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Let’s dive into one of those cosmic curiosities that’s bound to blow your mind: how we might chat with aliens. And no, I’m not talking about elaborate coded messages or flashy signals. We’re talking about something incredibly fundamental—21cm radiation.

If you’re planning on having a conversation across the vastness of space, using light waves (electromagnetic radiation) is pretty much your go-to option. It’s fast, reliable, and, well, it’s the most practical way to shout out to other civilizations in the universe. But why specifically 21 centimeters? That’s where things get juicy.

This 21cm radiation isn’t just some random frequency we picked out of a hat. It’s tied to something very essential, known as the hydrogen spin flip. Hydrogen atoms consist of one proton and one electron, and these tiny particles have a property called “spin.” Think of spin like a little arrow pointing up or down. Every so often, in the vast reaches of space, a hydrogen atom’s electron can flip its spin, going from a state where its spin is aligned with the proton to one pointing in the opposite direction. This flip releases energy in the form of radiation at—you guessed it—a wavelength of 21 centimeters.

So, why does this matter? Well, any smart civilization, whether they have blue skin, tentacles, or something more bizarre, will eventually discover hydrogen, understand spin, dabble in quantum mechanics, and figure out this whole 21cm radiation thing. They’ll call it something different (they won’t have “21” or “cm”) but the concept remains universal. It’s like the cosmic Rosetta Stone.

What makes 21cm radiation perfect for long-distance interstellar chats is its ability to cut through interstellar dust. Space is filthy, with dust clouds that block out other forms of light. However, 21cm waves are like the VIPs of the universe, slipping through the velvet ropes of cosmic debris to carry their message far and wide.

Here’s a fun fact: NASA’s Pioneer spacecraft, launched in the early 1970’s, carry plaques. On these plaques there’s a handy diagram of the hydrogen spin flip transition. All other measurements on the plaque, including the height of humans, are made in reference to this fundamental distance. So the hope is that aliens can recognize the hydrogen spin-flip transition and use that to unlock the rest of our message.

Now imagine this scenario: One day, astronomers on Earth detect an unusual surge of 21cm radiation. It’s not coming from a random hydrogen cloud; it’s directional, purposeful. That could very well be an alien civilization sending us a “What’s up?” across the cosmos – 21cm radiation makes for a great calling card.

Using 21cm radiation to communicate with extraterrestrial beings leverages a basic, universal constant. And who knows? Maybe one day, when we finally hear that signal, we’ll know that somewhere out there, another intelligent species figured out the same galactic hack we did.

So keep your eyes—or rather, your telescopes—peeled. The next big discovery could be just a spin flip away!

The post If You’re Going to Call Aliens, Use This Number appeared first on Universe Today.

The majority of the universe remains unmapped, but we have a potential window into it through a peculiar light emitted by nothing other than neutral hydrogen.

Before stars and galaxies lit up the universe, the cosmos was a dark place filled mostly with neutral hydrogen. This was right after the Big Bang and the formation of the CMB—Cosmic Microwave Background. The CMB is like a baby picture of the universe when it was just 380,000 years old. But what came next was a long period called the “Dark Ages.” During this time, the universe didn’t have much going on in terms of visible light because there were no stars or galaxies yet. Frustratingly, most of the volume of the visible universe exists in these Dark Ages, which makes it a very valuable resource to learn about the nature of dark matter and dark energy. But…it was dark, so we can’t just make a bigger telescope and observe it.

Thankfully, the neutral hydrogen that filled the universe during this epoch does emit a feeble kind of light. Due to the quantum mechanical spin flip transition, neutral hydrogen emits radiations with a wavelength of 21 centimeters. However, the Dark Ages were so long ago at this 21cm radiation is redshifted to a wavelength of two meters or more, putting it firmly in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum.

In fact, a tiny fraction of the static you hear in your car radio is due to this ancient radiation.

Astronomers can use slightly different wavelengths to map out the extent and evolution of the Dark Ages. Different pockets of neutral gas will emit their radiation at different times, which will correspond to different redshifts.

We expect to see an enormous amount of 21cm radiation at the very longest wavelengths, right at the beginning of the Dark Ages. That’s when the universe was filled with an almost uniform distribution of neutral hydrogen. Then as the first stars and galaxies wake up, they ionize their surrounding gas with powerful blasts of high-energy radiation. So a 21cm map of this era should show holes and pockets in the overall signal. Finally, once most of the neutral hydrogen is wiped away and confined only to cool regions of galaxies, we should see the signal disappear – only to be replaced with the light of galaxies themselves.

However, observing this radiation is a daunting task. That’s because humans are also quite fond of radio emissions, and this signal from the Dark Ages is at least a million times weaker than terrestrial radio broadcasts. Observatories around the world, like the Murchison Wide-field Array in Western Australia and the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array in South Africa have so far failed to find a conclusive signal.

To nail this detection and open up the Dark Ages to exploration, we may have to go off planet. The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope hopes to turn the far side of the Moon into a pristine radio observatory, using the Moon itself to shield the observatory from radio interference. The idea is a long way off, but it might be our only way to to draw a complete map of the cosmos’ past, present, and future.

The post Neutral Hydrogen: The Next Big Game in Cosmology appeared first on Universe Today.

I am fascinated by the technologies that live largely behind the scenes. These are not generally consumer devices, but they may be components of consumer products, or may largely have a role in industry – but they make our modern world possible, or make it much better. In addition I think that material science is largely underrated in terms of popular appeal, but it is material science that often make all other technologies possible or feasible. There is another aspect of technology that I have been increasingly interested in – solid state technology. These are, generally speaking, devices that use electricity rather than moving parts. You are likely familiar with solid state drives, that do not have spinning discs and therefore are smaller, use less power, and last longer. One big advantage of electric vehicles is that they are largely solid state, without the moving parts of an engine.

There is a technology that combines all three of these features – it is a component technology, dependent on material science, and solid state: thermoelectric devices. This may not sound sexy, but bear with me, this is cool (pun intended) technology. Thermoelectric materials are those that convert electricity into a temperature difference across a material, or convert a temperature difference into electricity. In reality, everything is a thermoelectric material, but most materials have insignificant thermoelectric effects (so are functionally not thermoelectric).

Thermoelectric devices can be used to harvest energy, from any temperature difference. These are generally not large amounts of energy – we don’t have thermoelectric power plants connected to the grid – and they are currently not practical and cost effective enough for a large scale. This may be possible in the future, but not today. However, for applications that require small amounts of energy, harvesting that energy from ambient sources like small temperature differences is feasible.

There are likely many more applications for the reverse – using electricity to cause temperature changes. This is basically a refrigerator, and in fact y0u can buy small solid state thermoelectric refrigerators. A traditional refrigerator uses a compressor and a refrigerant. This is a liquid that turns into a gas at low temperature, absorbing heat when it transitions to gas and then letting off heat when it transitions back to liquid. But this requires a compressor with moving parts and pipes to carry the refrigerant. Refrigerants are also not good for the environment or the ozone. Thermoelectric coolers can be smaller, use less electricity, are quiet, and have more precise temperature control. But their size is limited because they are not powerful enough for full-sized refrigerators.

As an aside, I see that Samsung is coming out this year with a hybrid full-size refrigerator. I still uses a compressor, but also has a thermoelectric cooler to reduce temperature variation throughout the refrigerator.

Thermoelectric cooling is also useful for electronics, which having an increasing problem with heat dissipation as we make them smaller, more compact, and more powerful. Heat management is now a major limiting factor for high end computer chips. This is also a major limiting factor for bio-electronics – implanting chips in people for various potential applications. Having a small and efficient solid state cooling device that just requires electricity would enable this technology.

But – the current state of the art for thermoelectric cooling is limited. Devices have low overall efficiency, and their manufacture is expensive and generates a lot of waste.  In other words – there is a huge opportunity to improve this technology with massive and far ranging potential benefits. This is an area ripe for investment with clear benefits. This can also be a significant component of our current overall goal to electrify our technology – to accomplish with electricity what currently requires moving parts and fossil fuels.

All this is why I was very interested in this latest advance – Interfacial bonding enhances thermoelectric cooling in 3D-printed materials. This incorporates yet another technology that has my interest – 3D printing, or additive manufacturing. This does not represent an improvement in the thermoelectric devices themselves, but an improvement in the cost and efficiency of making them (again, and often neglected by very important aspect of any technology). As one of the authors says:

“With our present work, we can 3D print exactly the needed shape of thermoelectric materials. In addition, the resulting devices exhibit a net cooling effect of 50 degrees in the air. This means that our 3D-printed materials perform similarly to ones that are significantly more expensive to manufacture,” says Xu.”

The innovation has to do with the molecular bonding of the materials in the 3D printing process. As Xu says, the performance is the same as existing materials, but with much lower cost to manufacture. As always, shifting to a new technology often means that there is room for further incremental advances to make the advantages even better over time. It may take years for this technology to translate to the market, but it is very possible it may lead directly to a slew of new products and applications.

It may seem like a small thing, but I am looking forward to a future (hopefully not too distant) with full-sized thermoelectric refrigerators, and with computers that don’t need fans or water cooling. Having a silent computer without fans is nice for podcasting, which I know is a particular interest of mine, but is also increasingly common.

In general, quality of life will be better if we are surrounded by technology that is silent, small, efficient, cost-effective, and long-lasting. Thermoelectric cooling can make all of that increasingly possible.

The post Thermoelectric Cooling – It’s Cooler Than You Think first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

There is no doubt the "studies" in this journal will conclude We Want Them Infected doctors were right about everything the whole time; mitigation measure were an epic catastrophe while COVID was a harmless cold for everyone but grandma.

The post Misinformation Doctors Start a Misinformation Journal to Spread Misinformation first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

NASA engineers are pressing ahead with preparations for the Artemis II mission unless someone tells them otherwise. The ambitious flight will send four astronauts on a trajectory similar to Apollo 8’s historic lunar journey, with the crew traveling around the Moon in an Orion Capsule before returning to Earth. A crucial milestone in the mission preparations was reached as technicians completed the assembly of the Space Launch System’s twin solid rocket boosters inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. The stacking process began in late November 2024 and concluded on February 19th.

In a significant step forward for our return to the Moon, NASA engineers at Kennedy Space Center have finished assembling the massive solid rocket boosters that will power the Artemis II mission. The stacking operation, completed on 19 February 2025, marks a key milestone in preparation for the first crewed lunar mission since Apollo. As someone who never saw the Apollo Moon landings, I’m excited. 

Aldrin on the Moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle during the Apollo 11 mission. Mission commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. While astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility region of the moon, astronaut Michael Collins remained with the command and service modules in lunar orbit. Image Credit: NASA

The assembly process began on 20 November 2024, inside Kennedy’s amazing Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where generations of Moon rockets have been built. Using techniques that have been refined over decades of spaceflight experience, technicians employed one of the facility’s overhead cranes to carefully position each segment of the twin boosters.

These solid rocket boosters represent modern engineering at its best, being assembled on Mobile Launcher 1, a huge structure standing 380 feet tall – roughly the height of a 38-story building. This launch platform serves a number of different functions, acting as both the assembly base for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, and the launch platform from which the mission will eventually depart for the Moon.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard is seen at sunset atop the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B as preparations for launch continue, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

The completed boosters will form part of the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, more powerful even than Saturn V that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon. When ignited, these twin rockets will generate millions of pounds of thrust, working in together with the SLS core stage to lift the Orion spacecraft and its four-person crew toward the Moon.

Apollo 11 launch using the Saturn V rocket

Artemis II represents a historic moment in space exploration as the first time humans will venture beyond low Earth orbit since 1972. The mission profile calls for a crew of four astronauts to journey around the Moon in the Orion spacecraft, testing critical systems and procedures before future missions attempt lunar landings.

The successful completion of booster stacking demonstrates the expertise of NASA’s engineering teams. Each segment had to be perfectly aligned and secured, with no room for error in a process that demands accuracy. The boosters will eventually help propel the spacecraft to speeds exceeding 17,000 miles per hour – fast enough to break free of Earth’s gravity and get to the Moon.

With this milestone achieved, NASA continues toward launch, carefully checking and testing each system to ensure the safety of the crew and the success of this ambitious mission to return humans to deep space.

Moon, here we come, once again. 

Source : Artemis II Rocket Booster Stacking Complete

The post The Artemis II Boosters are Stacked appeared first on Universe Today.

It’s not uncommon for space missions to be tested here on planet Earth. With the plethora of missions that have been sent to Mars it  is becoming increasingly likely that the red planet was once warmer, wetter and more habitable than it is today. To find evidence of this, a new paper proposes that Deception Island in Antarctica is one of the best places on Earth to simulate the Martian environment. The paper identifies 30 sites on the island that correspond well to places on Mars.

The exploration of Mars has been a focus of space agencies worldwide, driven by the desire to understand the its geology, climate, possibility of past life, and excitingly the potential for future human colonisation. Early missions, such as NASA’s Mariner 4 in 1965, provided the first close-up images of Mars, while the Viking landers of the 1970s conducted the first successful surface experiments. In the 1990s and 2000s, orbiters like Mars Global Surveyor and rovers like Spirit and Opportunity helped us to understand more about the Martian terrain and atmospheric conditions. As we explore the red planet, and with more projects on the horizon, Mars remains a key target for exploration. 

Three Generations of Mars Rovers in the ‘Mars Yard’ at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Mars Pathfinder Project (front) landed the first Mars rover – Sojourner – in 1997. The Mars Exploration Rover Project (left) landed Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in 2004. The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The world that has been revealed following the multitude of missions is of a surface that is cold, dry, and exposed to high radiation. Evidence exists that liquid water once flowed on Mars, bringing the tantalising possibility that microbial life may have existed in the past. Today, underground water reserves and seasonal methane emissions hint at the possibility of present-day life BUT and it is a strong BUT, no evidence has been found yet.   Further exploration is required and it is at times like this that researchers turn to planetary analogues to explore further. 

Image taken by the Viking 1 orbiter in June 1976, showing Mars thin atmosphere and dusty, red surface. Credits: NASA/Viking 1

A planetary analogue is a location on Earth that is similar or identical to places found on alien worlds. In the case of Mars, a new paper has been published that suggests that Deception Island in Antarctica is a great ‘analogue’ for parts of Mars. Exploring life that is found in these locations enables us to better understand the locations on Mars and helps inform future exploration. 

The paper, that was authored by a team led by María Angélica Leal Leal identifies 30 locations on the island that are an excellent match for locations on Mars. The locations have been divided into four categories; geologically similar to areas of Mars, environmental conditions are similar to Mars, biological interest due to the existence of extremophiles on Earth and various engineering applications enabling hardware testing in Mars-like environment. 

It concludes that Deception Island in Antarctica serves as a valuable Mars analogue site due to the combination of extreme environmental conditions and geological features that mirror those found on Mars. It’s a volcanic island too offering a natural (and significantly closer) laboratory where it might reveal how life adapts to harsh conditions including low temperatures and high radiation. 

The island’s particularly unique features include the presence of perchlorate (chemical compounds that contain salts made up of chlorine and oxygen atoms,) glaciovolcanic processes, permafrost, and microbial mats (layers of complex microorganisms) that survive in extreme conditions. This all makes for an excellent terrestrial alternative for studying potential past or present life on Mars. However, the researchers note that further detailed studies of the island’s geochemistry, extremophile organisms, and mission simulations are needed to fully confirm its validity as a Mars analogue for specific Martian regions and time periods.

Source : The potential of Deception Island, Antarctica, as a multifunctional Martian analogue of astrobiological interest

The post Antarctica’s Deception Island is the Perfect Place to Practice Exploring Mars appeared first on Universe Today.

Rapid, localized heat management is essential for electronic devices and could have applications ranging from wearable materials to burn treatment. While so-called thermoelectric materials convert temperature differences to electrical voltage and vice versa, their efficiency is often limited, and their production is costly and wasteful. Researchers have now used a 3D printing technique to fabricate high-performance thermoelectric materials, reducing production costs significantly.

A research team has unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses satellite imagery to track urban green spaces more accurately than prior methods, critical to ensuring healthy cities.

In a monthly reporting call on global climate, researchers from the US government’s climate and weather agency avoided mentioning rising levels of greenhouse gases

Young mice seemingly attempt to revive an anaesthetised cage mate by grooming and biting it and will even pull aside the tongue to clear its airway

Some of our Solar System’s moons have become very enticing targets in the search for life. There’s growing evidence that some of them have oceans under layers of ice and that these oceans are warm and rich in prebiotic chemistry. NASA’s Europa Clipper is on its way to examine Jupiter’s moon Europa, and the ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer is also on its way to the Jovian system to explore some of its icy moons.

While the presence of an ocean on Europa is becoming widely accepted, there’s more uncertainty about the other Galilean moons. However, new evidence suggests that Callisto is very likely an ocean moon, too.

Callisto is Jupiter’s second-largest moon, the third-largest moon in the Solar System, and the outermost Galilean moon. The Voyager probes gave us our first close looks at Callisto in 1979, and the Galileo spacecraft gave us our best images and science data during flybys between 1996 and 2001. Galileo provided the first evidence that Callisto may harbour a subsurface ocean.

Callisto has a different appearance than other suspected ocean moons like Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus. Europa clearly has a white, icy surface, although it has other brownish colours, too. Enceladus has an extremely bright, icy surface and has the highest albedo of any object in the Solar System. Callisto, on the other hand, has a dark, icy surface and is covered in craters.

Europa (L), Enceladus (M), and Callisto (R) have distinctly different surfaces, yet all likely have subsurface oceans.

However, the evidence for its ocean is unrelated to its surface appearance and any visible ice.

The main evidence supporting an ocean on Callisto comes from the moon’s magnetic field. Unlike Earth’s internally generated magnetic field, Callisto’s is induced. That means the field is created from Callisto’s interactions with Jupiter and its extremely powerful magnetic field. For Callisto to induce a magnetic field, it has to have a layer of conductive material.

This illustration shows Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field and the four Galilean moons. Image Credit: ESA.
Licence: ESA Standard Licence

The question is, is the layer an ocean or something else?

Different researchers have been trying to answer that question since Galileo gathered its data. One of the spacecraft’s instruments was a magnetometer, a type called a Dual-Technique Magnetometer (DTM). There are multiple types of magnetometers, and each one works differently. Galileo’s DTM provided redundancy and allowed for cross-checking, which increased the accuracy and reliability of its data. It was especially good at detecting the subtle magnetic fields of Jupiter’s moons, including Callisto. It also collected data continuously, which let scientists gain insights into how the magnetic fields of Jupiter and its moons varied over time due to different interactions.

In a 2017 paper, researchers pointed to the ionosphere as the primary cause of Callisto’s magnetic fields. “We find that induction within Callisto’s ionosphere is responsible for a significant part of the observed magnetic fields,” the authors wrote. “Ionospheric induction creates induced magnetic fields to some extent similar as expected from a subsurface water ocean.”

New research in AGU Advances based on Galileo data strengthens the idea that Callisto has a subsurface ocean and that it’s responsible for the moon’s magnetic field rather than its ionosphere. The paper is titled “Stronger Evidence of a Subsurface Ocean Within Callisto From a Multifrequency Investigation of Its Induced Magnetic Field.” The lead author is Corey Cochrane, a scientist at JPL who studies planetary interiors and geophysics. An important part of this research is that they considered data from multiple Galileo flybys (C03, C09, and C10).

“Although there is high certainty that the induced field measured at Europa is attributed to a global-scale subsurface ocean, there is still uncertainty around the possibility that the induced field measured at Callisto is evidence of an ocean,” Cochrane and his co-researchers write. “This uncertainty is due to the presence of a conductive ionosphere, which will also produce an induction signal in response to Jupiter’s strong time-varying magnetic field.”

Observations acquired from the Galileo spacecraft indicate that Callisto (left) reacts inductively to Jupiter’s (right) time-varying magnetic field. New research suggests that this reaction and its results are indicative of the moon hosting a subsurface salty ocean. Image Credit: Corey J. Cochrane, NASA/JPL-Caltech

In short, Callisto’s magnetic field could be caused by its ionosphere, an ocean, or a combination of both. The problem is that Callisto’s conductive ionosphere creates a magnetic field that can mask the presence of an ocean. To get to the truth, the authors used previously published simulations of the moon’s interactions combined with “both an inverse and an ensemble forward modeling method.” The authors write that this brings some clarity about the possible range of Callisto’s interior properties.

The researchers created a four-layer model of Callisto, including its ionosphere. “Among these models, we vary the thickness of the ice shell, the thickness of the ocean, and the conductivity,” the authors write. They also varied the seafloor depth and the ionosphere’s conductance.

This schematic diagram from the study shows the variable parameters in some of the researchers’ modelling. (Left) D is seafloor depth, T is ocean thickness, and Rc is conductance. (R) The ocean parameter space in the study has 8 linear steps for ocean thickness and 10 steps for ocean conductivity. Image Credit: Cochrane et al. 2025.

The researchers concluded that the moon’s ionosphere alone cannot explain the magnetic field. Instead, it “more likely arises from the combination of a thick conductive ocean and an ionosphere rather than from an ionosphere alone.”

They also concluded that the ocean is tens of kilometres thick from the seafloor to the ice shell, and the ice shell could also be tens of kilometres thick. “As our results demonstrate, both the inverse and forward modelling approaches support the presence of an ocean when considering data acquired from flyby C10 alongside C03 and C09,” the researchers explain. “Our analysis, the first to simultaneously fit C03, C09, and C10 flyby data together, favours the presence of a thick and deep ocean within Callisto.”

The models also favour a thick ice shell “consistent with Callisto’s heavily cratered geology,” they explain.

Galileo wasn’t dedicated to studying Callisto, so there is a dearth of data in all research into its magnetic fields. “It is challenging to place tighter constraints on the properties of Callisto’s ocean because of the limited number of close Galileo flybys that produced reliable data and because of the uncertainty associated with the plasma interaction,” the authors write in their conclusion.

Better and more complete data is in the future, though. Both NASA’s Europa Clipper and the ESA’s JUICE mission will gather more data, some of it from very close to Callisto’s surface.

The Europa Clipper is scheduled to make nine flybys of Callisto. Seven will be within 1800 km of the surface, and four of those will be within 250 km. Its magnetometer will operate continuously during those flybys. The ESA’s JUICE mission is scheduled to perform 21 flybys of Callisto. All of them will be within 7000 km of the surface, and most will be below 1000 km.

The Europa Clipper’s elliptical orbit will allow it to perform flybys of Jupiter’s moons, including Callisto. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Both the Europa Clipper and JUICE have instruments that Galileo didn’t have. Though Galileo came within about 1100 km of Callisto’s surface, it simply could not provide the same kind of data that these newer missions will. The Clipper and JUICE are scheduled to reach the Jovian system in 2030 and 2031, respectively.

As their data starts to arrive and reaches scientists, we will likely determine for sure if Callisto is yet another of the Solar System’s ocean moons.

• Press Release: Jupiter’s Moon Callisto Is Very Likely an Ocean World
• Research: Stronger Evidence of a Subsurface Ocean Within Callisto From a Multifrequency Investigation of Its Induced Magnetic Field

The post Does Jupiter’s Moon Callisto Have an Ocean? The Evidence is Mounting appeared first on Universe Today.

Researchers have succeeded in establishing a method for producing recycled liquid fertilizer that contains high concentrations of phosphorus.

And so we come to the last sex post of the day—about a new piece by Richard Dawkins on his Substack site, The Poetry of Reality. Richard points to what he sees as arrant hypocrisy in the statement on biological sex by the Presidents of the SSN, ASN, and SSB.  As I mentioned in my first post today:

Note that the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists issued a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress (declaration archived here), a statement deliberately aimed at contradicting the first Executive Order by declaring that sex is not binary but a spectrum—in all species!

Richard shows, in his post (click below to read), that even the Presidents of these societies act, in their scientific publications, as if sex is binary, and he considers the disparity between their statement and their scientific behavior to be hypocritical.

An excerpt:

The presidents of three American societies of evolutionary biologists and ecologists have written a joint letter to President Trump and members of the US Congress stating that “extensive scientific evidence” contradicts the view that “there are two sexes . . . [which] are not changeable.” Also the view that “sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce”. Their statement is false and their letter is riddled with hypocrisy. In my opinion Donald Trump is a loathsome individual, utterly unfit to be President, but his statement that “sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce” is accurate in every particular, perhaps the only true statement he ever made.

The fact is, of course, that paper after paper in the scientific literature refers without qualification or equivocation to “males” and “females”. Biologist authors correctly assume that their readers will know the meanings of  “male” and “female” without further explanation, and will accept the authors’ unsubstantiated recognition of the sex of the animals they study. I shall quote just three examples, which happen to be papers authored by Carol Boggs, Daniel Bolnick and Jessica Ware, the three society presidents. A conceivable riposte would be that “humans are not animals”. But then at what point in the evolution of Homo sapiens did sex suddenly became non-binary, a single exception to the general rule pervading the whole of the animal and plant kingdoms? And indeed, the three presidents explicitly disavow human exceptionalism when they say, “Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.”

You can read the three examples yourself, for free, in his piece. (I used different examples in my own post here.) Note in the last sentence above that the three Presidents imply that sex is a spectrum in all species!  I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t make such a foolish assertion were they to rewrite their letter. But I’m not sure they have even sent that letter, and have heard noises that they haven’t.

After Richard gives his examples, he says this:

When I wrote this, I was unaware that Jerry Coyne had already made the same point, quoting three different papers written by the three society presidents. He was too polite to accuse them of hypocrisy.

Finally, I want to add something important: If you want us to consider adding your name to the letter above, for we’re still accumulating signatures, please click on the link below, which is an early version of the letter with some signatures.

At the bottom of the letter, you will see this form:

If you want your name to be added to the letter to the SSE, ASN, and SSB, please go to that site and fill in the blanks. I ask only two things: you be affiliated with biology in some way, and that you be willing to have your name publicized, not only to the society but on this website (I’m not sure if I’ll post the final version, though).  Your response will automatically be added to an Excel document from which we’ll draft the final letter.  Thanks!

Researchers have developed Deep Nanometry, an analytical technique combining advanced optical equipment with a noise removal algorithm based on unsupervised deep learning. Deep Nanometry can analyze nanoparticles in medical samples at high speed, making it possible to accurately detect even trace amounts of rare particles. This has proven its potential for detecting extracellular vesicles indicating early signs of colon cancer, and it is hoped that it can be applied to other medical and industrial fields.

Researchers have developed Deep Nanometry, an analytical technique combining advanced optical equipment with a noise removal algorithm based on unsupervised deep learning. Deep Nanometry can analyze nanoparticles in medical samples at high speed, making it possible to accurately detect even trace amounts of rare particles. This has proven its potential for detecting extracellular vesicles indicating early signs of colon cancer, and it is hoped that it can be applied to other medical and industrial fields.

Epigenetic inhibitors as a promising new antimalarial intervention strategy? A new study identifies an inhibitor of gene regulation that specifically kills the malaria pathogen.

An international research collaboration has overturned the long-standing belief that the atomic nucleus of lead-208 is perfectly spherical. The discovery challenges fundamental assumptions about nuclear structure and has far-reaching implications for our understanding of how the heaviest elements are formed in the universe.

An international research collaboration has overturned the long-standing belief that the atomic nucleus of lead-208 is perfectly spherical. The discovery challenges fundamental assumptions about nuclear structure and has far-reaching implications for our understanding of how the heaviest elements are formed in the universe.

Researchers have found that stars in the early universe may have formed from 'fluffy' molecular clouds. Using the ALMA telescope to observe the Small Magellanic Cloud -- whose environment is similar to the early universe -- they observed that about 60% of the observed clouds had the common filamentary structure, while the remaining 40% had a 'fluffy' shape. These results could provide new insights into the formation of stars in the universe.

Researchers have developed a powerful computational tool, named iDOMO, to improve the prediction of drug synergy and accelerate the development of combination therapies for complex diseases. The study highlights iDOMO's ability to identify synergistic drug combinations using gene expression data, outperforming existing methods.