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THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2024

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Recent Solar Storm
Gave Mars a GlowAn unusually forceful outburst
from the sun created an aurorathat enveloped the planet.
By ROBIN GEORGE ANDREWS

The sun fired off a volley of radiation-riddled outbursts in May. When they slammed
into Earth’s magnetic bubble, the world wastreated to iridescent displays of the northern and southern lights. But our planet wasn’t the only one in the solar firing line.
A few days after Earth’s light show, another series of eruptions screamed out ofthe sun. This time, on May 20, Mars wasblitzed by a beast of a storm.
Observed from Mars, “this was thestrongest solar energetic particle event
we’ve seen to date,” said Shannon Curry, theprincipal investigator of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, orMAVEN, at the University of Colorado.
When the barrage arrived, it set off an aurora that enveloped Mars from pole to polein a shimmering glow. If they were standingon the Martian surface, “astronauts could
see these auroras,” Dr. Curry said. Based on
scientific knowledge of atmospheric chemistry, she and other scientists say, observers
on Mars would have seen a jade-green lightshow, although no color cameras picked itup on the surface.

But it’s very fortunate that no astronauts
were there. Mars’s thin atmosphere and theabsence of a global magnetic shield meantthat its surface, as registered by NASA’s Curiosity rover, was showered by a radiationdose equivalent to 30 chest X-rays — not alethal dose, but certainly not pleasant to thehuman constitution.
While last month’s auroras were bewitching, they served as a reminder that Mars
can be a dangerous, radiation-smothered
place and that future astronaut visitors will
have to beware. “These solar storms pack apunch,” Dr. Curry said.
Lava tubes — lengthy caves forged byvolcanic activity — can provide Martianvoyagers with hardy refuge from solar
storms. But with the sun’s deleterious particles sometimes reaching Mars in minutes,
earthlings will have to be light on their feet.
In other words, if you’re a Martian astronaut, “you’d better keep up to date on yourspace weather forecasts,” said JamesO’Donoghue, a planetary astronomer at theUniversity of Reading in England.
When the May 20 mega-eruption
emerged, it was immediately obvious that itwas formidable. A powerful solar flarereached Mars first, bathing it in X-rays andgamma rays. Hot on its heels was a potent
coronal mass ejection, a buckshot ofcharged particles from the sun. “TheyNASA/UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO/LASP

Auroras, seen as flecks
to represent ultraviolet light,
were detected last monthon Mars’s nightside.

looked pretty fast to me,” said Mathew Owens, a space physicist at the University ofReading.
When particles from a solar salvo reachhumanity’s home, they are caught inEarth’s magnetic field and spiral down into
the north and south magnetic poles. There,
they bounce off different gas molecules inD5

the atmosphere, temporarily energizingthem and unleashing bursts of myriad, visible colors.
Mars lost its magnetic field eons ago,
when its iron-rich innards stopped churning, so May’s solar bombardment was notintercepted. “There’s nothing to stop theseparticles plowing right into the atmosphere,” said Nick Schneider, the lead scientist working on the Imaging Ultraviolet
Spectrograph on MAVEN at the Universityof Colorado.
Subjected to a global pummeling, auroras
ignited across the entire planet. The MAVEN orbiter documented a thunderous ultraviolet glow, while a light-green hue
would have been visible on the surface as it
emanated from the atmosphere’s agitatedoxygen atoms.
Some of Mars’s robotic residents encountered the more unpleasant effects of thestorm. Charged particles hit Curiosity’snavigation cameras and the star tracker
camera for the Mars Odyssey orbiter, inundating them all with static like “snow.”
Solar storms can also degrade a spacecraft’s solar panels. May’s maelstrom was
no exception. “Everybody’s solar panels
took a hit,” Dr. Curry said. She added thatone solar storm like that of May 20 “causes
about the same amount of degradation that
we typically see over a year.”
None of the spacecraft were deeply damaged — and the scientific data they recorded has been warmly received. But
these orbiters may not always emerge unscathed in the face of the sun’s fury. “Thescience team is thrilled every time we seethese events,” Dr. Curry said. “The spacecraft ops team, less so.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2024

A Tale of Two Nearly Extinct Giant Salamanders
Trying to save amphibians
native to Japan, herpetologists
may rescue a species in China.
By RACHEL NUWER
KYOTO, JAPAN — In Japanese rivers, if you’revery lucky, you might find unusual amphibians that grow up to five feet long and look
like strange cartoon dinosaurs. They are giant salamanders.
“Salamanders are big, and they’re cool,”said Sena Ishikawa, a master’s student
studying the animals at Kyoto University. “Ijust love them.”
Such passion for the slippery species,
which Japan has designated a “special national treasure,” prompted Ms. Ishikawa
and two other students to set out on an unseasonably cold evening in March along theKamo River in Kyoto, wearing headlamps,
waterproof overalls, knee-high rubberboots and neon yellow safety vests, and carrying what looked like oversize butterfly
nets.
The three students weren’t just looking tocapture any large salamander: Their goal
was to find a purebred Japanese giant salamander.
For those who know where to look, it’s notdifficult to find giant salamanders in Japan.
But they typically are not the large amphibians native to the country. The unplanned
release in recent decades of giant salamanders from China has resulted in a risingnumber of hybridized animals of Japaneseand Chinese descent. These blended animals have become a bane for Japanese conservationists who wish to protect the genetic integrity of their endemic species, whichis considered to be vulnerable to extinction.
No good estimate exists for how many
purebred Japanese giant salamanders still
exist in the wild, but the species is losing
ground, said Kanto Nishikawa, a herpetologist at Kyoto University who leads the lab
where Ms. Ishikawa and colleagues are conducting research. “Some rivers are now
filled with hybrids,” he said.
Along the Kamo River, Ms. Ishikawa
scrambled down the steep bank and eased
into the clear, frigid water. She and the otherstudents expertly scanned the edges of vegetation for the spotted, bulbous face of salamanders that could lay concealed among
the slick rocks. Within five minutes, theyfound their mark: a two-foot-long salamander that, with some gentle prodding, swam
straight into their net.
Would it turn out to be a Japanese salamander, or yet another hybrid? Ms.
Ishikawa was holding out hope for the“treasure” native species, but they’d have totake it back to Dr. Nishikawa’s lab to findout.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Someday, a Breeding Program

From Farm to Plate
While Japan’s often elusive giant salamander species is under threat, the country may
end up helping China preserve some of its
giant salamanders, which face troubles of adifferent form.
Unlike Japan, which has a single giant
salamander species, China has several
species of the animals. But they have nearly
disappeared in the wild because of poaching and habitat loss.
Dr. Nishikawa and his colleagues reported in the journal Scientific Reports thisyear that they had discovered two purebredSouth China giant salamanders — a critically endangered species that can grow tonearly six feet — living at aquariums in Japan. That means salamanders that are considered invasive species in Japan could potentially aid the comeback of the species inChina.
“We want to use these individuals to help
keep the species from going extinct,” Dr.
Nishikawa said. “Time is running out.”
Giant salamanders are considered “living fossils” that have survived in East Asia
for some 170 million years. Their undoing
began only recently, when humans developed a taste for their meat.
Japanese traders started importing live
giant salamanders from China in the 1960s
as a novelty food item. As demand grew, sodid concern that this new culinary penchant

up-to-date information about where purebred animals can still be found. During an
earlier phase of their research, from 2007 to2015, Dr. Nishikawa and his colleagues
searched the Kamo River in Kyoto, as wellas aquariums and backyard ponds aroundthe country, for purebred individuals.
They analyzed 58 salamander samples
and found that 23 were of the purebred Japanese species.
To their surprise, they also discovered
four purebred South China giant salamanders.
“We never expected to find one of therarest amphibians in the world,” Dr.
Nishikawa said.
One was a preserved specimen that had
died some time ago. Another was being kept
as a pet in Okayama Prefecture, but it recently died. Two males at aquariums in Tokyo and Hiroshima, however, are still alive.
Hiroki Sakiyama, a chief fish keeper at
the Sunshine Aquarium in Tokyo, said heand his colleagues were “very surprisedand proud when we heard the news aboutour salamander.”The aquarium, which is on the top floorsof a popular shopping mall, acquired the salamander in 1999 from a pet shop. The animal resides in a private tank in a back roomthat it shares with jellyfish, tropical fish anda Hilaire’s side-necked turtle. It has noname, Mr. Sakiyama said, “just ‘giant salamander.’”“We had no idea that we’ve been doingconservation by accident for the past 25years,” he added. “There’s no hybridization
up here, and no poachers at the top of abuilding in Tokyo.”Top, Sena Ishikawa, left, a master’s
student at Kyoto University, andKanto Nishikawa, a herpetologist at
the university, with a giant
salamander they caught during adaytime hunt. Above, Ms. Ishikawa,left, with Saki Anan, a fellow
master’s student at Kyoto,preparing a sample for testing. Left,a giant salamander at Sunshine
Aquarium in Tokyo.

could lead to poaching of protected Japanese giant salamanders.
In 1973, the Japanese government asked
restaurants to voluntarily stop serving giant salamander. Most complied, and thetrade ground to a halt. With no options forselling their remaining animals from China,some Japanese traders chose to release
them into the wild rather than kill them.
Those original Chinese giant salaman-ders interbred with local Japanese ones. Today, their hybrid descendants are found inwaterways in much of the southern half ofthe country’s main island, Honshu.
“It’s such a difficult problem,” Dr.
Nishikawa said. “The hybrids are constantly expanding their range.”
That concern is mirrored in China, wherepeople continue to consume giant salamanders as a luxury food. There, millions of theanimals live on farms. Nearly all in captivity are a genetic hodgepodge of the country’s different species, though, and escapees pose a genetic risk to the remaining wildsalamanders.

Big (Discoveries) in JapanSaving the Japanese giant salamander
from extinction by hybridization requires

South China giant salamanders were suspected of being extinct in the wild until
about five years ago, when Jing Che, a herpetologist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, discovered several populations at theZhangjiajie National Forest Park in Hunan
Province.
Because the populations are so small, “areintroduction project is necessary,” shesaid.
Dr. Nishikawa and his colleagues’ “extremely exciting and important” discoveryof the two purebred Chinese salamanders
has inspired hope that such reintroductionscould be soon possible, said Samuel Turvey,
a conservation biologist at the ZoologicalSociety of London, who was not involved inthe research.
“These individuals have the potential toact as founders,” he said.
Ideally, Japanese and Chinese scientists
would work together to save the South
China giant salamander from extinction bycreating a breeding program, said Jianping
Jiang, a herpetologist at the Chengdu Institute of Biology, who was not involved in theresearch.
But for now, he added, “the most important thing is to keep these two individualsalive.”
Giant salamanders can live for about 60years, Dr. Nishikawa said, and the two
South China males in Japan seem to bearound 40 to 50 years old.
Funding does not currently exist to support moving the two males to China, or setting up a breeding program. But Dr.
Nishikawa hopes that it might be possible tofind other South China giant salamanders,preferably females, that are left over fromthe restaurant trade.
If they do exist, they could be one of thelast hopes for their kind.
“People may be secretly keeping them aspets,” Dr. Nishikawa said. “There might bemore out there.”
Back in his lab, the hunt for more purebred Japanese giant salamanders would
have to continue. Genetic testing of the animal Ms. Ishikawa and her colleagues pulled
out of the river confirmed a week later that
it was yet another hybrid.
The researchers humanely euthanized
the salamander, which they then put intostorage for scientific study — adding the hybrid to the thousands of others pluckedfrom Japan’s rivers with the hope of saving
what remains of the country’s amphibious
national treasures.