Latest news with #DanMills
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Jefferson Parish StormPrep 2025 event prepares residents for hurricane season
JEFFERSON PARISH, La. (WGNO) — The 2025 hurricane season officially begins on Sunday, June 1, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says you need to be prepared. Jefferson Parish is no stranger to hurricane season, with many residents experiencing the devastation that can follow a storm. 'We know we live in a vulnerable zone for hurricanes, and this really is a time of the year where everybody needs to start having discussions on your own family prep,' said Parish President Cythnia Lee Sheng. Jefferson Parish officials discuss 2025 hurricane preparations Forty local vendors came together to offer Jefferson Parish residents the opportunity to learn about the options available when a hurricane threatened the area. Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans CEO Dan Mills understands the pain and anguish people can go through when a storm comes through. He says small actions like trimming the branches away from your home or clearing storm drains can make a big difference. 'Clear the storm drains. Always check those window openings and try to protect them. One thing we see a lot is the wind exposure on a garage door is vast, and if that garage door caves in, it can pressurize the home and cause a lot of damage,' said Mills. Sheng points out that every Category 5 storm formed in the United States was a tropical storm, or weaker, three days before. Remembering Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of Hurricane Hunter She emphasizes the importance of having an evacuation plan ready. 'We live in a very highly, you know, dense area. When we call for an emergency evacuation, everybody needs to leave. So it's critical that the planning happens beforehand so we can execute an evacuation order as smoothly as possible,' said Sheng. Water, food, prescriptions, flashlights and batteries are just a few necessities residents should have on hand. The owner of Craig's Electrical and Generator Service, Craig Jacomine, tells WGNO the worst mistake is waiting until hurricane season to check your generator 'Start it up once a month. That's the best way to do it. But we've had people that the day before hurricanes wanted to bring portable generators in for repairs. And unfortunately, we're in hurricane mode and we have a different set of standards that we have to follow to make sure our customers are properly taken care of,' said Jacomine. Officials say home insurance is another critical necessity as hurricane season beginsNASCAR legend Michael Waltrip teams up with Austin Peay for special beer Australian actor raising money to cryogenically preserve teen son Florida mother of dead 6-year-old was trying to 'exorcise demons': sheriff In Touch, Life & Style magazines, others, to end: THR Louisiana State Police welcomes 46 new Troopers to the force Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Boost for alien hunters? Earth life may not be so improbable, study suggests
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The concept of the "great filter" to explain why so far we seem to be alone in the universe is based on erroneous assumptions, according to a new model that describes how life on Earth evolved in step with changing geobiological conditions rather than through a series of improbable events. "We're arguing that intelligent life may not require a series of lucky breaks to exist," said lead author Dan Mills of the University of Munich in a statement. "Humans didn't evolve 'early' or 'late' in Earth's history, but 'on time' when the conditions were in place." It was the Australian physicist Brandon Carter who first popularized the notion that life on Earth was the result of a sequence of unlikely events, which he described as "hard steps" in a 1983 paper. A black hole theorist, from time to time Carter also dipped his hand into more existential matters, specializing in drawing assumptions from probabilistic and anthropic (i.e. the argument that conclusions about the nature of the cosmos have to be constrained by the fact that we exist) reasoning to say something about our existence in the universe. Related: The search for alien life This is no better seen than in his Doomsday argument, in which Carter posits that we, as individuals, are more likely to exist at a time when the greatest number of humans are alive. For example, imagine every human who ever lived is given a number based on the order in which they were born, and then these numbers are pulled from a pot like the numbers in a lottery — you're more likely to pull a higher number than a very low number if the total number of humans who have lived and will ever live is large. Since population growth can be modeled as exponential, the fact that we exist now with a relatively low birth number compared to all the hundreds of billions to trillions of people who will follow us suggests that something catastrophic could be about to happen to the human race that will curtail future population numbers. At least, that's the argument; philosophers and statisticians have been arguing about it ever since Carter proposed it. Carter's "hard steps" model of our evolution on Earth is similarly probabilistic in nature. The sun is nearing the halfway point of its approximately 10-billion-year lifespan, and yet it's taken us — Homo sapiens — nearly all of that time to arrive on the scene. Carter could not see any reason why it would take so long for human-like life to evolve on Earth if complex life is common in the universe. This suggested to Carter that the development of human-like life must be difficult, passing through a series of evolutionary bottlenecks for which the chances of life succeeding are so remote that we would not typically expect those evolutionary transitions to occur in the lifetime of Earth. Life on our planet would therefore be a complete fluke, unlikely to be repeated elsewhere in the universe. The hard steps idea has subsequently morphed into the concept of the "great filter," the idea that something in the history of all life inevitably brings that life to an end. Suggested great filters have included the origin of life in the first place, the evolution of technological life and the ability of said life to wipe itself out. The existence of the great filter would certainly help explain the apparent "great silence" in the universe that SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) researchers have encountered, with no confirmed evidence of alien life in all the decades that we have been searching. However, like the Doomsday argument, the "hard steps" model has its critics, and now adding to them are the authors of a new paper that highlights what they say is a fallacy in Carter's reasoning. Carter specifically assumed that the age of the sun, and therefore the Earth, should have no bearing on how quickly complex life evolved. However, the new paper by Mills (a geomicrobiologist), along with Penn State University co-authors Jennifer Macalady (a professor of geosciences), Adam Frank and Jason Wright (both astrophysicists), points out that the age of the sun and therefore the Earth very much have something to do with it. The team selected five of the more universally agreed-upon "hard steps:" the origin of life, the evolution of eukaryotes (organisms with cells made from a nucleus containing genetic information surrounded by a membrane), the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere, the development of complex multicellular life and the arrival of Homo sapiens. They then looked at how geological and atmospheric changes to Earth might have affected when these supposedly hard steps occurred. If Earth were initially hostile to these supposed hard steps, it would naturally explain why they took so long to pass — because they had to wait for Earth to reach the point where they could be possible. Take, for example, the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere. For over two billion years after its formation, Earth's atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide. It was only about 2.1 to 2.4 billion years ago that Earth's atmosphere began to fill with oxygen. This was thanks to the onset of photosynthesis, brought about by the evolution of microbes called cyanobacteria. In turn, the development of cyanobacteria relied on certain climactic and environmental conditions. In some models, the oceans of this era were hot, and the water would have had to cool below 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit) for cyanobacteria to evolve. In other models, conditions were milder and the development of cyanobacteria then depended upon the availability of freshwater and how much of Earth's landmass was above sea level. Either way, cyanobacteria's evolution and the onset of photosynthesis and the oxygenation of the atmosphere was delayed until these conditions were met; it couldn't have happened any sooner. And even once cyanobacteria were ingesting carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen via photosynthesis, it took time for oxygen levels to build up. Multicellular life requires a certain abundance of oxygen, with more complex life in general requiring more oxygen. The oxygen abundance in the atmosphere suitable for the evolution of Homo sapiens didn't occur until 400 million years ago — meaning that for 91% of Earth's history, there wasn't enough oxygen in the atmosphere to support human life. In other words, Mills' team propose that these were not "hard steps" as Carter saw them, but that life simply had to wait until Earth could facilitate them — that Earth and life had to co-evolve together. Related: Fermi Paradox: Where are the aliens? Related stories: — SETI & the search for extraterrestrial life — Does alien life need a planet to survive? Scientists propose intriguing possibility — Alien life may not be carbon-based, study suggests Other variables that may have had an effect on how soon the different stages of life's evolution could occur include atmospheric ozone levels, nutrient availability, decreasing sea surface temperatures, decreasing ocean salinity, snowball Earth periods in which the planet completely iced over, and the development of plate tectonics. "This is a significant shift in how we think about the history of life," said Macalady. "It suggests that the evolution of complex life may be less about luck and more about the interplay between life and its environment, opening up exciting new avenues of research in our quest to understand our origins and our place in the universe." We know from geological evidence that life existed on Earth as early as 3.7 billion years ago, and possibly even earlier. The initial development of life on Earth is known as the "habitability boundary." As different windows of habitability subsequently opened up, life would have been able to evolve in bursts. And if this is the way it happens on Earth, it could be the way it happens on other worlds, too — and perhaps faster or more slowly, depending upon how the geology of those worlds develops. There is a caveat, in that evolutionary biologists still do not understand how life originated on Earth. This moment of genesis is currently lost in the mists of time, and we cannot yet say whether it was a fluke one-off event or whether it was an easy step. One possibility is that life developed on multiple occasions on Earth, but all the other lineages went extinct, leaving only ourselves — the descendants of LUCA, the last universal common ancestor, from which all known life on Earth evolved — as the only ones left standing. This would give the illusion that life originated only once when it could have had several independent origins. Other mysteries include how biological cells first evolved, and what caused the dramatic onset of complex life during the Cambrian explosion 540 million years ago. It is still entirely possible that these were unique and rare events, but the new paper is not arguing that life is common in the universe, only that the concept of hard steps in evolution is not necessarily true and that the development of planetary environments has a big role to play, counter to Carter's original model. Another caveat is that, so far, astronomers have not yet found another world like Earth, so geologists cannot yet say whether the way in which Earth's geology and atmosphere developed is typical or not. It could yet be that creating a habitable world is where the hard steps really lie. Until we discover true extraterrestrial life, whether that be microbes on Mars or bonafide little green men, we will continue to grapple with the possibility that Earth and its life are unique. For now, it's a lonely universe out there. The Mills et al paper was published on Feb. 14 in the journal Science Advances.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Boost for alien hunters? Earth life may not be so improbable, study suggests
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The concept of the "great filter" to explain why so far we seem to be alone in the universe is based on erroneous assumptions, according to a new model that describes how life on Earth evolved in step with changing geobiological conditions rather than through a series of improbable events. "We're arguing that intelligent life may not require a series of lucky breaks to exist," said lead author Dan Mills of the University of Munich in a statement. "Humans didn't evolve 'early' or 'late' in Earth's history, but 'on time' when the conditions were in place." It was the Australian physicist Brandon Carter who first popularized the notion that life on Earth was the result of a sequence of unlikely events, which he described as "hard steps" in a 1983 paper. A black hole theorist, from time to time Carter also dipped his hand into more existential matters, specializing in drawing assumptions from probabilistic and anthropic (i.e. the argument that conclusions about the nature of the cosmos have to be constrained by the fact that we exist) reasoning to say something about our existence in the universe. Related: The search for alien life This is no better seen than in his Doomsday argument, in which Carter posits that we, as individuals, are more likely to exist at a time when the greatest number of humans are alive. For example, imagine every human who ever lived is given a number based on the order in which they were born, and then these numbers are pulled from a pot like the numbers in a lottery — you're more likely to pull a higher number than a very low number if the total number of humans who have lived and will ever live is large. Since population growth can be modeled as exponential, the fact that we exist now with a relatively low birth number compared to all the hundreds of billions to trillions of people who will follow us suggests that something catastrophic could be about to happen to the human race that will curtail future population numbers. At least, that's the argument; philosophers and statisticians have been arguing about it ever since Carter proposed it. Carter's "hard steps" model of our evolution on Earth is similarly probabilistic in nature. The sun is nearing the halfway point of its approximately 10-billion-year lifespan, and yet it's taken us — Homo sapiens — nearly all of that time to arrive on the scene. Carter could not see any reason why it would take so long for human-like life to evolve on Earth if complex life is common in the universe. This suggested to Carter that the development of human-like life must be difficult, passing through a series of evolutionary bottlenecks for which the chances of life succeeding are so remote that we would not typically expect those evolutionary transitions to occur in the lifetime of Earth. Life on our planet would therefore be a complete fluke, unlikely to be repeated elsewhere in the universe. The hard steps idea has subsequently morphed into the concept of the "great filter," the idea that something in the history of all life inevitably brings that life to an end. Suggested great filters have included the origin of life in the first place, the evolution of technological life and the ability of said life to wipe itself out. The existence of the great filter would certainly help explain the apparent "great silence" in the universe that SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) researchers have encountered, with no confirmed evidence of alien life in all the decades that we have been searching. However, like the Doomsday argument, the "hard steps" model has its critics, and now adding to them are the authors of a new paper that highlights what they say is a fallacy in Carter's reasoning. Carter specifically assumed that the age of the sun, and therefore the Earth, should have no bearing on how quickly complex life evolved. However, the new paper by Mills (a geomicrobiologist), along with Penn State University co-authors Jennifer Macalady (a professor of geosciences), Adam Frank and Jason Wright (both astrophysicists), points out that the age of the sun and therefore the Earth very much have something to do with it. The team selected five of the more universally agreed-upon "hard steps:" the origin of life, the evolution of eukaryotes (organisms with cells made from a nucleus containing genetic information surrounded by a membrane), the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere, the development of complex multicellular life and the arrival of Homo sapiens. They then looked at how geological and atmospheric changes to Earth might have affected when these supposedly hard steps occurred. If Earth were initially hostile to these supposed hard steps, it would naturally explain why they took so long to pass — because they had to wait for Earth to reach the point where they could be possible. Take, for example, the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere. For over two billion years after its formation, Earth's atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide. It was only about 2.1 to 2.4 billion years ago that Earth's atmosphere began to fill with oxygen. This was thanks to the onset of photosynthesis, brought about by the evolution of microbes called cyanobacteria. In turn, the development of cyanobacteria relied on certain climactic and environmental conditions. In some models, the oceans of this era were hot, and the water would have had to cool below 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit) for cyanobacteria to evolve. In other models, conditions were milder and the development of cyanobacteria then depended upon the availability of freshwater and how much of Earth's landmass was above sea level. Either way, cyanobacteria's evolution and the onset of photosynthesis and the oxygenation of the atmosphere was delayed until these conditions were met; it couldn't have happened any sooner. And even once cyanobacteria were ingesting carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen via photosynthesis, it took time for oxygen levels to build up. Multicellular life requires a certain abundance of oxygen, with more complex life in general requiring more oxygen. The oxygen abundance in the atmosphere suitable for the evolution of Homo sapiens didn't occur until 400 million years ago — meaning that for 91% of Earth's history, there wasn't enough oxygen in the atmosphere to support human life. In other words, Mills' team propose that these were not "hard steps" as Carter saw them, but that life simply had to wait until Earth could facilitate them — that Earth and life had to co-evolve together. Related: Fermi Paradox: Where are the aliens? Related stories: — SETI & the search for extraterrestrial life — Does alien life need a planet to survive? Scientists propose intriguing possibility — Alien life may not be carbon-based, study suggests Other variables that may have had an effect on how soon the different stages of life's evolution could occur include atmospheric ozone levels, nutrient availability, decreasing sea surface temperatures, decreasing ocean salinity, snowball Earth periods in which the planet completely iced over, and the development of plate tectonics. "This is a significant shift in how we think about the history of life," said Macalady. "It suggests that the evolution of complex life may be less about luck and more about the interplay between life and its environment, opening up exciting new avenues of research in our quest to understand our origins and our place in the universe." We know from geological evidence that life existed on Earth as early as 3.7 billion years ago, and possibly even earlier. The initial development of life on Earth is known as the "habitability boundary." As different windows of habitability subsequently opened up, life would have been able to evolve in bursts. And if this is the way it happens on Earth, it could be the way it happens on other worlds, too — and perhaps faster or more slowly, depending upon how the geology of those worlds develops. There is a caveat, in that evolutionary biologists still do not understand how life originated on Earth. This moment of genesis is currently lost in the mists of time, and we cannot yet say whether it was a fluke one-off event or whether it was an easy step. One possibility is that life developed on multiple occasions on Earth, but all the other lineages went extinct, leaving only ourselves — the descendants of LUCA, the last universal common ancestor, from which all known life on Earth evolved — as the only ones left standing. This would give the illusion that life originated only once when it could have had several independent origins. Other mysteries include how biological cells first evolved, and what caused the dramatic onset of complex life during the Cambrian explosion 540 million years ago. It is still entirely possible that these were unique and rare events, but the new paper is not arguing that life is common in the universe, only that the concept of hard steps in evolution is not necessarily true and that the development of planetary environments has a big role to play, counter to Carter's original model. Another caveat is that, so far, astronomers have not yet found another world like Earth, so geologists cannot yet say whether the way in which Earth's geology and atmosphere developed is typical or not. It could yet be that creating a habitable world is where the hard steps really lie. Until we discover true extraterrestrial life, whether that be microbes on Mars or bonafide little green men, we will continue to grapple with the possibility that Earth and its life are unique. For now, it's a lonely universe out there. The Mills et al paper was published on Feb. 14 in the journal Science Advances.
Asharq Al-Awsat
15-02-2025
- Science
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Was the Emergence of Intelligent Life on Earth Just a Fluke? Some Scientists Think Not
Roughly 300,000 years ago, our species first appeared on the African landscape before spreading globally and coming to dominate the planet. All this happened about 4.5 billion years after Earth formed, with innumerable steps occurring in between that made our planet a cradle for intelligent life. An influential scientific thesis - called the "hard steps" theory and first presented in 1983 - has held that this outcome was a long shot and that the emergence of technological-level intelligent life on Earth or elsewhere was highly improbable. But perhaps this result was not so unlikely after all, according to scientists who are now advancing an alternative theory, Reuters reported. These scientists propose that Homo sapiens and analogous extraterrestrial life forms may be the probable end result of biological and planetary evolution when a planet has a certain set of attributes that make it habitable, rather than requiring countless lucky breaks. The path toward intelligent life, they argue, may be more of a predictable process, unfolding as global conditions allow in a manner that should not be considered unique to Earth. "In short, our framework shows how hard steps may not actually exist - past evolutionary transitions that needed to happen for us humans to be here may not have been hard or unlikely in the available time," said Dan Mills, a postdoctoral researcher in geomicrobiology at the University of Munich and lead author of the study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances, opens new tab. Physicist Brandon Carter devised the hard steps theory. It stresses that the long road to the emergence of humankind necessitated passage through various intermediate steps, each highly unlikely. Over the years, scientists have tried to identify some of these hard steps. These include the emergence of single-celled living organisms on primordial Earth, the initial oxygenation of the atmosphere by photosynthesis, the evolutionary transition from prokaryotic cells that lack a nucleus and other internal structures to eukaryotic cells that have them, and the appearance of complex organisms such as multicellular animals. And then, the final proposed hard step is the appearance of Homo sapiens and milestones such as language and technology. A species with advanced technological capabilities emerged on Earth relatively late in the Earth's habitable history, with the sun expected to increase in luminosity and boil away our planet's oceans about a billion years from now. This has inspired the argument that Earth is an incredibly rare planet that managed to accomplish the needed hard steps before becoming rendered uninhabitable. The new theory was devised by a team of two geobiologists and two astronomers. They propose that humankind's emergence followed the sequential opening of various "windows of habitability" over Earth's history, driven by factors such as changes in nutrient availability, sea surface temperatures, ocean salinity levels and atmospheric oxygen levels. Due to these factors, Earth only relatively recently became hospitable to a species like ours, they said, and that once those conditions existed the evolutionary path was relatively rapid. "Biological innovations proposed as hard or unlikely might actually occur quickly - geologically speaking - as soon as the environment permits," said Penn State microbiologist Jennifer Macalady, one of the researchers. "For example, life might have originated very quickly once temperatures were appropriate for the stability of biomolecules and liquid water. The Earth has only been habitable for humans since the second rise of oxygen in the atmosphere approximately 0.5 billion years ago, meaning that humans could not have evolved on Earth prior to that relatively recent moment," Macalady added. Astronomers are searching for evidence of life beyond Earth and have identified roughly 5,800 exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system. Some of them are uninhabitable gas giants akin to Jupiter but some of them are rocky worlds like our solar system's four terrestrial planets that include Earth. Astrophysicist and study co-author Jason Wright, director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, said that a best estimate right now is that somewhere around half of stars have a planet about the size of Earth orbiting at about the right distance to host liquid water, a key ingredient for life. "Understanding the probability of intelligent life emerging helps us understand our own place in the world," Mills said. "Are we humans a cosmic fluke, as the hard steps model predicts? Or are we instead the more expected and typical outcome of a living planet, as our alternative framework suggests?"
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Was the emergence of intelligent life on Earth just a fluke? Some scientists think not
By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roughly 300,000 years ago, our species first appeared on the African landscape before spreading globally and coming to dominate the planet. All this happened about 4.5 billion years after Earth formed, with innumerable steps occurring in between that made our planet a cradle for intelligent life. An influential scientific thesis - called the "hard steps" theory and first presented in 1983 - has held that this outcome was a long shot and that the emergence of technological-level intelligent life on Earth or elsewhere was highly improbable. But perhaps this result was not so unlikely after all, according to scientists who are now advancing an alternative theory. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. These scientists propose that Homo sapiens and analogous extraterrestrial life forms may be the probable end result of biological and planetary evolution when a planet has a certain set of attributes that make it habitable, rather than requiring countless lucky breaks. The path toward intelligent life, they argue, may be more of a predictable process, unfolding as global conditions allow in a manner that should not be considered unique to Earth. "In short, our framework shows how hard steps may not actually exist - past evolutionary transitions that needed to happen for us humans to be here may not have been hard or unlikely in the available time," said Dan Mills, a postdoctoral researcher in geomicrobiology at the University of Munich and lead author of the study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances. Physicist Brandon Carter devised the hard steps theory. It stresses that the long road to the emergence of humankind necessitated passage through various intermediate steps, each highly unlikely. Over the years, scientists have tried to identify some of these hard steps. These include the emergence of single-celled living organisms on primordial Earth, the initial oxygenation of the atmosphere by photosynthesis, the evolutionary transition from prokaryotic cells that lack a nucleus and other internal structures to eukaryotic cells that have them, and the appearance of complex organisms such as multicellular animals. And then, the final proposed hard step is the appearance of Homo sapiens and milestones such as language and technology. A species with advanced technological capabilities emerged on Earth relatively late in the Earth's habitable history, with the sun expected to increase in luminosity and boil away our planet's oceans about a billion years from now. This has inspired the argument that Earth is an incredibly rare planet that managed to accomplish the needed hard steps before becoming rendered uninhabitable. The new theory was devised by a team of two geobiologists and two astronomers. They propose that humankind's emergence followed the sequential opening of various "windows of habitability" over Earth's history, driven by factors such as changes in nutrient availability, sea surface temperatures, ocean salinity levels and atmospheric oxygen levels. Due to these factors, Earth only relatively recently became hospitable to a species like ours, they said, and that once those conditions existed the evolutionary path was relatively rapid. "Biological innovations proposed as hard or unlikely might actually occur quickly - geologically speaking - as soon as the environment permits," said Penn State microbiologist Jennifer Macalady, one of the researchers. "For example, life might have originated very quickly once temperatures were appropriate for the stability of biomolecules and liquid water. The Earth has only been habitable for humans since the second rise of oxygen in the atmosphere approximately 0.5 billion years ago, meaning that humans could not have evolved on Earth prior to that relatively recent moment," Macalady added. Astronomers are searching for evidence of life beyond Earth and have identified roughly 5,800 exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system. Some of them are uninhabitable gas giants akin to Jupiter but some of them are rocky worlds like our solar system's four terrestrial planets that include Earth. Astrophysicist and study co-author Jason Wright, director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, said that a best estimate right now is that somewhere around half of stars have a planet about the size of Earth orbiting at about the right distance to host liquid water, a key ingredient for life. "Understanding the probability of intelligent life emerging helps us understand our own place in the world," Mills said. "Are we humans a cosmic fluke, as the hard steps model predicts? Or are we instead the more expected and typical outcome of a living planet, as our alternative framework suggests?"
