Sergio Parra

According to a new analysis From existing data representing a new milestone in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), less than 0.04% of star systems have the potential to host advanced civilizations with equivalent radio technology or slightly more advanced than 21st century humans.

A collaborative research team at the University of Manchester has discovered an analytical breakthrough that has dramatically expanded the search for extraterrestrial life from 1,400 stars to 280,000, increasing the number of stars analyzed by a factor of more than 200.

Only intelligent life

This new analysis, then, could only locate intelligent and technically advanced civilizations that use radio waves as a form of communication; for example, they could not detect "simple" life or non-technical civilizations.

According to the study leader, Michael Garrett, from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, Reviewing the catalog produced by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia spacecraft, stars were selected at much greater distances (up to about 33,000 light years) than the original sample of nearby stars , being able to expand the number of stars studied from 1,327 to 288,315:

We now know that fewer than one in every 1,600 stars closer than about 330 light years host transmitters a few times more powerful than the most powerful radar we have here on Earth. Inhabited worlds with much more powerful transmitters than we can currently produce must be even rarer.

In Xataka Science

No, humanity would not be terrified if it were discovered that extraterrestrials exist

Furthermore, the expanded sample includes not only a wide range of main sequence stars, but also numerous giant stars and white dwarfs.

The Kardashov scale is a method to measure the degree of technological evolution of a civilization, proposed in 1964 by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashov. It has three categories, called Type I, II and III, based on the amount of energy that a civilization is capable of using from its environment. Generally speaking, a Type I civilization has achieved mastery of the resources of its home planet, Type II of its planetary system, and Type III of its galaxy. However, perhaps things don't work that way: because we cannot understand advanced civilizations, as criticized in Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life, from the biologist Jack Cohen and the mathematician Ian Stewart.

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Less than 0.04% of star systems would have the potential to host advanced civilizations

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A new lab study shows that a molecule found in bee venom can suppress the growth of particularly nasty cancer cells.

He study has focused on certain subtypes of breast cancer, including triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), which is an extremely aggressive condition with limited treatment options.

TNBC

TNBC accounts for up to 15 % of all breast cancers. To be treated, different types of treatments are needed because they are estrogen receptor negative, progesterone receptor negative and HER2 negative. Drugs such as tamoxifen, which targets the estrogen receptor, and trastuzumab (Herceptin), which targets HER2, are not helpful in treating triple-negative breast cancer.

In Xataka Science

The disappearance of bees could be caused by a common herbicide

He bee venom (Apis mellifera), however, it has shown potential in other medical therapies such as treating eczema, and has been known for some time to have anti-tumor properties, including melanoma. However, how it works against tumors at the molecular level is not fully understood. Now, however, a big step has been taken towards the answer.

Bees really use melittin, the molecule that makes up half of its venom and makes its bites painful, to combat its own pathogens. Insects produce this peptide not only in their venom, but also in other tissues, where it is expressed in response to infections. With their sights set on this molecule, the researchers subjected lab-grown cancer cells and normal cells to bee venom from Ireland, England, and Australia, and bumblebee venom (Bombus terrestris) from England.

In Xataka Science

People usually prefer bees to wasps, but we should reconsider

Bumblebee venom, which does not contain melittin, had little effect on breast cancer cells, but bee venom of all places did make a difference. In fact, melittin can completely destroy cancer cell membranes within 60 minutes.

Furthermore, if this were not enough, melittin had little impact on normal cells, specifically targeting cells that produced a large amount of EGFR and HER2 (another molecule produced in excess by some types of breast cancer); it even spoiled the ability of cancer cells to replicate.

After trying the same thing with a synthetic version of melittin, they discovered the same results.

In Xataka Science

If insects disappear, the world economy would suffer a huge setback

Before you get excited, it's worth warning that many things can kill a cancer cell in a petri dish, and researchers warn that there is still a long way to go before this bee venom molecule can potentially be used as a treatment in humans.

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Breast cancer cells are destroyed in the laboratory thanks to bee venom

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Intellectual, university and media hegemony comes from the French Revolution, it was bled of science and technological progress in May 69 and has been trivialized and turned into digestible mush in the 21st century using three blades as a turmix:

Three keys

1. Avoid ideas that do harm because it is considered that there are ideas that can never be debated. In that sense, lately the left is beginning to censor more in the university than the right.
2. Trust in emotions or political emocracy because the important thing is if you feel victimized, it hurts you or it seems aberrant, beautiful or vibrant.
3. Propose that life is a conflict between good and bad, between them / us. In fact, In times of COVID we are polarizing more than ever.

In Xataka Science

Authoritarian populism VS Enlightenment: the great problem of the 21st century

These three blades have shredded the nuances and they come, fundamentally, from populism, the softer social sciences and the moral/reputational activism that derives from ochlocracy, as well as from pseduciences, the exoticism of traditional/oriental cultures, Luddism, social constructivism, epistemological relativism, the denial of human nature (we are hairless monkeys, wow), as well as the very popular postmodern and 2.0 versions of environmentalism, feminism and tribalism.

At least, in order to combat this gloomy pessimism, it is worth remembering that we have always been more or less equally bad and that, now, at least, on a percentage basis, there are more people who can save us, as I indicate in the following video:

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The three postmodern ideas that are dynamiting the inheritance of the Enlightenment

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Using metal-organic frameworks (MOF) and sunlight, as published in the journal Nature Sustainability, a group of researchers has managed to transform brackish water and seawater into drinking water in less than half an hour.

Not only…

In space, no one can hear you scream, but with the right equipment, it is possible to detect a roar. The instrument that detected the mysterious roaring signal was the Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission (ARCADE), which NASA built to extend the study of the cosmic microwave background spectrum to lower frequencies.

The scientific objectives of the mission, while ARCADE floated high above Earth's atmosphere, 37 kilometers high, free of interference from our planet, were to find heat from the first generation of stars, search for relics of the particle physics of the Big Bang, and observe the formation of the first stars and galaxies.

ARCADIAN

The first evidence of this space roar Was discovered by Alan Kogut and his NASA team,1 the announcement was made in issue 213 of the American Astronomical Society on January 7, 2009.

ARCADE was able to make 'absolutely calibrated zero level' measurements, meaning it was measuring the actual brightness of something in real physical terms rather than relative terms. This was different from typical radio telescopes, which observe and contrast two points in the sky. By looking at all the 'light' and comparing it to a blackbody source, ARCADE was able to see the combination of many dim sources. That's when the intensity of a particular signal became evident..

Since then, scientists have sought to see where the radiation comes from while seeking to describe the properties of the signal. The latter became evident quite quickly. According to Al Kogut, who led the ARCADE team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

It is a diffuse signal that comes from all directions, so it is not caused by a single object. The signal also has a frequency spectrum, or 'color', that is similar to the radio emission from our own Milky Way galaxy.

In Xataka Science

An astronaut receives a greater dose of radiation in a year than someone trying to mitigate the consequences of a nuclear accident

Scientists call the signal 'synchrotron radio background', the background is an emission from many individual sources and blends into a diffuse glow. But because the 'space roar' is caused by synchrotron radiation, a type of emission of high-energy charged particles in magnetic fields, and because each source has the same characteristic spectrum, it is difficult to identify the origin of this intense signal.

The mysterious thing is that the signal is six times stronger than expected: It has been known since the late 1960s that the combined radio emission from distant galaxies should form a diffuse radio background coming from all directions. The space roar is similar to this expected signal, but there appear to be six times as many galaxies in the distant universe to make up the difference, which could point to something new as the source.

It is now being debated whether this source is inside or outside the Milky Way. Still, one reason it probably isn't coming from our galaxy is because the roar doesn't seem to follow the spatial distribution of the Milky Way's radio emission. Once you know with certainty where it comes from, you have to determine what it is.

In Xataka Science

This is the first space cement, produced in space, thanks to NASA

The American physicist David Brown, For example, has pointed out that space roar could be 'the first big empirical success of M-theory', a broad mathematical framework that encompasses string theory. 'There could be a Fredkin-Wolfram automaton scattered across a multitude of alternate universes, producing recurring physical time with endless repetitions of all possible physical events.' What this means is that the early universe had much more real matter than today, which explains the powerful radio signal.

Other possible, less theoretical sources could be large-scale diffuse mechanisms, such as turbulently merging galaxy clusters, or an entirely new class of incredibly numerous, previously unknown, individual sources of radio emission in the universe. Anything along those lines is highly speculative at this point, and some suggestions that have been floated include dark matter annihilation, supernovae from the first generations of stars, and many others.

Some scientists have suggested that gases in large galaxy clusters could be the source, although it is unlikely that ARCADE's instruments would have been able to detect radiation from any of them. Similarly, there is a possibility that the signal was detected in the earliest stars or originated in many otherwise faint radio galaxies, the cumulative effect of which is what is being recorded with ARCADE. But if this were the case, then they would have to be packed together incredibly tightly, to the point that there is no gap between them, which seems unlikely.

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The strange 'space roar' detected by NASA's ARCADE instrument

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According to a new study published in Nature Geoscience, the use of fertilizers and pesticides on farmland are now the most important source of sulfur for the environment.

This source thus replaces what was previously the largest source of reactive sulfur: coal-fired power plants.

Acid rain

Reactive sulfur is a component of acid rain, for the biosphere. It can react quickly and, as decades of acid rain research has shown, affect ecosystem health and the cycling of toxic metals that pose a danger to wildlife and people.

In Xataka Science

How agriculture made us shorter than we were

As explained Eve-Lyn Hinckley, assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, in the United States and lead author of the study:

It seemed that the sulfur story was over. But our analysis shows that sulfur applications on croplands in the United States and other countries are often ten times higher than the maximum sulfur load in acid rain. No one has comprehensively analyzed the environmental and human health consequences of these additions.

Researchers predict that increasing trends will continue in many farmlands around the world, in places like China and India that They are still working to regulate fossil fuel emissions.

Sulfur in agriculture is not going away. However, there is an opportunity to bring science and practice together to create viable solutions that protect long-term environmental, economic and human health goals.

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The largest source of sulfur for the environment is no longer coal-fired power plants but agriculture

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Sergio Parra

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Currently, it is normal to distinguish between natural and supernatural events: the former are governed by laws that we know, the latter seem to escape them. However, this distinction is relatively recent, and when it occurred it constituted an intellectual revolution.

This revolution took place because the realm of what was between the natural and the supernatural was abolished, the realm of the preternatural: ghosts, witches and monsters.

The advent of science and experiments

With the intention of transforming strange facts into vulgar facts, more and more philosophers of the 17th century insisted that any rare or unusual fact could be reproduced, and then find its causes, its explanation, removing the cloak of mysticism. In this way, the supposedly supernatural was becoming something natural.

In Xataka Science

Atheism is incompatible with the scientific method, according to this Templeton Prize-winning physicist

Galileo, thus, insisted that the mountains on the Moon were the same as the mountains on Earth. Or that Jupiter's moons were the same as our moons. Or that the phases of Venus were the same as the phases of our moon. As it explains David Wootton in his book The invention of science: "At every step he took the strangest facts and made them as vulgar as possible." The difficulty lay, then, in knowing how and when to distinguish between natural philosophy and theology:

The Logic of Port-Royal outlines what could go wrong when describing people who are overly gullible when it comes to miracles. They swallow, he says, a strange fact, and when they encounter objections to it they change their story to accommodate them; The strange fact can survive only if it is made more natural, which in this case means, to begin with, moving further and further away from any truth that may have existed in it.

Simon Stevin, a Dutch mathematician, military and hydraulic engineer, builder of mills and fortifications, semiotician, accountant and mayor abounds in this, in the mid-1600s, in his motto "The wonder is not a wonder":

In philosophy, we must always proceed from wonder to non-wonder, that is, we must continue the research carried out until what was thought strange no longer seems strange to us; But in theology, we must proceed from non-wonder to wonder, that is, we must study the Scriptures until what does not seem strange to us seems so to us, and everything is wonderful.

For the first time, then, some thinkers begin to face phenomena carefully, trusting more in experiments, evidence, tests, He knows how to explain the concatenation of events that produce a phenomenon, rather than subjectively, in revelation, the fallacy of authority or ad hominem. Above all, it consists of a disenchantment of the world: the assumption that everything can be explained, no matter how complex it may be, and that one should not simply add empty words to describe the world such as "magic," "god," or "supernatural."

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The day when the natural began to be distinguished from the supernatural

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Sergio Parra

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We have recently witnessed attempts to destroy the reputations of celebrities and intellectuals simply for their ideas (one of the recent cases we discussed It was Steven Pinker's), in addition to the fact that this strategy is ineffective and counterproductive (basically for three reasons).

However, how to know we're getting a legitimate review instead of a cancellation. The following 6 signs They can give you a clue, depending on Jonathan Rauch:

six signs

1. Punitiveness. Cancellation seeks to punish and not correct, and often for a single error and not a trajectory. For example, forcing you to resign from your job.
2. Censorship. If they try to censor you, prevent you from publishing a work, boycott you and not allow your freedom of expression to give talks or attend conferences.
3. Organization. If critics are organized and have objectives, if they recruit others and harass you at work or in the media.
4. Secondary boycotts. If there are implicit or explicit threats that those who support you will suffer the same punishment as you,
5. Moral Posture. If the tone against you is ad hominem, accusatory, of indignation and moral demonization. Cancellers do not seek to convince but rather use the attacked to elevate their social status.
6. Veracity. If they spread things about you that are not true, if they do not care about truthfulness, if they distort your words, ignore your corrections and make false accusations.

In Xataka Science

Three reasons why cancel culture is ineffective (and three that prove it is counterproductive)

These are the warning signs. If you spot one or two, they may be canceling you. If there are 5 or 6, then that is surely what is happening. Another thing is that you convince yourself of those signs, or you exaggerate them to victimize yourself and obtain some social or economic benefit, which is, along with cancel culture, the other great social scourge of the 21st century.

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If you notice these signs, they are not criticizing you, but they are canceling you

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People who identify as more attractive are more likely to also identify as conservative. On the contrary, those who are perceived as less attractive tend to be on the other side of the political spectrum.

This is at least what the next study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois.

Reasons

In the study cited, measures of attractiveness were used through multiple surveys, and The relationship between attractiveness and political beliefs was examined. Controlling for socioeconomic status, more attractive individuals were found to be more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican.

These findings suggest an additional mechanism for political socialization that has further implications for understanding how the body is intertwined with the social nature of politics.

In Xataka Science

Attractive people have better salaries, but less than those who are very unattractive

Naturally, we are facing a correlation, and also in the face of self-perceived issues such as physical beauty or political orientation. However, we can launch some hypotheses that someone who is more attractive tends to be more conservative or Republican and someone who is less attractive tends to be more progressive or Democrat. For example, if you are physically more attractive you also have more self-confidence. More confidence means more self-sufficiency and more desire to follow the people in power.

Previous research shows that good-looking people are generally treated better, They achieve a higher social status and earn more money, which influences them to perceive the world as a fairer place than the ugly ones.. Social psychologists refer to this as the halo effect, or when positive traits influence a person's overall opinion of a person.

In Xataka Science

This is how makeup affects women's perception of age

This blind spot prevents attractive people from seeing the need for government intervention, a central element of left-wing politics. According to one of the authors of the study, Peterson:

The best way to describe our results is that, if you take two individuals who share similar characteristics such as age, income, and education, but who differ in attractiveness, our results show that higher attractiveness correlates with being more effective and more conservative than the similar individual who is less attractive. This is not deterministic; all attractive people are not conservative and all unattractive people are not liberal.

Peterson and Palmer took data from the 1972, 1974, and 1976 American National Studies surveys that asked people to evaluate the appearance of others. These results were compared to the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study which focused on the physical characteristics of more than 10,000 high school students who were rated by others on their level of attractiveness. Given the greater social influence of attractive people, Peterson has noted that his findings could have deeper implications. Better-looking people 'may have political influence over others in their social networks, regardless of their actual levels of effective political knowledge.'

The opposite, Peterson said, is that 'those who are not blessed with good looks will be less likely to feel empowered, to participate in politics, to seek redress for grievances, or to exercise their political rights.'

If conservatives are more attractive than their liberal or left-wing opponents, Right-wing parties may end up with an advantage at election time.

Recent research suggests that conservative-leaning candidates in the United States and Europe are, in fact, objectively more physically attractive on average than their left-wing counterparts, which under some conditions leads to an electoral advantage.

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The ugliest people tend to be progressive, the most beautiful people tend to be conservative.

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Marcelo Gleiser has become the first Latin American to win the Templeton Prize, which is awarded for 'contribution to the affirmation of the spiritual dimension of life'.

In an interview about the award, this Dartmouth College physics professor argued that atheism is 'inconsistent with the scientific method.'

What is atheism?

Literally, Gleiser argued this way:

I believe that atheism is incompatible with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It is a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in disbelief. 'I don't believe, although I have no evidence for or against, I just don't believe.' Spot. It's a statement. But in science we don't really make statements. We say, 'Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.' And then an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence of God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim god? What god is that?). On the other hand, an agnostic would recognize no right to make a final statement about something he does not know.

In Xataka Science

Violent acts increase when the level of religiosity decreases (but there is an important nuance that prevents this from happening)

Gleiser reminds us that we are on an 'island of knowledge' in the middle of an 'ocean of the unknown.' As knowledge advances, we become more aware of what we do not know.

Given all the times that scientists have said something was already certain and then it has been discovered that it was not so, it may well turn out that the statement 'there is no God' could end up being similar to saying, 'No balloon or airplane can fly in the future' a century ago. Similarly, skepticism of the statement 'X does not exist' is also important in science since 'X' might appear one day.

Atheism must be defined

Gleiser is right. But it does because it is defining skepticism and, by extension, atheism in a very restricted way.. Surely there are atheists and skeptics who reason that way, but atheism is also defined as "I don't think about this hypothesis because it doesn't help me solve the problems I face." That is to say, one is an atheist regarding God in the same way that one does not believe that one lives on a television set and is continually being deceived, or that one lives in a dream, or that a magician has put a spell on one and one knows nothing about the real world, or that even everything that appears in the movies is true but the government hides it.

In Xataka Science

New law allowing test answers to be scientifically incorrect if based on religious beliefs

To be agnostic would be to affirm that everything is possible. And that's obvious. Everything is possible. But admitting that everything is possible is not the same as introducing all possibilities (each and every one of them, to infinity) when reflecting on how the world works. Simply, trying to climb the mountain of knowledge step by step, proposing humble hypotheses that we can progressively verify. Proposing the hypothesis of God is simply looking at the summit, at the highest possible level of knowledge, and proposing a total explanation for everything. So, is there any greater display of audacity and ineffectiveness than proposing a hypothesis that explains everything?

Or put another way: atheists are also agnostics: of course they do not know with absolute certainty that God does not exist, just as they do not know anything absolutely. What atheism proposes is that it is a hypothesis that is too vague and daring, as well as impractical, asking if God exists, if there are four thousand parallel dimensions, or if in reality we are in an extraterrestrial circus entertaining the masses without being aware of it.

All of this is possible, but do we waste time solving it? No. First, we must falsify many other hypotheses that are much more plausible and, above all, accessible to our narrow space of knowledge.

In Xataka Science

Ten important advantages for your life of being an atheist

Bertrand Russell He explained it very well with his famous teapot. While it remains true that humility can be a good thing, that we do not know what we do not know, and that it is impossible to prove the negative claim that 'God does not exist', Bertrand Russell reminds us that we can be rational in saying that we do not believe in something we cannot refute the existence of:

I must call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I don't think the existence of the Christian God is any more likely than the existence of the gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another example: no one can prove that there is not between Earth and Mars a porcelain teapot rotating in an elliptical orbit, but no one believes that this is probable enough to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God is equally improbable.

What Russell is saying is that the fact that a point asserted without evidence cannot be refuted does not mean that it is unreasonable to think that it is not true. Furthermore, Russell places the burden of proof on the person making the positive claim (God/the teapot exists) and not on the person who questions that statement.

In Xataka Science

Religious people vote more often than those who are not

The astronomer Carl Sagan He proposed a similar argument about the existence of a dragon in his garage in his book The World and Its Demons:

Suppose I seriously make such a statement to you. You'll probably want to check it out, see it for yourself. There have been countless stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity! 'Show me,' you say. I'll take you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle, but no dragon. Where is the dragon? you ask. 'Oh, she's here,' I reply, waving vaguely. 'I forgot to mention that she is an invisible dragon.' You propose spreading flour on the garage floor to capture the dragon's footprints. 'Good idea,' I say, 'but this dragon floats in the air.' Then, you will use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. 'Good idea, but invisible fire has no heat either.' You will spray paint the dragon and make it visible. 'Good idea, but it's a disembodied dragon and the paint doesn't stick.' And so. Counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

What's the difference between a floating, disembodied, invisible dragon that breathes fire without heat and no dragon at all? If there is no way to refute my argument, no conceivable experiment that counts against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? The inability to invalidate a hypothesis is not at all the same as proving it true. Claims that cannot be proven, claims immune to refutation, are truly useless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or exciting our sense of wonder.

Sagan, like Russell, holds that the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim. Since there is no evidence of the dragon, it is not unscientific to say that one does not believe the dragon is there.

Is it going too far to say that God does not exist? That depends on where you want to place the burden of proof and how much evidence (or lack thereof) is needed to make such a claim. Since we're talking about God (the most mind-blowingly supernatural thing we know of), perhaps we should ask for, at the very least, millions and millions of proofs and hundredweights of evidence. More than anything else we have been able to discover in the entire history of humanity. Because stating that God exists is as daring as saying that the parody exists Flying Spaghetti Monster Monster.

Or put another way: even award-winning physicists should study a little more epistemology.

Corollary proposed in the following video: don't believe in anything that hasn't been proven, and propose hypotheses that can be falsified (god is not one of them because we don't even know what he is, it's just a human word to refer to the unknowable):

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Atheism is incompatible with the scientific method, according to this Templeton Prize-winning physicist

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

.