In 1961, astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake developed an equation to estimate the number of active extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy using factors such as rate of star formation, number of planets, length of time intelligent civilizations needed to release detectable signals into space and other obviously speculate but ‘intelligent’ guesses. The now famous Drake Equation, with Drake’s estimates, gave a range from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of 50,000,000. The equation has been debated and refined and has inspired many people to join the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Not James Benford. He has developed his own version of the Drake equation to look for signs of extraterrestrial artifacts (SETA) and it tells him we should find them on the Moon. Do lunar astronauts need to start carrying metal detectors?

This is going to get me to the Moon!

“The virtue of searching for artifacts is their lingering endurance in space, long after they go dead.”

In a study published in the journal in the journal Astrobiology and reviewed by Space.com, James Benford, a physicist at Microwave Sciences in Lafayette, California, outlines his justifications for SETA over SETI – specifically, that artifacts last far longer the signals, they can be left as static indicators of alien presence and observation by ETs who don’t want to be discovered until after they leave, and they can be found on planets and space bodies that don’t necessarily show signs of life, like the Moon.

“I construct a ratio of a SETA Drake equation for artifacts to the conventional Drake equation so that most terms cancel out. This ratio is a good way to debate the efficacy of SETI versus SETA. The ratio is the product of two terms: one is the ratio of the length of time that probes from extraterrestrial (ET) civilizations could be present in the near-Earth region to the length of time that ET civilizations transmit signals to the Solar System. The second term is the ratio of the respective origin volumes: the volume from which probes can come, which is affected by the long-term passage of stars near the Sun, to the volume of transmitting civilizations.”

Benford thinks SETA is more appealing because it involves an active search, while SETI is more of a passive sit-and-wait-for-a-signal approach. Also, artifacts are a better sign of an advanced intelligence capable of long-distance space travel, whereas we humans are capable of sending signals but not traveling too far or too fast in space. Who wants to find more beings who can only do that?

“You can see Neil Armstrong’s footprints on the moon in some photos, but only a handful of these images have been inspected by human eyes. We need to use AI [artificial intelligence] software to look for structures, for signs of artificiality, which could benefit sciences on Earth, such as archaeology.”

Benford argues that NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken about 2 million photos of the moon since 2009 but they haven’t been analyzed for signs of non-lunar artificiality – artifacts. He also proposes that the solar system could have been visited by ETs from stars that have passed near the Sun — Scholz’s Star came within 0.82 light-years of the sun just 70,000 years ago, and two stars came with 10 light years in the past 10,000 years. ETs from those stars could have sent robotic probes just as we do to Mars and the Moon – probes that can survive for millions of years in those types of environments.

If this isn’t Alan Shepard’s golf ball, I think I’m going to like these aliens.

Benford is not the first to propose looking for alien artifacts, but he’s the first to develop an alternative Drake equation for SETA. Searching for alien artifacts, even if it’s just on photographs, beats waiting around for contact or for humans to develop interstellar space travel.

Sorry Dr. Drake!

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The two names most associated with Planet Nine are astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin of Caltech. In 2016, they published a paper about their simulation of Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects (ETNOs) to determine why these faraway space rocks share the same angle at perihelion, the point in their orbit that is closest to the Sun, and concluded this could be caused by a large planet not more than 10,000 astronomical units from the Sun – anything beyond that would be out of the gravitational pull of the Sun – that was somewhere in the Oort Cloud. The pair recently released a new paper based on new data and simulations which will help Planet Nine hunters, including Brown and Batygin, narrow their search. Before you buy a bigger telescope and a new star map, you may want to hear them out.

“Due to the long-term gravitational pull of Planet Nine’s orbit, inner Oort Cloud objects evolve on billion-year timescales, slowly getting re-injected into the outer solar system. So what happens to them? We have simulated this process, accounting for perturbations from the canonical giant planets, Planet Nine, passing stars, as well as the galactic tide, and have found that these re-injected inner Oort Cloud objects can readily mix in with the census of distant Kuiper belt objects, and even exhibit orbital clustering.”

On their Find Planet Nine blog, Brown and Batygin revise their thinking about the Oort Cloud based on new simulations which use the 19 now-known ETNOs rather than the original six used in 2016. Where they once assumed objects in the Oort Cloud were static, they now consider the possibility that some could have come from the Kuiper Belt, which is close enough to the Sun to contain Pluto and the other minor planets. Further, they propose that there is still movement going on in both directions between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, specifically in the inner Oort Cloud. Finally, that inner Oort Cloud was affected during its creation by both Saturn and Neptune flinging debris outward while nearby developing stars in the early formation of the galaxy pushed them back towards the Sun. The result is a dense – relative to the rest of the Oort Cloud – ring of space objects.

“However, the degree of clustering they show is prominently weaker, suggesting that a more eccentric P9 is required to explain the data. Another intriguing aspect of these calculations is that they produce a more radially extended distribution of long-period TNOs, providing an intriguing potential explanation for the abundance of highly long-period orbits, such as that of the Goblin.”

The Goblin – formally named 541132 Leleākūhonua – was the third ETNO discovered and is known for its extreme orbit around the Sun at a distance of 65–2000 AU once every 32,000 years with a very high eccentricity of 0.94 and angle of inclination relative to the standard planetry plane. All of that made both simulations digitally scream “Planet Nine!” with the more recent one adding “In the inner Oort Cloud!” Put it all together and it tells Planet Nine hunters to look for it in the inner Oort cloud at an orbital eccentricity and angle similar to the Goblin’s. That narrows the area down, but it’s still far beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Needless to say, Brown and Batygin are excited.

“All in all, as scientists, our primary role is to continue hammering away at the hypothesis, and our new simulations indicate that there exists an intriguing additional mode of P9-induced dynamics affecting our efforts to pin down the orbit of Planet Nine. With each theoretical breakthrough, the observational search comes into sharper focus.”

In other words, keep looking!

The “What could possibly go wrong” file is so full, it may be time to give China its own manila folder for its experiments with human-animal chimeras that not only cross the ethical line – they wipe it out completely with genetically-altered erasers. The latest entry in the file is an experiment that attempts to reach the unholy grail of hybrids – human-monkey chimeras, created under the ‘good intentions’ guise of developing ways to address the severe shortage of human organs for transplants. Before you start pointing fingers at China’s Kunming University of Science and Technology, the leader of this experiment was an American from the Salk Institute in California who has also been involved in creating human-pig chimeras. Do we need to start TWO files?

“We studied the chimeric competency of human extended pluripotent stem cells (hEPSCs) in cynomolgus monkey (Macaca fascicularis) embryos cultured ex vivo. We demonstrate that hEPSCs survived, proliferated, and generated several peri- and early post-implantation cell lineages inside monkey embryos.”

Whoa!

In their new paper published in the journal Cell, American geneticist Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte and a team of researchers in China led by primate reproduction biologist Weizhi Ji announced they have successfully injected 25 human stem cells into developing five-day-old macaque monkey embryos, and of the 132 human-monkey chimera embryos created, 103 were still alive after 10 days and 3 survived for 20 days in lab dishes. That’s an impressive success rate when compared to Izpisúa Belmonte’s experiments with human-pig and other chimeras, and he tells Live Science it’s because “the evolutionary distance is smaller” between humans and monkeys.

“Generation of a chimera between human and non-human primate, a species more closely related to humans along the evolutionary timeline than all previously used species, will allow us to gain better insight into whether there are evolutionarily imposed barriers to chimera generation and if there are any means by which we can overcome them.”

In the press release, Izpisúa Belmonte even destroys the chalk used to draw the ethical line by revealing his experiments seek to hurdle the barriers to chimera generation. Right now, by doing the experiments in China, the only barriers he hasn’t hurdled are regulations in other countries. Alejandro De Los Angeles, a stem cell biologist at the Yale University School of Medicine who was not involved in the study, told Live Science:

“The embryos here were not transferred into a uterus, and thus could not lead to living chimeric animals or even fetuses. Implantation of human-monkey embryos would be ethically contentious and will need to be discussed by scientists, ethicists and the public before moving forward with such experiments.”

Right — just like the creation of these human-monkey embryos was … not. In fact, one of the big concerns about allowing human-monkey chimeras to live longer is that the human cells would migrate to the monkey brains and grow there, transferring humanness to them. Unfortunately, it appears some communications already occurred in the 20-day-old chimera embryos, according Izpisua Belmonte in the press release.

“From these analyses, several communication pathways that were either novel or strengthened in the chimeric cells were identified. Understanding which pathways are involved in chimeric cell communication will allow us to possibly enhance this communication and increase the efficiency of chimerism in a host species that’s more evolutionarily distant to humans.”

This is too much!

Even if we eliminate the more cinematic, sci-fi and dystopian scenarios from the “what could possibly go wrong” discussions, there are still plenty of other outcomes worth worrying about and preventing. As always, the reality is that these experiments are being conducted in China and those scenarios may have already played out, even though Izpisua Belmonte assures us that “it is our responsibility as scientists to conduct our research thoughtfully, following all the ethical, legal, and social guidelines in place.”

Sorry, Izpisua Belmonte. What if you’re in a place where there are no such guidelines? Isn’t that why you went to China?

How many more “What could possibly go wrong” files do we need? Is it time for a cabinet? A warehouse?

On the night of September 12, 1952, something terrifying descended upon the small, West Virginian town of Flatwoods. Precisely what it was remains very much a mystery to this day. All that can really be said for sure is that it was hideous, fear-inducing and downright monstrous. It has, quite appropriately, become known as the Flatwoods Monster. Situated in Braxton County and dominated by a cool, picturesque, forested landscape, Flatwoods is a distinctly small town – that much is apparent from the fact that, today, its population is less than four hundred. Back in 1952, though, it was even less than that. On the night in question, however, the people of the town found themselves briefly added to by one visitor from…well…no-one really knows from where. It all began just as the sun was setting on what was a warm, still, September evening. A group of boys from Flatwoods were playing football in the town’s schoolyard when they were frozen to the spot by the sight of a brightly lit, fiery object that shot overhead, provoking amazement and wonder in the process. All that the boys could be sure of was that the object appeared to be either egg-shaped or circular. Its color fluctuated from orange to a fiery red.

As the stunned children watched in awe, they saw the object begin to descend – and at a high rate of speed, no less – and then appear to come down on one of Flatwood’s largest hilltops. Not surprisingly, being kids, they saw this as a big adventure looming large. The result: they, with a woman named Kathleen May and a recent U.S. Army recruit, Eugene Lemon, headed off for the scene of all the action. It wasn’t long before the group reached the hill in question – and with nightfall rapidly closing in. The first thing the group noticed, as they reached the darkened peak, was something brightly lit within the trees. What it was, no-one had a clue. But, it clearly wasn’t the lights of a farmhouse, truck, or car. Suddenly, the air was filled with a sickening odor – not unlike that of devilish brimstone. That was not a good sign. To their credit, however, they pushed on, determined to figure out the true nature of the source behind the lights. They soon found out: as the air became filled with a strange, sizzling sound, nothing less than a pair of self-illuminated red eyes could be seen getting ever closer. Kathleen May had the presence of mind to bring a flashlight with her and she quickly focused it on the eyes. In doing so, she also lit up the abominable creature that possessed those fiery eyes.

Looming before the now-terrified band of intrepid souls was an approximately ten-feet-tall, floating monster. It appeared to be humanoid in shape and had something almost like a large, black hood-like piece behind its head – that gave the entire thing an “Ace of Spades”-type appearance. Oddly, its lower half was ice-cream cone-shaped and had wires and cables running from it. This issue of the cone-shaped lower portion led flying saucer sleuths to later suggest the monster my actually have been encased within some kind of remotely piloted vehicle. As the creature then turned its attention to the group, and wildly fired laser-like beams from its eyes, the brave band was suddenly brave no more. They didn’t wait to see what might happen next. One and all fled, screaming – possibly for their lives. Mrs. May breathlessly shouted to the boys to follow her to her home, which they all did. On arrival, and possibly as a result of exposure to the noxious odor that hung around the hill, several of the boys became violently ill, feeling nauseous and even outright vomiting.

Kathleen May quickly called the local police, who, rather intriguingly, were busy responding to reports of what was described as an “airplane crash” somewhere in the area. It turns out that no such crashed aircraft was ever found – something that suggests the “airplane” and the brightly lit UFO that descended upon the high hill that night were, almost certainly, one and the very same. As a result of the fact that Flatwoods was, and still is, a very small town, word soon got out about what had happened. The local media was quickly on the scene, and even the U.S. Air Force sat up and took careful notice. Despite intense investigations by the press and the military, the mystery of the Flatwoods Monster was never solved to the satisfaction of everyone: the creature was long gone by the time anyone else was on the scene. It is, however, decidedly interesting to note that Flatwoods is only around 125 miles from the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where, from 1966 to 1967, yet another red-eyed monster was seen. Its famous name is, of course, Mothman.