If a German merchant orders a container of goods from China, he not only receives the container with the goods but also a stack of paper documents about 15 cm high. These papers document the trade, control it, validate it. And this stack of papers is not delivered with the container – it is transferred between the trade partners, banks, the port authorities, and the custom services, often a few times around the world.

Why are those paper documents necessary? How can the blockchain improve the situation?

A digital standard for international trade has not yet been established. This is mostly because introducing it would be very complex. There are several parties involved with different goals that sometimes clash with each other. All these interests would have to be included in a common agreement. That is extremely important since the system is actually desperately in need of a platform provider for international trade, an intermediary to coordinate and execute the processes. But this raises some questions: where would the provider, for example the intermediary, be based geographically? Who would be providing the services?

If the Americans were to provide the service, the Chinese would not use it for their trade business, especially not if the seat of that company is geographically located in a legal area under the influence of Donald Trump. And it is the same situation the other way around – international trade is just too complex and important. This is the part where a geographically independent blockchain comes into play. All transactions, processes, contracts and actions would be transparent, based upon the idea of a “common truth”, for all parties involved in the trade, not depending on geographic borders. The blockchain could become the intermediary for international trade. And apart from that one would save a lot of paper.

Make an educated guess: When will this technology impact everyday life?

I reckon the blockchain will hit us next year, if it hasn’t done so already. I just hope you won’t notice at all.

Why would you hope so?

Solutions for crypto currencies, intermediaries and international trade involving the blockchain are far too complicated for amateurs. The blockchain will never be understood by everyone. That is not necessary since the consumer is not the one who uses the blockchain actively. I just think that we have to get used to stuff happening more quickly and simply in the future. The background activities involving the blockchain are not for everyone to understand. It is just like online banking: we got used to it and use it every day without questioning what is happening on our bank’s server. It just works. If you were to ask someone on the street how their online banking works, they will tell you that they open their browser to open the website of their bank and then they start transferring money. It is not important how that is happening, and that is how it will be with blockchain technology. Technology is really embedded into our lives once we do not notice it anymore.

But international trade is a complicated field to understand, with or without blockchain. Why does the blockchain offer an opportunity for society in that context?

Once the technology has entered everyday life, you will notice the details. Suddenly, groceries will become cheaper because costs for bureaucracy and administration vanish for all the transactions are executed via blockchain. Or you will read about its positive impact on the environment because there are millions of documents that will no longer need to be flown around the world. The products you buy will have a smaller ecological footprint.

That is indeed something to wish for. But are there more practical uses for the blockchain in my everyday life?

I hope that there will be opportunities for that. But I have to repeat: The blockchain is an intermediary, a transparent institution which is different from what was used before. We currently have only companies and we pay those for their services. If you were to book a trip to visit me at the University of Bayreuth, how would you do it?

I would probably go to the station and get a ticket to Bayreuth and then take the train. In Bayreuth, I would get a taxi or use public transport.

Exactly. But you might go further than that. You might book a bike via a bike sharing service, using your phone, then buy a ticket, take the train to Bayreuth. In Bayreuth, you would book a car at a car-sharing service and drive to my place. In any case, you would start comparing different modes of transportation or combine them with each other for your journey. There are apps and online services that offer routes and possible ways of transportation. However, you do not have a “Book Now” button for all transport services at once. There is no way to book a complete trip from your starting point up to the final destination. Why does that button not exist, even though almost everyone who travels would agree on that being highly useful?

Probably because the intermediary is missing?

Exactly. Why is it missing? Because every provider would like to be the intermediary. Companies could get extra money from that, and since everyone wants to be the mediating institution, everybody blocks everyone else and, in the end, you have nobody in this position.

The German railroad company Deutsche Bahn is one of the more integrative companies. They have their own app, the “DB Navigator”, which also features other public transport systems apart from theirs in the search option. The automobile companies are also open to these possibilities. As self-driving cars become more popular, there will be self-driving taxis on the streets. That will be the future of the companies – not just building the cars, but also offering services as a mobility provider. They will want you to plan your travels with their assistance. Everybody is aiming to be the intermediary and because that could only work if everyone cooperated, the position remains vacant. There have been start-ups that tried to mediate between big companies, but as soon as a big corporate group enters the deal, everyone else quits. The economic interest is more important than usability for the customers.

So that is why the blockchain might be helpful in that context?

Exactly. Just as it is with international trade, there is no economic interest with the blockchain. Transparency for the companies and usability for the customers would be more important. I travel a lot and I would be so happy to have a “Book Now”-button, and that is how everyone who travels would feel. Nobody would care if the blockchain worked as an intermediary in the background, just as it is with online banking in the present.

Transparency, usability, fairness, unchangeable rules – sounds just like blockchain were an ultimate solution. Does that technology have disadvantages and problems, too? Could it be even dangerous?

Yes, but the major problem is power usage. It is true that the blockchain – that is, the bitcoin blockchain – does need a lot of power. But that technology is ten years old and not up to date. That would be just like looking at the first computer and saying that It is slow and has a high power drain. The technology has been updated and more efficient systems exist now.

What is the bigger problem, then, with the blockchain?

The blockchain is a machine and therefore it acts like a machine. It acts upon the rules, contracts, and processes without thinking.

Could you elaborate on that?

Sure. Some have considered digitalising our public administration via blockchain technology and using transparent contracts to do so. We’d save a lot of paper that way. Still, we would have a dimension of bureaucracy we cannot begin to imagine. The blockchain would act and decide upon hard rules. It would end up as a system without empathy and human control. We would feel like we were being chased by the machine. So that is a danger, but there is also a solution. It is quite complex, but nevertheless, it is our duty to take up on that problem and solve it.

Are there further problems with the blockchain?

Yes, there are some. It is a severe problem that the blockchain is not under any legal rule because it is international and not located anywhere geographically. For example: if I transferred too much money to you and you refused to return it, and you were based in a country which is not participating in a legal agreement, then I would have no chance to solve that problem. That is why we have to establish an international legal standard for blockchains. As soon as we start to transfer more and more processes to the blockchain we will discover problems that would be hard to solve without a standard. This problem is not just technological, so we have to start working interdisciplinarily: economy, law, society.

Where do you think will we end up with the blockchain?

The bitcoin boom opened the topic to the public. Right away everyone wanted to be involved and a lot of people thought the blockchain would change the world in a day. I was in favour of people getting to know the new technology. The ones that were involved early on and got rich due to the bitcoin boom thrived, and rightfully so. They took the chance and are the ones who can finance their start-ups and now develop new, exciting ideas for society. Money flowed into an innovative and creative sector, so I think that was a positive aspect of bitcoin. Additionally, I think that the European Central Bank should offer the Euro as a crypto currency sooner or later. We still want to do trade with a hard currency such as the Euro; we do not like to rely on bitcoin, Ethereum or other digital currencies. That even goes as far as people printing their bitcoin as a physical coin with a code on it.

I think it is just getting started. The hype and the gold rush are over. Now companies and the creative industry will really get to know the technology and try to use its new potential. The technology will still play a role, not as a currency, but as a valuable infrastructure.

Interview: Martin Böhmer

Translation: Paulin Sander

Gilbert Fridgen is Professor for Business Informatics and Sustainable IT-Management at the University of Bayreuth. He also is deputy leader of the project group for Business Informatics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technics and founder as well as leader of the Fraunhofer Blockchain Laboratory.