Every piece and every explanation, read against the news each week

No new count of rocky planets in the habitable zone. On whether such planets keep an atmosphere: the JWST DREAMS team's four transits of TRAPPIST-1 e (Glidden and others, 2025-09-05) give no strong evidence for or against an atmosphere, with a bare rock and a nitrogen-rich atmosphere both fitting; the fifteen-transit follow-up has no published result as of 2026-10-16. A press claim (2026-07-09) that the JWST Rocky Worlds programme found GJ 3929 b airless is not on the programme's own site, which on 2026-07-10 still said the analysis was ongoing, so it is not counted. Logged: Glidden 2025.

No evidence of life beyond Earth in the window, and three results the log did not yet carry that bear on this piece's test: the Perseverance rover's potential biosignature in a Martian mudstone (Hurowitz and others, Nature, 2025-09-10; the sample stays on Mars), complex organic compounds confirmed in ice grains fresh from Enceladus's ocean (Khawaja and others, Nature Astronomy, 2025-10-01), and a 45-letter RNA molecule that copies itself and its complement in ice, at 94.1% accuracy and 0.2% yield over 72 days (Gianni and others, Science, 2026-02-13), the kind of laboratory demonstration the test names. None settles how improbable the first step is; the K2-18 b dispute stands where the 2025 reanalyses already in the log left it. The range was left alone: the shape is John's ruling, and the ingredients of life are not life.

No second example of intelligent life and no new number for this piece. Three results bear on its test and were not in the log: Mills and others (Science Advances, 2025-02-14) argue the long wait for intelligence on Earth needs no improbable steps, only windows of habitability opening in turn; Bernabeu and others (Nature, 2026-06-10) find the complex cell arose through a long succession of microbial partnerships rather than one freak capture; and Rueda-Alaña and others (Science, 2025-02-13) find birds and mammals built similar sensory brain circuits by separate routes, read as complex cognition evolving at least twice. All three lean toward the optimistic end of a range that already reaches 1; none gives a number, so the range stays.

No detection. Four new bounds and follow-ups: Mason, Garrett and Siemion (2025-11-25) limit steady beacons of at least five times ten to the sixteen watts to fewer than about one in a hundred thousand stellar systems within 2.5 kiloparsecs, by counting every star that fell in the beam of a Breakthrough Listen survey; Huang, Tao and Zhang (2026-01) find no galaxy-scale waste heat in nearby galaxies, with at most about one in 6,500 able to host it; Korn and others (2026-07-28) find two of the seven Dyson-sphere candidates of 2024 are background galaxies and none confirmed; Garrett (2026-08-31) proposes a search for cold waste heat at submillimetre wavelengths. The bounds are on strong, steady transmitters, which the range's low end of 0.01 already allows to be rare, so the range stays.

Four published arguments with a number or a reinterpretation, none in the log: Rahvar and Rouhani (2026-02-24, accepted in MNRAS Letters) turn the silence into an upper bound of about 5,000 years if life and intelligence are common; Blanco, Haqq-Misra and Profitiliotis (2026-04-15) simulate collapse and recovery and find civilisations active for 38% to 100% of their span, so the piece is better read as time spent detectable; Garrett (2025-09-28) argues the detectable phase may last mere decades; Bertolami (2025-10-08) proposes replacing the piece with an energy-and-search term. The 5,000-year bound is conditional on the other pieces being large, so narrowing the range on it would count the silence twice; the range of 100 to 10 billion years stays.

No second origin of complex cells, living or fossil. Bernabeu and others (Nature, 2026-06-10) reconstruct the ancestor of all complex cells and find its genes came from at least four microbial partners plus giant viruses over a long period, with the mitochondrion acquired late: the step still happened once, but it looks like a drawn-out association rather than a single unlikely capture, which bears on the argument that the one step was a freak. Logged.

Mills and others (Science Advances, 2025-02-14) argue the hard-steps reading of Earth's history is unnecessary, which weakens the case that a filter lies behind us; Wilman, Nicholson and Haqq-Misra (2026-01-20) summarise the symposium debate on past versus future filter without new evidence. Against that, the Mars potential biosignature and the Enceladus organics (read under the chance life starts) would, if confirmed as life, push the filter forward. Both papers logged; nothing settled.

Two papers the log did not carry, both toward the explanation: Finke and Razzaque (2024-07-22) argue the brightest burst ever seen may belong to a population of narrow-jet bursts that would hit Earth with a mass-extinction dose about once per 500 million years from anywhere in the galaxy; Quintana, Wright and Martínez García (MNRAS, 2025-03-11) find nearby supernovae come about 2.5 times per billion years, matching the rate of Earth's unexplained extinctions. Neither is a new burst-rate estimate for the whole galaxy's history, and neither finds life or its absence in the inner galaxy.

Two arguments about the lower ends of the ranges: Baak and Snoek (2026-03-02) treat humanity as one count and derive that at least 0.051 communicating civilisations in the observable universe is allowed at 95% confidence, making solitude in the observable universe disfavoured at 97.6%, while for the galaxy the bound says almost nothing; Bertolami (2025-10-08) proposes replacing the lifetime term. Neither moves the origin-of-life range's low end up or down. Logged both.

No detection of oxygen or any gas tied to complex life around another star, and no new result on how common moving continents are. TRAPPIST-1 e's four JWST transits (Glidden and others, 2025-09-05) neither find nor exclude an atmosphere. A July 2026 press claim of a biosignature on a rocky planet 40 light-years away names no paper and is not counted.

Rueda-Alaña and others (Science, 2025-02-13), with companion papers in the same issue, find that birds and mammals built similar brain circuits for complex cognition by separate developmental routes, which is the weakening test's 'intelligence arose independently in several lineages', with the caveat that the two share deep ancestry and common pressures. Mills and others (2025) remove the hard-steps support for the explanation. Logged both; the argument that no other Earth species built technology is untouched.

No second origin of life anywhere, and no evidence that life on Earth started more than once. Toward weakening: a 45-letter RNA molecule that copies itself and its complement (Gianni and others, Science, 2026-02-13), far smaller than the copying machines studied for thirty years, which the authors read as such molecules being commoner in sequence space than assumed; the Mars potential biosignature (Hurowitz and others, 2025-09-10) and Enceladus's ocean organics (Khawaja and others, 2025-10-01) are ingredients and conditions, not life. The Europa and Enceladus oceans have not been shown sterile. Logged.

No update to the grabby-aliens model. On red dwarf planets holding atmospheres, the strengthening test: TRAPPIST-1 e is unresolved (Glidden and others, 2025-09-05) and the Rocky Worlds programme's GJ 3929 b result is unpublished on its own site. Against the hard-steps picture the explanation leans on, Mills and others (2025-02-14) argue the steps were not hard. Both logged.

Blanco, Haqq-Misra and Profitiliotis (2026-04-15) simulate an Earth-born civilisation collapsing and recovering over a thousand years and find the rate of resource depletion the most influential lever, with a civilisation technologically active for as little as 38% of its span: a model of the coupled civilisation-and-planet kind the test names, though it finds intermittent activity rather than final collapse to be the usual outcome. No atmosphere bearing the traces of industry has been found; the instruments that could see one are still being planned. Logged.

Wilman, Nicholson and Haqq-Misra (2026-01-20) summarise the symposium debate on whether the filter is past or future, with no new evidence, and is logged. A preprint by Dougan (2026-02-09) proposes falling birth rates as a new filter, with an argument and no evidence, and is not logged. No signs of civilisations that existed and ended; the Mars and Enceladus results (read under the chance life starts) would strengthen this explanation only if confirmed as life.

No new estimate of how often civilisation-ending events strike a typical planet. Quintana, Wright and Martínez García (2025-03-11) find the nearby supernova rate matches the rate of Earth's unexplained extinctions, and Finke and Razzaque (2024-07-22) raise the possible rate of extinction-level gamma-ray bursts; both logged. On the weakening side, the 2022 DART impact remains the one demonstration of deflection, with China's first test planned before 2030.

Three arguments toward the explanation: Rahvar and Rouhani (2026-02-24) bound the lifetime at about 5,000 years if civilisations are common; Garrett (2025-09-28) argues the detectable phase may be mere decades; Blanco and others (2026-04-15) find civilisations detectable for only part of their span. No signal or trace that has already stopped has been found. Logged.

No evidence of suppressed stellar death or dormant structures. Garrett (2026-08-31) works out what the waste heat of a civilisation computing in the cold would look like and proposes a submillimetre search for it, noting that such civilisations may instead be asleep; that is the first concrete observational test near this explanation since the 2017 paper. Logged.

No detected civilisation either way. Reiss and Feng (Acta Astronautica, 2026) argue that fast ships are so vulnerable in transit that the dark forest's caution has a physical basis; Garrett (2026-08-31) argues cold waste heat would be conspicuous, not hidden, which cuts against the hiding the explanation needs. No peer-reviewed game-theory treatment appeared; two unreviewed preprints propose cooperative equilibria instead. Logged the two papers.

Two models with settlement that leaves gaps: Roudenko and Pierre-Boyer (2024-10-31) simulate competing civilisations and find even dominant ones leave large gaps between colonies; Ivliev (2026-06-11, unreviewed) argues expansion past a threshold is quiet and saturates a neighbourhood within ten million years, so none has reached us. No simulation on whether stellar motion erases voids. Logged both.

No civilisation whose only trace is computing's waste heat: two of the seven Dyson-sphere candidates are background galaxies (Korn and others, 2026-07-28) and nearby galaxies show no galaxy-scale waste heat (Huang and others, 2026-01). Reiss and Feng (2026) describe a civilisation withdrawing into slow time near the galaxy's central black hole, a cousin of the inward turn. Logged.

Khawaja and others (Nature Astronomy, 2025-10-01) confirm complex organic compounds in ice grains fresh from Enceladus's ocean, pointing to hydrothermal chemistry under the ice: conditions, not life. Europa Clipper flies past Earth on 2026-12-03 and reaches Jupiter in 2030. No new census of interior-ocean worlds. Logged.

No detection by any method. Toward the explanation: Garrett (2025-09-28) argues the loud phase may last decades; Garrett (2026-08-31) argues the standard infrared searches look at the wrong temperature; Vidal and others (2026-05-20) map every proposed kind of trace, including neutrinos and gravitational waves. Toward weakening it: Huang and others (2026-01) find no galaxy-scale waste heat in nearby galaxies. Optical laser searches with new spectrographs are proposed for 2026 onward, with no result yet. Logged four.

No detected civilisation, transmitting or silent. Ivliev (2026-06-11, unreviewed) argues the opposite of the explanation, that expansion becomes too cheap to refuse once industry runs itself, but quietly; the Hephaistos follow-up (Korn and others, 2026-07-28) confirms no candidate. Logged Ivliev.

No comprehensive all-sky, all-frequency search is complete; the COSMIC survey on the Very Large Array had passed 950,000 pointings by September 2024 with no detection. Mason, Garrett and Siemion (2025-11-25) show past surveys covered far more stars than their target lists suggest, which shrinks the glass-of-water argument a little; Crawford (2026-05-30) argues for artefact searches that probe accumulated time; Vidal and others (2026-05-20) map what has and has not been searched. Logged three.

No physical finding of a discrete computation or a seam. Edge and Brown (Frontiers in Physics, 2026-04-21) answer Vazza's 2025 impossibility argument by saying it refutes a stronger claim than the one made, so the 'proof of impossibility' the weakening test names has not been given; a revised Wolpert preprint (2026-03-19) argues the question turns on the Church-Turing thesis. Logged Edge and Brown.

The third interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS (Seligman and others, 2025-07-03, found 2025-07-01), is a natural comet on every measurement, with a minority arguing otherwise and no evidence for it: a natural explanation for an interstellar visitor, which is on the weakening side. Crawford (2026-05-30) proposes looking for microscopic technological debris in lunar soil, a search that has not been done. No artificial object found. Logged both.

No artificial object or signal, and no anomalous heat found: the Dyson-sphere candidates of 2024 are unconfirmed with two explained as background galaxies (Korn and others, 2026-07-28), nearby galaxies show no galaxy-scale waste heat (Huang and others, 2026-01), and no Galactic Centre heat survey appeared. On the argument's side, Garrett (2025, 2026) and Ivliev (2026) each describe machine civilisations our searches would miss, and Garrett's cold-computing paper gives the first concrete test. Logged five.

No black hole with properties that natural formation cannot explain. Reiss and Feng (Acta Astronautica, 2026) show that a civilisation could live on tolerable orbits near the galaxy's central black hole in a frame where time runs ten thousand times slower, a worked-out version of the inward withdrawal this explanation describes; a July 2026 unreviewed preprint restates the idea in formal logic and is not logged. Logged Reiss and Feng.