Today’s Big Story

Is Anything Out There?

An adjustment to a famous equation could redefine how we look for intelligent life in our galaxy

When you look up at the stars, do you ever wonder what’s out there? Astronomer Frank Drake formulated an influential equation in 1961 to estimate the number of civilizations in the Milky Way capable of communicating with us. Our understanding of planetary science has changed a lot since then—leading a team of scientists to propose a pair of important adjustments that produce an answer that could explain the “Great Silence”.

According to Gizmodo, the Drake Equation has faced criticism over the years for its broad assumptions and ambiguous parameters; it often results in an overly optimistic estimate for the value of N—the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which we might be able to communicate with. This tends to feed a conundrum known as the Fermi Paradox: If intelligent life is common, why haven’t we found any evidence of it? New research published in Scientific Reports offers a potential fix via the addition of two new factors.

Planetary scientists Robert Stern from the University of Texas at Dallas and Taras Gerya from ETH-Zurich, the two co-authors on the study, suggest that the presence of both continents and oceans, along with long-term plate tectonics, is critical for the emergence of advanced civilizations. They consequently propose the addition of two factors into the equation: the fraction of habitable planets with significant continents and oceans and the fraction of those planets with plate tectonics operating for at least 500 million years. This adjustment, however, significantly reduces the value of N in the Drake Equation.

Because space is inconveniently enormous and traversing it so intensely time-consuming, looking and listening for alien life is exhaustive and exhausting. But the prospect of success makes it worthwhile. A confirmed ET signal detection would be a moment that “divides history into before we knew there was somebody out there, and after,” one astronomer at the SETI Institute told Vox. Still, we’ve never heard a peep.

It does make you wonder, though, what happens if we ever do hear or see something out there. Has any serious consideration gone into what happens when our efforts to detect cosmic intelligence pay off and we find a blip of a signal in the sea of radio noise that pours into the SETI antennas? Most scientists say that if it happens, the news will be met positively. It means that intelligent life has forged a civilization and that biology is not a fluke. But cynics need only to look to movies like Avatar (or our world’s history of colonization) to know that a new world somewhere certainly would raise questions about what comes next.

Jury Begins Sifting Evidence As It Weighs Trump’s Fate

They must be unanimous to convict the former president, but can disagree on underlying crimes

The jury in the first criminal trial for a former American president ended its first day of deliberations without a verdict Wednesday, but asked to rehear testimony from key witnesses about the alleged hush money scheme at the heart of the history-making case.

The 12-person jury was sent home around 4 p.m. after about four-and-a-half hours of deliberations. The process will pick back up today, when jurors are expected to rehear the requested testimony and at least part of the judge’s legal instructions meant to guide them on the law. What makes this case tricky is that the jurors will have to determine whether Trump falsified business records in furtherance of another crime. According to the Washington Post, prosecutors have offered three types of crimes that would make the state election-meddling charge come into play: federal election law crimes, tax crimes or false business records.

On social media, Trump falsely claimed Wednesday that Judge Juan Merchan “is not requiring a unanimous decision on the fake charges against me.” Of course, the jury must be unanimous when it comes to determining whether Trump is guilty or not guilty. However, the judge pointed out that the panel did not have to be unanimous about which of those three types of crimes could serve as the underlying violation.

The Rising Threat of Superbugs

How the pandemic gave power to antibiotic-resistant infections

Antibiotics are wonder drugs. But they will only work in certain situations. They, of course, didn’t help if you got COVID. But during the pandemic, COVID patients were given antibiotics—a lot of antibiotics. And that’s not great. According to NPR, the overuse of antibiotics can breed superbugs that are resistant to medications. The impact of this pandemic overuse has lingered even as the pandemic has faded.

About 75% of patients hospitalized with COVID were given antibiotics, despite only 8% having a bacterial coinfection where antibiotics would be medically useful. This comes from new data published in late April that was collected through the World Health Organization’s Global Clinical Platform in 65 countries between January 2020 and March 2023. The WHO says the antibiotics were often used “just in case” they could help.

Dr. Sameer Kadri, an antibiotic resistance epidemiologist at the NIH, says that when antibiotic medications don’t work against infections, patients suffer. “The antibiotic resistance problem in the U.S. [and] in the world is one of our greatest health-care challenges today,” he says. Experts agree that the development of new antibiotics will be crucial to tackling the problem. Yet, shockingly, not a single new class of antibiotic has been invented since the 1980s. And this is a choice made by Big Pharma, Aljazeera points out, which focuses more on profit-driven medicine monopolies.

Ticketmaster Hacked

Personal info and even financial details of 500 million people have allegedly been exposed

A notorious hacker group claims it has breached the data of about 560 million Ticketmaster users globally in a recent cyberattack, reports Billboard. The group called ShinyHunters alleges it accessed a trove of data from the ticketing giant, including names, emails, phone numbers, addresses and credit card details. News outlets are reporting that the hackers are now trying to sell the information online for $500,000.

Mashable called it bad karma “for years of being the bane of concertgoers' existence.” Just last week, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against the ticketing conglomerate. The DOJ is seeking to break up the alleged monopoly its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, holds over the live music and entertainment industry—potentially a good thing for consumers. That is, if their credit card info doesn’t make its way onto the dark web.

Cybersecurity experts have shared advice on what Ticketmaster customers can do following a massive data breach and how to avoid getting hacked online. Of course, it starts by changing your passwords regularly and never using the same one more than once. They also remind us to install any pending security updates or patches on our devices. And then always check your credit or debit card charges: watch out for unusual activity on your bank cards and report anything suspicious to your bank.

A Luxurious Father’s Day Gift List

What the MR PORTER team is giving (and hoping to receive themselves)

You know the drill: You want to get your dad something nice, but he’s notoriously hard to shop for. No surprise there. A lot of fathers are, which can making shopping for Father's Day particularly challenging, right? We went to the gifting experts at MR PORTER for their advice. The team offered up some fool-proof and luxurious suggestions that would make for perfect presents for all kinds of fathers. And to make it even easier for you, they're offering free standard delivery on orders over $150.

Need a second? Just breathe.