Science

The Prudhoe ice dome disappeared during a warm period 7000 years ago. Global warming could cause similar temperatures by 2100, showing the Greenland ice sheet’s vulnerability

There is a strong relation between the size of a galaxy's black hole and the motion of stars in the galaxy's core, known as the M-sigma relation. It turns out this relation doesn't work well for galaxies with ultramassive black holes.

For years, we've thought of autism as lying on a spectrum, but emerging evidence suggests that it comes in several distinct types. The implications for how we support autistic people could be profound

A galaxy cluster in the early universe is 10 times hotter than it ought to be, which may reshape how we think these enormous structures formed

A person I know has, for the past year or more, been trying to convince me that Earth has been visited by UFOs, and that, indeed, some of those spacecraft have been captured along with the bodies of the piloting extraterrestrials. Her claim is that the bodies and the spaceships (presumably crashed) have been given to private companies by the government, and the craft are being reverse-engineered to suss out the technology behind the “UFOs”.  Further, the bodies of the pilots (bipedal like us, I’m told) are being examined to see what kind of life they represent.  As to why this is all being kept secret, I’m informed that there are important security considerations. But I’m not told which considerations are important enough to keep this  huge story secret.

I have read a lot of the information sent to me supposedly supporting this claim, and ultimately it all comes down to the assertions of one David Grusch, who relies on documents he can’t show people and hearsay that he can’t reveal given by others who supposedly have seen the extraterrestrials and their craft. It’s instructive to look up Grusch on Wikipedia, where you read stuff like this:

David Grusch is a former United States Air Force (USAF) officer and intelligence official who has claimed that the U.S. federal government, in collaboration with private aerospace companies, has highly secretive special access programs involved in the recovery and reverse engineering of “non-human” spacecraft and their dead pilots, and that people have been threatened and killed in order to conceal these programs. Grusch further claims to have viewed documents reporting a spacecraft of alien origin had been recovered by Benito Mussolini’s government in 1933 and procured by the U.S. in 1944 or 1945 with the assistance of the Vatican and the Five Eyes alliance.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have both denied Grusch’s claims, stating there are no such programs and that extraterrestrial life has yet to be discovered. No evidence supporting Grusch’s UFO claims has been presented and they have been dismissed by multiple, independent experts.

Grusch also appears in an infamous 2½-hour hearing by the House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs on “Unidentified and Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs”. I’ve put it below. The hearing starts at 18:00, several True Believers gives testimony, and Grusch first appears at 46:45 and also later (I have not listened to the whole thing today). Note that AOC is on the subcommittee.

More from Wikipedia, including about this hearing:

On June 5, 2023, independent journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal provided a story detailing Grusch’s claims of a UFO coverup by the government to The Debrief, a website that describes itself as “self-funded” and specializing in “frontier science”.  The New York Times and Politico declined to publish the story, while The Washington Post was taking more time to conduct fact-checking than Kean and Blumenthal felt could be afforded because, according to Kean, “people on the internet were spreading stories, Dave was getting harassing phone calls, and we felt the only way to protect him was to get the story out”.According to Kean, she vetted Grusch by interviewing Karl Nell, a retired Army colonel who was also on the UFO task force, and “Jonathan Grey” (a pseudonym) whom Kean described as “a current U.S. intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC)”. Kean wrote that Nell called Grusch “beyond reproach” and that both Nell and “Grey” supported Grusch’s claim about a secret UFO retrieval and reverse engineering program.

Grusch claims that the U.S. federal government maintains a highly secretive UFO retrieval program and possesses multiple spacecraft of what he calls “non-human” origin as well as corpses of deceased pilots. He also claims there is “substantive evidence that white-collar crime” took place to conceal UFO programs and that he had interviewed officials who said that people had been killed to conceal the programs.

Grusch elaborated on his claims in a subsequent interview with the French newspaper Le Parisien on June 7. He said that UFOs could be coming from extra dimensions; that he had spoken with intelligence officials whom the U.S. military had briefed on “football-field” sized crafts; that the U.S. government transferred some crashed UFOs to a defense contractor; and that there was “malevolent activity” by UFOs.

During a July 26, 2023, Congressional hearing, Grusch said that he “was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program to which I was denied access”and that he believed that the U.S. government was in possession of UAP based on his interviews with 40 witnesses over four years. He claimed in response to Congressional questions that the U.S. has retrieved what he terms “non-human ‘biologics'” from the crafts and that this “was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the [UAP] program I talked to, that are currently still on the program”.  When Representative Tim Burchett asked him if he had “personal knowledge of people who’ve been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal” the government’s possession of “extraterrestrial technology”, Grusch said yes, but that he was not able to provide details except within a SCIF (Sensitive compartmented information facility).

So it’s not just the government that knows this stuff, but private companies, who apparently retain for study the craft and jars of pickled aliens, or “biologics.” (It may be relevant that Grusch has a history of mental disorders, for which he’s been committed twice to institutions.)  At any rate, you can see above that not just Grusch, but also two other people who have had respectable military or government jobs, testify to the credibility of extraterrestrial craft.

The hearing itself, with all three witnesses swearing to tell the truth, has been presented to me as giving credibility of the witnesses’ stories. To me all that means is that three people believe in UFOs and extraterrestrials, and yet fail to present convincing evidence. I have no objections to a hearing, because if there were credible evidence of this stuff, the government would like to know about it. So would the rest of us, especially biologists and physicists.

Both the government and other experts who aren’t True Believers have heard the verbal evidence, but for some reason material evidence never surfaces. I’ll revert to Wikipedia for the last time:

Grusch’s assertions are primarily based on alleged documents and his claimed conversations, rather than testable evidence. Claims that the government is engaged in a conspiratorial effort to conceal evidence of extraterrestrial visitation to Earth are broadly considered untrue by the majority of the scientific community, because such claims oppose the best currently available expert information.

Joshua Semeter of NASA’s UAP independent study team and professor of electrical and computer engineering with Boston University’s College of Engineering concludes that “without data or material evidence, we are at an impasse on evaluating these claims” and that, “in the long history of claims of extraterrestrial visitors, it is this level of specificity that always seems to be missing”.  Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, published a critique of the Grusch claims on June 22 with Big Think. Frank writes that he does “not find these claims exciting at all” because they are all “just hearsay” where “a guy says he knows a guy who knows another guy who heard from a guy that the government has alien spaceships”.   [JAC: that’s an apt critique of the claims.] Frank also said of the Grusch account that “it’s an extraordinary claim, and it requires extraordinary evidence, none of which we’re getting”, adding “show me the spaceship”.

Where is the damn spaceship? Where are the bodies of the extraterrestrial pilots?

You can go down the rabbit hole of these claims for days, but all I’ll say is I will remain skeptical until genuine evidence comes to light—and by that I mean production of the “biologics” and their craft.  The failure of proponents to provide such evidence, which is always “kept elsewhere” and is “a secret matter of national security importance”, make me think that what we have here is true conspiracy theory. Again, reporters and skeptics should look at this evidence, but they’ve always come up with bupkes.

When I asked my friend why the greatest news story in the history of humanity has not been broken by mainstream news, I get answers involving extreme secrecy. But give me a break: there existed pickled aliens and spacecraft remains, and none of it has been verified by mainstream news outlets, not in decades? Smells like Pizzagate to me!

Finally, when I’m told that the very testimony of people with decent credentials proves that they’re correct, I respond with this: “Well, there are lots of people with decent credentials who said they have had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.” Plenty of Americans believe in the literal truth of the divine-Jesus story and have had Jesus Encounter Experiences, despite the lack of evidence—even historical, extra-Biblical evidence for a divine, crucified-and-resurrected Son of God.  These people far outnumber True Believers in UFOs. Should we then take their testimony about Jesus seriously?

I haven’t followed this controversy closely, and perhaps readers, or people like Michael Shermer, have something to say about it. But until I see those pickled aliens, I think it’s more parsimonious to think that their existence is about as likely as that of the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot.

I believe they’re supposed to look something like the picture below. If so, it would be a remarkable example of convergent evolution following two independent origins of life on two different planets.

Peacefyre, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

A study of 160 European famines between 1500 and 1800 shows that El Niño weather events led to the onset of some famines and extended the duration of others

A host of new science books are due to hit shelves in January, by authors including Claudia Hammond, Deborah Cohen and Daisy Fancourt

Ec0logist Susan Harrison from UC Davis answered my plea for photos, and her submission today, which is the last in the tank, happens to be her 100th contribution to this site.  Kudos to Dr. Harrison, though she still has a ways to go to match the site record of John Avise.

At any rate, please follow Susan and send in your good wildlife photos. Her text and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Black Rails on a King Tide

“…The size of a sparrow and nearly impossible to see without tremendous effort… Beware confusion… Typically rare even in proper habitat. Incredibly difficult to locate even when vocalizing within mere feet of an observer; stealthily dashes around at the base of dense grass like a ninja.”  — eBird

“One of the most elusive birds in an elusive family… infamously difficult to see…. In some places, bird clubs organize field trips that search specifically for them… during particularly high tides when water levels force these small birds to the edges of marshes.”     —  All About Birds  

“Epic flooding from king tides leaves Marin County roads under water, businesses damaged”  — ABC7 News, Jan. 2, 2026

The new year began for me with the self-imposed challenge of seeing a Black Rail, Laterallus jamaicensis.  Like many other birders, I’d only ever heard one, and even that had not been easy (it entailed kayaking to a delta island where one had been heard by a boat-borne birder). Two factors were in my favor in early 2026:  the near-record high tides of Jan. 2, and the company of conservation biologist Steve Beissinger, who knows all about Black Rails in California.

We spent the morning in China Camp State Park in Marin County, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, where shallow marshes of pickleweed (Salicornia pacifica) line the western edge of the Bay.  While Steve hadn’t studied Black Rails here, it’s a well-known place to seek them.

Over the course of 90 minutes, we watched as meandering streams and ponds swelled, water puddled on the road and then cascaded over it, and entire marshes disappeared as the shore migrated inland.   Joggers, cyclists, and drivers paused in confusion along the inundated pavement. We later learned this was the region’s highest tide since 1998.

Flooded main road of China Camp State Park:

After some exploring, Steve paused where a low, shrub-lined embankment beside the road offered rails a covered exit ramp from the water:

While we watched the waters rise, Snowy Egrets (Egretta thula) and Great Egrets (Ardea alba) avidly hunted for flood-displaced prey.  We hoped NOT to see a Black Rail in the beak of an egret!

Egrets, mainly Snowy:

Raptors including White-Tailed Kites (Elanus leucurus) took advantage of the hunting opportunity as well (although this particular rat-murderer was seen on my drive home).

White-tailed Kite:

Finally, we saw a rail fly in and dive under the Coyote Bushes (Baccharus pilularis) just in front of us.  It turned out to be a Virginia Rail (Rallus limicola), robin-sized and with a longer and more colorful beak than a Black Rail.

Virginia Rail:

But with further searching under these bushes, we found two tiny, dainty Black Rails, as well as a second Virginia Rail!   All four were foraging within the dense tangle of branches, undisturbed by their human admirers a few feet away. We were very fortunate indeed to get these closeup views.

Black Rails:

One Sora (Porzana carolina), a larger and more swimming-prone rail, circled nearby.

Sora:

Steve and the magic Coyote Bushes:

The US government is approving the drug leucovorin to address rising rates of autism, despite limited evidence that it works. This year, results from the largest trial yet should give more insight into its potential

Researchers at Google have used their Willow quantum computer to demonstrate that "quantum contextuality" may be a crucial ingredient for its computational prowess

arXiv:2512.15858v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Despite numerous search campaigns based on a diverse set of observational techniques, exomoons - prospective satellites of extrasolar planets - remain an elusive and hard-to-pin-down class of objects. Yet, the case for intensifying this search is compelling: as in the Solar System, moons can act as proxies for studying planet formation and evolution, provide direct clues as to the migration history of the planetary hosts and, in favourable cases...

Big hitter Peter F. Hamilton has a new sci-fi novel out this month – and Booker winner George Saunders ventures into speculative fiction with his latest book, Vigil

An analysis of several experiments aimed at detecting the mysterious neutrino has identified a hint of a crack in the standard model of particle physics

Wealthy tech bro turned antivax crank Steve Kirsch attacked Paul Offit for refusing to debate antivaxxers, while Dr. Mike was "surrounded" by MAHA stans. These recent events led me to revisit the question: Is it ever a good strategy to publicly debate cranks?

The post Revisiting the question of debating science deniers first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Scientists have found a way to see ultrafast molecular interactions inside liquids using an extreme laser technique once thought impossible for fluids. When they mixed nearly identical chemicals, one combination behaved strangely—producing less light and erasing a single harmonic signal altogether. Simulations revealed that a subtle molecular “handshake” was interfering with electron motion. The discovery shows that liquids can briefly organize in ways that dramatically change how electrons behave.

Tiny bits of Earth’s atmosphere have been drifting to the moon for billions of years, guided by Earth’s magnetic field. Rather than blocking particles, the magnetic field can funnel them along invisible lines that sometimes stretch all the way to the moon. This explains mysterious gases found in Apollo samples and suggests lunar soil may hold a long-term archive of Earth’s history. It could also become a valuable resource for future lunar explorers.

Inside high-energy proton collisions, quarks and gluons briefly form a dense, boiling state before cooling into ordinary particles. Researchers expected this transition to change how disordered the system is, but LHC data tell a different story. A newly improved collision model matches experiments better than older ones and reveals that the “entropy” remains unchanged throughout the process. This unexpected result turns out to be a direct fingerprint of quantum mechanics at work.

The first results on the iconic active galactic nucleus MCG–6-30-15 captured with the XRISM mission show the most precise signatures yet of its supermassive black hole’s extreme gravity and the outflows that shape its galaxy.

New research shows that AI doesn’t need endless training data to start acting more like a human brain. When researchers redesigned AI systems to better resemble biological brains, some models produced brain-like activity without any training at all. This challenges today’s data-hungry approach to AI development. The work suggests smarter design could dramatically speed up learning while slashing costs and energy use.

Researchers using China’s “artificial sun” fusion reactor have broken through a long-standing density barrier in fusion plasma. The experiment confirmed that plasma can remain stable even at extreme densities if its interaction with the reactor walls is carefully controlled. This finding removes a major obstacle that has slowed progress toward fusion ignition. The advance could help future fusion reactors produce more power.