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Readers give higher ratings to AI-generated poetry than the works of poets such as William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson – perhaps because they often have more straightforward themes and simpler structure

It is surely within the ambit of scientific journals to take stands on issues that affect the fields they cover, but endorsing political candidates is a dangerous matter. In 2020, for example, Nature endorsed Joe Biden for President (a first for them). It did not change the readers’ views of Biden, but it eroded the credibility of both the journal and science in general. This is according to a study by Floyd Zhang published in Nature Human Behavior, and is summarized in a later issue of Nature:

Overall, the study provides little evidence that the endorsement changed participants’ views of the candidates. However, showing the endorsement to people who supported Trump did significantly change their opinion of Nature. When compared with Trump supporters who viewed Nature’s formatting announcement, Trump supporters who viewed the endorsement rated Nature as significantly less well informed when it comes to “providing advice on science-related issues facing the society” (Fig. 1). Those who viewed the endorsement also rated Nature significantly lower as an unbiased source of information on contentious or divisive issues. There was no comparable positive effect for Biden supporters.

Zhang also found that viewing Nature’s political endorsement reduced Trump supporters’ willingness to obtain information about COVID-19 from Nature by 38%, when compared with Trump supporters who saw the formatting announcement. This finding echoes other work on how partisanship influences interest in scientific information5. Furthermore, Trump supporters who viewed the endorsement also rated US scientists, in general, as much less well informed and unbiased than did Trump supporters who viewed the formatting article. There was no comparable positive effect for Biden supporters.

This lesson was apparently lost on Nature‘s American competitor, Science, which (like the new Nature article below it), is calling for scientists to hold Trump to account on things like climate change, pandemics, and so on.  That’s fair enough, but then they politicize the whole thing by demonizing Trump from the outset, doing exactly the thing that will erode confidence in the journal and its pronouncements.

The article was written by Science‘s editor, Holden Thorp. He considers himself “progressive,” and has debated my partner in crime, Luana Maroja, on the role of politics in science (see also this video).  Thorp also devoted a column in his journal to criticizing a paper on which both Luana and I were coauthors, a paper on “In Defense of Merit in Science” by Abbot et al.

Click to read:

Here’s the way it starts, guaranteed to alienate Republicans:

The reelection of Donald Trump for a second, nonconsecutive term as US president—mirroring only Grover Cleveland’s 22nd and 24th presidencies after the Civil War—underscores a reality: Although his success stems partly from a willingness to tap into xenophobia, sexism, racism, transphobia, nationalism, and disregard for truth, his message resonates with a large portion of the American populace who feel alienated from America’s governmental, social, and economic institutions. These include science and higher education. Winning back this disaffected group will require science leaders to foster and promote a more inclusive scientific landscape for all Americans and lay out how science can be successful under Trump.

How willing will readers be to take these lessons to heart if they are Republicans? (Granted, most readers, who are budding scientists, will be Democrats, but then they don’t need these lessons.) Who wants to be implicitly told that they are xenophobes, racists, sexists, and nationalists?

And there’s a statement whose first part is tautological and the second part is debatable:

Make no mistake, the political assaults on science stem largely from those who seek to undermine the truth for political gain, and this dynamic is the major contributor to declining trust in science.

Some of the declining trust in science is also due to scientists’ changing their views, as during the COVID crisis, but much of that was simply due to the acquisition of new information and is not the fault of scientists. We are supposed to change our minds when new data undercuts our previous stands. But that erosion is not due to scientists “undermining the truth for political gain”. There is no mention of Nature’s contribution to declining trust in science by simply endorsing a candidate in 2020.  Other erosion of trust occurs when scientists or journals make statements like “human biological sex is a spectrum,” something that is flatly wrong and contradicts what people already know.

The article above, then, is not only bound to do precisely what it’s decrying—eroding trust in science by politicizing it—but is also disingenuous by neglecting the causes of distrust in science that come from progressive politics, as well as from the infusion of politics in science.

The rest of the article is anodyne, urging scientists to change their minds when they’re wrong, not to engage in falsifying results (duh!), and not to blame “their students and postdocs for problems” (duh again!).  The article ends by taking another swipe at an administration that hasn’t yet begun:

The attacks [on science] are going to keep coming and probably accelerate for the next 4 years. As painful as that will be, it’s up to the scientific community to respond in a way that makes those blows less successful.

The “four years” implies that the Trump administration will be bad for science. That may well be true, but we don’t know yet! Here we have journals playing Chicken Little.

Nature, already stung by its endorsement of Biden in 2020, didn’t endorse anyone in the last election, but might as well have endorsed Biden if you read this article. The piece also contains a survey showing that nearly 40% of  Nature readers in the U.S. would consider moving out of the country if Trump won. I wonder how many actually will move?

At any rate, the new Nature article below also evinces fear of the Trump administration, but does so in a fear-mongering way that I wouldn’t employ were I editor. It also gives anodyne advice. But it’s not as bad as the Science article:

A few excerpts:

When Donald Trump was first elected to the US presidency in 2016, Nature advised scientists to constructively engage with Trump. We said that the incoming president’s contrary approach to evidence, among other things, had no place in modern society. We added that the science community had a responsibility to step up and work with the president and his new administration so that they govern on the basis of research and evidence.

. . .The United States has now re-elected Donald Trump as president. Many researchers have told Nature that they are in despair, seeing the election result as a step backwards for facts, reason, knowledge and civility.

Last week, Nature said that the United States needs a leader who respects evidence. The incoming administration must embody this principle. On behalf of the research community, we will hold it to account if it falls short.

We hope that the incoming administration will govern in the best interests of the United States. That means holding on to the best of what the previous administration did, and not returning to some of the policies of the first Trump presidency.

Is it journalism to cite the “many scientists who are in despair” without mentioning that some scientists (granted, a minority, given our political leanings) are happy?  This is a slanted take.

The article then calls out the Trump administration (properly) for its weakness on recignizing climate change and for threatening to defund the World Health Organization.  But then it becomes anodyne like the Science article above, and ends on a lame note:

The research community must engage with the new administration with courage, tenacity, strength and unity. At the same time, scientists in the United States must know that they are not alone. The research community is a global one. We need to stand together and stand strong for the challenges that are to come. And that will mean continuing to speak facts to power.

“Stand together” clearly means “stand together against the Trump administration,” and I think that’s obvious to any reader with eyes.

Readers here know that I abhor Trump, but even more than that I abhor the ideological erosion of my beloved science. In four years Trump will be gone (hopefully to be replaced by someone who’s not mentally ill), but any damage done to the reputation of science by journals rushing to take sides will last a lot longer.

With the help of a ruby cube and two laser beams, researchers made one ray of light cast a shadow when illuminated by the other

Despite the fact that our universe is old, cold, and well past its prime, it’s not done making new galaxies yet.

Galaxy formation first got started when our universe was only a few hundred million years old. In those dark ages the first stars gathered enough material to trigger nuclear fusion and ignite. Slowly over time those clumps of stars found each other and began to build the first young protogalaxies. 

Over time those protogalaxies accumulated more material and merged together to quickly grow to become the massive galaxies that sprinkle throughout the universe today.

But galaxies are more than clumps of stars and gas. They are also deep wells of dark matter, which is the invisible substance that makes up the most of the mass of every object in the universe. To make a galaxy you really start with an accumulation of dark matter. That forms the gravitational bedrock for normal matter to gather onto and start forming stars.

The accumulation of dark matter really only happened in the very early universe, and long ago shut off. But those concentrations of dark matter remain today. Evidence from simulations and observations tells us that normal matter is still finding those pockets and triggering fresh rounds of star formation. That means while the seeds of galaxies were only laid down once, new accumulations of matter are still lighting up in the present day cosmos.

It is true that we are well past the peak of star formation and the heyday of galaxy assembly. That epoch came and went over 10 billion years ago. And far into the future our universe will expand so much that this process will slow down and eventually stop. But the universe isn’t done yet. For now, we can still enjoy a universe full of galaxies and knowing that new ones are still coming on the scene.

The post Yes, Virginia, The Universe is Still Making Galaxies appeared first on Universe Today.

Send in your good photos, please, as every day the tank gets lower.

But today we have a text-plus-photo essay by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior on one of his favorite subjects: plant pollination. Athayde’s comments are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair: hover through the fog and filthy air (The Weird Sisters)

Most angiosperms (flowering plants) need an agent to move pollen from one flower to another. This service could be provided by the wind, water, bats, birds, or, for the overwhelming majority of cases, insects. But a plant must advertise itself to attract visitors to its flowers. Visual traits such as colour, shape and size are effective lures, but for short distances only because most pollinating insects see as well as Mr Magoo: their visual acuity ranges from centimetres to a few metres, at best. A red flower must have a diameter of at least 26 cm to be recognised by a honey bee (Apis mellifera) 1 m away (Chittka & Raine, 2006). Insects’ vision is mediocre during daytime and goes down to irrelevant at night, except for a few specialised nocturnal species. Other sensory signals such as temperature, texture and even electrical fields are involved in flower recognition. But to attract insects from afar, plants rely on scent.

The majority of flowering plants produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a group of organic chemicals (that is, they all contain carbon) that quickly evaporate and disperse in the air. VOCs can act as herbivore deterrents, but a huge variety of them attract pollinators. These volatiles, released by petals or other plant tissues, persist long enough to reach insects and guide them to the flowers, but not for too long so that they don’t accumulate in the air and overwhelm insects’ sensorial capacity. Most of the attractant VOCs are ‘flowery’ scents such as benzyl acetone, which is one of the most abundant aromatic lures in flowers. You are likely to have smelled it from raspberries, cocoa butter, soaps and perfumes.

Ladies making potpourri, a source of benzyl acetone © Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911), Wikimedia Commons:

Pollinators are experts in detecting particular compounds from odour blends. And crucially for the pollination angle, they learn to associate specific fragrances with food, so they return repeatedly to its flowery source.

Tracking VOCs seems like a convenient and efficient way to get to pollen and nectar, but there are complexities involved. Scents released by a flower do not travel in a straight line the way light and sounds do. Air turbulence disperses, dilutes and mixes compounds, so that an odour plume is not a well-defined strand of airborne chemicals. And yet, pollinators manage to sort out the chaotic environs and make a run for the smell’s origin. Watch fruit flies navigating confidently through a turbulent atmosphere.

Top: a section of an odour plume, where the shaded area is the projection of an average conical plume. Crosswind transport and odour concentration decrease rapidly outside the cone. Bottom: a two-dimensional section of two blending plumes © Celani et al., 2014:

We don’t have a complete understanding of the ways pollinators track scents to find flowers, but we do know that the presence of certain compounds, their ratios in volatile blends, and the magnitude of the olfactory signal are important. The processes involved are complex, specific, and vulnerable to disturbances. Such as those created by a diesel-guzzling SUV driven to the farmers’ market for the purchase of locally grown organic carrots.

The engine invented by Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913) is the most fuel-efficient internal combustion engine because it converts more heat to mechanical work than any of its alternatives. It is also reliable and sturdy, so it was quickly adopted by industry, agriculture and transport to become the main source of power that keeps the world going. The diesel engine largely did away with coal and revolutionised the world’s economy by generating power efficiently and inexpensively. But its allure suffered a serious blow in the 2010s, when the first studies about its collateral effects came to light.

The combustion (burning) of diesel fuel results in a complex mixture of water, gases and aerosols. Study after study have shown that some of these by-products such as particulate matter (soot), nitric oxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx), are serious health hazards. They cause all sorts of ailments, from lung inflammation to exacerbation of emphysema and asthma. The World Health Organisation considers diesel exhausts carcinogenic agents as dangerous as asbestos. As if this evil cocktail wasn’t bad enough, it also promotes the formation of other harmful compounds such as ozone (O3). In the upper atmosphere, this gas is essential for life on Earth because it blocks most of the ultraviolet radiation from the sun. At ground level, ozone is a pollutant resulting from chemical reactions between NOx and VOCs in the presence of sunlight. These ground level VOCs have nothing to do with plants; rather, they come from solvents, biomass burning, industrial processes and, most importantly, incomplete fuel combustion.

Formation of ground level ozone © DANMUSISI, Wikimedia Commons:

Ozone is bad for us and bad for insects. It degrades plant-emitted VOCs and changes the ratios of compounds in a scent blend. As a result, pollinators detect VOCs at shorter distances, become confused, or worse: they may no longer recognise flowers’ chemical signals (Farré-Armengol et al., 2015). In a laboratory setting, adding ozone at concentrations commonly found in rural areas to the scent produced by the jasmine tobacco (Nicotiana alata) disrupted the attraction of one of its main flower visitors, the tobacco hawkmoth (Manduca sexta) (Cook et al., 2020).

Effect of ozone pollution © Langford et al., 2023:

The pale evening primrose (Oenothera pallida) grows in sandy and rocky habitats in the arid regions of northern Mexico and western USA. Its flowers release a scent loaded with monoterpenes, a class of chemicals found in various herbs, spices, conifers and fruits. Monoterpenes attract several visitors including the tobacco hawkmoth and the white-lined sphinx (Hyles lineata), which are two of the plant’s main pollinators. These moths have a keen sense of smell and can track pale evening primrose flowers from several kilometres away. But this plant-moth interaction can be severely disrupted by the nitrate radical NO3, a gas resulting from the reaction of ozone with NO2, the latter spewed by wildfires, power plants and diesel engines. Monoterpenes break down quickly in the presence of NO3, drastically reducing the reach of olfactory cues that moths rely on to locate flowers. In wind tunnel experiments, nocturnal levels of NO3 typically found in urban settings caused a 70% drop in number of flower visitations, resulting in a 28% reduction in fruit set (Chan et al., 2024). Sunlight degrades NO3, so this chemical is primarily a nighttime pollutant – bad news for moths and other nocturnal pollinators.

A white-lined sphinx visiting a pale evening primrose flower © Ron Wolf, US National Science Foundation:

Image of hawkmoth (Hyles lineata) pollinating Oenothera flower. Researchers at the University of Washington found that nitrate radicals (NO3) in the air degrade the scent chemicals released by a common wildflower, drastically reducing the scent-based cues that nighttime pollinators rely on to locate the flower.

With the industrial revolution, urban spaces became choked with foul air. People in charge slowly woke up to the problem, and today many countries drastically reduced atmospheric pollution thanks to ever improving filtration technologies and strict regulations. Despite these advances, diesel exhaust and other emissions remain major environmental problems, particularly in countries undergoing rapid economic growth such as China and India.

Global emissions of NOx, particulate matter with a diameter of 10 μm or less (PM10), ammonia (NH3) and global exposure to tropospheric O3. Tg: teragrams, ppb: parts per billion © Duque & Steffan-Dewenter, 2024:

The progressive deterioration of worldwide air quality is a serious threat to human health and certainly doesn’t bode well for plant reproduction, although the magnitude of this effect can only be guessed at. We already knew that clean air is vital for our eyes and lungs: more and more evidence tell us that it is also important to pollination services.

Haze over London caused by air pollution. Bad for us and for pollinators © shirokazan, Wikimedia Commons:

The New Zealand Astrophotography Competition showcases and recognizes some of the most stunning images of the southern hemisphere’s night sky. This year, photographers from across New Zealand have captured some incredibly breathtaking skyscapes such as amazing auroras, stunning images of our Solar System, and deep-sky marvels.

Universe Today was proud to be part of this year’s competition, as our own Fraser Cain was one of the judges.

The overall winner in the competition is a gorgeous view of the Aurora Australis, above, by photographer Tom Rae. Rae said he captured this image during the “once in a lifetime” geomagnetic storm in May of 2024, showing the Milky Way arching over the dramatic landscape of Aoraki Mount Cook National Park. This image also won the “Aurora” category.

The other categories in the competition include Deep Sky, Solar System, Dark-Sky Places, Timelapse, and new this year are Smartphone Images and a People’s Choice Award, chosen by the public.

There’s also a Nightscape category, and the winner –again — for this category is Tom Rae, showing the bowed Milky Way over a sharp ridge in Aoraki Mount Cook National Park.

“The Ridge” by Tom Rae, winner of the Artistic/Nightscape category of the 2024 New Zealand Astrophotography Competition. Credit and copyright: Tom Rae.

“This image is one of my biggest astrophotography accomplishments to date,” Rae explained on NZ Astrophotography Competition website, “and the largest panorama I’ve ever captured, with the full resolution image containing over a billion pixels from 62 images stitched together.”

Deep Sky “First Amateur Detection of Light Echoes from 19th-Century Great Eruption of Eta Carinae” by Rolf Wahl Olsen in the Deep Sky category of the 2024 New Zealand Astrophotography Competition. Credit and copyright: Rolf Wahl Olsen.

NZ astrophotographer Rolf Wahl Olsen is no stranger to Universe Today readers, as we’ve featured several of his photos for years. Olsen outdid himself with this deep sky photo of Eta Carinae.

“This is the first amateur image of light echoes from the 19th-century Great Eruption of Eta Carinae,” Olsen explained. “These light echoes have been detected by the Hubble Space Telescope and from large observatories such as the CTIO 4m telescope, but this is the first time that amateur images reveal these transient features.

Olson said his other first amateur detection of light echoes from supernova SN1987a inspired an attempt to try looking for the fainter echoes near Eta Carinae. You can read more about this effort on the NZ Astrophotography website and also at Olsen’s website.

Solar System “Solar Fury” by Navaneeth Unnikrishnan won the Solar System Category of the 2024 New Zealand Astrophotgraphy Competition. Credit and copyright: Navaneeth Unnikrishnan.

Navaneeth Unnikrishnan captured this stunning view of the full disk of the Sun. Using an H-alpha filter reveals the Sun’s dynamic surface and massive prominences. “A reminder of the incredible power and beauty just beyond our skies,” said Unnikrishnan.

Dark Sky “Endurance” by Abby Keith won the Dark Sky Places category of the 2024 New Zealand Astrophotgraphy Competition. Credit and copyright: Abby Keith.

Abby Keith captured this stunning dark sky photo while on a five-day hike in New Zealand’s in Fiordland National Park. The view shows Lake Mackenzie, a sub-alpine lake on the Routeburn Track, which is one of New Zealand’s Great Walks.  

This panoramic image consists of 16 images for the foreground and 38 images for the sky.

“This image is the hardest one I’ve had to work for,” Keith explained. Carrying a 20-plus kg pack was worth it, however, as there were perfect conditions to capture this view.

Smartphone “Lake Aviemore aurora” by Ian Griffin won the Smartphone category in the 2024 New Zealand Astrophotgraphy Competition. Credit and copyright: Iam Griffin.

This image was was also taken during the famous geomagnetic storm of May 12, 2024. Griffin called it “one of the most epic auroral storms I have ever seen. As my main digital cameras snapped away, I decided to see what my Iphone could do; I was blown away by the results!”

So are we! For more great astrophotos, check out Griffin’s website.

People’s Choice “Father and Son Magic” by Grant Birley won the People’s Choice Award in the 2024 New Zealand Astrophotgraphy Competition. Credit and copyright: Grant Birley.

New this year for this competition is the People’s Choice Award, where after short-list winners were announced, online voting was opened for the public to choose their favorite images. This beautiful and heartfelt image is definitely worthy of being a favorite. You can see more of Birley’s images on Instagram.

Timelapse

This breathtaking timelapse shows mountains rotating against the backdrop of the stars, instead of the usual view of the stars moving. This work was submitted by Last Quarter Photography on YouTube.

You can see all the winners, runners-up and highly commended images and videos at the NZ Astrophotography Competition website.

New Zealand Astrophotography Competition This is New Zealand’s leading annual astrophotography competition and it is run jointly by the Royal Astronomy Society of New Zealand (RASNZ) and the Auckland Astronomical Society. Along with Fraser Cain, the other judges this year were Judy Schmidt  — another name well-known to Universe Today readers for her imaging editing and cosmic creativity, and Dylan O’Donnell who operates the YouTube channel “Star Stuff.” 

Below is a video of all the short-list entries from this year’s competition.

The post Our Breathtaking Cosmos: New Zealand Astrophotography Winners Announced appeared first on Universe Today.

At the centre of most galaxies are supermassive black holes. When they are ‘feeding’ they blast out jets of material with associated radiation that can outshine the rest of the galaxy. These are known as quasars and they are usually found in regions where huge quantities of gas exist. However, a recent study found a higher than expected number of quasars that are alone in the Universe. These loners are not surrounded by galaxies nor a supply of gas. The question therefore remains, how are they shining so brightly. 

A quasar or ‘quasi-stellar’ object as they are more formally known are among the most powerful and energetic objects in the Universe. They are usually powered by a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy. Matter gets drawn toward the black hole by gravity and as it does, it spirals in forming an accretion disk. It is here that friction and gravitational forces heat material to extremely high temperatures emitting intense light and radiation that can outshine the light from all the stars in the galaxy put together. 

This is an artist’s illustration of a supermassive black hole that is inside the dust-shrouded core of a vigorously star-forming “starburst” galaxy. It will eventually become an extremely bright quasar once the dust is gone. New research shows that the object, discovered in a Hubble deep-sky survey, could be the evolutionary “missing link” between quasars and starburst galaxies. The dusty black hole dates back to only 750 million years after the big bang. NASA, ESA, N. Bartmann

The team of astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to explore 5 distant ancient quasars. They are thought to have formed between 600 and 700 million years after the Big Bang and are a billion times more massive than the Sun. They punt out so much energy that they are more than a trillion times brighter than our local star! 

The objects are 13 billion light years away but due to their extreme luminosity their light can be detected across the cosmos. The real surprise though is that they have been found in an unexpected variety of different environments. The ‘quasar fields’ as they are known include areas of space  crowded with galaxies as the models forecast. The others though seem to be isolated, drifting through space with only a few stray galaxies nearby. 

Using the James Webb Space Telescope between August 2022 and June 2023 multiple images were taken of each quasar field to produce a mosaic. The images were captured in multiple wavelengths and were stitched together provided a complete picture of the region of space around each quasar. Using this approach, the team could determine if the light was from a neighbouring galaxy or from the central quasar. 

Artist impression of the James Webb Space Telescope

The discovery flies in the face of quasar models that usually places them in host galaxies with a plentiful supply of gas and dust to keep them fed. Finding quasars floating in voids has left astronomers scratching their heads to understand and modify the theories. It is of course possible the host galaxies are just not visible, perhaps they are just shrouded by dust. 

When the quasars formed, the Universe would have been full of filaments of dark matter. The presence of the matter would attract gas and dust through gravitational interactions. It is from this material that the studied quasars would have formed. However the curiosity is that they would have had to grow at an incredible rate through accretion to achieve the luminosity seen just a few hundred years after the Big Bang. Further observations are needed of the quasar fields to try and identify the true nature of the area they exist within to truly understand their nature. 

Source : Astronomers detect ancient lonely quasars with murky origins

The post Why are Some Quasars So Lonely? appeared first on Universe Today.

Driverless cars can now do doughnuts and drift like stunt drivers, skidding sideways around corners while maintaining control, which might help the cars recover from dangerous situations

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing for the sixth test flight of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket. It aims to conduct the launch as early as 18 November. Here’s everything we know so far

An 11-page document that’s attributed to a Pentagon whistleblower has provided new cases in the controversy over unidentified anomalous phenomena — also known as UAPs, unidentified flying objects or UFOs.

The document, released today in conjunction with a House subcommittee hearing on UAPs, lays out details about what’s said to be a special access program called Immaculate Constellation. It accuses officials in the federal government’s executive branch of a “criminal conspiracy” that has been managing issues surrounding UAPs and evidence for non-human intelligence “without congressional knowledge, oversight or authorization for some time, quite possibly decades.”

Over the past few years, the Department of Defense has become more open to discussing UAP reports publicly, while insisting that there have been no substantiated reports of alien visitations. During today’s hearing, lawmakers called on the Pentagon to be more transparent in its investigations.

“It is clear, from my experience and what I’ve seen, that there is something out there,” said Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn. “The question is, is it ours? Is it someone else’s? Or is it otherworldly? … We must know, and anyone who prevents us from gaining access to that information, I would consider that criminality, because we have U.S. personnel who may very well be in harm’s way.”

The document claims that the Immaculate Constellation program has imagery and other data relating to encounters with a variety of anomalous objects. “From 1991 to 2022, the most common UAP shapes reported in this [U.S. government] dataset were spheres/orbs, discs/saucers, ovals/tic-tacs, triangles, boomerang/arrowhead, and irregular/organic,” it said. The irregular objects were described as having a “floating brain” or “jellyfish” appearance.

Michael Shellenberger, an author and journalist who received the document from the purported whistleblower, said he verified the source’s credentials and assured lawmakers that the document was authentic. He also said he’s continuing to gather reports from other sources.

“Since my reporting on this Immaculate Constellation last month, another source came forward,” Shellenberger said. “He told me that they saw a roughly 13-minute-long, high-definition, full-color video of a white orb UAP coming out of the ocean approximately 20 miles off the coast of Kuwait. It was filmed from a helicopter. Then halfway through the video, the person said, the orb is joined by another orb that briefly comes into the frame from the left before rapidly moving again out of the frame.”

Shellenberger said there may be “hundreds, maybe thousands” of UAP reports in the Immaculate Constellation database.

Mick West, a retired software engineer who specializes in analyzing UAP reports, was generally skeptical of the claims made during the hearing, which was conducted jointly by two subcommittees under the aegis of the House Oversight Committee. Nevertheless, West was intrigued by the purported whistleblower report — and said the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, should follow up.

“The UFO document discussed in congressional testimony today contains descriptions of some interesting-sounding videos,” West said in a posting to the X social-media platform. “If these exist, I urge @DoD_AARO to make as many of these videos public as possible and share their analysis so we can get some clarity ASAP.”

In addition to Shellenberger, the witnesses at today’s hearing included retired Navy Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, who served as the acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the Trump administration; Luis Elizondo, a former intelligence official who is now an advocate for UAP disclosure; and Mike Gold, a former NASA associate administrator who was a member of NASA’s independent UAP study panel and is now chief growth officer at Redwire.

Witnesses at the UAP hearing included, from left, Tim Gallaudet, Luis Elizondo, Michael Shellenberger and Mike Gold. (Credit: House Oversight Committee via YouTube)

In advance of the hearing, Gallaudet came in for some strong criticism from Sean Kirkpatrick, who was in charge of AARO in 2022-2023 and is now chief technology officer for defense and intelligence programs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. “Mr. Gallaudet is clearly still bitter that I didn’t hire him into AARO when he came looking for a job,” Kirkpatrick said in a statement distributed on X. “His predisposed tendencies for conspiracies without evidence made him unsuitable for a job that required objectivity and evidence-based reason.”

Kirkpatrick and others involved in the UAP debate have suggested that the likeliest explanations for anomalous aerial sighting have to do with advanced technologies that are being secretly employed by rival nations, including Russia and China. But questions about potential alien intrusions, secret crash retrievals and exotic technologies repeatedly came up during the hearing.

In response to such questions, Gallaudet said he believed some of the reports about UAPs could be attributed to non-human higher intelligence. Elizondo agreed. “Although much of my government work on the UAP subject still remains classified, excessive secrecy has led to grave misdeeds against loyal civil servants, military personnel and the public — all to hide the fact that we are not alone in the cosmos,” Elizondo said.

In contrast, Gold declined to weigh in definitively on questions about extraterrestrials. “I just don’t know,” he said. “I think we must be modest in our assumptions that we’re looking for intelligence that could be biological. It might not.”

For example, Gold said, some UAPs may be controlled by artificial intelligence. “We assume that all intelligence would be like us, and every time we look out in the universe, we are humbled relative to what we don’t know, in terms of the forms of intelligence and what it may take,” he said. “l probably can’t answer your question, but I think the ultimate answer is going to surprise us all.”

The witnesses and the lawmakers seemed unanimous in their support for greater transparency about UAP sightings. Congress is currently considering legislation that would strengthen current requirements for UAP disclosure and whistleblower protection.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., hinted that more information may be forthcoming when Donald Trump returns to the White House. “This has been bipartisan, bicameral,” Moskowitz said. “As we get into a new administration, the president-elect has talked about opportunities to declassify information on UAPs, and I hope he lives up to that promise.”

The post Congressional Hearing Fuels Fresh Debate About UFOs appeared first on Universe Today.

One of the most challenging aspects of astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is anticipating what life and extraterrestrial civilizations will look like. Invariably, we have only one example of a planet that supports life (Earth) and one example of a technologically advanced civilization (humanity) upon which to base our theories. As for more advanced civilizations, which statistically seems more likely, scientists are limited to projections of our own development. However, these same projections offer constraints on what SETI researchers should search for and provide hints about our future development.

In a series of papers led by the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science (BMSIS), a team of researchers examines what Earth’s level of technological development (aka. “technosphere”) will look like in the future. In the most recent installment, they offer a reinterpretation of the Kardashev Scale, which suggests that civilizations expand to harness greater levels of energy (planet, host star, and galaxy). Instead, they suggest that the Kardashev Scale establishes upper limits on the amount of stellar energy a civilization can harness (a “luminosity limit”) and that civilizations might circumvent this by harnessing stellar mass directly.

As with the previous study in this series, the research was led by Jacob Haqq-Misra, the Senior Research Investigator at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. He was joined by George Profitiliotis, an Affiliate Research Scientist at the BMSIS and a Research Member of the Working Group on SETI and Law at the International Institute of Space Law (IISL), and Clement Vidalb, a researcher with the Center Leo Apostel (CLEO) at the Free University of Brussels. The paper “Projections of Earth’s Technosphere: Luminosity and Mass as Limits to Growth” is being reviewed for publication in Acta Astronautica.

Energy consumption estimated in three types of civilizations defined by the Kardashev Scale. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Kardashev Scale, named after Soviet-Russian astrophysicist and radio astronomer Nikolai Kardashev (1932 – 2019), was first proposed in his seminal paper, “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations,” released in 1964. In it, Kardashev suggested what types of radio frequencies (and at what energies) scientists should search for to discern possible transmissions of an extraterrestrial civilization (ETC). In keeping with the idea that there may be civilizations billions of years older than humanity, he reasoned that these civilizations could harness levels of energy beyond human capabilities.

To characterize the level of an ETC’s development, Kardashev proposed a three-level scale based on the amount of energy they could harness. This included:

• Type I – Planetary Civilizations: ETCs that have developed the means to harness and store all of their home planet’s energy, an estimated 4×1019 erg/sec.
• Type II – Stellar Civilizations: ETCs that have evolved to the point where they can harvest all the energy emitted by their star – 4×10³³ erg/sec.
• Type III – Galactic Civilizations: ETCs able to harness the energy of an entire galaxy – 4×1044 erg/sec.

However, this scale reflected the assumption that civilizations and their energy needs will grow exponentially. This is in keeping with observations of humanity’s own “technosphere,” which refers to the human-made infrastructure, machinery, communications, and other indications of technological activity (aka “technosignatures”). Basically, it reflects our limited perspective when it comes to the kinds of behaviors advanced ETCs would exhibit. As Haqq-Misra told Universe Today via email:

“Earth is our only known example of a planet with technology, so the search for extraterrestrial civilizations must begin by thinking about how to search for analogs to Earth’s technosignatures today and possible technosignatures that could arise in Earth’s future. We should also try to stretch our minds to consider other, non-terrestrial, and more exotic possibilities, but even such imaginative possibilities will always either begin with (or contrast with) what we know is possible based on existing or known physics on Earth.”

Artist’s impression of a Dyson Sphere, a proposed alien megastructure that is the target of SETI surveys. Finding one of these qualifies in a “first contact” scenario. Credit: Breakthrough Listen/Danielle Futselaar

Traditional applications of the Kardashev Scale predict that growth will be exponential and have even considered how this could give rise to a civilization capable of utilizing the energy output of all stars in the Universe – a Type IV Cosmic Civilization! This application has motivated many searches for civilizations that have reached these scales of vast energy utilization, as indicated by megastructures (e.g., Dyson Spheres, Clarke Bands, etc.) and other advanced technospheres. For their study, Haqq-Misra and his colleagues took a different approach:

“Our study re-examines these assumptions by noting that civilizations can follow different trajectories for their expansion in space and their energy consumption. This involves tradeoffs between ‘exploration’ and ‘exploitation,’ and there are many possibilities for how a civilization might develop along these two dimensions. Some civilizations may prioritize exploration in physical distance without ever needing to expand their energy consumption to Kardashev Type I or Type II scales. Other civilizations may focus on exploitation and increase their energy use more locally. Some civilizations may attempt to find an optimal balance between exploration and exploitation.

“We also point out that the Kardashev scale is better considered as a theoretical limit to a civilization that utilizes stellar energy (luminosity). Rather than describing a trajectory that advanced civilizations will follow, the Kardashev scale is the uppermost limit for a civilization’s energy use, as it relates to expansion in physical distance, but a limit that may never actually be achieved due to thermodynamic efficiency limits. In other words, the Kardashev scale describes an upper-limit to the tradeoffs between exploration and exploitation, and a civilization that is dependent on stellar luminosity for its energy needs will always fall below the energetic and spatial limits described by the Kardashev scale.”

The scenario Haqq-Misra and his colleagues proposed presents some new and interesting possibilities for advanced civilizations. For example, suppose humanity ever reaches the limit of how much energy it can harness from our Sun. In that case, it may not choose to explore and settle other star systems (with the intent of harnessing the energy of more planets and more stars). Instead, they may turn to harvesting stellar mass itself.

Illustration of a white dwarf accreting mass by stripping its non-degenerate companion. Credit: ESO/Kornmesser

“Civilizations like this that consume stars, which we call ‘stellivores,’ would be able to expand in energy use beyond the luminosity limits of the Kardashev scale,” said Haqq-Misra. “We are not at this level as a civilization on Earth yet, but we can at least think about the possibility that harvesting mass and converting it into energy (as Einstein’s famous equation describes) provides a way for a civilization to reach energy use scales beyond those envisioned by the Kardashev scale.”

Like all projections on humanity’s future development, this study also has implications for future SETI surveys. This is in keeping with the assumption that ETCs in our galaxy would be older and more advanced than humanity at this point. It’s also consistent with the principle that “if we can conceive of it, someone else has probably done it already.” As Haqq-Misra explained, future SETI surveys should examine “accreting binaries,” closely orbiting binary stars with mass flowing from one star to another.

Maqq-Misra and his colleagues recommend that scientists observe accreting binaries to search for abnormal behavior, which could indicate technological activity:

“If some civilizations actually do evolve into stellivores, then some of these may look like such accreting binary star systems. We cannot claim that all, or even most, accreting binaries are actually technological civilizations, but we also cannot rule out the possibility that some of them could in fact be technological. It is worth keeping our minds open and actually searching for such evidence of advanced and exotic civilizations rather than ruling them out before we look.”

Further Reading: arXiv

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Researchers have developed an innovative electrochemical reactor to extract lithium from natural brine solutions, offering a promising approach to address the growing demand for lithium used in rechargeable batteries.

Mobile phones could be the key to a cheaper and more reliable way of tracking animals for ecology and conservation research, according to a new study.

Wastewater injection resulting from oil and gas production in Oklahoma caused a dramatic rise in seismic activity in the state between 2009 and 2015. But regulatory efforts to backfill some injection wells with cement and reduce injection volumes have been effective in lowering the state's induced earthquake rate, according to a new study.

The mega-coral measures 34 metres by 32 metres – making it larger than a blue whale – and it is thought to be three centuries old

Navigating the harsh terrain of other rocky worlds has consistently been challenging. The Free Spirit campaign unfortunately failed in its goal to will the plucky Martian rover out of the morass it found itself in, despite two years of continual effort from some of the world’s best engineers. To combat this difficulty, other engineers have turned to alternative propulsion methods, and a team of researchers in the EU have done just that for their work on an autonomous mining robot. They decided to use an Archimedes screw as their primary propulsion method.

The team has already successfully tested various prototype iterations of their miniaturized mining robot. More recently have released a paper that detailed a mobility platform based on four individually controlled Archimedes screws that could be useful for more than just mining underground.

As with most engineering projects, they started with a computer model, which resulted in a CAD model that the team tested on different terrain. They weren’t the first ones to think of using an Archimedes screw as a driving mechanism. Existing research has pointed out that it is not the most efficient on some terrains. However, it can navigate almost all terrains to at least some degree.

The work described in the paper was part of the ROBOMINERS project, supported by the EU.
Credit – ROBOMINERS YouTube Channel

Kinematics models are critical to the development of any robot, and one with a relatively obscure propulsion system is no exception. Since Archimedes screws can be modeled from any observational angle, coordinating the operation of each of the four independent screws to align correctly to the desired direction required some complex modeling that was eventually hosted as part of the control algorithm on board a computer seated on top of the mobile platform.

Another part of the control algorithm required the robot to understand how it was orientated, and to do that, the team developed an integrated network of sensors. These ranged from time of flight positioning systems, which allowed the robot to gauge the distance to an object, to force sensors on the screws themselves that would ensure they wouldn’t over-torque and burn out their drive motors.

Once the sensors were selected and the preliminary control code was written, it was time to put it to a real environmental test. The team built a physical prototype, partly out of 3D-printed parts, and set about moving it about on various surfaces. The drive system worked well on snow, sand, frozen ground, and mud. However, it was mainly used to traverse level surfaces rather than the more complicated slopes that it might encounter in some environments, such as Mars. 

Fraser discusses how we might use robots to explore the Moon.

That is not to say the system cannot adapt to slopes – just that there is more work to be done. ROBOMINERS, the EU project focused on building an autonomous mining robot, is looking to complete its final prototype soon, and the results of the drive platform testing shown in this latest paper will help contribute to that. Someday, it might contribute to a similar robot on the moon or Mars.

Learn More:
Gkliva et al – A Multi-Terrain Robot Prototype With Archimedean Screw Actuators: Design, Realization, Modeling, and Control
UT – NASA Tests a Robotic Snake That Could Explore Other Worlds
UT – Snake Rovers Might be the Best Way to Explore the Surface and Tunnels on Mars
UT – NASA Redoubling Efforts to Contact Spirit

Lead Image:
Prototype of the screw-driven robot on leafy ground.
Credit – Gkliva et al.

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Mars has been a fascination to us for centuries. Early observations falsely gave impressions of an intelligent civilisation but early visiting probes revealed a stark, desolate world. Underneath the surface is a few metres of water ice and a recent study by NASA suggests sunlight could reach the layer. If it does, it may allow photosynthesis in the meltwater. On Earth this actually happened and biologists have found similar pools teeming with life. 

The exploration of Mars by space probes began in the 1960’s. It began with the Soviet Union Mars 1 and NASA’s Mariner mission and was soon followed by the well known Viking landers in 1976. They were the first missions to test surface material for signs of life. The Mars Pathfinder mission took along the Sojourner rover and was followed by Spirit and Opportunity rovers after the turn of the century. Curiosity rover was among the latest of the visitors along with Perseverance and China’s Tianwen-1. The focus of later missions has been the hunt for water and analysis of the climate and geology of the planet. This was not only to understand the conditions as the planet evolved but to pave the way for human exploration. 

The Viking 1 lander was the first to capture a real selfie. This is a mosaic of high-resolution images of Viking 1 at Chryse Planitia. Image Credit: NASA/JPL.

To date, there has been no evidence of life on Mars. The question has intrigued us for decades though. Of all the planets in the Solar System, Mars is the most likely place to have once harboured primitive life, chiefly due to the discovery of liquid water in the distant past. Evidence of ancient dried river beds has been found across the planet with mineral deposits indicating that Mars was once warmer, wetter and potentially far more habitable. Even organic molecules have been discovered by the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers but researchers continue to hunt for evidence (past or present) of microbial life. 

Mars, Credit NASA

A team of researchers from NASA have published a paper articulating their use of computer modelling to help the search. They have shown that sunlight can shine through the Martian water ice, perhaps even enough for photosynthesis to occur in shallow pools of meltwater. 

There are two types of ice on Mars, frozen water and frozen carbon dioxide. The study explored water ice which had mostly formed as snow had fallen on the surface during a Martian ice age millions of years ago. The team believe that the key to the study are the dust particles that obscure light reaching the deeper layers of ice. They suggest that sunlight will warm the dark dust more than surrounding ice and then cause ice to warm and melt. Some scientists believe that ice at the surface cannot melt due to the thin dry atmosphere causing it to turn straight to a gas. This won’t apply to the ice deeper in the surface layer. 

Almost pure water ice is seen in the ejecta surrounding this impact crater (8 meters in diameter), which formed in 2008. The only reason we can see ice at the surface here is because this crater is so young. As time passes, the ice will all sublimate and no longer be present at the surface. Image Credit: High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.

Such a process has been observed on Earth where dust heats ice, melts and allows the dust to sink. Over time, the dust particles will stop sinking through the ice but still generate enough heat to melt the ice and create tiny voids. It is here that thriving ecosystems have been found hosting simple forms of life. 

The paper published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, suggests the dusty ice can produce enough light at depths up to 3 metres to allow photosynthesis to occur. The subsurface pools of meltwater are protected from evaporating by the ice above. It also provides some protection from radiation too providing a possibly habitable environment for simple forms of life. The authors suggest the areas would likely form in the Martian tropics between 30 and 60 degrees latitude in both hemispheres. 

Source : Could Life Exist Below Mars Ice? NASA Study Proposes Possibilities

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Researchers have developed a simple model system that can be used to break down fibrils -- the cause of numerous disorders including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease -- into their constituent single units or liquid droplets.

An asteroid struck Mars 11 million years ago and sent pieces of the red planet hurtling through space. One of these chunks of Mars eventually crashed into the Earth and is one of the few meteorites that can be traced directly to Mars. This meteorite was rediscovered in a drawer at Purdue University in 1931 and therefore named the Lafayette Meteorite. During early investigations of the Lafayette Meteorite, scientists discovered that it had interacted with liquid water while on Mars. Scientists have long wondered when that interaction with liquid water took place. Scientists have recently determined the age of the minerals in the Lafayette Meteorite that formed when there was liquid water.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab has announced a second round of layoffs for 2024, this time laying off 325 people – about 5% of its workforce. The announcement was made on Nov. 12 in a memo sent to employees, which notes the layoffs could have been even larger. The last cut was made this past February, when 530 employees were let go. Part of the issues which forced the layoffs comes from the the possible cancelation of the Mars Sample Return mission. With the October 2024 launch of Europa Clipper, JPL doesn’t have a flagship mission in the pipeline right now.

As with the layoffs in February, the cuts have nothing to do with the individual performance; it’s all budget-related and an attempt to balance the books. NASA Headquarters passed on funding constraints in the current budget to JPL, and while JPL has tried to manage them, the results are the two rounds of difficult layoffs.  

“This is a message I had hoped not to have to write,” JPL Director Laurie Leshin said in the memo sent to all staff members. “Despite this being incredibly difficult for our community, this number [of layoffs] is lower than projected a few months ago thanks in part to the hard work of so many people across JPL.”

Dr. Laurie Leshin has been the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory since May 2022. Credit: JPL.

Leshin said the lab’s leadership has had to deal with “continued funding challenges” and an uncertain future as NASA has been juggling and reconsidering its priorities for deep space exploration. She noted that the reduction was spread across nearly all areas of JPL, including technical, project, business, and support areas to meet the available funding for Fiscal Year 2025. Leshin said that the outcome of the presidential election last week did not have any bearing on the layoffs.

“We have taken seriously the need to re-size our workforce, whether direct-funded (project) or funded on overhead (burden). With lower budgets and based on the forecasted work ahead, we had to tighten our belts across the board, and you will see that reflected in the layoff impacts,” Leshin wrote.

All employees were told to work from home today (Nov. 13) and everyone would receive an email whether their position was being eliminated or not. Leshin said JPL would offer “personalized support to our laid-off colleagues who are part of the workforce reduction, including offering dedicated time to discuss their benefits, and several other forms of assistance.”

Artist’s concept of a Europa Clipper mission. Credit: NASA/JPL

This second round of layoffs were not a surprise. During a recent town hall with employees, Leshin discussed the continued funding challenges and projections of what the potential impact on the JPL workforce could look like. She indicated her team had been working through multiple workforce scenarios to address the changes in funding, with the goal of minimizing adverse effects on JPL’s capabilities and workers. But despite their efforts, the conclusion was that this additional workforce reduction was inevitable.

After the layoffs today, JPL will be left with about 5,500 regular employees.

“These are painful but necessary adjustments that will enable us to adhere to our budget while continuing our important work for NASA and our nation,” JPL said in a statement.

On social media, JPL employees called the news “devastating,” and “awful.” Another said, “Can’t imagine the stress this will produce.”

But Leshin also said she believed this would be the last workforce reduction needed for the foreseeable future and that staffing levels at this point are now “stable and supportable.”

“While we can never be 100 percent certain of the future budget, we will be well positioned for the work ahead,” Leshin wrote. “This may not help much in this difficult moment, but I do want to be crystal clear with my thoughts and perspective. If we hold strong together, we will come through this, just as we have done during other turbulent times in JPL’s nearly 90-year history.”

Dare Mighty Things The “Dare Mighty Things” sign at JPL. Image by Nancy Atkinson.

JPL has a long and storied history — “Dare Mighty Things” is the Lab’s motto — with the Lab’s origins dating back to the 1930s, when Caltech professor Theodore von Kármán oversaw pioneering work in rocket propulsion. In the 1960s, JPL began to develop robotic spacecraft to explore other worlds, beginning with the Ranger and Surveyor missions to the Moon, quickly followed by Mariner missions to Mercury, Venus and Mars. Now, missions and instruments built or managed by JPL have visited every planet in our Solar System as well as studying the Sun. The iconic Voyager missions have now entered interstellar space.

Despite the difficult layoffs, Leshin was hopeful for what’s to come for JPL.

“We are an incredibly strong organization—our dazzling history, current achievements, and relentless commitment to exploration and discovery position us well for the future,” she wrote.

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