SURFS UP

Scientists have finally 'heard' the chorus of gravitational waves that ripple through the universe

By Associated Press

 Jun 30, 2023

Gravitational waves stretching and squeezing space-time in the universe. (AP)

Einstein predicted that when really heavy objects move through spacetime - the fabric of our universe - they create ripples that spread through that fabric. Scientists sometimes liken these ripples to the background music of the universe.

In 2015, scientists used an experiment called LIGO to detect gravitational waves for the first time and showed Einstein was right. But so far, those methods have only been able to catch waves at high frequencies, explained NANOGrav member

Chiara Mingarelli, an astrophysicist at Yale University.

Those quick "chirps" come from specific moments when relatively small black holes and dead stars crash into each other, Mingarelli said.

Scientists have observed for the first time the faint ripples caused by the motion of black holes that are gently stretching and squeezing everything in the universe. (AP)

In the latest research, scientists were searching for waves at much lower frequencies. These slow ripples can take years or even decades to cycle up and down, and probably come from some of the biggest objects in our universe: supermassive black holes billions of times the mass of our sun.

Galaxies across the universe are constantly colliding and merging together. As this happens, scientists believe the enormous black holes at the centers of these galaxies also come together and get locked into a dance before they finally collapse into each other, explained Szabolcs Marka, an astrophysicist at Columbia University who was not involved with the research.

The black holes send off gravitational waves as they circle around in these pairings, known as binaries.

"Supermassive black hole binaries, slowly and calmly orbiting each other, are the tenors and bass of the cosmic opera," Marka said.

Snowfall just hours from Sydney is so large it is seen from space

No instruments on Earth could capture the ripples from these giants. So "we had to build a detector that was roughly the size of the galaxy," said NANOGrav researcher Michael Lam of the SETI Institute.

The results released this week included 15 years of data from NANOGrav, which has been using telescopes across North America to search for the waves. Other teams of gravitational wave hunters around the world also published studies, including in Europe, India, China and Australia.

The scientists pointed telescopes at dead stars called pulsars, which send out flashes of radio waves as they spin around in space like lighthouses.

These bursts are so regular that scientists know exactly when the radio waves are supposed to arrive on our planet — "like a perfectly regular clock ticking away far out in space," said NANOGrav member Sarah Vigeland, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But as gravitational waves warp the fabric of spacetime, they actually change the distance between Earth and these pulsars, throwing off that steady beat.

By analyaing tiny changes in the ticking rate across different pulsars — with some pulses coming slightly early and others coming late — scientists could tell that gravitational waves were passing through.

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The NANOGrav team monitored 68 pulsars across the sky using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico and the Very Large Array in New Mexico. Other teams found similar evidence from dozens of other pulsars, monitored with telescopes across the globe.

So far, this method hasn't been able to trace where exactly these low-frequency waves are coming from, said Marc Kamionkowski, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved with the research.

Instead, it's revealing the constant hum that is all around us — like when you're standing in the middle of a party, "you'll hear all of these people talking, but you won't hear anything in particular," Kamionkowski said.

The background noise they found is "louder" than some scientists expected, Mingarelli said. This could mean that there are more, or bigger, black hole mergers happening out in space than we thought — or point to other sources of gravitational waves that could challenge our understanding of the universe.

Researchers hope that continuing to study this kind of gravitational waves can help us learn more about the biggest objects in our universe. It could open new doors to "cosmic archaeology" that can track the history of black holes and galaxies merging all around us, Marka said.

"We're starting to open up this new window on the universe," Vigeland said.

Scientists have finally 'heard' the chorus of

gravitational waves that ripple through the 

universe

Maddie Burakoff

Jun 30 2023

Scientists have observed for the first time the faint ripples caused by the motion of black holes that are gently stretching and squeezing everything in the universe.

They reported on Wednesday (local time) that they were able to “hear” what are called low-frequency gravitational waves – changes in the fabric of the universe that are created by huge objects moving around and colliding in space.

“It’s really the first time that we have evidence of just this large-scale motion of everything in the universe,” said Maura McLaughlin, co-director of NANOGrav, the research collaboration that published the results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Einstein predicted that when really heavy objects move through spacetime – the fabric of our universe – they create ripples that spread through that fabric. Scientists sometimes liken these ripples to the background music of the universe.

In 2015, scientists used an experiment called LIGO to detect gravitational waves for the first time and showed Einstein was right.

But so far, those methods have only been able to catch waves at high frequencies, explained NANOGrav member Chiara Mingarelli, an astrophysicist at Yale University.

AURORE SIMONNET/AP
This illustration provided by researchers in June 2023 depicts gravitational waves stretching and squeezing space-time in the universe.

Those quick “chirps” come from specific moments when relatively small black holes and dead stars crash into each other, Mingarelli said.

In the latest research, scientists were searching for waves at much lower frequencies. These slow ripples can take years or even decades to cycle up and down, and probably come from some of the biggest objects in our universe: supermassive black holes billions of times the mass of our sun.

Galaxies across the universe are constantly colliding and merging together. As this happens, scientists believe the enormous black holes at the centres of these galaxies also come together and get locked into a dance before they finally collapse into each other, explained Szabolcs Marka, an astrophysicist at Columbia University who was not involved with the research.

The black holes send off gravitational waves as they circle around in these pairings, known as binaries.

“Supermassive black hole binaries, slowly and calmly orbiting each other, are the tenors and bass of the cosmic opera,” Marka said.

UNCREDITED/AP
The Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, US, were used to observe the slow gravitational waves.

No instruments on Earth could capture the ripples from these giants. So “we had to build a detector that was roughly the size of the galaxy,” said NANOGrav researcher Michael Lam of the SETI Institute.

The results released this week included 15 years of data from NANOGrav, which has been using telescopes across North America to search for the waves. Other teams of gravitational wave hunters around the world also published studies, including in Europe, India, China and Australia.

The scientists pointed telescopes at dead stars called pulsars, which send out flashes of radio waves as they spin around in space like lighthouses.

These bursts are so regular that scientists know exactly when the radio waves are supposed to arrive on our planet – “like a perfectly regular clock ticking away far out in space,” said NANOGrav member Sarah Vigeland, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

But as gravitational waves warp the fabric of spacetime, they actually change the distance between Earth and these pulsars, throwing off that steady beat.

UNCREDITED/AP
This Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico and several other telescopes around the world were used to observe the slow gravitational waves that are constantly stretching and squeezing everything in the universe.

By analysing tiny changes in the ticking rate across different pulsars – with some pulses coming slightly early and others coming late – scientists could tell that gravitational waves were passing through.

The NANOGrav team monitored 68 pulsars across the sky using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico and the Very Large Array in New Mexico. Other teams found similar evidence from dozens of other pulsars, monitored with telescopes across the globe.

So far, this method hasn’t been able to trace where exactly these low-frequency waves are coming from, said Marc Kamionkowski, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved with the research.

Instead, it’s revealing the constant hum that is all around us – like when you’re standing in the middle of a party, “you’ll hear all of these people talking, but you won’t hear anything in particular,” Kamionkowski said.

The background noise they found is “louder” than some scientists expected, Mingarelli said. This could mean that there are more, or bigger, black hole mergers happening out in space than we thought – or point to other sources of gravitational waves that could challenge our understanding of the universe.

UNCREDITED/AP
NANOGrav team members meeting at Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia., in 2018.

Researchers hope that continuing to study this kind of gravitational waves can help us learn more about the biggest objects in our universe. It could open new doors to “cosmic archaeology” that can track the history of black holes and galaxies merging all around us, Marka said.

“We’re starting to open up this new window on the universe,” Vigeland said.

New UPS Trucks Will Get Air Conditioning After Years of Driver Demands

UPS will slowly begin introducing air conditioning to its fleet of delivery trucks from next year, but is it doing enough?

BY LEWIN DAY|PUBLISHED JUN 29, 2023 

Air conditioning was once considered an optional luxury, but it's generally standard issue on most vehicles today. When it comes to UPS's fleet of delivery trucks, though, drivers have long had to suffer the brunt of hot summers entirely unaided. Some relief will soon be at hand, though, as a result of long-running negotiations with workers.

Air conditioning has long been a top priority for those that work at UPS. If you've ever driven your project beater without A/C in a hot summer, you'll know the struggle. Imagine that magnified by the fact that you're stuck in a hot truck for a full day's shift. Workers have even shared thermometer readings on Twitter showing temperatures inside UPS trucks can reach in excess of 120 F. Now, it seems that UPS has finally agreed to new measures that should help to keep its trucks, and thus its delivery crews, cooler.

The change has come about via contract negotiations with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union which represents UPS workers. The primary measure is that all newly purchased UPS small package delivery vehicles will be fitted with air conditioning from January 1, 2024 onwards. Where possible, the company will prioritize the delivery of new vehicles to the hottest parts of the country first.

Of course, UPS operates a fleet of over 120,000 delivery trucks in the US. The newly-equipped trucks will make up a small fraction of that fleet for some time. For the rest of its famous Package Cars, UPS will install a fan in the cab to provide drivers with some airflow. A second fan will later be installed in UPS trucks without air conditioning by June 1, 2024.

The new agreement with the Teamsters also highlights some glaring design oversights in UPS's unique Package Car delivery vehicles. Moving forward, UPS will retrofit its vehicles with exhaust heat shields to minimize the amount of heat passing into the vehicle. This is something virtually every passenger car has featured for decades, so it's surprising the measure was never implemented on UPS's trucks. The company will retrofit existing Package Cars with exhaust shields in the 18 months following ratification of its new contract with the Teamsters.

Package Cars will also receive a new air scoop that ducts fresh air into the cargo area of the vehicle. This promises to reduce temperatures in the back when workers are loading and unloading packages. The retrofit programs will cover the bespoke Package Cars that make up 95% of UPS's fleet, with other vehicles to receive upgrades where practical.

Workers have been calling for UPS to solve this issue for years, with heat stroke and other heat-related injuries causing undue harm to those on the job. Workers have collapsed and even died on the job, with relatives pinning the cause on soaring temperatures and unbearable working conditions.

A few fans in old trucks aren't going to solve this problem overnight. While it's positive to see the company finally taking some actions toward protecting its workers from injury, it's hard to understand why it's taken this long in the first place.

New Mexico regulators fine oil producer $40 million for burning off vast amounts of natural gas

New Mexico oilfield and air quality regulators announced unprecedented fines against a Texas-based oil and natural gas producer on accusations that the company flouted local pollution reporting and control requirements as it burned off vast amounts of ...

By MORGAN LEE 

Associated Press
June 29, 2023

 Pump jacks work in a field near Lovington, N.M.,

New Mexico oilfield and air quality regulators on Thursday, June 29, 2023, announced unprecedented state fines against a Texas-based oil and natural gas producer 
The Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. -- New Mexico oilfield and air quality regulators on Thursday announced unprecedented state fines against a Texas-based oil and natural gas producer on accusations that the company flouted local pollution reporting and control requirements by burning off vast amounts of natural gas in a prolific energy-production zone in the southeast of the state.

The New Mexico Environment Department announced a $40.3 million penalty against Austin, Texas-based Ameredev, alleging the burning caused excessive emissions in 2019 and 2020 at five facilities in New Mexico’s Lea County near the town of Jal. Regulators raised concerns about the excess release of several pollutants linked to climate warming or known to cause serious health issues, including sulfur dioxide.

The agency alleged that Ameredev mined oil and natural gas without any means of transporting the gas away via pipeline, as required by state law. The company instead is accused of burning off the natural gas in excess of limits or without authorization in 2019 and 2020 — with excess emissions equivalent to pollution that would come from heating 16,640 homes for a year, the agency said in a statement.

The open-air burning, or “flaring,” of natural gas is often used as a control measure to avoid direct emissions into the atmosphere, with permit requirements to estimate burning.

“They simply were not following what they had represented in their permits. ... They represented that they would capture 100% of their gas, send it to the sales pipeline," said Cindy Hollman, section chief for air quality compliance at the New Mexico Environment Department.

Representatives for Ameredev and a parent company could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday by phone or email.

Separately, state oilfield regulators issued a violation notice and proposed a $2.4 million penalty against Ameredev for a series of regulatory infractions at one of the company’s wells. It accused Ameredev of failing to file required production and natural gas waste reports.

“Such reports are critical for operators to demonstrate compliance with (New Mexico) waste rules, which themselves are a key component of New Mexico’s climate change policy,” the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department said in a statement. “Other required reports were submitted but were unacceptably late.”

Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department Secretary Sarah Cottrell Propst said her agency was pursuing the maximum penalty available.

The sanctions can be disputed administratively, and eventually appealed in court.

The Environment Department has ordered the company to cease all excess emissions and seek permits that accurately reflect its operations, with verification from an independent auditor.

Hollman said that the sanctions stem from anonymous calls from concerned citizens about open-air flares from the burning of natural gas. She said that led to on-site inspections in late December 2019 at installations of tanks that receive crude oil from the wells.

“None of the facilities had permitted a flare and yet every facility was flaring,” Hollman said in an interview. “Every site was different than what they had represented.”

Advanced oil-drilling techniques have unlocked massive amounts of natural gas from New Mexico's portion of the Permian Basin, which extends into Texas. But existing pipelines don’t always have enough capacity to gather and transport the gas.

State oil and gas regulators recently updated regulations to limit venting and flaring at petroleum production sites to reduce methane pollution, with some allowances for emergencies and mandatory reporting.

Recent changes by the state Environment Department focus on oilfield equipment that emits smog-causing pollution, specifically volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides.

Two  Combines

两个结合

JUN 30, 2023 | RYAN HO KILPATRICK

THE CMP DICTIONARY

Four and a half decades after Deng Xiaoping called for Marxism to adapt to China’s “material conditions,” Xi has added that it must also match “China’s outstanding traditional culture.” But the “Two Combines,” as this formula has been christened, is aimed squarely at legitimizing and justifying his own uncontested power.

At a symposium on cultural heritage development on June 2, 2023 Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the importance of “combining Marxist theory with China’s outstanding traditional culture” (把马克思主义基本原理同中华优秀传统文化相结合). According to Xi, this marriage is necessary to realize his grandiose vision of a new “modern Chinese civilization” (中华民族现代文明) grounded in his own theory, which we explore in-depth in “China’s ‘Xivilizing’ Mission.”

Together with the need to adapt Marxism to China’s material conditions (把马克思主义基本原理同中国具体实际相结合), a prerogative established by the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1978, the formulation has become known as the “Two Combines” (两个结合). It’s a political phrase or tifa (提法) that was first put forward by Xi in July 2021, but which has seen a renewed publicity push since Xi made related remarks during a speech on June 2, 2023. In one memorable flourish, the China Confucius Foundation even at the time called the combines a “magical talisman” that has always guided China’s development.

Marking Marx As Chinese

Magical properties aside, the Confucians are right to point out that the idea of molding Marxism around specific conditions in China — a process known as Sinicization (中国化) — is far from new. It was first formally introduced by Mao Zedong from the caves of Yan’an in 1938, after he and his vision of a distinctly Chinese, peasant-led revolution triumphed over the Soviet-educated “Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks” who had dominated the CCP prior to the Long March out of Jiangxi Soviet (for more on this history, read “CCP or CPC: A China Watchers’ Rorschach”).

However, the idea has not always been in vogue since that time. Mao’s insistence that Marxism should be applied through national forms (通过民族形式的马克思主义) and with Chinese characteristics (中国特色) was denounced by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as “nationalist” (搞民族主义) and was not openly used in the official documents during the 1960s. It was only after the Cultural Revolution, as China entered the era of Reform and Opening-up, that a second wave of “Sinicization” was proposed by Deng Xiaoping then followed up by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

Second-wave Sinicization, ironically, was used in service not of communism but capitalism, rationalizing and justifying market reform in China’s post-socialist stage. The consistency with which “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色社会主义) was used to describe this stage saw the modifier “with Chinese characteristics” take on new, parodical meaning as a disavowal of whatever concept preceded it.

Civilized Communism

Xi’s addition of the second combine is “an important original assertion,” according to a piece in cpcnews.cn, the Communist Party’s official news site. Taken together, it says, the two are “the inherent requirement and inevitable logic of the Sinicization of Marxism. The entire history of the Chinese Communist Party, writes the author, a professor of Marxism, is the history of the Sinicization of Marxism. Only when Marxism is fully Sinicized will it decisively “take root in the hearts of the people.”

This approach reframes the historical failings of the Communist Party in an original manner. By this logic, past problems had to do not with an excess of violence and dogmatism, or with over-concentration of power. Rather, they arose because Marxism as applied in China was simply not Chinese enough.

Most saliently, the “Two Combines” concept reinforces how Xi has used the idea of Chinese culture or civilization to legitimize his own tightening grip on power. Throughout his rule, invocations of the greatness of Chinese civilization have been coupled with claims to be its inheritor and protector. As another Two Combines commentary on cpcnews.cn puts it, “our Party’s historical and cultural self-confidence has reached a new height, and […] our Party’s efforts to inherit the excellent Chinese tradition have reached a new level.”

---

Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

CMP Managing Editor

 Columnists

US approval of 'lab-grown chicken' could be game-changer for efforts to halt decline of nature – Philip Lymbery

Meat grown from stem cells promises to emit fewer greenhouse gases than traditional agriculture

By Philip Lymbery

THE SCOTSMAN

Published 30th Jun 2023,

Food history has been made in America this month with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) authorising the sale of cultivated chicken – meat grown from stem cells in a bioreactor. For the first time ever, American diners will be able to tuck into chicken produced without harming a single bird.

It’s produced from stem cells harmlessly drawn from donor animals, then raised in a soup of nutrients in a bioreactor. Compared to conventional meat, meat from stem cells promises to need much less land and emit far fewer greenhouse gases. In 2020, Singapore became the first country in the world to give the go-ahead to what is often described by the media as “lab-grown” meat

However, approval for the commercial production and sale of meat from stem cells by the USDA is likely to send much greater reverberations around the world, setting the stage for similar approvals elsewhere. On hearing the news, Maarten Bosch, chief executive of the Netherlands-based Mosa Meats, an early pioneer of the technology, said: “With regulators in Asia and North America signalling that cultivating meat is a safe alternative to slaughtering animals, policymakers worldwide will be jumping into action so as not to miss out on the huge economic and environmental opportunity presented by cellular agriculture.”

Race to market

Regulatory approval in the US means that two California companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, will be able to offer lab-grown meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves. Good Meat has already started producing its first batch of cultivated chicken which will be sold to celebrated restaurateur and humanitarian chef, José Andrés, who runs 30 restaurants across the country.

During an opportunity to speak to Good Meat’s co-founder and chief executive, Josh Tetrick, I asked him about his motivation and attitude toward competition, given that more than 100 companies are now clamouring in this field. “We have an urgency, and every single second we delay is creating more pain and more degradation and taking us further from who we are [as a species]… If you told me right now that some other company will solve this problem in the next handful of years, that more human beings will eat meat that didn’t require killing an animal and it had nothing to do with us, sign me up – I’ll just go on vacation in the mountains!” he told me.

Game-changer

Scientists have worked out how to produce chicken meat without the need to grow the animal (Picture: Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)

'Oh, God...': Biden on whether Trump would have tipped off Putin about coup plan

ByHT News Desk

Jun 30, 2023 

Former US President Donald Trump is a longtime admirer of Russian 

President Vladimir Putin.

US President Joe Biden on Thursday claimed that his administration knew about the impending rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin “ahead of time”. In what Fox News called a ‘softball interview' with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, Biden briefly talked about the last week's revolt against Putin by his former aide and mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and a dramatic U-turn within 24 hours.

US President Joe Biden.(AFP)

When asked about what the US knew about the Russian revolt, Biden responded, “We knew things ahead of time,” but said he couldn't say what.

Wallace followed up, “Did you worry that Trump might have tipped him off, had he still been president?” She was apparently asking whether Trump would have warned Russian President Vladimir Putin of the mercenary leader's plans for the rebellion against Russia's military leaders.

“Oh, God,” Biden said. "I don't know. I don't think about that very often."

As president, former US President Donald Trump developed friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Thursday, Trump said the Russian President has been "somewhat weakened" by an aborted mutiny and that now is the time for the United States to try to broker a negotiated peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine.

"You could say that he's (Putin) still there, he's still strong, but he certainly has been I would say somewhat weakened at least in the minds of a lot of people," Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview.

If Putin were no longer in power, however, "you don't know what the alternative is. It could be better, but it could be far worse," he said.

Putin witnessed one of the biggest challenges as Russian premier after the Wagner Group chief launched a mutiny against the top leadership. Prigozhin claimed that the armed mutiny was to save his group after being ordered to place it under the command of the defence ministry, which he has cast as ineffectual in the war in Ukraine.

Congress doubles down on explosive claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

BY MARIK VON RENNENKAMPFF, 

OPINION CONTRIBUTOR 

THE HILL

- 06/27/23

Asked June 26 about allegations of secret UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering programs, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) made several stunning statements.

In an exclusive interview, Rubio told NewsNation Washington correspondent Joe Khalil that multiple individuals with “very high clearances and high positions within our government” “have come forward to share” “first-hand” UFO-related claims “beyond the realm of what [the Senate Intelligence Committee] has ever dealt with.”

Rubio’s comments provide context for a bipartisan provision adopted unanimously by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which would immediately halt funding for any secret government or contractor efforts to retrieve and reverse-engineer craft of “non-earth” or “exotic” origin.

This extraordinary language added to the Senate version of the Intelligence authorization bill mirrors and adds significant credibility to a whistleblower’s recent, stunning allegations that a clandestine, decades-long effort to recover, analyze and exploit objects of “non-human” origin has been operating illegally without congressional oversight.

Additionally, the bill instructs individuals with knowledge of such activities to disclose all relevant information and grants legal immunity if the information is reported appropriately within a defined timeframe. Moreover, nearly 20 pages of the legislation appear to directly address recent events by enhancing a raft of legal protections for whistleblowers while also permitting such individuals to contact Congress directly.

Researcher and congressional expert Douglas Johnson first reported on and analyzed the remarkable bill language, which, if it passes the House, could become law this calendar year.

Beyond the Senate Intelligence Committee, the powerful investigative body that oversees the nation’s intelligence agencies found the aforementioned whistleblower’s allegations — that secret UFO-related programs are illegally withheld from Congress — to be “credible and urgent.”

Moreover, according to two reports, multiple military, intelligence and contractor officials corroborated claims that the U.S. government or private companies possess multiple craft of possible “non-human” origin.

Importantly, this intelligence bill is not the first instance of Congress addressing the possible existence of surreptitious UFO retrieval and reverse engineering programs.

The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden last December, established robust whistleblower protections for individuals with knowledge of secret UFO programs engaged in “material retrieval, material analysis, reverse engineering [and] research and development.”

But the Senate Intelligence Committee’s legislation goes significantly further than previous laws. If enacted as drafted, the legislation would immediately halt funding for any secret, unreported programs that engage in “analyzing” retrieved UFOs “for the purpose of determining properties, material composition, method of manufacture, origin, characteristics, usage and application, performance, operational modalities, or reverse engineering of such craft or component technology.”


At the same time, the legislation would cease funding for any personnel engaged in “capturing, recovering, and securing [UFOs] or pieces and components of such craft.”

Funding would also be cut for “the development of propulsion technology, or aerospace craft that uses propulsion technology, systems, or subsystems, that is based on or derived from or inspired by inspection, analysis, or reverse engineering of recovered [UFOs] or materials.”

Perhaps more importantly, the bill language prohibits legal prosecution of individuals with knowledge of surreptitious retrieval and reverse engineering of “non-human” craft. To avoid legal jeopardy, such individuals would have two months after passage of the legislation to inform the director of the Pentagon’s new UFO analysis office of the existence of relevant UFO-related information.

These individuals would then have six months to turn over “all such material and information,” as well as “a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic [UFO] material.”

Importantly, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s legislation contains a “sense of Congress” provision. Such resolutions typically convey a particular message from either the House or the Senate or, as in this case, from Congress as a whole.

The “sense of Congress” is that any illegally hidden craft of “non-earth” or “exotic” origin must be brought out of the shadows for broader scientific and industrial analysis. In particular, the goal of the legislation is to “avoid technology stovepipes” — a reference to the non-sharing of information due to excessive secrecy and compartmentalization — and to integrate any recovered “exotic technology” into the nation’s broader “industrial base.”

The “sense of Congress” provision aligns closely with concerns expressed by multiple officials that extraordinary secrecy prevents the robust scientific analysis required to make sense of the advanced, “non-human” craft allegedly retrieved in recent decades.

Of note, there are indications that at least one law enforcement entity is engaged in a sweeping investigation of the U.S. government’s handling of UFOs.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are one of the few pathways through which private citizens can obtain government information on UFOs. Official documents and other data released under FOIA are frequently redacted to prevent the release of classified information. Importantly, each redaction must be grounded in a legal justification for why the relevant information is withheld.

Recently, the U.S. government denied in full five FOIA requests encompassing a broad range of UFO-related topics. In a striking departure from previous practice, the government denied the requests on the grounds that release of the information may interfere with “enforcement proceedings” and “law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.”US-India relations: A test case for the Sullivan DoctrineDon’t take away critical surgery options from breast cancer patients

The application of such novel justifications for withholding government UFO information is circumstantial evidence that a law enforcement entity, such as the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, is engaged in a broad, and possibly criminal, investigation of the U.S. government’s involvement with UFOs.

After all, what government oversight body, explicitly charged with preventing unlawful activities, would fail to initiate a sweeping investigation of extraordinary and seemingly credible allegations of illegality?


Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Why a Harvard professor thinks he may have found fragments of an alien spacecraft at the bottom of the Pacific


A daring deep sea search has found tiny pieces of a mysterious meteor that crashed to Earth in 2014. The ‘alien hunter of Harvard’ tells Bevan Hurley the discovery may be evidence of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization visiting Earth




Harvard professor Avi Loeb with a piece of magnetic debris dredged from the Pacific Ocean
(Avi Loeb / Medium)

After spending years studying the night skies for signs of extraterrestrial life, Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb believes he has found proof of their existence at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Professor Loeb has just completed a $1.5m expedition searching for signs of a mysterious meteor dubbed IM1 that crashed off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2014 and is believed to have come from interstellar space.

The 61-year-old told The Independent he oversaw a team of deep-sea explorers who found 50 tiny spherules, or molten droplets, using a magnetic sled that was dropped from the expedition vessel the Silver Star 2km underneath the surface of the ocean.

He believes the tiny objects, about half a millimetre in size, are most likely made from a steel-titanium alloy that is much stronger than the iron found in regular meteors.

Further testing was now required, but Prof Loeb believes they either have interstellar origins, or have been made by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

Prof Loeb chaired Harvard’s astronomy department from 2011 to 2020 and now leads the university’s Galileo Project, which is establishing open-sourced observatories across the world to search for signs of UFOs and interstellar objects.

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He has long courted controversy for his trenchant belief that aliens have visited Earth.

In his bestselling 2021 book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Prof Loeb argued that ‘Oumuamua — a pancake-shaped space rock about the size of a football field which was visible to scientists for 11 days in 2017 — could only have been an interstellar technology built by aliens.

A tiny spherule, recovered from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, could be a fragment from an alien spacecraft, Harvard Professor Avi Loeb says
(Courtesy of Avi Loeb)

His ideas have set him at odds with much of the scientific community. But the unapologetic scientist dubbed the “alien hunter of Harvard” tells The Independent that his naysayers are “arrogant” to dismiss his findings.

The objects will now be taken back to Harvard for testing to confirm their make-up. But for Prof Loeb, the “miracle” discovery is further vindication that his unorthodox methods are bearing fruit.

‘An outlier’

His quest began in 2019, when IM1 caught the attention of his research team as they combed NASA’s open-source catalogue of meteors for irregular space rock detected around the Earth.


IM1 stood out for its high velocity — it travelled faster than 95 per cent of nearby stars — and the fact it had exploded much lower in the Earth’s atmosphere than most meteors.

“The object was tougher than all (272) other space rocks recorded in the same NASA catalogue, it was an outlier of material strength,” Prof Loeb told The Independent.


He and his Harvard colleague Amir Siraj calculated with 99.999 per cent confidence that IM1 had travelled to Earth from another star.

The pair initially had their paper rejected for publication in an academic journal, and were stymied from gaining access to key classified US Government data about IM1.

Then in April last year, the US Space Force wrote to NASA to say that the chief scientist of the US Space Operations Command had confirmed IM1’s velocity was “sufficiently accurate” to indicate it had come from interstellar space.

Using a combination of Department of Defense data and seismology readings, Prof Loeb was able to calculate a rough area where debris from IM1 had fallen.

From there, he was able to pinpoint the meteor’s most likely path as it exploded and shed its payload.

With $1.5m in funding from US entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson, the founder of blockchain company Cardano, Prof Loeb assembled what he describes as the best team of ocean explorers in the world.

This included Rob McCallum, the founder of EYOS Expeditions and a former OceanGate Expeditions consultant who had tried to raise the alarm about the doomed Titan submersible with its CEO Stockton Rush in 2018.

In mid-June, Prof Loeb set out from his home in Connecticut bound for Papua New Guinea.

Days earlier, former US Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch went public with claims that a Department of Defense UFO Task Force was withholding information about a secretive UFO retrieval program and is in possession of “non-human” spacecraft.

“It’s easier to seek extraterrestrial facts on the Pacific Ocean floor than get them from the government,” Prof Loeb wrote in an expedition journal on Medium at the time.

He noted that opinion among the general public towards the possibility of alien life was shifting.

An ‘interstellar expedition’

On 14 June, the Silver Star expedition vessel set out for the meteor’s estimated landing zone in the Pacific Ocean about 84km north of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.

“There are about 850 spoken languages in Papua, the most linguistically diverse place on Earth,” Prof Loeb wrote on Medium. “Yet, if the expedition recovers a gadget with an extraterrestrial inscription, we will add a new language to this site.”

After reaching the site, the crew dropped a one-metre wide magnetic sled into the ocean that was towed behind the ship with a long cable.

The crew began by collecting control samples of volcanic ash from the ocean floor outside of IM1’s estimated path.

About one week into the expedition, a breakthrough came when the sled picked up the first “spherical metallic marbles”.

The spherules are formed as meteors and asteroids explode, and have been found at impact sites across the globe. The “tiny metallic pearls” were so small they were difficult to pick up with tweezers, Prof Loeb said.

Loeb and the research team on the Silver Star examine ‘spherules’ recovered from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean
(Courtesy of Avi Loeb)

Writing on Medium, Prof Loeb said at first the material looked like shards of corroded iron.

But when examined under fluorescent X-Ray, the research team determined they were most likely a steel and titanium alloy, also known as S5 or shock-resisting steel. The strength of S5 steel is well above that of iron meteorites, Prof Loeb wrote.

Under a microscope, they looked “beautiful”, Prof Loeb told The Independent. “One of them looked like Earth, many of them look like gold,” he said.

“My daughter asked if she can have one for a necklace. And I said that they were too small to thread through,” he said.

The objects will be taken to the Harvard College Observatory, where a team of researchers will analyse them for comparisons to other meteorite debris.

Rather than finding a needle in a haystack, Prof Loeb is convinced his “interstellar expedition” found tiny specks of an alien life form in the middle of the ocean.

A team of researchers towed a magnetic sled along the floor of the Pacific Ocean 2km underneath the surface
(Courtesy of Avi Loeb)

On their final day at sea, having collected 50 spherules from the first recognised interstellar meteor, Prof Loeb and the team cracked open bottles of champagne on the deck of the Silver Star.

“There is this new opportunity of looking for interstellar debris at the bottom of the ocean,” Prof Loeb told The Independent.

“And the ocean is sort of like a museum. If it fell in the Sahara Desert, it would have been covered with sand by now. Those tiny droplets fell on the ocean floor, waited for nine and a half years, until our magnet attracted them. This entire story is just amazing.”

For a researcher who has has written more than 1,000 theoretical research papers, finding tiny objects at the bottom of the ocean had been an exhilarating experience.

“The past two weeks were the most exciting weeks in my scientific career,” he told The Independent.

Prof Loeb’s next book, Interstellar, is scheduled for publication in August 2023.

DESANTISLAND

DeSantis signs bill allowing new roads to be built with mining waste linked to cancer

BY OLAFIMIHAN OSHIN - 06/29/23 



HB 1191 adds phosphogypsum to a list of “recyclable materials” that can be used for the construction of roads. The list also includes ground rubber from car tires, ash residue from coal combustion byproducts, recycled mixed-plastic, glass and construction steel.

Phosphogypsum, a waste product from manufacturing fertilizer, emits radon — a radioactive gas, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The material also contains radioactive elements such as uranium, thorium and radium.

Radon is second to smoking as a leading cause of lung cancer. The gas has been linked to 21,000 lung cancer deaths every year in the U.S, according to the EPA.

The agency previously confirmed to CBS News that the mining waste — leftover material from phosphate rock — is potentially cancer-causing. The material is stored in gypstack systems in an effort to prevent it from coming in contact with people and the environment.

The bill also noted that the state’s Department of Transportation will have to conduct a study to “evaluate the suitability” of its use, adding that it “may consider any prior or ongoing studies of phosphogypsum’s road suitability in the fulfillment of this duty,” according to CBS News.

The department’s study must be completed by April 1, 2024.Sriracha prices soar amid ongoing supply shortage linked to droughtsCDC to start tracking cases of bacteria tied to infant formula shortage

Phosphate mining has been an ongoing problem in the state in recent decades. In 2021, a breach at Piney Point, a former phosphate mining facility in Manatee County, resulted in 215 million gallons of water with environmentally toxic levels of nutrients ending up in the Tampa Bay area with a 10-day span.

In a statement, Florida and Caribbean director and attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity Elise Bennett said the bill is “reckless handout to the fertilizer industry.”

“Gov. DeSantis is paving the way to a toxic legacy generations of Floridians will have to grapple with,” Bennett told CBS News. “This opens the door for dangerous radioactive waste to be dumped in roadways across the state, under the guise of a so-called feasibility study that won’t address serious health and safety concerns.”

Sriracha prices soar amid ongoing supply shortage linked to droughts

BY JULIA MUELLER - 06/29/23 

Sriracha chili sauce is produced at the Huy Fong Foods factory in Irwindale, Calif.

 (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

Bottles of Huy Fong Sriracha are going for as much as $70 on some sites amid a shortage of the popular hot sauce linked to ongoing droughts.

A single 28-ounce bottle is being listed by one eBay seller for nearly $70, while a two-pack of 17-ounce bottles is going on Amazon for around $100 or more from some merchants.

Other brands’ iterations of the sauce on the sites are notably less expensive, but prices for Huy Fong’s authentic version are being driven up by the an ongoing shortage of the chilis used to make the condiment.

The company announced a “a shortage of chili pepper inventory” back in 2020, and said last year that weather conditions were affecting quality and sparking an even “more severe” shortage.Father of Parkland shooting victim knocks ex-school officer for ‘celebrating’ not guilty verdictKen Buck to students: Look to ‘role models who didn’t need affirmative action’

The company is based in Irwindale, Calif., and reportedly supplied by chili pepper farms in California, New Mexico and Mexico, areas that have faced drought in recent years.

CBS News reported Thursday that a Huy Fong spokesperson said the company has recently resumed limited production, but is still facing “a shortage of raw material” and has “no estimations of when supply will increase.”

The Hill has reached out to Huy Fong for comment.

Lab study misrepresented in posts that claim garlic works better than Covid vaccines




Kate TAN, 

AFP Australia 

Thursday 29 June 2023 

Social media posts -- including one from a former Australian lawmaker -- misleadingly claim a study commissioned by a garlic producer has shown the popular spice works better against Covid-19 than vaccines. But the institute that conducted the study has clarified its findings "do not show medical treatment application" for garlic as the research had only been done in a laboratory. In contrast, vaccines have passed stringent human clinical trials and remain "most effective" in reducing severe coronavirus illness and deaths, scientists say.

"How stupid must the world feel today having wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on useless (vaccine emoji) and destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth with panicked lockdowns when it's now discovered that garlic kills Covid," Craig Kelly, a known vaccine sceptic and former member of parliament, tweeted on May 31.

Kelly was reportedly removed from Facebook in 2021 for repeatedly peddling pandemic misinformation.

His tweet, which has been retweeted more than 4,000 times, shared an article headlined, "Australian garlic kills COVID-19, says Doherty Institute", referring to an Australia-based medical research centre.

Screenshot of the misleading post, captured on June 22, 2023

Similar posts circulated on Instagram and Telegram, including a group with more than 20,000 subscribers which said: "They injected half the world, leading to untold deaths and injuries, and could've just used garlic."

Misinformation around Covid vaccine safety surged during the pandemic, despite health authorities highlighting billions of people around the world have been safely jabbed against the disease.
Laboratory study

Following news reports about the research, the Doherty Institute issued a statement to clarify the study did not find that garlic could kill Covid-19 in humans (archived link).

It said the research involved "in-vitro testing" -- meaning outside a living organism -- on garlic extracts and the results "do not show medical treatment application".

"Stringent clinical trials would need to be conducted to determine if these findings translate from test tubes to humans."

The institute also said it frequently evaluates the antiviral properties of certain products under paid contracts with commercial entities, and that the garlic study was commissioned by Australian Garlic Producers.

Many news outlets that reported on the findings of the study, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Nine News and Seven News, did not mention that the research was in-vitro.

The Australian Financial Review article that Craig Kelly shared in his tweet updated its report to cite an epidemiologist clarifying the results of the study.

"We won't know if this product helps with COVID-19 or influenza until we run clinical trials in real people, rather than petri dishes in a lab," the article quotes Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz from the University of Wollongong as saying.

Furthermore, health experts said there was no evidence to support claims that garlic can kill Covid-19.

Duane Mellor, a senior teaching fellow at Britain's Aston Medical School, said there was "little clinical trial evidence to suggest that either eating garlic or taking a garlic supplement has any clinical effects on either Covid or influenza in humans."

But Covid-19 vaccines "have been shown to reduce risk of infection during clinical trials," he told AFP on June 19.

Sylvie Briand, the World Health Organization's director of global infectious hazard preparedness, said in October 2020 while there were health benefits to eating garlic, there was no evidence it could cure Covid-19 (archived link).

Australia's medical regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration recommends Covid-19 vaccines as "the most effective way to reduce deaths and severe illness from infection" (archived link).

Health agencies across the world -- for example in the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom -- have shared a similar message citing real-world data gathered from their respective inoculation campaigns (archived links here, here and here).

Kate TAN