The five corrupt pillars of climate change denial

By Mark Maslin

Sunday, December 1, 2019 

The fossil fuel industry, political lobbyists, media moguls and individuals have spent the past 30 years sowing doubt about the reality of climate change - where none exists. The latest estimate is that the world’s five largest publicly-owned oil and gas companies spend about US$200 million a year on lobbying to control, delay or block binding climate policy.

Their hold on the public seems to be waning. Two recent polls suggested over 75% of Americans think humans are causing climate change. School climate strikes, Extinction Rebellion protests, national governments declaring a climate emergency, improved media coverage of climate change and an increasing number of extreme weather events have all contributed to this shift. There also seems to be a renewed optimism that we can deal with the crisis.

But this means lobbying has changed, now employing more subtle and more vicious approaches – what has been termed as “climate sadism”. It is used to mock young people going on climate protests and to ridicule Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old young woman with Asperger’s, who is simply telling the scientific truth.

Anti-climate change lobbying spend by the five largest publicly-owned fossil fuel companies. Statista, CC BY-SA

At such a crossroads, it is important to be able to identify the different types of denial. The below taxonomy will help you spot the different ways that are being used to convince you to delay action on climate change.

1. Science denial

This is the type of denial we are all familiar with: that the science of climate change is not settled. Deniers suggest climate change is just part of the natural cycle. Or that climate models are unreliable and too sensitive to carbon dioxide.

Some even suggest that CO₂ is such a small part of the atmosphere it cannot have a large heating affect. Or that climate scientists are fixing the data to show the climate is changing (a global conspiracy that would take thousands of scientists in more than a 100 countries to pull off).

All these arguments are false and there is a clear consensus among scientists about the causes of climate change. The climate models that predict global temperature rises have remained very similar over the last 30 years despite the huge increase in complexity, showing it is a robust outcome of the science.

Model reconstruction of global temperature since 1970. Average of the models in black with model range in grey compared to observational temperature records from NASA, NOAA, HadCRUT, Cowtan and Way, and Berkeley Earth. Carbon Brief, CC BY

The shift in public opinion means that undermining the science will increasingly have little or no effect. So climate change deniers are switching to new tactics. One of Britain’s leading deniers, Nigel Lawson, the former UK chancellor, now agrees that humans are causing climate change, despite having founded the sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation in 2009.

It says it is “open-minded on the contested science of global warming, [but] is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated”. In other words, climate change is now about the cost not the science.

2. Economic denial

The idea that climate change is too expensive to fix is a more subtle form of climate denial. Economists, however, suggest we could fix climate change now by spending 1% of world GDP. Perhaps even less if the cost savings from improved human health and expansion of the global green economy are taken into account. But if we don’t act now, by 2050 it could cost over 20% of world GDP.

We should also remember that in 2018 the world generated US$86,000,000,000,000 and every year this World GDP grows by 3.5%. So setting aside just 1% to deal with climate change would make little overall difference and would save the world a huge amount of money. What the climate change deniers also forget to tell you is that they are protecting a fossil fuel industry that receives US$5.2 trillion in annual subsidies – which includes subsidised supply costs, tax breaks and environmental costs. This amounts to 6% of world GDP.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that efficient fossil fuel pricing would lower global carbon emissions by 28%, fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46%, and increase government revenue by 3.8% of the country’s GDP.

3. Humanitarian denial

Climate change deniers also argue that climate change is good for us. They suggest longer, warmer summers in the temperate zone will make farming more productive. These gains, however, are often offset by the drier summers and increased frequency of heatwaves in those same areas. For example, the 2010 “Moscow” heatwave killed 11,000 people, devastated the Russian wheat harvest and increased global food prices.

Geographical zones of the world. The tropical zones span from the Tropic of Cancer in the North to the Tropic of Capricorn in the South (red shaded region) and contains 40% of the World population. Maulucioni/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

More than 40% of the world’s population also lives in the Tropics – where from both a human health prospective and an increase in desertification no one wants summer temperatures to rise.

Deniers also point out that plants need atmospheric carbon dioxide to grow so having more of it acts like a fertiliser. This is indeed true and the land biosphere has been absorbing about a quarter of our carbon dioxide pollution every year. Another quarter of our emissions is absorbed by the oceans. But losing massive areas of natural vegetation through deforestation and changes in land use completely nullifies this minor fertilisation effect.

Climate change deniers will tell you that more people die of the cold than heat, so warmer winters will be a good thing. This is deeply misleading. Vulnerable people die of the cold because of poor housing and not being able to afford to heat their homes. Society, not climate, kills them.

This argument is also factually incorrect. In the US, for example, heat-related deaths are four times higher than cold-related ones. This may even be an underestimate as many heat-related deaths are recorded by cause of death such as heart failure, stroke, or respiratory failure, all of which are exacerbated by excessive heat.

US weather fatalities for 2018 alongside the ten- and 30-year average. National Weather Service, CC BY

4. Political denial

Climate change deniers argue we cannot take action because other countries are not taking action. But not all countries are equally guilty of causing current climate change. For example, 25% of the human-produced CO₂ in the atmosphere is generated by the US, another 22% is produced by the EU. Africa produces just under 5%.

Given the historic legacy of greenhouse gas pollution, developed countries have an ethical responsibility to lead the way in cutting emissions. But ultimately, all countries need to act because if we want to minimise the effects of climate change then the world must go carbon zero by 2050.

Per capita annual carbon dioxide emissions and cumulative country emissions. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Nature. Data from the Global Carbon Project

Per capita annual carbon dioxide emissions and cumulative country emissions. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Nature (data from the Global Carbon Project)

Deniers will also tell you that there are problems to fix closer to home without bothering with global issues. But many of the solutions to climate change are win-win and will improve the lives of normal people. Switching to renewable energy and electric vehicles, for example, reduces air pollution, which improves people’s overall health.

Developing a green economy provides economic benefits and creates jobs. Improving the environment and reforestation provides protection from extreme weather events and can in turn improve food and water security.

5. Crisis denial

The final piece of climate change denial is the argument that we should not rush into changing things, especially given the uncertainty raised by the other four areas of denial above. Deniers argue that climate change is not as bad as scientists make out. We will be much richer in the future and better able to fix climate change. They also play on our emotions as many of us don’t like change and can feel we are living in the best of times – especially if we are richer or in power.

But similarly hollow arguments were used in the past to delay ending slavery, granting the vote to women, ending colonial rule, ending segregation, decriminalising homosexuality, bolstering worker’s rights and environmental regulations, allowing same sex marriages and banning smoking.

The fundamental question is why are we allowing the people with the most privilege and power to convince us to delay saving our planet from climate change?

Take care when examining the economic impact of fires. GDP doesn't tell the full story

By Janine Dixon

Saturday, January 18, 2020 11:15 AM UTC

Estimates of the economic damage caused by the bushfires are rolling in, some of them big and some unprecedented, as is the scale of the fires themselves.

These types of estimates will be refined and used to make – or break – the case for programs to limit the impact of similar disasters in the future. Some will be used to make a case for – or against – action on climate change.

But it’s important they not be done using the conventional measure of gross domestic product (GDP).

GDP measures everything produced in any given period.

It is a good enough measure of material welfare when used to measure the impact of a tourist event or a new mine or factory or something like the national broadband network, but it can be misleading – sometimes grossly misleading – when used to measure the economic impact of a catastrophe or natural disaster.

That’s because it measures the positives brought about the recovery from disasters but leaves out some of the negatives caused by the destruction.

For example:

• building a new house has a positive impact on GDP, even if the old house was burnt down
• a military evacuation has a positive impact on GDP, even though the circumstances that make it necessary are life-threatening and traumatic
• bushfires stimulate GDP by creating more demand for health services, even as the victims suffer from smoke inhalation, burns or post-traumatic stress disorder.

It is possible to get at the full story

Economic modelling pioneered in Australia, and used to estimate the impact of terrorism and epidemics makes it possible to prepare measures of welfare that take account of the costs of disasters.

Among the immediate costs in the first months after a bushfire disaster would be:

• the direct cost of fire-fighting
• the cost of temporarily relocating residents
• health costs, such as treatment of burns and respiratory illnesses
• loss of work days associated with firefighting, injuries, illnesses, displacement and loss of life
• a downgrading of consumer confidence
• destruction of assets including homes, farms, businesses and natural resources and the associated disruption of economic activity including tourism, agriculture and housing
• the cost of replacing or rebuilding these assets

Longer term impacts would derive from:

• health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder leading to negative impacts on quality of life and labour supply
• long term damage to ecosystems, including contamination of water, and extinction or severe loss of animal species including those necessary to agricultural production, such as bees
• reputational damage leading to possible permanent downgrading of tourism activity in affected regions and in Australia more broadly
• potential ongoing reluctance to invest in Australia
• potential increases in cost of living in bushfire prone regions due to increases in insurance costs.

It involves going beyond GDP

The longer term impacts of disasters on a nation’s GDP are clearly negative, deriving from a decline in productive capacity (labour, capital and natural resources) which unambiguously detracts from economic welfare.

In the immediate aftermath, expenditure on reconstruction of homes and other assets can add to GDP, but the funding of these activities (whether direct or through insurance) adds to debt and can drag on household consumption, either immediately or in the future. A related measure, Gross National Income (GNI) takes this into account and is generally a better measure of economic welfare.

Bushfire-induced health expenditure stimulates both GDP and GNI but detracts from welfare.

Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, can hardly be considered an improvement in standard of living.

To offset this inappropriate “good news”, it is possible to construct an index of leisure-adjusted GNI which takes into account the downgraded quality of leisure time.

As a starting point for such estimates, the prime minister’s department sets the statistical value of a year of life free of injury, disease and disability at A$182,000 (2014 dollars).

And it depends on where you are

Aggregated measures like GDP, GNI and leisure-adjusted GNI do not show the distribution of economic impact.

An event that strips a small amount from the incomes of everybody is different from one that decimates just a few regions, yet looks the same in a nationwide measure, so it is important that any economic analysis also looks at regional impacts.

The work is yet to be done, but it is safe to say that the conventional link between GDP and economic welfare (“more is better”) breaks down when assessing tragedies, particularly ones with profound regional impacts.

When campaigning to be US president Bobby Kennedy (John F Kennedy’s brother) said that GDP measures “everything… except that which makes life worthwhile”.

It’d be wise to bear that in mind when considering the policy response to the bushfires.

PUTIN DISMISSES PARLIAMENT TRUMP JEALOUS

Russia's constitutional changes are designed to perpetuate power of Vladimir Putin's elite

During the Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly.

Saturday, January 18, 2020 11:20 AM UTC

Russian president Vladimir Putin has always enjoyed the decisive move that takes everyone by surprise. Long periods of quiet are broken by a sudden, shocking manoeuvre.

This was the case with his package of reforms following the Beslan school hostage crisis in September 2004, and again with the announcement in September 2011 that he planned to return to the Kremlin, following the four-year presidency of his close colleague, Dmitry Medvedev. The Russian constitution, agreed after a referendum in December 1993, stipulates that nobody can serve more than two consecutive terms, and so, after the gap, Putin legitimately returned to the Kremlin.

On January 15 2019 in his annual address to Russia’s Federal Assembly, Putin sprang yet another surprise package of changes, signalling the beginning of a transition period that could last up to the end of his fourth constitutionally-mandated term of office in 2024.

The speech fired the starting gun on another managed succession, although Putin’s personal role at the end of this time is unclear. It appears he is seeking to create a management structure for the country’s affairs without his direct involvement.

Putin’s speech was followed by the immediate resignation of Medvedev as prime minister and of his cabinet, and the appointment of the former head of the Federal Tax Service, Mikhail Mishustin, as prime minister. Medvedev was appointed to the new post of deputy head of the Security Council, subordinate to the council’s head, Putin.

But Putin’s proposals represent neither a “January coup”, as some Russian media described it, nor democratisation. Rather, they are a way to ensure the continuity of the current elite and the system they preside over.

Where power lies

In his speech, Putin outlined the most significant package of constitutional reforms since 1993, suggesting seven amendments to the constitution. Some have a democratising edge while others are clearly designed to create a repertoire of institutions to perpetuate Putinism without Putin.

The most crucial was a suggestion by Putin to allow the State Duma to appoint the prime minister, and then “the deputy prime ministers and federal ministers at the prime minister’s recommendation”. The president would have no right to reject the candidates approved by parliament.

This would represent a major transfer of power back to the legislature from the presidential executive, raising the status of parliament. If approved, the changes could also provide a path for the United Russia political party and its leader (currently still Medvedev) to formalise its control of power from within the legislature.

Putin did not stop there, and he also asserted that Russia: “Cannot properly advance and even exist sustainably as a parliamentary republic.” The country would therefore remain “a strong presidential republic” – and a proposed constitutional change would reinforce this structure. The president would set the government’s tasks and priorities and maintain the right to sack the prime minister and ministers. The president would continue to exercise direct control over the armed forces and the entire law enforcement system (the siloviki).

A third change concerned the personnel staffing the nation’s top offices, who would no longer be allowed to have foreign citizenship or residence permit. The requirements would be even tougher for presidential candidates, who must have had permanent residency for at least 25 years with no foreign citizenship or residence permit.

Putin then noted that:

People are discussing the constitutional provision under which one person cannot hold the post of the President of the Russian Federation for more than two successive terms. I do not regard this as a matter of principle, but I nevertheless support and share this view.

This classically ambiguous formulation pointed the way to the imposition of a conclusive two-term limit on future Russian presidents, rather than the current limit on them serving two consecutive terms.

A fourth change stressed the need to increase the role of governors in federal decision-making due to Russia’s enormous size and diversity. In 2000, Putin restored the State Council as a presidential consultative body, bringing together the heads of the regions and some officials. He has now extolled the quality of its work and proposed making it a formal constitutional body. Many have speculated that the State Council could then provide a platform for his continued indirect leadership.

Sovereignty and living standards

Fifth, he proposed to entrench in the constitution a law passed in December 2015 that granted domestic legislation priority over international law. Putin argued that: “Russia can be and can remain Russia only as a sovereign state. Our nation’s sovereignty must be unconditional.” The changes would constitutionally entrench the principle that Russian norms take precedence over international law and treaties.

A sixth proposal reflected a major theme of his speech: the question of improving the country’s standard of living and dealing with demographic, climate and other issues. He suggested a constitutional change to “seal the principles of a unified system of public authority”. This would include expanding the authority of local government, alongside a constitutional provision to ensure the regular adjustment of pensions for inflation.

A final seventh proposal granted the Federation Council, Russia’s upper legislative house, the constitutional authority to dismiss Constitutional and Supreme Court judges in the event of misconduct, on the proposal of the president. How such misconduct would be defined opens up a range of possible abuses by politicians.

As the amendments represented “substantial changes”, Putin proposed they would be put to the people in a referendum. A 75-strong working group has already begun work to formulate the text of the draft amendments to the constitution.

Overall, the changes slightly diminish the president’s powers and restore greater balance in the relationship between the executive and legislative authorities. The introduction of some checks and balances would ensure that Putin’s legacy would not be easily undone. But the reforms are as much about ensuring that Putin’s system will endure as about perpetuating his leadership.

Richard Sakwa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

With costs approaching $100 billion, the fires are Australia's costliest natural disaster

A firefighting helicopter tackles a bushfire near Bairnsdale in Victoria’s East Gippsland region, Australia. STATE GOVERNMENT OF VICTORIA

Saturday, January 18, 2020 12:29 PM UTC

It’s hard to estimate the eventual economic cost of Australia’s 2019-20 megafires, partly because they are still underway, and partly because it is hard to know the cost to attribute to deaths and the decimation of species and habitats, but it is easy to get an idea of its significance – the cost will be unprecedented.

The deadliest bushfires in the past 200 years took place in 1851, then 1939, then 1983, 2009, now 2019-20. The years between them are shrinking rapidly. Only a remote grassfire in central Australia in 1974-75 rivalled them in terms of size, although not in terms of material burnt or loss of life.

The term “megafire” is a new one, defined in the early 2000s to help describe disturbing new wildfires emerging in the United States – massive blazes, usually above 400,000 hectares, often joining up, that create more than usual destruction to life and property.

Australia’s current fires dwarf the US fires that inspired the term.

They are 25 times the size of Australia’s deadliest bushfires, the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria that directly killed 173 people, and are so large and intense that they create their own weather in which winds throw embers 30 kilometres or more ahead of the front and pyro-cumulus clouds produce dry lightning that ignites new fires.

The Black Saturday fires burnt 430,000 hectares. The current fires have killed fewer people but have so far burnt 10.7 million hectares – an area the size of South Korea, or Scotland and Wales combined.

There are easy-to-measure costs…

The federal government has promised to put at least A$2 billion into a National Bushfire Recovery Fund, which is roughly the size of the first estimate of the cost of the fires calculated by Terry Rawnsley of SGS Economics and Planning.

He put the cost at somewhere between A$1.5 and $2.5 billion, using his firm’s modelling of the cost of the NSW Tathra fires in March 2018 as a base.

It’s the total of the lost income from farm production, tourism and the like.

It is possible to get an idea of wider costs using the findings of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.

Final Report, 2019 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission

It came up with an estimate for tangible costs of A$4.369 billion, which after inflation would be about $5 billion in today’s dollars.

… and harder-to-measure costs

Tangible costs are those easily measured including the cost of replacing things such as destroyed homes, contents and vehicles.

They also include the human lives lost, which were valued at A$3.7 million per life (2009 dollars) in accordance with a Commonwealth standard.

The measure didn’t include the effect of injuries and shortened lives due to smoke-related stroke and cardiovascular and lung diseases, or damage to species and habitats, the loss of livestock, grain and feed, crops, orchards and national and local parks.

Also excluded were “intangibles”, among them the social costs of mental health problems and unemployment and increases in suicide, substance abuse, relationship breakdowns and domestic violence.

The cost of intangibles can peak years after a disaster and continue to take tolls for decades, if not generations.

One attempt to estimate the cost of intangibles was made by Deloitte Access Economics, in work for the Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience & Safer Communities.

Deloitte put the tangible costs of the Black Saturday fires at A$3.1 billion in 2015 dollars and the intangible costs at more than that again: A$3.9 billion, producing a total of A$7 billion, which would be A$7.6 billion in today’s dollars.

Black Saturday is a staring point

This season’s megafires are, so far, less costly than the 2009 Victorian fires in terms of human life, roughly on par in terms of lost homes, and less costly for other structures.

But given that considerably more land has been burnt we can expect other costs to eclipse those of Black Saturday.

As of today, 25 times as much land has been burnt.

Scaling up the royal commission’s Black Saturday figures for the size of the fire and scaling them down for the fewer deaths and other things that shouldn’t be scaled up produces an estimate of tangible costs of A$103 billion in today’s dollars.

The Deloitte Access Economics ratio of intangible to tangible costs suggests a total for both types of costs of A$230 billion.

As it happens, the tangible costs estimate is close to an estimate of A$100 billion prepared using different methods by University of Queensland economist John Quiggin.

The reality won’t be clear for some time.

There are several weeks of fire season remaining, and we are yet to reach the usual peak season for Victoria, which is the first week of February.

What we can safely say, with weeks left to go, is that these fires are by far Australia’s costliest natural disaster.

UFOs: Leaked footage can threaten national security, says US Navy

tombud/Pixabay

Saturday, January 18, 2020 9:34 AM UTC

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The presence of UFOs or Unidentified Flying Objects has continuously baffled many, from enthusiasts to government agencies. Recently, the United States Navy has warned that having to release more footage of these mysterious aerial vehicles could pose a threat to national security.

Express reports that many sightings of anonymous air crafts have been inquired about to the government. These sightings of unidentified flying objects have forced officials to acknowledge them, but the footage taken of these sightings was never released. Due to the increasing inquiries and footage that are being leaked to the public, the authorities said that no more footage nor cases of these sightings should be made public as it could endanger the country’s national security.

Through a Freedom of Information Act Request, the officials said they found slides that were classified as Top Secret. After reviewing the slides, they found that according to the Original Classification Authority or OCA, any release of the materials or footage would cause damage to the national security of the United States. However, this statement may only intrigue those who are really curious about what the government knows about these mysterious aerial vehicles.

In recent years, there have been a few sightings that were made public as those who have spotted them came forward to reveal the details. The first of which was in 2004 and the second encounter which became highly talked about was in 2017 when leaked US Navy radar footage showed an anonymous aircraft that was glowing and flying erratically.

Meanwhile, aside from UFOs, many have wondered about the possibility of life existing on other planets such as Mars. The Red Planet has often been the destination for space agencies all over the world as of late, and a recent report reveals that alien enthusiasts have spotted what appears to be three human-like statues on the dunes of the planet. Scott Waring, a known UFO enthusiast, claims that this is conclusive evidence that there is life on Mars.

Waring analyzed the images released by NASA’s Curiosity Rover, and he calls the statues the “Mona Lisa” of the Red Planet. He went on to explain that one of the statues seemingly is of a woman wearing a green robe, with long hair down to the shoulders. Another statue, Waring claims, is of a bald man wearing a green outfit as well. While he claims that this is proof of life on another planet, Waring believes that the agency is intentionally misleading the public.

Aliens: Strange moving lights spotted in the United Kingdom

Thor_Deichmann/Pixabay

Wednesday, January 1, 2020 1:15 PM UTC

For decades, many have often wondered when they would be able to spot alien life on Earth. A recent report reveals that some unidentified flying objects or UFOs were seen hovering over England and Wales.

Some time the previous week, Express reports that England and Wales have seen their share of strange moving lights hovering in the sky. Over the weekend, people in Oxfordshire and South Yorkshire have also witnessed the same strange moving lights in the sky, leading people to believe that they may have seen an alien spacecraft. According to some eyewitnesses who recounted what they saw on social media, the lights were traveling in a single file, and there were about 20 lights in total.

Some even said that the lights were fading out at some point. Although a few have said that it may just be satellites, the pattern of which the lights moved was unusual. It is not the first time people in Wales have seen an occurrence like this either as some locals in North Wales have also spotted strange moving lights in the sky earlier in the month.

Astronomers who took notice of these sightings have concluded that these lights really do come from outer space. However, the very visible presence in the night skies may be attributed to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellites called Starlink. According to the East Anglian Astrophysical Research Association, they clarified that the moving train of lights that are incredibly visible in the night sky are the Starlink project of Musk’s SpaceX program, providing accessible internet to everyone.

Meanwhile, NASA has shared a photo captured by their Curiosity Rover on Mars that has all the enthusiasts and scientists talking. The photo shows what could be an alien base on the Red Planet shaped like a letter B, at least according to self-proclaimed UFO expert Scott Waring. Waring explained that while he was studying the image taken by the Rover, he noticed a spot on the terrain that may have been created through mining.

Waring then found a large structure by a supposed hill, surrounded by other structures. The hillside, in particular, had a capital letter B on it. He then speculated what that letter might mean to extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet, but he is certain that this would serve as proof that aliens have lived and thrived on Mars.

Scientist describes what death is actually like

geralt/Pixabay

Wednesday, January 15, 2020 9:11 AM UTC

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One of the mysteries of life is death itself and whether there is life after death is a question that many have always wanted to know. Recently a scientist explained what death is actually like.

The ancient Egyptians believed that there was an afterlife, but it still bears wondering if there actually is such a thing as an afterlife. In a recent Oz Talk, Dr. Sam Parnia from the NYU Langone School of Medicine described what it is like. After speaking to many people who have had near-death experiences, Dr. Parnia summed up that dying is “comfortable” and began to explain the process.

Parnia said that as we die, the brain loses oxygen and the heart stops beating and once it happens, everything in the body begins to shut down and then we become unconscious to what is happening outside. “We become lifeless and motionless and that is the time that the doctors use to give us the time of death,” said Parnia.

The scientist has written many books and conducted several studies regarding death and the afterlife, including speaking to many people who have had near-death experiences and even trying to bring people back from near-death. Dr. Parnia also shares that there is a mental process that happens when someone dies. This mental process is what leaves survivors of near-death experiences wanting death again. “When we die, the experience is not unpleasant for the vast majority of people,” says Parnia.

He says that even those who have experienced pain before dying, such as sickness or injury, the process of death “becomes very comfortable, it is very blissful, peaceful.”

Meanwhile, other people have also spoken up about their experience with death. Previously, Reddit user Pwnograpik recalled his experience on the site. After getting sick overseas and being forced to go on a Keto diet that wound up destroying the lining of his stomach, he checked himself into a hospital in his home country. However, his body was rejecting all the IV and hydration that was being given to him and he recalls “everything went black” and was clinically dead for three minutes.

During those three minutes, he said that he did not see angels nor bright lights. He did not hear any voices either. He likened the situation to being on another planet. “When I looked down there was sand, and there was very shallow water. It was like an endless shore.” He even described that same feeling of bliss “It just felt like every single problem I had, every single issue no matter how big or small was just gone.”

Astronomers discover bizarre stretchy objects unlike anything else in our galaxy

By Georgina Torbet January 18, 2020

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious new class of objects at the heart of the Milky Way, unlike anything else found previously in our galaxy. The objects “look like gas but behave like stars,” according to senior researcher Andrea Ghez, as they start off small and compact but are stretched to a larger size when they approach the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy.

The researchers believe these objects could teach us about the evolution of stars and what happens to celestial bodies in environments of extreme gravity.



What are these strange objects?Artist’s impression of G objects, with the reddish centers, orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. The black hole is represented as a dark sphere inside a white ring (above the middle of the rendering).Jack Ciurlo

The puzzle began in 2005 when astronomers identified an object near the center of our galaxy called G1, which seemed to be orbiting around the supermassive black hole there in a strange way. In following years, five more objects numbered G2 to G6 were discovered. At first, these objects were thought to be clouds of gas. But one odd thing researchers noticed was that when the object G2 came very close to the event horizon of the black hole, it wasn’t torn apart in the way they would have expected. Instead, it initially stretched out, before rebounding back toward its original state.


“At the time of closest approach, G2 had a really strange signature,” Andrea Ghez, Professor of Astrophysics and director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group, said in a statement. “We had seen it before, but it didn’t look too peculiar until it got close to the black hole and became elongated, and much of its gas was torn apart. It went from being a pretty innocuous object when it was far from the black hole to one that was really stretched out and distorted at its closest approach and lost its outer shell, and now it’s getting more compact again.”

Now, new analysis of data on the six G objects makes astronomers think that they were formed when binary stars collided. Binary stars are twin star systems, in which two stars are locked in a mutual orbit. But sometimes, these stars can smash together and merge, producing a huge cloud of dust and gas surrounding the now singular merged star. These mergers are thought to be rare, but as the gravitational forces in this particular region of space are so extreme, it could be causing these mergers to happen more regularly than elsewhere in the galaxy.

The dramatic region at the heart of the Milky Way
Artist’s impression of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the spiral galaxy NGC 3147, located 130 million light-years away.ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser

Right in the center of our galaxy is a behemoth of a black hole called Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star). Even though it is 2.6 million times the mass of our Sun, it is only around 120 Astronomical Units across (an Astronomical Unit is the distance between the Earth and the sun). That means that a tremendous amount of mass is squeezed into a relatively small space, and the black hole exerts a very strong gravitational pull.


This type of black hole is called a supermassive black hole, and astronomers believe that almost all galaxies have such black holes at their centers (though there are exceptions). We are just beginning to learn about the secret lives of these monster black holes, with surprising findings like the fact that planets may be able to form around them as well as the recent discovery of the G objects.

One of the challenging but also exciting features of investigating the heart of the Milky Way is that it is an extreme environment where density and gravitational forces are much stronger than they are in our solar system. “The Earth is in the suburbs compared to the center of the galaxy, which is some 26,000 light-years away,” Ghez explained in the statement. “The center of our galaxy has a density of stars 1 billion times higher than our part of the galaxy. The gravitational pull is so much stronger. The magnetic fields are more extreme. The center of the galaxy is where extreme astrophysics occurs — the X-sports of astrophysics.”


Ghez’s team is the same one that discovered last year that the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way is getting hungrier. The team theorized that blobs of gas could have been sucked off a nearby star and fallen into the black hole, producing a change in brightness as the gas glows when falling into the event horizon.

How the G objects were identified  
 
Orbits of the G objects at the center of our galaxy, with the supermassive black hole indicated with a white cross. Stars, gas and dust are in the background.Anna Ciurlo, Tuan Do/UCLA Galactic Center Group

To identify the G objects, the researchers looked at data about the center of the Milky Way gathered at the W.M. Keck Observatory and used a technique called adaptive optics. Adaptive optics enables more accurate imaging by limiting the distorting effects of Earth’s atmosphere in real time, allowing astronomers to peer deeper into the heart of our galaxy.

They had to distinguish the G objects from other clusters of nearby stars, so they used a tool called the OSIRIS-Volume Display which can identify objects’ spectra so they could track the movements of the G objects in isolation.

As the data used to investigate the objects spans more than two decades, the scientists have a good level of confidence that what they are observing is a real phenomenon and more than just a single strange aberration. “The unique dataset that Professor Ghez’s group has gathered during more than 20 years is what allowed us to make this discovery,” Anna Ciurlo, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper describing the findings, said in the statement. “We now have a population of G objects, so it is not a matter of explaining a one-time event like G2.”
What these mysterious objects teach us about star evolution

If these G objects are indeed formed by the merging of binary stars, this has implications for the way we think about mergers occurring under extreme gravitational forces. “Mergers of stars may be happening in the universe more often than we thought, and likely are quite common,” Ghez said.


“Black holes may be driving binary stars to merge. It’s possible that many of the stars we’ve been watching and not understanding may be the end product of mergers that are calm now. We are learning how galaxies and black holes evolve. The way binary stars interact with each other and with the black hole is very different from how single stars interact with other single stars and with the black hole.”

The confirmation of the existence of these objects also means we can look forward to some dramatic events when they approach close to the black hole. “One of the things that has gotten everyone excited about the G objects is that the stuff that gets pulled off of them by tidal forces as they sweep by the central black hole must inevitably fall into the black hole,” co-author Mark Morris, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, said in the same statement. “When that happens, it might be able to produce an impressive fireworks show since the material eaten by the black hole will heat up and emit copious radiation before it disappears across the event horizon.”

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

Black hole: Scientists spot strange objects near the Milky Way

geralt/Pixabay

Saturday, January 18, 2020 9:34 AM UTC

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Black holes reside in the heart of galaxies, and in a span of billions of years, can consume everything it can come across, including light. Recently, some scientists have spotted strange celestial objects lurking around the milky way galaxy, seemingly approaching the supermassive black hole.

Express reports that astronomers from UCLA discovered unusual objects close to Sagittarius A. The objects in question look like clouds or clusters of gas but they exhibit the same behavior as stars. Under observation, they found that these objects are getting stretched out and compacted in their orbits because of the gravitational pull of the black hole. The scientists have estimated that the orbital time of these unusual objects is within the range of 100 to 1000 years.

This is not the first time astronomers found strange beings or objects lurking within the galaxy. The first was back in 2005, and the scientists that discovered it have formally referred to it as G1, and five more were found since then, from G1 to G6. According to the researchers, G2, in particular, had a strange signature when it approached the black hole.

While they were not unusual enough for scientists to really take notice, their behavior towards the black hole’s gravitational pull was what got their attention. What these objects are is yet to be determined but the UCLA scientists have theorized that these may be binary stars. Binary stars are two stars that orbit each other and form a cluster of larger stars when they merge.

Meanwhile, black holes, in general, have always been elusive in nature. Now, a report reveals that astronomers have discovered a way to further learn about these celestial entities. Scientists from the European Southern Observatory found clouds of gas that surround these supermassive black holes. Dr. Emanuele Paolo Farina said that these gases are what these black holes consume.

It also bears noting that some of these beings or primordial black holes go back 12 billion years or 12 billion light-years away. These very old black holes are thought to be the remains of the first stars that lit up the universe called the Cosmic Dawn.

Dr. Farina stated, “We are now able to demonstrate for the first time, primordial galaxies do have enough food in their environments to sustain the growth of supermassive black holes and vigorous star formation.”