White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller addresses the audience at the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism at the State Department on July 16, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
“If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention.”
Trump administration officials on Thursday hyped up plans to carry out mass political arrests and prosecutions of people whom it deemed far-left terrorists.
In a speech given at the US State Department, Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, described left-wing political violence as a “fatal cancer to civilization,” and boasted of plans to use state power to suppress people whom he called “political terrorists.”
Miller said that the administration would be carrying out this operation under the guidance of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by Trump in September that demanded a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
Miller bragged that “for the first time in American history,” NSPM-7 would direct “all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, de-bank, arrest, prosecute these political terrorists that are operating within our country.”
Santa Monica Goebbels is doing his weird and creepy gyrations while delivering a speech smearing Democrats as violent radicals pic.twitter.com/PaeDcD55jw
Miller said that the mass arrest of left-wing radicals was necessary to prevent them from carrying out mass arrests of their own.
“Inevitably, left to its course, it always becomes a gulag,” said Miller. “It always becomes the mass imprisonment of political enemies, the stripping of their rights and freedoms, inflicting immense pain, humiliation, suffering, in order to establish complete and total control, control through psychological and physical and actual terror.”
The social media account of independent progressive publication The Tennessee Holler expressed alarm at Miller’s speech.
“Fascism is here,” The Tennessee Holler wrote. “If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention. ‘Left-wing political terrorism’ will mean those who oppose the regime—while actual right-wingextremism is allowed to grow and thrive. We are very far off the cliff, folks.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also spoke of the event, noted last year that his department “designated four violent far-left extremist groups as foreign terrorist organizations, and there will be more designations soon.”
Secretary of State Rubio says there will be more terrorist designations of left-wing groups "soon." pic.twitter.com/RmZjBgQXas
The administration’s declaration of war against left-wing political violence comes despite decades of research showing that political violence is more commonly carried out by right-wing groups.
A report published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that, while left-wing political violence has grown since Trump’s first election in 2016, it “remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers.”
The report also noted that violence carried out by left-wing individuals or groups was “remarkably less lethal” than violence carried out by right-wing or jihadist individuals or groups.
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In 1990, the year Queer Nation published the manifesto that Mr. Vines quotes in his essay, I was one of that group’s members. I was 19. That same year, the Boy Scouts of America expelled me for being gay, and two years later, I sued.
The case took eight years to reach the Supreme Court, which in 2000 ruled in favor of the Boy Scouts. My Lambda Legal attorney at the time, Evan Wolfson, went on to become a leader in the marriage equality movement that Mr. Vines credits with changing his life.
In his essay, Mr. Vines presents queer confrontation and mainstream acceptance as opposing forces. My life tells a different story. The welcome I found among queer radicals gave me the courage to fight for a place in the most wholesome institution in America. The people in the streets and the people in the courtrooms were the same movement. Often the same people.
I am 55. I survived the AIDS crisis and buried many friends. I have been queer all my life, in the streets and in the courtroom, and I never found those two fights as far apart as Mr. Vines suggests.
James Dale New York
To the Editor:
Matthew Vines’s guest essay left me with one overriding thought: He’s looking in the wrong direction.
I’ve lived through the fight for marriage equality. The L.G.B.T.Q. community did not win those rights by being polished, restrained or always in agreement. People marched, protested, challenged unjust laws, came out publicly and refused to hide. Some were criticized for being too loud or too radical. History has a way of changing those judgments.
The danger, to me, is a political movement that opposed our equality long before most Americans had ever heard the word “queer.” It is also a movement that keeps finding new groups to target: immigrants, religious minorities, transgender people, people of color and anyone else who does not fit its vision of America.
That is why I struggle with Mr. Vines’s conclusion. Dividing our community into the acceptable and the unacceptable will not change the minds of people who have spent decades trying to roll back our rights. Those coming for us would do so regardless of how polished and restrained our community tried to be.
Garrick Spears Canaan, N.Y.
To the Editor:
I grew up just south of Matthew Vines in a small town in Oklahoma. I intimately understand the comfort he found in the marriage equality messaging of the 2010s. As an associate legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, I wrote some of it.
We earned legal protections by arguing unthreatening sameness. It would be easy to attribute falling levels of public support to the abandonment of a streamlined gay narrative. But the language we use to describe our community is not the problem. We have hit the limits of legal equality while navigating fraying democratic institutions. The MAGA agenda has made L.G.B.T.Q. lives the villain in an old, predictable, antidemocratic story.
A healthy democracy depends on protecting individuality and expression. It does not prescribe a single vision for living, but rather a set of tools to live differently while thriving together. L.G.B.T.Q. people are beautifully and inescapably different. Queer lives are good for democracy. Our stubborn existence and demand for equal dignity are daily forms of democratic resistance.
Robin Maril Portland, Ore. The writer is an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law and the author of “A Queer Guide to Saving American Democracy.”
To the Editor:
I recognize the shame behind Matthew Vines’s essay. It is devastating to be gay (or lesbian or queer) in a homophobic religious community. Yet Mr. Vines misses the profound connection between queer politics and robust Christianity.
Queer politics is, indeed, anti-normative. But the point is not rebellion for its own sake. Decades of queer scholarship and activism have understood the critique of social norms as a way of exposing systems (like gender and the tax code) that make some lives more livable than others. Questioning those norms allows us to be advocates for the people they harm.
Queer politics, like Christ’s teaching, reminds us that our responsibility is not to those with power, but to those who lack it — all those whom the community rejects. Both call us to support those who have less than we do — those facing violence, homelessness, the withholding of medical care or death. Queer politics asks this; gay identity does not.
Queer politics asks more of us than acceptance for ourselves. It asks us to stand with those who remain excluded. That is not a departure from Christian ethics but a reminder of them.
Shannon Brennan Milwaukee The writer is an associate professor of English at Carthage College and an associate editor at Edith Wharton Review.
To the Editor:
I am heterosexual, which seems to mean that Matthew Vines is worried I don’t like him. He avoids calling himself queer as a gay man because he finds the term too “adversarial” toward straight people. Indeed, in Mr. Vines’s eyes, offending heterosexual people — or simply confusing them — appears to be the worst mistake available to a gay person who likes having rights.
I was struck by how limiting Mr. Vines’s ideas are. He certainly did not choose to be gay, but in fretting that gay people will make straight homophobes too mad to stop being homophobic, he has certainly chosen to be fearful. If there is a solution to homophobia, it is not to enforce “clarity and moderation” in the ways that human beings are allowed to identify; it is to enlist straight allies to defend the human right to be fluid and radical.
Griffin Larson-Erf Skokie, Ill.
To the Editor:
I owe a debt of gratitude for Matthew Vines articulating not only the differences between being gay and being queer, but also for reminding us, especially those who might have forgotten the fact, that being gay “is every bit as dignified and human as being straight.”
Like Mr. Vines, I consider myself to be gay and not queer. What’s more, I often bristle when I’m lumped into what often seems like an amorphous mass of nonheteronormative identities.
Admittedly — and now somewhat ashamedly — never having had a desire to be married, I selfishly considered the issues surrounding same-sex marriage as no concern of mine. With the far right’s onslaught against all manner of human rights, the urgency to fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights is palpable. I’m left thinking that perhaps it’s time to be a lot more vociferously queer than I’d have ever considered before.
(Rev.) Shaun S. Brown San Diego
Corrected on
July 18, 2026:
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of the letter by Robin Maril misstated her affiliation. She is a former associate legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, not at the United Nations Human Rights Council.
We acknowledge mistakes in our reporting with corrections. If you spot an error, please let us know at corrections@nytimes.com.Learn more.
A version of this article appears in print on July 19, 2026, Section SR, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Parsing ‘Gay’ and ‘Queer’
“Paulist Press deserves credit for adding this new dimension to interfaith dialogue.” The Jewish Spectator The Book of Enlightenment edited and translated, with an introduction by Daniel Chanan Matt, preface by Arthur Green So this story of Torah is the garment of Torah. Whoever thinks that the garment is the real Torah and not something else―may his spirit deflate! Zohar (c. 1280-1286) Zohar―”the book of Splendor, Radiance, Enlightenment”―has fascinated readers from its first appearance in thirteenth-century Spain until today. It is the major text of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. To assure the acceptance of his work within the Jewish community, a Spanish scholar named Moses de Leon claimed that Zohar was an ancient work of the school of the famous Rabbi Shim’on son of Yohai. It was not until our own century that critical scholarship demonstrated that the book’s author was Moses de Leon himself. His mosaic of Scripture, Midrash, medieval homily, fiction, and fantasy presents what Professor Daniel Matt describes as “a challenge to the normal workings of consciousness [that] dares one to examine one’s assumptions about tradition, God, and self.”
Books can be attributed to “Anonymous” for several reasons:
* They are officially published under that name * They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author * They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author
Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.
[H]ow significant it is that in the Indo-European languages . . . the root meaning “two” should connote badness. The Greek prefix dys- (as in dyspepsia) and the latin dis- (as in dishonorable) are both derived from “duo.” The cognate bis-gives a pejorative sense to such modern French words as bévue (“blunder,” literally “two-sight”). Traces of that “second which leads you astray” can be found in “dubious,” “doubt” and Zweifel--for to doubt is to be double-minded. . . . Obscurely and unconsciously wise, our language confirms the findings of the mystics and proclaims the essential badness of division–a word, incidentally, in which our old enemy “two” makes another decisive appearance.
“When Bayazid was asked how old he was, he replied, ‘Four years.’ They said, ‘How can that be?’ He answered, ‘I have been veiled from God by the world for seventy years, but I have seen Him during the last four years. The period during which one is veiled does not belong to one’s life.'”
“For my part, I think the chief reason which prompted the invisible God to become visible in the flesh and to hold converse with men was to lead carnal men, who are only able to love carnally, to the healthful love of his flesh, and afterwards, little by little, to spiritual love.” –St. Bernard
“Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride fo a monarch, in her husband’s chamber, hath no such causes of delight as you.
“You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.
“Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you can never enjoy the world. Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world.
“Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it; and more rejoice in the palace of your glory than if it had been made today morning.
“Yet further, you never enjoyed the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it that you had rather suffer the flames of hell than willingly be guilty of their error.” –Thomas Traherne
“Therefore I give you still another thought, which is yet purer and more spiritual. In the Kingdom of Heaven all is in all, all is one, and all is ours.” –Eckhart
“Love is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love.” –William Law
Love is a mode of knowledge.
[M]an’s obsessive consciousness of, and insistence on being, a separate self is the final and most formidable obstacle to the unitive knowledge of God.
“The sect of lovers is distinct from all others; Lovers have a religion and a faith all their own.” –Jalal-uddin Rumi
“Temperance is love surrendering itself wholly to Him who is its object; courage is love bearing all things gladly for the sake of Him who is its object; justice is love serving only Him who is its object, and therefore rightly ruling; prudence is love making wise distinction between what hinders and what helps itself.” –St. Augustine
“Our kingdom go” is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of “Thy kingdom come.”
“The rout and destruction of the passions, while a good, is not the ultimate good; the discovery of Wisdom is the surpassing good. When this is found, all the people will sing.” –Philo
It is by losing the egocentric life that we save the hitherto latent and undiscovered life which, in the spiritual part of our being, we share with the divine Ground. This new-found life is “more abundant” than the other, and of a different and higher kind. Its possession is liberation into the eternal, and liberation is beatitude [happiness].
Wisdom is Bliss with Robert Thurman (1941-2026) Jul 18, 2026 Psychology and Psychotherapy Robert Thurman, PhD, passed on June 16 of this year. He was a shining light of love and joy, and a friend to the New Thinking Allowed family. We are grateful to have known him and to be touched by his warmth and passion. He was professor emeritus at Columbia University where he was a teaching professor for 50 years on Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies. He was the first Westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He authored many books, including Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet, and the Whole World and Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within. His most recent book is Wisdom is Bliss: Four Friendly Fun Facts That Can Change Your Life. His website is bobthurman.com. In this video, rebooted from 2023, Robert shares how wisdom is bliss. Ignorance is not bliss and can cause suffering. He describes the four noble truths of Buddhism as four friendly fun facts and encourages you to use your life to become generous, compassionate, and enlightened. New Thinking Allowed CoHost, Emmy Vadnais, OTR/L, is a licensed occupational therapist, intuitive healer and coach, and spiritual guide based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Emmy is the founder of the Intuitive Connections and Holistic OT communities. She is the author of Intuitive Development: How to Trust Your Inner Knowing for Guidance With Relationships, Health, and Spirituality. She offers intuitive coaching to help individuals access their inner guidance for clarity, healing, and meaningful decision-making. Her website is https://emmyvadnais.com (Recorded on February 24, 2023)
The DNC is always saying that is wants to excite young people. Then when somehting like the emergence of DSA happens, they say, “Oh, no, not like that.” Is this related to some kind of astrological transit?
ChatGPT:
That’s a witty way of putting it, and it points to a real political tension.
From a political science perspective, there’s a straightforward explanation: the Democratic Party is a broad coalition. Party leaders often want higher youth turnout because younger voters tend to vote Democratic more often than Republicans. At the same time, many party leaders also want to maintain control over the party’s direction and avoid positions they think could alienate moderate voters or major donors.
The Democratic Socialists of America attracts many younger activists with a more left-wing agenda. So when DSA-backed candidates gain influence, some Democratic leaders welcome the new energy, while others worry it could hurt the party in swing districts or shift the party away from its preferred platform. Those two goals—energizing young voters and maintaining a broad electoral coalition—can come into conflict.
As for astrology: if you view events through an astrological lens, some astrologers might describe this kind of situation as reflecting transits involving Uranus (youth, rebellion, disruption), Pluto (power struggles and transformation), or Saturn (established institutions resisting change). They might say a Uranus–Pluto or Uranus–Saturn dynamic symbolizes a clash between a rising generation and an entrenched establishment.
However, it’s important to note that there is no scientific evidence that astrological transits cause or predict political events. Astrology can be a symbolic framework that some people find meaningful, but it isn’t an evidence-based explanation for why political parties behave as they do.
So whether you see it politically or astrologically, the pattern you’re describing—a party wanting youthful enthusiasm but being wary when that enthusiasm challenges existing leadership—is a recurring one in many political organizations.
Me:
What are the current Saturn, Pluto and Uranus transits?
ChatGPT:
If you’re asking in terms of mundane (world) astrology, these are the major outer-planet transits as of today, July 18, 2026:
Saturn in Aries (about 14°). Saturn entered Aries earlier this year, marking a shift toward themes of new beginnings, leadership, responsibility, and rebuilding structures.
Uranus in Gemini (about 2°). Uranus recently entered Gemini, a seven-year transit that astrologers associate with disruption in communication, technology, education, and the exchange of ideas.
Pluto retrograde in Aquarius (about 7°). Pluto in Aquarius is commonly interpreted as a long-term transformation of institutions, social networks, technology, and collective power.
One of the biggest aspects today is:
Uranus trine Pluto (Gemini to Aquarius), an exact aspect that many astrologers interpret as a harmonious opportunity for innovation, societal change, and reform. Because it’s a trine, it’s generally viewed as making transformation easier than a square or opposition would.
If you’re thinking about the tension you mentioned between the Democratic establishment and the DSA, a mundane astrologer might see Uranus in Gemini trine Pluto in Aquarius as symbolizing new political ideas and grassroots movements reshaping existing power structures. Saturn in Aries could be seen as established institutions trying to define boundaries and maintain order while adapting to change.
With specific and easily understandable exercises and epiphanies, The Wizard of Us harkens to the classic tale and defines the hero’s journey through the skills and internal qualities that live within each of us. If you are seeking a creative exploration of self-understanding, realization, and improvement you will find a connection to the larger world story as you explore Oz like never before.
Robert Thurman, the preeminent scholar and interpreter of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy for the modern world, leads us on a joyful exploration into the nature of reality through Buddha’s threefold curriculum of “super-education.” “Buddha had to be an educator, rather than a prophet or religion founder, since he had achieved his goal of exact and complete understanding of reality by using reason, experiments to open his own mind, and vision to do so,” Thurman writes.
Angels at My Fingertips takes us back to the territory that made Angels in My Hair a million selling, international bestseller. Stories of Lorna’s early life in rural Ireland, of how angels helped and guided her through traumatic events, lead to a detailed description of what angels are like, the different types of angels, how they behave in interact with God and other angels as well as human beings, and their role during our lives and after death.
Consciousness Came First is a unique, panoramic and powerful book bridging the gulf between contemporary science and the philosophy of the ages. Aimed at the general rather than the specialist academic reader, it is essential reading for all those attempting to unravel the mysteries of life in the modern age.
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Jul 17, 2026 Psychology and Psychotherapy This video is a special release from the original Thinking Allowed series that ran on public television from 1986 until 2002. It was recorded in about 1990. It will remain public for only one week. Jean Houston, PhD, passed on May 16 of this year. She was a great soul, role model, and inspiration! She was founder and director of The Mystery School, a program of mythology and culture. She is past-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology and also director of the Human Capacities Training Program. She is author of numerous books including Search for the Beloved, Godseed, Lifeforce, Mindgames, Listening to the Body (coauthored with Robert Masters), The Hero and the Goddess and The Possible Human. Jean expands upon the learning experiences she had with Margaret Mead, elaborating on her own experiences working with different cultures. To illustrate her work in human capacities training, she leads an exercise called “Cleansing the Doors of Perception.” Then follows a powerful poetic reading by actress Peggy Nash Rubin. Jean then elaborates on how these experiences may call forth within the viewer new visions and deeper understandings.
Why our fascination with psychopaths is scientifically wrongheaded, and how the criminal justice system has misused the controversial science of psychopathy.
Psychopathy is a widely acknowledged personality disorder associated with callous unemotional traits and antisocial behaviors. Psychopathic persons are described as dangerous predators incapable of empathy and moral intuition, and while they are believed to make up only around 1 percent of the general population, forensic experts claim they are disproportionately responsible for the majority of violent crimes. Today, psychopathy assessments are being widely used in the legal system to inform a variety of judicial decisions. In Psychopathy Unmasked, Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen provides a critical rebuttal of psychopathy and its legal use, scrutinizing central claims about the diagnosis that have traditionally served to justify its role in the criminal justice system.
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of offenders undergo a psychopathy assessment each year in North America. This book surveys and discusses contemporary developments in psychopathy research where studies have consistently shown that psychopathic persons, contrary to mainstream beliefs, are not meaningfully more dangerous than, or psychologically different from, ordinary non-psychopathic criminals. Based on these disqualifying findings, Larsen argues that we should end the use of psychopathy assessments in the legal system.
“It’s in the habitable zone, which is super exciting for astrobiology and habitability and searching for life.”
An artist’s concept showing the exoplanet LHS 1140 b in the foreground, enveloped by an atmosphere with helium. In the background is its red dwarf star with another planet in its orbit. (Image credit: Melissa Weiss/Center for Astrophysics |Harvard & Smithsonian)
This might be the closest we’ve gotten to finding a planet that could support life: Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-like, rocky planet orbiting in the habitable zone around its star, a monumental first.
The rocky planet, called LHS 1140 b, is 48-light-years away from Earth and according to this new research, it has an atmosphere that contains helium. It is also the first rocky planet to have an atmosphere be detected directly. This is the first rocky planet to be found with an atmosphere that is also in the habitable zone, meaning it’s at the right distance away from its star for liquid water to potentially exist on the planet. As we continue to search the cosmos for planets that can be considered “habitable,” this planet checks more boxes than almost anything we’ve ever seen.
“We have actually detected directly the helium present in the atmosphere itself, and that’s the first direct detection for any rocky exoplanet, which is really exciting … and then there’s this added bonus that it’s in the habitable zone, which is super exciting for astrobiology and habitability and searching for life,” lead author Collin Cherubim, who recently earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University, told Space.com. “It feels kind of surreal.”
Let’s explore this planet and the system where it “lives.”
This exoplanet, or planet outside of our solar system, was first discovered in 2017 by a team led by astronomer Jason Dittmann who is now a co-author on this new discovery.You may like
“This planet was found like 10 years ago, and we’re just now saying, okay, that’s an atmosphere,” Dittman told Space.com. “We’re slowly narrowing the gap and checking these boxes … we’re finding a planet that’s rocky, a planet that’s of the right temperature and now … it’s like okay, we finally found one that has an atmosphere.”
And being a rocky planet, “there’s definitely a surface … it’s made of rocks,” Dittman said. What does the planet’s surface look like? We can’t say yet, but the researchers who found this planet’s atmosphere think there’s a good chance it could have water.
While it orbits a red dwarf star, which is smaller and cooler than the sun, it orbits closer than we do to our star, maintaining a temperature that keeps the planet in the “Goldilocks zone” where liquid water could exist on its surface.
“It probably also has a lot of water,” Cherubim said. “If it has some amount of atmosphere that can provide a bit of a greenhouse effect, which we know that it does now … it will very likely be what we consider to be habitable conditions on Earth, and conditions that would likely support liquid water.”
So is it Earth-like? While it’s certainly not an Earth copy, this planet can be considered Earth-like in two main ways, Cherubim shared. One: its overall composition. The planet is rocky, likely with an iron core and (now we know) it has an atmosphere. And two: the planet’s temperature is just right for liquid water, which is necessary for life at least as far as we understand it on our planet.What to read next
The discovery of the first exoplanet was confirmed just over 30 years ago. Since then, scientists have found over 6,000 exoplanets and counting. And while a few rocky planets have been found in their star’s habitable zone, it wasn’t until now that an atmosphere has been confirmed around a rocky planet in the habitable zone.
One reason why scientists have had a hard time finding such planets with atmospheres is their stars. LHS 1140 b orbits the most common type of star, a red dwarf, which is about one-third the size of our sun. This type of star remains active for a lot longer than stars like our sun. This activity means it releases bursts of extreme radiation like solar flares and coronal mass ejections. And typically, the extreme radiation around these stars totally strips the atmospheres from the planets orbiting them, so astronomers have wondered if planets orbiting these stars can have an atmosphere at all.
“This discovery is a big deal because it’s showing that at least this rocky planet has retained an atmosphere over billions of years,” Cherubim said. It’s “a bona fide, robust way of saying yes, atmospheres can survive on rocky exoplanets.”
It’s possible that other gases beyond helium are in the planet’s atmosphere, and it’s possible that some of its atmosphere was previously stripped away by its star’s radiation. But the red dwarf that this planet orbits is roughly 6 billion years old, a few billion years older than the age at which their extreme radiation activity begins calming down. So while some helium is still slowly escaping the planet’s atmosphere over time, the team expects the planet to retain an atmosphere, Dittman shared. After all, even Earth’s helium is slowly escaping our own atmosphere.
The proof is in the atmosphere
To prove that this planet has an atmosphere, the team started with a prediction that Cherubim made during graduate school. It all started with a theoretical model and a sneaking suspicion that there must be rocky exoplanets with atmospheres other than Earth.
“This came out of a very specific prediction from a planetary evolution model that I actually developed myself, from scratch, from first principles, for my Ph.D. as a theorist, and I made a very specific prediction about this planet,” Cherubim said. “And then I went out and did a pretty unexpected, weird thing using this technique that’s typically reserved for observing giant planets, and I used it for a rocky planet, which nobody has done before.
“And lo and behold, I made this measurement that was actually consistent with my prediction. And it was really nice to kind of close the whole loop of the scientific method.”
The team took the theoretical model that Cherubim developed in graduate school and put it to the test using the Warm Infrared Echelle (WINERED) Spectrograph on the Magellan Observatory in Chile. And with their observations, they were able to see LHS 1140 b and another planet both transit, or pass in front of, their star in the same night. With this spectrographic data, they could identify the signatures of molecules in the atmospheres of these planets as they passed in front of the star. And while one planet yielded no results, this planet showed a direct, undeniable helium signature.
Are there aliens?
When looking at a planet that is rocky, has an atmosphere, and is in the habitable zone (meaning it could have liquid water), the question of life comes up quite quickly.
But the researchers don’t have enough data to make that conjecture. “I’m not claiming this planet has life,” Cherubim made clear. With further investigation, scientists could better understand what else might be in this planet’s atmosphere, and they could confirm if it has water. Further observations might not be able to confirm habitability or identify any life on the planet, but they could at least help us to better understand planets like this.
With this being the first planet of its kind discovered, further exploration will help us to put the pieces together. But it is certainly a major step forward in the eternal human quest to answer the question: are we alone?
