Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
Astronomers scanning distant star systems for signs of alien technology say they have found 60 candidates, including seven M-dwarf stars giving off unexpectedly high infrared heat signatures, which may be surrounded by orbiting extraterrestrial power plants known as Dyson Spheres (DSs). First proposed by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson back in 1960, confirmation of these aptly named devices would not only represent the first verifiable signs of life beyond Earth but would likely indicate a species that is more technologically advanced than humans. Since humanity's most powerful telescopes cannot image objects orbiting distant stars directly, researchers ... knew they would have to analyze light spectrum data emitted by millions of stars across the galaxy to search for signs of alien technology. In the case of Dyson Spheres, the team would need to look for an â€unnatural' imbalance between the visible light and the infrared light emitted by a distant star. As proposed by Dyson, the more technologically advanced a species becomes, the more energy it needs. If they become advanced enough, a species could, in theory, surround an entire star with a "sphere" designed to capture all of its emitted energy. The sphere would radiate an excess of heat energy in the infrared spectrum as it captures the star's radiated energy and then releases it into space. In their published study [they explain:] "Dyson spheres, megastructures that could be constructed by advanced civilizations to harness the radiation energy of their host stars, represent a potential technosignature that, in principle, may be hiding in public data already collected as part of large astronomical surveys." Dubbed Project Hephaistos (named for the armorer of the Greek Gods), the effort [examined] data from over one hundred million stars. As hoped, the effort ... not only found 60 stars that had the right light ratios, but seven of these were particularly tantalizing, with IR heat signatures that lacked any other good explanation.
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Performing random acts of kindness increases happiness in both givers and receivers, but we find that givers systematically undervalue their positive impact on recipients. In both field and laboratory settings (Experiments 1a through 2b), those performing an act of kindness reported how positive they expected recipients would feel and recipients reported how they actually felt. From giving away a cup of hot chocolate in a park to giving away a gift in the lab, those performing a random act of kindness consistently underestimated how positive their recipients would feel, thinking their act was of less value than recipients perceived it to be. Givers' miscalibrated expectations are driven partly by an egocentric bias in evaluations of the act itself (Experiment 3). Whereas recipients' positive reactions are enhanced by the warmth conveyed in a kind act, givers' expectations are relatively insensitive to the warmth conveyed in their action. Underestimating the positive impact of a random act of kindness also leads givers to underestimate the behavioral consequences their prosociality will produce in recipients through indirect reciprocity (Experiment 4). We suggest that givers' miscalibrated expectations matter because they can create a barrier to engaging in prosocial actions more often in everyday life (Experiments 5a and 5b), which may result in people missing out on opportunities to enhance both their own and others' well-being.
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