Top Secret

On September 4, China launched a mysterious, top-secret “reusable test spacecraft” atop a Long March 2F rocket at the country’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia. And according to state media, it made its way safely back down to Earth after spending two days in orbit.

The spacecraft is shrouded in mystery. We don’t know what it looks like, what it does — or even exactly where and when it landed, as Space.com points out.

Adding to the mystery, SpaceNews reports, is the fact that the spacecraft appeared to have released an unknown object before making its return journey.

Space Push

All we got from officials was an extremely brief update from state media website Xinhua News. “China’s reusable experimental spacecraft on Sunday returned to the scheduled landing site after a two-day in-orbit operation,” reads the succinct update.

According to the report, the vehicle is designed to carry Chinese astronauts to and from space, and is not for military use — despite the secrecy.

“The successful flight marked the country’s important breakthrough in reusable spacecraft research and is expected to offer convenient and low-cost round trip transport for the peaceful use of the space,” read the update.

Expert Take

Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and satellite tracker, suggested on Twitter that the spacecraft may be similar to the top secret X-37B spy plane built by the US Air Force.

However, he didn’t rule out that it could be a SpaceX “Dragon-style capsule with a parachute landing in the Taklamakan [desert] somewhere.”

READ MORE: China’s reusable experimental spacecraft returns to Earth after two-day mystery mission [Space.com]

More on the spacecraft: China Just Launched a Mysterious “Reusable Test Spacecraft”

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Edit Test

In order to show off how sophisticated language-processing artificial intelligence has gotten, the newspaper The Guardian commissioned an op-ed written by the algorithm GPT-3.

GPT-3, the latest and most powerful text-writing AI algorithm developed by OpenAI, has made headlines for both its surprising degree of coherence and the poor grasp on reality that’s common among AI systems. Now, in the Guardian op-ed, it argues — to the best of its ability — AI and humans can live in peace.

Hype Machine

More accurately, the algorithm wrote the first draft of eight different op-eds that the editors at The Guardian then spliced together, picking and choosing the best arguments of each — a fact that, as The Next Web points out, you wouldn’t know unless you read all the way to the fine print at the end.

Watching journalists cheat to make a tech company's algorithm seem more capable than it actually is…. just…. have people learned nothing from the last decade about the importance of good coverage of machine learning? https://t.co/jzXly03zZ5

— Martin F. Robbins (@mjrobbins) September 8, 2020

Editing is a normal part of publishing any piece of journalism, but as experts in the field pointed out on Twitter, having a reputable newsroom hype up GPT-3 runs the risk of misleading the public about an already-overhyped area of technology.

This @guardian #GPT3 article is an absolute joke. It would have been actually interesting to see the 8 essays the system actually produced, but editing and splicing them like this does nothing but contribute to hype and misinform people who aren't going to read the fine print https://t.co/Mt6AaR3HJ9

— Daniel Leufer (@djleufer) September 8, 2020

Oddly Specific

That said, the individual paragraphs within the op-ed were often coherent and resembled what you might find in a human-written argumentative essay, even if a shocking number of GPT-3’s talking points mentioned violence and gore.

“Overall, it took less time to edit than many human op-eds,” The Guardian wrote.

READ MORE: A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human? [The Guardian]

More on AI: This Grad Student Used a Neural Network to Write His Papers

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Glass Box

NASA scientists are taking an unusual approach to the material science behind its upcoming lunar rovers and landers — by building components out of heavy-duty metallic glass.

The glass gears and gearbox, thankfully, are sturdier than they sound at first and passed a number of rigorous durability tests, according to a NASA press release. The main selling point of moving away from traditional metals where possible, the scientists say, is that glass parts can work at vastly lower temperatures, allowing the rover to explore more of the Moon without carrying energy-intensive heaters.

Glass Cannon

To make sure the metallic glass was up to par, NASA scientists put it through some extremely violent temperature and durability tests.

The scientists cooled it all the way down to -279 degrees Fahrenheit (-173 Celsius) to simulate the frigid temperatures a rover might encounter, and then fired steel rods at the beam the metallic glass was sitting on at extremely high speeds to simulate the shocks and jolts of a lunar landing.

Glass Slipper

Passing such brutal tests is a pretty big deal, because metal-built rovers typically have to avoid particularly frigid and dark parts of the Moon to avoid the extreme cold. But with metallic glass components, future rovers would be able to trek onward.

“This is an exciting event as it demonstrates both the mechanical resilience of the bulk metallic glass alloy and the design of the gearbox,” NASA project manager Peter Dillon said in the press release. “These gears could help enable potential operations during the lunar night, in permanently shadowed lunar craters, in polar regions on the Moon, and on ocean worlds.”

READ MORE: NASA’s New “Metallic Glass” Gears Can Withstand Impact, Freezing Temperatures During Lunar Missions [NASA]

More on NASA: NASA Venus Rover Designed for “Exploring Hell”

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Tong

Dorothee Clasen, a master’s student of design at the Köln International School of Design, has come up with an unusual new way to interface with a computer: a tongue-operated controller.

At its core, the prototype device is a dental retainer with a ball and magnet attached to it that slide along a set of rails, as Dezeen reports.

Move the Ball Back and Forth

The idea is simple: the wearer can move the ball back and forward with their tongue. A wire coming out of the wearer’s mouth hooks up to a WiFi transmitter to send the information to a nearby computer.

According to Clasen, it’s meant for with disabilities, or for those whose two hands are already occupied.

Human Reins

In a demonstration, Clasen was able to play a game of Tong, a tongue-based take on the Atari classic Pong, as shown in the video above.

Oddly, she says she got the idea from riding a horse.

“As I do horse riding as a hobby, I was especially fascinated by the haptic communication between the rider’s hand and the horse’s mouth,” Clasen told Dezeen. “Through the reins, the human influences the horse’s posture, and at the same time has to rely on his sense of touch to check on the horse’s posture.”

READ MORE: Tong allows users to control a computer with their tongue [Dezeen]

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Fit for Flight

NASA’s Orion, the spacecraft designed to carry American astronauts to the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program, just completed its System Acceptance Review and Design Certification Review. In other words, Orion is officially fit to embark on its maiden voyage as soon as next year.

The Orion spacecraft is a partially reusable capsule meant to ferry a crew of between two and six into space and as far as the lunar orbit. It also features an emergency abort system and the ability to provide safe re-entry from deep space.

SLS

Orion is designed to be carried into space using NASA’s next-generation, heavy lift Space Launch System (SLS) rockets.

The thorough review included system tests, inspection reports, and detailed analyses of every part of the spacecraft. It also signifies “the final formal milestone to pass before integration with the Space Launch System rocket,” according to a NASA statement.

The news comes a day after Northrop Grumman successfully fired a massive 154-foot SLS booster during a test in the Utah desert.

Artemis I

Artemis I, formerly known as Exploration Mission-1, will put Orion and SLS to the ultimate test — the mission will be a three week, uncrewed test flight around the Moon, getting to within just 60 miles of the lunar surface.

The mission is slated for November 2021. The first crewed mission, Artemis II, is expected to launch in August 2023.

READ MORE: Orion Program Completes Key Review for Artemis I [NASA]

More on Artemis: NASA Tests Rocket So Huge It Lights Entire Hillside on Fire

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Don’t Mind Me!

Amazon is launching a new program that would make it easier for landlords to install Alexa-enabled smart speakers and devices in their tenants’ homes.

Alexa for Residential, The Verge reports, would get Alexa integration set up in the now-smart apartment, and tenants would be able to link their Amazon accounts to the devices or just use them as standalone gadgets. Most importantly, Amazon says that the wealth of user data that these devices would gather on each tenant will stay out of their landlord’s hands.

Tall Order

Of course, Amazon telling us we can trust them to keep data private is a bit rich, given the myriad privacy scandals involving Amazon’s tech in recent years — not to mention its well-funded efforts to spy on its own employees.

That said, The Verge reports that tenants will be able to separate their Amazon account from the smart devices, and Amazon says that any voice recordings gathered by the devices will be deleted after a day.

Potential Upsell

In the coming months, companies that have already signed up for Alexa for Residential plan to install the units in rental properties in Colorado, Florida, and Maryland.

At that point, it’ll be interesting to see if the units get rented for more than they did previously – or, on the other hand, if people avoid the high-tech homes altogether.

READ MORE: Amazon Alexa for Residential will let the voice assistant power apartment complexes [The Verge]

More on Alexa: Thanks, Amazon! Echo Recorded And Sent Audio To Random Contacts Without Warning

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NPCs

A team of scientists thinks they’ve finally arrived at a model of how consciousness works in the human mind — and in doing so, may have settled a 1,500-year-old debate.

The big issue is whether consciousness is continuous or discrete: Basically, scientists and philosophers have long argued over whether we’re conscious all the time or only during concise moments. In an opinion piece published Thursday in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, the scientists say it’s a little bit of both — and their verdict could free scientists of various disciplines up to do their work without butting heads.

And/Or

The scientists, all psychophysicists at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), said that there’s a two-step process going on. While our brains are continuously processing information behind the scenes in more of an “unconscious” manner, we’re only actively conscious of that information during discrete moments.

“Conscious processing is overestimated,” lead author Michael Herzog said in a press release. “You should give more weight to the dark, unconscious processing period. You just believe that you are conscious at each moment of time.”

Autopilot

When we ride a bike, Herzog mused, our bodies automatically make minute adjustments to keep from falling over without consciously thinking about it. But even with his team’s two-step model, some of the secondary questions surrounding the ancient debate remain. Questions about how long these discrete moments of consciousness last, or how they differ among people, don’t have answers.

“The question for what consciousness is needed and what can be done without conscious? We have no idea,” Herzog said.

READ MORE: Is consciousness continuous or discrete? Maybe it’s both, argue researchers [Cell Press]

More on consciousness: Artificial Consciousness: How To Give A Robot A Soul

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Action Hero

Ford is gunning to become the name brand of choice when it comes to the new generation of American all-electric muscle cars — and with its one-off Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 prototype, dubbed the “all-electric action hero,” it might just have a shot to take first place.

The vigorous electric powertrain on wheels delivers a rubber-melting 1,400 horsepower and over 1,100 pound feet of torque, served up immediately with a single press of a pedal.

During a private test, Ford engineers were able to squeeze just over 1,500 horsepower out of the 800 volt powertrain, the company claims.

Up to 11

The Cobra Jet features four motors that spin at up to 10,000 revolutions per minute. Its battery pack can put out 350 kW — per motor.

It’s so much unbridled performance, the car can barely keep itself grounded. In a new video uploaded by Ford’s Performance division, the vehicle pops a wheelie as it screams down the drag strip.

“Since revealing the car, we’ve continued to fine-tune it and now know we’re just scratching the surface of what we may be able to achieve with this much electric horsepower in a drag racing setting,” Mark Rushbrook, global director at Ford Performance Motorsports, said in a statement.

There’s only a slim chance you’ll be able to buy one any time soon, though. Ford has, however, announced the Mustang Lithium, a 900 horsepower all-electric muscle car. There’s also the Mustang Mach-E.

READ MORE: Watch Ford Mustang electric prototype pull a wheelie on the drag strip [Electrek]

More on Ford: Ford Software Update Lets Cop Cars Bake Away Coronavirus

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Enhance

Using Europe’s largest solar telescope GREGOR, researchers zoomed in on the surface of the Sun to study its magnetism and how it influences the Earth — and what they saw is absolutely terrifying.

They were able to get close enough to identify features as small as 50 kilometers across, the equivalent of spotting a needle on a soccer field from an entire kilometer away, according to a statement.

Telescope Upgrades

Telescope optics suffer from many of the same problems as glasses wearers who have the wrong prescription, resulting in blurry vision. These issues tend to be caused by fabrication issues involved in constructing the telescope’s numerous elements.

The team was able to correct for some of these issues on GREGOR by realigning its elements and making several mechanical upgrades, as outlined in a new paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

One of these issues was an astigmatism, another issue plaguing both human and telescopic vision. They eliminated it by polishing six nanometers off the ‘scope’s massive parabolic mirrors, or about 10,000th the diameter of a human hair.

Gaping Maw

Thanks to the upgrades, the team was able to get a detailed look at the Sun’s mysterious sunspots, strange and relatively cool spots that dot the surface of our star. Magnetic fields are very strong in these areas, trapping the heat within.

And as it turns out, they look absolutely terrifying when viewed from Earth — like a horrible gaping mouth.

READ MORE: New High-Res Images of The Sun Show How Creepy Sunspots Look in Closeup [Science Alert]

More on the Sun: Scientists Found Something Surprising in Closest-Ever Photos of the Sun

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Topsy-Turvy

For the first time, astronomers have found a star system that ripped apart its own protoplanetary disc, the ring of materials that gradually clump together to form planets.

The star system in question, GW Orionis, is particularly volatile. With three stars at its center, what once was a regular, uniform protoplanetary disk is now warped out of alignment, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science. It’s an unusual find, and it could help the hunt for more exoplanets elsewhere now that scientists know planets could form in bizarre, unique orbits.

Black Sheep

Thankfully, the damage to the protoplanetary disc isn’t so bad that exoplanets can’t form around the three stars. Even a separate misaligned ring still has enough material to potentially create a new world.

“Any planets formed within the misaligned ring will orbit the star on highly oblique orbits and we predict that many planets on oblique, wide-separation orbits will be discovered in future planet imaging campaigns,” study co-author Alexander Kreplin of the University of Exeter said in a press release.

Missing Piece

The scientists found that the three stars, all of which are in misaligned orbits, could have gradually ripped the disc apart. But a separate team from the University of Victoria thinks that there’s still a missing piece: one exoplanet formed in the middle of the mess that served as a trigger for the ensuing chaos.

“We think that the presence of a planet between these rings is needed to explain why the disc tore apart,” Victoria researcher Jiaqing Bi said in the release.

READ MORE: New observations show planet-forming disc torn apart by its three central stars [ESO]

More on planet formation: A Baby Exoplanet Is Creating Strange Dust Rings Around Its Star

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Mysterious Spacecraft

China quietly launched a mysterious reusable spacecraft into orbit this morning, atop a massive Long March 2F rocket at the country’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

China’s state news website Xinhua called the launch a success. “The test spacecraft will return to its intended domestic landing site after a period of orbit, during which reusable technical validation will be carried out as planned,” reads the report, as translated by Google Translate.

Top Secret

It’s still unclear what the spacecraft, likely a project by the country’s main space contractor China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), is designed to do — or what it even looks like, for that matter.

Some experts suggest it could be a spaceplane, reminiscent of the US’s top secret X-37B project, which recently carried out its sixth mission in orbit.

“China has been looking into a few different concepts for spaceplanes for quite a few years,” Andrew Jones, a freelance reporter specializing in China’s space program, told The Verge.

Wider Payloads

In 2017, China announced plans to test a reusable spaceplane in 2020, as SpaceNews reports. Adding to the rumors was apparent modification work on the launch tower, reportedly allowing wider payloads to be launched using the Long March 2F rocket.

The 2017 reports also claimed that such a reusable spacecraft would be designed to carry both crew and payloads, according to SpaceNews.

READ MORE: China just launched a ‘reusable test spacecraft’ — possibly a spaceplane [The Verge]

More on X-37B: The Space Force Is About to Launch a Mysterious Spacecraft

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Not Impressed

On August 28, Elon Musk showed off an early version of his secretive startup Neuralink’s brain computer interface. He demonstrated a coin-sized prototype, implanted in a pig’s skull, that’s meant to read and write information from the brain.

Musk called it “kind of like a Fitbit in your skull, with tiny wires” during the event, and said it could solve a number of disorders, from depression to brain damage.

But not everybody was impressed. To many experts, the demo seems to have raised far more questions than it was able to answer.

“Let me give a more specific concern: The device we saw was placed over a single sensorimotor area,” John Krakauer, chief medical and scientific officer at MindMaze and professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University, told Inverse.

Studded Belt

Krakauer’s logistical concern: could one Neuralink device really give access to the entire brain?

“If we want to read thoughts rather than movements (assuming we knew their neural basis) where do we put it?” he added. “How many will we need? How does one avoid having one’s scalp studded with them? No mention of any of this of course.”

Big Huh

Krakauer wasn’t the only unimpressed neuroscientist.

“In terms of their technology, 1,024 channels is not that impressive these days, but the electronics to relay them wirelessly is state-of-the-art, and the robotic implantation is nice,” Andrew Jackson, professor of neural interfaces at Newcastle University said in a Science Media Center statement.

“The biggest challenge is what you do with all this brain data,” Jackson added. “The demonstrations were actually quite underwhelming in this regard, and didn’t show anything that hasn’t been done before.”

READ MORE: Neuralink: 3 neuroscientists react to Elon Musk’s brain chip reveal [Inverse]

More on Neuralink: PETA Is Really Upset With Elon Musk For Testing Neuralink on Pigs

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Button Masher

A team of computer scientists have spent their year working on the world’s first battery-free Game Boy.

The device, CNET reports, is a faithful recreation of the 1989 Nintendo Game Boy, with one key difference: Instead of AA batteries, the handheld gaming system is powered entirely by tiny solar panels and the force of a heated gamer mashing the buttons. Just like the Game Boy was a breakthrough in mobile gaming, the scientists hope that they too can spark a revolution in battery-free technology.

Gamer Fuel

Playing the device — called the Engage — isn’t quite up to the standard of an authentic Game Boy, even though it can play the classic console’s entire library of games. That’s because its very limited power necessitates a tiny screen, no speakers, and just a few seconds of life without constant button-mashing.

“We’re really making a huge leap towards useful and usable systems that are built upon this foundation of intermittent computing,” Delft University of Technology computer scientist Przemyslaw Pawelczak told CNET.

Save States Enabled

Those limitations are by design, CNET reports, and the team found a way to make the console autosave your progress at the exact moment before it dies. Press a few buttons and the game springs back to life at the exact moment you left it. That’s great for games like Tetris, but more of a disruption for games like the Pokémon series that don’t require button mashing.

What remains to be seen, however, is how the notoriously-litigious Nintendo will react after the team presents the Engage at a research conference next week.

READ MORE: The first battery-free Game Boy wants to power a gaming revolution [CNET]

More on gaming: Putting Pokémon On The Blockchain Takes Microtransactions To Their Inevitable, Insufferable End

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Battery-Free Game Boy Powered by Force of Mashing Buttons

Remember all the commotion and immediate backlash against the idea of CRISPR babies — human embryos that have their genes altered with CRISPR — after a Chinese researcher created a pair of twins with altered genetic code in 2018 and 2019?

Well, the concept hasn’t gone away, much to bioethicists’ chagrin. Now, Russian biologist Denis Rebrikov of Moscow’s Pirogov Medical University is telling New Scientist that he still plans to gene-hack human embryos, in an attempt to prevent congenital deafness.

“We are still planning to correct the inherited hearing loss mutation in [the gene] GJB2, so that a hearing baby is born to a deaf couple,” Rebrikov told the magazine.

But other scientists, of course, remain convinced that’s a bad idea. After the Chinese researcher He Jiankui created the world’s first CRISPR babies a few years back, an international team of doctors created the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing.

The commission, New Scientist reports, published a report on Thursday concluding that human gene editing is still unsafe, especially when the goal is to bring an embryo to term. And if a doctor absolutely must do so, they suggest that it ought to be only for life-saving purposes.

Even having read the report, Rebrikov told New Scientist that he’s still moving ahead with his plan.

It’s not clear that he’s got the necessary approval from Russian regulatory bodies. But, as is the case in many countries around the world, Russia doesn’t outright ban the practice so he may be able to sneak his experiments through.

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Finally, after the Russian government approved it for use, there’s actual evidence that the country’s experimental coronavirus vaccine induces an actual immune response.

Results from a preliminary test were published in the academic journal The Lancet on Friday, New Scientist reports, ending weeks of mystery during which Russian officials bragged about the vaccine despite there being no publicly-available evidence that it worked.

Even the newly-published experiment is minuscule in scale compared to what’s necessary to prove that a vaccine works and is safe. The paper shows that the vaccine prepared the immune systems of all 76 healthy volunteers to fight the coronavirus without side effects. But, as New Scientist points out, there’s still no evidence that the vaccine actually prevents or even mitigates COVID-19 infections.

Without proper data, scientists remain skeptical of the vaccine — and, needless to say, the deployment of it  — until there’s actual evidence that it will help.

“We are not expecting to see widespread vaccination until the middle of next year,” World Health Organization spokesperson Margaret Harris said at a Friday press briefing.

“This phase 3 must take longer because we need to see how truly protective the vaccine is and we also need to see how safe it is,” Harris added, speaking of experimental vaccines in general.

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We Have Liftoff

For the first time, a scale model of the Flying-V, an experimental jetliner that seats passengers inside its wings, took flight during an uncrewed test.

The results of a Flying-V test have been long awaited. The plane’s unusual design makes it 20 percent more fuel efficient than the most advanced planes on the market, according to New Atlas, which has covered the project previously. But, as with any unusual experimental design, it remains unclear how well it would actually work in practice.

Flight Simulator

Even if it wasn’t a real Flying-V, the successful flight test of the scaled down model is a pretty big deal. Even the engineers helping design it weren’t sure how well the new plane would fare during takeoff and landing.

“One of our worries was that the aircraft might have some difficulty lifting-off, since previous calculations had shown that ‘rotation’ could be an issue,” Roelof Vos, a propulsion researcher at Delft University of Technology, told Flightglobal.com. “The team optimized the scaled flight model to prevent the issue. But you need to fly to know for sure.”

Light Turbulence

The largest issue that the team ran into was during what Vos called “somewhat of a rough landing,” Vos told FlightGlobal.

When your flight lands, you might notice that the plane tends to tilt back and forth a bit as it lands up with the runway. The same thing happened with the Flying-V, Vos told the site, and we can’t imagine how nauseous passengers would have been.

READ MORE: Flying V long-distance plane makes its first flight as a scale model [New Atlas]

More on aviation: New “Flying-V” Plane Puts Passenger Seats in the Wings

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Engineers Test Jetliner Where You Ride in the Wings

It’s like an episode of “True Detective.”

How do you find human remains in a massive natural ecosystem like the Amazon rainforest? According to a new paper published in the journal Trends in Plant Science, tree and shrub canopies could guide search and rescue teams to find human remains, as CNN reports.

As they decompose, human remains create “cadaver decomposition islands,” the researchers write, altering the surrounding soil, roots and leaves. These changes could even be “detected remotely.”

“In smaller, open landscapes foot patrols could be effective to find someone missing, but in more forested or treacherous parts of the world like the Amazon, that’s not going to be possible at all,” explained senior author Neal Stewart Junior, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Tennessee, in a statement. “This led us to look into plants as indicators of human decomposition, which could lead to faster, and possibly safer body recovery.”

The researchers are planning to test their new cadaver discovering technique at the University of Tennessee’s “body farm,” more formally known as the Anthropology Research Facility, where they will assess changes in these cadaver decomposition islands including minute changes in the coloration and fluorescent signatures of individual leaves.

“The most obvious result of the islands would be a large release of nitrogen into the soil, especially in the summertime when decomposition is happening so fast,” Stewart said. “Depending on how quickly the plants respond to the influx of nitrogen, it may cause changes in leaf color and reflectance.”

There’s one key problem: humans aren’t the only mammals dying in the woods. That means the team will have to find a human specific way to spot these metabolic processes that differ, say, from a dead deer.

“One thought is if we had a specific person who went missing who was, let’s say, a heavy smoker, they could have a chemical profile that could trigger some sort of unique plant response making them easier to locate,” Stewart suggested. “Though at this stage this idea is still farfetched.”

Stewart and his team are hoping their research could make recovering human bodies — and possibly nearby survivors — in large forested ideas far more efficient.

“When you start to think about deploying drones to look for specific emissions, now we can think of the signals more like a check engine light,” he explained. “If we can quickly fly where someone may have gone missing and collect data over tens or even hundreds of square kilometers, then we’d know the best spots to send in a search team.”

READ MORE: Plants could help authorities detect dead human bodies in woodland [CNN]

More on forensics: Horrifying Study: Corpses Thrash Around For a Year After Death

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Plants Do Something Weird When They Grow Near Human Corpses, Scientists Say

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s top coronavirus advisor, warns that humanity is now living in a “pandemic era.”

At this point, nearly half a year after the COVID-19 pandemic brought the U.S. to its knees, that may sound obvious. But as The Washington Post reports, Fauci is talking about something greater than just the current pandemic. Rather, he believes that human activity has become a major contributor to the emergence of new deadly diseases.

“COVID-19, recognized in late 2019, is but the latest example of an unexpected, novel, and devastating pandemic disease,” Fauci, along with his colleague Dr. David Morens, wrote in research published last month in the prestigious journal CELL. “One can conclude from this recent experience that we have entered a pandemic era. The causes of this new and dangerous situation are multifaceted, complex, and deserving of serious examination.”

Throughout the paper, Fauci and Morens point out numerous dangerous disease outbreaks that began as a downstream effect of industrialization or other ways that human civilization impacted nature. For instance, there’s the Nipah virus outbreak from around the turn of the 21st century that began because humanity burned down forests to make room for agriculture, which displaced infected bats closer to populated areas.

“There are many examples where disease emergences reflect our increasing inability to live in harmony with nature,” Fauci and Morens write.

In order to reverse course, the duo warns that we need to rethink many aspects of our society, from deforestation to living in crowded cities to unsanitary animal farming.

“Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues,” Fauci and Morens write.

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Fauci Warns That Earth Has Entered a “Pandemic Era”

According to Anthony Fauci, the United States top infectious disease expert, there could be a safe way to start giving out a COVID vaccine earlier than expected.

Fauci said during aTuesday interview with Kaiser Health News that the Data and Safety Monitoring Board, a committee made up of independent experts who evaluate the safety of vaccine development, could decide that the data is so good right now that you can say its safe and effective.'

In other words, researchers could end the trials early and start giving out the vaccine.

Three COVID vaccines have reached late stage large-scale trials in the US, according to CNN, including one by pharmaceutical company Moderna.

Its a touchy subject and complicating matters is the politicization of the vaccine by U.S. president Donald Trump. Experts have claimed that Trump is pressuring regulators to release a vaccine early to help with his reelection later this year.

Fauci remained steadfast during Tuesdays interview. If you are making a decision about the vaccine, youd better be sure you have very good evidence that it is both safe and effective, Fauci said. Im not concerned about political pressure.

Health experts are reluctant to make any claims as to when a coronavirus vaccine will be made available. Some claim that ending trials early would likely come with inherent safety risks, as CNN reports.

Fauci is optimistic. He believes that we could make rapid progress before the end of 2020.

I believe that by the time we get to the end of this calendar year that we will feel comfortable that we do have a safe and effective vaccine, Fauci told NBC today.

Faucis main concern right now, actually, is the upcoming flu season, something the nation needs to get ahead of.

What Id really like to see is a full court press to get us way down as a baseline, so that when you get these cases in the fall, they wont surge up, Fauci added.

READ MORE: Theres a legitimate way to end coronavirus vaccine trials early, Fauci says [CNN]

More on Fauci: Trump Wants to Approve a COVID Vaccine Before Theyre Done Testing It

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Fauci: We Could Cut Trials Short and Give Out COVID Vaccine "Right Now" - Futurism

Branching Out

The search for extraterrestrial life just got a whole lot more expansive a team of scientists keeping an ear out for alien transmissions just ballooned their operation to examine 200 times the number of star systems it had previously.

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative, an effort to intercept radio transmissions sent out by extraterrestrial civilizations, is now listening to 288,315 star systems instead of its previous 1,327, according to preprint research shared online last week. In all, the change represents a major upgrade to one of the more prominent attempts to find intelligent life in the Milky Way.

The University of Manchester scientists behind the project made the improvements after combing through existing European Space Agency data about the locations and distance from Earth of celestial bodies within 33,000 lightyears, which is the range of their radio telescope.

Knowing the locations and distances to these additional sources, Manchester researcher and team leader Michael Garrett said in a press release, greatly improves our ability to constrain the prevalence of extraterrestrial intelligence in our own galaxy and beyond. We expect future SETI surveys to also make good use of this approach.

The idea is to identify extraterrestrial civilizations by picking up radio broadcasts, so figuring out how feasible it is for each star system to get a message to Earth helped them narrow down their search while adding the new candidates.

Our results help to put meaningful limits on the prevalence of transmitters comparable to what we ourselves can build using twenty-first-century technology, study coauthor Bart Wlodarczyk-Sroka said in the release.

READ MORE: Breakthrough narrows intelligent life search in Milky Way [University of Manchester]

More on SETI: Scientists Say Life Could Survive Inside Stars

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SETI Team Increases Number of Stars That Might Host Life by 200x - Futurism