Has Queen Nefertiti finally been found? New scans provide fresh evidence for a hidden chamber beyond Tutankhamun's tomb that could hold the remains of his long-lost stepmother
It is the most famous tomb in the world, extensively studied by Egyptologists since it was discovered by Howard Carter more than a century ago and visited by hundreds of thousands every year.
But archaeologists believe they may have uncovered a new secret hiding behind the walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
For scans have revealed tantalising evidence of a previously unknown network of corridors and chambers just metres from the young pharaoh’s burial chamber.
If the researchers are right, they could contain one of ancient Egypt’s greatest missing treasures – the long-lost burial place of his stepmother, Queen Nefertiti.
The study, first reported in Nature, involved a range of geophysical surveys and clues from ground-penetrating radar.
Analysis of the tomb structure, the ground around it and wall paintings indicate there is a 'hidden complex' of corridors and rooms.
They appear to pre-date the entombment of Tutankhamun, the experts said – suggesting they could hold the remains of his stepmother. If confirmed, the discovery could 'rank among the most transformative archaeological discoveries of the modern era'.
Any excavation or drilling would require approval from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. If approved, careful drilling to deploy tiny tractors equipped with cameras could start in the next two months.
New scans have revealed tantalising evidence of a previously unknown network of corridors and chambers (pictured in purple and yellow) just metres from the young pharaoh's burial chamber (in grey). KV 9 refers to the nearby tomb of the pharaohs Ramesses V and Ramesses VI
A room inside the tomb of King Tutankhamun, who died at the age of 18 or 19, in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. Analysis of the tomb structure, the ground around it and wall paintings indicate there is a 'hidden complex' of corridors and rooms
The idea that there could be a hidden chamber within the tomb containing Tutankhamun's predecessor, Nefertiti, was first proposed in 2015 by British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves
He said lines and cracks in the north wall of the burial chamber, as well as alterations to the room's paintings, made him believe the structure was a false wall.
The tomb itself is unexpectedly small for a royal burial, leading some to think it is part of a larger network of chambers.
Mr Reeves proposed that when Tutankhamun died unexpectedly, as a teenager, a much larger royal tomb was adapted for his burial, with the deeper sections blocked off.
For the new study, archaeologists at Egypt's National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics used powerful ground-penetrating radar to probe the interior walls of the tomb.
Their analysis indicates a 6.5 foot (two metre) wide corridor leading away from the burial chamber.
George Ballard, co-author of the study, said previous teams may have missed it because they were searching for a large void immediately behind the wall.
Further investigations involving a microgravity survey – a technique that can measure density through tiny variations in the Earth's gravitational field – pointed to a series of hidden chambers tucked into the rock behind.
Further investigations involving a microgravity survey – a technique that can measure density through tiny variations in the Earth's magnetic field – pointed to a series of hidden chambers tucked into the rock behind (depicted with dashed yellow lines)
The proposed opening to the corridor, in what experts believe could be a 'false wall' in the side of Tutankhamun's tomb
The study, published in Occasional Papers of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project, compares the layout of Tutankhamun's tomb to others, including that of Hatshepsut – one of ancient Egypt's most powerful female pharaohs.
The team point out that the exit in Tutankhamun's tomb is left-turning – identical to the layout of Hatshepsut's resting place.
However, tombs for kings during this period all have right-turning exits.
'The implication of this leftwards turn is clear,' the team wrote. 'KV 62 [Tutankhamun's tomb] conforms to the architectural grammar of neither a private nor a kingly monument.
'The plan Tutankhamun's tomb follows is that of an Eighteenth Dynasty Queen.'
The researchers add that Tutankhamun's burial chamber may have initially served as an intermediary space separating the tomb's visible outer apartments from an original burial suite further back.
This adds to the theory that the tomb was originally for Queen Nefertiti, before being adapted for the early death of her stepson.
The walls of Tutankhamun's burial chamber may contain another clue. Experts believe some of the paintings were originally created for an earlier royal – and that images of Nefertiti may have been altered to portray her stepson after his unexpected death.
Experts believe some of the paintings were originally created for an earlier royal – and that images of Nefertiti may have been altered to portray her son after his unexpected death
View of the proposed funerary complex, showing how it cuts deep into the rock in the Valley of the Kings
'Close analysis confirms that the space employed as a burial chamber for Tutankhamun had not been conceived as such,' the researchers wrote.
'It had originally played a very different, median role within a larger, ultimately regal tomb.
'The identification of the owner and original occupant of this larger tomb is dependent on satisfying a tightly constrained set of conditions: to have been female, as tomb type indicates… to have enjoyed full pharaonic status, and to have been Tutankhamun's immediate predecessor.
'With none but Nefertiti… meeting these criteria, it comes as no surprise to find the north wall's ownership imagery replicating the precise profile of this very lady.'
The team suggest that Tutankhamun's death – barely a decade after his stepmother passed away – prompted the reopening of Nefertiti's tomb and for the outermost rooms to be repurposed as his burial chamber.
'[This room] was now redesigned as a burial chamber for Tutankhamun, with satellite side-rooms newly quarried,' the team wrote.
'[The] single, north wall scene was then revised to suit its new ownership and role.
'By the time these changes had been fully implemented, KV 62 presented the appearance of ownership by Tutankhamun alone – which, for more than a century, is how it has been completely misunderstood.'
One chamber in particular appears to be closed off, with no link to other entrances.
The researchers said there's a chance it could be filled with objects – which may not have been touched since they were first put there more than 3,000 years ago.
The face of Tutankhamun was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, and ruled between 1332 BC and 1323 BC. Right, his famous gold funeral mask
Tutankhamun was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, and ruled between 1332 BC and 1323 BC.
He was the son of Akhenaten and took to the throne at the age of nine or ten.
When he became king, he married his half-sister, Ankhesenpaaten.
He died at around the age of 18 and his cause of death is unknown.
In 1907, Lord Carnarvon George Herbert asked English archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter to supervise excavations in the Valley of the Kings.
On 4 November 1922, Carter's group found steps that led to Tutankhamun's tomb.
He spent several months cataloguing the antechamber before opening the burial chamber and discovering the sarcophagus in February 1923.
When the tomb was discovered in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter, under the patronage of Lord Carnarvon, the media frenzy that followed was unprecedented.
Carter and his team took 10 years to clear the tomb of its treasure because of the multitude of objects found within it.
For many, Tut embodies ancient Egypt's glory because his tomb was packed with the glittering wealth of the rich 18th Dynasty from 1569 to 1315 BC.
Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass (3rd L) supervises the removal of the lid of the sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun in his underground tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings in 2007.
EXCLUSIVE - Noah's Ark resting place '100% confirmed' after 4,300 years as astonishing 'man-made' structure is detected buried deep underground
High in the mountains of Turkey sits a mysterious boat-shaped formation that some researchers believe could be the remains of Noah's Ark.
According to the Bible, the massive vessel saved humanity and every kind of animal from annihilation during a catastrophic flood that some biblical chronologies place more than 4,300 years ago.
Now, an international team examining the Durupınar Formation near Mount Ararat claims it has '100 percent confirmed' that the mound is not a natural geological feature but a 'man-made object.'
Recent radar surveys reportedly revealed structural layers, straight lines, right-angle intersections and large cavity-like spaces at multiple depths.
Most strikingly, researchers claim scans show potential chambers, corridors and tunnels along with a thick underground layer dividing into three parts – a feature they compared to God's command in Genesis for Noah to build the Ark with three decks.
Physical core drilling also found a layer rich in organic material, which researchers are testing to determine whether it contains decayed wood.
Independent researcher Andrew Jones, the founder of Noah's Ark Scans who has investigated the area for nearly 30 years, told the Daily Mail neither the radar surveys nor drilling conducted inside the formation detected limestone or solid bedrock.
'This destroys the theory the site is a solid limestone block shaped into a boat by glaciers and weathering after coming down the mountainside, and it also refutes the theory that this is bedrock around which mud flowed to form the shape,' he said.
A group of researchers think a formation in Turkish mountains could be remains of Noah's Ark
The team recently drilled into the formation, collecting samples that may contain vital evidence
Jones acknowledged the evidence has not definitively identified the formation as the biblical vessel.
But he added: 'I firmly believe the Durupınar Formation represents the buried remains of Noah's Ark.'
He described the latest scans as a 'compelling new line of evidence' suggesting the site contains non-natural structures, but said they are not definitive proof.
The first major radar survey in 2019 detected linear and angular anomalies the team interpreted as possible walls, passageways and separate compartments.
A deeper investigation conducted in 2026 by Dr Khosrow Bakhtar used an advanced radar system developed through US Air Force research, capable of probing significantly deeper than earlier equipment.
The system detected massive layered reflectors, underground boundaries that bounce radar signals back toward the surface, as well as what the team interpreted as sediment-filled cavities.
Five prominent anomalies appeared to form a possible tunnel system extending across roughly 151 feet, with an average structural height of over 14 feet.
An international team are '100 percent confident' that the formation is a 'man-made object
Two other major anomalies measured approximately 26 feet and 39 feet high, while another distinct underground feature stood about 23 feet high.
At several locations, the radar detected a layer measuring between 16 and 20 feet thick, approximately 16 feet beneath the surface.
That layer appeared to contain three separate sublayers.
But the readings are not photographs of exposed rooms or passageways. They instead show how radar waves reacted to different materials and boundaries beneath the ground.
Those anomalies must be physically investigated before researchers can determine what produced them.
The team is using the measurements as a road map to select the most promising locations for further drilling.
The site was formally identified in 1959 by a shepherd and has sparked intrigue ever since
The samples (pictured) will be tested for signs of decaying wood, which may prove the theory
Lauren Witzke, director of marketing and fundraising for Noah's Ark Scans, claimed the formation's uppermost section is deteriorating.
'The top, and most exposed, tier is decaying, and the hardened mudflow encasing the rims of the boat are basically the only thing holding it together,' she said.
'It's very fragile, as to be expected with 4,300-year-old wood. But beneath the surface, the bottom two layers appear to still be intact, and we believe we have hit a floor of petrified wood.'
However, researchers have not confirmed the material is wood, nor have they scientifically dated anything recovered from drilling to 4,300 years ago.
Jones stressed the figure represents a proposed biblical time frame for the flood rather than an established scientific age.
The team must isolate suitable organic material from its core samples and submit it for radiocarbon dating before it can determine whether the site fits that timeline.
Researchers have also discovered pottery outside the formation dating from the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, through the Iron Age.
The team said the pottery helps establish people occupied or visited the mountainside across a long period of ancient history and identifies areas that may warrant further archaeological investigation.
The radar captured 'a series of right angles' about 20 feet down, which researchers believe could be rooms that held animals on the ark
Further studies using infrared thermography (IRT) may show a ship-shaped hull under the soil
'It's quite possible this pottery was used to store food and supplies on the Ark, and was used as Noah's family exited the Ark and set up camp (the Bible says Noah was living in a tent),' Witzke shared in a statement.
However, Jones acknowledged pottery alone cannot establish that the formation is the Ark or demonstrate that the people who left the artifacts were connected to it.
The Durupınar Formation lies about 18 miles south of Mount Ararat, Turkey's highest peak.
Local accounts claim heavy rain and earthquakes exposed its unusual outline in 1948, when it was reportedly noticed by a Kurdish shepherd.
The site was formally identified in 1959 after Turkish Army Captain İlhan Durupınar spotted its ship-like outline in aerial survey photographs.
The team found pottery which they say predates what biblical scholars call the Great Flood
The Durupınar Formation lies about 18 miles south of Mount Ararat, Turkey's highest peak
Much of the fascination surrounding the mound stems from its elongated shape and dimensions, which researchers say closely resemble the biblical description of the Ark.
Scripture describes the vessel as roughly 515 feet long, 86 feet wide and 52 feet tall. Yet the formation has divided investigators for decades.
Early researchers who surveyed and excavated the site reported finding only soil and rocks, concluding it was a naturally formed geological feature rather than remains of a vessel.
Most geologists continue to favor a natural explanation, while Ark researchers argue the new radar readings, core samples and nearby pottery justify another investigation.
'What excites me most about this phase is that we are transitioning from remote imaging to collecting physical samples deep within the site, allowing us to scientifically evaluate hypotheses that have been debated for decades,' Jones said.
RELATED
Scientists detect radio signals coming directly from an exoplanet for the first time
Radio signals coming directly from an exoplanet have been detected for the very first time.
Astronomers used the massive MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa to spot short, repeating bursts of radio waves.
Using bright galaxy cores called quasars as reference points, the scientists were able to pin down this signal's origin to a single planet 63.4 light-years from Earth.
However, the researchers say this isn't an alien civilisation trying to send us a message.
Instead, the signal is coming from the exoplanet's auroras, created by charged particles from its parent star interacting with the magnetic field.
On Earth, these same effects create the dazzling Northern Lights, but no one has been able to pick up the signal of an alien aurora outside the solar system before now.
In their pre-print paper, the researchers write: 'Although auroral radio bursts are observed in Solar System planets and in some ultracool dwarfs, no radio detection has previously been unambiguously localized to an extrasolar planet rather than its host star.'
Radio signals coming directly from an exoplanet, a planet outside the solar system, have been detected for the very first time (illustrated)
Astronomers used the massive MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa to spot short, repeating bursts of radio waves (illustrated)
On four separate occasions in 2025 and 2026, scientists focused their radio telescopes on the distant star Beta Pictoris.
Previous studies have found that this star is home to four orbiting exoplanets, named Beta Pictoris a, Beta Pictoris b, Beta Pictoris c and Beta Pictoris d.
Although scientists have detected powerful radio bursts from the solar system, it has previously been immensely difficult to filter out any planetary signals from the noise of a nearby star.
However, the particular type of star and radio signal the astronomers found made this fine separation possible for the first time.
The radio signal was highly circularly polarised, which is a classic signature of a signal emitted by a planet's aurora.
Beta Pictoris is also an 'early–type star', meaning it is larger, hotter, and structured differently from stars like our sun.
However, these types of stars are incapable of producing the kinds of radio signals the researchers were seeing.
The authors wrote: 'No physical mechanism known to cause radio emission in early–type stars can explain the observed emission.'
That means the radio signal must be coming from one of the orbiting exoplanets, rather than the star itself.
The signals were traced back to Beta Pictoris b, a massive gas giant orbiting a star 63.4 light–years from Earth
Beta Pictoris is home to four exoplanets, including Beta Pictoris b, which became the faintest exoplanet ever to be directly imaged last year (pictured)
Using the bright reference points of quasars, the scientists finally found that the signal was being emitted by Beta Pictoris b, the second planet out from the star.
Previous studies have shown that Beta Pictoris b is a young, massive gas giant, about 10 times the mass of Jupiter.
What makes this discovery so exciting is that it opens up a new avenue for understanding the makeup of exoplanets.
Beta Pictoris b's aurora is produced by an effect called Electron Cyclotron Maser Instability, which is the same process that creates the stunning auroras on planets like Jupiter and Mars.
Since scientists have a good understanding of how this effect works, they can use the radio signals it produces to make predictions about the planet itself.
Using their new measurements, the researchers were able to show that Beta Pictoris b has an incredibly strong magnetic field, thousands of times more powerful than Earth's.
These signals are further boosted by the planet's rapid rotation, with the researchers estimating that days on Beta Pictoris b only last eight to nine hours.
While it might be disappointing that these signals don't come from an alien race, insights like these could be key to finding life beyond our solar system one day.
A planet's magnetic field insulates the surface from harmful radiation that would destroy early life and helps hold the atmosphere together against the ravages of solar wind.
If astronomers can isolate aurora signals from exoplanets, they can also figure out which planets are most likely to have conditions favourable for life.
The researchers already have plans to use their new techniques on seven other exoplanets located in five solar systems.
These planets could soon be analysed in the same way as Beta Pictoris b, with planned next-generation radio observatories making even more sensitive observations possible.
Distant stars and their orbiting planets often have conditions unlike anything we see in our atmosphere.
To understand these new world's, and what they are made of, scientists need to be able to detect what their atmospheres consist of.
They often do this by using a telescope similar to Nasa's Hubble Telescope.
These enormous satellites scan the sky and lock on to exoplanets that Nasa think may be of interest.
Here, the sensors on board perform different forms of analysis.
One of the most important and useful is called absorption spectroscopy.
This form of analysis measures the light that is coming out of a planet's atmosphere.
Every gas absorbs a slightly different wavelength of light, and when this happens a black line appears on a complete spectrum.
These lines correspond to a very specific molecule, which indicates it's presence on the planet.
They are often called Fraunhofer lines after the German astronomer and physicist that first discovered them in 1814.
By combining all the different wavelengths of lights, scientists can determine all the chemicals that make up the atmosphere of a planet.
The key is that what is missing, provides the clues to find out what is present.
It is vitally important that this is done by space telescopes, as the atmosphere of Earth would then interfere.
Absorption from chemicals in our atmosphere would skew the sample, which is why it is important to study the light before it has had chance to reach Earth.
This is often used to look for helium, sodium and even oxygen in alien atmospheres.
This diagram shows how light passing from a star and through the atmosphere of an exoplanet produces Fraunhofer lines indicating the presence of key compounds such as sodium or helium
Man takes on ‘Terminator’ robot in historic fight – and it’s as brutal as you’d expect
Sarah Hooper | Live News Reporter
American influencer Frankie LaPenna decided to go against a humanoid android robot during an MMA fight.
Believed to be a world first, LaPenna entered the ring against a Rek Robotics ‘Rekbot’, which has been compared to a T-800 from ‘The Terminator’.
Rek Robotics wrote on X: ‘We just made history with the first Human VS Terminator robot fight. Frankie LaPenna gave it his all.’
Footage from the clip showed the large robot pumping its ‘fists’, with glaring red eyes and a skull-like head attachment.
The android even ‘stretched’ before beginning to throw punches.
LaPenna put up a good fight, getting a few rounds in before the robot’s roundhouse kicked him to the ground.
Footage of the fight has already been compared to scenes from ‘The Terminator’.
One person wrote: ‘Humans are cooked.’
It was later revealed that the robot was being controlled by a human, but the fight has many people questioning what could become a reality in years to come – humans versus robots.
Recent footage of Chinese humanoid robots sparked fears that humanoids could be the future of global military conflicts.
Metro previously spoke to leading war experts about the role humanoid robots could play in future battlefields or whether they’ll remain a dystopian fantasy.
Dr James Pritchett, a War Studies Lecturer at Hull University, told Metro: ‘In the West, we have become very casualty-averse. We don’t like to take risks.
‘Robots are a great alternative to that. You can send a machine to do a person’s job.’
But China accounted for around 90% of all humanoid robots sold last year and is home to more than 451,000 companies involved in intelligent robotics.
Two of the leading humanoid companies sold a combined 10,000 robots last year, whereas Elon Musk’s Tesla has built just 150 humanoids.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has also been developing its own robotic systems.
Early last year, they conducted a trial using robot dogs to defuse explosives.
RELATED
White House Slammed Over 'Distraction' UFO File Release as Critics Call It 'Anything To Distract'
The Pentagon releases a sixth PURSUE tranche as critics question its timing and officials stress the process is ongoing
PHOTO AI-generated by Google Gemini
The US Department of War released its sixth batch of declassified and historical unidentified anomalous phenomena records on Friday, 18 September, prompting fresh debate online over whether the disclosure was meaningful or politically timed. Some social-media users characterised the release as a distraction from other issues facing President Donald Trump's administration, but the criticism does not establish that distraction was the purpose of the release.
The files were published under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, or PURSUE, the government programme created after Trump directed federal agencies on 19 February to identify and release records related to UAPs, UFOs and possible extraterrestrial life. The Department has said the material is being reviewed and released in stages as records are located, assessed and declassified.
The Pentagon
© AFP via Getty Images
Officials within the White House are being slammed for releasing a lackluster report on UFOs that many claim is a distraction from the administration's failings.
The newest batch of documents was released by the Department of Defense on Friday and contained 10 different statements and photos of what the department claimed to be UFOs. However, many of the photos taken at night show only the merest pinprick of light, which could be either a star or even a plane.
Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs and Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said the sixth release contained declassified and historical UAP files and that additional material would be published on a rolling basis. He added that the Department and its agency partners were already working on the next release.
PURSUE describes the records in its archive as unresolved, meaning the government has not been able to make a definitive determination about the phenomena shown or reported. The Department also says a case may remain unresolved simply because available information is insufficient, so the designation should not be read as confirmation of an extraordinary or extraterrestrial explanation.
Among the material in Release 06 is the 1952 Tremonton film, a long-running Project Blue Book case involving footage shot near Tremonton, Utah, by US Navy Chief Warrant Officer Delbert C. Newhouse. The release also includes historical records connected to the investigation of that film.
The tranche further includes records linked to reports from local law enforcement in Colorado in October 2023. One accompanying transcript says the officer recorded a reported UAP while narrating what was visible. Identifying details were removed to protect the source and law-enforcement activity, limiting what can be independently determined from the public version.
Other files include infrared footage gathered by US military platforms in locations including the Middle East and the Yellow Sea. The official descriptions are deliberately limited and warn that summaries of what appears in the footage should not be treated as analytical judgments or conclusions about what the objects were.
Release 06 also adds records associated with the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, or AAWSAP, including contracting material and technical research documents. Public records from the release show that the programme involved a contract valued at about $21.9 million (£16.3 million) with Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. That figure should not be described simply as money spent investigating Skinwalker Ranch because the programme covered a broader range of aerospace research.
The latest disclosure quickly became the subject of political commentary on social media. Some users described the UAP release as an attempt to divert attention from subjects including the economy, foreign policy and other controversies involving the administration. Similar distraction claims have accompanied earlier PURSUE releases.
Those reactions, however, amount to political opinion rather than evidence about why the sixth tranche appeared on 18 September. The Department's published explanation is that PURSUE is a continuing records-review project involving multiple agencies and that new material will be released as files are found and cleared for publication.
"Let's show the first clip. It was taken by a Navy aerial photographer. His name was Delbert Newhouse. It was taken along a Utah highway, he added. "If you look closely, it looks like a drone swarm, but there were no known drones in the sky when this video was taken in 1952."
"I am told they took the first and only copy of this film. They found it in the National Archives," added the Fox News host. "It has been digitized into 4K to be released right here for the first time today."
The release follows earlier PURSUE tranches published on 8 May, 22 May, 12 June, 10 July and 7 August. The sixth tranche therefore forms part of an established disclosure process rather than a one-off release announced only in response to the latest political debate.
UFO documents
© Department of War
Doocy then played another clip, which he said was taken by a Colorado law enforcement officer in 2023. "The officer's narration and some nearby buildings have been redacted," Doocy added.
The news reporter said he had heard the complete, unredacted version, in which the officer described seeing multiple orbs "hovering over a sensitive military installation for 15 minutes at a time." Doocy added, "We have a third clip taken by a drone over the Middle East last year. It showed six objects flying in formation, destination unknown."
"Depending on how they look at this, they say they do not know what they're looking at on the screen," he added. "And then there's this, there's a newly declassified copy of an expense report, a line-by-line expense report."
Doocy said that the report was the $22 million that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) used to investigate a claim of something called Skinwalker Ranch, which even had alleged UFO sightings.
"Senior White House officials are telling me they cannot find any copy of the records. They've got all the proof that this government contractor was spending $22 million to do this investigation," added Doocy. "But we should stress, again, officials do not know what the objects are in these videos that are going to go wide online after this report at war.gov slash UFO."
Many on X were quick to call out the drop as a distraction from the Trump administration's antics. "The white house. Literally anything to distract from all the garbage they're doing," one X user said.
"No one cares, people are concerned about the economy and why Trump forced America into a war on behalf of Israel," another person added. A third person joked that the administration needed to "step it up" and that the file drop was "lame."
The government has also maintained a cautious description of the evidence. PURSUE does not state that unresolved records demonstrate extraterrestrial technology, alien life or any single explanation for the reported sightings. Instead, it presents them as cases in which officials have not reached a definitive determination on the available information.
Parnell said further UAP files would continue to be published on a rolling basis. For now, the sixth release expands the public archive with material spanning decades, while claims that its timing was intended as a political distraction remain unsubstantiated.
Pentagon Releases New UFO Files Showcasing Alleged 'Flying Saucers' and Secret Defence Tech Research
The Pentagon’s latest UFO files include 1952 footage from Utah and defence research into warp drives, wormholes and cloaking technology
PHOTO Pixabay
The US Department of War released a new tranche of UFO and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) records on Friday, 18 September, including film of bright, disc‑shaped objects recorded near Tremonton, Utah, in 1952 and documents relating to a US defence programme that examined speculative concepts such as warp drives, wormholes and cloaking.
The sixth tranche was released under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, or PURSUE. The collection includes historical case files, military footage and research documents spanning decades.
The department's records classify many of the reported incidents as unresolved and do not establish that any of the objects were extraterrestrial.
The release includes the Project Blue Book file on the Tremonton incident, in which US Navy Chief Warrant Officer Delbert C. Newhouse filmed a group of bright objects on 2 July 1952. Newhouse reported seeing roughly 10 to 14 objects, which he described as disc‑shaped.
The subsequent investigation considered several possible explanations, including birds, balloons and optical effects, but did not conclusively identify the objects.
The photographic evidence did not allow investigators to reach a conclusive identification. The release also includes a roughly 65‑minute recording of Air Force Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt giving a UFO briefing in March 1952.
Ruppelt said about 20 per cent of roughly 800 cases were reports from what he regarded as reliable observers for which investigators could draw no conclusion. More recent files include infrared military footage of six spherical objects over the Middle East in 2025, accompanied by a mission report.
Some reports describe objects travelling in groups or appearing to change direction. The available imagery does not, by itself, establish the nature or origin of the objects.
The Defense Intelligence Agency's Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program(AAWSAP) programme was established in 2008 to examine potential future aerospace threats and technologies. The programme ran from 2008 to 2012 and is associated with a series of Defense Intelligence Reference Documents, 37 of which were publicly released through FOIA.
The documents cover speculative concepts including warp drives, wormholes, antigravity, negative‑mass propulsion, metallic glass and cloaking. Some of the documents also discuss methods for manipulating electromagnetic, thermal or radar signatures.
The documents were intended as reference material on potential technologies and aerospace applications, rather than as evidence that those technologies had been demonstrated.
AAWSAP's contractor was Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, a company founded by Robert Bigelow. The newly released paperwork adds detail about the programme's scope and contracting, while many of the underlying technical papers had previously been made public through FOIA releases.
President Donald Trump directed his administration in February to begin identifying and releasing government files related to UFOs, UAPs and extraterrestrial life. The first PURSUE tranche was released on 8 May, followed by additional releases in May, June, July and August.
Reaction online included both positive and sceptical commentary, with some researchers highlighting the historical records and others focusing on the footage's limitations and the extent of the redactions. Some commentators questioned the timing or political context of the release.
The department's published material does not identify the released records as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation. A department spokesman said the sixth release formed part of the continuing declassification effort, with further records to follow. The department's PURSUE website provides access to the released records and lists earlier tranches.
The released records add historical and technical detail, but they do not establish the origin of the reported objects.
UFO Researcher Becomes Christian, Claiming 700 Abductions Were 'Demonic' Entities Stopped by Jesus Christ
A Florida UFO investigator says 700 alleged abductions ended when witnesses called on Jesus, leading him to conclude the encounters were demonic rather than extraterrestrial (image is for illustration purposes only)
PHOTO AI Generated image
Joe Jordan, a Florida-based UFO investigator who became a Christian in 1996, says testimonies he has collected since 1997 led him to believe some alleged alien-abduction experiences have a spiritual or demonic explanation.
Jordan began studying UFO reports in the early 1990s after reading about the 1947 Roswell incident. He says he became a Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) field investigator in 1992 and later held a state section director role.
In the years that followed, his research increasingly focused on alleged alien-abduction experiences. In a July 2026 interview, Jordan said he had dealt with 'well over 700' case histories since 1997 involving people who reported alleged abduction encounters.
Jordan's turning point came with an experiencer he identified only as 'Bill D.' Jordan said the man described the experience as dark and having satanic overtones. According to Jordan, the man cried out, 'Jesus, Jesus, help me!' and reported that the experience immediately stopped, he then said he woke up in his bed.
Jordan said the account surprised him because, in his view, researchers he had encountered at the time generally treated alleged abductions as experiences that could not be stopped once they began.
He says he subsequently collected numerous similar testimonies from people who reported that prayers, hymns or invocations of Jesus ended their experiences, and said he had repeatedly encountered testimonies in which the reported experience ended after the person invoked Jesus.
'The way it changed my life is seeing that the power and the name and authority of Jesus Christ convinced me 100 percent that God is real, the Bible is real, Jesus was real,' Jordan said. 'You call on him for help, he's there for help.'
Jordan rejects the idea that people are physically transported aboard spacecraft. He instead describes the experiences as 'demonic spiritual visionary experience[s]' and says, 'Nobody's getting taken anywhere.' He has also argued that involvement with occult or paranormal practices can, in his view, make people more vulnerable to such experiences.
The idea that some UFO phenomena may have a non-extraterrestrial or interdimensional explanation has been discussed by researchers including Jacques Vallée, while Hal Puthoff has discussed a range of possible 'ultraterrestrial' interpretations, including demonic or djinn-like possibilities. Some Christian commentators have also argued that alleged extraterrestrial encounters could have a demonic explanation.
The idea has even reached the highest levels of US politics. Vice President JD Vance said during a March 27, 2026, podcast appearance that he did not think UFOs were aliens, adding, 'I think they're demons.' Vance added that, in his view, major world religions have long recognised phenomena that are difficult to explain.
Jordan alleges that some UFO researchers have encountered similar testimonies but chose not to discuss them publicly because they feared the effect on their credibility. He has not publicly identified those researchers. Jordan has described the alleged withholding of such accounts by researchers as a 'cover-up.'
Jordan says his Christian faith predates much of his later research. He has described himself before his conversion as a New Age practitioner who used crystals and said he became a Christian in the autumn of 1996 after a Christian acquaintance gave him a Bible.
Jordan has described himself as a safety professional working for Blue Origin in Florida. He pointed to the US government's longstanding lack of verified evidence that UFOs or UAPs are extraterrestrial.
In a 2024 historical review, the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office said it had found no evidence that any US government investigation, academic-sponsored research or official review had confirmed a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology.
Jordan's own research describes the alleged phenomenon in terms of interdimensional, extradimensional or ultradimensional possibilities rather than 'extraterrestrial biological entities.'
The accounts described in this article are based primarily on testimony and claims made by Jordan and people he says he has interviewed. Reports have not independently verified the alleged abduction experiences or established that they were caused by extraterrestrial or demonic entities.
According to Jordan, some of the people whose testimonies he has collected described paralysis, fear and encounters with entities they believed were extraterrestrial, followed by an end to the experience after they invoked Jesus.
Whether the reports reflect a spiritual phenomenon, a psychological or neurological experience, or another explanation remains unresolved. For now, the available evidence establishes the existence of the testimonies, not the supernatural explanation Jordan assigns to them.
RELATED
US Military Thought 1952 'Flying Disc' Footage Showed Seagulls Before Declassified Documents Dropped
The US military recorded UFO reports ranging from floating orbs travelling at 480 mph over the Middle East to a 1952 'flying disc' case that the Air Force later attributed to seagulls, according to newly released declassified UFO files. The records detail sightings and investigations spanning several decades.
UFOs And Floating Orbs Recorded At 480 MPH
For context, a 2025 US Central Command (CENTCOM) report detailed a sighting involving 'six small spherical objects, grouped together' that were 'frequently changing direction' while travelling at 480 mph. One minute of accompanying video showed the objects flying over what appeared to be a desert region.
The files also include a 2023 video showing circular objects over the Yellow Sea. The objects were spotted by an infrared sensor aboard a US military platform, according to the report.
That same year, a Colorado law enforcement officer recorded a 15-minute mobile phone video of a UFO with 'red, blue and green flashing lights'. The object remained 'silent' while hovering in the sky.
The recent reports appear alongside historical records from the office of the US Air Force Director of Intelligence concerning 'flying disc' incidents recorded between September and December 1952.
Declassified UFO Files Revisit 1952 Flying Disc Footage
A separate 1952 incident involved Chief Warrant Officer Delbert Newhouse, who saw what appeared to be flying discs near Tremonton, Utah, and captured the objects on film. He was travelling from Washington, DC, to Portland, Oregon, when he recorded the footage on 2 July using a Bell and Howell auto master camera.
The 16mm Kodachrome colour motion-picture footage showed a group of bright airborne objects. According to the declassified document webpage, the film later became one of the visual cases reviewed by Project Blue Book, the US Air Force programme that investigated the nature and origin of UFOs from 1952 to 1969.
Investigators considered whether the objects could have been 'pillow balloons'. They contacted General Mills, described in the document as 'the only known manufacturer of pillow balloons at the time', to determine whether a balloon release could account for the incident.
In 1956, the Air Force Photo Reconnaissance Lab concluded that the light in the film 'was caused by seagulls soaring in thermal air currents'. However, another analysis in the files said it was 'believed to be reasonably certain' that the objects' reflection brightness exceeded that of natural diffusing objects such as white birds against the sky.
The records also describe a separate report made the day before Newhouse filmed the objects. An unidentified correspondent reported seeing a 'white object, shaped like an "elongated oval"' but 'fatter than a cigar', with an estimated length of about 100 feet.
The newly released files follow an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in February 2026 that, according to the source, declassified most information concerning the government's unresolved strange-sighting cases. The release places recent military observations alongside historical records documenting earlier investigations into reported aerial objects.
Scientists Heard Earth’s Magnetic Field Collapse 41,000 Years Ago, And It Sounds Straight Out Of A Horror Movie
Scientists have recreated the sound of an ancient disruption in Earth’s magnetic field, revealing a rare planetary event from 41,000 years ago.
© Credit: Shutterstock
Scientists have transformed data from one of Earth’s most dramatic magnetic disturbances into an unusual soundscape, allowing listeners to hear the changes that affected the planet’s protective magnetic shield around 41,000 years ago. The reconstruction was presented by the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of its work exploring Earth’s magnetic history and the forces shaping our planet.
The audio representation comes from the period known as the Laschamps event, a temporary weakening and partial reversal of Earth’s magnetic field that occurred during the last ice age. Researchers used measurements of magnetic particles preserved in geological records to recreate how the field changed over time.
The Earth’s magnetic field is generated by movements inside the planet’s outer core, where flowing molten iron creates a global shield against charged particles from the Sun and space. Over geological timescales, this field can weaken, shift direction, and recover.
During the Laschamps event, magnetic strength dropped significantly compared with normal conditions. The magnetic north and south poles did not permanently switch places, but the field became unstable before returning to its current configuration.
Researchers recreated this period by combining evidence from ancient rocks, sediments, and other natural archives that recorded changes in magnetic conditions. The data was then converted into sound frequencies, creating a representation of how the magnetic fluctuations evolved.
The European Space Agency published the sonification project to demonstrate how space and planetary science data can be experienced through different senses. The agency has used satellite observations and scientific models to study changes in Earth’s magnetic environment.
The resulting soundscape contains deep, unsettling tones created from variations in magnetic field intensity and movement. The audio does not represent a threat from the past, but provides a new perspective on the dynamic nature of Earth’s invisible shield.
Strength of the magnetic field at Earth’s surface.
Credit: ESA
The Laschamps event occurred during a period when Earth was already experiencing major environmental transformations. Scientists continue to examine how changes in the magnetic field may have interacted with conditions on the surface.
Researchers studying this ancient period have found links between the event and other records of environmental shifts.
“This is consistent with climate and environmental changes from this time observed in other records from across the globe, such as the mysterious extinction of Australia’s megafauna.”
The same period also overlaps with evidence of early human cultural activity. “Curiously, it also coincides with some of our oldest cave art on record, prompting the researchers to hypothesize that the event could have driven humans indoors.”
Scientists stress that the relationship between the magnetic event, environmental changes, and human behavior remains an area of investigation. The evidence does not show that the magnetic disruption directly caused these developments, but the timing has encouraged researchers to explore possible connections.
The study of past magnetic changes helps scientists understand how Earth’s protective system behaves during periods of instability. These ancient records provide a long-term perspective that cannot be obtained from modern observations alone.
Modern researchers are also monitoring unusual areas of Earth’s magnetic field, including the South Atlantic Anomaly, a region where the field is weaker than surrounding areas. This zone affects satellite operations because spacecraft passing through it can encounter higher levels of energetic particles.
The anomaly has attracted attention because its behavior is not identical across the region. Scientists are studying whether current changes represent normal variations in Earth’s magnetic system or part of a longer pattern.
“The South Atlantic Anomaly is not just a single block,” said Chris Finlay, professor of geomagnetism at the Technical University of Denmark, who led a 2025 study examining the growth in the anomaly.
“It’s changing differently towards Africa than it is near South America. There’s something special happening in this region that is causing the field to weaken in a more intense way.”
Researchers continue to use satellite missions, including ESA’s Swarm satellites, to monitor magnetic changes around the planet. These observations provide detailed measurements of how the field evolves over years and decades.
The ancient Laschamps event and modern magnetic variations occur on very different timescales, but studying both helps scientists build a broader picture of Earth’s magnetic behavior.
Understanding past magnetic disruptions gives scientists information about the possible range of changes that can occur within Earth’s magnetic system. These records also support research into space weather, satellite protection, and the interaction between Earth and its surrounding environment.
“Understanding these extreme events is important for their occurrence in the future, space climate predictions, and assessing the effects on the environment and on the Earth system,” said Sanja Panovska of GFZ Potsdam, Germany, who reconstructed the magnetic field data behind the sonification back in 2024.
The recreated sound of the Laschamps event offers a new method for communicating complex planetary science. By turning invisible magnetic movements into audio, researchers can make changes that normally exist only in datasets more accessible.
Earth’s magnetic field remains active and constantly changing. The sound created from its ancient transformation serves as a reminder that the planet’s protective systems have a long history of variation and adaptation.
Future missions and geological research will continue examining how magnetic changes unfold and what they reveal about Earth’s interior, atmosphere, and relationship with space.
Oxygen on Mars is proposed to be extracted from carbon dioxide using cold plasma
To bring astronauts back from Mars, the oxidizer needed for the return launch will have to be produced directly on the planet. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researchers have developed a small plasma reactor for this purpose that splits carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere. That part of the process is already working well. The harder task is capturing the oxygen before it recombines with the other reaction products.
Artist’s illustration of a possible residential base on Mars together with other surface facilities.
Credit: NASA
Crewed missions to Mars are planned in the coming decades by NASA and China, Universe Today notes. In rockets that use liquid oxygen, the oxidizer accounts for most of the mass loaded into the tanks. According to agency estimates, launching an ascent vehicle carrying four astronauts from the Martian surface would require about 25 tons of oxygen. Transporting that much from Earth would significantly increase the mass of the entire mission.
Real-world experience so far has been far more modest. Using the MOXIE instrument aboard the Perseverance rover, 16 runs were carried out between 2021 and 2023, producing a total of 122 grams of oxygen. The amount required is roughly two hundred thousand times greater.
MIT graduate student Lanie McKinney led the development under the supervision of Associate Professor Carmen Guerra-García, according to MIT News. In her small reactor, CO2 molecules, which make up almost the entire Martian atmosphere, were split by cold plasma into oxygen and carbon monoxide.
In this state of matter, energy is transferred mainly to the electrons, while the remaining particles stay relatively cool. This makes it possible to break chemical bonds without heating the system to about 800°C, as is required by the MOXIE instrument.
The device is a nanosecond repetitively pulsed dielectric barrier discharge system, or NRP-DBD. Its tube is filled with beads. Lanie McKinney studied how the material used for this packing affects the splitting process. A description of the work has not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal; the results are currently known only from the researcher’s university profile.
According to Lanie McKinney, the splitting stage has been made to work very well. The challenge begins afterward. The output is a mixture. As long as oxygen remains close to carbon monoxide, some of it recombines with it to form CO2 again.
To prevent this, the researcher combined the reactor with a membrane that selectively allows oxygen to pass through. Such a membrane is intended to remove the gas from the reaction zone faster than it can react again.
It is still unclear how the chemically active plasma environment will affect the membrane itself, because the combination of the two systems has not yet been studied in depth. Lanie McKinney acknowledged that the team does not know for certain what result to expect.
Outside her dissertation work, Lanie McKinney participated in NASA competitions as part of the student Space Resources Workshop group. The CERBERUZ team, which she co-led, won the second phase of the LunaRecycle Challenge and received $775,000. The award was given for a system that grinds mixed waste into powder for casting spare parts and producing filament for 3D printing.
Another project carried out as part of an academic course brought engineers and architects together. They looked for a way to protect lunar habitats from radiation using only local resources. Their solution was regolith bricks that could be cast and stacked without mortar or any other binding material.
RELATED
Organic matter from meteorites preserves traces of ancient water from the Solar System
The oldest meteorites still contain organic matter with oxygen that it acquired before asteroids had even formed. The source of the oxygen was most likely water in the young Solar System. In the most primitive samples, interaction with liquid inside these bodies over billions of years barely changed its isotopic composition. Geochemists at Harvard University reached this conclusion after measuring the ratio of the three oxygen isotopes in the organic material with high precision. The result helps determine where this material formed and also sheds light on the origin of the reference line scientists use to compare the composition of primitive minerals.
Interior section of a carbonaceous chondrite containing organic matter from the early Solar System.
Credit: Mikhail Petaev (Harvard University). Source: EurekAlert
The isotopic composition of the organic matter turned out to be almost identical in seven carbonaceous chondrites from different chemical groups. These are stony meteorites that have not melted since the formation of the Solar System and contain up to 4% carbon by mass. The studied samples included members of the CI, CM, and CR classes, as well as the rare Bells and Tarda meteorites.
The deviation in the proportion of oxygen-18 from the terrestrial standard fell within a narrow range of 10.4 to 12.3 per mille. If the organic matter had exchanged atoms with water inside asteroids for a long time, the authors calculated that this value would have ranged from 27 to 58 per mille.
The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The first author, Daniel Crocker, and co-author David Johnston work in Harvard University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
Oxygen atoms occur in three forms with masses of 16, 17, and 18, known as isotopes. On Earth, the ratios between them change according to a constant rule, so all terrestrial samples line up along a single line on a graph. The oldest minerals in meteorites fall along a different trend. This difference is explained by the mixing of two oxygen reservoirs with different proportions of the lightest isotope in the young Solar System.
A 520-gram fragment of the Allende meteorite. This carbonaceous chondrite fell in Mexico on February 8, 1969.
Credit: H. Raab. Source: Wikipedia
This pattern was first described in 1977 using samples from the Allende meteorite and was called the Carbonaceous Chondrite Anhydrous Mineral line, or CCAM. Other variants were proposed later. Some scientists considered CCAM merely a copy of the original line that had later been shifted by secondary processes, such as exchange with water. The organic matter from all seven samples studied fell on or near this line. If secondary processes had really shifted the line, the minerals and organic matter would have had to end up by chance in the same place on the graph, which the authors consider unlikely.
Organic matter from six meteorites that had experienced thermal effects inside their parent bodies or during impacts showed a different isotopic composition. The proportions of oxygen-17 and oxygen-18 decreased, even though the loss of volatile substances and exchange of atoms with the surrounding environment usually increase them.
To test this, organic matter from the Mighei meteorite was kept in a vacuum for one hour at 500 and 600°C. This chondrite fell in 1889 near the village of Migiia in what is now Mykolaiv Region. In the study, it served as a sample of primitive organic matter that had not previously undergone strong heating.
After the experiment, the composition of the sample shifted in the same way as in naturally heated chondrites. It is likely that before thermal alteration, the organic matter in all of the meteorites studied had the same heavy-oxygen content.
The authors concluded that the organic matter acquired its oxygen during its own synthesis, before it became incorporated into asteroids. The source was probably water depleted in the lightest isotope. Enrichment in nitrogen-15 and deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, points to a cold environment exposed to intense radiation. Such conditions, as Interesting Engineering writes, existed in the icy outskirts of the young Solar System.
Artist’s illustration of a protoplanetary disk
The authors explain the identical composition of samples from different meteorites in two possible ways. Either a single reservoir of organic matter spread throughout the outer part of the disk, or the same chemical process occurred everywhere within it.
If carbonaceous chondrites delivered most of Earth’s volatile substances, then this organic matter became a major source of carbon and nitrogen for the young planet, the authors argue. These elements later helped make Earth suitable for life.
The two possible origins of the organic matter will now be tested using models of protoplanetary-disk chemistry. Scientists will also need to explain why the oxygen in meteoritic material is compositionally close to terrestrial oxygen, while our star, according to solar-wind measurements, is enriched in oxygen-16.
UFO or drone? Strange object lights up Tehran sky 50 years after famous sighting
Tehran is once again looking up at a mysterious object in the night sky — almost 50 years after the Iranian capital became the centre of one of the world's most talked-about UFO sightings.
Videos circulating on social media appear to show a brightly lit object hovering or moving slowly over Tehran.
The footage has triggered a familiar question: UFO, drone, aircraft — or something far less mysterious? For now, there is no clear answer.
Iranian authorities have not publicly identified what was captured in the videos.
The timing has added another layer to the intrigue. The new footage appeared almost 50 years after a documented aerial incident over Tehran on September 19, 1976.
That case began with reports from residents in the Shemiran area who said they had seen a strange, bright object in the sky.
A declassified US government report later recorded the account of the Imperial Iranian Air Force and the response by two F-4 Phantom fighter jets.
According to the report, the first F-4 lost its instrumentation and communications as it approached the object. The systems reportedly returned after the pilot turned away. A second F-4 was then sent to investigate and acquired the object on radar.
The second crew reported another unusual development when a smaller object appeared to separate from the main one. The pilot attempted to engage it, but the aircraft's weapons-control system and communications reportedly failed at that moment.
The 1976 encounter was subsequently documented in US government records and remains one of the better-known historical UFO cases involving military aircraft.
Some social media users suggested that the lights could be from a military drone or multiple drones flying together, while others speculated that the object could be an aircraft or some form of unidentified aerial phenomenon. None of these theories has been independently confirmed.
The footage also prompted a wave of humorous reactions online, with suggestions ranging from Aladdin's flying carpet to Chinese LED lights.
“From the colours of this UFO, I think this must be a flying object of a female Alien. Just see, how beautifully she has decorated her interstellar spaceship with amazingly colourful lights,” one person wrote.
Another joked, “The aliens are here to broker peace between Trump and Iran.”
A third commenter had a more practical question: “Why are aliens using cheap RGB lights?”
RELATED
Mystery object spotted over Iran sparks buzz over US 'Black Manta' spy jet
US Black Manta Iran
Written By: Abhishek De
Amid renewed fighting between the US and Iran, a mysterious object with bright, multi-coloured lights was seen hovering over Tehran this week. It looked like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. The sighting has now revived speculation about a highly secretive US aircraft, allegedly called the TR-3B 'Black Manta'. While the US has never acknowledged it, there have been previous sightings of a large, dark triangular object moving quietly at low altitudes - similar to what was seen over Iran.
The mysterious object was first spotted gliding through the sky near the Azadegan Expressway in Tehran on September 20. The visuals show a large, crescent-shaped aircraft with multi-coloured lights. On September 21, another video emerged showing a strange cluster of lights moving across the skies in Iran's Zahedan.
The sudden appearance of the mysterious objects has sparked a wave of theories. Some suggested it was an illuminated kite. But not all were convinced, considering the huge size of the object.
Others suggested that it could be a mystery drone or even an extraterrestrial object. So far, the Iranian military or government has remained tight-lipped on the sightings.
A section of experts have revived an even more intriguing theory - the enigmatic 'Black Manta' aircraft. However, there is no public evidence to confirm the existence of such a jet. Its existence is purely speculative. Despite this, the 'Black Manta' legend refuses to die.
What has given fresh momentum to the 'Black Manta' theory is Donald Trump's recent claim that the US has "weapons that nobody has ever seen before" and that are known "only to a select few". The US President made the remarks while threatening to "wipe out" Iran.
Against this backdrop, the mysterious sightings over Iran have once again brought the alleged 'Black Manta' into focus.
Over the decades, witnesses have described it as a black, triangle-shaped UFO with a bright central light that hovers and departs with unnerving suddenness. There have been odd satellite silhouettes that match the dimensions of the 'Black Manta ', but there has been no definitive proof of its existence.
The world got a glimpse of it in 2021, when Iranian media shared an image of a triangle-shaped object on board a US aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea. A report by the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency speculated that it could actually be the top-secret TR-3 'Black Manta'.
Conspiracy theorists believe the supersonic stealth spy jet flies using anti-gravity technology. While having no gravity is impossible, its effects can be reduced or countered in various ways.
According to a report in Medium, one theory suggests that the jet uses nuclear energy to create high-pressure plasma, which creates an anti-gravity field around it.
The 'Black Manta' is also speculated to have special thrust systems that allow it to quickly change speed, direction and position. Moreover, plasma produced through nuclear reactions can reduce an aircraft's radar signature.
This is believed to make the aircraft harder to detect, making it capable of flying long distances.
While there have been independent investigations into the mysterious sightings, the most detailed one was conducted by the National Institute of Discovery Science (NIDS). The Las Vegas-based research group conducted an extensive investigation into sightings of black, triangle-like objects.
Before it was disbanded in 2004, the NIDS collected more than 150 reports from the US, Canada and Europe.
It concluded that the object appeared to be an "extremely silent" aircraft and could quickly accelerate from a hovering position using powerful nuclear-based technology. It suggested that the primary function of the 'Black Manta' was intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
However, these claims have never been independently confirmed. The mysterious 'Black Manta' may remain part of aviation folklore.
But if we look at history, there have been instances of US aircraft flying in secrecy for years before being acknowledged by Washington. The most popular being the F-117 Nighthawk, whose distinctive triangular outline generated much intrigue in the late 1980s.
The Nighthawk, believed to be the world's first operational stealth aircraft, was spotted several times since 1983, but was not publicly acknowledged until 1988.
The latest videos have also brought back memories of a popular UFO sighting over Tehran in 1976. On September 19, 1976, Iranian authorities reported seeing a bright object in the sky. While Iran sent F-4 fighter jets to probe the sighting, the identity of the object was never established.
Several years later, a pilot of one of the F-4s recounted that the object appeared to launch multiple glowing orbs that allegedly circled his plane. The 1976 incident also found its way into US government records. However, the details are sketchy.
For now, the latest sightings over Iran remain unexplained. There is no evidence that the object was the alleged 'Black Manta', or even that such an aircraft exists. But history has shown that some of America's most secretive aircraft have remained hidden from public view for years. The 'Black Manta', for now, remains an aircraft of mystery.
Space Rocks Carry Hundreds of Thousands of Complex Organic Molecules—and We Just Photographed Them
Some of the structures of the organic compounds found in the meteorites along with their chemical structures, as shown by AFM imaging.
Credit - Brookhaven National Laboratory / J.W. Frye-Jones et al.
Scientists have known for a while that meteorites contain the “building blocks” of life - complex organic molecules such as amino acids, simple sugars, or even the chemical rungs of DNA. But anyone who has taken an organic chemistry class knows there are plenty of other carbon-based molecules out there, and a new study from Joseph W. Frye-Jones of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Florida State, which was published in The Planetary Science Journal, found tens of thousands of types of previously unseen organic compounds in two of the world’s most famous meteorites.
Many meteorites formed even before the planets of the solar system, in a cauldron of gas and dust that circled the Sun. Some of them, known as carbonaceous chondrites, managed to avoid the planetary formation process and preserved their chemistry, which in some cases dates back to even before the Sun was born.
Chemists have spent decades analyzing meteorites to unlock their secrets. But when studying their organic compounds, they typically focused on specific molecules. They would take powdered meteorite samples, wash them in water or acid, and search for familiar organics like glycine or uracil. Typically those experiments were successful, but they ignored the vast majority of organic compounds in these meteorites, known as their soluble organic matter (SOM).
Fraser talks about the sugars we found in the asteroid Bennu.
Dr. Frye-Jones decided to take a different approach. He and his team gathered samples from the Murchison meteorite, which landed in Australia in 1969, and the Aguas Zarcas meteorite, which landed in Costa Rica in 2019. They then crushed them into a powder and rinsed them in four sequential solvents with decreasing polarity - methanol, ethanol, chloroform, and toluene (plus acetone specifically for the Murchison samples).
Since “like dissolves like”, the more polar solvents captured many open-chained organics containing nitrogen and oxygen, whereas the less polar ones captured oily organics with “aromatic” rings. All of the dissolved solutions were subjected to two extremely powerful instruments - a 21-Tesla Mass Spectrometer and a high resolution Atomic Force Microscope (AFM).
The 21-Tesla Mass Spec is housed at the National MagLab in Tallahassee, and is the most powerful superconducting mass spectrometer in the world. Its superpower is to measure the mass of a compound down to an absurd level of precision - the paper describes the error as being less than the mass of a single electron.
Fraser discusses finding organic building blocks in OSIRIS-REx samples.
The AFM was housed at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, and its specialty is taking actual pictures of the molecules themselves. Researcher Percy Zahl, who happens to also be an avid astronomer in addition to being an AFM expert, deposited the extracts from the organic solvents onto a copper crystal in a vacuum. Then he attached a single carbon monoxide molecule to the tip of the AFM and traced the dissolved molecules by measuring the pushback the CO molecule received while gliding over the rings of the organics. Essentially, the mass spec showed what the compounds were made of, and the AFM showed what their structure looked like.
And there were a lot of different compounds. The team found over 66,000 unique molecular formulas in Murchison and over 91,000 in Aguas Zarcas. Their mass ranges extended up to 1,000 atomic mass units, with the number of carbon atoms ranging from 10 up to 70, and with as many as 20 oxygen atoms. Interestingly, there was very little overlap in the types of molecules dissolved by the different solvents - for example less than 1% of the molecular formulas were shared between the methanol extract and the toluene extract of the Murchison samples.
Even more interesting was the discovery of organometallics. The mass spectrometer found plenty of iron-bearing organic molecules, with carbon chains that included over 35 carbon atoms. They represent stable organometallic compounds, some of which were heavily oxidized, and many of which also contained magnesium. And, despite being from the same category of asteroid, only a minority of the molecular formulas from each asteroid overlapped. Aguas Zarcas, for example, had many fewer organometallic formulas that involved magnesium than did Murchison.
The most important takeaway from this work is that meteorites didn’t simply deliver pure amino acids directly to the Earth’s surface before life sprang up here. Instead they looked more like a petrochemical reservoir similar to an oil field, with hundreds of thousands of organic compounds contained in their interiors. Ultimately, it is yet more proof that there was complex organic chemistry going on in the solar system long before there was life - and we are still very much in the dark about how that transition from abiotic chemical refinery to complex biological systems happened. But meteorites and their pristine asteroid cousins remain one of the best places to keep exploring for that answer.
Learn More:
RELATED
Mysterious UFO-like object filmed hovering over Tehran
Rep. Tim Burchett Reveals Viral ‘UFO’ Spotted Over Iran Could Be Secret U.S. Weapons System That Mimic Alien Technology
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 21, 2026
"It's legit. It's something up there. It's just, what is it? We're seeing more and more of this stuff..."
"They're always V-shaped. I always have a hard time… pic.twitter.com/hKYxyfUPlP
EXCLUSIVE - The chilling threat to Americans floating over their heads... as insiders reveal how the next world war will actually take shape
After a string of mysterious rocket launches by SpaceX this month, the US military has finally confirmed what many suspected: space-based weapons have been placed into Earth's orbit.
The unprecedented announcement came after SpaceX would only say that they were carrying top-secret payloads for the US Space Force, launching a pair of rockets from their California base in less than a week.
Now, the top uniformed officer in America's newest military branch, USSF Chief of Space Operations General Douglas Schiess, has told the Daily Mail that space has quietly become a secret battlefield - and the US is in a struggle with other superpowers to control it.
Schiess said: 'Space is both a battlefield and the backbone of our Joint Force.
'We face determined and credible adversaries who are building and fielding counterspace systems at incredible speeds to directly target the United States' space advantage.'
'Let me be clear: Today, Guardians [Space Force personnel] operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the Joint Force against space-enabled attacks.'
On September 16, SpaceX launched a classified payload into orbit for the US Space Force, which is charged with defending the country's satellites and communications systems
A Space Force spokesperson specifically singled out Russia and China, claiming that both nations had been testing weapons for use in space for the last two decades.
While the Pentagon has not revealed what the September 2026 rocket launches were carrying for the Space Force, the White House has already made it clear that one of the military's goals is building President Donald Trump's 'Golden Dome' - a giant net of sensors and missile-interceptor satellites around the globe.
On September 14, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink made the shock announcement that those interceptors had already gone from the development phase to 'flight-ready hardware' in less than a year.
Speaking at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference, Meink said the US was prepared to deal with 'evolving threats' but did not elaborate on the weapon's offensive capabilities or when it was put into orbit.
Space Force was created in 2019 with the main mission of protecting satellites used for communications, navigation and surveillance.
However, a military spokesperson told the Daily Mail the US is facing increased threats that could originate from hostile satellites in Earth orbit - comparing the vast vacuum just miles above Earth's surface to an actual battle zone.
'The US has warned about Russian and Chinese weapons testing and operationalization since 2007. Due to their actions, it is no longer a question that space is a warfighting domain,' they said.
'Acknowledging our readiness to protect and defend against adversary use of space weapons deters aggression. The space domain is contested, and we must be able to secure our nation's interests in space - that is why the Space Force was established as the sixth military service.'
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink confirmed the US military placed weapons in orbit above Earth
President Trump has wants a 'Golden Dome' missile defense system by the end of the decade
Pictured: A hypothetical scenario showing how the US 'Golden Dome' system would activate and prevent a nuclear attack on America
The source did not reveal what the new weapons placed in orbit were capable of, when they were launched into space or how these systems operate.
Five years ago, the Russian military showed how lethal its space-based satellites could be, successfully testing a hit-to-kill anti-satellite missile in 2021.
The device obliterated a defunct, Soviet-era spy satellite launched in 1982, sparking condemnation from around the world.
It is believed that the Golden Dome, which the White House wants completed by the end of the decade, will consist of sensors and tracking satellites, ground and sea-based missile platforms and a planned 'constellation' of space-based interceptors.
Similar to the defense missile used by Israel, the 'dome' would act like a layered shield meant to detect and shoot down missiles and other airborne attacks on the American homeland.
The interceptors in space would sit in orbit and, if used, try to ram an enemy missile early in flight before it can drop warheads or decoys.
Besides the interceptors, Golden Dome is also expected to feature sensor and enemy tracking platforms sitting in orbit.
Those satellites would watch for missile launches from foreign nations or other adversaries, follow the threat across the sky and feed targeting data to the interceptors on land, at sea or in space.
Officials want them there because a missile can appear with only minutes of warning, and space is the only place that can see almost the entire surface of the Earth at one time.
While the Pentagon has not revealed the specifics of these new systems moving into the 'flight-ready' status, lawmakers in Washington have already done the math on how many interceptors will need to be launched to complete Trump's plan.
A so-called 'golden dome' would help protect the United States from outer space
The US has deployed a space weapon in the Earth's orbit for the first time, its air force said
According to a May 2026 report from the Congressional Budget Office, the US would need approximately 7,800 interceptor satellites in low Earth orbit to effectively defend the country.
That estimate came from an assessment of what it would take to stop ten long-range missiles, possibly nuclear-capable ICBMs, which were fired at America at the same time.
The CBO report also laid out a jaw-dropping $1.2 trillion price tag for the Golden Dome. This would cover the development, deployment and operation of these satellites for the next 20 years.
There is one type of weapon that the US has agreed to not launch into space - nuclear missiles or other weapons of mass destruction. These typically include chemical and biological weapons.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which the US signed and ratified, states that countries may not place nuclear devices or other similar weapons into Earth orbit, on the Moon or elsewhere in outer space.
However, that does not ban conventional weapons, signal jammers, missile interceptors or military satellites.
There are more than 110 'states parties' - meaning countries which are legally bound to obey it - that have signed the agreement over the years.
US lawmakers have raised concerns Russia wants a nuclear anti-satellite weapon in space
All major countries which have ventured into space are parties, including Russia and China.
Despite that, US lawmakers, including Republican Mike Turner, the former head of the House intelligence committee, have claimed that Russia is prepared to violate that agreement and take the space arms race nuclear.
In 2024, Turner demanded that the Biden Administration declassify all intelligence on a 'serious national security threat' that was believed to involve Russian President Vladimir Putin seeking to deploy a nuclear anti-satellite weapon in space.
Moscow denied the claim. Putin said Russia opposed nuclear weapons in space, and then-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said there were 'no such projects.'
Man vs robot: Influencer takes on 6ft humanoid in a terrifying cage fight – and it doesn't end well for him
It might sound like the plot of a bonkers sci–fi film, but the world has now witnessed the very first human vs robot boxing match.
Influencer Frankie Lapenna stepped into the ring last Friday to take on a 6ft–tall humanoid robot with a worrying resemblance to the Terminator.
The event took place in San Francisco, hosted by the robot fighting company REK, which controlled the robot remotely.
While Mr Lapenna made a valiant effort, the fight didn't end well for him.
As the influencer stepped into the ring wearing a helmet and protective pads, his visibly nervous coach said: 'I'm scared for you, man.'
The fight started with Mr Lapenna actually landing a few solid punches that rock the lumbering robot's head back and sent it stumbling.
But humanity's hopes didn't hold out for long as the robot soon countered with a devastating flurry of kicks that sent him flying across the cage.
However, although it might not look that way in the clip, REK says that Mr Lapenna actually won the fight and went on to tackle an even bigger bot later the same evening.
Influencer Frankie Lapenna stepped into the ring last Friday to take on a 6ft–tall humanoid robot with a worrying resemblance to the Terminator
Cix Liv, CEO of REK, told the Daily Mail that hosting human vs robot fights was not something the company originally planned to get into.
The San Francisco–based firm's main business is staging fights between remote–controlled robots, like a real–life version of the film Real Steel.
However, when Mr Lapenna reached out about two months ago saying he wanted to get into the ring himself, the opportunity seemed too good to turn down.
'When he reached out to us, he said he didn't want to wear any protective clothing,' Mr Liv told the Daily Mail.
'But we told him that he had to, and when he saw what the robot could do, he actually said that he needed more.'
REK described the event as its first human-versus-humanoid robot fight.
In the fights, Mr Lapenna wore motorcycle gear to shield him from the worst of the blows and spiked boxing gloves to cushion his hands.
On social media, fans were terrified by the footage of a robot pummelling a human to the floor.
On Instagram, one commenter wrote: 'Didn't we have, like, 6 movies explaining why this is a bad idea?
REK, the company hosting the fight, says that Frankie wore motorcycle protective gear and spiked boxing gloves so that he could stand a chance of surviving the robot's attacks
'This could've been a Black Mirror episode,' chimed in another.
While one bluntly wrote: 'Stop. Teaching. Them. To. Fight.'
Across the entire evening, the influencer actually took on three robots, starting with a tiny Unitree G1 and working his way up to face two of the hulking six–foot bots seen in the viral clip.
Those large robots are adapted versions of the ENGINEAI T800, which weighs up to 187lb (85kg) and costs $40,500 (£30,332).
Although they are not specifically built for fighting, their powerful limbs make an extremely powerful base for a robotic warrior.
Mr Liv says: 'We have like 500 try–hard men emailing us saying they're going to fight the robot, but they don't realise that it's like trying to punch a metal wall.'
While the average adult can kick with about 650lb (294kg) of force, REK says its large robots deliver 850lb (385kg) of force with their blows.
Although it can't be seen in this teaser clip, Mr Liv says that the influencer actually 'defeated' the massive bot seen kicking him around the ring.
The 'Terminator' robot was just one of three bots that the influencer took on that night, with each round seeing the human fighter sent flying by kicks
Mr Lapenna apparently managed to unbalance the bot and send it tumbling into the wall, where it seized up and 'ripped its head off'.
Mr Liv says he doesn't want to give away the results of the next fight, which will be released in a video tomorrow, but cautions that things didn't go so well for the human fighter.
Despite that, the only real damage sustained by Mr Lapenna is a self–inflicted hand injury that came from 'punching metal', and the influencer was otherwise unhurt.
Watch the video here:
The unusual showdown quickly attracted attention on social media, with users speculating about whether human-controlled robots could eventually become part of professional combat sports.
Mr Liv says that the company had never considered hosting human fights long term and added that this was always intended to be 'a stunt'.
But with so many people already begging to get in the ring, he says: 'We'll have to do it again.'
RELATED
‘UFOs and God’ movie: Why the year’s most unsettling film isn’t just about aliensVenus might have swallowed its moon
Scientists in California say that if Venus once had a moon of its own, the planet would inevitably have “eaten” it. The moon would have gradually lost angular momentum, eventually ending with a fall onto the planet’s surface. However, no traces of such an event have yet been found.
Venus.
Source: www.skyatnightmagazine.com
Recently, people on Earth were able to watch the Moon “eat” Venus. Of course, this was only an illusion caused by the fact that the two objects happened to line up from Earth’s point of view. However, as phys.org reports, scientists from the University of California, Riverside suggest that Venus may once have had a moon of its own, which it later consumed. A paper on the subject has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Astronomers have long been puzzled by the question of why Venus, which is very similar to Earth in mass and size and lies right next to us, has nothing comparable to the Moon. The new paper proposes looking for the answer in what is happening to our own moon.
Earth’s Moon is thought to have formed shortly after a large body collided with the very young planet. Some of the debris gathered in orbit, much closer to the surface than the Moon is today. Since then, the “jewel of the night” has been moving very slowly away from us.
This happens because Earth itself rotates around its axis much faster than the Moon orbits it. It is known that the Moon transferred its rotational momentum until its rotation became synchronized, so that it always faces us with the same side. But the reverse is also true: Earth very slowly transfers part of its daily rotational momentum to the Moon, causing it to gradually move farther away.
For Earth, one possible scenario for losing the Moon would be for it to escape the planet’s gravitational influence. For Venus, however, the new study suggests the opposite. Venus rotates around its own axis extremely slowly, once every 243 Earth days. If it had a moon, that moon would orbit the planet in a much shorter period than this. Instead of gaining angular momentum, the moon would lose it.
As a result, the orbital period of a hypothetical Venusian moon would continue to shrink until the moon eventually crashed into the planet. Scientists carried out computer simulations with different moons, first for Earth to verify that they always move outward, and then for Venus, where they consistently fell toward the planet. The more massive the moon, the sooner the collision occurred.
The idea is elegant and plausible, and the study’s authors suggest that our neighboring planet may indeed have had a moon in the past. However, there are no signs that such a moon ever existed, and most scientists doubt that Venus could ever have had anything massive in orbit.
The problem is that if Earth’s large Moon originated from a giant impact, then something similar would also have had to happen to Venus early in the history of the Solar System. Two such events within a single planetary system would be quite a coincidence.
Nevertheless, the new study is important. It shows that large moons orbiting slowly rotating planets are doomed eventually to fall onto them. This matters when considering what we should expect from Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.
As for the absence of impact traces on Venus, the explanation may be that the planet’s entire surface underwent a major resurfacing event in the relatively recent past, around a billion years ago. So even if such an event was caused by the fall of a moon, no traces would remain — just as no remnants remain of the oceans in which life may once have existed.
AI Keeps Getting Smarter—And Now Scientists Want to Know If It Can Build Robots
Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly become part of mainstream culture, with people around the world now using AI systems every day. Researchers at Harvard University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have designed a new benchmark to determine whether AI can tackle a considerably different challenge: robot engineering.
From writing code to creating AI agents and designing software, AI systems have demonstrated increasingly sophisticated capabilities in the digital world. Robots, however, introduce a physical, three-dimensional challenge. Researchers are now testing how far AI coding agents can go in meeting the demands of robotics engineering.
Now, a research team led by Na Li, a professor at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Bo Dai, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech, is tackling the question with a new open-source benchmark called RLE-Bench. The benchmark measures whether general-purpose AI agents can complete tasks associated with building and engineering robotic systems.
RLE-Bench evaluates whether an AI agent can understand how software interacts with sensors, motors, mechanical components, and the laws of physics. It includes 48 tasks across four areas, ranging from developing control and perception algorithms to designing robot hardware and interfaces.
Some challenges involve creating algorithms that allow robots to move, teaching robotic systems to perform tasks, interpreting sensor data, and designing hardware components and interfaces.
“Benchmarks are important because they give the field a common measuring stick, allowing us to compare systems under the same conditions and identify where important capability gaps remain,” Li said in a statement. “Robotics already has many valuable benchmarks, but many focus primarily on learning and evaluating control policies. RLE-Bench takes a broader view. Can an AI system perform the range of engineering tasks required to make a robotic system actually work?”
The tasks take place in simulation, where AI agents can create code, run their solutions, review the results, and make decisions to improve their work. Importantly, however, the challenges are designed around real-world engineering constraints.
An AI system, for example, might produce a design that appears successful in simulation but fails once factors such as weight, torque, balance, or geometry are taken into consideration.
Li notes that the current benchmark is only the beginning.
“RLE-Bench 1.0 is only a starting point,” he says. “We hope researchers and robotics practitioners will contribute tasks based on the engineering problems they encounter in their own work. Our goal for RLE-Bench 2.0 is to capture a much broader picture of what an AI system needs to do to function as a robot learning engineer.”
In one example, an AI agent must design a mobile base capable of supporting multiple robotic arms that need to reach objects at different heights on a shelf. While the AI-generated design might appear to work digitally, its real-world counterpart could be unstable and tip over.
China seems to be advancing quickly with regard to both robots and AI. In August 2026, Beijing hosted the second World Humanoid Robot Games, an event that put robotic systems through a variety of physical challenges.
The games featured more than 2,000 robots from 666 teams across 16 countries, with events involving potential real-world applications such as household tasks, industrial operations, and emergency rescue.
RLE-Bench and competitions like the World Humanoid Robot Games evaluate very different aspects of robotics and therefore cannot be directly compared. RLE-Bench asks whether general-purpose AI agents can perform the engineering work required to design and develop robotic systems, while physical competitions provide developers with opportunities to test how robots perform under real-world conditions.
Together, these approaches illustrate two sides of a growing challenge in robotics: developing AI systems capable of reasoning about physical machines and determining whether the resulting robotic technologies can actually perform reliably outside a simulated environment.
