Constraining Beyond The Standard Model Physics With Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

Background: Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

One of the most impressive cosmology theories in existence is Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. It is a theory that assumes a starting point, not long after the Big Bang, at which the universe is at a high average temperature (i.e. particles are moving with high average levels of kinetic energy) and all atomic nuclei are initially simple protons and neutrons.

The theory then uses statistics to consider all possible collisions of those protons and neutrons that give rise to nuclear fusion or fission in all possible pathways, and assume that at the end of the nucleosynthesis period that nuclear fusion to create light elements becomes dramatically less common as the temperature of the universe falls as kinetic energy is captured and converted into nuclear binding energy, an indirect form of the strong nuclear force, and as collisions become less common as the size of the universe that is in the Big Bang light cone relative to the number of particles in it increases.

For the most part, the predictions of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis are confirmed by experiment. The relative abundance of light element isotypes in the universe is a reasonably close match to what we would expect if Big Bang Nucleosynthesis is an accurate description of what actually happened. The biggest discrepancy is in abundance of Lithium-7, which differs significantly from the predicted value even though it still has a right order of magnitude.

Using Big Bang Nucleosynthesis To Constrain Beyond The Standard Model Physics

Many predictions of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis are sensitive to the existence of relatively long lived particles (e.g. those with mean lifetimes on the order of seconds or more) beyond those of the Standard Model. Collisions of ordinary protons and neutrons with this particles would cause the relative abundance of light element isotypes to be greater or smaller, although the relationship isn't straightforward because one decays of such particles will tend to increase element abundances, while other decays of the same particles will tend to decrease abundances of some of the same elements.

But, plugging a hypothetical new long lived decaying particle into the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis model involves straightforward, well understood physics. If a long lived decaying particle with certain properties exists, it will decay in a very predictable way and it will have a very precisely discernible impact on light element isotype frequencies.

Thus, beyond the Standard Model physics long lived decaying particles of a very general type that is not very strongly model dependent can be ruled out if they give rise to deviations from the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis predictions by significantly more than existing margins of error in the theoretical calculation and astronomy measurements of these predictions.

The Results

A new pre-print does just that, and reaches the following conclusion:

We have revisited and updated the BBN constraints on long-lived particles. . . .

We have obtained the constraints on the abundance and lifetime of long-lived particles with various decay modes. They are shown in Figs. 11 and 12. The constraints become weaker when we include the p ↔ n conversion effects in inelastic scatterings because energetic neutrons change into protons and stop without causing hadrodissociations. On the other hand, inclusion of the energetic anti-nucleons makes the constraints more stringent. In addition, the recent precise measurement of the D abundance leads to stronger constrains. Thus, in total, the resultant constraints become more stringent than those obtained in the previous studies.  

We have also applied our analysis to unstable gravitino. We have adopted several patterns of mass spectra of superparticles and derived constraints on the reheating temperature after inflation as shown in Fig. 15. The upper bound on the reheating temperature is ∼ 10^5 − 10^6 GeV for gravitino mass m3/2 less than a several TeV and ∼ 10^9 GeV for m3/2 ∼ O(10) TeV. This implies that the gravitino mass should be ∼ O(10) TeV for successful thermal leptogenesis.  

In obtaining the constraints, we have adopted the observed 4He abundance given by Eq. (2.4) which is consistent with SBBN. On the other hand, if we adopt the other estimation (2.3), 4He abundance is inconsistent with SBBN. However, when long-lived particles with large hadronic branch have lifetime τX ∼ 0.1 − 100 sec and abundance mXYX ∼ 10^−9 , Eq. (2.3) becomes consistent with BBN. 

In this work, we did not use 7Li in deriving the constraints since the plateau value in 7Li abundances observed in metal-poor stars (which had been considered as a primordial value) is smaller than the SBBN prediction by a factor 2–3 (lithium problem) and furthermore the recent discovery of much smaller 7Li abundances in very metal-poor stars cannot be explained by any known mechanism. However, the effects of the decaying particles on the 7Li and 6Li abundances are estimated in our numerical calculation. Interestingly, if we assume that the plateau value represents the primordial abundance, the decaying particles which mainly decays into e +e − can solve the lithium problem for τX ∼ 10^2 − 10^3 sec and mXYX ∼ 10^−7.

Figures 11 and 12 basically rule out any decaying particles with a lifetime of more than a fraction of a second in the mass range of 30 GeV to 1000 TeV for hadronically decaying particles (Figure 11), and imposes similar constraints for radiatively decaying particles (Figure 12). This is a nice complement to results from the LHC and other colliders with exclude beyond the Standard Model particles that are lighter than hundreds of GeV with lifetimes up to roughly a fraction of a second. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis constraints, generally speaking, are more sensitive to masses much heavier than the LHC can reach and mean lifetimes longer than the LHC is designed to measure. This also strengthens and makes more robust exclusions based upon an entirely different methodology involving the cosmic microwave background radiation of the universe explored by astronomy experiments such as Planck 2015. This basically rules out any relatively long lived remotely "natural" supersymmetric particle unless supersymmetric particles have extremely weak interactions with ordinary matter.

A thermal relic gravitino in a supersymmetry (SUSY) model with a mass on the order of 10 TeV suggests a very high energy characteristic supersymmetry scale which while not directly ruling out some other SUSY particle as a dark matter candidate, makes a SUSY theory that could supply both a dark matter candidate and explain leptogenesis extremely "unnatural."

The potential Lithium problem solution, a particle with a mean lifetime of 100 to 1000 seconds (on the same order of magnitude as a free neutron), favors a quite light, predominantly radiatively decaying (i.e. decaying via photons, electrons and positrons) particle. The main problem with this is that such a particle ought to have shown up in collider experiments if it existed. Yet, there are no known fundamental particles or hadrons that have the right length mean lifetime but decay primarily radiatively. The muon and pion are both tens of millions of times too short lived (or more), the neutron has primarily hadronic decays (to a proton, an electron and an anti-neutrino), and all other hadrons and fundamental particles are much shorter lived. Ergo, a beyond the Standard Model particle is unlikely to be the solution to the Lithium problem of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.

Bottom Line

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis indirectly constrains the parameter space of beyond the Standard Model physics in a manner that strongly compliments other methods while not overlapping the exclusion of other methods at all. 

This makes the case against supersymmetry models, one of the most popular kinds of beyond the Standard Model theories, significantly stronger than it already was based on other lines of reasoning from experimental evidence such as the strong evidence disfavoring a SUSY dark matter candidate.

The Paper

The pre-print and its abstract are as follows:

We study effects of long-lived massive particles, which decay during the big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) epoch, on the primordial abundances of light elements. Compared to the previous studies, (i) the reaction rates of the standard BBN reactions are updated, (ii) the most recent observational data of light element abundances and cosmological parameters are used, (iii) the effects of the interconversion of energetic nucleons at the time of inelastic scatterings with background nuclei are considered, and (iv) the effects of the hadronic shower induced by energetic high energy anti-nucleons are included. We compare the theoretical predictions on the primordial abundances of light elements with latest observational constraints, and derive upper bounds on relic abundance of the decaying particle as a function of its lifetime. We also apply our analysis to unstable gravitino, the superpartner of the graviton in supersymmetric theories, and obtain constraints on the reheating temperature after inflation.

Masahiro Kawasaki, et al., "Revisiting Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Long-Lived Decaying Particles" (September 5, 2017).

Lost Languages Found In Monastery In Sinai

At Saint Catherine's monastery in the Sinai in Egypt, monks erased old works to copy new ones over them when parchment was scarce. Now, imaging and computers can resort the erased works and this has revealed a couple of lost languages which were almost completely unattested in writing before now.

Since 2011, researchers have photographed 74 palimpsests, which boast 6,8000 pages between them. And the team’s results have been quite astonishing. Among the newly revealed texts, which date from the 4th to the 12th century, are 108 pages of previously unknown Greek poems and the oldest-known recipe attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates.

But perhaps the most intriguing finds are the manuscripts written in obscure languages that fell out of use many centuries ago. Two of the erased texts, for instance, were inked in Caucasian Albanian, a language spoken by Christians in what is now Azerbaijan. According to Sarah Laskow of Atlas Obscura, Caucasian Albanian only exists today in a few stone inscriptions. Michael Phelps, director of the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, tells Gray of the Atlantic that the discovery of Caucasian Albanian writings at Saint Catherine’s library has helped scholars increase their knowledge of the language’s vocabulary, giving them words for things like “net” and “fish.”

Other hidden texts were written in a defunct dialect known as Christian Palestinian Aramaic, a mix of Syriac and Greek, which was discontinued in the 13th century only to be rediscovered by scholars in the 18th century. “This was an entire community of people who had a literature, art, and spirituality,” Phelps tells Gray. “Almost all of that has been lost, yet their cultural DNA exists in our culture today. These palimpsest texts are giving them a voice again and letting us learn about how they contributed to who we are today.”

Why Did It Take So Long For The Neolithic Revolution To Take Hold?

From SMBC.

The Annotated Lagrangians of Fundamental Physics

Via Backreaction.

A Stable Sexaquark?

A new preprint proposes that there is a stable (i.e. half-life longer than the age of the universe) hadron that could exist called a sexaquark, a bound state of up, down and strange quarks, which would be a dark matter candidate.

It is proposed that the neutral, B=2, flavor singlet sexaquark (S) composed of uuddss quarks, has mass m_S <~ 2 GeV. If m_S < 2 (m_p + m_e), it is absolutely stable, while for m_S < m_p+m_e + m_Lambda, its lifetime can be greater than the age of the Universe. Lattice gauge theory cannot yet predict m_S, but indirect evidence supports the hypothesis of stability. A stable S is consistent with QCD theory and would have eluded detection in accelerator and non-accelerator experiments. If it exists, the S is a good Dark Matter candidate. Analyses of existing Upsilon decay and LHC data can be used to discover it and measure its mass.

Glennys R. Farrar, "Stable Sexaquark" (August 29, 2017).

While the premise that a sexaquark that was lighter than two time the mass of a proton would be absolutely stable is sound, I have no confidence whatsoever that Farrar's heuristic argument that the not yet calculated mass of a sexaquark is less than twice the proton mass has any validity whatsoever. indeed, the fact of its non-detection at colliders so far strongly militates against this hypothesis.

It would be a convenient dark matter candidate that would explain the lack of fundamental dark matter particles, but the cross-section of interaction would be too high and the gravitational dynamics would probably be wrong as well.

The Case Against Humans In California 130,000 Years Ago

In April, I reported on an article in Nature claiming evidence of a human presence in California around 130,000 years ago. Here is a rebuttal:

In a controversial study published in Nature, Holen et al. (2017) claim that hominins fractured mastodon bones and teeth with stone cobbles in California ∼130,000 years ago. Their claim implies a human colonization of the New World more than 110,000 years earlier than the oldest widely accepted archaeological sites in the Americas. It is also at odds with genetic and fossil evidence for the dispersal of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) out of Africa and around the world. 

Recognizing the incompatibility of their claim with extant knowledge, the authors suggest that the Cerutti Mastodon locality might have been created by an as-yet unidentified archaic hominin, for which no fossil, archaeological, or genomic evidence currently exists in northeast Asia or the Americas. 

We assess Holen et al.’s (2017) supporting evidence and argue that such extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which their paper and supporting materials fail to provide.

Todd J. Braje, et al., "Were Hominins in California ∼130,000 Years Ago?" 3 PaleoAmerica 200-202 (July 17, 2017)  dx.doi.org/10.1080/20555563.2017.1348091

The rebuttal paper largely appears to recap the points that I made in my post at the time, but it is closed access, so it isn't easy to tell.

A Modern Physics Recap

A Recap Of The Core Theory

For all of those of you who haven't been paying attention to physics for the last century or so, here is a quick recap of the the current situation from the introduction to a recent pre-print on quantum gravity:

The past few hundreds of years of development have combined precision experiments with abstract theoretical reasoning, and our current understanding of the basic building blocks of nature is as follows. 

The universe contains matter, which is acted upon by forces. 

All observed forces are consequences of only four fundamental forces. 

Three of these - electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force - are described by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, which also lists all known matter particles – quarks and leptons – that combine to make the various composite particles observed in nature. 

All forces and matter types in the SM are described by fields filling all of spacetime. The equations describing these fields include the effects of quantum mechanics and relativity, so that the SM is an example of a quantum field theory (QFT). 

Indeed, the particles themselves emerge as quanta of the fields, with the canonical example being the photon (a quantum of the electromagnetic field). Furthermore, the fields have certain abstract mathematical symmetries, so that this type of QFT is also called a (non)-Abelian gauge theory.

There. Got it. The Standard Model has been in place more or less since the 1970s, and general relativity is more or less unchanged from its state a hundred years ago.

Recent Standard Model Developments - The Higgs Boson and Neutrino Physics

The only really significant developments in the Standard Model since the 1970s have been the discovery of various Standard Model predicted particles (the last of which was the Higgs bosons discovered in 2012 completing the set) and some properties of neutrinos. 

We've learned that neutrinos are massive and oscillate between mass eigenstates according to a three by three complex matrix with four parameters known as the PMNS matrix. We know the difference between the masses of the three mass eigenstates, but not their absolute values (although we have capped the maximum value of the sum of the three masses) or the order of the masses, and we know three of the four PMNS matrix parameters, although not as precisely as we'd like and not the fourth CP violating parameter. We also don't know which of two mechanisms generate the neutrino masses. 

Dark Matter and Dark Energy

On the gravitational front, we've learned that we need a cosmological constant or dark energy or the equivalent, and that we need either dark matter or a tweak to the behavior of gravity in weak gravitational fields to explain a lot of astronomy observations. Unlike the remaining aspects of the Standard Model which require us to simply set a few parameters, the dark matter/dark energy problems are truly unsolved.

Quantum Gravity

It seems like it ought to be possible to formula General Relativity as a quantum theory (it is currently a classical theory like Newtonian physics) and that quantum theory might even resolve some other loose ends. But, we haven't managed to do that yet and our two "Core Theories" are theoretically inconsistent without it. This may or may not be related to the dark matter and dark energy problems.

The First Moments After The Big Bang - An Optional Problem

There is also some lack of clarity regarding just what happened in the first few moments after the Big Bang - primarily baryogenesis, leptogenesis, cosmological inflation, and matter-antimatter asymmetry. But, since these things happened at basically unreproducible energy scales, there is really no practical or functional reason that we must know the answers to any of these questions which together conspire to create initial conditions a very short period of time after the Big Bang, after which conventional physics takes over.

Within The Standard Model - An Optional Problem

We would also prefer to condense the somewhat parameters heavy, multi-equation "Core Theory" to an even deeper "within the Standard Model" theory or even a "Theory of Everything", but ultimately that would be simply an academic exercise once finished and wouldn't have observable differences from the Standard Model and General Relativity with the parameters it predicts.

Non-Fundamental Physics

Step back one more step and there are some more practical, probably not fundamental, issues left.

QCD Issues

We still don't really understand how scalar mesons and axial vector mesons form or take the mass spectrum that they do. We are still trying to better grasp the physics of glueballs and hadrons with more than three constituent quarks. QCD calculations are very hard to do precisely, taking lots of time, expertise and computational capacity to conduct. There are quite a few Standard Model and General Relativity constants that aren't measured terribly precisely and we could do better.

Experimental Anomalies

There are also a few relatively minor glitches in comparing experiment and theory. Most notably: there are some indications of a violation of charged lepton universality, a measurement called muon g-2 does not quite square with the predicted value, the charge radius of muonic hydrogen isn't quite right, and the predicted abundance of Lithium-7 in the universe isn't quite right.

Dreamers hope these are signs of new physics. Cynics think this is probably due to a combination of measurement errors and flawed calculations of the theoretically predicted values in subtle ways.

Astronomy

We would like to understand black holes, galaxy formation and galactic cluster formation better.

Outlook

Lots of these problems will take more experiments, observations and calculations to solve, but are in principle eminently solvable. A handful of mostly optional problems may be a bit more intractable.

Who Are The Lebbo' People Of Borneo?

Why care about the Lebbo' people of Borneo?

Eurogenes reports that in his efforts to explain the autosomal genetic origins of South Asians that the Lebbo' people of the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo were a better fit to the Ancestral South Asian component of autosomal genetic diversity of South Asians (especially Dravidian speakers) than the Onge people of the Andaman islands who have often been used for that purpose.

This puts front and center the question:

Who are the Lebbo' people of Borneo?

Anthropology and Archaeology

Two Lebbo' men from this source.

The source for the picture of these two men notes their probably longstanding, pre-Neolithic, presence in the region:

Previous surveys have led to the unexpected discovery of more than 150 caves with unique rock art paintings (mostly hand stencils), dating back to at least the Early Holocene (9900 years BP; Plagnes et al. 2003) and presenting some similarities to those from eastern Indonesian Islands, West Papua and Australia (Fage et al. 2010). These discoveries confirmed for the first time the early human occupation of eastern Borneo. Liang Abu is located 130km north-west of the shore of the Makassar Strait, within the rainforest of a mountainous karstic area. Hundreds of cliff caves and shelters are present, where human activity occurred on three levels: human settlement at the base, burial in the middle and rock art at the top (Chazine 2005). . . . The site is located 6km from the remote Lebbo' village of Merabu. The Lebbo' are an isolated indigenous population of hunter-gatherers and are the only ethnic group which have lived in this inner region for a long time. Ethno-linguistic studies of their oral traditions and cultural practices, to document their former use of caves in relation to the proto-historic and pre-historical periods in the region, are currently under way. Some of the Lebbo's representations can be directly related to the prehistoric rock art found in nearby caves. All these characteristics make Liang Abu a site well suited for the investigation of links between late Pleistocene human occupation, rock art, the communities represented by them as well as the communities of their potential descendants.

Geography

The image above is Figure 1 in this article in Nature. The Lebbo' are locating in the Northeast portion of Indonesian Borneo. The Andaman islands, which are home to the Onge are in the chain of Islands extending to the south from Bangladesh to the island of Sumatra (to the west of Myanmar f.k.a. Burma).

The Lebbo' peoples historic range may have been more expansive than it is today.

Autosomal Genetics

The ancestry components of the Lebbo' people based upon a fourteen population admixture analysis (shown in Figure 2 of from the same article, below in bottom panel of the far left) are quite heterogenous, with a plurality component that is most common in Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia (labeled C13 in the figure below), a significant share of a component that is almost pure in the H'tin people of Thailand (labeled C12), and a notable shares associated with the Ma'anyan people of Borneo (labeled C8, who are linguistically the closest match to the people of Madagascar) and with the people of Sulawesi and the Lesser Sunda islands (labeled C8), but almost none of a Philippine Negrito component (labeled C2), a Hmong component (labeled C7), a component found in the nearby Bidayuh people of Borneo (labeled C9), the Temuan people of Peninsula Malaysia (C10), the Miabei people of Thailand (labeled C5), a West Eurasian component (labeled C6), or an African component (labeled C1).

Their lack of Papuan or Philippine Negrito affinity, their lack of Denisovan admixture, and the apparent archaeological case for their arrival in Borneo ca. 35,000 years ago would be consistent with the deep ancestors of the Lebbo' people being second wave hunter-gatherers of Southeast Asia, rather than first wave hunter-gatherers (like Papuans and Aboriginal Australians and Philippine Negrito populations) in the region. It is this wave of hunter-gatherer people, rather than the first one, to whom ancestral South Indians apparently have a strong genetic affinity.

On the other hand, uniparental ancestry seems to indicate that some first wave hunter-gatherers were incorporated into this population.

The same article from Nature also concludes based upon another statistical analysis that mainland Southeast Asia "gene flows reached the west of Borneo, but not the east." But the Lebbo' people are in eastern Borneo (Borneo was, in historic times, divided by a shallow gulf that divided the western and eastern part of the island). An f3-test analysis "showing shared genetic history with Austronesian groups (represented by indigenous Formosan) compared to Mainland Southeast Asian groups (represented by the H’tin)" places the Lebbo' people in an almost overlapping position with the Ma'anyan people (the closest linguistic ancestors of the people of Madagascar), despite their quite different mixes of ancestry components in an Admixture analysis. 

Another analysis, however, puts the Lebbo' equidistant with the Formosan indigenous people from the Ma'anyan people.

In a PCA analysis (Figure 5 in the Nature paper), the Lebbo' people (light gray triangles in a central position on the PCA figure overlapping the green blue and red boxes) are a near perfect match for the Asian component of the ancestors of the people of Madagascar, while the closest linguistic match, the Ma'anyan are clearly not a good match.

The disparity between the genetically Asian component of the people of Madagascar and the people most linguistically similar to the people of Madagascar suggests either that the Lebbo' people may be a relict population of one which once included people with advance maritime skills who spoke a language similar to the Ma'anyan people of today, or that the Lebbo' people coincidentally have similarity on a PCA chart to the end result of free admixture of Eastern Indonesia, Bornean and mainland Southeast Asian people (much like my own half-Korean, half-European children look like Uighars on a PCA chart).

There is passing discussion of the Lebbo' who are noted for having some unexpected Austro-Asiatic ancestry in another paper on the current population genetics of the region, and there is more analysis of the genetic data (mostly also discussed in the Nature article) here.

Uniparental Genetics

Y-DNA

In terms of uniparental genetics, the Lebbo' have the following Y-DNA haplogroups:

C* a.k.a. C-M130 (13.33%), K* a.k.a. K-M9 (6.67%), KxLT a.k.a. K2 (13.33%), O2a1 a.k.a. O-M88 (33.33%), O1a2 a.k.a. O-M50 (26.67%), and O3a2 a.k.a. O-M164 (6.67%). This is a subset of the diversity of the Ma'anyan people with one exception understandable given the small sample size of just 12 Lebbo' men, two-thirds of whom have Y-DNA haplogroup O which is rare in South Asia. 

Five of the twelve Y-DNA clades are associated with first wave hunter-gatherers in Southeast Asia, and six are often associated with the Austronesian founding population, and one is associated with Austro-Asiatic mainland Southeast Asia.

Y-DNA C* is found in Australian Aborigines, India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, in Europe among males with the surname Llach originating from Garrotxa, Catalonia, Spain, and in prehistoric remains, dating from 34,000 years BP, found in Russia and known as "Kostenki 14". 

Y-DNA C, in general, "attains its highest frequencies among the indigenous populations of Mongolia, the Russian Far East, Polynesia, Australia, and at moderate frequency in Korea and Manchu people, it displays its highest diversity among modern populations of India. It is therefore hypothesized that . . . [it] either originated or underwent its longest period of evolution within India or the greater South Asian coastal region. The highest diversity is observed in Southeast Asia, and its northward expansion in East Asia started approximately 40,000 years ago."

Y-DNA K* is derived from Y-DNA F, which is a brother clade to Y-DNA C (through several intermediate steps), and Y-DNA KxLT a.k.a. K2 is derived from Y-DNA K*. "The basal paragroup K* is exceptionally rare, although it has been reported at low frequencies in various parts of Eurasia, Oceania and Africa." 

Y-DNA KxLT in common in Australian Aborigines, Papuans, and is present as a minor clade in island Southeast Asians. Two individuals with Y-DNA KxLT have been found in a South Asian specific clade, K2e (K-M147) and two individuals with Y-DNA KxLT have been found in a clade with one Telegu man (i.e. Dravidian India) and one ethnically Malaysian man, K2a1 (K-M2313). Y-DNA KxLT is ancestral to Y-DNA N, Y-DNA O, and Y-DNA Q, and Y-DNA Q, in turn, is ancestral to Y-DNA R. 

Y-DNA O-M88 is found frequently among Hani, She people, Tai peoples, Cambodians, and Vietnamese, with a moderate distribution among Qiang, Yi, Hlai, Miao, Yao, Taiwanese aborigines, and Han Chinese. 

Y-DNA O-M50 occurs among Austronesian peoples of Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Madagascar as well as among some populations of continental Southeast Asia and among Bantu peoples of the Comoros. 

Y-DNA O-M164 is most common in Cambodia and Laos.

mtDNA

The Lebbo' have the following mtDNA haplogroups:

B4a (21.05%), B5a (15.79%), M20 (15.79%), M71a2 (15.79%), R9b1a1a (10.53%),  and E1a (21.05%) out of a sample size of 19 Lebbo' people. This is about a 50% overlap with the diversity of the Ma'anyan people. 

mtDNA B4a, B5a, M71a, and R9 are all also found in aboriginal populations in Southern Laos, while mtDNA E1a is typically Austronesian haplogroup. 

mtDNA M20 is typical of Southern China and mainland Southeast Asia.

The mtDNA M71a2 is a rare haplogroup associated with mainland Asia. mtDNA M71 is found in Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines, and China. 

mtDNA E is found especially in Taiwan (aborigines), Maritime Southeast Asia, and the Mariana Islands. mtDNA E is a descendant of mtDNA M9 which is found in East Asia and Central Asia, especially in Tibet.  

mtDNA B is a descendant of mtDNA R which, in turn, is derived from mtDNA N. mtDNA B4a is found among Polynesians including the Malagasy people of Madagascar, among Koreans and among some Native Americans. 

mtDNA B5a is found, among other places, in Southern China such as in Hubei province. 

mtDNA R9b is typical of Southeast Asia and mtDNA R is derived from mtDNA N. 

Of course, both mtDNA m and mtDNA N are derived from mtDNA L3, an African mtDNA clade.

South Asia Compared

Neither of these sets of uniparental markers significantly overlap with the uniparental markers of South Asia.

Culture and Language

One of the few good references directly discussing the Lebbo' people is a closed access chapter in book of conference proceedings entitled "The Lebbo’ Language and Culture: A Window on Borneo’s Ancient Past" (January 2015), by Antonio Guerreiro, in the book: 12-ICAL Bali, Proceedings volume I, Publisher: ANU, Editors: Wayan Arka, I, pp.149-177. This paper is, however, discussed in a secondary source which recounts that abstract:

The Lebbo’ are former hunter-gatherers/horticulturists; they are localized in remote places in Eastern Borneo, in the regencies of East Kutai and Berau (Province of East Kalimantan). 

Linguistically, they are distinct from the neighbouring Dayak, and Punan (Pnaan) belonging to various branches of the Kayanic and Kenyahic linguistic groups. While the other languages spoken in the region are the Kutai and Berau Malay dialects, besides Bajau and Bugis (on the coastal areas). 

The paper considers the main features and the lexical/phonological aspects of the two Lebbo’ isolects, Lebbo’ Aso’ and Lebbo’ Isi, which amount to less than 1,000 speakers. Both isolects have evolved from the so-called “Basap” language (known also as “Bahasa Sanimban” in Dutch sources). I will relate the Lebbo’ to the other components of this scattered linguistic and cultural group, such as the Ulun Darat (Basap Selatan) in Mangkalihat, the Ulun Latti in Northern Berau and related Basap in Talisayan. Until now the Lebbo’ language has not been recorded and described systematically. 

In central Borneo, the ancient links of the Lebbo’ are to be found with the proposed Rejang-Sajau linguistic group (Hudson 1978). These links, spread across the Island, point to other languages from East to Western Borneo. The field research was carried from 2009 to 2011 in the frame of the French-Indonesian pluridisciplinary programme, and supplemented by the study of archival materials.

Another story (in Spanish) advocating for designation of parts of their homeland as a UNESCO World Heritage site notes (via Google translation of the Spanish) that:

In karst, thick tropical forests conceal the worn limestone towers, among which the team discovered 35,000-year-old bones and charcoal, the oldest test of human occupation found so far in Kalimantan. "These remains are interesting because for a long time Kalimantan was excluded from the history of human evolution." . . .

The Franco-Indonesian team is working in an area where ancient peoples left impressions of their hands in caverns 10,000 years ago or more. In addition to ancient bones, they found hundreds of rock paintings in orange to brown pigments showing figures of tapirs (now extinct in Borneo), wild cattle and some creatures unknown to us today. 

The wonders of the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst are not limited to the human footprint: the southeastern limestone hills and valleys of Southeast Asia have been called "biodiversity coffers" in danger. The region abounds in rare species restricted to limestone. "I saw blind freshwater fish, rare bats, black and white swifts, innumerable animals. It is also a refuge for orangutans fleeing forest fires during the El Niño years," explains biologist Rondang Siregar of the University of Indonesia. 

The diversity of species of bats is greater than in any point of Southeast Asia. Also discovered cockroaches of a species endemic to a cave and that with its 10 centimeters is the largest in the world. 

About 2,000 Lebbo live in the region, the only ethnic group that inhabits this inland part of eastern Borneo. The Lebbo incorporate to their narrations elements of the cave paintings. One of his myths speaks of a young shaman and his eight wives who took possession of the Karst territory marking the caves with paintings of their hands, as was done in the caves millennia ago. 

The Lebbo have been a great help since they know the karst and the forest and collaborate in the location of the shelters and interpret the paintings.

A DVD recounting of the story of the Shaman is available. See also this description of those materials:

A Lebbo' Shaman's Tale 

During the first part of the interview, Pak Kuling, a Lebbo' shaman (belian) from the village of Pana'an (aged about 50), who is currently the kepala adat, tells of the feats of Belian Danyam. Belian Danyam, literally, "The Young Shaman," is a culture hero of the Lebbo' people of the Lesan River area of East Kalimantan. Among the villagers the hero's legacy remains alive to this day. Several important aspects of this narrative are stressed. Generally, the narrative focuses on the idea of territorial origins and shamanic powers. Belian Danyam was miraculously born as a shaman among human beings on earth. However, who his parents were is not known. As a child he was ready to practice rituals at once and did not have to study first with an elder shaman as is usually the case. During his travels and adventures in the Karst region, the hero expelled evil spirits from the earth, thus making it a suitable place for humans to live. Because he was jealous of his eight wives' behavior, he broke the taboo against mocking animals and so had to cope with the anger of the powerful Thunder God, Meruaa Laut, the protector of adat. Eventually, in his flight the hero vanished into a mountain named Batu Lujep located at the headwater boundary of the upper Lesan and Tabalar Rivers. After his disappearance into the rock his seven successors, known by their shamanic titles, continued to perform in the shamanic tradition (adat belian) he instituted. 

It was Belian Danyam's eight wives who made the stencils of their hands and other marks in the caves as a sign of "being there" and of taking possession of the surrounding area. The hero thus produced a social space in this remote Karstic region. Perhaps, this aspect of the narrative can be related to the holistic character of Lebbo' shamanistic representations, involving the forested landscape and the plentiful reproduction of natural resources (fruits, honey, game). Conversely, a feature that is prevalent in the tale is the notion of bounded territories ascribed to Lebbo' local groups. Spatial boundaries are well-known and relate directly to natural resource exploitation within local group territories. 

In the second part of the interview, Pak Ruling describes ritual ideas and practices at the core of Lebbo' shamanism, i.e. the Tuak harvest festival and the Nobet curative/ purification rites.

Not much is known about their languages, as explained in the link to a presentation describing an effort to document these languages:

The project is focussed on documenting the oral traditions and compiling bilingual vocabularies of some former hunters-gatherers’ languages in the Province of East Kalimantan. Until now these languages, mainly the Punan Tubu’ and the Ulun Lebbo’ and Ulun Darat are poorly known and scattered in different Regencies. The topics addressed in this documentation project are: 

• oral traditions (songs, epics, stories, myths, proverbs); 

• linguistic interactions and borrowings, phenomenon of diglossia with the National language (Bahasa Indonesia), and other, regional, languages; 

• lexicology and dialectal variations. 

• Very little information on the oral traditions of these people is available. 

• The main kind of narrative genre is mbui. 15 mbui have been collected and 8 have been transcribed and translated. A dictionary is being prepared and will be published together with the stories and their translations in Indonesian. 

Many languages from multiple only modestly related language families are spoken in the region, although all (including their's) are apparently Austronesian languages, albeit with substrate influences probably from Austro-Asiatic languages which are common in mainland Southeast Asia.

The 2017 Solar Eclipse In Denver

The 93% solar eclipse in Denver was still surprisingly bright (like a heavily overcast day, much more than moonlight), but discernibly cooler than normal, despite the high fraction of the sun obscured as seen with eclipse glasses.

The relevant physics have been known since the 1600s, and eclipses were predicted by cruder means even back in the late 1400s. So, there was nothing new to learn on that front.

In short, slightly better than meh. It was a fun minor social event.