Takeaways from the AP's look at the role of conspiracy theories in American politics and society

DAVID KLEPPER
Updated Wed, January 31, 2024 

This image provided by the Adventist Digital Library shows part of a Millerite document circulated on Oct. 16, 1844, in the Boston area, with a headline reading, "End of the World, October 22, 1844!!" Before the appointed day, many of William Miller’s followers sold or gave away their possessions, donned white clothing and headed for high land — in some parts of Massachusetts they climbed trees on the highest hills — so as to hasten their reunion with God. 

(Adventist Digital Library via AP)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Conspiracy theories have a long history.

Humans have always speculated about secret motives and plots as a way to understand their world and avoid danger.

These days, however, conspiracy theories and those who believe them seem to be playing an outsize role in politics and culture.

Republican Donald Trump has amplified conspiracy theories about climate change, elections, voting and crime, and has expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory. His lies about the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden spurred the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, an event that quickly spun off its own conspiracy theories.

On the left, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has exploited conspiracy theories about vaccines to wage his own campaign for the presidency this year.

Conspiracy theories have also proven lucrative for those cashing in on unfounded medical claims, investment proposals or fake news websites.

The Associated Press has examined the history of conspiracy theories in the United States.

Interviews with experts on technology, psychology and politics give insight into why people choose to believe and spread conspiracy theories, and how those beliefs are affecting our mental health, our politics and our society.

A look at some of the biggest takeaways from the investigation:

A LONG HISTORY

Conspiracy theories exposed social tensions long before the American Revolution and the birth of U.S. democracy.

Just as now, early conspiracy theories reflected popular worries of the day. In the years immediately after the American Revolution, rumors and hoaxes circulated about dark plots by the Illuminati and Freemasons, suggesting those secret organizations wanted to control the republic.

Likewise, the conspiracy theories of the modern age often reflect uncertainties about technology, immigration and government overreach. Stories about UFO coverups, microchips in vaccines or the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, being an inside job are examples.

While the specific claims in many of these tales can be debunked, the stories reflect anxieties shared by millions of people.

“We are the stories we tell ourselves,” said John Llewellyn, a professor at Wake Forest University who studies conspiracy theories and why people believe what they believe.

WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE

Humans thirst for information that can help them protect themselves and help them make better decisions for the future. This information, along with personal experiences, upbringing and cultural perspectives, creates a view of the world that helps people understand big events and forces in their lives.

Disasters, elections, wars and even the outcomes of sporting events can shake our perspective, and make us look for explanations. Sometimes that means accepting the facts. But sometimes it can be easier to embrace an alternative explanation.

Conspiracy theories can act as a shortcut to understanding. They fill in the gaps of understanding with speculation that often reflects more about the believer's inner beliefs than the events themselves. Conspiracy theories suggesting vaccinations are being used to implant microchips in people, for instance, reflect concerns about technology, medicine and government power.

With the internet, false claims and conspiracy theories can travel further and faster than ever. Social media algorithms prioritize content that elicits strong emotions, like anger and fear.

FACING THE DEMONS

The AP interviewed dozens of current and former conspiracy theory believers to understand what led them to believe. They consistently said conspiracy theories offered them a sense of power and control in a world that can seem random and chaotic.

“The pieces did not fit,” said Melissa Sell, a conspiracy theorist from Pennsylvania who began doubting the official narrative of history after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut in 2012.

They spoke of growing distrust of democratic institutions and the media, and a gnawing feeling they were being lied to. The world of online conspiracy theories offered answers, and a built-in community of like-minded people.

“I was suicidal before I got into conspiracy theories,” said Antonio Perez, a Hawaii man who became obsessed with Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and QAnon until he decided that they were interfering with his life. But when he first found other online conspiracy theorists, he was ecstatic. “It’s like: My God, I’ve finally found my people!”

TURNING IDEAS INTO ACTION

Polls show nearly half of Americans believe a conspiracy theory and that those beliefs are almost always harmless. But when fringe views interfere with a person's job or relationships, they can lead to social isolation. And when people put their conspiracy theory beliefs into action, it can lead to violence.

In recent years, conspiracy theorists have tried to stop vaccine clinics, they've attacked election officials and they've committed murders that they say were motivated by their beliefs. The Jan. 6 riot is perhaps the most notable example of how conspiracy theories can lead to violence: The thousands of people who stormed the Capitol and fought with police were motivated by Trump's election lies.

Such rapidly spreading disinformation fuels extremist groups and encourages distrust — a particular concern during a year of big elections in the U.S. and other nations. Russia, China, Iran and other U.S. adversaries have worked to amplify conspiracy theories as a way to destabilize democracy further. Artificial intelligence's ability to rapidly create lifelike video and audio only increases the challenge.

“I think the post-truth world may be a lot closer than we’d like to believe,” said A.J. Nash, vice president for intelligence at ZeroFox, a cybersecurity firm that tracks disinformation. “What happens when no one believes anything anymore?”

PROFITING OFF BELIEF

As long as there have been conspiracy theories, people have tried to make a buck off of them. A century or more ago, peddlers went from town to town selling tonics and pills that they said could cure just about any problem. Nowadays, sales take place online. Business is booming.

There are supplements that claim to reverse aging, bogus treatments for COVID-19, T-shirts, investment scams claiming a new financial order is just around the corner.

The AP took a close look at conspiracy theories involving medbeds, which are futuristic-looking devices that believers think can reverse aging and cure a long list of illnesses. According to claims circulating online, the U.S. military is hiding the technology from the public but Trump, if he wins another term as president, will make them available for free. For people desperate to find help with a medical condition, the claims can be too tempting to ignore.

“There have always been hucksters selling medical cures, but I do feel like it’s accelerating,” said Timothy Caulfield, a health policy and law professor at the University of Alberta who studies medical ethics and fraud. “There are some forces driving that: obviously the internet and social media, and distrust of traditional medicine, traditional science. Conspiracy theories are creating and feeding this distrust.”

Grave peril of digital conspiracy theories: 'What happens when no one believes anything anymore?'

DAVID KLEPPER
Wed, January 31, 2024 







WASHINGTON (AP) — Days after Maui's wildfires killed scores of people and destroyed thousands of homes last August, a shocking claim spread with alarming speed on YouTube and TikTok: The blaze on the Hawaiian island was set deliberately, using futuristic energy weapons developed by the U.S. military.

Claims of “evidence” soon emerged: video footage on TikTok showing a beam of blinding white light, too straight to be lightning, zapping a residential neighborhood and sending flames and smoke into the sky. The video was shared many millions of times, amplified by neo-Nazis, anti-government radicals and supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and presented as proof that America's leaders had turned on the country's citizens.

“What if Maui was just a practice run?” one woman asked on TikTok. “So that the government can use a direct energy weapon on us?”


The TikTok clip had nothing to do with the Maui fires. It was actually video of an electrical transformer explosion in Chile earlier in the year. But that didn't stop a TikTok user with a habit of posting conspiracy videos from using the clip to sow more fear and doubt. It was just one of severalsimilarvideos and images doctored and passed off as proof that the wildfires were no accident.

Conspiracy theories have a long history in America, but now they can be fanned around the globe in seconds, amplified by social media, further eroding truth with a newfound destructive force.

With the United States and many other nations facing big elections in 2024, , the perils of rapidly spreading disinformation, using ever more sophisticated technology such as artificial intelligence, now also threaten democracy itself — both by fueling extremist groups and by encouraging distrust.

“I think the post-truth world may be a lot closer than we’d like to believe,” said A.J. Nash, vice president for intelligence at ZeroFox, a cybersecurity firm that tracks disinformation. “What happens when no one believes anything anymore?”

Extremists and authoritarians deploy disinformation as potent weapons used to recruit new followers and expand their reach, using fake video and photos to fool their followers.

And even when they fail to convince people, the conspiracy theories embraced by these groups contribute to mounting distrust of authorities and democratic institutions, causing people to reject reliable sources of information while encouraging division and suspicion.

Melissa Sell, a 33-year-old Pennsylvania resident, is among those who has lost faith in the facts.

“If it’s a big news story on the TV, the majority of the time it’s to distract us from something else. Every time you turn around, there’s another news story with another agenda distracting all of us,” she said. Sell thinks the Maui wildfires may have been intentionally set, perhaps to distract the public, perhaps to test a new weapon. “Because the government has been caught in lies before, how do you know?” she said.

Absent meaningful federal regulations governing social media platforms, it's largely left to Big Tech companies to police their own sites, leading to confusing, inconsistent rules and enforcement. Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, says it makes an effort to remove extremist content. Platforms such as X, formerly known as Twitter, as well as Telegram and far-right sites like Gab, allow it to flourish.

Federal election officials and some lawmakers have suggested regulations governing AI, including rules that would require political campaigns to label AI-generated images used in its ads. But those proposals wouldn't affect the ability of extremist groups or foreign governments to use AI to mislead Americans.

Meanwhile, U.S.-based tech platforms have rolled back their efforts to root out misinformation and hate speech, following the lead of Elon Musk, who fired most of the content moderators when he purchased X.

“There's been a big step backward,” said Evan Hansen, the former editor of Wired.com who was Twitter's director of curation before leaving when Musk purchased the platform. “It’s gotten to be a very difficult job for the casual observer to figure out: What do I believe here?”

Hansen said a combination of government regulations, voluntary action by tech titans and public awareness will be needed to combat the coming wave of synthetic media. He noted the Israel-Hamas war has already seen a deluge of fake and altered photos and video. Elections in the U.S. and around the world this year will create similar opportunities for digital mischief.

The disinformation spread by extremist groups and even politicians like former President Donald Trump can create the conditions for violence, by demonizing the other side, targeting democratic institutions and convincing their supporters that they're in an existential struggle against those who don't share their beliefs.

Trump has spread lies about elections, voting and his opponents for years. Building on his specious claims of a deep state that controls the federal government, he has echoed QAnon and other conspiracy theories and encouraged his followers to see their government as an enemy. He even suggested that now-retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, whom Trump himself nominated to be the top U.S. military officer during his administration, was a traitor and deserved execution. Milley said he has had to take security precautions to protect his family.

The list of incidents blamed on extremists motivated by conspiracy theories is growing. The Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, attacks on vaccine clinics, anti-immigrant fervor in Spain; and anti-Muslim hate in India: All were carried out by people who believed conspiracy theories about their opponents and who decided violence was an appropriate response.

Polls and research surveys on conspiracy theories show about half of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory, and those views seldom lead to violence or extremism. But for some, these beliefs can lead to social isolation and radicalization, interfering with their relationships, career and finances. For an even smaller subset, they can lead to violence.

The credible data that exists on crimes motivated by conspiracy theories shows a disturbing increase. In 2019, researchers at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism identified six violent attacks in which perpetrators said their actions were prompted by a conspiracy theory. In 2020, the year of the most recent survey, there were 116.

Laws designed to rein in the power of social media and artificial intelligence to spread disinformation aren't likely to pass before the 2024 election, and even if they are, enforcement will be a challenge, according to AI expert Vince Lynch, CEO of the tech company IV.AI.

“This is happening now, and it's one of the reasons why our society seems so fragmented," Lynch said. “Hopefully there may be AI regulation someday, but we are already through the looking glass. I do think it's already too late.”

To believers, the facts don’t matter.

“You can create the universe you want,” said Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who studies online harassment and extremism. “If the truth doesn’t matter, and there is no accountability for these false beliefs, then people will start to act on them.”

Sell, the conspiracy theorist from Pennsylvania, said she began to lose trust in the government and the media shortly after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 students and six educators dead. Sell thought the shooter looked too small and weak to carry out such a bloody act, and the gut-wrenching interviews with stricken loved ones seemed too perfect, almost practiced.

“It seemed scripted,” she said. “The pieces did not fit.”

That idea — that the victims of the rampage were actors hired as part of a plot to push gun control laws — was notably spread by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The families of Sandy Hook victims sued, and the Infowars host was later ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages.

Claims that America's elected leaders and media cannot be trusted feature heavily in many conspiracy theories with ties to extremism.

In 2018, a committed conspiracy theorist from Florida mailed pipe bombs to CNN, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several other top Democrats; the man’s social media feed was littered with posts about child sacrifice and chemtrails — the debunked claim that airplane vapor clouds contain chemicals or biological agents being used to control the population.

In another act of violence tied to QAnon, a California man was charged with using a speargun to kill his two children in 2021. He told an FBI agent that he had been enlightened by QAnon conspiracy theories and had become convinced that his wife “possessed serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children.”

In 2022, a Colorado woman was found guilty of attempting to kidnap her son from foster care after her daughter said she began associating with QAnon supporters. Other adherents have been accused of environmental vandalism, firing paintballs at military reservists, abducting a child in France and even killing a New York City mob boss.

The coronavirus pandemic, with its attendant social isolation, created ideal conditions for new conspiracy theories as the virus spread fear and uncertainty around the globe. Vaccine clinics were attacked, doctors and nurses threatened. 5G communication towers were vandalized and burned as a wild theory spread claiming they were being used to activate microchips hidden in the vaccine. Fears about vaccines led one Wisconsin pharmacist to destroy a batch of the highly sought after immunizations, while bogus claims about supposed COVID-19 treatments and cures led to hospitalizations and death.

Few recent events, however, display the power of conspiracy theories like the Jan. 6 insurrection, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, vandalized the offices of Congress and fought with police in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election.

More than 1,200 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. About 900 have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials. Over 750 have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving some term of imprisonment, according to data compiled by The Associated Press. Many of those charged said they had bought into Trump’s conspiracy theories about a stolen election.

“We, meaning Trump supporters, were lied to,” wrote Jan. 6 defendant Robert Palmer in a letter to a judge, who later sentenced him to more than five years for attacking police. “They kept spitting out the false narrative about a stolen election and how it was ‘our duty’ to stand up to tyranny.”

Many conspiracy theorists reject any link between their beliefs and violence, saying they're being blamed for the actions of a tiny few. Others insist these incidents never occurred, and that events like the Jan. 6 attack were actually false-flag events concocted by the government and media.

“Lies, lies lies: They're lying to you over and over and over again,” said Steve Girard, a Pennsylvania man who has protested the incarceration of Jan. 6 defendants. He spoke to the AP while waving a large American flag on a busy street in Washington.

While they may have taken on a bigger role in our politics, surveys show that belief in conspiracy theories hasn't changed much over the years, according to Joe Uscinski, a University of Miami professor and an expert on the history of conspiracy theories. He said he believes that while the internet plays a role in spreading conspiracy theories, most of the blame lies with the politicians who exploit believers.

“Who was the bigger spreader of COVID misinformation: some guy with four followers on Twitter or the president of the United States? The problem is our politicians,” Uscinski said. “Jan. 6 happened, and people said: ‘Oh, this is Facebook’s fault.’ No, the president of the United States told his followers to be at this place, at this time and to fight like hell.”

Governments in Russia, China, Iran and elsewhere have also pushed extremist content on social media as part of their efforts to destabilize Western democracy. Russia has amplified numerous anti-U.S. conspiracy theories, including ones claiming the U.S. runs secret germ warfare labs and created HIV as a bioweapon, as well as conspiracy theories accusing Ukraine of being a Nazi state.

China has helped spread claims that the U.S. created COVID-19 as a bioweapon.

Tom Fishman, the CEO at the nonprofit Starts With Us, said that Americans can take steps to defend the social fabric by turning off their computer and meeting the people they disagree with. He said Americans must remember what ties them together.

“We can look at the window and see foreshadowing of what could happen if we don’t: threats to a functioning democracy, threats of violence against elected leaders,” he said. “We have a civic duty to get this right.”

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Meet the newscaster in drag making LGBTQ+ history in Mexican television

1 / 20  Mexico Drag News Anchor
News anchor Guillermo Barraza combs his hair as he gets ready to go to work, at his home in Mexico City, Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023. Growing up gay in the hyper-conservative northern city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, Barraza never saw gay characters he identified with on a deeper level staring back at him from the screen of his family’s television. 

(AP Photo/Aurea Del Rosario)

MEGAN JANETSKY and FERNANDA PESCE

Thu, February 1, 2024

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Guillermo Barraza buzzes with a nervous energy as he watches himself transform.

Hands delicately paint stripes of bright pink eyeshadow onto Barraza’s angular face as newscasters and makeup crews bustle around him.

Tonight, in a small studio set in the heart of Mexico City, Barraza is making history.

Through his drag character Amanda, the 32-year-old journalist is the first-ever drag queen to host a news program for Mexican TV.

By stepping out under the glow of the studio lights, Barraza has sought to push the boundaries of society in a place where both LGBTQ+ people and journalists are violently targeted. And he is doing it at a moment when the issue has roared back into the public discourse with the violent death of one of the very guests on his program, one of the most prominent queer figures in the country who was later found dead along with their partner with dozens of cuts across their body.

“Having an alter ego, you have fewer problems because they can’t harass a character. You have more freedom to speak out,” he said. “There are many things that Guillermo wouldn’t do or say that Amanda wouldn’t think twice about.”

As he says it, his makeup artist helps him pull on a bright blonde wig, and Barraza shrugs on a purple sequined blazer. Each piece goes on like another layer of sparkle-studded armor until all that remains of Barraza is a playful smile under purple lipstick.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Barraza says, striding through the halls, each clack of his leather boots ringing out like an act of defiance to a society that has long rejected people like him.

“Rock star,” he adds, pushing through the heavy metal doors and onto his set.

___

From its inception, the program “La Verdrag” was meant to radically transform the way the LGBTQ+ communit y is viewed in Mexican society. First broadcast in October, the program goes against the grain in a highly “macho” country where nearly 4 in every 5 people identify as Catholic.

The program — a play on words in Spanish mixing the word “truth” and “drag” — first came to fruition when Barraza, a journalist of 10 years, took the helm of the newscast of his public television station, Canal Once, during Mexico’s Pride celebration in June dressed in drag.

The crush of hate comments that followed first scared Barraza, who had already received two death threats working as a journalist in northern Mexico. But it soon pushed him and the TV station to create a show to make a space to discuss LGBTQ+ issues with a serious tone.

“This just years ago, would be completely unthinkable, talking about transsexuality, gender, drag,” said Vianey Fernández, a news director at Canal Once. “We want to open up spaces for the LGBTQ+ community, and we need to do it with a serious perspective, recognizing not just their rights but also their abilities."

In Mexico, drag — the act of dressing up in exaggerated outfits that challenge gender stereotypes — has been long employed in entertainment and comedy shows like “El Show de Francis,” “Las Hermanas Vampiras” and “Desde Gayola.”

The shows would often use gay slurs and cartoon-like stereotypes. Still, they took key steps in carving out space for the queer community in Mexico, said Jair Martínez, researcher for the Mexican LGBTQ+ rights organization Letra S.

“They’re pioneers, showing how you can transform yourself from a victim to someone with agency, with the capacity to resist,” he said.

Growing up gay in the hyper-conservative northern city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, Barraza never saw gay characters he identified with on a deeper level staring back at him from the screen of his family’s clunky television.

On news channels, the only time gay people were brought up was following a hate crime or a brutal murder. In school, people would go out of their way to not appear gay. With a family that continues to struggle to accept his public gender expression, Barraza said he only grew into himself when he became involved in a theater community, where his character of Amanda was born.

“In Sinaloa, they teach you not to be gay.” Barraza said. “Historically, we were always ridiculed, an object of entertainment.”

In other countries, with the rise of shows like “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” drag has gradually mixed with mainstream culture. But drag has long been used as a tool or resistance when the LGBTQ+ community is “under attack”, explained Michael Moncrieff, a University of Geneva researcher who has studied the history of drag queens.

Early examples date back to 18th century England’s “molly houses,” secret meeting places where people would cross dress and which were often raided by authorities when homosexuality was still a capital offense. Later, drag would become an integral part of the so-called Harlem Renaissance, and the faces of resistance in key moments like the McCarthy-era.

In the past 15 years, the practice has rippled across the world from Israel to Moscow to parts of Africa, Moncrieff said, and continues to be used in the U.S. to combat a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and bans.

“These are the fighters of their community,” Moncrieff said. “Drag queens were willing to do the things that no one else wanted to do.”

___

Barraza opens his program with a characteristic flourish, standing on a stage surrounded by three hefty broadcast cameras and earpiece-donning producers counting down “four, three, two, one.”

Today, wrapped in a puffy blue-and-purple ball gown, Barraza spins around, looks into the camera with his chin tilted upward and says: “Welcome to La Verdrag, the program where minorities turn into a majority.”

Running 40 minutes in length, Barraza's show cycles through the day’s biggest headlines – gender in Mexico’s 2024 elections, human rights in a historic migration to the U.S., and violence against queer populations. He pivots the rest of the program to deeply reported stories and interviews that each pull back a different layer of the world of queerness in Mexico.

One week, it’s a deep dive on transgender youth in Mexico, the next it’s an interview with Ociel Baena, the first openly nonbinary person in Latin America to hold a judicial position. One of most recognizable LGBTQ+ figures in the country, Baena smashed through barrier after barrier, becoming emblematic of the fight for visibility long championed by drag queens of the past.

“This hate speech against me continues to grow and grow. I’ve seen it on social media. What’s most regrettable are the death threats I’ve been receiving recently,” Baena said. “They’re ingredients that create a breeding ground for homicides.”

Donning a blazer, silver pumps shrouded by a white skirt and their signature rainbow fan, it would be the last TV interview the magistrate would ever give. Just weeks later, Barraza would be reminded that breaking out of that box in a place like Mexico can come with deadly consequences.

Baena was found dead next to their partner in their home in the conservative central Mexican state of Aguascalientes. What appeared to be nearly two dozen razor cuts slashed across their body, haunting Barraza and many queer people in Mexico.

Just hours after Baena’s body was found, local prosecutors quickly described the deaths as a murder-suicide, a move often made by authorities to dub a case a crime of passion and quickly shelve cases in a country where nearly 99% of crimes go unsolved.

Local prosecutors said it appeared that Baena's partner had killed the magistrate then killed himself, a theory quickly rejected by other Mexican officials and Mexico’s LGBTQ+ community, which said it was just another attempt by authorities to brush aside the violence against them.

Activists continue to demand a deeper investigation, taking into account the mounting death threats against Baena and historical violence against LGBTQ+ populations. In the first month of 2024, authorities and rights groups registered at least three more transgender people killed.

___

Gathered with a group of friends in his Mexico City apartment after watching the first broadcast of “La Verdrag,” Barraza flicks through rows of hate comments flooding Canal Once’s social media, something that would only continue to grow with each broadcast.

“‘God prohibits perversion, only Satan is happy with the rotting of this world. What a disgusting creep,’” Barraza reads with a roar of laughter, tossing out jokes with his characteristic ease.

Behind it is a blanket of fear, a reminder of the weight of what he’s undertaking.

In addition to being one of the deadliest places to practice journalism in the world, Mexico has some of the highest rates of violence against LGBTQ+ communities in Latin America, a region where hate crimes and gender-based violence already run high.

“I wouldn’t be the first journalist to be killed and I wouldn’t be the last,” he said. “My biggest fear is that what I’m doing is going to hurt other people, my partner, my mom, my brother.”

Over the past six years, the rights group Letra S has documented at least 513 targeted killings of LGBTQ+ people in Mexico. Cases of violence have only risen in the past year, said Martínez, the Letra S researcher tracking the deaths.

Slayings of gay and transgender people are often characterized by a particular brand of brutality, bodies left mutilated by their victimizers. While a normal homicide victim in Mexico may be stabbed once and show signs of beatings, Martínez said he’s seen cases of gay people being stabbed up to 20 times, their genitals cut off and hate messages written across their bodies.

“They don’t just try to put an end to the victim, but rather send a message to the entire population. This brutality is intended to sort of discipline or to make an example of what could happen to other LGBTQ+ people,” Martínez said.

___

Barraza peers down at a sea of thousands of mourners carrying candles and Pride flags in mid-November, a somberness painted on his normally animated face.

Speckling nearly every surface are photos of the magistrate Baena, who just weeks before sat across from Barraza speaking about mounting death threats they received for their activism.

Their violent death sent shockwaves through Mexico’s gay community, that once looked to Baena as a vocal leader in their fight for visibility. Chants of “justice, justice!” floated over Barraza, whose mind cycled through the hate comments popping up on La Verdrag’s social media.

“They’re both sick in the head,” read one. “Divine justice.”

“One week drunk celebrating their killing, the world is a better place,” another would read.

He sees flashes of Baena smiling and laughing next to him behind the cameras of his studio.

“My mom wrote to me this morning incredibly worried. A couple friends wrote to me saying, ‘Man, step out of the spotlight. Don’t talk politics. Protect yourself,’” Barraza said. “I don’t want my mom to have to be the one out here marching.”

As Barraza marches alongside thousands of others winding through Mexico City’s main artery, tears begin to stream down his face. His partner, Francisco, wraps his arms around Barraza and they step forward hand-in-hand, walking until the wind whipping around them dries their tears.

“In this country, no one is safe,” Barraza said. “The more visible you are, the more you want to fight for change, the more you put a target on your own chest. And if we have to put our lives on the line, that’s what we’ll do, because we won’t let fear win.”

___

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

   

Investigation into killings of 19 burros in Southern California desert hits possible breakthrough

Associated Press
Updated Thu, February 1, 2024 

This photo provided by The Bureau of Land Management shows video surveillance of vehicles federal investigators want to talk to the owners of: a gray or silver 2008 Toyota extended cab pickup with flared fenders and a white 2008 Toyota extended cab pickup with a white camper shell and white rims, in relation to the killing of wild burros in 2019. Nineteen burros were found shot to death along a Interstate 15 northeast of Los Angeles in August 2019. 

(The Bureau of Land Management via AP)

NEEDLES, Calif. (AP) — There may finally be a breakthrough in a long-running investigation into the killing of wild burros in California’s Mojave Desert nearly five years ago, federal authorities said Thursday.

Nineteen burros were found shot to death along a 50-mile (80-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 15 northeast of Los Angeles on Aug. 13, 2019.

Wild burros are protected under federal law. They are also an iconic symbol of the American Southwest, dating to their days as pack animals for people flocking to California during the Gold Rush.

The Bureau of Land Management said its investigators want to talk to the owners of two vehicles of interest: a gray or silver 2008 Toyota extended cab pickup with flared fenders and a white 2008 Toyota extended cab pickup with a white camper shell and white rims.

Both pickups were recorded on video traveling together on that stretch of the highway the day of the killings and were last seen in the parking lot of Whiskey Pete's Hotel and Casino in Primm, Nevada, the agency said in a statement.

In addition, investigators identified the weapon used to kill the burros as a .30-06 caliber rifle, “possibly vintage based on the rifling of the projectiles recovered, that could have been manufactured by Browning, Remington, Springfield, U.S. Military Arms, or Winchester,” the statement said.

“Special agents also believe the person or persons responsible used reloaded ammunition marked with red/orange paint on the bottom of their cartridges,” according to the bureau.

A $10,000 reward was offered and officials asked anyone with information on possible suspects to contact the bureau.

ICYMI
The planet is dangerously close to this climate threshold. Here's what 1.5°C really means

Hayley Smith
Thu, February 1, 2024 

Storm clouds loom over downtown Los Angeles in January. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

The alarm bells are loud and clear.

Federal and international climate officials recently confirmed that 2023 was the planet’s hottest year on record — and that 2024 may be even hotter.

With a global average temperature of 58.96 degrees, Earth in 2023 was within striking distance of a dangerous limit: 2.7 degrees of warming over the preindustrial period, or 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.


The benchmark is significant. In 2015, the United States was among 195 nations that signed the landmark Paris agreement, an international treaty drafted in response to the worsening threat of climate change.

The parties agreed to hold the increase in the global temperature to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels — and preferably below 1.5 degrees Celsius — in order to reduce the worst effects of climate change.

The preindustrial period refers to an era before humans began to meaningfully alter the planet’s climate through fossil fuel and other heat-trapping emissions. Most agencies measure this using temperature data from between 1850 and 1900.

But last year’s simmering temperatures make it clear the 1.5-degree Celsius benchmark is slipping away.

An A380 jumbo jet disappears into the clouds after taking off from LAX in December. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

“At this point, it is really difficult to see a path to keeping warming below 1.5 degrees,” said Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

To do so, she said, would necessitate a more than 40% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

“That requires a pace of emissions reductions that’s really inconsistent with what we see on the planet to date,” Dahl said. “At the same time, it’s really important that we continue to strive for that goal, even if we know we’re not going to make it.”

Read more: Earth reaches grim milestone: 2023 was the warmest year on record

Critically, the limit set under the Paris agreement is not about a single day, month or even year of warming, Dahl said. Rather, it refers to sustained warming over two or three decades. (The agreement does not specify a time frame, and has been interpreted differently by different scientists.)

“Remember, passing this threshold as defined in the Paris Agreement is supposed to reflect when human-caused global warming consistently exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial times,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a recent report.

NOAA noted that global surface temperatures can be influenced not only by human-caused climate change, but also by natural climate factors such as El Niño and random weather, which can briefly push monthly or even yearly temperatures above the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold.

“To know when Earth has passed that threshold, we have to look at longer timescales,” the agency said.

What is clear, however, is that each additional degree — or even tenth of a degree — of warming will have impacts beyond those already occurring, including increased tree mortality, biodiversity loss, worsening wildfires, longer heat waves, extreme rainfall and heavy floods.

Read more: U.N. report warns of catastrophic climate tipping points. California is nearing several

In 2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report on the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold that outlined a number of potential futures based on different levels of emissions reductions and subsequent warming.

In one middle-of-the-road scenario, delayed action around emissions leads the planet to experience a warmer decade in the 2020s before peaking at 2 degrees Celsius of warming around the middle of the century. The warming then begins to decrease due to improved global efforts and technology.

In that world, deadly heat waves would strike major cities such as Chicago, while droughts would plague southern Europe, southern Africa and the Amazon, the IPCC report says. The destruction of key ecosystems including coral reefs, tropical forests, mangroves and sea grass beds would lead to reduced levels of coastal defense from storms, winds and waves, and Asia and other places would experience major flooding.

The bleached tips of this staghorn coral show signs of distress from the hot water temperature in the Florida Keys. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

That scenario also predicts that steadily rising sea levels, increased water stress and declining crop yields would put pressure on global food prices and lead to prolonged famines in some African countries. The world would also see increasing levels of public unrest and political destabilization, the report says.

Such possibilities illuminate the need for urgent action, as well as the consequences of a half-degree Celsius increase from 1.5 to 2 degrees of warming. For example, about 75% of the world’s coral reefs are expected to be lost at 1.5 degrees of warming, versus 99% at 2 degrees, Dahl said.

Antarctic ice sheets are also sensitive to that half degree, and would see exponential melting at 1.5 degrees Celsius and beyond. Their melting would be “a tipping point in Earth’s climate system that would be really difficult to recover from,” Dahl said.

Other differences include millions of additional people exposed to sea level rise, heat waves and water stress, according to a separate report from the U.K.-based group Carbon Brief, which compiled data from dozens of studies.

At 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, the planet would soon see about 19 inches of sea level rise, a 16% increase in hot days and an 8% decline in Northern Hemisphere snowpack, the report says. But at 2 degrees Celsius, those numbers would increase to 22 inches of sea level rise, a 25% increase in hot days and an 11% decline in snowpack, among other effects.

Read more: Earth surpasses critical 2-degree warming threshold, European climate officials say

The current best estimate for when Earth will surpass the 1.5-degree benchmark is between now and 2040, according to the IPCC’s 6th climate change assessment, released last year.

Yet the planet is not only nearing that limit, it surpassed 2 degrees Celsius for the first time on record on two days in 2023 — Nov. 17 and 18, according to Copernicus.

Humanity has never before “had to cope with a climate this warm,” the agency’s director, Carlo Buontempo, said recently.

“There were simply no cities, no books, agriculture, or domesticated animals on this planet last time the temperature was so high,” Buontempo said. “This calls for a fundamental rethink of the way in which we assess our environmental risk, as our history is no longer a good proxy for the unprecedented climate we are already experiencing.”

In November, world leaders gathered in Dubai for COP28 — the same annual climate conference where the Paris agreement was established in 2015. At Dubai, nearly 200 nations agreed for the first time to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels.

A tractor-trailer rolls past an almond orchard in Buttonwillow in November. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Dahl, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said it’s a step forward. What’s more, she said, it doesn’t necessarily matter where emissions reductions come from. While every country should do its part, places that are lagging can be bolstered by places that are making deeper cuts, such as California.

“If we, as a country, can recognize our culpability as being the world’s historically largest emitter, and really take the lead on aggressively reducing emissions, that will have a significant impact,” Dahl said.

Limiting sustained warming to below 2 degrees Celsius is still within reach, she added — so long as countries continue to strengthen and implement their pledges to reduce emissions.

“Every tenth of a degree really matters,” she said.

And while the 1.5-degree threshold is likely to be surpassed, it’s important to keep working toward it. Dahl likened it to getting her kids to school in the morning when they’re already running late — noting that it’s better to be late by one minute than one hour.

“That’s how I think of the 1.5 C goal,” she said. “At this point, it would be incredibly difficult to achieve that, and we have to keep trying.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

 This Superconducting Experiment Just Broke Physics

Jackie Appel
Wed, January 31, 2024 

SAKKMESTERKE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY - Getty Images


Researchers just witnessed a superconductor behavior that defies our current understanding of physics.


At a certain electron density, quantum fluctuations—the phenomena that make superconductors stop being superconductors—just… stop.


The team behind this discovery has no idea why it happens, but looks forward to finding new physics to explain their discovery.

When ice melts into water, it changes. It behaves differently, it moves differently, and the atoms are organized differently. These are all effects of a phase change, and while they don’t change what a material is, they can definitely change how it works.

The same thing—or at least a similar thing—happens in the quantum realm, and these quantum phase changes are extremely interested to researchers studying superconductors. “How a superconducting phase can be changed to another phase is an intriguing area of study,” Sanfeng Wu, who studies these transitions, said in a press release. “And we have been interested in this problem in atomically thin, clean, and single crystalline materials for a while.”

In order to turn that interest into more scientific knowledge, as the research team describes in a study recently published in the journal Nature Physics, they turned to a material known as tungsten ditelluride and shaved it down until it was just three atoms thick. Then, they made it cold. Really cold. -459.58 F° cold.

One it was cold enough, the team added a few extra electrons to the material and made themselves a superconductor. “Just a tiny amount of gate voltage can change the material from an insulator to a superconductor,” Tiancheng Song, lead author of the paper, said in a press release. “This is really a remarkable effect.”

But it wasn’t the only remarkable effect. It turns out that at certain electron densities, something really weird happened—something the team was really not expecting.

See, in this study, the team wanted to take a close look something called quantum fluctuations. They occur right at the threshold between superconductor and non-superconductor, and they destroy superconductivity. Superconductivity is an inherently organized state of being, and fluctuations are the exact opposite. Bring on the fluctuations, you kill the superconductivity.

So, the team wanted to get a good look at these disruptive little buggers. In order to do so, they heated one side of their material until it was no longer behaving as a superconductor, but instead acting as an insulator. This causes the quantum fluctuations to produce quantum vortices—little whirlpools of magnetic field that researchers can track to study fluctuations.

Throughout this entire experiment, the team had been maintaining a certain density of electrons flowing through the material. And after they established their gradient, they began to change those density levels. And here’s where it gets weird: at a certain density, the quantum fluctuations just… stopped. Poof.

And no one knows why. According to physics as we know it, that really shouldn’t have happened. “We expected to see strong fluctuations persist below the critical electron density on the non-superconducting side, just like the strong fluctuations seen well above the BKT transition temperature,” Wu said in the press release. “Yet, what we found was that the vortex signals ‘suddenly’ vanish the moment the critical electron density is crossed. And this was a shock. We can’t explain at all this observation—the ‘sudden death’ of the fluctuations.”

If particle physicists are saying they have no idea what’s going on, things have gotten really complicated. As Wu told Popular Mechanics in an email, this situation “requires new understanding of the superconducting quantum phase transition.”

All new understanding. That’ll certainly be an exciting puzzle for the team to try and solve.

‘Mind-blowing’ new images reveal 19 Spiral Galaxies ‘down to the smallest scales ever observed’

Ashley Strickland, CNN
Thu, February 1, 2024 

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured scintillating images of 19 spiral galaxies — and the millions of stars that call them home — in unprecedented detail never seen before by astronomers.

Webb’s singular ability to observe the universe in different wavelengths of infrared light, such as near-infrared and mid-infrared, showcases the stars, gas and dust within the intricate structure of each galaxy.

Astronomers believe that about 60% of all galaxies are spiral galaxies — and our solar system resides in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy. Webb’s observations can help astronomers better understand star formation and the evolution of spiral galaxies like our own.

Seen face-on, each galaxy in the new images has spiral arms laden with stars. The center of each galaxy features clusters of old stars or supermassive black holes.

The James Webb Space Telescope captured images of 19 spiral galaxies in near- and mid-infrared light. - NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team

The observations were made as part of the PHANGS, or the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS, project. More than 100 astronomers around the world participate in the program, which also looks at data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Space Observatory’s Very Large Telescope’s MUSE instrument and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile.

Data from the different telescopes enables astronomers to make observations across different wavelengths of visible, ultraviolet and radio light. Adding Webb’s infrared insights can help address some of the observational gaps.

“Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” said Janice Lee, PHANGS core member and a project scientist for new missions and strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, in a statement. “They’re mind-blowing even for researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades. Bubbles and filaments are resolved down to the smallest scales ever observed, and tell a story about the star formation cycle.”
Peering inside the spirals

Astronomers used Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera to observe millions of stars, seen in sparkling blue, grouped together in clusters and spread throughout the arms of the 19 galaxies as well. Meanwhile, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument puts the spotlight on glowing dust surrounding the stars, as well as red still-forming stars cocooned in the very gas and dust that aids stellar growth.

“These are where we can find the newest, most massive stars in the galaxies,” said Erik Rosolowsky, PHANGS core member and a professor of physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, in a statement.

This image shows both Webb (top left) and Hubble (bottom right) telescope observations of the galaxy NGC 4254. - NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team

The spiral arms are practically incandescent with orange and red gas in Webb’s imagery. The images will be used to help astronomers determine the distribution of gas and dust in spiral galaxies, as well as how galaxies both nurture and cease the formation of stars.

“These structures tend to follow the same pattern in certain parts of the galaxies,” Rosolowsky said. “We think of these like waves, and their spacing tells us a lot about how a galaxy distributes its gas and dust.”

Webb also captured large, spherical shell-shaped voids among the galactic gas and dust that were likely sculpted by the explosions of stars.

“These holes may have been created by one or more stars that exploded, carving out giant holes in the interstellar material,” said Adam Leroy, PHANGS core member and a professor of astronomy at the Ohio State University in Columbus, in a statement.
The anatomy of a galaxy

Astronomers think that galaxies form from the inside out. Star formation begins at the galactic center before rippling across the arms in a spiral. That means a star’s distance from the heart of the galaxy is relative to its age, so younger stars are likely farther from the galactic core. Groupings of blue stars near the centers of each galaxy indicate older stars.

Meanwhile, some galaxies have pinkish-red spikes near their centers.

“That’s a clear sign that there may be an active supermassive black hole,” said Eva Schinnerer, PHANGS core member and a staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, in a statement. “Or, the star clusters toward the center are so bright that they have saturated that area of the image.”

Scientists are most excited about studying the massive number of stars revealed by Webb’s new images, according to Leroy.

“Stars can live for billions or trillions of years,” Leroy said. “By precisely cataloging all types of stars, we can build a more reliable, holistic view of their life cycles.”

Scientists in awe of detail in telescope photos

Galya Dimitrova - BBC News
Thu, February 1, 2024 

The gas and dust stand out in stark shades of orange and red, thanks to JWST's infrared instruments

Highly detailed images of 19 spiral galaxies have been released by Nasa.

They were captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and are being analysed by scientists from the University of Oxford.

The telescope was launched into orbit two years ago and is fitted with highly sensitive instruments that allow it to view older and more distant objects than Hubble.


The university said the "extraordinary images will provide several new puzzle pieces for astronomers and astrophysicists around the world".

The telescope captured millions of stars in the images, with older stars appearing blue and clustered at the galaxies’ cores

Thomas Williams, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford's physics department, has been leading work on processing data from the latest pictures.

"The amount of detail in these images is overwhelming - in a good way," he said

"It means that we may be able to fill in more of the gaps in our knowledge about the structure and evolution of galaxies, star formation, the life-cycle of stars and so much more."

The image of NGC 4254 shows a densely populated face-on spiral galaxy anchored by its central region, which has a light blue haze

He added that working with the data so early in the JWST's lifecycle had been a "privilege and a challenge".

"The images, I think, speak for themselves: this is the sharpest view we have ever had of galaxies at these wavelengths."

They were made public on Monday by scientists involved in a project called Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) that operates across several major astronomical observatories.

Shades of white, yellow, orange, and red are all vivid in the "messy" NGC 5068 spiral galaxy


Spiral galaxies, evidence of black holes: See 'mind-blowing' images snapped by NASA telescope

Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY
Wed, January 31, 2024 


Galaxies brimming with stars and even evidence of supermassive black holes can be seen in stunning new photos unveiled by NASA captured by its James Webb Space Telescope.

The Monday release of 19 images depicting spiraling galaxies comes nearly two years after the arrival of the first images captured by Webb, and a little more than two months after NASA's counterpart in Europe released images from its own groundbreaking telescope.

The collection depicts millions of stars clustered at galaxies' cores in near- and mid-infrared light, serving as the latest example of Webb's astonishing capabilities to reveal distant, mysterious corners of our universe.

In a statement, Janice Lee, a project scientist for strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, called the images "mind-blowing, even for researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades."

“Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” Lee said. "Bubbles and filaments are resolved down to the smallest scales ever observed, and tell a story about the star formation cycle.”

Commercial spaceflight: Calif. man says Virgin Galactic spaceflight was 'dream of a lifetime'

James Webb photos show spiral galaxies, millions of stars


This collection of 19 face-on spiral galaxies from the James Webb Space Telescope in near- and mid-infrared light shows millions of stars clustered at the galaxies’ cores.

Astronomers have for decades been able to observe these nearby spiral galaxies, but this is the first time images of them have been presented to the public, NASA said.

Webb’s high-resolution images – captured with a NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) – show millions of stars, which sparkle in blue tones. Some stars are spread throughout the spiral arms, but others are clumped tightly together in star clusters.

Shades of orange and red indicate where the telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) observed glowing dust existing around and between stars. The MIRI also spotlights stars appearing bright red that haven’t fully formed, but are rather encased in gas and dust that help them grow, according to NASA.

The recent photos depict millions of stars clustered at galaxies' cores in near- and mid-infrared light, serving as the latest example of the James Webb Space Telescope's astonishing capabilities.

“These are where we can find the newest, most massive stars in the galaxies,” Erik Rosolowsky, a professor of physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, said in a statement.

Scientists also believe that several galaxy cores displaying pink-and-red diffraction spikes serve as signs that these galaxies may have central active supermassive black holes.

Scientists hope to learn more about star formations

Astronomers have for decades been able to observe these nearby spiral galaxies, but this is the first time images of them have been presented to the public, according to NASA.

The spiral galaxies are Webb’s first contributions to the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, which is supported by more than 150 astronomers worldwide.

By studying these structures, astronomers hope to gain new insights into how stars form within galaxies.

Teams of researchers are now studying the images to uncover the origins of these intricate structures. Forthcoming research should ultimately help humanity better understand not only star formation, but the evolution of spiral galaxies, NASA said.

“Stars can live for billions or trillions of years,” Adam Leroy, a professor of astronomy at the Ohio State University in Columbus, said in a statement. “By precisely cataloging all types of stars, we can build a more reliable, holistic view of their life cycles.”
Many discoveries made possible by Webb

A woman takes a video of the gians screens displaying images captured by The James Webb Space Telescope in Times Square on July 12, 2022 in New York. -Released one by one starting from 10:30 am Eastern at the Goddard Space Flight Center, the new images demonstrated the full power of the $10 billion observatory, which uses infrared cameras to gaze into the distant universe with unprecedented clarity.More

Ever since the James Webb Space Telescope launched in 2021 into space, astronomers have increasingly turned to the powerful observatory to make new cosmic discoveries.

In Webb's three years, the telescope has offered stunning views of our solar system's planets, galaxies, stars and other parts of the universe never glimpsed before.

From ancient ghost galaxies to strangely synchronized orbiting planets, last year was one teaming with cosmic discoveries made possible by the publicly-available data from Webb's observations. Thanks to Webb, researchers last year learned more about mysterious star-orbiting exoplanets outside our solar system including one that rains down sand.

Scientists have also been able to turn to Webb to aid the discovery of exoplanets similar to our own and even to uncover evidence of a possible ocean world larger than Earth with conditions that could support life.

The powerful Webb telescope has also helped scientists yield valuable insights into enigmatic black holes.

Last year, researchers were able to pinpoint the oldest black hole ever discovered, confirming the theory that supermassive black holes were part of the early universe. Formed 470 million years after the Big Bang, the supermassive black holes are 10 times bigger than the black hole in our own Milky Way.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NASA unveils Webb images of galaxies, stars, black holes: See photos

Dark energy is forcing the universe to expand. This new observatory may show us how

Monisha Ravisetti
Thu, February 1, 2024

The silhouette of an observatory sits atop a dark hill beneath the milky way stretched across a starry sky.


As our universe poofs out in every direction like an indestructible balloon — thanks to dark energy, a force fully hidden to the human eye — Dillon Brout is an astrophysicist trying to make sense of it all.

Brout wishes to unveil the strange correlation that exists between the invisible and visible universe, understand how the fabric of spacetime flows and perhaps finally reveal the truth about whatever's causing the cosmos to bubble outward faster and faster by the day.

To do this, he collects supernovas.


When picking out which supernovas to add to the shelf, however, Brout isn't interested in them all. These star explosions are typically divided into two main categories: Type 2 and Type 1a. Brout wants the Type 1a's, and his reasoning is actually pretty simple:

"They're not all exactly the same, but they're very similar," he told Space.com.

Related: How fast is the universe expanding? New supernova data could help nail it down

In essence, to solve all those aforementioned space mysteries, you need to measure some distances on cosmological scales. Only then can you know, for instance, how far and how quickly dark energy seems to have forced space to expand. Reverse calculate from there, and maybe you learn something about the nature of dark energy itself, too. Yet, to measure even such grand distances and elusive concepts, to probe how far back we can see and how much farther back that point is traveling, you still need something as basic as a ruler.

Fortunately, because they're so standardized in brightness and general behavior, Type 1a supernovas are like the ticks on light-years-long rulers plunging through space. In fact, astronomers like to call them "standard candles" for this reason. They're perfect lighthouses that guide us as we calibrate our equations and search for some answers. The more we have, the better.

a yellow gaseous star is being stretched and eaten by a bigger, blue star, which quickly engulfs the yellow and enlarges by several scales.

Looking for efficiency and accuracy, Brout fills up his supernova collection by employing machine learning algorithms that vigorously scout out as many Type 1a's as possible. (Yet another reason why Type 1a standardization is helpful. Consistent algorithms love consistency.)

He's part of the Dark Energy Survey collaboration, and earlier this month, the team announced their algorithms managed to detect 1,500 of these luminous natural markers — in only five years. That's a pretty big deal. For context, Brout says it took scientists 30 years of regular Type 1a searching (aka, through using a trusty spectrograph) to find the previous 1,500 total subjects. DES got the same result within about a sixth of that timeframe.

"One of the main things that made DES so special is that it covered so much area on the sky," Brout said, adding that he trusts his algorithms enough to say cross-checking the same parameters is more or less not needed.

But things are about to heavily ramp up.

Though DES yielded an impressive amount of Type 1a's, its associated instrument, the Dark Energy Camera, only covered 30 square degrees of sky. That's a relatively small fraction, Brout says. Enter: The Rubin Observatory.

Or, more specifically, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time that'll be created in part by using the state-of-the-art LSST Camera starting next year.

two dimly lit observatories sit as stunted domes beneath a vibrant night sky and a stretch of blue hued milky way.

"LSST is going to observe the entire observable southern night sky," Brout said. "You're going to go from DES discovering 1,500 to LSST discovering a million alerts, and we're going to filter that down, hopefully, using machine learning and other algorithms to get a few 100,000 Type 1a supernovas."

One specific question waiting to be answered

Fortunately once more, the Rubin Observatory is officially on track to be totally built later this year and the LSST will begin its journey early-to-mid next from the top of a Chilean summit, Victor Krabbendam, the observatory's construction project manager said during the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January 2024. "We're about 10 years into the actual construction phase," he said. "The sun is setting and we're getting close."

And actually, Brout already has a specific puzzle waiting to be solved with the LSST.

With their major 1,500 Type 1a supernova haul announced this month, Brout and fellow researchers sort of confirmed what we presently know about what's called "the cosmological constant," which you can think of as the value that represents dark energy in the universe's expansion equations. It accounts for the acceleration bit that normal physics can't totally explain. This "confirmation" might sound disappointing at first, but in a way, it's quite good progress. It means that one of the most precise calculations of the universe's expansion is telling us that we're probably right about everything we know concerning dark energy so far.

Maybe more interesting, however, is that the team's work sort of hinted at a weird pattern, too. "We do have a section in the paper that combines all of the available probes of dark energy, not just supernova, and what we see is a lot of them are pointing towards a slightly larger value of the 'equation of state' of dark energy, which would imply that it's not a cosmological constant."

In other words, that'd mean there isn't a value to blanket represent dark energy. Maybe it's flexible.

"One of the major benefits we get from this new LSST analysis is that we get a lot more supernovas in the nearby universe, and that's because we're covering so much area of the sky," Brout said. "If you think about it, the nearby universe is the universe that, because of the speed of light, we're seeing the galaxies much closer to as they are today. If you're looking at the faraway universe you're seeing the universe when it was much younger."

That's important, he explains, because the effect of dark energy is believed to be strongest in the recent universe. Why? Here's where it gets really weird.

"Dark energy, we think, is a property of space itself," Brout said. "That's kind of what the cosmological constant embodies, which is like the energy of empty space."

Thus, if dark energy is a property of empty space, that'd mean there's more dark energy in the universe today than there was in the past. This is because the universe is expanding, thereby creating more "space."

"We think it does not dilute as the universe expands," Brout said, "so that means, relative to the amount of matter in the universe and dark matter in the universe, you're getting more and more dark energy."

At this point, like I was, you might be wondering: I'm sorry, what? I thought the universe is contained? Where is the new dark energy coming from? It can't just pop into existence, right?

"That's the million dollar question," Brout said. "Is it just a property of space? Is this a fundamental property of the universe? That as space itself expands, you would just naturally get more dark energy along with it?"

And to get to the bottom of this, we'll soon have a multi-million dollar camera waiting.
2025's golden observatory

There are four major steps left before Brout can start counting the days leading up to LSST's first light. First, the Rubin team must get some key mirrors ready to go. Then, the crew must get the glass necessary for the Simonyi Telescope — which reportedly has flown through tests without even the proper glass component — and mount the commissioning camera thereafter. Finally, the approximately $200 million LSST camera, currently being put together on the West Coast, will earn its spot.

a tiny person in a full white jumpsuit peers into a giant lens attached to metal supports in a white, dimly lit room.

"You still have to get that from California to the summit. It's a very delicate instrument. It's special in the sense that it's a $200 million camera — irreplaceable," Krabbendam told Space.com.

"It is a massive camera," he said. "It's 3.2 gigapixels for a focal plane."

Related Stories:

— The mysteries of the dark universe could be solved by the Rubin Observatory

— We still don't know what dark matter is, but here's what it's not

— Hypothetical 'dark photons' could shed light on mysterious dark matter

One gigapixel, for context, is equal to one billion pixels; a standard DSLR camera works on scales of megapixels, or millions of pixels. To really drive this home, consider how a million seconds is 12 days; a billion seconds is 31 years. So… picture that resolution of camera power scanning the entire observable southern sky.

This is why the observatory, built with about $500 million of National Science Foundation funding and a few $100 million of Department of Energy funding — the latter of which is particularly interested in dark energy studies like Brout's — is so highly anticipated.

So highly anticipated.

Update 2/1: 1 million seconds is equal to 12 days, this article has been updated to reflect that.

'It's getting closer and closer for sure.' How SETI is expanding its search for alien intelligence (exclusive)

Leonard David

SPACE.COM
Wed, January 31, 2024 

Large satellite dishes point upward at the night sky.


To spot potential intelligent life out there in the great beyond, first you must cast a net wide by using an array of techniques and technologies.

Any "fishing expedition" for E.T. includes close-in studies of life in extreme environments right here on Earth, to help us recognize any signatures we might find on Mars or deep diving through the icy shell of Jupiter's moon, Europa. The search can also blend in the use of space-based telescopes to inspect Earth-like planets circling their home stars. Then there's cupping a proverbial ear to the cosmos using radio telescopes to pick up any bustling interstellar civilization or perhaps look for far-off laser-pulsed communiqués from extraterrestrial homebodies.

These and other efforts are actively pursued by the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, right there in the high-tech heartbeat of Silicon Valley. More than a hundred institute scientists are busily carrying out research in astronomy and astrophysics, astrobiology, as well as exoplanets, climate and bio-geoscience and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).


Related: SETI scientists begin huge new hunt for intelligent aliens

Space.com caught up with Bill Diamond, President and CEO of the SETI Institute for an exclusive, mind-stretching close-encounter discussion regarding the mounting evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Spoiler alert! It's not that old tried, true and tired query "are we alone?" Rather, it's more like "just how crowded is it?"

Early stages

There's a lot going on today in terms of searching for and trying to understand potential extraterrestrial life in the universe, Diamond said.

"Much of the first several decades of SETI, the effort has been quite minimal, looking with fairly 'insensitive' instruments in fairly narrow parts of the radio spectrum in random parts of the sky. So hardly anything that could be considered a comprehensive endeavor," said Diamond.

But even today, in many ways, SETI work is still in the early stages. However, more and more is taking place with an increasing number of instruments and technologies around the world. "There's an extensive and expanded effort ongoing now," Diamond said.
COSMIC collaboration

For example, there's the Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — mercifully shortened to COSMIC SETI.

All 27 antennas that constitute the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico have been outfitted with new gear to perform 24/7 SETI observations under a collaboration between the SETI Institute and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the group that operates the VLA.

Yes, that's the same VLA showcased in the 1997 sci-fi film "Contact," replete with actress Jodie Foster adorned with a tight-fitting stereo headset. In reality, the VLA was never used for SETI, Diamond noted, but now it is.

a large white satellite dish sits in a grassy field before a large snowing mountain in the background of a blue sky.

Detectable signatures

"COSMIC is really the most comprehensive SETI search on a single instrument in history. That's very exciting," Diamond said, and gives the COSMIC effort access to a complete and independent copy of the data streams from the entire VLA.

COSMIC will analyze data for the possible presence of "technosignatures" - detectable signatures and signals that shout out the presence of distant advanced civilizations.

In scientific circles, technosignatures are viewed as a subset of the far more established search for "biosignatures" — evidence of microbial or other primitive life loitering on some of the billions of exoplanets we now know exist.
Newly augmented

"For classical radio SETI, there's more going on now around the world than there has ever been," Diamond said. That uptick also includes the SETI Institute's newly augmented Allen Telescope Array situated northeast of San Francisco. It was named after Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, given his generous financial backing of the facility in its early phases.

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) has undergone antenna redesign and now is outfitted with high-end computers, signal processors, and other electronics making it far faster than ever before, Diamond adds. "The instrument is performing at a level that it has never performed at since it was built. All of that is fairly new in the two to three years."

One output from ATA has been its use by SETI Institute scientists to delve into powerful Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), a head-scratching phenomenon wanting of explanation.
Philanthropic gift

A passionate booster in ATA's overhaul was Franklin Antonio, a co-founder of Qualcomm, a communications chip company. Antonio's support as an institute technical advisor continues with his philanthropic gift to the SETI Institute of $200 million after his passing last May.

That bequest is sparking an action plan that will enhance the institute's multi-disciplinary, multi-center research, education and outreach make-up, Diamond said.

Also on the institute's agenda is taking in and evaluating ideas from SETI researchers anywhere in the world to tap into a pool of money for such things as technology, software, or to run an experiment.

"If we like what you're doing, we'll fund it," Diamond said. "We will kind of take the place of NASA for the time being as the only place in the world where you can submit a proposal to do SETI work."

Those three words

Roll back time to Columbus Day in 1992 when NASA initiated a formal, more intensive, SETI program. But less than a year later, Congress short-circuited the program.

Is it time for the government to re-embrace the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?

"Yes, absolutely," Diamond responded. NASA, he said, has a trio of science questions it's spearheading: How does the Universe work? How did we get here? Are we alone?

Almost every time NASA leadership publicly speaks, said Diamond, they invoke those three words — Are we alone?

"We all want to know. NASA clearly wants to know as it's one of their science priorities," Diamond said. "So isn't it time they get back in the business of trying to answer that question?"

a gold-bowled space probe with four camera mounts and two solar panels gazes downward at a star and smaller orbiting planets in space.

Planets are everywhere

NASA's own Kepler space telescope served as the space agency's first planet-hunting mission. During nine years of deep space scoping, Diamond emphasized, it showed our galaxy contains billions of exoplanets. "It told us that planets are everywhere and a lot of them are potentially habitable."

NASA is starting to chip away at SETI work, Diamond noted. A NASA-funded grant to a SETI Institute scientist is using observations from the space agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The intent is to purge out of the TESS data possible technosignatures aided by artificial intelligence/machine learning tools.

"So yes, I think the winds of change are blowing a little bit in favor of the government getting back into this business. And, in my opinion, I think they should step up and do it," Diamond said.

a space telescope of coper with a grey base leans upward amidst a starry black backdrop.

Neighborhood watch

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With all the in-motion SETI research underway, just how prepared are we for a confirmed, door-ringing neighborhood watch revelation?

"The straight answer to that question is no, we are not necessarily ready, although it depends on what the answer is," Diamond responded. It's only a matter of time before this question is answered, he added, at one level or another.

We should begin to think about how we convey this information, possible impacts to society, to religion, to politics, to technology, to governments, said Diamond.

"I do think that with all these technologies, modalities, instruments looking in different ways," Diamond concluded, "it's getting closer and closer for sure."