,1,The scientific community stands divided even 3 years after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. But now, a team of international scientists have found genetic data that links the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic to raccoon dogs that were sold at a wet market in Wuhan. This new finding has strengthened the theory of many experts that the pandemic had a natural origin.
The Common raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) is a canid indigenous to mainland East Asia and northern Vietnam. Despite its name, its closest relatives are the true foxes and not the American raccoons.*
* According to the Animalia website
The racoon dog was also a kind of meat available at the Wuhan market along with bats, snakes, beavers, and porcupines. The research team from Europe, North America, and Australia collected genetic data using swabs from in and around Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market and nearby areas in 2020. The data was then quietly uploaded to a global database by researchers affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in March 2023. Analysis of the data shows that raccoon dogs, which were being sold illegally at the market, may have been “carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019”
“This is a really strong indication that animals at the market were infected. There's really no other explanation that makes any sense,”
- Angela Rasmussen, Virologist (member of the Research Team), Scientist, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Research Organization , Via The Atlantic. The findings, however, do not definitively prove that the virus jumped from raccoon dogs to humans but still strengthen the argument that the Covid pandemic might be linked to illegal wildlife trade in China’s wet markets.
,1,China’s “artificial sun” set a new record after it ran at 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds, according to state media. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) device designed by China replicates the nuclear fusion process carried out by the sun . For 20 seconds, EAST also achieved a peak temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius which is over ten times hotter than the sun. The experiment was conducted at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP), in Hefei. The ultimate goal of EAST is to create nuclear fusion like the Sun, using deuterium abound in the sea. Deuterium from one-litre of seawater can produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline, through a nuclear fusion reaction. For nuclear fusion to occur, tremendous heat and pressure are applied to hydrogen atoms so that they fuse together and unlike fission, Nuclear fusion is considered a safer process with no nuclear waste. Nuclear fusion could potentially provide unlimited clean energy and very low costs. China’s EAST project is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) facility which will become the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor after it becomes operational in 2035. Several countries are a part of this project, including South Korea, Japan, Russia, India, and the United States. The next goal for the EAST project is to maintain the high temperature for a long period of time.
