Tag: science

‘No easy explanation’: Scientists are debating a 70-year-old UFO mystery as new images come to light

More than 70 years ago, astronomers at the Palomar Observatory in California photographed several star-like flashes that appeared and vanished within an hour — years before the first satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched into orbit.

New peer-reviewed research revisiting those midcentury sky plates reports that these fleeting points of light, called transients, appeared on or near dates of Cold War nuclear weapons tests and coincided with a spike in historical UFO reports. Could these things all be related? Researchers are trying to find out.

While such flashes can sometimes be traced to natural phenomena such as variable stars, meteors or instrumental quirks, several of the Palomar events share distinctive features — including some sharp, point-like shapes that appear to line up in straight rows — that the authors of the new research say defy known natural or instrumental causes.

“We’ve ruled out some of the prosaic explanations, and it means we have to at least consider the possibility that these might be artificial objects from somewhere,” study co-author Stephen Bruehl, an anesthesiologist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee who is interested in UFOs, told Live Science. Bruehl co-authored two recent papers with Beatriz Villarroel, an astronomer at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Sweden.

“If it turns out that transients are reflective artificial objects in orbit — prior to Sputnik — who put them there, and why do they seem to show interest in nuclear testing?” Bruehl added.

Not all researchers agree with this interpretation of the images, however — with some experts noting that technological restrictions of the time make this data very hard to interpret with any certainty. Michael Garrett, director of the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in the U.K. who was not involved with the new studies, praised Villarroel’s team for their creative use of archival data but cautioned against interpreting these results too literally.

“My main worry is not the quality of the research team but the quality of the data at their disposal,” he said. Before Sputnik, the data are poor — especially the anecdotal UFO, or UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon) reports, which Villarroel’s team acknowledges it did not assess for validity.

Keep reading

Putin scientists unveil ‘spy pigeons fitted with brain implants and cameras that can be controlled like drones’

A state-linked Moscow neurotechnology firm boasts its operators can steer flocks of the flying pests across the sky at will. 

Researchers have launched field tests of so-called ‘bird-biodrones’ known as PJN-1, ordinary pigeons surgically implanted with neural chips that allow technicians to direct their flight routes.

The birds can be steered remotely in real time, with operators able to upload flight commands by stimulating targeted regions of the brain.

The pigeon then ‘believes it wants to fly’ in the instructed direction, claim sources at Neiry, which has deep ties to the Kremlin’s hi-tech innovation machine.

Surgery is carried out in which electrodes are inserted into the brain with millimetre precision.

The birds wear tiny solar-powered backpacks containing onboard electronics, GPS tracking, and the receiver that transmits signals into the neural implant.

Chillingly, Neiry insists that ‘no training is required’, declaring that any animal becomes ‘remotely controllable after the operation’ – with pigeons capable of covering 310 miles a day, or more than 1,850 miles in a week.

Keep reading

The Problem Of Fake Science

Don’t eat those waffles; your hair will fall out. Science says so!

Think of this. We’ve never before been in the position to generate such seemingly scientific content on any subject under the sun within a matter of seconds. This power has only existed for two years. Many people do not even know it exists, much less how easy it is. Bad actors are in a position to use this power anytime they want. They can count on legacy levels of trust in “science” to pass off such fakery as real.

This past week, we saw yet another piece of fake science retracted from publication. This one is a big deal. The publication is The Lancet, one of the most prestigious venues in the world. It had published the study, which was thoroughly peer-reviewed. But it turns out that the authors had pulled the wool over the eyes of the experts.

The retracted paper is one of many generated from a huge and well-funded trial of therapeutic drugs used to treat COVID-19. The trial in question was called TOGETHER. It was funded with grants from FTX, the crypto company later shut down for fraud, alongside financial companies holding large pharmaceutical stocks and think tanks funded by the industry that hoped to sell vaccines. If the study was correct, getting the shot would seem like the only option.

The authors peppered all the journals with papers on the results.

Only one has been pulled so far, but the others will likely do the same in time. This includes the New England Journal of Medicine, a venue that prides itself on its low retraction rate.

The TOGETHER trial was conducted then released fully four years ago. Questions and criticisms have been roiling and boiling all this time.

When the study came out in 2021, it was invoked as one of the major reasons to pull hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin from the shelves. Even if your own doctor wrote a prescription, the answer was no.

I will never forget that day when I walked into my neighborhood pharmacy and showed them my prescription. The girl behind the counter excused herself to talk to her manager, who shook his head no without saying a word. That sent me on a scramble to get some sent by overnight mail from New York City, from a person who had ordered some from India. I felt better in three hours.

I later learned that although millions of people did something similar, because it was the only way to get effective meds, the practice is, shall we say, frowned upon.

Why had all the pharmacies in my local neighborhood denied me proven treatments that my own doctor had prescribed me? Because they believed the science.

This is the problem of fake science. It has real-world consequences. We supposedly live in the age of science, but the credibility of all the institutions is now in free fall. The slogan “science” was deployed to justify a level of attack on freedom that we had never before seen. As a result, the reputation of science in general has taken a huge hit.

The TOGETHER trial at least had the appearance of plausibility. After all, they had actually done a real trial. The SURGISPHERE trial, in contrast, released early on in the summer of 2020, was discovered to have entirely made up all its data. Its conclusions were thereby invalid. And to be fair, the fake science was not entirely one-sided. Some studies indicating the reverse results have also been shown to have faked data.

In the end, hundreds of thousands of papers during this period were published, and these days, the retractions are happening as quickly as the acceptances in the old days. My friends, this is not just a PR problem. This is a genuine crisis for the credibility of science itself.

When the science tells you that you cannot safely have a Thanksgiving dinner in your home or sing praises to God without killing grandma, it is risking the very foundations of the scientific revolution.

Keep reading

Future computers could grow their own memory – from mushrooms

Computers run on silicon and metal. Mushrooms grow in soil. Yet now, scientists are finding that one could stand in for the other.

Fungi might replace parts of the machines that shape our digital world. The idea sounds strange until you realize how intelligent and resilient these organisms are.

Mushrooms in computing

At The Ohio State University, researchers found that edible mushrooms such as shiitake could act like organic memory chips. When connected to circuits, the mushrooms stored and processed information like a living brain.

Study lead author John LaRocco is a research scientist in psychiatry at Ohio State’s College of Medicine.

“Being able to develop microchips that mimic actual neural activity means you don’t need a lot of power for standby or when the machine isn’t being used,” said LaRocco.

The fungal chips performed surprisingly well. Each could switch electrical states thousands of times per second with high accuracy.

These organic systems did not rely on costly rare-earth minerals or energy-intensive factories, which makes them an appealing alternative to traditional semiconductors.

Learning from nature

Fungi already form vast underground networks that pass signals between roots and trees. The researchers realized these same biological systems could be repurposed to store information.

The mycelium – the thread-like part of a fungus – responds to electrical pulses by changing its resistance. Those shifts act like memories.

In tests, mushrooms adjusted their conductivity when exposed to repeated voltage cycles. Their ability to change behavior after each signal mirrored how neurons in the brain learn.

Over time, the fungi “remembered” patterns of stimulation and became more stable in performance. That self-tuning nature could one day lead to energy-efficient devices that learn continuously, much like biological systems.

Testing mushrooms for computers

To explore this, the team grew shiitake and button mushrooms on organic materials such as wheat germ, hay, and farro seeds.

Once the fungal mats reached maturity, they were dried in sunlight to maintain shape and later sprayed with water to restore conductivity.

“We would connect electrical wires and probes at different points on the mushrooms because distinct parts of it have different electrical properties,” said LaRocco.

Each part responded differently to signals, showing that the internal structure of mushrooms influences how electricity flows.

At specific frequencies, the fungi displayed classic memory loops known as hysteresis curves, confirming their potential as memristors.

Keep reading

Quantum teleportation between photons from two distant light sources achieved

Everyday life on the internet is insecure. Hackers can break into bank accounts or steal digital identities. Driven by AI, attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Quantum cryptography promises more effective protection. It makes communication secure against eavesdropping by relying on the laws of quantum physics. However, the path toward a quantum internet is still fraught with technical hurdles.

Researchers at the Institute of Semiconductor Optics and Functional Interfaces (IHFG) at the University of Stuttgart have now made a decisive breakthrough in one of the most technically challenging components, the quantum repeater. They report their results in Nature Communications.

Nanometer-sized semiconductor islands for information transfer

“For the first time worldwide, we have succeeded in transferring quantum information among photons originating from two different quantum dots,” says Prof. Peter Michler, head of the IHFG and deputy spokesperson for the Quantenrepeater.Net (QR.N) research project.

What is the background? Whether WhatsApp or video stream, every digital message consists of zeros and ones. Similarly, this also applies to quantum communication, in which individual light particles serve as carriers of information.

Zero or one is then encoded in two different directions of polarization of the photons (i.e., their orientation in the horizontal and vertical directions or in a superposition of both states). Because photons follow the laws of quantum mechanics, their polarization cannot always be completely read out without leaving traces. Any attempt to intercept the transmission would inevitably be detected.

Making the quantum internet ready for the fiber-optic infrastructure

Another challenge: An affordable quantum internet would use optical fibers—just like today’s internet. However, light has only a limited range. Conventional light signals, therefore, need to be renewed approximately every 50 kilometers using an optical amplifier.

Because quantum information cannot simply be amplified or copied and forwarded, this does not work in the quantum internet. However, quantum physics allows information to be transferred from one photon to another as long as the information stays unknown. This process is referred to as quantum teleportation.

Keep reading

Top MIT scientist blasts ‘climate hysteria,’ says global warming fears are driven by money… not evidence

Skepticism about climate change has resurfaced, as some experts claim the exact causes of global warming remain unclear and that the policies addressing it are motivated more by money than by science.

Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has spent decades studying atmospheric science. He told the Daily Mail that the public hysteria surrounding global warming isn’t actually based on realistic data.

Climate change is the term used to describe Earth’s warming, mainly as a result of human activity, such as burning coal, oil and gas.

Scientists and climate activists have warned that this extra warmth could cause more extreme storms, rising seas that flood cities, and hotter summers that make it harder to grow food worldwide – all within the next 25 years.

However, Lindzen said the financial implications of controlling the multi-trillion-dollar energy industry have been the true motivation for politicians to support flawed research that argues small temperature increases will lead to immediate disasters.

‘The fact that you have a multi-trillion dollar industry and you have an opportunity to completely overturn it had a great appeal to a lot of politicians,’ he explained. ‘They go wild on it. Another half degree and we’re doomed, and so on. The public knows this is nonsense.’ 

Lindzen explained the basic math behind what he called ‘climate alarm.’ He said the emphasis on lowering specific emissions like carbon dioxide (CO₂) simply doesn’t produce the worldwide temperature changes advocates say it will.

The scientist noted that the planet’s temperature has fluctuated significantly throughout recorded history and science still can’t definitively prove what the exact cause of both extreme warming and cooling events has been.

‘We don’t understand the glaciation that occurred in the 15th century. You know, so what was going on then? Inadequate CO₂?’ Lindzen said of the event in the Northern Hemisphere known as the Little Ice Age.

Keep reading

Satellite Communications Breakthrough Could Pave the Way Toward ‘Quantum Energy’

Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have developed a new method for sending once-impossible Earth-to-space quantum light transmissions, which could enable ultra-secure satellite communications in the future.

The technology produces a beam of entangled light particles, a feat previously achieved only in the space-to-ground direction. The UTS team revealed their advances in a paper recently published in Physical Review Research.

Quantum Communications

China has been operating space-based quantum communications for almost a decade, beginning with the Micius satellite in 2016. Subsequently, the Jinan01 satellite, launched this year, established a 12,900-kilometer quantum link connecting China to South Africa.

“Current quantum satellites create entangled pairs in space and then send each half of the pair down to two places on Earth – called a ‘downlink, ‘” said co-author Professor Alexander Solntsev. “It’s mostly used for cryptography, where only a few photons (particles of light) are needed to generate a secret key.”

In previous estimates, scientists believed that moving in the opposite direction would be impossible, as signal loss, interference, and scattering would degrade the uplink. Despite these issues, ground station transmitters have many advantages over satellite-based ones. They have easier access to power, enabling them to produce stronger signals while also being far easier to maintain. 

By developing uplink technology, the researchers believe it will allow satellite-connected quantum computer networks, pushing them to overcome the challenges involved. Their first step was to create a testable concept that addressed the interference issues, which they did.

“The idea is to fire two single particles of light from separate ground stations to a satellite orbiting 500 km above Earth, travelling at about 20,000 km per hour, so that they meet so perfectly as to undergo quantum interference,” said co-author Professor Simon Devitt. “Is this even possible?”

Keep reading

Scientists Say They Have Proof the Universe Isn’t a Simulation—The Math Makes It Impossible

For decades, philosophers, technologists, and even billionaires like Elon Musk have toyed with the idea that our universe might be a highly sophisticated computer simulation. The idea represents one of modern science’s most haunting and enduring hypotheticals, a kind of digital cosmology.

However, according to a study by an international team of theoretical physicists, the mathematics itself may finally settle the debate. Their conclusion? It’s impossible that we’re living in a simulation.

In a paper published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, researchers argue that the same mathematical principles that limit what computers can calculate also limit what any simulation of the universe could ever reproduce. In short, the universe contains truths that no algorithm—no matter how advanced—can ever compute.

“It has been suggested that the universe could be simulated. If such a simulation were possible, the simulated universe could itself give rise to life, which in turn might create its own simulation,” lead author and theoretical physicist at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Mir Faizal, said in a statement. “This recursive possibility makes it seem highly unlikely that our universe is the original one, rather than a simulation nested within another simulation.”

“This idea was once thought to lie beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. However, our recent research has demonstrated that it can, in fact, be scientifically addressed.”

The idea that reality could be computed—sometimes called “It from Bit,” after physicist Dr. John Archibald Wheeler’s phrase—has long fascinated scientists. In this view, the cosmos itself could be described as a vast informational process: every atom, photon, and galaxy, a pixel in a cosmic program.

Yet Dr. Faizal and his co-authors—renowned cosmologist Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss, Dr. Francesco Marino of Italy’s National Institute of Optics, and researcher Arshid Shabir—argue that this idea collapses under the very laws of logic itself.

Using the mathematical frameworks of Kurt Gödel, Alfred Tarski, and Gregory Chaitin, researchers demonstrated that any “Theory of Everything” built entirely on computation must, by definition, be incomplete.

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, for example, proved that in any sufficiently complex mathematical system, there are true statements that can never be proven using the rules of that system.

Tarski’s theorem showed that truth itself cannot be defined entirely within a formal language. And Chaitin’s work revealed that some mathematical truths are fundamentally uncomputable—they contain more information than any algorithm can encode.

The researchers argue that these theorems also apply to the foundations of physics. Any theory of quantum gravity—the long-sought framework that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics—would be a kind of algorithmic system. And just like mathematics, it would inevitably face its own unprovable truths.

“Together, the Gödel–Tarski–Chaitin triad delineates an insurmountable frontier for any strictly computable framework,” the researchers write.

In other words, if the laws of physics can’t be reduced to pure computation, then neither can the universe.

Keep reading

Scientists Use Novel Materials That Mimic Wormholes and Multiple Realities to “Transcend the Limitations of Physical Dimensions”

In Erwin Schrödinger’s most famous thought experiment, a cat is seemingly able to be alive and dead simultaneously, as it exists in superposition within a closed box alongside a radioactive atom, a detector, a hammer, and a vial of poison.

Now, reaching into similar mind-bending territory that blurs the lines between practical science and science fiction, researchers in China report in a new study that they have successfully used nonlocal artificial materials to create what they call “photonic parallel spaces,” emulating the effects of wormholes, and even multiple realities.

At the heart of the new research are optical systems, in which a single material is able to perform the role of two distinct optical devices at the same time—not unlike the bizarre “superposition” of Schrödinger’s cat—whereby light is able to display multiple properties at once.

The experiments, detailed in a new paper in Nature Communications, allowed the researchers to produce invisible pathways and other optical effects that could pave the way toward the creation of a range of new technological applications in the coming years.

Photonic Parallel Spaces

“The concepts of the multiverse and wormholes in dimensions beyond our physical space have long captivated curiosity and imagination,” the authors of the new paper write. However, demonstrating such ideas in an experimental setting has long been challenging.

To overcome such hurdles, the research team relied on special artificial materials that allowed them to develop what they characterize as a “photonic analogy” of parallel spaces, which they describe as conditions where “two distinct effective optical media coexist within a single artificial material,” each of which is accessible using different boundaries in the respective material.

The team’s method, which was complemented with machine learning for their study, successfully helped them to create analogies for what they call “photonic wormholes,” which function as invisible optical tunnels, as well as “photonic multiple realities” where the independent function of two different optical devices occurred within a single location. The effect, the researchers describe, produced optical scatterers that functioned “as if they exist in separate dimensions.”

“Higher-Dimensional Phenomena” in the Lab

When light enters one boundary in the artificial materials used by the team, it experiences an entirely different set of optical effects compared with light entering from another boundary. Surprisingly, each of these optical experiences can occur without any interference between them.

The researchers liken this effect to C.S. Lewis’s classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where different “doors” could lead to entirely separate worlds located in a single place.

Keep reading

Thousands of potential UFOs spotted in 1950s photos — before satellites even dotted the sky: studies

A pair of new peer-reviewed scientific papers claim to have detected the presence of UFOs in photographs taken in the 1950s.

Astronomer Beatriz Villarroel from the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics claimed in two papers that “transients” — fleeting star-like objects of unknown origin — which appear in “historic photographic plates” of the night sky could represent visitors from a far-off planet.

“We speculate that some transients could potentially be [unidentified aerial phenomena] in Earth orbit that, if descending into the atmosphere, might provide the stimulus for some [unidentified aerial phenomenon] sightings,” the paper published in Nature’s Scientific Reports claimed.

There was a “small positive correlation” between UAP sightings and transients that was “well beyond chance,” she argued in the paper published on Oct. 20.

Researchers analyzed roughly 2,000 photographic plates which were taken between 1949 to 1958 at the Palomar Observatory in California for one of the first detailed astronomical surveys of the sky, called the Palomar Sky Survey, Scientific American reported.

Keep reading