Is there anybody out there?
This article is an adaptation of our weekly Science newsletter that was originally sent out on June 23, 2021. Want this in your inbox? Sign up here.
By Victoria Jaggard, SCIENCE executive editor
As a high-schooler in the early 1990s, I had a fairly consistent Friday night routine: Come home from school, microwave a burrito, and scare the buttons out of my mom by tuning in to The X Files. My adolescent brain reveled in the dark and gritty tone, the “monster of the week” formula, and the drawn-out ship (yes, this slang term DID arise from The X Files) between the two lead characters.
In real life, I’m definitely more of a skeptical Dana Scully than an optimistic Fox Mulder. I want to believe that some form of alien life exists, perhaps even in our solar system, but my money is on tiny microbes and not advanced civilizations. (Pictured above, a 1952 image by a Coast Guard photographer of purported UFOs in a “Y” formation above Salem, Massachusetts.)
So imagine my raised eyebrow when news broke that the Pentagon had spent
$22 million to investigate UFOs. The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was set up in 2007 to scrutinize odd sightings by military personnel, and it bubbled away quietly until news reports blew the lid off its existence in 2017. In the wake of this disclosure, the U.S. Congress mandated an unclassified report from the Department of Defense detailing what we know about unexplained aerial phenomena, or UAP. That much-anticipated report is slated to land later this week, and Joe Pappalardo will have the details for us.
As Nadia Drake reported in 2017, this is hardly the first time the U.S. government has spent money searching for aliens. That’s been happening since the 1940s, and it’s nothing to get mad about. The key thing with science is that it’s a constant balancing act between skepticism and following the evidence wherever it may lead. So far, the alien hunters have come back empty-handed, but when stuff happens that rational minds can’t explain, it’s worth checking things out, just to be sure. That’s what I appreciate most about this latest effort from the Pentagon, which is trying to remove stigma from any personnel who report a UAP in good faith.
A few leaks about the pending Pentagon report suggest that, after reviewing more than 120 UAP sightings, the objects in question remain unexplained. There’s no conclusive evidence they are alien hardware—but there’s no conclusive evidence for what they really are, either, the New York Times revealed.
In the incredibly slim chance that we do one day find hard evidence for alien life, the good news is that most people seem to be Mulders: A 2018 study found that public reaction to news that aliens exist would trend positive. Heck, we’ve already invited them over for a visit in the form of a map designed to point the way to Earth, which is now whizzing through interstellar space aboard the Voyager spacecraft.
Still, the Scully in me says that based on past experience, odds are your standard flying saucer will eventually turn out to be a top-secret military vehicle, or exhaust from a missile test, or maybe even a Mylar party balloon. (Pictured above, searchers in 1966 after a reported sighting in southern Michigan.)
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INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY
What a difference an hour makes: Only an hour before shooting this time-lapse video in Scoresby Sound on the eastern coast of Greenland, Daisy Gilardini was cruising among the icebergs in the same bay. Once an iceberg is born by calving from a glacier, its shape and size are continuously changing. Snow, rain, wind, violent storms, and huge waves sculpt and carve its surface constantly. Cruising among icebergs is one of the most fascinating activities in the polar regions, but it is also very dangerous. What seems like a solid iceberg might collapse at any time with little or no warning. See the full video.
Related: Arctic summer sea ice could disappear as early as 2035
TODAY IN A MINUTE
A better cure for hiccups? Breathing into a paper bag, rapidly drinking water. Those homemade remedies don’t work? Scientists say they have found a better solution to curing hiccups: a drinking straw. Patented as the HiccAway, the $14 plastic device has a mouthpiece at one end and a small hole, at the other. Hiccupping people place the device into a glass of water and use it to sip, the Guardian reports.
Amateurs helping science: Everyday mushroom lovers and hunters are supplementing the work of mycologists at university and government labs, sometimes making stunning discoveries, or just building a community that connects amateurs and pros. Nathan Wilson started in 2006 the crowdsourcing site mushroomrover.org, which now houses millions of images from around the world, he told NPR.
Signs of life? Not here: For the first time, scientists have found soil on the Earth’s surface that have no signs of microbial life. “The assumption has always been that microbes are tough, they can live anywhere,” ecologist Noah Fierer tells Nat Geo.
Glowing bacteria can help find landmines. In another discovery, scientists in Israel found that genetically engineered E. coli light up when they creep near vapors linked to landmines and other buried explosives, the New York Times reports.
Beware poison hemlock: One of America’s deadliest plants is blooming in U.S. states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Don’t touch it—or even think of eating it."Plants contain highly toxic piperidine alkaloid compounds, including coniine and gamma-Coniceine, which cause respiratory failure and death in mammals,” USA Today quotes Ohio State professors Joe Boggs and Erik Draper as saying. “The roots are more toxic than the leaves and stems; however, all parts of the plant including the seeds should be considered dangerous.”
THE BIG TAKEAWAY
Little-seen suffering: To India’s city dwellers, the fight against COVID-19 seems to be improving. But outside India’s dense urban centers, the pandemic is still battering rural regions where two-thirds of the nation’s people live. Testing is sparse or nonexistent there, coupled with lack of access to essential healthcare, misdiagnosis, pandemic denial, and social stigma, Sibi Arasu writes for Nat Geo. (Pictured above, plastic sheets are pulled over a hospitalized COVID patient to prevent the infection of the rural hospital’s only senior doctor handling pandemic cases.)
Related: The complex situation for the immunocompromised and vaccines
THE NIGHT SKIES
Mars buzzes Beehive: Tonight, look to the low western sky about an hour after sunset for planet Mars positioned in the middle of the Beehive star cluster. Binoculars and telescopes may help you beat the twilight glare for best views of the clusters. Mars is so relatively close that light and radio signals from the NASA and Chinese rovers take less than 20 minutes to travel the distance between our worlds. Meanwhile the Beehive, this loose group of hundreds of stars that Mars finds itself in front of, lies 610 light years away. That means the light we see left on its journey from this star cluster in the year 1411. Late night Saturday and into Sunday morning look for the waning gibbous moon pairing up with brilliant yellowish Saturn. Both worlds will be rising in the southeast near midnight. Joining them will be Jupiter, competing in brightness with the near full moon.
IN A FEW WORDS
The story of rural India is actually a double whammy. There is the visible crisis of not getting care, and the invisible story of the migrant crisis, where migrant workers who were forced to return to their villages have acted as carriers of the infection.
Rama V. Baru, Member, Indian Council of Medical Research, From: How rural India has been overrun by the pandemic’s second wave
DID A FRIEND FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER?
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THE LAST GLIMPSE
Tiny forests, big cities: Stuffed with indigenous species, these wild spaces may be no bigger than a tennis or a basketball court. Yet these “tiny forests” are popping up in cities from the Netherlands (pictured above) to India, and are making an outsized difference. They provide shade, attract animals, and even store a bit of carbon, Elizabeth Hewitt writes for Nat Geo.
This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard and Monica Williams, and Jen Tse has selected the photos. Have an idea or a link? We'd love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading, and happy trails.
