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TRAPPIST-1e, an Earth-sized world in the system’s habitable zone, is drawing scientific attention as researchers hunt for signs of an atmosphere—and potentially life-supporting conditions. Early James Webb observations hint at methane, but the signals may instead come from the star itself, a small ultracool M dwarf whose atmospheric behavior complicates interpretation.

Via podcasts, Fox News interviews, and "leaked" memos, our FDA leaders are teasing "profound revelations" about dead children and hidden data, complete with dastardly villains and brave heroes, namely themselves. Stay tuned for more!

The post Dr. Marty Makary: Using Dead Children to Create a Spectacle of Accusations first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Controlling qubits with quantum superpositions allows them to dramatically violate a fundamental limit and encode information for about five times longer during quantum computations

What geological features on Earth can be used to better understand unique geological features on Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated potential Earth analogs for studying a unique geological feature on Europa scientists identified almost 30 years ago. This study has the potential help scientists gain insights into Europa’s unique geological features, some of which scientists hypothesize are caused by the moon’s internal liquid water ocean.

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the microbe responsible for gonorrhoea, is developing resistance to most antibiotics, which means we need new drugs to treat the condition. An antibiotic called zoliflodacin might be part of a solution

Surface-bound gels may have provided the structure and chemistry necessary for life to take root on Earth. These findings could also have implications in the search for life beyond Earth.

The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is forming a new research group that will focus solely on the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The pair of irregular dwarf galaxies are satellites of the Milky Way, and are natural, nearby laboratories for studying how galaxies form and evolve. The research group will make heavy use of the spectroscopic 4MOST survey from the VISTA telescope.

In a stunning reversal, Disney has changed tack with regard to safeguarding its copyrighted characters from incorporation into AI tools – perhaps a sign that no one can stem the tide of AI

White-sided dolphins seem to help killer whales "scout" and catch Chinook salmon near Vancouver Island, then eat the leftovers

“Western powers can be in a cold war … before they realize it.” — CALDER WALTON, Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West

How is the history of espionage relevant to the present? How does recent document declassification change our understanding of the Cold War? Spies, Lies, and Algorithms broadly and concisely surveys the hows and whys of the U.S. intelligence community from multiple perspectives. Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West deeply surveys a century of espionage by Russia against the U.S. and Britain. Both books offer new information and conclude with sharp warnings for the present.

When I was in graduate school, the professor of a class on cold war history commented that a book he had initially assigned was already out of date just three years after its publication, due to information declassified in the interim. I recalled this often as I read, so many times, in Calder Walton’s Spies, that his sources were documents that had only been accessible or declassified as recently as 2022. As such, Walton’s book rewrites history, from Lenin to Putin. His thesis is that Russian espionage against the U.S. and Britain was as aggressive before and after the Cold War as it was during it.

Some of the book’s new or strengthened conclusions will please partisans on either side of political (U.S.) debates. Conservatives might find grim validation in the relentlessness and depth of Soviet—and then Russian—espionage. For example, Russian archives have not only proven the guilt of President Franklin Roosevelt’s advisers Lauchlin Currie and Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White (among many others of the Cold War era), but also reveal compelling new evidence of Russian assistance to liberal politician Henry Wallace, as well as to later left-wing intellectuals and the multi-country antinuclear movement, and that the Soviet Union used détente (and later the Soviet Union’s collapse) to increase its espionage. Liberals, on the other hand, may be pleased by new evidence that U.S. Cold War policy did not take into consideration the Soviet perception of NATO, and that the founding U.S. Cold War document’s “domino theory” was based on a false premise (Kremlin documents now show that Soviets did not initiate wars in the Third World).

U.S. science and technology effectively drove both sides of the Cold War.

Newly released material also suggests that from Lenin to Putin, Russian leaders’ refusal to tolerate criticism and alternative points of view severely damaged the Soviet Union (and later Russia), both internally and externally. In contrast, the openness of the U.S. and Britain made it smart for Russia to focus its efforts on human spies. Walton points out, for an example perhaps of particular interest to Skeptic readers, that Russian spies in the U.S. were remarkably successful in their technological espionage, not just in accelerating the Russian development of the atomic bomb, but also more recently in stealing military technology, so that “U.S. science and technology effectively drove both sides of the Cold War.”

One revelation that startled me was new evidence that Truman was never briefed on Korea prior to the outbreak of war, and that, in Russia and the U.S., throughout the Cold War and since, most spies who were caught have been unmasked due to the opposing side’s defectors (and that both sides blundered in promoting people who committed treason). By contrast, Walton argues that, in most other areas, even intelligence historians continue to overemphasize the role of human spies and underestimate the role of communications interception (“signals intelligence”).

Zegart diagnoses the root of the problem as the necessity for secrecy: it is illegal for political scholars to examine most current intelligence.

One reason for the overemphasis on human spies highlighted by Professor Amy Zegart in Spies, Lies, and Algorithms is the explosion in popularity of spy entertainment in recent decades. The ticking time bomb scenario where the hero saves the world is a staple of fiction, but has vanishingly few analogs in real life, according to Zegart, where real intelligence work involves multiple sources being weighed against each other. (Walton’s most dramatic example of how both human and technological methods complement is new evidence of why President Kennedy was able to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis.) However, this is not how things are portrayed in fiction. Zegart acknowledges how terrific it would be if fantasy were reality, and cites alarming evidence that the general public confuses the two. Her even more damning indictment is that entertainment has been mistaken for fact by senior policy makers in the 21st century, including by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice and in a confirmation hearing for a CIA director.

Zegart diagnoses the root of the problem as the necessity for secrecy: it is illegal for political scholars to examine most current intelligence, and older declassified documents sought by historians can arrive years after they’d been requested, and then only heavily redacted. Thus, Zegart finds it unsurprising that there are remarkably few articles about intelligence in academic journals, and incredibly few college courses on the history or politics of espionage. Zegart sees a similar dynamic at work when it comes to Congressional oversight, where elected representatives can’t talk about secret material.

To provide some much needed background, Zegart discusses the history of U.S. intelligence, including an additional chapter on highly placed traitors. The heart of the book is a chapter-by-chapter discussion of issues in the world of espionage. Real life intelligence work is mostly tedious and mundane. Her coverage of it, and what its results can and cannot do, is nuanced and sobering. Readers of Skeptic will not be surprised by the challenge of overcoming confirmation bias and human frailty at estimating size and probability. Evidence, she suggests, is that these are best overcome by an outsider “devil’s advocate” (a procedure bypassed in the case of Saddam Hussein’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction) type counterscenario planning. The paradox of presidential use of covert action analyzes why presidents of opposing views in different times and facing different challenges all criticize secret, morally questionable “active measures” but end up using them anyway.

Intelligence failures result from “the natural variations in the predictability of human events and the limitations of human cognition.” — AMY ZEGART, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms

Walton and Zegart agree that governments are losing their monopoly on intelligence gathering, essentially due to new technology. Zegart sees Google Earth, smart phones, and other public technology as having broken the monopoly that governments once had on the discovery of nuclear weapons sites and other military matters, and she discusses the potential dangers of premature revelation of that information, even if it is true. (Here and elsewhere, she emphasizes that the analysis of images and other data is a highly specialized and sophisticated skill learned by intelligence professionals, with many traps into which even well-meaning amateurs all to0 easily fall.) Where Zegart focuses on the activities of private citizens, Walton sees the future of intelligence being with multinational private companies, selling satellite access or high-end encryption programs to whatever government or business willing to pay their price, and so with no chance of government oversight.

American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989, Book II: Centralization Wins, 1960–1972. (Source: National Security Agency/Central Security Service)

Both books cite FBI statistics that document that China is by far the greatest threat to the U.S. through both government- and business-allied intelligence agencies sending over a seemingly endless number of highly trained agents to steal military and technological secrets from the U.S. Both authors also discuss the difficulty and urgency of reorienting an intelligence bureaucracy to new realities, Zegart’s being in greater depth and among the sources cited by Walton. Interestingly, both authors agree that history and current practice both indicate that intelligence is most effective when multiple techniques—human spying, satellite imagery, and much more—are used in combination, and both agree that cutting intelligence budgets ends up costing more than they save.

Both authors agree that cutting intelligence budgets ends up costing more than they save.

Both authors also discuss the relation between intelligence and conspiracy theories. First, both identify a few that were real, including the recent revelation of a Cold War deal with a leading manufacturer of government encoding machines. However, far more often people see conspiracies where none exist. Part of Walton’s data comes from England, and he suggests that “Those who tend to see … conspiracy overestimate the competency of those in Whitehall (home of British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, much as ‘Langley’ is a term used for the American CIA).” Zegart quips that from her analysis of the impact of spytainment and her survey of Ivy League courses, students are more likely to hear a professor discuss U2 the rock band than the U-2 spy plane, one point of which is that ignorance of espionage history and practice is a great breeding ground for conspiracy theories. While Stalin’s paranoia is well known, Walton provides evidence of Lenin’s as well, and concludes that Putin is “a naturally inclined conspiracist.” (Note that Putin began his career in counterintelligence—ferreting out spies.)

As outstanding as both books are, no text of such depth can be perfect. The most serious problem with Walton’s Spies is that the bibliography is solely online (and often inaccessible), and the entries on it do not always include dates and publisher information. In the book itself, if part of Walton’s thesis is that the Cold War started in 1917, shouldn’t he have offered more than one example of early espionage? Recent scholarship in most areas is thorough (based on the endnotes), but some important books are missing, including G-Man by Beverly Gage (for its new data about the FBI’s work abroad [which it is not supposed to do], and which I reviewed in Skeptic).

Most of Walton’s 548 pages of main text are well used, but some ancillary material (such as recently declassified World War II British intelligence work unrelated to Russia) might have been edited out for length, however fascinating and new it is. I also wonder if, in a history book, it is best practice for an author to explicitly discuss implications for the present, which he does, with several opening pages on Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and a closing chapter on the relevance of the book’s conclusions to 21st century Chinese espionage. That said, this is telling, or at least amusing: for this book, it was discovered that a World War II Russian operative in Ukraine was named Nikita Khrushchev, who might not have gone on to become a future Soviet leader had he tried to warn Stalin about German troops massing on the border of Russia. Another likely case of the futility of speaking truth to power in the old Soviet bloc is the anecdote about a lone non-Communist Czech minister, Jan Masaryk, who tried to warn the public about Soviet tyranny and soon died from falling out a window, allegedly from suicide.

Walton offers two examples of recent or new evidence that the world came closer to nuclear war than previously known.

More to the point, Walton offers two examples of recent or new evidence that the world came closer to nuclear war than previously known in not only the Cuban Missile Crisis, but, possibly, also in a 1980s military exercise that may have been mistaken for the real thing. Both resulted in increased dialogue between the U.S. and Russia.

The two books are masterclasses on their respective subjects. Walton doesn’t just incorporate recent research on Soviet Russian espionage, but he has investigated original documents (some declassified very recently) in Russia, Ukraine (for its intelligence about the Soviet Union), Britain, the U.S., and elsewhere. In addition to Zegart’s original research and government work, she has mastered a vast secondary literature and demonstrates her experience in explaining it. Both can be read by skeptics for evidence of the very real dangers posed by confirmation bias and lack of critical thinking by the highest government officials, as well as by the general public who, at least in some countries, empower them.

It’s one of the better annual meteor showers, and 2025 is shaping up to give sky watchers a chance to see it at its best. If skies are clear this weekend, be sure to be vigilant for the Geminid meteors.

Scientists at the University of Geneva have successfully tested key components of RISTRETTO, a new spectrograph designed to analyse light from Proxima b, the nearest exoplanet to Earth. The instrument uses coronagraphic techniques and extreme adaptive optics to block a star's overwhelming glare and detect planets that shine 10 million times fainter. Simulations suggest RISTRETTO could not only spot Proxima b with just 55 hours of observation time but potentially identify oxygen or water in its atmosphere, offering our first chance to study the conditions on an Earth sized world orbiting our nearest stellar neighbour.

Astronomers have developed a new technique called "X-arithmetic" that reveals the hidden physics inside galaxy clusters. By analysing Chandra X-ray Observatory data at different energy levels and painting the results in vibrant colours, researchers can now distinguish between sound waves, black hole inflated bubbles, and cooling gas, enabling them to classify structures by what they are rather than how they look. The method has already exposed striking differences between galaxy clusters and galaxy groups, showing that supermassive black holes wield dramatically different influence on their surroundings.

We are not close to mining asteroids, but the idea is intriguing enough to cause some serious study of the potential. The idea is simple enough – our solar system is full of chunks of rock with valuable minerals. If we could make it economically viable to mine even a tiny percentage of these asteroids the potential would be immense, a game changer for many types of resources. How valuable are asteroids?

The range of potential value is extreme, but at the high end we have a large metal rich asteroid like 16 Psyche in the asteroid belt. Astronomers estimate that the iron in 16 Psyche alone is worth about $10,000 quadrillion on today’s market. By comparison the world’s current economic output is just over $100 trillion, so that’s 100,000 times the world’s annual economic output. Of course, the cost of extraction would be high and the market value would likely be dramatically affected by such a resource, but it shows the dramatic potential of mining asteroids. Some asteroids are rich in platinum-group metals or rare earths, which would be even more valuable. But even the more common carbonaceous asteroids would likely have minerals worth quadrillions.

Again, these figures are likely not the actual monetary value that would be profited from mining asteroids, but they indicate that it is very likely economically viable to do so. I am reminded of the fact that aluminum was more expensive than gold in the 19th century. Then a process for extracting and refining aluminum from dirt was found, and now it is worth about $1.30 a pound. Still the aluminum industry is worth about $300 billion today. Mining asteroids would have a similar effect on many industries.

There are two basic uses for the material mined from asteroids. The first is to provide resources for space exploration and settlement itself. It is really expensive to get things into space, and getting out of Earth’s gravity well is the vast majority of the cost. Once in Earth’s orbit, you are most of the way there (in terms of energy costs) to pretty much anywhere in the inner solar system. So extracting resources away from Earth would potentially be extremely cost-effective. The more local the better, but even mining an asteroid for material to be used on the Moon is a huge advantage over blasting material off the Earth.

Further, many asteroids, and especially comets, have water-rich minerals or frozen volatiles. Having a steady water supply is essential if we want humans to live in space. Hydrogen from water is also potentially a source of fuel (not energy, just a way of storing energy in hydrogen).

The second use is to bring valuable minerals back to Earth. For this purpose we would want to target asteroids that are already close to Earth, and even come close to our orbit. We could even potentially alter the orbit of such asteroids to keep them in an Earth-lunar orbit, or to rest near a Lagrangian point (a “valley” in the combined gravitational fields of multiple objects that keep objects in place). We could then mine them at our leisure.

Further, if we identify an asteroid whos orbit might intersect with Earth, and therefore pose a threat of strike, we could deal with it by simply mining it out of existence. Therefore we get a double benefit – we get the minerals and we eliminate a potential threat to the Earth.

Right now we are mostly studying asteroids (and mostly from studying meteorites) to determine their composition, how to identify their composition, and determine the composition of specific asteroids that might be a target for future mining. To kickstart an asteroid mining industry we would likely want to pick the lowest-hanging fruit first – which means the easiest to mine, close to Earth, and chock full of highly valuable metals. Even still, this would require a massive investment with a very long horizon before returns are realized.

But once we get a toe-hold in this industry, the potential value is so extreme it will likely take off. We need to develop the technology for mining in low gravity environments, and develop cost-effective methods for returning the ore to Earth or perhaps even refining it in space for delivery to the Moon or Mars. Technological progress over the last two decades, specifically with reusable rockets dramatically lowering the cost of getting into space, makes mining asteroids more feasible, but further technological progress is still required.

It is easy to imagine that in a few hundred years something like the Belters of The Expanse might become a reality – people living permanently in the asteroid belt, mining it for its resources. It’s also possible that the industry would be entirely robotic – why put frail humans into the harsh environment of space unless they are absolutely necessary. Robotics and AI advances have also been extensive in the last decade, and it would certainly be more cost-effective to extract resources without having the added expense of keeping people alive in space. Belters, in other words, are likely to be robots.

The post Mining Asteroids first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

There are already tens of thousands of pieces of large debris in orbit, some of which pose a threat to functional satellites. Various agencies and organizations have been developing novel solutions to this problem, before it turns into full-blown Kessler Syndrome. But many of them are reliant on understanding what is going on with the debris before attempting to deal with it. Gaining that understanding is hard, and failure to do so can cause satellites attempting to remove the debris to contribute to the problem rather than alleviating it. To help solve that conundrum, a new paper from researchers at GMV, a major player in the orbital tracking market in Europe, showcases a new algorithm that can use ground-based telescopes to try figure out how the debris is moving before a deorbiter gets anywhere near it.

The challenge is that nothing in this universe is simple. And if there’s one thing you take away from today’s episode, then let it be that. Don’t ever let yourself fall into the trap of simple answers for difficult questions. We’re cosmologists, we study the universe as it is, not as we wish it would be.

People are often diagnosed with multiple neurodivergencies and mental health conditions, but the biggest genetic analysis so far suggests many have shared biological causes

A new explanation for the solar system's radioactive elements suggests Earth-like planets might be found orbiting up to 50 per cent of sun-like stars

Scientists developed a high-performance hydrogen-production catalyst using lignin, a common waste product from paper and biorefinery processes. The nickel–iron oxide nanoparticles embedded in carbon fibers deliver fast kinetics, long-term durability, and low overpotential. Microscopy and modeling show that a tailored nanoscale interface drives the catalyst’s strong activity. The discovery points toward more sustainable and industrially scalable clean-energy materials.

Scientists have uncovered that some atoms in liquids don't move at all—even at extreme temperatures—and these anchored atoms dramatically alter the way materials freeze. Using advanced electron microscopy, researchers watched molten metal droplets solidify and found that stationary atoms can trap liquids in tiny “atomic corrals,” keeping them fluid far below their normal freezing point and giving rise to a strange hybrid state of matter.