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If there are so many galaxies, stars, and planets, where are all the aliens, and why haven't we heard from them?Those are the simple questions at the heart of the Fermi Paradox. In a new paper, a pair of researchers ask the next obvious question: how long will we have to survive to hear from another alien civilization?  Their answer? 400,000 years.400,000 years is a long time for a species that's only been around for a couple hundred thousand years and only discovered farming about 12,000 years ago.But 400,000 years is…

The natural world around us is endlessly inspiring, and fascinating, and often very odd too: like when researchers snapped a photo of Bolivian river dolphins swimming around with a Beni anaconda snake in their mouths, for example.  These river dolphins are relatively rarely seen creatures, as it's unusual for them to have their heads above water for very long – let alone to be juggling a predatory snake between their jaws at the same time.While it's not clear exactly what was going on here, dolphins and cetaceans more…

Some of the biggest names in bitcoin — including Jack Dorsey, Tom Lee, and Michael Saylor — have banded together to refute claims made by House Democrats calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the environmental effects of crypto mining.Bitcoin operates on a proof-of-work (PoW) mining model, meaning that miners around the world run high-powered computers to simultaneously create new bitcoin and validate transactions. Proof-of-work mining, which requires sophisticated gear and a whole lot of…