Chilling theory emerges about suspicious activity in space... as Harvard expert warns we will tear ourselves apart: 'Time to worry'
Professor Avi Loeb, known for his controversial theories on extraterrestrial intelligence, has published three pre-print studies since the detection of the object, dubbed 3I/ATLAS, on July 1, 2025.
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Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Andrew Garfield leaves fans confused by his 'freaky' face on new film set as he fuels plastic surgery rumors
Andrew Garfield has fans doing a double take after his latest appearance on the set of Artificial in San Francisco. The 41-year-old Spider-Man star looked noticeably different while filming the AI drama alongside Ike Barinholtz and Monica Barbaro. Garfield takes on the role of tech visionary Sam Altman, with Barinholtz as Elon Musk and Barbaro playing former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. But it wasn't the star-studded cast or romance rumors with Barbaro that stirred chatter—it was Garfield's altered look that had fans buzzing. Many are now speculating if the actor underwent cosmetic procedures to achieve his new appearance. 'They did something real freaky to his face,' one critic wrote, as another added, 'Did he get bad botox?' But it wasn't the star-studded cast or romance rumors with costar Monica Barbaro that stirred chatter—it was Garfield's altered look that had fans buzzing Yet another chimed in, 'Did someone edit his face?' while another posted, 'I came to the comments to check if I was just crazy. What happened!?' 'Why does he look yassified,' one wrote. 'His whole eye area looks diff,' said another, while one fan admitted, 'I've never been so unattracted to Andrew Garfield before.' One summed it up: 'People are saying it's because he shaved but no. He looks very pale like he has makeup on? and then a facelift maybe? But that's insane if he did that.' The critic then made a robot reference, saying, 'It's giving uncanny valley and I feel bad judging but there is SOMETHING not right. We've all taken bad photos so I'm praying that's all it is' One simply said, 'He looks artificial.' Of course, some fans thought the actor looked incredible, with one writing, 'Andrew Garfield still looks 24 when he's actually 42 is an enigma to me.' The viral uproar comes after Garfield and Babar confirmed their romance as they joined the likes of Lily Collins and Poppy Delevingne at day seven of Wimbledon in July. The lovebirds, who reportedly seen smooching at Glastonbury the week before, put on a very cosy display while watching the centre court action, with the actor leaning in for a cheeky kiss. After sparking romance rumours in February, actor Andrew reportedly went public with his romance with the Top Gun: Maverick star Monica at Glastonbury. Speaking to The Sun , an onlooker at the festival said that Andrew and Monica are the 'real deal' and were seen holding hands, kissing and hugging. The pair are said to have stayed in the luxury teepee tents for the festival and spent their time moving between the VIP area and the main farm. 'On Friday she was posing for some pictures in the VIP area and he stood quite a distance away but looked really proud,' the source said. 'By Saturday they were holding hands and kissing and cuddling. They both seemed really happy and were singing along to Gracie Abrams during her set.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
A professor had a $2.4m grant to study Black maternal health. Then Trump was elected
Jaime Slaughter-Acey was in a state of shock and anger when she learned that her National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study on birth outcomes in Black families was cancelled this spring. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill associate professor in epidemiology said that she felt like 'the rug was pulled out from under us' when the university called her to share the news. The termination notice said that the study no longer met the agency's priorities and didn't promise to increase life expectancy. 'It was heartbreaking,' Slaughter-Acey told the Guardian, 'and honestly, infuriating given the high rates of maternal and infant mortality in this country.' The cancellation came as the Trump administration terminated 1,902 NIH grants totalling more than $4.4bn between his January inauguration and the end of July, according to Grant Witness data. NIH followed guidance from the so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) and Trump's executive orders to cut costs. Additionally, in April, the Trump administration let go of a majority of the staff at the federal Division of Reproductive Health, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) office that collects data on maternal experiences. It also surveils pregnancy-related deaths in an effort to reduce infant mortality and improve health outcomes for mothers and their children. Slaughter-Acey's several-year study funded by a more than $2.4m NIH grant aimed to look at how social and biological factors affect outcomes for more than 500 Black women in Detroit. The grant termination froze the team's more than $581,000 remaining funding. Through blood samples and surveys of Black mothers and grandmothers, Slaughter-Acey and her team aimed to understand if social environments accelerated how bodies physiologically age, otherwise known as biological ageing, which may lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes for Black women. She said that the research is 'designed to tell us how social environment and the pathways that social environment affects us physiologically, to then increase this risk that Black moms and Black babies have with respect to pregnancy'. While most studies that look at racism only focus on one point in time, Slaughter-Acey said that hers was 'the first study to comprehensively examine how exposure to structural, cultural and intergenerational racism throughout a Black woman's life impacts her epigenome and her child's birth outcomes.' It was also innovative because Black women are underrepresented in epigenomic studies, a field where researchers look at how environment and behavior impacts a person's genes, said Slaughter-Acey, due to medical mistrust and experiences of racism in the healthcare system. The NIH-grant cancellation in late March followed the release of data from the CDC revealing that Black women were the only race or ethnic group who didn't experience a decline in deaths from pregnancy related causes in 2023. Out of every 100,000 live births, 50.3 Black mothers died, compared with 14.5 deaths for white people, 12.4 for Latinos and 10.7 for Asians. The NIH didn't respond to a request for comment. Slaughter-Acey fears that the grant-cancellation signals that research and efforts to close the maternal death gap are at risk of coming to a standstill under the Trump administration. Other NIH grants that have been terminated include one that looked at prenatal exposure to public drinking water contaminants and a study that analyzed why women of color die of cervical cancer at a disproportionate rate. On Thursday, the Trump administration froze UCLA research grants from federal agencies including NIH and the National Science Foundation totaling nearly $200m, accusing the university of antisemitism and discrimination in admissions. 'It's part of a larger pattern of political interference in science that puts the health of all people at risk, especially vulnerable populations,' Slaughter-Acey said. The study 'is about understanding the root causes of poor maternal and infant health in this country – something that affects all of us, regardless of race or background. When science is silenced, communities suffer'. Still, Slaughter-Acey and her team are hopeful that the study will continue for years to come as they search for alternative funding sources, including donations. On Slaughter-Acey's LinkedIn page, she called upon her followers to donate to the University of North Carolina Department of Epidemiology, and to include a note that they support Slaughter-Acey's work, or the name of the study, 'LIFE-2'. 'The voices of these 500 plus moms and babies should not die or be silenced with the termination of this grant,' she told the Guardian. The pull in funding 'is an example of erasure of black mothers and infants'. There has been some temporary relief. This June, Slaughter-Acey's team received short-term funding from Michigan State University to continue their study over the next few months. Now nearly 600 moms are enrolled in the study, but without additional funding, it will probably pause again at the end of the year. The nearly 600 women who have joined the study were recruited from local delivery hospitals in Detroit, Michigan, in the day or two following childbirth. Slaughter-Acey chose Detroit since she completed her post-doc at the University of Michigan, where she researched the influence of social environments on Black maternal health. Participants for her study, which began in 2021, completed a post-delivery survey where they answered questions about social determinants of health including housing and food insecurity throughout their life. Along with collecting their blood through a finger prick, researchers also collect the babies' and mothers' birth certificates from the state health department as well as the mothers' blood that was collected at birth and stored in a biobank. About 20% of the babies' grandmothers are also participating in the study by answering questions about the social environment during their pregnancies and their daughters' early childhoods. The multilevel data collection allows the researchers to create 'this robust and triangulated dataset that includes social determinants of health, like information about food and housing insecurity', Slaughter-Acey said. 'It's capturing a more holistic view than what's been captured previously for moms in terms of maternal and infant health.' After the moms are discharged from the hospital, the researchers also follow up with a majority of the women eight to 10 weeks after they give birth to ask about their adjustment to motherhood, whether they've received support for breastfeeding, a postpartum healthcare visit, or if they've experienced discrimination from their healthcare providers. At the time of the funding termination, the research team was in the process of creating a 12-month postpartum checkup with the mothers to help define maternal thriving. 'When we are talking about maternal morbidity and mortality, we're defining maternal health by the absence of disease, by mom not dying, by mom not having a severe morbidity,' Slaughter-Acey said. 'But the field in general does not have a good understanding or even definition of, 'what does maternal thriving look like?' And we need to get past this conversation of maternal survival, and move to thriving.' More than two years of funding remained in the NIH grant, during which her team had planned to recruit more mothers and to conduct data analysis. They also aimed to create a website for participants to read about the study's findings. But the data that the team has analyzed thus far has revealed that mothers with a lot of adverse childhood experiences were more likely to have conflict with the father of the child. The finding, Slaughter-Acey said, 'underscores the importance of understanding how the social environment influences relationship dynamics and maybe perinatal outcomes. We know that social support is key during pregnancy'. The team also found that one in five study participants experienced housing insecurity during their pregnancy, a factor that she said greatly affects perinatal health and is rarely documented in hospital records. They also created a tool to measure racial microagressions from healthcare providers and in the mothers' everyday life, since many in the cohort said that they experienced harmful interactions that Slaughter-Acey said may explain why they felt unsupported. For Slaughter-Acey, the study findings 'highlight how structural inequities – across housing, healthcare, and personal history – intersect to shape maternal and infant outcomes. And they underscore why we need research that listens to and reflects the full complexity of Black women's experiences.' NIH research funding will probably continue to take a hit under the Trump administration. A new Trump administration policy requiring that multiyear grants be paid upfront lowers the odds that a research proposal will be accepted. As a result, university labs may close.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Stephen Hawking's chilling alien doomsday prediction spreads as scientist issues alarming warning
Stephen Hawking's chilling warning to humanity may be coming true after a renowned scientist claimed a 'hostile' encounter with alien life could be months away. Hawking, the famous theoretical physicist who died in 2018, warned the world that making contact with alien life could end in disaster for the human race. The late professor believed that actively seeking out extraterrestrials would bring on a deadly invasion, similar to how cultures on Earth have wiped out less advanced civilizations in the past. 'The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us, 'Professor Hawking said in 2004. 'The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low.' He advocated for more passive searches for intelligent life, such as listening for alien radio signals, rather than actively broadcasting our presence to the universe. Hawking's grim message was recently revisited by an international team of researchers studying the so-called 'intelligence trap.' This concept has suggested that overconfidence could lead to disastrous consequences. In this case, successfully contacting a UFO could draw the attention of a malevolent species that destroys humanity. Hawking's words have gained even more traction after a respected Harvard astrophysicist suggested that the mysterious object barreling toward Earth this December could be a hostile UFO. Professor Avi Loeb and other scientists have conducted multiple studies involving interstellar object 3I/ATLAS since it was discovered approaching our solar system in late June. Although some astronomers have declared 3I/ATLAS to be a giant comet, Loeb contended there are signs it was artificially created, including its extremely unusual course that will make close passes by Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. This led Loeb to warn that such a craft and the beings who control it would have one of two motives for visiting our solar system, one being harmless and the other being hostile. 'The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity, and would possibly require defensive measures to be undertaken (though these might prove futile),' Loeb wrote in a study on the pre-print server arXiv on July 17. 3I/ATLAS is expected to pass within 223 million miles of Earth on December 17, speeding through the solar system at more than 41 miles per second (roughly 150,000 miles per hour). 'The late Stephen Hawking believed that direct contact with advanced alien civilizations would inevitably lead to the colonization of Earth by aliens,' US and Iranian researchers wrote in the Journal of Biomedical Physics and Engineering in 2024. The study examining Hawking's warning explained how the 'intelligence trap' suggests that highly intelligent individuals may be prone to cognitive biases, such as overconfidence or relying on past experiences, leading to flawed decision-making. While some scientists believe there are immeasurable benefits of contacting aliens, the study authors supported Hawking's cautious stance, claiming that broadcasting Earth's location to other worlds could be a 'tactical mistake.' Prior to his death from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) at the age of 76, Hawking added that humans should also be hesitant about answering any signals sent to Earth. In 2016, Hawking said Gliese 832c, a planet 16 light years away, could be home to intelligent life. However, if we were to meet an advanced civilization, he warned it could turn out similar to when the Native Americans first encountered Christopher Columbus. 'Gazing at the stars, I always imagined there was someone up there looking back', Hawking said during the film titled 'Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places.' 'As I grow older, I am more convinced than ever that we are not alone,' the theoretical physicist continued.
