title: Joe Namath

text: On December 20, 2003, Namath garnered unfavorable publicity after he consumed too much alcohol during a day that was dedicated to the Jets' announcement of their All-Time team. During live ESPN coverage of the team's game, Namath was asked about then-Jets quarterback Chad Pennington and his thoughts on the difficulties of that year's team. Namath expressed confidence in Pennington, but then stated to interviewer Suzy Kolber, "I want to kiss you. I couldn't care less about the team struggling." He subsequently apologized, and several weeks later entered into an outpatient alcoholism treatment program. In 2019, Namath said he used the incident as motivation to quit alcohol, explaining "I had embarrassed my friends and family and could not escape that feeling. I haven't had a drink since."


title: Joe Namath

text: In July 2015, Namath joined the search for two boys who went missing during a fishing trip off the coast of Florida, and offered a $100,000 reward for the safe return of the boys. The boat was found six days later, and the search was suspended, with the two boys presumed dead.


title: Joe Namath

text: On June 6, 2018, Namath threw out the first pitch at a Chicago Cubs baseball game at Wrigley Field. The pitch was caught by then-Cubs manager Joe Maddon, who idolized Namath as a child. This was Namath's first time at Wrigley Field.


title: Joe Namath

text: After the Super Bowl victory in 1969, Namath opened a popular Upper East Side nightclub called Bachelors III, which not only drew big names in sports, entertainment, and politics, but also organized crime. To protect the league's reputation, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle ordered Namath to divest himself of his interest in the venture. Namath refused, apparently retiring from football during a teary news conference, but he eventually recanted and agreed to sell the club, and reported to the Jets in time for the 1969–70 season. Namath again threatened to retire before the 1970 and 1971 seasons; "New York" wrote in 1971 that "his retirement act had become shallow and predictable". The magazine stated that Namath did not want to attend training camp because of the risk of injury, but could not afford to retire permanently because of poor investments.


title: Joe Namath

text: Namath's prowess on the field, fashion sense, lighthearted personality, and status as a sex symbol made him the first sports figure to appeal equally to men, women, and children—as demonstrated by his various product endorsements over the years. His nickname "Broadway Joe" was given to him by Sherman Plunkett, a Jets teammate. "Joe Willie Namath" was Namath's moniker based on his full given name and was popularized by sportscaster Howard Cosell. On the field, Namath stood out from other AFL and NFL players in low-cut white shoes rather than traditional black high-tops. The white shoes started when Namath was at Alabama, where he kept having his worn-out cleats taped over as a superstition, especially after his first major knee injury was the result of a game in which he had forgotten to have the shoes taped. When he joined the Jets, Namath continued to have his shoes taped until Jets coach Weeb Ewbank noticed that the excess tape usage was costing the team money, so he ordered white cleats for Namath. He originated the fad of wearing a full-length fur coat on the sidelines (since banned by the NFL, which requires all players, coaches, athletic trainers, et al., to wear league-approved team apparel).


title: Joe Namath

text: Namath also appeared in television advertisements both during and after his playing career, most notably for Ovaltine milk flavoring, Noxzema shaving cream (in which he was shaved by a then-unknown Farrah Fawcett), and Hanes Beautymist pantyhose (which he famously wore in the commercials). All of these commercials contributed to his becoming a pop-culture icon.


title: Joe Namath

text: Namath continues to serve as an unofficial spokesman and goodwill ambassador for the Jets. In 2011, Namath was representing Topps and promoting a "Super Bowl Legends" contest, appearing on its behalf on the "Late Show with David Letterman". For Super Bowl XLVIII which was hosted in the Jets' MetLife Stadium, Namath and his daughter Jessica wore fur coats for the ceremonial coin toss to "bring back a little of that flash from his heyday" as a player.


title: Joe Namath

text: On June 2, 2013, Namath was the guest speaker at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, unveiling the Canton, Ohio museum's $27 million expansion and renovation plan.


title: Joe Namath

text: In November 2006, the biography "Namath: A Biography" by Mark Kriegel was published, reaching the "New York Times" extended bestseller list (number 23). In conjunction with its release, Namath was interviewed for the November 19, 2006, edition of CBS' "60 Minutes". A recent documentary about Namath's hometown of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, includes a segment on Namath and why the city has celebrated its ties to him. In 2009, 40 years after winning Super Bowl III, he presented the Vince Lombardi Trophy to the Pittsburgh Steelers who won Super Bowl XLIII. NFL Productions also produced a two-hour long television biography in its "A Football Life" series.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Extraterrestrial life, colloquially referred to as alien life, is life that may occur outside Earth and which did not originate on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been conclusively detected, although efforts are underway. Such life might range from simple forms like prokaryotes to intelligent beings, possibly bringing forth civilizations that might be far more advanced than humankind. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of sapient life elsewhere in the universe. The science of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Speculation about the possibility of inhabited "worlds" outside the planet Earth dates back to antiquity. Multiple early Christian writers discussed the idea of a "plurality of worlds" as proposed by earlier thinkers such as Democritus; Augustine references Epicurus's idea of innumerable worlds "throughout the boundless immensity of space" (originally expressed in his Letter to Herodotus) in "The City of God". In his first century poem De rerum natura (Book 2:1048–1076), the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius predicted that we would find innumerable exoplanets with life-forms similar to, and different from, the ones on Earth, and even other races of man.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Pre-modern writers typically assumed that extraterrestrial "worlds" would be inhabited by living beings. William Vorilong, in the 15th century, acknowledged the possibility that Christ could have visited extraterrestrial worlds to redeem their inhabitants. Nicholas of Cusa wrote in 1440 that the Earth was "a brilliant star" like other celestial objects visible in space, which would appear similar to the Sun from an exterior perspective due to a layer of "fiery brightness" in the outer layer of the atmosphere. He theorized that all extraterrestrial bodies could be inhabited by men, plants, and animals, including the Sun. Descartes wrote that there was no means to prove that the stars were not inhabited by "intelligent creatures," but their existence was a matter of speculation. The writings of these thinkers show that interest in extraterrestrial life existed throughout history, but it is only recently that humans have had any means of investigating it.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Since the mid-20th century, active research has taken place to look for signs of extraterrestrial life, encompassing searches for current and historic extraterrestrial life, and a narrower search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. Depending on the category of search, methods range from the analysis of telescope and specimen data to radios used to detect and send communication signals.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The concept of extraterrestrial life, and particularly extraterrestrial intelligence, has had a major cultural impact, especially extraterrestrials in fiction. Over the years, science fiction has communicated scientific ideas, imagined a wide range of possibilities, and influenced public interest in and perspectives on extraterrestrial life. One shared space is the debate over the wisdom of attempting communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Some encourage aggressive methods to try to contact intelligent extraterrestrial life. Others—citing the tendency of technologically advanced human societies to enslave or wipe out less advanced societies—argue that it may be dangerous to actively call attention to Earth.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Extraterrestrial life, such as microorganisms, has been hypothesized to exist in the Solar System and throughout the universe. This hypothesis relies on the vast size and consistent physical laws of the observable universe. According to this argument, made by scientists such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking it would be improbable for life "not" to exist somewhere other than Earth. This argument is embodied in the Copernican principle, which states that Earth does not occupy a unique position in the Universe, and the mediocrity principle, which states that there is nothing special about life on Earth.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The chemistry of life may have begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during a habitable epoch when the universe was only 10–17 million years old. Life may have emerged independently at many places throughout the universe, as it arose on Earth roughly 4.2 billion years ago through chemical processes. Alternatively, life may have formed less frequently, then spread—by meteoroids, for example—between habitable planets in a process called panspermia. In any case, complex organic molecules may have formed in the protoplanetary disk of dust grains surrounding the Sun before the formation of Earth. According to these studies, this process may occur outside Earth on several planets and moons of the Solar System and on planets of other stars.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Since the 1950s, astronomers have proposed that "habitable zones" around stars are the most likely places for life to exist. Numerous discoveries of such zones since 2007 have generated numerical estimates of many billions of planets with Earth-like compositions. , only a few planets had been discovered in these zones. Nonetheless, on 4 November 2013, astronomers reported, based on "Kepler" space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs in the Milky Way, 11 billion of which may be orbiting Sun-like stars. The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Life on Earth is quite ubiquitous and has adapted over time to almost all the available environments in it, even the most hostile ones. As a result, it is inferred that life in other celestial bodies may be equally adaptative. However, the origin of life is unrelated to its ease of adaptation, and may have stricter requirements. A planet or moon may not have any life on it, even if it was habitable.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: A study published in 2017 suggests that due to how complexity evolved in species on Earth, the level of predictability for alien evolution elsewhere would make them look similar to life on our planet. One of the study authors, Sam Levin, notes "Like humans, we predict that they are made-up of a hierarchy of entities, which all cooperate to produce an alien. At each level of the organism there will be mechanisms in place to eliminate conflict, maintain cooperation, and keep the organism functioning. We can even offer some examples of what these mechanisms will be." There is also research in assessing the capacity of life for developing intelligence. It has been suggested that this capacity arises with the number of potential niches a planet contains, and that the complexity of life itself is reflected in the information density of planetary environments, which in turn can be computed from its niches.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The first basic requirement for life is an environment with non-equilibrium thermodynamics, which means that the thermodynamic equilibrium must be broken by a source of energy. The traditional sources of energy in the cosmos are the stars, such as for life on Earth, which depends on the energy of the sun. However, there are other alternative energy sources, such as volcanos, plate tectonics, and hydrothermal vents. There are ecosystems on Earth in deep areas of the ocean that do not receive sunlight, and take energy from black smokers instead. Magnetic fields and radioactivity have also been proposed as sources of energy, although they would be less efficient ones.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Life on Earth requires water in a liquid state as a solvent in which biochemical reactions take place. It is highly unlikely that an abiogenesis process can start within a gaseous or solid medium: the atom speeds, either too fast or too slow, make it difficult for specific ones to meet and start chemical reactions. A liquid medium also allows the transport of nutrients and substances required for metabolism. Sufficient quantities of carbon and other elements, along with water, might enable the formation of living organisms on terrestrial planets with a chemical make-up and temperature range similar to that of Earth. Life based on ammonia rather than water has been suggested as an alternative, though this solvent appears less suitable than water. It is also conceivable that there are forms of life whose solvent is a liquid hydrocarbon, such as methane, ethane or propane.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Another unknown aspect of potential extraterrestrial life would be the chemical elements that would compose it. Life on Earth is largely composed of carbon, but there could be other hypothetical types of biochemistry. A potential replacement for carbon should be able to create complex molecules, store information required for evolution, and be freely available in the medium. To create DNA, RNA, or a close analog, such an element should be able to bind its atoms with many others, creating complex and stable molecules. It should be able to create at least three covalent bonds; two for making long strings and at least a third to add new links and allow for diverse information. Only nine elements meet this requirement: boron, nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony (three bonds), carbon, silicon, germanium and tin (four bonds). As for abundance, carbon, nitrogen, and silicon are the most abundant ones in the universe, far more than the others. On Earth's crust the most abundant of those elements is silicon, in the Hydrosphere it's carbon and in the atmosphere, it's carbon and nitrogen. Silicon, however, has disadvantages over carbon. The molecules formed with silicon atoms are less stable, and more vulnerable to acids, oxygen, and light. An ecosystem of silicon-based lifeforms would require very low temperatures, high atmospheric pressure, an atmosphere devoid of oxygen, and a solvent other than water. The low temperatures required would add an extra problem, the difficulty to kickstart a process of abiogenesis to create life in the first place.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Even if extraterrestrial life is based on carbon and uses water as a solvent, like Earth life, it may still have a radically different biochemistry. Life on Earth started with a RNA world and later evolved to its current form, where some of the RNA tasks were transferred to the DNA and proteins. Extraterrestrial life may still be stuck on the RNA world, or evolve into other configurations. It is unclear if our biochemistry is the most efficient one that could be generated, or which elements would follow a similar pattern. However, it is likely that, even if cells had a different composition to those from Earth, they would still have a cell membrane. Life on Earth jumped from prokaryotes to eukaryotes and from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms through evolution. So far no alternative process to achieve such a result has been conceived, even if hypothetical. Evolution requires life to be divided into individual organisms, and no alternative organization has been satisfactorily proposed either. At the basic level, membranes define the limit of a cell, between it and its environment, while remaining partially open to exchange energy and resources with it.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The evolution from simple cells to eukaryotes, and from them to multicellular lifeforms, is not guaranteed. The Cambrian explosion took place thousands of millions of years after the origin of life, and its causes are not fully known yet. On the other hand, the jump to multicellularity took place several times, which suggests that it could be a case of convergent evolution, and so likely to take place on other planets as well. Palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris considers that convergent evolution would lead to kingdoms similar to our plants and animals, and that many features are likely to develop in alien animals as well, such as bilateral symmetry, limbs, digestive systems and heads with sensory organs. The planetary context would also have an influence: a planet with higher gravity would have smaller animals, and other types of stars can lead to non-green photosynthesizers. The amount of energy available would also affect biodiversity, as an ecosystem sustained by black smokers or hydrothermal vents would have less energy available than those sustained by a star's light and heat, and so its lifeforms would not grow beyond a certain complexity.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Some bodies in the Solar System have the potential for an environment in which extraterrestrial life can exist, particularly those with possible subsurface oceans. Should life be discovered elsewhere in the Solar System, astrobiologists suggest that it will more likely be in the form of extremophile microorganisms. According to NASA's 2015 Astrobiology Strategy, "Life on other worlds is most likely to include microbes, and any complex living system elsewhere is likely to have arisen from and be founded upon microbial life. Important insights on the limits of microbial life can be gleaned from studies of microbes on modern Earth, as well as their ubiquity and ancestral characteristics." Researchers found a stunning array of subterranean organisms, mostly microbial, deep underground and estimate that approximately 70 percent of the total number of Earth's bacteria and archaea organisms live within the Earth's crust. Rick Colwell, a member of the Deep Carbon Observatory team from Oregon State University, told the BBC: "I think it’s probably reasonable to assume that the subsurface of other planets and their moons are habitable, especially since we’ve seen here on Earth that organisms can function far away from sunlight using the energy provided directly from the rocks deep underground".


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Mars may have niche subsurface environments where microbial life exists. A subsurface marine environment on Jupiter's moon Europa might be the most likely habitat in the Solar System, outside Earth, for extremophile microorganisms.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The panspermia hypothesis proposes that life elsewhere in the Solar System may have a common origin. If extraterrestrial life were found on another body in the Solar System, it could have originated from Earth just as life on Earth could have been seeded from elsewhere. Directed panspermia concerns the deliberate transport of microorganisms in space, sent to Earth to start life here, or sent from Earth to seed new stellar systems with life.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The Nobel prize winner Francis Crick, along with Leslie Orgel, proposed that seeds of life may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, but considering an early "RNA world" Crick noted later that life may have originated on Earth.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: There may be scientific support, based on studies reported in March 2020, for considering that parts of the planet Mercury may have been habitable, and perhaps that life forms, albeit likely primitive microorganisms, may have existed on the planet.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In the early 20th century, Venus was considered to be similar to Earth for habitability, but observations since the beginning of the Space Age revealed that the Venusian surface temperature is around , making it inhospitable for Earth-like life. Likewise, the atmosphere of Venus is almost completely carbon dioxide, which can be toxic to Earth-like life. Between the altitudes of 50 and 65 kilometers, the pressure and temperature are Earth-like, and it may accommodate thermoacidophilic extremophile microorganisms in the acidic upper layers of the Venusian atmosphere. Furthermore, Venus likely had liquid water on its surface for at least a few million years after its formation. The putative detection of an absorption line of phosphine in Venus's atmosphere, with no known pathway for abiotic production, led to speculation in September 2020 that there could be extant life currently present in the atmosphere. Later research attributed the spectroscopic signal that was interpreted as phosphine to sulfur dioxide, or found that in fact there was no absorption line.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, the Moon could have had a magnetic field, an atmosphere, and liquid water sufficient to sustain life on its surface. Warm and pressurized regions in the Moon's interior might still contain liquid water.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: As of 2021, no native lunar life has been found, including any signs of life in the samples of Moon rocks and soil.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Life on Mars has been long speculated. Liquid water is widely thought to have existed on Mars in the past, and now can occasionally be found as low-volume liquid brines in shallow Martian soil. The origin of the potential biosignature of methane observed in the atmosphere of Mars is unexplained, although hypotheses not involving life have been proposed.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: There is evidence that Mars had a warmer and wetter past: Dried-up riverbeds, polar ice caps, volcanoes, and minerals that form in the presence of water have all been found. Evidence obtained by the "Curiosity" rover studying Aeolis Palus, Gale Crater in 2013 strongly suggests an ancient freshwater lake that could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life. Furthermore, present conditions on the subsurface of Mars may support life.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Current studies on Mars by the "Curiosity and Perseverance" rovers are searching for evidence of ancient life, including a biosphere based on autotrophic, chemotrophic and/or chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms, as well as ancient water, including fluvio-lacustrine environments (plains related to ancient rivers or lakes) that may have been habitable. The search for evidence of habitability, taphonomy (related to fossils), and organic carbon on Mars is now a primary NASA objective.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Ceres, the only dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, has a thin water-vapor atmosphere. The vapor could have been produced by ice volcanoes or by ice near the surface sublimating (transforming from solid to gas). Nevertheless, the presence of water on Ceres had led to speculation that life may be possible there. It is one of the few places in the Solar System where scientists would like to search for possible signs of life. Although the dwarf planet might not have living things today, there could be signs it harbored life in the past.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Carl Sagan and others in the 1960s and 1970s computed conditions for hypothetical microorganisms living in the atmosphere of Jupiter. The intense radiation and other conditions, however, do not appear to permit encapsulation and molecular biochemistry, so life there is thought unlikely. In contrast, some of Jupiter's moons may have habitats capable of sustaining life. Scientists have indications that heated subsurface oceans of liquid water may exist deep under the crusts of the three outer Galilean moons—Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The EJSM/Laplace mission was planned to determine the habitability of these environments; however, due to lack of funding, the program was not continued. Similar missions, like ESA's JUICE and NASA's Europa Clipper are currently in development and are slated for launch in 2023 and 2024, respectively.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Jupiter's moon Europa has been the subject of speculation about the existence of life, due to the strong possibility of a liquid water ocean beneath its ice surface. Hydrothermal vents on the bottom of the ocean, if they exist, may warm the water and could be capable of supplying nutrients and energy to microorganisms. It is also possible that Europa could support aerobic macrofauna using oxygen created by cosmic rays impacting its surface ice.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The case for life on Europa was greatly enhanced in 2011 when it was discovered that vast lakes exist within Europa's thick, icy shell. Scientists found that ice shelves surrounding the lakes appear to be collapsing into them, thereby providing a mechanism through which life-forming chemicals created in sunlit areas on Europa's surface could be transferred to its interior.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: On 11 December 2013, NASA reported the detection of "clay-like minerals" (specifically, phyllosilicates), often associated with organic materials, on the icy crust of Europa. The presence of the minerals may have been the result of a collision with an asteroid or comet, according to the scientists. The "Europa Clipper", which would assess the habitability of Europa, is planned for launch in 2024. Europa's subsurface ocean is considered the best target for the discovery of life.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Like Jupiter, Saturn is not likely to host life. However, its moons Titan and Enceladus have been speculated to have possible habitats supportive of life.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, has some of the conditions for life, including geothermal activity and water vapor, as well as possible under-ice oceans heated by tidal effects. The "Cassini–Huygens" probe detected carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen—all key elements for supporting life—during its 2005 flyby through one of Enceladus's geysers spewing ice and gas. The temperature and density of the plumes indicate a warmer, watery source beneath the surface. Of the bodies on which life is possible, living organisms could most easily enter the other bodies of the Solar System from Enceladus.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is the only known moon in the Solar System with a significant atmosphere. Data from the "Cassini–Huygens" mission refuted the hypothesis of a global hydrocarbon ocean, but later demonstrated the existence of liquid hydrocarbon lakes in the polar regions—the first stable bodies of surface liquid discovered outside Earth. Analysis of data from the mission has uncovered aspects of atmospheric chemistry near the surface that are consistent with—but do not prove—the hypothesis that organisms there, if present, could be consuming hydrogen, acetylene and ethane, and producing methane. NASA's Dragonfly mission is slated to land on Titan in the mid-2030s with a VTOL-capable rotorcraft with a launch date set for 2027.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Models of heat retention and heating via radioactive decay in smaller icy Solar System bodies suggest that Rhea, Titania, Oberon, Triton, Pluto, Eris, Sedna, and Orcus may have oceans underneath solid icy crusts approximately 100 km thick. Of particular interest in these cases is the fact that the models indicate that the liquid layers are in direct contact with the rocky core, which allows efficient mixing of minerals and salts into the water. This is in contrast with the oceans that may be inside larger icy satellites like Ganymede, Callisto, or Titan, where layers of high-pressure phases of ice are thought to underlie the liquid water layer.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Hydrogen sulfide has been proposed as a hypothetical solvent for life and is quite plentiful on Jupiter's moon Io, and may be in liquid form a short distance below the surface.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The scientific search for extraterrestrial life is being carried out both directly and indirectly. , 3,667 exoplanets in 2,747 systems have been identified, and other planets and moons in the Solar System hold the potential for hosting primitive life such as microorganisms. As of 8 February 2021, an updated status of studies considering the possible detection of lifeforms on Venus (via phosphine) and Mars (via methane) was reported.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Scientists search for biosignatures within the Solar System by studying planetary surfaces and examining meteorites. Some claim to have identified evidence that microbial life has existed on Mars. An experiment on the two Viking Mars landers reported gas emissions from heated Martian soil samples that some scientists argue are consistent with the presence of living microorganisms. Lack of corroborating evidence from other experiments on the same samples suggests that a non-biological reaction is a more likely hypothesis. In 1996, a controversial report stated that structures resembling nanobacteria were discovered in a meteorite, ALH84001, formed of rock ejected from Mars.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In February 2005 NASA scientists reported they may have found some evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. The two scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA's Ames Research Center, based their claim on methane signatures found in Mars's atmosphere resembling the methane production of some forms of primitive life on Earth, as well as on their own study of primitive life near the Rio Tinto river in Spain. NASA officials soon distanced NASA from the scientists' claims, and Stoker herself backed off from her initial assertions. Though such methane findings are still debated, support among some scientists for the existence of life on Mars exists.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In November 2011 NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory that landed the "Curiosity" rover on Mars. It is designed to assess the past and present habitability on Mars using a variety of scientific instruments. The rover landed on Mars at Gale Crater in August 2012.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The Gaia hypothesis stipulates that any planet with a robust population of life will have an atmosphere in chemical disequilibrium, which is relatively easy to determine from a distance by spectroscopy. However, significant advances in the ability to find and resolve light from smaller rocky worlds near their stars are necessary before such spectroscopic methods can be used to analyze extrasolar planets. To that effect, the Carl Sagan Institute was founded in 2014 and is dedicated to the atmospheric characterization of exoplanets in circumstellar habitable zones. Planetary spectroscopic data will be obtained from telescopes like WFIRST and ELT.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In August 2011, findings by NASA, based on studies of meteorites found on Earth, suggest DNA and RNA components (adenine, guanine and related organic molecules), building blocks for life as we know it, may be formed extraterrestrially in outer space. In October 2011, scientists reported that cosmic dust contains complex organic matter ("amorphous organic solids with a mixed aromatic-aliphatic structure") that could be created naturally, and rapidly, by stars. One of the scientists suggested that these compounds may have been related to the development of life on Earth and said that, "If this is the case, life on Earth may have had an easier time getting started as these organics can serve as basic ingredients for life."


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In August 2012, and in a world first, astronomers at Copenhagen University reported the detection of a specific sugar molecule, glycolaldehyde, in a distant star system. The molecule was found around the protostellar binary "IRAS 16293-2422", which is located 400 light years from Earth. Glycolaldehyde is needed to form ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which is similar in function to DNA. This finding suggests that complex organic molecules may form in stellar systems prior to the formation of planets, eventually arriving on young planets early in their formation.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Projects such as SETI are monitoring the galaxy for electromagnetic interstellar communications from civilizations on other worlds. If there is an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, there is no guarantee that it is transmitting radio communications in the direction of Earth or that this information could be interpreted as such by humans. The length of time required for a signal to travel across the vastness of space means that any signal detected would come from the distant past.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The presence of heavy elements in a star's light-spectrum is another potential biosignature; such elements would (in theory) be found if the star were being used as an incinerator/repository for nuclear waste products.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Some astronomers search for extrasolar planets that may be conducive to life, narrowing the search to terrestrial planets within the habitable zones of their stars. Since 1992, over four thousand exoplanets have been discovered ( planets in planetary systems including multiple planetary systems as of ).


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The extrasolar planets so far discovered range in size from that of terrestrial planets similar to Earth's size to that of gas giants larger than Jupiter. The number of observed exoplanets is expected to increase greatly in the coming years.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The Kepler space telescope has also detected a few thousand candidate planets, of which about 11% may be false positives.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: There is at least one planet on average per star. About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an "Earth-sized" planet in the habitable zone, with the nearest expected to be within 12 light-years distance from Earth. Assuming 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, that would be 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way, rising to 40 billion if red dwarfs are included. The rogue planets in the Milky Way possibly number in the trillions.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The nearest known exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, located from Earth in the southern constellation of Centaurus.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: , the least massive exoplanet known is PSR B1257+12 A, which is about twice the mass of the Moon. The most massive planet listed on the NASA Exoplanet Archive is DENIS-P J082303.1-491201 b, about 29 times the mass of Jupiter, although according to most definitions of a planet, it is too massive to be a planet and may be a brown dwarf instead. Almost all of the planets detected so far are within the Milky Way, but there have also been a few possible detections of extragalactic planets. The study of planetary habitability also considers a wide range of other factors in determining the suitability of a planet for hosting life.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: One sign that a planet probably already contains life is the presence of an atmosphere with significant amounts of oxygen, since that gas is highly reactive and generally would not last long without constant replenishment. This replenishment occurs on Earth through photosynthetic organisms. One way to analyze the atmosphere of an exoplanet is through spectrography when it transits its star, though this might only be feasible with dim stars like white dwarfs.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The science of astrobiology considers life on Earth as well, and in the broader astronomical context. In 2015, "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia, when the young Earth was about 400 million years old. According to one of the researchers, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth, then it could be common in the universe."


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In 1961, University of California, Santa Cruz, astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake devised the Drake equation as a way to stimulate scientific dialogue at a meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. The equation is best understood not as an equation in the strictly mathematical sense, but to summarize all the various concepts which scientists must contemplate when considering the question of life elsewhere. The Drake equation is:


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Drake's proposed estimates are as follows, but numbers on the right side of the equation are agreed as speculative and open to substitution:


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The Drake equation has proved controversial since several of its factors are uncertain and based on conjecture, not allowing conclusions to be made. This has led critics to label the equation a guesstimate, or even meaningless.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Based on observations from the "Hubble Space Telescope", there are between 125 and 250 billion galaxies in the observable universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all Sun-like stars have a system of planets, i.e. there are stars with planets orbiting them in the observable universe. Even if it is assumed that only one out of a billion of these stars has planets supporting life, there would be some 6.25 billion life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: A 2013 study based on results from the "Kepler" spacecraft estimated that the Milky Way contains at least as many planets as it does stars, resulting in 100–400 billion exoplanets. Also based on "Kepler" data, scientists estimate that at least one in six stars has an Earth-sized planet.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for such civilizations is known as the Fermi paradox.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Cosmic pluralism, the plurality of worlds, or simply pluralism, describes the philosophical belief in numerous "worlds" in addition to Earth, which might harbor extraterrestrial life. Before the development of the heliocentric theory and a recognition that the Sun is just one of many stars, the notion of pluralism was largely mythological and philosophical. The earliest recorded assertion of extraterrestrial human life is found in ancient scriptures of Jainism. There are multiple "worlds" mentioned in Jain scriptures that support human life. These include "Bharat Kshetra", "Mahavideh Kshetra", "Airavat Kshetra", "Hari kshetra", etc. Medieval Muslim writers like Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Muhammad al-Baqir supported cosmic pluralism on the basis of the Qur'an.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The first known mention of the term 'panspermia' was in the writings of the 5th century BC Greek philosopher Anaxagoras. He proposed the idea that life exists everywhere.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: With the scientific and Copernican revolutions, and later, during the Enlightenment, cosmic pluralism became a mainstream notion, supported by the likes of Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle in his 1686 work "Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes". Pluralism was also championed by philosophers such as John Locke and astronomers such as William Herschel. The astronomer Camille Flammarion promoted the notion of cosmic pluralism in his 1862 book "La pluralité des mondes habités". None of these notions of pluralism were based on any specific observation or scientific information.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: There was a dramatic shift in thinking initiated by the invention of the telescope and the Copernican assault on geocentric cosmology. Once it became clear that Earth was merely one planet amongst countless bodies in the universe, the theory of extraterrestrial life started to become a topic in the scientific community. The best known early-modern proponent of such ideas was the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, who argued in the 16th century for an infinite universe in which every star is surrounded by its own planetary system. Bruno wrote that other worlds "have no less virtue nor a nature different to that of our earth" and, like Earth, "contain animals and inhabitants". Bruno's belief in the plurality of worlds was one of the charges leveled against him by the Venetian Holy Inquisition, which trialed and executed him.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In the early 17th century, the Czech astronomer Anton Maria Schyrleus of Rheita mused that "if Jupiter has (...) inhabitants (...) they must be larger and more beautiful than the inhabitants of Earth, in proportion to the [characteristics] of the two spheres".


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In Baroque literature such as "The Other World: The Societies and Governments of the Moon" by Cyrano de Bergerac, extraterrestrial societies are presented as humoristic or ironic parodies of earthly society.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The didactic poet Henry More took up the classical theme of the Greek Democritus in "Democritus Platonissans, or an Essay Upon the Infinity of Worlds" (1647).


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In "The Creation: a Philosophical Poem in Seven Books" (1712), Sir Richard Blackmore observed: "We may pronounce each orb sustains a race / Of living things adapted to the place". With the new relative viewpoint that the Copernican revolution had wrought, he suggested "our world's sunne / Becomes a starre elsewhere". Fontanelle's "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds" (translated into English in 1686) offered similar excursions on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, expanding, rather than denying, the creative sphere of a Maker.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The possibility of extraterrestrials remained a widespread speculation as scientific discovery accelerated. William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus, was one of many 18th–19th-century astronomers who believed that the Solar System is populated by alien life. Other scholars of the period who championed "cosmic pluralism" included Immanuel Kant and Benjamin Franklin. At the height of the Enlightenment, even the Sun and Moon were considered candidates for extraterrestrial inhabitants.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Speculation about life on Mars increased in the late 19th century, following telescopic observation of apparent Martian canals—which soon, however, turned out to be optical illusions. Despite this, in 1895, American astronomer Percival Lowell published his book "Mars," followed by "Mars and its Canals" in 1906, proposing that the canals were the work of a long-gone civilization. The idea of life on Mars led British writer H. G. Wells to write the novel "The War of the Worlds" in 1897, telling of an invasion by aliens from Mars who were fleeing the planet's desiccation.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Spectroscopic analysis of Mars's atmosphere began in earnest in 1894, when U.S. astronomer William Wallace Campbell showed that neither water nor oxygen was present in the Martian atmosphere.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: By 1909 better telescopes and the best perihelic opposition of Mars since 1877 conclusively put an end to the canal hypothesis.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: As a consequence of the belief in the spontaneous generation there was little thought about the conditions of each celestial body: it was simply assumed that life would thrive anywhere. This theory was disproved by Louis Pasteur in the 19th century. Popular belief in thriving alien civilizations elsewhere in the solar system still remained strong until Mariner 4 and Mariner 9 provided close images of Mars, which debunked forever the idea of the existence of Martians and decreased the previous expectations of finding alien life in general. The end of the spontaneous generation belief forced to investigate the origin of life. Although abiogenesis is the more accepted theory, a number of authors reclaimed the term "panspermia" and proposed that life was brought to Earth from elsewhere. Some of those authors are Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1834), Kelvin (1871), Hermann von Helmholtz (1879) and, somewhat later, by Svante Arrhenius (1903).


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The science fiction genre, although not so named during the time, developed during the late 19th century. The expansion of the genre of extraterrestrials in fiction influenced the popular perception over the real-life topic, making people eager to jump to conclusions about the discovery of aliens. Science marched at a slower pace, some discoveries fueled expectations and others dashed excessive hopes. For example, with the advent of telescopes, most structures seen on the Moon or Mars were immediately attributed to Selenites or Martians, and later ones (such as more powerful telescopes) revealed that all such discoveries were natural features. A famous case is the Cydonia region of Mars, first imagined by the "Viking 1" orbiter. The low-resolution photos showed a rock formation that resembled a human face, but later spacecraft took photos in higher detail that showed that there was nothing special about the site.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The search and study of extraterrestrial life became a science of its own, Astrobiology. Also known as "exobiology", this discipline is studied by the NASA, the ESA, the INAF, and others. Astrobiology studies life from Earth as well, but with a cosmic perspective. For example, abiogenesis is of interest to astrobiology, not because of the origin of life on Earth, but for the chances of a similar process taking place in other celestial bodies. Many aspects of life, from its definition to its chemistry, are analyzed as either likely to be similar in all forms of life across the cosmos or only native to Earth. Astrobiology, however, remains constrained by the current lack of extraterrestrial lifeforms to study, as all life on Earth comes from the same ancestor, and it is hard to infer general characteristics from a group with a single example to analyze.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The 20th century came with great technological advances, speculations about future hypothetical technologies, and an increased basic knowledge of science by the general population thanks to science divulgation through the mass media. The public interest in extraterrestrial life and the lack of discoveries by mainstream science led to the emergence of pseudosciences that provided affirmative, if questionable, answers to the existence of aliens. Ufology claims that many unidentified flying objects (UFOs) would be spaceships from alien species, and ancient astronauts hypothesis claim that aliens would have visited Earth in antiquity and prehistoric times but people would have failed to understand it by then. Most UFOs or UFO sightings can be readily explained as sightings of Earth-based aircraft (including top-secret aircraft), known astronomical objects or weather phenomenons, or as hoaxes.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The possibility of extraterrestrial life on the Moon was ruled out in the 1960s, and during the 1970s it became clear that most of the other bodies of the Solar System do not harbor highly developed life, although the question of primitive life on bodies in the Solar System remains open.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: Many scientists are optimistic about the chances of finding alien life. In the words of SETI's Frank Drake, "All we know for sure is that the sky is not littered with powerful microwave transmitters". Drake noted that it is entirely possible that advanced technology results in communication being carried out in some way other than conventional radio transmission. At the same time, the data returned by space probes, and giant strides in detection methods, have allowed science to begin delineating habitability criteria on other worlds, and to confirm that at least other planets are plentiful, though aliens remain a question mark. The Wow! signal, detected in 1977 by a SETI project, remains a subject of speculative debate.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: On the other hand, other scientists are pessimistic. Jacques Monod wrote that "Man knows at last that he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe, whence which he has emerged by chance". In 2000, geologist and paleontologist Peter Ward and astrobiologist Donald Brownlee published a book entitled "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe". In it, they discussed the Rare Earth hypothesis, in which they claim that Earth-like life is rare in the universe, whereas microbial life is common. Ward and Brownlee are open to the idea of evolution on other planets that is not based on essential Earth-like characteristics such as DNA and carbon.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: As for the possible risks, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking warned in 2010 that humans should not try to contact alien life forms. He warned that aliens might pillage Earth for resources. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans", he said. Jared Diamond had earlier expressed similar concerns. On 20 July 2015, Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, along with the SETI Institute, announced a well-funded effort, called the Breakthrough Initiatives, to expand efforts to search for extraterrestrial life. The group contracted the services of the 100-meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia in the United States and the 64-meter Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia. On 13 February 2015, scientists (including Geoffrey Marcy, Seth Shostak, Frank Drake and David Brin) at a convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, discussed Active SETI and whether transmitting a message to possible intelligent extraterrestrials in the Cosmos was a good idea; one result was a statement, signed by many, that a "worldwide scientific, political and humanitarian discussion must occur before any message is sent".


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1979 Moon Agreement define rules of planetary protection against potentially hazardous extraterrestrial life. COSPAR also provides guidelines for planetary protection. A committee of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs had in 1977 discussed for a year strategies for interacting with extraterrestrial life or intelligence. The discussion ended without any conclusions. As of 2010, the UN doesn't have response mechanisms for the case of an extraterrestrial contact.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: One of the NASA divisions is the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA), also known as the Planetary Protection Office. A part of its mission is to "rigorously preclude backward contamination of Earth by extraterrestrial life."


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In 2020, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency, said the search for extraterrestrial life is one of the main goals of deep space research.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: He also acknowledged the possibility of existence of primitive life on other planets of the Solar System.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In 2016, the Chinese Government released a white paper detailing its space program. According to the document, one of the research objectives of the program is the search for extraterrestrial life. It is also one of the objectives of the Chinese Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) program.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: The French space agency has an office for the study of "non-identified aero spatial phenomena". The agency is maintaining a publicly accessible database of such phenomena, with over 1600 detailed entries. According to the head of the office, the vast majority of entries have a mundane explanation; but for 25% of entries, their extraterrestrial origin can neither be confirmed nor denied.


title: Extraterrestrial life

text: In 2020, chairman of the Israel Space Agency Isaac Ben-Israel stated that the probability of detecting life in outer space is "quite large". But he disagrees with his former colleague Haim Eshed who stated that there are contacts between an advanced alien civilization and some of Earth's governments.


title: Lo-fi music

text: Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The standards of sound quality (fidelity) and music production have evolved throughout the decades, meaning that some older examples of lo-fi may not have been originally recognized as such. Lo-fi began to be recognized as a style of popular music in the 1990s, when it became alternately referred to as DIY music (from "do it yourself").


title: Lo-fi music

text: Harmonic distortion and "analog warmth" are sometimes confused as core features of lo-fi music. Traditionally, lo-fi has been characterized by the inclusion of elements normally viewed as undesirable in professional contexts, such as misplayed notes, environmental interference, or phonographic imperfections (degraded audio signals, tape hiss, and so on). Pioneering, influential, or otherwise significant artists include the Beach Boys ("Smiley Smile" and "Wild Honey"), R. Stevie Moore (often called "the godfather of home recording"), Paul McCartney ("McCartney"), Todd Rundgren, Jandek, Daniel Johnston, Guided by Voices, Sebadoh, Beck, Pavement, and Ariel Pink.


title: Lo-fi music

text: Although "lo-fi" has been in the cultural lexicon for approximately as long as "high fidelity", WFMU disc jockey William Berger is usually credited with popularizing the term in 1986. At various points since the 1980s, "lo-fi" has been connected with cassette culture, the DIY ethos of punk, primitivism, outsider music, authenticity, slacker/Generation X stereotypes, and cultural nostalgia. The notion of "bedroom" musicians expanded following the rise of modern digital audio workstations, and in the late 2000s, lo-fi aesthetics served as the basis of the chillwave and hypnagogic pop music genres.


title: Lo-fi music

text: Lo-fi is the opposite of hi-fi. Historically, the prescriptions of "lo-fi" have been relative to technological advances and the expectations of ordinary music listeners, causing the rhetoric and discourse surrounding the term to shift numerous times. Usually spelled as "low-fi" before the 1990s, the term has existed since at least the 1950s, shortly after the acceptance of "high fidelity", and its definition evolved continuously between the 1970s and 2000s. In the 1976 edition of the "Oxford English Dictionary", lo-fi was added under the definition of "sound production less good in quality than 'hi-fi'". Music educator R. Murray Schafer, in the glossary for his 1977 book "The Tuning of the World", defined the term as "unfavourable signal-to-noise ratio."


title: Lo-fi music

text: There was virtually no appreciation for the imperfections of lo-fi music among critics until the 1980s, during which there was an emergent romanticism for home-recording and "do-it-yourself" (DIY) qualities. Afterward, "DIY" was often used interchangeably with "lo-fi". By the end of the 1980s, qualities such as "home-recorded", "technically primitive", and "inexpensive equipment" were commonly associated with the "lo-fi" label, and throughout the 1990s, such ideas became central to how "lo-fi" was popularly understood. Consequently, in 2003, the "Oxford Dictionary" added a second definition for the term—"a genre of rock music characterized by minimal production, giving a raw and unsophisticated sound". A third was added in 2008: "unpolished, amateurish, or technologically unsophisticated, esp. as a deliberate aesthetic choice."


title: Lo-fi music

text: The identity of the party or parties who popularized the use of "lo-fi" cannot be determined definitively. It is generally suggested that the term was popularized through William Berger's weekly half-hour radio show on the New Jersey-based independent radio station WFMU, titled "Low-Fi", which lasted from 1986 to 1987. The program's contents consisted entirely of contributions solicited via mail and ran during a thirty-minute prime time evening slot every Friday. In the fall 1986 issue of the WFMU magazine "LCD", the program was described as "home recordings produced on inexpensive equipment. Technical primitivism coupled with brilliance."


title: Lo-fi music

text: The notion of "bedroom musicians" expanded after the rise of laptop computers in many forms of popular or avant-garde music, and over the years, there was an increasing tendency to group all home-recorded music under the umbrella of "lo-fi". "Bedroom pop" loosely describes a musical genre, or aesthetic, in which bands record at home, rather than at traditional recording spaces. It also has the connotation of DIY. By the 2010s, journalists would indiscriminately apply "bedroom pop" for any music that sounded "fuzzy". In 2017, "About.com"s Anthony Carew argued that the term "lo-fi" was commonly misused as a synonym for "warm" or "punchy" when it should be reserved for music that "sounds like it's recorded onto a broken answering-machine".


title: Lo-fi music

text: Lo-fi aesthetics are idiosyncrasies associated with the recording process. More specifically, those that are generally viewed in the field of audio engineering as undesirable effects, such as a degraded audio signal or fluctuations in tape speed. The aesthetic may also extend to substandard or disaffected musical performances. Recordings deemed unprofessional or "amateurish" are usually with respect to performance (out-of-tune or out-of-time notes) or mixing (audible hiss, distortion, or room acoustics). Musicologist Adam Harper identifies the difference as "phonographic" and "non-phonographic imperfections". He defines the former as "elements of a recording that are perceived (or imagined to be perceived) as detrimental to it and that originate in the specific operation of the recording medium itself. Today, they are usually the first characteristics people think about when the subject of 'lo-fi' is brought up."


title: Lo-fi music

text: Recording imperfections may "fall loosely into two categories, distortion and noise", in Harper's view, although he acknowledges that definitions of "distortion" and "noise" vary and sometimes overlap. The most prominent form of distortion in lo-fi aesthetics is harmonic distortion, which can occur when an audio signal is amplified beyond the dynamic range of a device. However, this effect is not usually considered to be an imperfection. The same process is used for the electric guitar sounds of rock and roll, and since the advent of digital recording, to give a recording a feeling of "analogue warmth". Distortion that is generated as a byproduct of the recording process ("phonographic distortion") is typically avoided in professional contexts. "Tape saturation" and "saturation distortion" alternately describe the harmonic distortion that occurs when a tape head approaches its limit of residual magnetization (a common aspect of tape recorder maintenance that is fixed with degaussing tools). Effects include a decrease in high-frequency signals and an increase in noise. Generally, lo-fi recordings are likely to have little or no frequency information above 10 kilohertz.


title: Lo-fi music

text: "Non-phonographic" imperfections may involve noises that are generated by the performance ("coughing, sniffing, page-turning and chair sounds") or the environment ("passing vehicles, household noises, the sounds of neighbours and animals"). Harper acknowledges that the "appreciation of distortion and noise is not limited to lo-fi aesthetics, of course, and lo-fi aesthetics ... does not extend to all appreciations for distortion and noise. The difference lies in the ways in which distortion and noise are "understood" to be imperfections in lo-fi." He also distinguishes between "recording imperfections" and "sonic imperfections [that] occur as a result of imperfect sound-reproduction or - modulation equipment... Hypothetically, at least, lo-fi effects are created during recording and production itself, and perceptibly remain in master recordings that are then identically copied for release."


title: Lo-fi music

text: Bruce Bartlett, in his 2013 guide "Practical Recording Techniques", states that "lo-fi sounds might have a narrow frequency response (a thin, cheap sound), and might include noise such as hiss or record scratches. They could be distorted or wobbly in pitch." He offers the following methods for replicating lo-fi sounds: mixing levels so that they are unbalanced; placing obstructions between a microphone and the sound sources; placing the microphone in an unusual spot, such as in a wastebasket; recording with older, lower-quality instruments or equipment; and highlighting spill and sound reflections.


title: Lo-fi music

text: DIY music predates written history, but "lo-fi" as it was understood after the 1990s can be traced to 1950s rock and roll. AllMusic writes that the genre's recordings were made "cheaply and quickly, often on substandard equipment. In that sense, the earliest rock & roll records, most of the garage rock of the '60s, and much of the punk rock of the late '70s could be tagged as Lo-Fi."


title: Lo-fi music

text: Released in 1967, the Beach Boys' albums "Smiley Smile" and "Wild Honey" were lo-fi albums recorded mostly in Brian Wilson's makeshift home studio; the albums were later referred to as part of Wilson's so-called Bedroom Tapes. Although "Smiley Smile" was initially met with confusion and disappointment, appreciation for the album grew after other artists released albums that reflected a similarly flawed and stripped-down quality, including Bob Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" (1967) and the Beatles' White Album (1968). "Pitchfork" writer Mark Richardson credited "Smiley Smile" with inventing "the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop that would later propel Sebadoh, Animal Collective, and other characters." Editors at "Rolling Stone" credited "Wild Honey" with originating "the idea of DIY pop".


title: Lo-fi music

text: Writers of "The Wire" credit Skip Spence's "Oar" (1969) as "a progenitor of both the loner/stoner and lo-fi movements", adding that the album "would not find a real audience for decades."


title: Lo-fi music

text: In the early 1970s, there were a few other major recording artists who released music recorded with portable multi-tracking equipment; examples included Paul McCartney and Todd Rundgren. Produced shortly after the Beatles' breakup, the home-recorded solo release "McCartney" was among the best-selling albums of 1970, but was critically panned. In 2005, after an interviewer suggested that it was "[perhaps] one of the first big lo-fi records of its day", McCartney commented that it was "interesting" that younger fans were "looking back at something like that with some kind of respect", before adding that the album's "sort of ... hippie simplicity ... kind of resonates at this point in time, somehow." "Record Collector"s Jamie Atkins wrote in 2018 that many lo-fi acts had been indebted to the reverb-saturated sound of "All I Wanna Do" (1970) by the Beach Boys.


title: Lo-fi music

text: "Something/Anything?" (released in February 1972) was recorded almost entirely by Rundgren alone. The album included many of his best-known songs, as well as a spoken-word track ("Intro") in which he teaches the listener about recording flaws for an egg hunt-type game he calls "Sounds of the Studio". He used the money gained from the album's success to build a personal recording studio in New York, where he recorded the less successful 1973 follow-up "A Wizard, a True Star". Musicologist Daniel Harrison compared the Beach Boys' late-1960s albums to "Wizard", a record "which mimics aspects of Brian's compositional style in its abrupt transitions, mixture of various pop styles, and unusual production effects. But it must be remembered that the commercial failure of the Beach Boys’ experiments was hardly motivation for imitation." In 2018, "Pitchfork"s Sam Sodsky noted that the "fingerprints" of "Wizard" remain "evident on bedroom auteurs to this day".


title: Lo-fi music

text: With the emergence of punk rock and new wave in the late 1970s, some sectors of popular music began to espouse a DIY ethos that heralded a wave of independent labels, distribution networks, fanzines and recording studios, and many guitar bands were formed on the then-novel premise that one could record and release their own music instead of having to procure a record contract from a major label. Lo-fi musicians and fans were predominantly white, male and middle-class, and while most of the critical discourse interested in lo-fi was based in New York or London, the musicians themselves were largely from lesser metropolitan areas of the US.


title: Lo-fi music

text: Since 1968, R. Stevie Moore had been recording full-length albums on reel-to-reel tape in his parents' basement in Tennessee, but it was not until 1976's "Phonography" that any of his recordings were issued on a record label. The album achieved some notoriety among New York's punk and new wave circles. Matthew Ingram of "The Wire" wrote that "Moore might not have been the first rock musician to go entirely solo, recording every part from drums to guitar ... However, he was the first to explicitly aestheticize the home recording process itself. ... making him the great-grandfather of lo-fi." Asked if he supported the "DIY/lo-fi pioneer label", Moore explained that his approach resulted from "happenstance" rather than a calculated artistic decision, although he agreed that he "should be recognized as a pioneer". When a 2006 "New York Times" reporter referenced Moore as the progenitor of "bedroom pop", Moore responded that the notion was "hilarious" in light of his "bitter struggle to make a living and get some notoriety, I scoff at it."


title: Lo-fi music

text: In 1979, Tascam introduced the Portastudio, the first portable multi-track recorder of its kind to incorporate an "all-in-one" approach to overdubbing, mixing, and bouncing. This technology allowed a broad range of musicians from underground circles to build fan bases through the dissemination of their cassette tapes. Music critic Richie Unterberger cited Moore as "one of the most famous" of the "few artists in cassetteland [that] established a reputation, if even a cult one." From 1979 until the early 1980s, Moore was a staff member on WFMU, hosting a weekly "Bedroom Radio" show. Berger's "Low-Fi" program followed thereafter and effectively established lo-fi as a distinct movement associated with the spirit of punk. JW Farquhar's home-recorded 1973 album "The Formal Female", according to critic Ned Raggett, could also be regarded as a forerunner to "any number of" independent lo-fi artists, including R. Stevie Moore and the underground Texas musician Jandek.


title: Lo-fi music

text: In 1980, the Welsh trio Young Marble Giants released their only album, "Colossal Youth", featuring stark instrumentation, including a primitive drum machine, and a decidedly "bedroom" aura. Davyd Smith of the "Evening Standard" later wrote, "It’s hard to imagine a more lo-fi, unambitious sound." Throughout the following decade, the indie rock spheres of the American underground (bands such as college radio favorite R.E.M.), along with some British post-punk bands, were the most prominent exports of lo-fi music. According to AllMusic, the stylistic variety of their music often "fluctuated from simple pop and rock songs to free-form song structures to pure noise and arty experimentalism." Similar scenes also developed among DIY cassette-trading hip-hop and hardcore punk acts. One of the most recognizable bands was Beat Happening (1984–1992) from K Records, an influential indie pop label. They were rarely known as a "lo-fi" group during their active years, and were only noted for their pioneering role in the movement after the term's definition evolved in the mid 1990s.


title: Lo-fi music

text: Elsewhere, WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid was responsible for inventing and popularizing the "outsider music" category — much of it overlapping with lo-fi. Adam Harper credits the outsider musicians Daniel Johnston and Jandek with "form[ing] a bridge between 1980s primitivism and the lo-fi indie rock of the 1990s. ... both musicians introduced the notion that lo-fi was not just acceptable but the special context of some extraordinary and brilliant musicians." Hailing from New Zealand, the Tall Dwarfs' mid-1980s records are credited with anticipating the lo-fi sound. AllMusic wrote that Tall Dwarfs' home-recorded releases presaged "the rise of what was ultimately dubbed 'lo-fi' as the sound began to grow in prominence and influence over the course of the decades to follow."


title: Lo-fi music

text: During the 1990s, the media's usage of the word "indie" evolved from music "produced away from the music industry's largest record labels" to a particular style of rock or pop music viewed in the US as the "alternative to 'alternative'". Following the success of Nirvana's "Nevermind" (1991), alternative rock became a cultural talking point, and subsequently, the concept of a lo-fi movement coalesced between 1992 and 1994. Centered on artists such as Guided by Voices, Sebadoh, Beck, and Pavement, most of the writing about alternative and lo-fi aligned it with Generation X and "slacker" stereotypes that originated from Douglas Coupland's novel "" and Richard Linklater's film "Slacker" (both released 1991) which led to the genre being called "slacker rock". Some of the delineation between grunge and lo-fi came with respect to the music's "authenticity". Even though Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was well known for being fond of Johnston, K Records, and the Shaggs, there was a faction of indie rock that viewed grunge as a sell-out genre, believing that the imperfections of lo-fi was what gave the music its authenticity.


title: Lo-fi music

text: In April 1993, the term "lo-fi" gained mainstream currency after it was featured as a headline in "The New York Times". The most widely-read article was published by the same paper in August 1994 with the headline "Lo-Fi Rockers Opt for Raw Over Slick". In contrast to a similar story ran in the paper seven years earlier, which never deployed "lo-fi" in the context of an unprofessional recording, writer Matt Deihl conflated "lo-fi" with "DIY" and "a rough sound quality". He wrote:


title: Lo-fi music

text: The main focus in the piece was Beck and Guided by Voices, who recently become popular acts in the indie rock subculture. Beck, whose 1994 single "Loser" was recorded in a kitchen and reached the "Billboard" top 10, ultimately became the most recognizable artist associated with the "lo-fi" tag. As a response to the "lo-fi" label, Guided by Voices bandleader Robert Pollard denied having any association to its supposed movement. He said that although the band was being "championed as the pioneers of the lo-fi movement," he was not familiar with the term, and explained that "[a] lot of people were picking up [Tascam] machines at the time ... Using a four-track became common enough that they had to find a category for it: DIY, lo-fi, whatever."


title: Lo-fi music

text: At the time, music critic Simon Reynolds interpreted the seeming-movement as a reaction against grunge music, "and a weak one, since lo-fi is just grunge with even grungier production values." In turn, he said, lo-fi inspired its own reaction in the form of "post-rock". A reaction against both grunge and lo-fi, according to AllMusic, was chamber pop, which drew heavily from the rich orchestrations of Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, and Lee Hazlewood.


title: Lo-fi music

text: "Lo-fi" was applied inconsistently throughout the 1990s. Writing in the book "Hop on Pop" (2003), Tony Grajeda said that by 1995, "Rolling Stone" magazine "managed to label every other band it featured in the first half [of the year] as somehow lo-fi." One journalist in "Spin" credited Sebadoh's "Sebadoh III" (1991) with "inventing" lo-fi, characterizing the genre as "the soft rock of punk". Additionally, virtually every journalist referenced an increasing media coverage of lo-fi music while failing to acknowledge themselves as contributors to the trend.


title: Lo-fi music

text: Several books were published that helped to "canonize" lo-fi acts, usually by comparing them favorably to older musicians. For example, "Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-a-Rama" (1995) contained a chapter titled "The Lo-Fi Top 10", which mentioned Hasil Adkins, the Velvet Underground, Half Japanese, Billy Childish, Beat Happening, Royal Trux, Sebadoh, Liz Phair, Guided By Voices, Daniel Johnston, Beck and Pavement. Richie Unterberger's "Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll: Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks & More" and "the community of like-minded critics and fans surrounding him" were especially pivotal in establishing modern notions of the lo-fi aesthetic. According to Adam Harper: "In short, "Unknown Legends" bridges the interests of the [1980s] and the [Cassette Culture] Generation and those of [the 2000s], providing an early sketch, a portent – a 'leftfield blueprint', perhaps – of 00s movements like hauntology and hypnagogic pop".


title: Lo-fi music

text: The "lo-fi" tag also extended to acts such as the Mountain Goats, Nothing Painted Blue, Chris Knox, Alastair Galbraith, and Lou Barlow. "Other significant artists often aligned with 1990s lo-fi," Harper wrote, "such as Ween, the Grifters, Silver Jews, Liz Phair, Smog, Superchunk, Portastatic and Royal Trux have been largely omitted owing either to the comparative paucity of their reception or to its lesser relevance to lo-fi aesthetics."


title: Lo-fi music

text: From the late 1990s to 2000s, "lo-fi" was absorbed into regular indie discourse, where it mostly lost its connotations as an indie rock subcategory evoking "the slacker generation", "looseness", or "self-consciousness". "Pitchfork" and "The Wire" became the leading publications on music, while blogs and smaller websites took on the role previously occupied by fanzines.


title: Lo-fi music

text: The rise of modern digital audio workstations dissolved a theoretical technological division between professional and non-professional artists. Many of the prominent lo-fi acts of the 1990s adapted their sound to more professional standards and "bedroom" musicians began looking toward vintage equipment as a way to achieve an authentic lo-fi aesthetic, mirroring a similar trend in the 1990s concerning the revival of 1960s space age pop and analog synthesizers. R. Stevie Moore was increasingly cited by emerging lo-fi acts as a primary influence. His most vocal advocate, Ariel Pink, had read "Unknown Legends", and later recorded a cover version of one of the tracks included in a CD that came with the book ("Bright Lit Blue Skies"). At the time of his label debut, Pink was viewed as a novelty act, as there were virtually no other contemporary indie artists with a similar retro lo-fi sound.


title: Lo-fi music

text: Previous lo-fi artists generally rejected the influence of 1980s pop radio that informed most of Pink's sound. Afterward, a type of music dubbed "hypnagogic pop" emerged among lo-fi and post-noise musicians who engaged with elements of cultural nostalgia, childhood memory, and outdated recording technology. The label was invented by journalist David Keenan in an August 2009 piece for "The Wire", which included Pink among his examples. Pink was frequently referred to as the "godfather" of hypnagogic, chillwave or glo-fi as new acts that were associated with him (aesthetically, personally, geographically, or professionally) attracted notice from critics. According to "Pitchfork"s Marc Hogan, each of those tags described what was essentially psychedelic music. Adam Harper reflected in 2013 that there was a growing tendency among critics such as Simon Reynolds to overstate Pink's influence by failing to acknowledge predecessors such as R. Stevie Moore and the Cleaners from Venus' Martin Newell.


title: Lo-fi music

text: In the late 2010s, a form of downtempo music tagged as "lo-fi hip hop" or "chillhop" became popular among YouTube music streamers. Several of these YouTube channels attracted millions of followers. The foundation of this style came mainly from producers such as Nujabes and J Dilla.


title: Murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German

text: On February 14, 2017, the bodies of Abigail Williams (June 23, 2003 – February 13, 2017) and Liberty German (December 27, 2002 – February 13, 2017) were discovered near the Monon High Bridge Trail, which is part of the Delphi Historic Trails in Delphi, Indiana, United States, after the young girls had disappeared from the same trail the previous day. The murders have received significant media coverage because a video and audio recording of an individual believed to be the girls' killer were found on German's smartphone.


text: On October 26, 2022, a suspect was taken into custody, and was subsequently charged with two counts of murder on October 31.


text: At 1:35 p.m. on February 13, 2017, 13-year-old Abigail Joyce "Abby" Williams and 14-year-old Liberty Rose Lynn "Libby" German were dropped off by German's older sister, Kelsi German, on County Road 300 North, east of the Hoosier Heartland Highway. The girls were hiking on the Monon High Bridge over Deer Creek, among woodland in remote Deer Creek Township. At 2:07 p.m., Libby posted a photo of Abby walking the bridge; after this, they were not heard from again. They were reported missing at 5:30 p.m. after they failed to meet Liberty's father at 3:15 p.m. The families initially searched for the girls themselves before calling the police. Authorities who quickly searched the area did not initially suspect foul play in the disappearance. However, this changed when the bodies of the girls were found around noon the next day, about east of the abandoned Monon High Bridge. The bodies were found on the north bank of Deer Creek.


text: Police have not released details of how the girls were murdered. As early as February 15, 2017, Indiana State Police began circulating a still image of an individual reportedly seen on the Monon High Bridge Trail near where the two friends were slain; the grainy photograph appears to capture a Caucasian male, hands in pockets, head down, walking on the rail bridge, towards the girls. A few days later, the person in the photograph was named the prime suspect in the double-homicide.


text: On February 22, law enforcement released an audio recording where the voice of the suspect, although muffled, is heard to say, "Down the hill." At this news conference, officials credited the source of the audio and imagery to German's smartphone and further regarded her as a hero for having had the presence of mind and fortitude to secretly record the exchange. Police indicated that additional evidence from the phone had been secured but would not release further details so as not to "compromise any future trial." By this time, the reward offered in the case was set at $41,000.


text: On July 17, officers distributed a composite sketch of someone who, at that time in the investigation, was sought as a person of prime interest in the murders. It had apparently been drawn by police from eyewitnesses to a certain hiker of the Delphi Historic Trails on the day that the girls vanished.


text: On April 19, 2019, Indiana State Police announced a "new direction" in the case. On behalf of State Police and the Multi-Agency Taskforce, Superintendent Doug Carter released more materials a few days later in a press conference held on April 22. The new materials included a short video recording in which the blue-jeaned and jacketed suspect is seen walking along the rail bridge for a little over a second. Carter stated that, because of the deteriorated condition of the bridge, the suspect was not walking naturally due to the spacing between the ties.


text: An updated sketch of the suspect was also unveiled, as well as an extended version of the audio recording, in which a slight rise in the suspect's voice can be detected as he utters the word "Guys...", before the phrase "Down the hill." It was further explained that the previously released sketch, showing an older man with a goatee and cap, was now considered secondary; by contrast, the clean-shaven individual of the newly revised composite became the primary sketch of the prime suspect. Police said this person might range from age 18 to 40 but cautioned that his "youthful appearance" could make him look younger than his true age.


text: Investigators revealed they had reason to believe that the suspect might well be hiding in plain sight and that the person was almost certainly familiar with the area of Delphi, whether it be from living or working there or for another reason. An additional plea was made for help in identifying the driver of a vehicle left abandoned off the Hoosier Heartland Highway in Delphi, at the former Child Services office, between noon and 5 p.m. on the day of the murders.


text: On July 23, 2019, Paul Etter, who had been wanted for the kidnapping and rape of a 26-year-old woman on June 22 in Tippecanoe County was named as one of multiple suspects being investigated for the Williams and German murders, according to Carroll County Sheriff Tobe Leazenby. On June 27, 2019, the suspect was surrounded by police, and after a five-hour stand-off, he died by suicide.


text: Another suspect, a registered sex offender from Indiana, was arrested in Woodland Park, Colorado in September 2017 and charged with threatening strangers on a Monument trail with a hatchet. In early February 2018, authorities said the suspect was no longer considered an active person of interest in the Delphi murders.


text: On April 27, 2021, Indiana State Police detectives named another suspect as a new person of interest in the Delphi murders.


text: On October 26, 2022, a suspect was taken into custody and appeared in court on October 28. On October 31, 2022, Indiana State Police announced that the suspect had been charged with two counts of murder in the case. His trial is scheduled to begin in March 2023.


text: In response to a request from German's mother, homeowners across central Indiana have had orange lights installed on their front porches, both to commemorate the girls as well as to indicate that the murderer remains at large.


text: In August 2017, the families announced their plans to build a sports complex for Delphi in memory of the girls. A non-profit organization, L & A Park Foundation, was formed to "celebrate and commemorate the lives of Libby German and Abby Williams by creating a place for the appreciation of nature, art, play, and athleticism for generations to come." A site was procured a mile north of Delphi, and in the years following the girls' deaths, continued progress has been made in the development of Abby and Libby Memorial Park. In 2020, the L & A Park foundation was named a recipient of the NBA All-Star 2021 Legacy Grant.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union regulation on data protection and privacy in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of EU privacy law and of human rights law, in particular Article 8(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas. The GDPR's primary aim is to enhance individuals' control and rights over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business. Superseding the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, the regulation contains provisions and requirements related to the processing of personal data of individuals, formally called "data subjects", who are located in the EEA, and applies to any enterprise—regardless of its location and the data subjects' citizenship or residence—that is processing the personal information of individuals inside the EEA.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: The GDPR was adopted on 14 April 2016 and became enforceable beginning 25 May 2018. As the GDPR is a regulation, not a directive, it is directly binding and applicable, and provides flexibility for certain aspects of the regulation to be adjusted by individual member states.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: The regulation became a model for many other laws across the world, including in Turkey, Mauritius, Chile, Japan, Brazil, South Korea, South Africa, Argentina and Kenya. the United Kingdom retains the law in identical form despite no longer being an EU member state. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), adopted on 28 June 2018, has many similarities with the GDPR.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: The GDPR 2016 has eleven chapters, concerning general provisions, principles, rights of the data subject, duties of data controllers or processors, transfers of personal data to third countries, supervisory authorities, cooperation among member states, remedies, liability or penalties for breach of rights, and miscellaneous final provisions.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: The regulation applies if the data controller (an organisation that collects data from EU residents), or processor (an organisation that processes data on behalf of a data controller like cloud service providers), or the data subject (person) is based in the EU. Under certain circumstances, the regulation also applies to organisations based outside the EU if they collect or process personal data of individuals located inside the EU. The regulation does not apply to the processing of data by a person for a "purely personal or household activity and thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity." (Recital 18)


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: According to the European Commission, "Personal data is information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual. If you cannot directly identify an individual from that information, then you need to consider whether the individual is still identifiable. You should take into account the information you are processing together with all the means reasonably likely to be used by either you or any other person to identify that individual." The precise definitions of terms such as "personal data", "processing", "data subject", "controller", and "processor" are stated in Article 4 of the Regulation.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: The regulation does not purport to apply to the processing of personal data for national security activities or law enforcement of the EU; however, industry groups concerned about facing a potential conflict of laws have questioned whether Article 48 of the GDPR could be invoked to seek to prevent a data controller subject to a third country's laws from complying with a legal order from that country's law enforcement, judicial, or national security authorities to disclose to such authorities the personal data of an EU person, regardless of whether the data resides in or out of the EU. Article 48 states that any judgement of a court or tribunal and any decision of an administrative authority of a third country requiring a controller or processor to transfer or disclose personal data may not be recognised or enforceable in any manner unless based on an international agreement, like a mutual legal assistance treaty in force between the requesting third (non-EU) country and the EU or a member state. The data protection reform package also includes a separate Data Protection Directive for the police and criminal justice sector that provides rules on personal data exchanges at State level, Union level, and international levels.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: A single set of rules applies to all EU member states. Each member state establishes an independent supervisory authority (SA) to hear and investigate complaints, sanction administrative offences, etc. SAs in each member state co-operate with other SAs, providing mutual assistance and organising joint operations. If a business has multiple establishments in the EU, it must have a single SA as its "lead authority", based on the location of its "main establishment" where the main processing activities take place. The lead authority thus acts as a "one-stop shop" to supervise all the processing activities of that business throughout the EU (Articles 46–55 of the GDPR). A European Data Protection Board (EDPB) co-ordinates the SAs. EDPB thus replaces the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. There are exceptions for data processed in an employment context or in national security that still might be subject to individual country regulations (Articles 2(2)(a) and 88 of the GDPR).


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: The first reform of the personal data protection EU legislation introduced the risk-based approach as a privileged enforcement method, which shifts the duty to controllers for ensuring compliance. The reason behind the adoption of this approach resides in the wish to move data protection “from theory to practice” and towards accountability. The risk-based approach is envisioned as a type of meta-regulation that encourages controllers to go beyond their legal obligations. Its main goal is to make controllers their own enforcers, while also complementing the data protection framework and disapplying rules where they are unnecessary or not proportional. The risk-based approach requires data controllers to evaluate at each stage of the data life cycle the risks of data processing in relation to individuals' rights and freedoms. The data controllers will implement this approach through data protection impact assessments (Article 35 GDPR) and notification of a personal data breach to the supervisory authority (Article 33 GDPR), among other procedures. The risk based approach under the GDPR should not be confused with the notion of risk regulation, which is a “governmental interference with market or social processes to control potential adverse consequences” and refers to how enforcement agencies prioritize action.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: Personal data may not be processed unless there is at least one legal basis to do so. Article 6 states the lawful purposes are:


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: If informed consent is used as the lawful basis for processing, consent must have been explicit for data collected and each purpose data is used for (Article 7; defined in Article 4). Consent must be a specific, freely-given, plainly-worded, and unambiguous affirmation given by the data subject; an online form which has consent options structured as an opt-out selected by default is a violation of the GDPR, as the consent is not unambiguously affirmed by the user. In addition, multiple types of processing may not be "bundled" together into a single affirmation prompt, as this is not specific to each use of data, and the individual permissions are not freely given. (Recital 32)


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: Data subjects must be allowed to withdraw this consent at any time, and the process of doing so must not be harder than it was to opt in. (Article 7(3)) A data controller may not refuse service to users who decline consent to processing that is not strictly necessary in order to use the service. (Article 8) Consent for children, defined in the regulation as being less than 16 years old (although with the option for member states to individually make it as low as 13 years old (Article 8(1)), must be given by the child's parent or custodian, and verifiable (Article 8).


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: If consent to processing was already provided under the Data Protection Directive, a data controller does not have to re-obtain consent if the processing is documented and obtained in compliance with the GDPR's requirements (Recital 171).


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: Article 12 requires that the data controller provides information to the "data subject in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language, in particular for any information addressed specifically to a child."


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: The right of access (Article 15) is a data subject right. It gives people the right to access their personal data and information about how this personal data is being processed. A data controller must provide, upon request, an overview of the categories of data that are being processed (Article 15(1)(b)) as well as a copy of the actual data (Article 15(3)); furthermore, the data controller has to inform the data subject on details about the processing, such as the purposes of the processing (Article 15(1)(a)), with whom the data is shared (Article 15(1)(c)), and how it acquired the data (Article 15(1)(g)).


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: A data subject must be able to transfer personal data from one electronic processing system to and into another, without being prevented from doing so by the data controller. Data that has been sufficiently anonymised is excluded, but data that has been only de-identified but remains possible to link to the individual in question, such as by providing the relevant identifier, is not. In practice, however, providing such identifiers can be challenging, such as in the case of Apple's Siri, where voice and transcript data is stored with a personal identifier that the manufacturer restricts access to, or in online behavioural targeting, which relies heavily on device fingerprints that can be challenging to capture, send, and verify.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: Both data being 'provided' by the data subject and data being 'observed', such as about behaviour, are included. In addition, the data must be provided by the controller in a structured and commonly used standard electronic format. The right to data portability is provided by Article 20 of the GDPR.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: A "right to be forgotten" was replaced by a more limited "right of erasure" in the version of the GDPR that was adopted by the European Parliament in March 2014. Article 17 provides that the data subject has the right to request erasure of personal data related to them on any one of a number of grounds within 30 days, including noncompliance with Article 6(1) (lawfulness) that includes a case (f) if the legitimate interests of the controller are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject, which require protection of personal data (see also "Google Spain SL, Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Mario Costeja González").


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: Article 21 of the GDPR allows an individual to object to processing personal information for marketing or non-service related purposes. This means the data controller must allow an individual the right to stop or prevent controller from processing their personal data.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: GDPR is also clear that the data controller must inform individuals of their right to object from the first communication the controller has with them. This should be clear and separate from any other information the controller is providing and give them their options for how best to object to the processing of their data.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: There are instances the controller can refuse a request, in the circumstances that the objection request is "manifestly unfounded" or "excessive", so each case of objection must be looked at individually. Other countries such as Canada are also, following the GDPR, considering legislation to regulate automated decision making under privacy laws, even though there are policy questions as to whether this is the best way to regulate AI.


title: General Data Protection Regulation

text: Data controllers must clearly disclose any data collection, declare the lawful basis and purpose for data processing, and state how long data is being retained and if it is being shared with any third parties or outside of the EEA. Firms have the obligation to protect data of employees and consumers to the degree where only the necessary data is extracted with minimum interference with data privacy from employees, consumers, or third parties. Firms should have internal controls and regulations for various departments such as audit, internal controls, and operations. Data subjects have the right to request a portable copy of the data collected by a controller in a common format, as well as the right to have their data erased under certain circumstances. Public authorities, and businesses whose core activities consist of regular or systematic processing of personal data, are required to employ a "data protection officer" (DPO), who is responsible for managing compliance with the GDPR. Businesses must report data breaches to national supervisory authorities within 72 hours if they have an adverse effect on user privacy. In some cases, violators of the GDPR may be fined up to €20 million or up to 4% of the annual worldwide turnover of the preceding financial year in case of an enterprise, whichever is greater.