24 | New Scientist | 6 November 2021Solar systemJUPITER’s Great Red Spot, the
colossal storm that has raged in the
planet’s atmosphere for centuries,
is even deeper than we expected.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which
has been orbiting the planet since
2016, used microwave readings
and measurements of the density of
material inside Jupiter to peer deep
under its clouds. “This is the deepest
look we’ve had into a giant planet,”
says Juno team leader Scott Bolton
at the Southwest Research Institute
in Texas. “Prior to this, we’ve just
seen skin-deep.”
The measurements showed
that the Great Red Spot extends far
beneath the planet’s clouds, which
sit about 240 kilometres below
the top of the atmosphere, with the
storm perhaps reaching a depth of
500 kilometres. Two smaller storms
were found to have roots hundredsof kilometres deep, and the jet
streams that make up the bands
of colour at the top of Jupiter’s
atmosphere extend as deep as 3000
kilometres (Science, doi.org/g35w).
Researchers expected these
depths to be fairly homogeneous.
“Generally, the idea is that once
you drop below where the sunlight
reaches, below where the water
condenses into clouds, it’s all
vapour,” says Bolton. “Most people
expected that it would be well
mixed, so you wouldn’t get much
weather going on down there.”
The fact that the roots of Jupiter’s
storms go so deep indicates that the
layers of the planet’s atmosphere
are interconnected. “In hindsight,
it makes sense that the layers are
not completely isolated from each
other, because it’s a giant ball of
gas,” says Bolton. Leah CraneJupiter’s Great Red Spot is
far deeper than we realised
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SA
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News In brief
A STUDY that blends history
with DNA technology has further
strengthened the claim of a
familial relationship between
a living Native American and a
historical figure: Tatanka Iyotake,
popularly known as Sitting Bull.
Sitting Bull was a leader of the
Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux people. In
1876, he defeated General Custer’s
7th Cavalry Regiment of the US
Army in the Battle of the Little
Bighorn, also known as the Battle
of the Greasy Grass.
Today, Ernie LaPointe, a Native
American author and president
of the Sitting Bull Family
Foundation, is widely accepted as
the great-grandson of Sitting Bull.
Now, LaPointe, who is named as a
co-author on the study, has had his
claim strengthened by genetics.
In 2007, a lock of Sitting Bull’s
hair at the National Museum of
Natural History in Washington DCGeneticswas repatriated to LaPointe and
his sisters. A sample was sent to
a team of geneticists led by Eske
Willerslev at the University of
Copenhagen for DNA analysis.
By comparing DNA from
Sitting Bull’s hair with DNA from
LaPointe’s saliva, the new study
irrefutably establishes that
LaPointe is the great-grandson
of Sitting Bull, says Willerslev.
He says the methods generally
used to establish ancestry weren’t
possible as the DNA in the hair was
so degraded. But it was possible
to use haplotype frequency to
establish a relationship (Science
Advances, doi.org/g352). A
haplotype is a set of gene variants
inherited from one parent.
Oglala Lakota Nation President
Kevin Killer welcomes the research,
which lends support to the culture
of oral history of Indigenous
people. “To see [our oral history]
backed up by science... is a step
in proving how strong our oral
history that dates back to 10,000
years [is].” Alakananda DasguptaDNA of Sitting Bull
matched to relativeA SKIN patch for giving covid-19
vaccines provides greater immune
protection than injections,
according to a study in mice. The
patch, pictured, can be stored at
room temperature and be self-
administered, making it suitable
for use in places that lack cold
storage facilities and medical staff.
David Muller at the University
of Queensland in Brisbane,
Australia, and his colleagues haveCoronavirusdeveloped a centimetre-wide skin
patch dotted with 5000 plastic
spikes, each a quarter of a
millimetre long and coated with
dried vaccine that is more stable
than liquid forms. An applicator
presses the vaccine into the
upper layer of the skin.
Vaccines delivered this way
tend to elicit stronger immune
responses because the skin is full
of immune cells, says Muller.
The researchers tested the patch
with a covid-19 vaccine candidate
called HexaPro, which is still being
tested in clinical trials but is more
heat stable and cheaper to make
than existing vaccines.
Mice treated with the patch
developed more coronavirus
antibodies than those injected
with the vaccine and were
completely protected from
getting sick, even with a single
dose (Science Advances, DOI:
10.1126/sciadv.abj8065).
A trial of the covid-19 vaccine
skin patch in people will begin
DA next year. Alice KleinVIDMULL
ER
/UNIVERS
ITYOFQUEE
NS
LA
NDSkin patch created
for covid-19 vaccine