A new technique is a dramatic breakthrough in the search for alien life, astronomers say. Researchers at the Breakthrough Listen project based at the University of California, Berkeley say they have developed a new way to be sure that any potential signal is really coming from space – and not from something more boring. Astronomers spend vast amounts of time looking for radio signals that might have come from alien civilisations as part of work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. But they have in the past been fooled by very human technology, such as cellphones, microwaves and car engines, that can produce a blast of radio signals that look as if they have come from distant worlds. One way to check whether signals are really alien is to point the telescope elsewhere and then repeatedly return to the same spot, with the hope of seeing the signal again and ensuring that it is not a false alarm. But that is not foolproof – and only works if the signal sticks around. Some of the most promising radio signals might only be detectable once. The so-called “Wow!” signal, for instance – a radio signal detected in 1977 that was so shocking the astronomer who found it wrote the exclamation on a printout – has not been detected since, and astronomers still do not know whether it was an alien message or just a mistake. Now scientists have devised a new test that can be used to see whether a signal has really passed through interstellar space, which should help show that it is not from elsewhere on Earth. It works by looking for “scintillation” – the changes in amplitude of a signal as it is affected by the cold plasma of space. “The first ET detection may very well be a one-off, where we only see one signal. And if a signal doesn’t repeat, there’s not a lot that we can say about that. And obviously, the most likely explanation for it is radio frequency interference, as is the most likely explanation for the Wow! signal,” said Andrew Siemion, principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen and director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, which operates the world’s longest running SETI program. “Having this new technique and the instrumentation capable of recording data at sufficient fidelity such that you could see the effect of the interstellar medium, or ISM, is incredibly powerful.” Dr Siemion called the breakthrough “one of the biggest advances in radio SETI in a long time” and said that it would be the first time researchers would be able to differentiate a real signal from a false alarm, even if it was only detected once. The technique can only be used for signals that have travelled 10,000 light years or more to Earth, researchers note. If it was closer to us, the scintillation effect cannot be seen because they are not travelling through enough of the interstellar medium, or ISM. The research is described in a new paper, ‘On Detecting Interstellar Scintillation in Narrowband Radio SETI’, published in The Astrophysical Journal. Read More Battery breakthroughs are about to trigger a transport revolution Huge asteroid nearly crashes into Earth – and is only spotted days later ChatGPT rival with ‘no ethical boundaries’ sold on dark web

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An influencer has been publicly shamed for boasting about her dubious celebrity status during a furious rant. Morgan Osman, 35, from Miami Florida, was filmed in the midst of a heated exchange with fellow passengers on board an American Airlines flight when she touted her “star” credentials. The video shows Osman pulling a suitcase from an overhead locker as she tells a man off-camera “Call me a b***h again.” “I did nothing wrong,” she then argues before telling the man and “[his] b***h” to “shut the f**k up”. Walking down the aisle, she spots the flyer who’s recording her and fumes sarcastically: “Film me, I’m Instagram famous, you f**king bum.” Her behaviour was met with mocking laughs from onlookers and ridicule on social media after the video was uploaded to Reddit and Twitter/X. Viewers were quick to point out that they’d never heard of the fashionista who has some 967,000 Insta followers. However, at the time of writing, her account on the platform was “no longer available”. “Lmfao at Instagram famous,” one Twitter/X user wrote. “I’m going to start telling people I’m Monopoly rich.” “What’s great about this new plane lady discourse is that she says ‘STFU, I’m Instagram famous” while in Economy,” another pointed out. “Instagram isn’t Real Life. Oops.” The 35-year-old is perhaps best known for appearing on season 5 of the US reality TV show The Bad Girls Club. But, according to one fan site, she was swiftly booted off early on in the series for breaking into the producer’s room. She also caused a stir for claiming to have secretly dated Britney Spears’s now-ex-husband Sam Asghari shortly after they began their relationship in 2017. Osman shared and quickly deleted a photo showing her locking lips with a man who resembled Asghari and said he was “using Britney”, the New York Post reports. It’s not clear what prompted her viral plane altercation but it’s not the first time an American Airlines passenger has made headlines for jaw-dropping behaviour. A woman who was later identified as Tiffany Gomas shot to internet notoriety for a bizarre outburst in which she uttered the now immortal words “that motherf**ker is not real.” The 38-year-old marketing executive subsequently addressed her actions in a video statement, admitting that they were “completely unacceptable”. However, she has also urged viewers to appreciate that “we all have our bad moments” and has since rebranded herself as a motivational mental health guru. We’re all now waiting to see how Osman will respond now that she really is Instagram – and internet famous. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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The Earth will be torn apart by a nuclear disaster before the year is out, according to a legendary mystic credited with predicting many of the biggest events in history. Baba Vanga, a blind Bulgarian woman is said to have foreseen 9/11, the Covid pandemic and the death of Princess Diana, among other era-defining moments. And despite the fact she’s been dead for some 27 years, her loyal disciples still follow her prophesies with great devotion. They claim that many of her predictions came true long after her death, and there are still more to come. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Indeed, the rest of 2023 is set to be busy on the catastrophe front, according to Vanga’s followers as reported by The New York Post. Not only will a major nuclear power plant explosion take place at some point over the coming months – causing toxic clouds to settle over Asia – by the Earth will be hit by a devastating solar storm and suffer a potentially apocalyptic shift in its orbit around the sun. Other forecasts for the year allegedly include a bioweapons attack launched by an unnamed superpower, the emergence of a new religion based on artificial intelligence, and the end of natural pregnancies. According to her fans, she foretold that all babies would be grown in laboratories and parents would be able to select their physical traits. To be fair, that sounds eerily plausible when you consider one biotechnologist has already begun planning a “human factory” – though, admittedly, not before the end of the year. The issue with all of this is that Vanga’s predictions are cryptic and impossible to verify, as Sky History notes. And yet, there is a reason why a poor, blind woman from rural Bulgaria has been branded the “Nostradamus of the Balkans” and become a global icon. Legend has it that she was blinded in a dust storm at the age of 12 after which she announced that she had been endowed with the gifts of prophesy and healing. Her reputation soon spread beyond the local area and soon everyone from tsars to peasants would make the pilgrimage to her home in the Kozhuh mountains to seek her counsel. She was unable to write, however, so everything she said was documented by those around her, meaning there are no first-hand accounts of her visions on paper. Still, she is understood to have proclaimed in 1989 that “American brethren will fall after being attacked by steel birds […] innocent blood will be gushing” – which many people have taken to be an omen for the September 11 attacks. She also said that America’s 44th President would be Black, which was fulfilled by Barack Obama in 2009. And whilst her claim that Europe would “cease to exist” by 2017 hasn’t come to pass geographically, some have read this as a reference to the 2016 Brexit vote. She also predicted that the US’s 45th president would be faced with a crisis which would “bring the country down.” Given that the 45th president was Donald Trump, we’ll let you be the judge of whether or not there’s any truth to that one. Countless Bulgarian and Soviet scientists studied and tested Vanga throughout her life, ultimately concluding that she had an 85 per cent success rate with her predictions, Sky History reports. She even allegedly foresaw her own death on 11 August 1996 at the age of 85. All we can do now is hope that her doomsday visions for the rest of this year fall into that 15 per cent margin of error... Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Popular Twitch streamer Kai Cenat has expressed his disappointment at fans who rioted during his New York giveaway. On 5 August, Kai held a huge giveaway at Union Square that saw gaming consoles given away. More than 6,000 people were said to have attended the event which soon turned sour. Footage showed teens damaging cars, throwing objects, fighting and blasting fire extinguishers. Kai was escorted away by security as crowds became increasingly chaotic. He was later charged with inciting a riot, with a court date of 19 August. The NYPD arrested 65 people, including 30 minors, on counts from disorderly conduct to assaulting a police officer. "Being from New York, it has been my dream to want to give back to the community that made me who I am," Kai told his subscribers. "But after Friday, I’ve come to realise the amount of power and influence that I have on people." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter "I am beyond disappointed in anybody who became disruptive that day. None of that is cool," he continued. "None of that was my intention. I had good intentions for this whole thing. I don’t condone any of the things that went on that day." Kai then turned his attention to the media, saying that while he is able to handle anything towards him, that press should "leave [his] family out of it." "[There’s] no reason why you’re showing up to my mum’s house. I can handle it, whatever you want to say about me. I just don’t want you to be going to my mum’s house, she doesn’t even live in New York," he said. "I’m gonna have to chill for a bit," he continued. "You’re not gonna be seeing me for a bit, but it ain’t gonna be nothing long. I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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