Despite the many discoveries of exoplanets and new galaxies, there is no evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life in our universe. A new study suggests that this might be because we are really alone in the universe.

According to the latest findings humanity might not have a companion in the universe. The Fermi Paradox has underlined the contrast between the high likelihood of alien life and the lack of any evidence to support it is very high.

According to some researchers, aliens could be hiding and waiting for us to become more intelligence for them to make an appearance.

A research team at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute believes that aliens do not exist at all. A study they published this month in the Royal Society of London shows that there is “a substantial ex ante probability” of no intelligent life outside our planet in the known universe.

Oxford researchers said that we should not be surprised if programs like SETI do not detect any alien life at all. In short, the speculation about aliens has no place in the scientific realm. The study dubbed “Dissolving the Fermi Paradox” concluded that the green little men have never existed.

‘Where Is Everyone?’

Physicist Enrico Fermi reportedly asked himself where the aliens are when his colleagues showed him a cartoon in New Yorker about aliens invading New York City. “Where is everyone?,” the physicist asked. At first, his fellow researchers thought he cast doubt on interstellar travel. But he was in doubt about the existence of intelligent alien life forms.

Many researchers have tried to answer the question ever since. According to the Drake equation, alien civilizations may be populating the Milky Way without us even knowing it.

While the Drake equation relies on mathematics, the latest study takes into account the latest discoveries in cosmology, biology, and chemistry. Scientists found that the possibility of being the sole occupants of the observable universe is much higher than the other scenarios.

Scientists estimate that the probability of us being alone in the Milky Way stands between 53% and 99.6%, while the probability of us being alone in the universe stands between 39% and 85%.
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The owner of the Lexington, VA-based restaurant Red Hen, Stephanie Wilkinson, who kicked out Trump’s Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders Friday night said she was not sorry for what she did.

I would have done the same thing again,

Wilkinson told the Washington Post.

She added that people need to “live their convictions” in some moments in life. Wilkinson believes that kicking out the nation’s Press Secretary was one of those moments.

On Saturday morning, Sanders took to Twitter to respond to a request for comment about what had happened at the restaurant the day before. She confirmed that she was asked to leave the establishment because she is a member of the Trump administration.

Sanders Calling for Respect

The Press Secretary did not mention the owner’s name but added that the owner’s actions speak more about Wilkinson than about her. Sanders added that she always strives to treat people with respect even when she disagrees with those people.

Red Hen’s owner said in the interview that she wasn’t at the location when Sanders arrived with a group. Her chef reportedly called her around 8 p.m. to inform her about the surprise guest.

Wilkinson reportedly arrived at the location and asked her employees to tell the Press Secretary to leave. The staff urged her to take care of the issue. The restaurant owner underlined that she isn’t really into politics but that night she made an exception. She believes that what she did was upholding her morals.

Witnesses confirmed that the restaurant owner told Sanders that she is running her business on certain standards along with “honesty, and compassion, and cooperation.” Sanders and her family were not charged for the food already ordered.
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Scientists have discovered a new type of photosynthesis in algae, which challenges everything we thought we knew about the mechanism that turns sunlight into energy.

Green plants rely on photosynthesis to capture carbon dioxide and turn it into sugars, which they need for fuel. The general theory was that photosynthesis operated only with red light.

Researchers at Imperial College London found that some blue algae thrive on a type o photosynthesis that taps infrared light.

 The new form of photosynthesis made us rethink what we thought was possible,

said senior researcher Bill Rutherford.

The findings appeared this week in the journal Science.

Rutherford believes that the discovery is “textbook changing stuff” as it challenges the very understanding of the core of the standard photosynthesis.

Scientists spotted the new type of photosynthesis in blue-green algae in Australian waters and remote areas in the United States’ Yellowstone National Park.

Scientists Wrong About Photosynthesis

The standard mechanism relies on the plants’ chlorophyll-a, which is the pigment that gives plants the color green. All plants, along with some rare bacteria, contain the pigment. For decades, researchers have thought that photosynthesis has a so-called  “red limit”.

The latest study proved they were wrong. Some plants can contain chlorophyll-f which drives photosynthesis as well even when there is no red light.

The Imperial College London team tested the hypothesis in controlled settings. They placed photosynthetic bacteria in an environment exposed only to infrared light. They found that cyanobacteria’s photosynthesis is not affected by the absence of red light.

The findings could help researchers genetically edit crops to thrive in environments with low lighting. Co-author Dennis Nürnberg noted that nature is “amazing” since there are still plenty of things waiting to be discovered.
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A new study has found that a healthy coral reef can lower the damage done by coastal flooding and the destruction of tropical storms dramatically. The reef decline is expected to raise coastal flooding four-fold by the end of the century.

Scientists explained that coral reefs are absorbing the shock of cyclones and reducing their damages significantly. Without corals, coastal communities would have to shell out tens of billions of dollars more to repair the damages, the new study warns.

Coral reefs serve as natural, submerged breakwaters that reduce flooding by breaking waves and reducing wave energy,

explained lead author Michael Beck.

Beck’s team expects damages brought by coastal flooding to increase over the next decades.

Fortunately, not all reefs are at risk, while damaged corals can recover from excess fishing, storms, and bleaching. Nevertheless, there is a trend of “significant losses” when it comes to corals worldwide.

In addition, shallow reefs in coastal areas are being killed globally by dynamite fishing and runoff from human activities. Corals are also getting sick from rising seawater temperatures, which causes bleaching.

Heat Waves Killing Coral Reefs

In 2016, a sudden heat wave decimated 30% of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. In 2017, another heat wave damaged the reef, but the damage has not yet been fully assessed.

Scientists warn that the planet’s coral reefs could face global die-off if water temperatures rise 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels.

The Paris Climate Agreement wants to keep global warming below that level, but Earth has warmed by one degree C or more.

The new study unveiled that coral reefs can act as a natural barrier in the way of coastal flooding and storms.
Image Source: MaxPixel

A new study suggests that the presence of NASA astronauts on the surface of the moon in the 1970s led to a slight increase in its subsurface temperatures. The temperature rise has puzzled scientists for decades.

For the study, researchers sifted through the data offered by two Apollo missions’ tapes. In the early 1970s, NASA launched a so-called heat flow experiment designed to measure the lunar temperatures.

The Apollo 15 (1971) and Apollo 17 (1972) missions were part of the experiment and beamed the data back to Earth over a period of six years. NASA scientists found that the lunar temperatures rose during that time period.

Because of a tight budget, NASA ditched the experiment and archived the tapes. Many historians have believed for years that the tapes were “lost.”

The missing tapes were back in the spotlight recently, when a research team recovered them from the National Archives.

A Mystery Moon Temperature Rise

Lead author Walter Kiefer, who’s a researcher at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, and his fellow researchers have studied the tapes and found that lunar subsurface temperature rose mysteriously from 1.6 C to 3.5 C during the NASA experiment.

The temperature rise was detected in only some areas at a depth of up to three meters.

If one looks at a picture of the moon, one can see light-colored surfaces and darker surfaces. The lighter-colored areas are made of anorthosite while the darker ones are made of basalt. The latter rock is commonly found on our planet.

The latest research revealed that while NASA astronauts walked on the moon or their rovers hit the lunar surface, anorthosite layers were greatly disturbed. As a result, the basalt layers underneath the disturbed layers emerged.

Scientists explained that the darker rocks absorb more heat from the sun, a phenomenon which likely upped the moon’s temperatures.
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Scientists have found that Antarctica is not so unique when it comes to earthquakes. A new study shows that the icy continent had 27 quakes in its eastern parts in 2009.

Past studies suggested that just eight earthquakes had happened in East Antarctica between 1982 and present day. Those findings were odd since Antarctica is just like any other land mass: a tectonic plate on top of a restless molten mantle.

As a result, all continents have routine earthquakes, yet some go undetected. Scientists have long wondered why East Antarctica was so silent. They speculated that because of the continent’s weight the seismic activity was stifled.

A new study challenges that theory. Lead author Amanda Lough noted that East Antarctica’s stillness is no longer an anomaly. In 2009, her team has observed multiple earthquakes in the frozen landscape, which was a big surprise.

Scientists double checked the data to see if the events were real. They found that they haven’t witnessed a spike in earthquakes. It is perfectly normal for so many earthquakes to occur in East Antarctica, although no one has really looked for them before.

Routine Earthquakes Hit Antarctica Every Year

Lough’s team has been keeping an eye on Antarctica’s seismicity since January 2009. Their original research was funded by world’s governments through the 2007-2009 International Polar Year.

The International Polar Years event offers extra funding to researchers interested in the Earth’s poles. Research at the North or South Poles is extremely expensive as scientists need special tools to withstand the cold and charter flights to move around. Research teams also need cooks and other special personnel.

In 2009, Lough’s team installed two dozen seismometers in East Antarctica and left them for a year. In 2010, the team read the data and found that there had been 27 earthquakes in the region. All the quakes were “minor,” with the strongest having a 3.9 magnitude on the Richter scale.
Image Source: Wikimedia

On Monday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ferried a powerful communications satellite into orbit. The SES satellite will offer broadband and direct-to-home TV to people living in the Middle East, Australia, and the Asia-Pacific region.

The lift-off at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station had been delayed for four days because of some technical issues. The launch was the 56^th launch for the private space exploration company SpaceX, the 11^th launch this year, and the fifth SES launch.

On Monday, SpaceX did not try to recover the block 4 first stage rocket to reuse it for future flights. The stage fell into the ocean after the second booster’s engine took over to get the satellite into space.

Block 4 stages can only make two flights before they retire. The next-generation block 5 boosters will make up to 60 flights before becoming unusable. The second stage of the rocket launched on Monday was from the bloc 5 generation.

The New Satellite Will Have an ‘Enormous Life’ Capability

The 11,800-pound communications satellite was placed in a super-synchronous orbit, whose highest point is at 36,000 miles above our planet. The satellite is equipped with its own propulsion system that will move it to a circular orbit above the Equator. On that orbit, the satellite will take 24 hours to complete an orbital journey, which will make it appear stationary in the night sky.

Because SpaceX successfully placed the SES into the super-synchronous transfer orbit, the satellite will save enough fuel to stay five more years in the equatorial orbit. Also, the SES will reach its destination one month earlier this way.

“We’re going really high. We’re almost going to the limit of what we can do with the spacecraft,” SES chief technical officer Martin Halliwell said about the satellite. Thanks to SpaceX, the satellite’s lifespan will be extended from 15 to 22 years, which is an “enormous” life capability for a communications satellite.
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A new study funded by NASA suggests that Pluto is the results of a billion ancient comets smashing into one another. The origin of the beloved dwarf planet has puzzled scientists for decades.

An older theory claims that Pluto was once Neptune’s ancient moon that had been ousted from orbit by the giant planet’s largest moon, Triton. More recent studies have shown that the hypothesis doesn’t hold water because Pluto never gets close enough to Neptune in its orbital journey.

After the distant Kuiper Belt was discovered in 1992, new theories emerged. The dwarf planet is the largest known space body in the Kuiper Belt. But Pluto’s composition and orbit prompted scientists to speculate that it is related to the icy objects in the vicinity of the Belt.

Researchers believe that some Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) get expelled from the belt and become wandering comets within the solar system. The new theory suggests that Pluto formed after a billion of these outcasted KBOs smashed into one another.

Pluto’s Formation Gets New Theory

In their study, scientists sifted through the data on Pluto that was beamed back home by NASA’s New Horizons probe. The probe found that the nitrogen levels in the left lobe of “Pluto’s heart” matched the nitrogen levels in the computer models suggesting the comet-origin theory.

We’ve developed what we call ‘the giant comet’ cosmochemical model of Pluto formation,

lead author Dr. Christopher R. Glein said.

Dr. Glein believes that a billion comets and other KBOs formed Pluto. The latest theory is at odds with the so-called “solar model.” That model suggested that Pluto formed from the protoplanetary disk and should have a composition that is very close to the Sun’s.
Image Source: JPL.NASA

A NASA experiment tries to re-create the coldest spot in the universe, using special lasers in a portable laboratory. During the experiment, scientists will create a spot that is billions of times colder than the cold space.

Researchers want to analyze atoms’ quantum characteristics in such conditions. The experiment will take place inside a tiny facility called The Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) on board of the International Space Station (ISS). The ice chest-sized laboratory is run by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Lasers and magnets will lower the temperature of clouds of atoms to an ultra-cold point, which is close to the lowest temperature possible. The experiment was launched on May 21, but the cargo carrying CAL was deployed to the ISS on Sunday.

Atoms to Reach Ultra-Cold Temperatures

JPL researchers will be able to lower the temperature inside CAL remotely with no input from ISS occupants. The experiment will be conducted for 6.5 hours every day. The clouds of atoms should get close to absolute zero.

The atoms within those clouds are so cold that their speed is greatly reduced. On Earth, it is impossible to study atoms’ quantum features as they cannot be slowed down enough.

In the ISS’ microgravity, the experiment is expected to be a success as there is no gravity to hinder it. Atoms can be slowed down with magnets and lasers to a pace that cannot be achieved on Earth.

The temperature inside CAL will drop to one-tenth of a billion of a degree above absolute zero, according to JPL engineers. NASA first unveiled the experiment on May 10.

The experiment will enable researchers to study atoms on a quantum level, which physicians have been trying to do for quite some time.
Image Source: Pixabay

April has marked the 400^th month with an above-than-average temperature, according to a climate report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The last month with a temperature that was below the average was in 1984, the year when Apple Macintosh was released to the masses.

NOAA also found that April recorded the third-highest average temperature than any month of April in the planet’s history. The records date back to 1880.

NOAA climatologist Ahira Sanchez believes that higher-than-average temperatures are caused by human activities.

Climate change is real, and we will continue to see global temperatures increase in the future,

Sanchez said.

Global warming is expected to get worse as there are industries that rely on fossil fuels in developing economies. Nevertheless, developing nations do not match the U.S. or China when it comes to fossil fuel consumption.

Planet Is Getting Warmer

NOAA researcher Deke Arndt noted that the 400^th warmer-than-average month can only prove that global warming is accelerating, and the world continues to become a warmer place.

Higher temperatures have affected some regions more than others, NOAA’s report shows. The bulk of the heat was recorded in Europe, which had the highest month of April in its recorded history. Australia was next in line, with the second-warmest month in recorded history.

Some areas of Asia experienced unusual heat. For instance, on April 30, a town in southern Pakistan recorded 50.5 degrees C or 122.4 degrees F. Weather experts are trying to figure it out whether last April was the hottest in the planet’s entire history.

What’s more, NOAA found that carbon dioxide levels hit the highest point in the recorded history, with 410 parts per million. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas that fuels global warming.
Image Source: Pixabay