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The most recent episode of John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, featured a discussion of the UFO phenomenon. I’m always interested, and often disappointed, in how the mainstream media portrays skeptical topics. One interesting addition here is that Oliver actually referenced an SGU episode, the one in which we interviewed Jimmy Carter about his UFO sighting. Unfortunately the rest of the episode was a bit of a let down.

Oliver is the first to acknowledge that he is not a journalist. He’s a comedian. But comedians often give biting satire of our culture and society, and Oliver has developed a specific niche. He essentially picks a topic and makes the point that – we’re doing it wrong, we can do better. Oliver also has a staff of researchers, so he is not jut making stuff up or giving superficial observations. In general I find he does an excellent job, giving a descent overview of a topic and making important observations. But of course many of the topics he covers are too complex to do justice in a 20 minute comedy routine, but he usually manages to hit the important points.

His piece of UFOs was very typical of his general approach. All storytellers (whether you are a journalist, blog writer, or comedian) have a narrative, some organizing point or argument that you are making. Otherwise a piece is just a list of facts or assertions. Oliver’s series has a narrative (as I said, we’re doing it wrong), and each episode has a narrative within that framework. For the UFO piece his main narrative was that the US government is doing UFO research wrong, and this is being driven by the underlying fact that most people interested in UFOs fall into one of two groups, true believers or hardline skeptics. True believers will believe anything, no matter how ridiculous, and hardline skeptics just roll their eyes dismissively, chilling genuine research.

Both of these narratives have problems. Oliver did give a descent summary of the last 70 years of UFO research by the US government, but left out some important bits and focused on those bits that fit his narrative. He mentioned Project Blue Book, which investigated 12, 618 UFO sightings between 1947 and 1969. He did not discuss, however, that this was high quality serious investigation that yielded exactly zero evidence that any part of the UFO phenomenon includes alien spacecraft or activity. He focused more on the Condon report, because that fit his narrative. This was a much smaller study, really a pilot study, to determine if UFOs deserved further serious research. Condon concluded that it did not, and Oliver’s critique focused on some dismissive statements that Condon had made about UFO believers.

The best part of the piece was his summary of the Roswell incident. I think here he did hit the main points – the government initially said it was a weather balloon, but admitted in the 1990s that it was really a spy balloon designed to detect Soviet atomic weapons research. He mainly used this story to make the point that the government lies to the public, but did seem to justify it to some extent by pointing out that they are not going to just admit that the real explanation for UFO sightings is highly sensitive classified military secrets. That point would have been stronger if he explicitly said that this does not mean they are necessarily lying about aliens. He also did a good job in pointing out that some sightings have mundane explanations, and no one is excited by that.

The weakest part of his report was the clip he showed of the navy pilots who witnessed one of the recent Pentagon videos, taking their statements at face value and calling it “chilling” – mainly that whatever they had witnessed it represents technology superior to our own. He made no mention of Mick West’s investigation of these videos, and the fact that the actual evidence is completely compatible with mundane phenomena, like distant airplanes, drones, mylar balloons, or even birds.

He came close when he discussed the “go fast” video, using it as an example of the kind of research we need more of. He referred to a four hour video doing a careful scientific analysis of the video, but his conclusion was highly misleading. He said, correctly, that the analysis shows where and how fast the object was moving, but then misleadingly that we don’t know what the object is. This was not wrong, but highly misleading without context, because it gives the impression that the object is still mysterious. He did not say that with the careful analysis he praised it is completely possible, and in fact highly likely, that the object was simply a bird (even though we cannot be entirely certain).

He also made no mention of the recent extensive Pentagon report finding zero evidence of alien phenomena or any government coverup or secret operations. You might excuse this given the limited time he had, and that’s fair enough, but given his premise it seems like a critical omission.

The second major narrative of the piece, that the UFO world is divided into true believers and hardened skeptics, is a false dichotomy. The question of how much research a topic like UFOs deserves is a complex one, and Oliver missed a lot of nuance. Again, this is understandable given the format, but the false dichotomy was a bit lazy, in my opinion, and could have been improved by framing it differently or throwing in a few caveats. First, I don’t know what he means by “hardened skeptics”. He seems to be saying, however, that the skeptical community is dismissive and ridiculing when it comes to UFOs, in a way that specifically discourages reporting and research. I would argue that this is an unfair characterization and essentially not true.

There may be individual people who consider themselves skeptical who are dismissive, but that does not describe the skeptical literature. In fact skeptics often champion careful and transparent technical and scientific investigation into fringe beliefs, specifically so that we can come to conclusions more definitively. It also is a great way to showcase the scientific method to the public over issues of great public interest. Skeptics spend way more time examining fringe topics than they deserve purely on their scientific merits. We are, if anything, the opposite of dismissive. But there is the assumption that dismissiveness and cynicism is the opposite of gullibility and belief. But this is false. Critical thinking with scientific literacy is the opposite of gullibility.

There are caveats. We would not want to waste resources that could be better spent on more fruitful research. That’s an individual judgement call. We also would always want to make sure the research is truly scientific and does not amount to pseudoscience. Further, we push back against using the fact that research is happening (rather than the results) to promote a belief that has not been established.

With regards to UFOs, that aliens exist is not impossible, and in fact is likely. That they are visiting the Earth is of unknown probability, but currently there is no smoking gun evidence that they are. And there are many other terrestrial phenomena that could be making up parts of UFO sightings that are also interesting – new scientific phenomena, changes in public behavior (like the increased use of drones, or releasing floating candles) that may pose risks to aviation, and foreign powers invading our airspace. If nothing else we will learn in more detail the ways in which pilots can be deceived by what they think they see, and the limitations of radar and other technology.

I feel that there was a narrative that Oliver and his staff could have found that would have worked with his general theme that did not unnecessarily give the impression that there is still a genuine mystery here, that something fantastical is going on. Also I would have preferred that he did not straw man thoughtful skepticism about the UFO phenomenon.

 

The post UFOs and SGU on John Oliver first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Our blood sugar levels vary a lot from day to day, so results from continuous glucose monitors need to be interpreted with caution

Was the SARS-CoV-2 virus of natural origin, or was it engineered in a Chinese research lab?

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We push ourselves toward the highest-paying, most prestigious jobs, seeking promotions and public recognition. As Adam Gopnik points out, the result is not so much a rat race as a rat maze, with no way out. Except one: to choose accomplishment over achievement.

Achievement is the completion of the task imposed from outside.

Accomplishment, by contrast, is the end point of an engulfing activity one engages in for its own sake.

Shermer and Gopnik discuss:

• mastering the secrets of stage magic (Gopnik’s son worked with David Blaine and Jamy Ian Swiss)
• accomplishment in music
• family and mentors
• the concept of the 10,000-hour rule vs. natural talent
• Adam’s new book All That Happiness Is, which offers timeless wisdom against the grain.

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1986. He is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Paris to the Moon and The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft is finally phoning home again. This is much to the relief of mission engineers, scientists, and Voyager fans around the world.

On November 14, 2023, the aging spacecraft began sending what amounted to a string of gibberish back to Earth. It appeared to be getting commands from Earth and seemed to be operating okay. It just wasn’t returning any useful science and engineering data. The team engineers began diagnostic testing to figure out if the spacecraft’s onboard computer was giving up the ghost. They also wanted to know if there was some other issue going on.

It wasn’t completely surprising that Voyager 1 would have issues, after all. And, this isn’t the first time Voyager 1 has sent back garbly data. It’s been traversing space since its launch in 1977. Currently, the spacecraft is rushing away from the Solar System toward interstellar space. The spacecraft systems will eventually fail due to age and lack of power. But, people have always held out hope for them to last as long as possible. That’s because Voyager 1 is probing unexplored regions of space.

What Happened to Voyager 1?

The diagnostic testing led the engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to look at old engineering documents and manuals for the onboard computers. Eventually, they found that the flight data subsystem (FDS) was having an issue. In the spacecraft’s data handling pipeline, this system takes information from the instruments and packages it into a data stream for the long trip back to Earth.

It turns out that the FDS has a bit of a memory problem. The engineers found this out by poking at the computer—literally sending a “poke” command to Voyager 1. That prompted the FDS to disgorge a readout of its memory—including the software code and other code values. The readout showed that about 3 percent of the FDS memory is corrupted due to a single chip failing. That’s just enough to keep the computer from doing its normal work of packaging science and engineering data. Unfortunately, engineers can’t replace the chip. No repair is possible, so the technical team devised a workaround.

Fixing the Faulty Code and Chip

So, how did engineers reach across 24 billion kilometers of space to restore communication with Voyager 1? They focused on a specific part of the computer. The loss of the code on that failed chip made it impossible for the computer to do its job. So, they figured out a way to divide the code into sections and store them in various locations around the FDS. Then they had to make the sections work together to do their original job.

They started out by taking the code that packages engineering data and moving it to a safe spot in FDS. Then they sent some commands to the spacecraft for the FDS to do some tasks. That worked because, on April 20th, they heard back from the spacecraft with clear, intelligible data. Now, they just need to do the same thing with other bits of code so that the spacecraft can send back both engineering and science data.

The Voyager 1 flight team members celebrate in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 20 after receiving confirmation that their repair to the spacecraft’s FDS worked. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

For now, at least, the science and engineering teams can check the spacecraft’s health and its systems. Once they relocate the other bits of code and test them after being moved, they should be able to start receiving science data again. This could take several weeks to accomplish. They’re communicating with a spacecraft that’s 22.5 light-hours away, so having a lengthy diagnostic conversation with Voyager is going to take some time. This isn’t the only problem engineers have had to contend with recently with Voyager 1. In October 2023, they worked to overcome a fuel flow problem affecting its thrusters.

Voyager 1 Into History

Voyager 1 was launched on a planetary flyby trajectory on September 5, 1977. It passed by Jupiter in March 1979 and Saturn in November 1980. The mission then morphed into an extended period of exploration and exited the heliopause in 2012. On its way out of the Solar System, the spacecraft also “looked back” at Earth. Now, it’s exploring the interstellar medium but has not yet traversed the Oort Cloud, the outermost portion of the Solar System.

This updated version of the iconic “Pale Blue Dot” image taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft uses modern image-processing software and techniques to revisit the well-known Voyager view while attempting to respect the original data and intent of those who planned the images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Several of Voyager 1’s science instruments are shut down, including its ultraviolet spectrometer, the plasma subsystem, planetary radio astronomy instrument, and scan platform. In the not-too-distant future, more instruments will be powered down, along with the data tape recorder, the gyroscopes, and other systems will be off. Sometime in the next decade, the spacecraft won’t have enough power to keep anything running, and that is when we’ll finally lose contact with Voyager 1.

This will probably happen by the mid-2030s, and by that time, Voyager 1 will have been “in service” for around 55 years. Along with its twin, Voyager 2, this spacecraft opened up exploration of the outer solar system and interstellar space. They’ll continue out to the stars, their last mission being as a calling card to any civilizations that might find them in the distant future.

For More Information

NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
Engineers Pinpoint Cause of Voyager 1 Issue, Are Working on Solution

The post NASA Restores Communications with Voyager 1 appeared first on Universe Today.

Researchers have developed a method to use an image generation AI model to create realistic images of single cells, which are then used as 'synthetic data' to train an AI model to better carry out single-cell segmentation.

Researchers have developed a method to use an image generation AI model to create realistic images of single cells, which are then used as 'synthetic data' to train an AI model to better carry out single-cell segmentation.

A group of around 40 scientists signed a declaration calling for formal acknowledgement of consciousness in a range of animals, including insects and fish – but the evidence is still lacking

The search for extrasolar planets is currently undergoing a seismic shift. With the deployment of the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scientists discovered thousands of exoplanets, most of which were detected and confirmed using indirect methods. But in more recent years, and with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the field has been transitioning toward one of characterization. In this process, scientists rely on emission spectra from exoplanet atmospheres to search for the chemical signatures we associate with life (biosignatures).

However, there’s some controversy regarding the kinds of signatures scientists should look for. Essentially, astrobiology uses life on Earth as a template when searching for indications of extraterrestrial life, much like how exoplanet hunters use Earth as a standard for measuring “habitability.” But as many scientists have pointed out, life on Earth and its natural environment have evolved considerably over time. In a recent paper, an international team demonstrated how astrobiologists could look for life on TRAPPIST-1e based on what existed on Earth billions of years ago.

The team consisted of astronomers and astrobiologists from the Global Systems Institute, and the Departments of Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics and Statistics, and Natural Sciences at the University of Exeter. They were joined by researchers from the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria and the Natural History Museum in London. The paper that describes their findings, “Biosignatures from pre-oxygen photosynthesizing life on TRAPPIST-1e,” will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

The TRAPPIST-1 system has been the focal point of attention ever since astronomers confirmed the presence of three exoplanets in 2016, which grew to seven by the following year. As one of many systems with a low-mass, cooler M-type (red dwarf) parent star, there are unresolved questions about whether any of its planets could be habitable. Much of this concerns the variable and unstable nature of red dwarfs, which are prone to flare activity and may not produce enough of the necessary photons to power photosynthesis.

With so many rocky planets found orbiting red dwarf suns, including the nearest exoplanet to our Solar System (Proxima b), many astronomers feel these systems would be the ideal place to look for extraterrestrial life. At the same time, they’ve also emphasized that these planets would need to have thick atmospheres, intrinsic magnetic fields, sufficient heat transfer mechanisms, or all of the above. Determining if exoplanets have these prerequisites for life is something that the JWST and other next-generation telescopes – like the ESO’s proposed Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) – are expected to enable.

But even with these and other next-generation instruments, there is still the question of what biosignatures we should look for. As noted, our planet, its atmosphere, and all life as we know it have evolved considerably over the past four billion years. During the Archean Eon (ca. 4 to 2.5 billion years ago), Earth’s atmosphere was predominantly composed of carbon dioxide, methane, and volcanic gases, and little more than anaerobic microorganisms existed. Only within the last 1.62 billion years did the first multi-celled life appear and evolve to its present complexity.

Moreover, the number of evolutionary steps (and their potential difficulty) required to get to higher levels of complexity means that many planets may never develop complex life. This is consistent with the Great Filter Hypothesis, which states that while life may be common in the Universe, advanced life may not. As a result, simple microbial biospheres similar to those that existed during the Archean could be the most common. The key, then, is to conduct searches that would isolate biosignatures consistent with primitive life and the conditions that were common to Earth billions of years ago.

This artistic conception illustrates large asteroids penetrating Earth’s oxygen-poor atmosphere. Credit: SwRI/Dan Durda/Simone Marchi

As Dr. Jake Eager-Nash, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Victoria and the lead author of the study, explained to Universe Today via email:

“I think the Earth’s history provides many examples of what inhabited exoplanets may look like, and it’s important to understand biosignatures in the context of Earth’s history as we have no other examples of what life on other planets would look like. During the Archean, when life is believed to have first emerged, there was a period of up to around a billion years before oxygen-producing photosynthesis evolved and became the dominant primary producer, oxygen concentrations were really low. So if inhabited planets follow a similar trajectory to Earth, they could spend a long time in a period like this without biosignatures of oxygen and ozone, so it’s important to understand what Archean-like biosignatures look like.”

For their study, the team crafted a model that considered Archean-like conditions and how the presence of early life forms would consume some elements while adding others. This yielded a model in which simple bacteria living in oceans consume molecules like hydrogen (H) or carbon monoxide (CO), creating carbohydrates as an energy source and methane (CH4) as waste. They then considered how gases would be exchanged between the ocean and atmosphere, leading to lower concentrations of H and CO and greater concentrations of CH4. Said Eager-Nash:

“Archean-like biosignatures are thought to require the presence of methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor would be required as well as the absence of carbon monoxide. This is because water vapor gives you an indication there is water, while an atmosphere with both methane and carbon monoxide indicates the atmosphere is in disequilibrium, which means that both of these species shouldn’t exist together in the atmosphere as atmospheric chemistry would convert all of the one into the other, unless there is something, like life that maintains this disequilibrium. The absence of carbon monoxide is important as it is thought that life would quickly evolve a way to consume this energy source.”

Artist’s impression of Earth in the early Archean with a purplish hydrosphere and coastal regions. Even in this early period, life flourished and was gaining complexity. Credit: Oleg Kuznetsov

When the concentration of gases is higher in the atmosphere, the gas will dissolve into the ocean, replenishing the hydrogen and carbon monoxide consumed by the simple life forms. As biologically produced methane levels increase in the ocean, it will be released into the atmosphere, where additional chemistry occurs, and different gases are transported around the planet. From this, the team obtained an overall composition of the atmosphere to predict which biosignatures could be detected.

“What we find is that carbon monoxide is likely to be present in the atmosphere of an Archean-like planet orbiting an M-Dwarf,” said Eager-Nash. “This is because the host star drives chemistry that leads to higher concentrations of carbon monoxide compared to a planet orbiting the Sun, even when you have life-consuming this [compound].”

For years, scientists have considered how a circumsolar habitable zone (CHZ) could be extended to include Earth-like conditions from previous geological periods. Similarly, astrobiologists have been working to cast a wider net on the types of biosignatures associated with more ancient life forms (such as retinal-photosynthetic organisms). In this latest study, Eager-Nash and his colleagues have established a series of biosignatures (water, carbon monoxide, and methane) that could lead to the discovery of life on Archean-era rocky planets orbiting Sun-like and red dwarf suns.

Further Reading: arXiv

The post Will We Know if TRAPPIST-1e has Life? appeared first on Universe Today.

As work begins on building the US’s first high-speed rail service – linking Los Angeles to Las Vegas – analysts say the project could serve as a blueprint for similar projects across the country

In the 1920s, Erwin Schrödinger wrote an equation that predicts how particles-turned-waves should behave. Now, researchers are perfectly recreating those predictions in the lab

The college protest post has exhausted me for today, not only because reading this stuff is psychologically debilitating, but also because I’m preparing my talks for Amsterdam. Tomorrow I’ll try to resume regular posting, but for now you get a penguin video as lagniappe.

These happen to be Emperor Penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri), which live on sea ice, so I never saw them on my jaunts to Antarctica.  When they’re six to seven months old, after parental feeding has ceased, they trek en masse to the ocean to begin feeding and starting their life as free-living animals.  This National Geographic video shows them making an unusual jump into the sea from fifty-foot ice cliffs.

This reminds me of the mallards at Botany Pond who build their nests two or three stories off the ground. In that case, when the chicks hatch they have to make a perilous leap to the ground below (next to the water), egged on by the quacking mother who has flown to the ground. They are naturally apprehensive, but one chick is brave enough to jump and the others follow. (I’ve never seen a duckling injured in the leap.) These penguins seem to make successful leaps, too, and once one has made it the others follow. They’re like the proverbial lemmings! I hope they don’t land on each other.

The photography is marvelous.

Researchers have uncovered a remarkable metal alloy that won t crack at extreme temperatures due to kinking, or bending, of crystals in the alloy at the atomic level. Unlike most materials, the new alloy keeps its shape and resists cracking at both high and low temperature extremes, making it potentially suitable for demanding applications like high-efficiency aerospace engines.

Despite surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, lava-spewing volcanoes, and puffy clouds of sulfuric acid, uninhabitable Venus offers vital lessons about the potential for life on other planets, a new paper argues.

Astronomers have produced the first high-resolution map of a massive explosion in a nearby galaxy, providing important clues on how the space between galaxies is polluted with chemical elements.

Researchers used structured light and switchable fluorescent molecules to reduce the background light from the out-of-plane regions of microscope samples. This method allowed for the acquisition of images that surpassed the conventional resolution limit, and it may be useful for further study of cell clusters and other biological systems.

A sensing technology that can assess the quality of components in fields such as aerospace could transform UK industry.

Physicists have shown that ultra-thin two-dimensional materials such as tungsten diselenide can rotate the polarization of visible light by several degrees at certain wavelengths under small magnetic fields suitable for use on chips.

Physicists have shown that ultra-thin two-dimensional materials such as tungsten diselenide can rotate the polarization of visible light by several degrees at certain wavelengths under small magnetic fields suitable for use on chips.

Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia worldwide with around 59 million people concerned in 2019. This irregular heartbeat is associated with increased risks of heart failure, dementia and stroke. It constitutes a significant burden to healthcare systems, making its early detection and treatment a major goal. Researchers have recently developed a deep-learning model capable of predicting the transition from a normal cardiac rhythm to atrial fibrillation. It gives early warnings on average 30 minutes before onset, with an accuracy of around 80%. These results pave the way for integration into wearable technologies, allowing early interventions and better patient outcomes.