If scientists discover aliens, they have a plan for ‘disclosure day’

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By Daniel Clery, Science. 

Excerpt: Disclosure Day, arriving in movie theaters this week, deals with what would be a pivotal event in history: the moment conclusive evidence arrives of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The movie pits sinister military-industrial forces that hide and control the information against those who strive to reveal the truth. ...Researchers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) have long realized this moment—if it ever arrives outside cinemas—is going to be fraught with emotion, confusion, and possible danger. To get a jump on such events, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) convened a permanent committee of SETI experts. In 1989, the committee drew up a set of “postdetection protocols,” nonbinding guidelines for what scientists and their institutions should do when the time comes. The protocols stress the importance of verifying the alien signal and making accurate and transparent announcements. They suggest data should be stored securely, in multiple repositories. No reply to any alien civilization should be sent without the authority of the United Nations and other representative bodies. ...IAA [International Academy of Astronautics] adopted the revised protocols in April.... 

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Early universe’s ‘little red dots’ may be black hole stars

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By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: It’s as if the baby universe had caught a case of measles. Since NASA’s JWST observatory began peering into the distant universe in 2022, it has discovered a rash of “little red dots”—hundreds of them, shining within the first billion years of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe, so small and red that they defied conventional explanation. Only in the past few months has a picture begun to emerge. The little red dots, astronomers say, may be an entirely new type of object: a colossal ball of bright, hot gas, larger than the Solar System, powered not by nuclear fusion, but by a black hole. ...JWST couldn’t resolve the dots into a recognizable shape, which meant they must have been tiny—less than 2% of the diameter of the Milky Way....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/early-universe-s-little-red-dots-may-be-black-hole-stars . 
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This ‘Galaxy That Wasn’t’ Never Bore Any Stars

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By Katrina Miller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: This week, astronomers announced the discovery of a new kind of cosmic object, something that is very nearly a galaxy, save for one crucial, missing ingredient: stars. The almost-galaxy is about 14 million light-years from Earth. It was the ninth cloud found to be associated with a nearby spiral galaxy, leading to its serendipitous name: Cloud-9. The object is starless, consisting of only a haze of hydrogen gas that astronomers believe is swaddled in a much more massive clump of  dark matter,  the invisible substance that permeates the cosmos and shapes its overarching structure. ...Cloud-9 is the first confirmed example of what astronomers call a RELHIC, short for Reionization-Limited H I Cloud and pronounced “relic.” Such objects are rich in gaseous hydrogen but devoid of any stars. They are  failed galaxies  thought to be nearly as old as time itself, primordial fossils that can help astronomers understand the...
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