Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

Starlink expansion threatens astronomy – scientists warn of increased interference

Published 27 October 2024
– By Editorial Staff
One of the SpaceX factories in the US.
3 minute read

Scientists at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy warn that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites are causing severe radio interference in Earth’s orbit, hampering astronomers’ observations of distant planets and stars. They are now calling for action to tackle the problem before it gets any worse.

Since 2012, the European Low-Frequency Array radio telescope network (LOFAR) has been probing faint and distant objects in the universe to detect black holes and look for exoplanets.

However, since SpaceX began launching its Starlink satellites five years ago, increased radio wave emissions have made it much more difficult for LOFAR to carry out its observations.

Jessica Dempsey is the Scientific Director and Director General of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.

– Last year, we started to see interference signals in the sky, we managed to trace them to some of the Starlink satellites from the first generation that were orbiting above the Earth, she said in an interview with The Independent.

6 000 satellites

SpaceX currently has a string of over 6 000 satellites in orbit, enabling high-speed internet access to almost anywhere on Earth. The satellites have been inadvertently emitting electromagnetic radiation, which the LOFAR astronomers initially thought was due to faulty batteries.

Dempsey says that last year they discussed solutions with SpaceX engineers to reduce the radiation and were optimistic that the problem could be solved.

But when the astronomers conducted new observations in July, they discovered that SpaceX’s updated Starlink V2 Mini satellites were causing even more interference. The company has also launched more satellites since then.

Starlink [was] emitting over 30 times more emissions, and now not just a few, all of [the satellites]. Frankly, we were shocked.

– The brightness in this particular frequency band of these new satellites, compared to what we’re looking at [is] about 10 million times brighter. The equivalent would be you’re trying to look at that beautiful, faintest star you can see with your eye on a dark night. And then, the full moon rises next to it, says Dempsey.

SpaceX Starlink satellit
6,000 Starlink satellites currently in orbit above the Earth.

The problem is increasing

The most worrying thing, according to Dempsey, is that the problem just keeps growing. Despite previous talks with SpaceX to reduce interference, their updated Starlink satellites have created even more radio interference.

The company is currently launching around 40 new satellites a week, and with plans to have 100,000 satellites in orbit in the future, scientists fear that ground-based astronomy will eventually become impossible.

– They’re launching 40 of these ‘full moons’ every week. Right now, there’s about 6,000 Starlink satellites up there but there’s an intended 100,000 [total future satellites]. So imagine 100,000 full moons up there. Then we can really say goodbye to any kind of astronomy that we would hope to do from the ground.

Dempsey and her colleagues recently published results in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics showing that almost all the Starlink satellites they observed emitted electromagnetic radiation that could interfere with the observations.

– The UN has regulations on the protected bands of frequencies. And, those protected bands are there so that astronomy can do its work. It’s a matter of whether those regulations are supported by anyone who has the power to do so.

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USA: Cognitive abilities declining among young adults

Published 11 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Economic stress, digital dependency and an uncertain job market may be behind the increase, according to researchers.
2 minute read

An increasing number of adults in the United States are experiencing problems with cognitive abilities such as concentration, memory, or decision-making. The increase has primarily occurred among adults aged 18 to 39.

The study is based on data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, an annual telephone survey conducted by state health departments in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers examined data on brain health between 2013 and 2023. A total of 4.5 million responses were recorded during the study period.

Increased most among young adults

The results, which are presented in Neurology, show that there has been a sharp increase in cognitive impairment problems with concentration or memory, for example during the study period. The increase began in 2016 and has continued to rise since then.

Between 2013 and 2023, cognitive impairment among adults without depression increased from 5.3 percent to 7.4 percent. Among young adults aged 18 to 39, the increase was most pronounced, more than doubling from 5.1 percent in 2013 to 10.2 percent a decade later.

Digitalization may contribute

However, the causes of the increase remain unclear, researchers say. It may partly be due to increased awareness among young adults that makes them more likely to acknowledge brain health issues.

But I certainly don’t think it is the sole cause at all, says study co-author Ka-Ho Wong, a public health scientist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, in a press release.

Wong believes that economic stress, job market uncertainty, and increased dependence on digital tools play a major role. As an example, Wong notes that while his parents can remember their home phone numbers from childhood, younger adults “can barely remember our own cell phone numbers half the time”. The results indicate, however, that doctors and public health officials should pay greater attention to brain health among young adults.

If they report it, we need to address it, says Wong.

Professor: We’re trading source criticism for speedy AI responses

The future of AI

Published 9 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
AI has become a natural companion in our daily lives - but what happens if we stop thinking for ourselves and take the chatbot's answers as truth?
2 minute read

Professor Olof Sundin warns that generative AI undermines our fundamental ability to evaluate information.

When sources disappear and answers are based on probability calculations, we risk losing our source criticism.

— What we see is a paradigm shift in how we traditionally search, evaluate and understand information, states Sundin, professor of library and information science at Lund University in southern Sweden.

When we Google, we get links to sources that we can, if we want, examine and assess the credibility of. In language models like Chat GPT, users get a ready-made answer, but the sources often become invisible and frequently completely absent.

— The answer is based on probability calculations of the words you’re interested in, not on verifiable facts. These language models guess which words are likely to come next, explains Olof Sundin.

Without sources, transparency disappears and the responsibility for evaluating the information presented falls entirely on the user.

— It’s very difficult to evaluate knowledge without sources if you don’t know the subject, since it’s a source-critical task, he explains.

“More dependent on the systems”

Some AI systems have tried to meet the criticism through RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation), where the language model summarizes information from actual sources, but research shows a concerning pattern.

— Studies from, for example, the Pew Research Institute show that users are less inclined to follow links than before. Fewer clicks on original sources, like blogs, newspapers and Wikipedia, threaten the digital knowledge ecosystem, argues Sundin.

— It has probably always been the case that we often search for answers and not sources. But when we get only answers and no sources, we become worse at source criticism and more dependent on the systems.

Research also shows that people themselves underestimate how much trust they actually have in AI answers.

— People often say they only trust AI when it comes to simple questions. But research shows that in everyday life they actually trust AI more than they think, the professor notes.

Vulnerable to influence

How language models are trained and moderated can make them vulnerable to influence, and Sundin urges all users to consider who decides how language models are actually trained, on which texts and for what purpose.

Generative AI also has a tendency to often give incorrect answers that look “serious” and correct, which can damage trust in knowledge in society.

— When trust is eroded, there’s a risk that people start distrusting everything, and then they can reason that they might as well believe whatever they want, continues Olof Sundin.

The professor sees a great danger to two necessary prerequisites for being able to exercise democratic rights – critical thinking about sources and the ability to evaluate different voices.

— When the flow of knowledge and information becomes less transparent – that we don’t understand why we encounter what we encounter online – we risk losing that ability. This is an issue we must take seriously – before we let our ‘digital friends’ take over completely, he concludes.

Language models

AI services like ChatGPT are built on language models (such as GPT-4) that are trained on enormous amounts of text. The model predicts which word is likely to come next in a sentence, based on patterns in language usage.

It doesn't "know" what is actually true – it "guesses" what is correct based on probability calculations.

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

RAG combines AI-generated responses with information retrieved from real sources, such as the top three links in a Google search.

The method provides better transparency than AI services that respond entirely without source references, but studies show that users nevertheless click less and less on the links to original sources.

Study: Divorce harms young children’s development

Published 2 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
According to a Chinese study, children of divorced parents risk falling behind in a range of different developmental areas.
2 minute read

Children whose parents divorce risk falling behind in their development – particularly in social skills, reading ability and physical health. The results come from a major study that followed 62,000 preschool children and compared children from divorced and intact families.

The research, published in the journal BMJ Paediatrics Open, is one of the largest studies conducted on younger children and shows that divorce can slow young children’s development in several areas.

Divorces don’t just affect adults but also have a significant impact on children. However, previous research has often been based on small groups of voluntary participants and produced conflicting results. Additionally, studies have primarily focused on older children, which has left knowledge about how the youngest children are affected inadequate.

The new study fills this knowledge gap by examining children between 3 and 5 years old – a critical age period where development progresses particularly rapidly and where important foundations are laid for the child’s future social, emotional and cognitive abilities.

The researchers used the so-called Human Capability Index, which measures children’s development across nine areas: reading, speech, writing, learning, persistence, language comprehension, cultural knowledge, social and emotional abilities, and physical health.

Worse at almost everything

Of the more than 62,000 children in the study, 2,409 (just under 4 percent) had parents who had divorced. When researchers compared these children with children from intact families, the differences became clear: children whose parents had divorced scored lower on almost all developmental areas.

The largest differences were in social and emotional skills, physical health and reading ability, while medium-sized differences were seen for verbal communication, persistence, language comprehension and cultural knowledge. The least impact was noticed in the areas of writing and general learning ability.

Overall, the study showed that children from divorced families had a greater risk of falling behind in their development compared to peers whose parents still lived together.

The researchers emphasize that the results highlight the need for more research on how society can support this vulnerable group. Parents, relatives and friends, healthcare services and society as a whole need to find better ways to help children through divorce processes so that their development is not negatively affected.

AI-created viruses can kill bacteria

The future of AI

Published 28 September 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Bacteriophages attach to bacteria, inject their DNA and multiply until the bacteria burst. AI can now design new variants from scratch.
2 minute read

Researchers in California have used artificial intelligence to design viruses that can reproduce and kill bacteria.

The breakthrough opens up new medical treatments – but also risks becoming a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands.

Researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute have for the first time succeeded in creating complete genomes using artificial intelligence. Their AI-designed viruses can actually reproduce and kill bacteria.

— That was pretty striking, just actually seeing, like, this AI-generated sphere, says Brian Hie, who leads the laboratory at the Arc Institute where the work was carried out.

The team used an AI called Evo, trained on genomes from around 2 million bacteriophages (viruses that attack bacteria). They chose to work with phiX174, a simple virus with just 11 genes and 5,000 DNA letters.

16 of 302 worked

The researchers let the AI design 302 different genome variants, which were then chemically manufactured as DNA strands. When they mixed these with E. coli bacteria, they achieved a breakthrough: 16 of the designs worked and created viruses that could reproduce.

— They saw viruses with new genes, with truncated genes, and even different gene orders and arrangements, says Jef Boeke, biologist at NYU Langone Health who was given advance access to the study.

Since viruses are not considered living organisms, this is not yet truly AI-designed life – but it is an important first step toward that technology.

Major medical potential

The technology has great potential in medicine. “Most gene therapy uses viruses to shuttle genes into patients’ bodies, and AI might develop more effective ones”, explains Samuel King, the student who led the project.

Doctors have previously tried so-called phage therapy to combat serious bacterial infections, something that AI-designed viruses could improve.

“Grave concerns”

But the technology’s development also raises strong concerns. The researchers have deliberately avoided training their AI on viruses that infect humans, but others could misuse the method.

— One area where I urge extreme caution is any viral enhancement research, especially when it’s random so you don’t know what you are getting. If someone did this with smallpox or anthrax, I would have grave concerns, warns J. Craig Venter, a pioneer in synthetic biology.

Venter believes that the technology is fundamentally based on the same trial-and-error principle that he himself used two decades ago, just much faster.

Future challenges

Creating larger organisms is significantly more difficult. E. coli has a thousand times more DNA than phiX174. “The complexity would rocket from staggering to way way more than the number of subatomic particles in the universe”. explains Boeke.

Jason Kelly, CEO of biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks, believes that automated laboratories where AI continuously improves its genome designs will be needed for future breakthroughs.

— This would be a nation-scale scientific milestone, as cells are the building blocks of all life. The US should make sure we get to it first, says Kelly.

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