It’s never aliens until it is. Today, news leaked in the British newspaper The Guardian of a mysterious signal coming from the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, a star too dim to see from Earth with the naked eye that is nevertheless a cosmic stone’s throw away at just 4.2 light-years. Found this autumn in archival data gathered last year, the signal appears to emanate from the direction of our neighboring star and cannot yet be dismissed as Earth-based interference, raising the very faint prospect that it is a transmission from some form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI)—a so-called “technosignature.” Now, speaking to Scientific American, the scientists behind the discovery caution there is still much work to be done, but admit the interest is justified. “It has some particular properties that caused it to pass many of our checks, and we cannot yet explain it,” says Andrew Siemion from the University of California, Berkeley.

Most curiously, it occupies a very narrow band of the radio spectrum: 982 megahertz, specifically, which is a region typically bereft of transmissions from human-made satellites and spacecraft. “We don’t know of any natural way to compress electromagnetic energy into a single bin in frequency” such as this one, Siemion says. Perhaps, he says, some as-yet-unknown exotic quirk of plasma physics could be a natural explanation for the tantalizingly concentrated radio waves. But “for the moment, the only source that we know of is technological.”

The detection was made by a $100 million project called Breakthrough Listen, led by Siemion and funded by tech billionaire Yuri Milner under the umbrella of Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives. The goal of this multiyear endeavor—which began in 2015 with a star-studded announcement attended by Stephen Hawking and other space-science luminaries—is to buy observing time on radio telescopes around the world to search the skies for evidence of technological civilizations. That pursuit, of course, is more commonly known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). To date, no such evidence has conclusively been found despite more than a half century of modest-but-steady SETI activity, with any potential signals almost always ruled out as originating from satellites orbiting Earth or other human-caused interference.

“If you see such a signal and it’s not coming from the surface of Earth, you know you have detected extraterrestrial technology,” says Jason Wright, a SETI-centric astronomer at Penn State University in Pennsylvania. “Unfortunately, humans have launched a lot of extraterrestrial technology.”

The story of this latest SETI spectacle really began on April 29, 2019, when scientists affiliated with Breakthrough Listen started collecting the data that would later reveal the intriguing signal. A team had been using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia to study Proxima Centauri for signs of flares coming from the red dwarf star, in part to understand how such flares might affect Proxima’s planets. The system hosts at least two worlds.

The first, dubbed Proxima Centauri b upon its discovery in 2016, is about 1.2 times the size of Earth and in an 11-day orbit. Proxima b resides in the star’s “habitable zone,” a hazily defined sector in which liquid water could exist upon a rocky planet’s surface—provided, that is, Proxima Centauri’s intense stellar flares have not sputtered away a world’s atmosphere. Another planet, the roughly seven-Earth-mass Proxima c, was discovered in 2019 in a frigid 5.2-year orbit.

Using Parkes, the astronomers had observed the star for 26 hours as part of their stellar-flare study, but, as is routine within the Breakthrough Listen project, they also flagged the resulting data for a later look to seek out any candidate SETI signals.

The task fell to a young intern in Siemion’s SETI program at Berkeley, Shane Smith, who is also an undergraduate student at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Smith began sifting through the data in June of this year, but it was not until late October that he stumbled upon the curious narrowband emission, needle-sharp at 982.002 megahertz, hidden in plain view in the Proxima Centauri observations. From there, things happened fast—with good reason.

“It’s the most exciting signal that we’ve found in the Breakthrough Listen project, because we haven’t had a signal jump through this many of our filters before,” says Sofia Sheikh from Penn State University, who helmed the subsequent analysis of the signal for Breakthrough Listen and is the lead author on an upcoming paper detailing that work, which will be published in early 2021. Soon, the team began calling the signal by a more formal name: BLC1, for “Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1.”

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To pique any SETI researcher’s interest, a signal must first endure a barrage of simple automated tests to rule out obvious terrestrial interference. Hundreds of candidates, however, routinely pass this phase and are singled out for further investigation. From there, almost all will be dismissed as some mirage or error—perhaps an excess of static, for instance—that fooled the winnowing algorithm, eliminating them from consideration as any sort of transmission from talkative aliens. “Except this one,” Sheikh says.

Revisiting the data from 2019, Sheikh and her colleagues noted that the telescope had looked at Proxima multiple times in scans lasting 30 minutes over the course of a week. Breakthrough Listen uses a technique called “nodding,” where the telescope will spend a period of time looking at a target and then an equivalent period looking elsewhere in the sky, to check that any potential signal is truly coming from the target and not, say, someone microwaving their lunch in an observatory’s cafeteria. “In five of the 30-minute observations over about three hours we see this thing come back,” Sheikh says, a hint that the signal indeed originated from Proxima Centauri—or some other deep-space source in that part of the sky—before making its way to Earth.

One might think, then, that the case would be closed. But while a natural cosmic source may seem unlikely, it cannot yet be ruled out—and, the thinking goes, as unlikely as a natural explanation might be, an “unnatural” explanation such as aliens is even less likely still. Consequently, every member of the Breakthrough Listen team interviewed for this article steadfastly insists the chance of this being anything other than terrestrial interference is exceedingly remote. “The most likely thing is that it’s some human cause,” says Pete Worden, executive director of the Breakthrough Initiatives. “And when I say most likely, it’s like 99.9 [percent].”

That rational skepticism extends all the way to the top. “When we launched Breakthrough Listen with Stephen Hawking in 2015,” Milner says, “it was understood that the most rigorous scientific approach will be used to analyze all candidate signals.” Milner and seemingly all the SETI researchers his funding supports fully expect BLC1 to wither away under the project’s now-intense scrutiny. But, just maybe, it won’t.

Proxima Centauri

For the time being, months of further analysis are in store to definitively rule out other potential sources. And BLC1 itself, while seeming to come from Proxima Centauri, does not quite fit expectations for a techno signature from that system. First, the signal bears no trace of modulation—tweaks to its properties that can be used to convey information. “BLC1 is, for all intents and purposes, just a tone, just one note,” Siemion says. “It has absolutely no additional features that we can discern at this point.” And second, the signal “drifts,” meaning that it appears to be changing very slightly in frequency—an effect that could be due to the motion of our planet, or of a moving extraterrestrial source such as a transmitter on the surface of one of Proxima Centauri’s worlds. But the drift is the reverse of what one would naively expect for a signal originating from a world twirling around our sun’s nearest neighboring star. “We would expect the signal to be going down in frequency like a trombone,” Sheikh says. “What we see instead is like a slide whistle—the frequency goes up.”

So far, follow-up observations using Parkes have failed to turn up the signal again, with a repeat observation being a necessity to confirm that BLC1 is a genuine technosignature. “If it’s an ETI it must eventually be replicable, because it’s unlikely it would be a one-off,” says Shami Chatterjee, a radio astronomer from Cornell University in New York. “If an independent team at an independent observatory can recover the same signal, then hell yes. I would bet money that they won’t, but I would love to be wrong.”

Nonetheless, it remains one of the most intriguing signals found by Breakthrough Listen—or indeed any SETI program—to date, one that Sheikh compares to the so-called “Wow! signal” detected in 1977, which some believed to be of extraterrestrial origin. “I think it’s on par with the Wow! signal,” she says. More likely than not, however, this is simply some previously unknown source of Earth-based interference. In a few months, we’ll likely know for certain one way or another. But for the time being, it’s never aliens … right? “I hate that phrase, because if you say that then why even look,” Wright says. “What we mean by that is that it’s never been aliens before.”

Originally Published on: scientificamerican.com

The Trump administration turned down Pfizer vaccine offer for additional doses of its COVID-19 vaccine – and now additional supplies to vaccinate Americans might not be available until June. 

The New York Times first reported that Pfizer had made the offer, saying it came in late summer – and that the administration had declined. 

It came on the heels of Fox News Channel reporting that President Donald Trump planned to sign an executive order that would ‘ensure that United States government prioritizes getting the vaccine to American citizens before sending it to other nations.’  

pfizer vaccine

Under the current Pfizer order, the U.S. government will get 100 million doses, which is only enough to vaccinate 50 million Americans. Pfizer has made commitments to other countries, which could cause the delay. 

It’s unclear whether the outgoing president’s executive order would be able to force Pfizer’s hand.  

President Donald Trump was incensed after good news on the coronavirus pfizer vaccine front came after the November 3 presidential election 

The White House invited Psizer CEO Albert Bourla (left) and Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel to Tuesday’s ‘Vaccine Summit,’ an invitation they both declined, according to STAT

Psizer told The Times in a statement that ‘any additional doses beyond the 100 million are subject to a separate and mutually acceptable agreement.’ 

‘The company is not able to comment on any confidential discussions that may be taking place with the U.S. government,’ the statement said. 

Earlier, STAT reported that the heads of Pfizer and Moderna turned down an invitation to appear at Tuesday’s White House ‘Vaccine Summit,’ where Trump will sign the executive order.  

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He’s charged vaccine-makers with holding back good news until after the November 3 election, which he lost to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. 

Trump has refused to concede.  

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel had been invited to appear Tuesday in Washington and declined.  

The president is expected to take credit for the quick development of vaccines through Operation Warp Speed at the summit, as well as pressure the Food and Drug Administration to quickly approve an emergency use authorization for both companies’ products. 

The snub is predictable, as Trump has especially been at odds with Pfizer after executive Kathrin Jansen, the head of vaccine research and development, said on November 10 that this particular vaccine wasn’t part of Operation Warp Speed. 

Pfizer didn’t take federal dollars for development of the vaccine, but signed on to sell $1.95 billion of it to the U.S. government, thus ensuring there would be a marketplace. 

Bourla defended the company’s decision not to take federal funds saying that Pfizer wanted to ‘liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy’ and ‘keep Pfizer out of politics.’ 

But on November 9 – six days after the presidential election and two days after President-elect Joe Biden was deemed the winner – Pfizer announced the findings that the company’s vaccine was 95 per cent effective against COVID-19. 

Trump was incensed. 

‘As I have long said, @Pfizer and the others would only announce a Vaccine after the Election, because they didn’t have the courage to do it before. Likewise, the @US_FDA should have announced it earlier, not for political purposes, but for saving lives!’ Trump tweeted that night. ‘The @US_FDA and the Democrats didn’t want to have me get a Pfizer vaccine WIN, prior to the election, so instead it came out five days later — As I’ve said all along!’

The Washington Post reported on November 11 that Trump blamed the ‘medical deep state’ and the Food and Drug Administration for the post-election announcement. 

Other major companies will send representatives to the Tuesday White House summit. 

They include FedEx, UPS, CVS, Walgreens and McKesson, STAT reported.

A handout from the White House showed that there would be a focus on vaccine distribution. 

Biden, in remarks last week, suggested the Operation Warp Speed plan wasn’t fully developed. 

‘There is no detailed plan that we’ve seen anyway as to how you get the vaccine out of a container into an injection syringe into somebody’s arm,’ Biden said. 

Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, said Sunday he had plans to meet with Biden this week.  

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk

Together they beat, tortured, and burned Air Force veteran Cordell Richards to within an inch of his life before returning the next day to finish him off with a meat cleaver.

But while Ronald Bell and Kristel Maestas will likely die behind bars for the ‘unspeakable’ slaying, the third member of their evil trio is enjoying a comfortable middle-class life in a Florida suburb, DailyMail.com can reveal. 

Minister’s son Bell and former girlfriend Maestas were aged 17 and 16 respectively when they kidnapped and butchered Richards in the Panhandle city of Fort Walton Beach in February 1999. 

Accomplice Renee Lincks – tied father-of-two Richards to a tree and took turns in battering him with a baseball bat – at the age of 15. 

But while the older teens were convicted of first degree murder and jailed for life, Lincks was able to plead no contest to charges of manslaughter and false imprisonment in return for testifying against them. 

The maximum sentence was 15 years and Lincks would ultimately serve just 12 in a medium security prison. 

Cordell Richards

Renee Lincks, 36, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the 1999  murder of Air Force veteran Cordell Richards when she was 15 and was released in 2012 at age 28 

Since being released from prison, Lincks lives a comfortable lifestyle in Florida, pictured here last week shopping at Ross where she purchased dog treats and home goods 

The tattooed felon has built a new life in Homestead, south of Miami, where she recently purchased her first home with a female partner (the couple are pictured together) 

The badly decomposed body of 31-year-old Cordell Richards was found burned and tied to a tree in a secluded area near Fort Walton Beach, Florida in March 1999

Now in their 30s, Bell and Maestas, appeared in court last week to appeal their sentences under a Supreme Court ruling that said mandatory life without parole for juveniles was unconstitutional. 

A judge dashed their hopes of release by upholding both life terms – but the same cannot be said of Lincks who was freed in 2012, aged 28. 

DailyMail.com can reveal that the tattooed felon has since built a fun new life in Homestead, south of Miami, where she recently purchased her first home with a female partner. 

Her carefree lifestyle is laid bare in social media posts which show her partying with girlfriends, sipping drinks by a pool and dressing dogs up in Christmas outfits. 

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When DailyMail.com approached the now 36-year-old this week to speak about the case Lincks refused to discuss her dark past. ‘How did you know my name?’ she snapped at our reporter. ‘I’m not going to answer any of your questions.’

Richards’ family understood the need for a plea deal in the original 2000 prosecution and regarded it as a necessary evil to secure damning testimony against two of the three. But they have always felt Lincks was integral to the killing – and should also be locked up for life.

‘Without a doubt in my mind, she should still be behind bars,’ the slain Airman’s youngest daughter Rei Richards, 24, told DailyMail.com.

‘Renee Lincks was a very active part of the process – she is just as much of a monster as the rest of them are.’

Lincks’ carefree lifestyle is laid bare in social media posts which show her partying with friends 

A year after she was released from prison in 2012, Lincks (center) was sipping drinks by a pool with her girlfriends 

This is the woman (left) that Lincks is living with in Homestead, Florida, after only serving 12 years behind bars for the murder of the Air Force veteran 

Renee Lincks and her female partner purchased this three bedroom, two bath 1,483 square-foot home Homestead, Florida for $205,000 in 2018 

In a grim irony, the Ford F150 truck she drives has a large decal on the back window paying tribute to fallen US servicemen

Lincks took a break from her manual labor job to have lunch at Long John Silvers in Florida last week 

Links, Maestas and Bell had never met Richards until Maestas was kicked out by her parents in early 1999 and responded to his newspaper ad for a room for rent.

Within weeks of moving in she alleged to Bell, her besotted boyfriend of several months, that Richards had made unwanted sexual advances towards her and Lincks. 

Cordell’s daughter Rei Richards, 24, told DailyMail.com, ‘Without a doubt in my mind, she should still be behind bars’

On the evening of February 2, 1999, Bell confronted Richards inside his apartment, chocking him unconscious and clubbing him with a baseball bat. Bell, Maestas and Lincks then together tied Richards up and rolled him in a blanket before driving him to secluded woodland. 

For the next two days they kept the helpless veteran chained to a tree and subjected him to what the judge at the original murder trial described as ‘unspeakable horror’.

The trio first took turns to hit Richards with the bat, with Bell complaining the girls weren’t striking him hard enough and proclaiming himself ‘Babe Ruth’ as he viciously slugged his victim.

Then, as Richards begged for his life Bell poured lighter fuel over him. Maestas set him alight.

The three ran off into the night but when they returned the next morning to check that Richards was dead, they found him clinging to life and calling faintly for help. 

According to Lincks’ testimony, Bell attempted to snap Richards’ neck but failed. He and Lincks then drove to a nearby Target to buy duct tape and a meat cleaver which Bell used to cut Richards’ throat. 

They even took the murder weapon back to the store afterwards to claim a refund, according to reports from the time. Bell and Maestas would return to the scene one last time a week later, this time to burn Richards’ corpse and cover their tracks. 

The warped trio might have succeeded had a 12-year-old boy not stumbled across the charred remains on March 4. 

While the body was damaged beyond recognition, forensics experts were able to retrieve a single fingerprint from a thumb which they eventually matched to Richards’ military records. 

By then the doting dad had been missing a month, his family growing increasingly concerned when he failed to show up at Rei’s fourth birthday party. 

An autopsy would reveal the shocking extent of the torture, with Richards found to have suffered multiple fractures to his head, shoulder, sternum, ribs, arms and wrist.

Bell was originally sentenced to death but in 2002 the Florida Supreme Court overturned the ruling because the judge had not taken sufficient account of his age at the time of the killing. 

Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty against Maestas because she was only 16. She was instead handed a life sentence. 

Kristel Maestas was 16 at the time of Cordell Richard’s murder, who was her landlord. She was re-sentenced to life in prison in Florida last week 

Ronald Bell was 17 when he murdered Cordell Richards after his then-girlfriend Maestas claimed Richards had made a pass at her. He and Maestas had become eligible for re-sentencing after the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that juveniles couldn’t be sentenced to life without parole

Renee Lincks is pictured in court as a teen accused of tying the father-of-two to a tree and taking turns in battering him with a baseball bat before setting him on fire 

Surveillance footage shows the deadly trio purchasing the meat cleaver that was used to cut Cordell Richard’s throat in 1999

Lincks was never charged with murder because she gave testimony stating that Bell and Maestas plotted the killing and bought the rope and chain beforehand. 

However portions of her account were later contested by Maestas, who decided to give testimony post-sentence in an attempt to win favor in any future clemency petition. 

She stated that Lincks had demanded PIN numbers from Cordell Richards while he was being beaten – and that she was the first to suggest burning him alive. 

Maestas also said that when Bell cut Richards’ throat, Lincks quizzed him as to whether he had cut deep enough. 

Public records state that Lincks was released from prison on February 1, 2012 and there is nothing to suggest she has ever reoffended. 

A Facebook post taken one year later showed her hanging out poolside with a group of girlfriends, drinking beer and liquor. 

In recent years she appears to have settled down with a female partner with whom she jointly bought a three-bedroom family home last June for $205,000. 

The 5ft 3in former offender now works for a maintenance company and shares her love of dogs on social media.

In a grim irony, the Ford F150 truck she drives has a large decal on the back window paying tribute to fallen US servicemen. 

‘The United States flag does not fly because the wind moves past it,’ the sign reads. ‘The United States flag flies from the last breath of each military member who has died protecting it.’

Cordell Richard mother Ruby Richards and Cordell’s daughter Rei Richards embrace in court last week after the two killers were jailed for life

The re-sentencing of Bell and Maestas – who have spent more than half their lives behind bars – was ordered because of a 2012 US Supreme Court ruling that banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences. 

The 5-4 decision gave thousands of juvenile lifers across the US a shot at release but Okaloosa County Circuit Court Judge William Stone slammed the cell door shut on the duo’s hopes of freedom. 

Bell was re-sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder and slapped with a consecutive life term for kidnapping with a weapon.

Maestas, the only one of the trio who has ever contacted the Richards family to express remorse, will serve life plus 30 years consecutive for the kidnapping.

‘I know that a lot of people might want to look at this like it’s a celebration because they are behind bars and they are never coming out,’ Rei told DailyMail.com.

‘Yes, it feels good that justice has been done but this will always be a massive loss for us that we will never recover from. We lost a father, a son, a brother.

‘I’m never going to have my father walk me down the aisle, I’m never going to get to introduce him to his grandchildren. Having them behind bars will never give me back my dad.’ 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk