Harvard and Korean Researchers Lead Scientific Investigation of UFO Sightings

Inha Son

UFO sightings have continued for decades. Despite clearer photos and videos and the emergence of advanced observation equipment, the controversy has not ended. Can the identity of UFOs be revealed?

Image created by generative AI.

Investigating Suspicious UFO Sightings

Three lights moved across the sky in broad daylight. A military infrared sensor captured an unidentified circular object, and a photograph showed an object not seen with the naked eye.

Mystery 1. Three Lights in the Daytime Sky

In August 2026, three shining white dots were spotted in the sky over Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province. The objects' shapes were not clearly visible. The three dots maintained a constant distance from each other, moving slowly, and were also seen changing positions. The video did not show them suddenly accelerating or sharply changing direction.

• Insufficient Data｜Seo Jong-han, Advisor to the Korean UAP Society
  The video alone is not enough to determine the object's position or speed. We need to confirm the situation at the time of filming and interview the witness to determine what it is.

(Left) Three dots spotted in the sky over Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province, in August 2026. YouTube channel video capture - Courtesy of Children's Science Donga. (Right) UFO-related photo released by the U.S. Department of Defense. U.S. Department of Defense - Courtesy of Children's Science Donga.

Mystery 2. UFO over the West Sea Interfering with Military Sensors?
Starting in May 2026, the U.S. Department of Defense released 375 records, including photos, videos, and reports related to UFOs on five occasions. Among them was a case from Korea. In 2023, an object presumed to be a UFO was filmed over the West Sea (Yellow Sea). A high-resolution infrared sensor on a military aircraft tracked the object for about 4 minutes and 45 seconds.

• nsufficient Data｜Yoon Dong-ki, Vice President of the Korean UAP Society
  Unusual phenomena, such as interference with the military aircraft's sensors, were observed, but a precise analysis is difficult because time, speed, and location data are missing.

Mystery 3. A Giant UFO Near the Moon?
In January 2026, a research team from the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine announced the discovery of over 20 UFOs in a video of the area around the Moon filmed in 2025. Assuming the objects were near the lunar surface, their size was estimated to be up to 36 km and their speed up to 11 km/s. The objects appeared doughnut- or disk-shaped and their brightness changed periodically. The findings have not yet been published in a scientific journal.

• Insufficient Data｜Avi Loeb, Professor at Harvard University
  Observations with a single ground-based telescope can make terrestrial objects appear to be passing in front of the 

(Left) UFO data announced in January 2026 by the research team from the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Boris Ephimovich Zhilyaev et al. (Right) UFO photo taken on September 4, 1995, by Kim Seon-kyu, a photojournalist for Munhwa Ilbo. Kim Seon-kyu - Courtesy of Children's Science Donga.

Mystery 4. A UFO Captured in a Chuseok Photo?!
On September 4, 1995, Kim Seon-kyu, a photojournalist for Munhwa Ilbo, was photographing a couple threshing sesame seeds in Gapyeong County, Gyeonggi Province. While reviewing the photos, he discovered an object presumed to be a UFO above and to the right of the couple. The photo became a hot topic when it was published in the Munhwa Ilbo. The location was a no-fly zone, and the Korea Meteorological Administration confirmed there were no special weather phenomena. Investigations by the European Space Agency and the film company Kodak found no evidence of manipulation or film error.

Judgment Reserved｜Maeng Seong-ryeol, Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Woosuk University & President of the Korean UAP Society
Assuming the object is a large aircraft far away, its estimated diameter is about 100m, its altitude 4-5 km, and its speed about 4 km/s.
Hwang Min-goo, Director of the Korea Institute of Forensic Image Analysis
It is presumed to be an insect in flight, captured as a streak, much like a fast-moving baseball is captured as a blur in a photograph.

The Hunt for UFOs: From Sighting to Analysis

People chasing the identity of UFOs have gathered in one place. At the general meeting of the Korean UAP Society, we observed how unidentified objects in photographs are analyzed. How is missing information obtained from just a photo? We also looked at the tracking methods of the Galileo Project, which uses various instruments for direct observation.

“A white dot appeared at the 30-second mark and disappeared at 31 seconds!”
On August 22, 2026, at the general meeting of the Korean UAP Society, advisor Seo Jong-han showed three photos taken at Seoraksan Mountain in 2022. A small white object was captured above a Buddha statue, but it was not visible in the photos taken one second before and one second after. To identify the object, Seo analyzed the photo for manipulation, shape, size, and speed in sequence. He examined the direction and contours of the light reflecting off the object and surrounding buildings but found no signs of tampering.

Advisor Seo Jong-han estimated the size of the white object by comparing the photo's pixel count, the distance to the Buddha statue, and the statue's size.

Courtesy of Children's Science Donga.

When the photo was enlarged, the object was revealed to be a horizontally elongated, symmetrical oval, like a rugby ball. Seo compared it to a fast-flying falcon, which has a similar shape, but concluded it was unlikely to be a falcon, stating, “The white object is excessively symmetrical and has a glossy surface.”

Size and speed were also estimated. Since the distance to the object could not be determined from the photo alone, it was assumed to be at the same distance as the Buddha statue. Using the statue's size and the number of pixels occupied by the statue and the white object in the photo, the object's calculated size was 35.4 cm horizontally and 16.9 cm vertically. Assuming the object moved out of frame within one second, its calculated speed was approximately 125.3 km/h.

Based on his analysis, Seo considered the possibility of it being a drone or a balloon to be low. However, he could not identify the object because the actual distance was unknown. “It's difficult to confirm its size and speed because we lack data from direct distance measurements,” Seo explained.

Photos Aren't Enough! Direct Observation is Key

Avi Loeb, a professor at Harvard University and head of the Galileo Project, supplements the limitations of photography by observing the sky with various instruments. The Galileo Project is a research initiative to identify UFOs using scientific equipment. The team records the light, heat, and radio waves of objects using infrared cameras and other devices. Artificial intelligence (AI) compares the observational data with known objects like birds, balloons, drones, aircraft, and satellites. Anything unclassified is then analyzed by the research team.

Professor Loeb emphasized the particular importance of accurately measuring the distance to an object. The team has set up three observatories in Las Vegas, USA, named 'Sphere,' 'Wildhorse,' and 'Hideout.' They observe the sky with a device called 'Dalek.' The distance between Sphere and Wildhorse is 10.2 km, between Sphere and Hideout is 10.1 km, and between Wildhorse and Hideout is 2 km. By observing the same object from three different locations, they can measure its distance, speed, and acceleration through triangulation.

 By observing the same object from three different locations, its distance, speed, and acceleration can be measured through triangulation.

Courtesy of Children's Science Donga.

Professor Loeb explained, “We want to determine whether UFOs are products of extraterrestrial civilizations or phenomena arising from other causes.” He added, “By obtaining clear images and material samples, we are also exploring the possibility that they could be probes sent by an alien civilization.”

Are UFOs Extraterrestrial Spacecraft?

Many photos thought to show UFOs have ultimately been identified as known objects or phenomena, such as balloons or satellites. Still, some incidents remain unexplained. Are the rapid acceleration and sharp turns often described in UFO sightings physically possible? We examine whether objects that defy identification can be considered extraterrestrial spacecraft.

According to an announcement by the French National Centre for Space Studies in August 2026, out of 3,381 UFO cases collected since 1977, 2,260 have been identified. Among cases identified between 2023 and 2025, aircraft-related phenomena were the most common at 20%, followed by balloons (17.6%), and astronomical phenomena and satellites/launch vehicles each at 12.2%.

However, some cases remain unexplained. “Among the cases reported to us, only about 0.01% are potential UFOs,” said Seo Jong-han, advisor to the Korean UAP Society. “In the investigation by the French National Centre for Space Studies, about 3.1% remained unidentified even after investigation.”

So, how did these unidentified UFOs move? Claims have emerged of saucer-shaped objects flying at supersonic speeds without creating a sonic boom, or accelerating instantaneously. There are also sightings of them making sharp turns at high speed or moving seamlessly between space, the atmosphere, and the ocean.

How did the unidentified UFOs move? There are claims of saucer-shaped objects flying at supersonic speeds without producing a sonic boom, or accelerating in an instant.

Image created by generative AI.

A saucer-shaped aircraft could fly if it had a superior propulsion and attitude control system. However, air resistance would create turbulence, making stable flight difficult. Flying at high speeds would also significantly raise the aircraft's surface temperature. Making a right-angle turn while maintaining high speed is also difficult. To change direction, an aircraft must turn in a curve. The X-31, an advanced fighter jet developed by the United States and Germany, had to reduce its speed before making curved turns.

Just because an object cannot be identified does not mean it is a spacecraft made by an alien civilization. Hong Sung-wook, a researcher at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, explained, “To conclude it came from an extraterrestrial civilization, the same phenomenon must be observed multiple times and its cause precisely identified.” He added, “It also needs to be confirmed through various analyses that it involves technology that cannot be made on Earth.” Kim Jong-am, a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Seoul National University, emphasized, “Speculation about UFOs is not meaningless. But when concluding that a certain phenomenon could exist, it requires verification based on observational data and evidence.”

Harvard professor Avi Loeb on new federal UFO disclosure rules | FOX 10 Talks | FOX 10 Phoenix

{ https://www.dongascience.com/en }

Grant Morrison Said ‘Aliens’ Took Him Outside Space-Time And Showed Him What Humans Really Are

Morrison even jokingly described what happened as an “alien abduction,” although his account was very different from the traditional stories usually associated with that phrase. He said the reason he was abducted by aliens in Kathmandu was because he had gone to Kathmandu wanting to be abducted by aliens, presenting the whole experience with the same mix of seriousness, humor and self-awareness that appeared throughout his talk.

Before the experience, Morrison had already been interested in magic, altered consciousness and unusual ways of changing human perception. He was therefore not describing himself as an unsuspecting person who suddenly found himself pulled aboard an extraterrestrial spacecraft, because he had deliberately travelled hoping to experience something extraordinary.

While sitting in the roof garden of the Vajra Hotel, Morrison said something eventually happened that went far beyond what he expected. He had been smoking hash and was already familiar with its effects, but he stressed that being stoned normally did not make him leave his body or experience a completely different world.

Morrison explained that when someone regularly uses cannabis, they generally know the difference between being high and completely losing contact with ordinary reality. He joked that if someone goes to a garage while stoned, it is still clearly the garage, and if they go to a convenience store, it remains the same store even if their perception becomes more interesting.

That was why Morrison found the Kathmandu experience so disturbing and fascinating. He said he suddenly felt as though he was no longer inside his physical body, while strange beings appeared around him and seemed capable of interacting directly with his consciousness.

The Beings Looked Like Something Terence McKenna Had Described

Morrison described the entities as silver, constantly changing forms that resembled liquid mercury or living chrome. Instead of having recognizable humanoid bodies, they appeared more like intelligent metallic shapes that could continuously transform themselves.

The description immediately reminded Morrison of Terence McKenna, whose work he had read before travelling to Kathmandu. Morrison did not try to hide this possible influence and actually pointed it out during the talk, acknowledging that the entities might have looked the way they did partly because McKenna’s ideas were already somewhere inside his mind.

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McKenna famously called them “self-transforming machine elves.” He claimed that when he took DMT, these entities could somehow use a kind of visible language. Instead of simply speaking words, they appeared to “sing” incredibly complex objects into existence, then showed those objects to him as if they were demonstrating something.

Morrison believed that experiences like his own and McKenna’s might be filtered through the nervous system of the person experiencing them.

The Beings Asked Morrison Where He Wanted To Go

According to Morrison, the entities then asked him where he wanted to go, and his immediate answer was Alpha Centauri. The response was almost humorous because Alpha Centauri is one of the first nearby star systems people often think about when imagining extraterrestrial travel.

Morrison claimed he was then taken to what he believed was the Alpha Centauri system, where everything appeared surprisingly realistic to him. He said the stars seemed to move in a way consistent with how he understood the system should behave astronomically, making the experience feel less like an ordinary dream from his perspective.

After this, Morrison asked the beings what was happening and why they had appeared to him. He said they told him that they had come to show him certain ideas so that he could put those ideas into his creative work and eventually communicate them to other people.

However, what the beings allegedly showed Morrison next became far more important to him than the initial alien imagery. He said they took him into what he understood as the fifth dimension, somewhere outside the normal experience of space and time, and from that perspective they supposedly explained what time actually does.

Morrison Said The Human Body Is Much Larger Than We Realize

To explain the idea, Morrison asked the audience to think about themselves when they were around ten years old. Everyone knows that their childhood self once existed because they remember being that person and may have photographs proving that moment of their life was real.

Morrison said the entities gave him a completely different way of thinking about this problem. According to the explanation he received, the ten-year-old version of you may not truly be gone at all, because it may remain part of a much larger structure that human beings cannot normally perceive.

From our ordinary perspective, life happens one moment after another. A person is first a baby, later becomes a child, grows into an adult and eventually reaches old age, with each stage apparently replacing whatever existed before it.

But Morrison asked what the same life might look like to something capable of standing completely outside time. From such a perspective, every stage of a person’s existence might be visible simultaneously rather than appearing and disappearing one after another.

Your birth, childhood, teenage years, adulthood and every movement you make throughout your life could therefore form part of a single enormous structure stretching through spacetime. Morrison suggested that this complete structure, rather than the temporary body we currently see in the mirror, might represent the person’s true body.

He compared the shape to a gigantic centipede extending across time. Every place you walk, every staircase you climb, every journey you make and every position your body occupies would form part of a continuous four-dimensional object beginning at birth and ending at death.

The person you experience at this exact moment would therefore be only one tiny slice through that much larger structure. We feel as though the present version of ourselves is the complete person because our consciousness only experiences one section of time at once.

Morrison Used A Simple Hand Analogy To Explain Something Even Stranger

Morrison then used another example to explain how apparently separate things could actually belong to one larger object. He asked the audience to imagine a completely flat two-dimensional world inhabited by creatures capable of perceiving only length and width.

If someone from our three-dimensional world pushed a hand through their flat surface, the two-dimensional creatures would not see an entire hand. Instead, they might see several separate circles appearing where different fingers intersected their plane.

From their limited perspective, those circles could look like completely independent objects. They would have no obvious reason to believe that one circle on one side of their world was physically connected to another circle somewhere else.

A three-dimensional observer would immediately understand what was happening because all of those separate circles would actually belong to a single hand. Their apparent separation would exist only because the creatures living in two dimensions lacked access to the additional dimension where the connection became obvious.

Morrison said the entities suggested that human beings could exist in a similar situation. We look around the world and see billions of different people, each apparently possessing a separate body and individual consciousness, but that separation might partly result from the limited way humans perceive reality.

From a higher-dimensional perspective, Morrison suggested, apparently separate people could actually be different intersections of one much larger entity. Just as several circles in a two-dimensional world could secretly belong to a single hand, individual human beings might be connected through dimensions that our ordinary senses cannot perceive.

Time May Exist Because Something Needs A Place To Grow

According to the explanation Morrison said he received, there is a basic problem with existing completely outside time. If there is no sequence of moments, then nothing can grow in the familiar sense because there is no earlier state followed by a later state.

A timeless entity could simply exist, but normal development requires change. A baby becomes a child because time passes, a seed becomes a tree through a sequence of transformations, and knowledge is accumulated because one experience happens after another.

Morrison said the solution shown to him was to create a universe where time exists. A portion of a larger being could enter that universe and then undergo birth, experience, growth, learning and eventually death as it moved through the temporal environment.

From this perspective, time becomes something more than a measurement used by clocks. It becomes the mechanism that allows transformation to occur.

Morrison therefore described the universe almost like a womb in which higher-dimensional beings could develop. What we experience as a complete human life might actually be only the developmental phase of something whose mature state exists beyond the reality we normally perceive.

He also described the realm beyond ordinary space and time as something like a sea of pure information. The beings appeared to exist naturally within this environment, while humans normally experienced reality only through limited sections of spacetime.

Morrison Said Humanity Might Not Even Be Born Yet

Morrison suggested that humanity itself might be passing through a developmental process similar to the growth of a fetus inside a womb. A fetus begins as something extremely simple before gradually becoming more complicated and organized. Different structures emerge at different stages until what originally looked like a small group of cells eventually becomes a complete human being.

Morrison wondered whether human history could appear the same way when viewed from outside time. From our perspective, history seems chaotic, with civilizations rising and collapsing, wars breaking out, technologies appearing and cultures constantly changing.

However, from a higher-dimensional perspective, those events might resemble different stages in the development of one enormous organism. Human civilization could be slowly moving toward a level of coherence and self-awareness that is currently impossible for us to fully understand.

That idea led Morrison to one of the strangest statements in the entire talk when he said humanity had not even been born yet. He also joked that there was not a single adult on the planet, which he suggested might explain a great deal about human behavior.

Behind the humor was the much stranger possibility that what we currently call civilization could still be an embryonic stage. If humanity eventually develops into something radically different, people living today might be comparable to cells inside a body that has not yet finished forming.

Morrison Never Demanded That People Believe His Story

. Morrison admitted that he had been using hash, admitted that he had previously read Terence McKenna and even recognized that the appearance of his entities could have been influenced by ideas already present inside his mind.

At the same time, he continued to insist that the experience felt fundamentally different from anything he normally experienced while using cannabis. For Morrison, that difference was important enough that the Kathmandu event remained one of the most influential experiences of his creative life.

The question of what the beings actually were therefore, remained open. They could be interpreted as extraterrestrials, psychological constructions, entities encountered through altered consciousness, symbolic manifestations of the unconscious, or something else that does not easily fit into any existing category.

Morrison seemed less interested in proving their objective identity than in understanding what the experience did to his perception of reality. The ideas he brought away from Kathmandu eventually became deeply connected with his writing and particularly with The Invisibles.

Kathmandu Changed The Direction Of The Invisibles

The Invisibles was already filled with ideas about magic, consciousness, hidden realities, secret forces and the manipulation of perception. After the Kathmandu experience, Morrison increasingly treated the comic as a way of exploring the possibility that human beings might be capable of perceiving reality in completely different ways.

Rather than simply writing a fictional adventure about strange forces, Morrison wanted the comic to contain something of the transformative quality he believed he had experienced. The story therefore became a place where he could experiment with ideas involving higher dimensions, mystical states, identity and the possibility that ordinary reality is only one limited layer of something much larger.

This is why Morrison’s Kathmandu experience is more interesting than simply calling it a celebrity alien-abduction story. The silver beings are certainly the most attention-grabbing part, but the ideas he associated with them go much further than extraterrestrials visiting Earth.

Morrison was essentially asking what a human being would look like from outside time. If every stage of your life still exists as part of one complete four-dimensional structure, then the person you see in the mirror would represent only one temporary slice of your real existence.

He was also asking whether individual humans could be connected in ways impossible for us to perceive. Just as two-dimensional creatures could mistake different sections of one hand for separate objects, perhaps people experience themselves as separate because they cannot perceive whatever higher dimension might connect them.

Whether Morrison’s experience was produced entirely by an altered state, something inside the human mind, a genuine mystical experience or something completely unknown cannot be established from his account. Morrison himself provided no physical evidence that the entities existed independently of his consciousness, and his admission that he was using hash remains an essential part of the story.

However, the experience remained powerful enough to influence Morrison’s work for years afterward and led him toward one of the strangest ideas he ever discussed publicly. Perhaps the person experiencing life at this moment is not the complete human being at all, but only one tiny cross-section of something much larger extending through time.

If Morrison’s experience is taken purely as a thought experiment and separate individuals living inside a familiar universe, while from some completely different perspective we could be only fragments of a structure we have not yet learned how to p, the conclusion is still difficult to shake. Humanity may see itself as fully developederceive.

{ https://howandwhys.com/ }

The discoveries were made during research the international collaboration was undertaking within Peru’s Machu Picchu National Archaeological Park, and required the use of drones equipped with light detection and ranging, or LiDAR technologies, which rely on laser pulses to generate remarkably detailed maps of terrain, even when it is obscured by vegetation or other features when seen from above.

The recent surveys, which were undertaken in July and August of this year, have helped uncover a system of roads that once led toward platforms and terraces located near the so-called Mandor Wall, a feature located across the Urubamba Valley from the Machu Picchu complex.

The recent drone-based LiDAR survey was led by Bartłomiej Ćmielewski, and Peruvian archaeologist Jeff Rocky Contreras Soto participated in the fieldwork, along with other specialists.

The recently discovered roadways near Machu Picchu, as revealed by LiDAR surveys

(Image edited by Bartłomiej Ćmielewski)

New Insights into an Ancient Inca Enigma

The research team says its discoveries add new insights into the extensive network of roads and settlements that surround the area known as Llaqta de Machu Picchu.

In the past, more than 60 archaeological sites have already been documented in the park, many of which were connected by a complex system of roads at the height of their use centuries ago. Each of the individual sites served different purposes and functions related to the primary settlement.

Most of the sites uncovered in the area were located on the left bank of the Urubamba River, which is a headwater of the Amazon River and served as a major waterway for the Inca many centuries ago.

However, the newly documented roadways, platforms, and terraces offer additional evidence that supports past discoveries suggesting there had been significant Inca construction and activity that also occurred on the opposite side of the valley.

More work remains for the international collaboration, and a future field campaign planned for the 2027 field season is expected to complete the team’s remote-sensing surveys of the area. After that, partial excavations of some of the newly uncovered roadways and other features will also be undertaken.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

Ancient Alien Couple Last Moments Of Life Caught In NASA Photo, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Oct 2, 2026

Location of discovery: Mars Sol 0107

Source photo:

• https://mastcamz.asu.edu/galleries/sol-0107-crater-wall-boulders-mastcam-z-mosaic/?back=%2Fmars-images%2Fpanoramas-mosaics%2F%3Fsort%3Ddate_asc%26undefined%3Dundefined%26pg%3D3

I found some ancient runes in a Mars photo today. One is a tiny doorway that measures about 7 inches high and 5 inches wide that enters a pyramid shaped object. But I found something that...well...hurts a little bit knowing about it. I found not one but two faces that at first I thought to be crude sculptures left behind from long ago cut from stone, but then on closer inspection...I realized these were once 5-6 foot living beings, fossilized and left just as they had fallen thousands if not millions of years ago. What leads me to that conclusion? Well, so many things. First both faces are facing the same direction and laying on the side of the face. No sculpture will put faces laying face down on its side. Also the person in front is most complete where the one behind it has only the had and helmet above the sand. The one in front has two eyes, nose ridge, small nose, small pointy chin, blue-green skin, small lips and big cheeks. It also has an unusual eyebrow ridge area and a smaller cranium skull area than humans have. IT seems to either have a matted hair blanket or a matted hair pet on its shoulders. Its lower back and buttocks area visible, bended legs and even a hand is visible from the other face...the hand coming from below the sand reaching for the leg of the person who fell in front of it...I would say they were mates or family. The hand...looks human in that it has a smaller pinky finger and has four fingers and a thumb like we have...all seem to be the same size as our own with joints in the fingers similar to our own. It looks to me like a very tragic and quick death came to the two of them. The one in front has its eyes open, the one in back has eyes closed. The one in back has softer facial features, leading me to believe its a female and the one in front has more pronounced facial features leading to think it was a male. 

What could end their lives so fast and fossilize their bodies for all eternity on the surface as mars? Sounds like an alien weapon of some sort, only an intelligent species could create such a horrible weapon of destruction. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ 

Inscription on ancient tomb chest sheds new light on man who helped carry Jesus' cross 

• READ MORE: True tomb of Jesus discovered after 2,000 years as hidden location that aligns with Bible account is found

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

The name of the man who helped Jesus carry the cross may have survived for 2,000 years, carved into an ancient burial chest.

The limestone chest, known as an ossuary used to hold human bones, bears the inscription 'Alexander, son of Simon,' matching the father-and-son pairing recorded in the Gospel of Mark. It was found in a Jerusalem tomb in 1941.

For decades, scholars have debated whether the inscription refers to the biblical family or simply people who shared the same names. 

New Testament scholar Dr Jeremiah Johnston believes the clues point toward a real connection.

He told the Daily Mail: 'So we have a Simon, a son named Alexander, and a Cyrenian family, buried in Jerusalem in the right period, before 70 AD. Is it the same family? I think it is very plausible, if not likely.'

A further clue appears on the lid - a Hebrew marking interpreted as a reference to Cyrene, the same North African city associated with Simon in the Bible.

Mark describes Simon as a passerby coming in from the countryside when soldiers forced him to help Jesus carry the cross through Jerusalem.

'The convergence of the name, the son, the Cyrenian origin, and the date is striking,' said Johnston. 'In my judgment it tips toward a real connection.'

The limestone chest, known as an ossuary used to hold human bones, bears the inscription 'Alexander, son of Simon,' matching the father-and-son pairing recorded in the Gospel of Mark

While many biblical scholars believe the ossuary likely bears the name of the biblical character, Johnston told the Daily Mail that caution is warranted.

'Simon was the most common Jewish name of the time, and Alexander was popular too,' he said.

A total of 11 ossuaries were found inside that Jerusalem tomb.

Johnston, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Jesus Discoveries, further explained that the tomb where the ossuary was found lacked a bone box dedicated to Alexander's brother, Rufus.

In the Bible, Mark 15:21 states: 'A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross.' 

With the missing ossuaries, Johnston said: 'So we cannot call it proven with certainty, but high probability.'

He added: 'What is not in doubt is what Mark is doing. He names Simon's sons because his first readers knew them. 

'He is pointing to living witnesses who could confirm the story. Ancient legends don't work that way. Eyewitness history does. And this ossuary shows that Mark's details fit real people in real Jerusalem.'

Some biblical scholars believe the box may have held the remains of the son of Simon, the man mentioned in the Bible as helping Jesus carry the cross before the crucifixion

The chest carries three separate inscriptions on its front, back and lid, with Alexander and Simon’s names appearing more than once.

Writing about the artifact in 2003, Biblical Archaeology Review contributor Tom Powers described an apparent engraving mistake: the writer began adding Alexander’s name beside Simon’s before starting again on the lines below.

The lid contains lettering in both Greek and Hebrew. The Greek inscription translates as ‘of Alexander,’ while 'QRNYT' alongside his name has been interpreted as a reference to Cyrene.

That reading remains uncertain, but Powers suggested that the engraver may have made a one-letter error when writing the Hebrew word for ‘Cyrenian.’

Powers reported that Israeli historian Tal Ilan, an expert on ancient Jewish names, considered it ‘very likely’ that the chest belonged to the Alexander mentioned in Mark’s Gospel.

For Powers, the names, family relationship, apparent North African origins and first-century Jerusalem setting create a compelling parallel with Mark’s account. 

They do not, however, establish that the chest belonged to the biblical family.

Powers raised an even more intriguing possibility: the chest may once have held the remains of both Alexander and his father, Simon.

In a follow-up analysis published in 2006, he argued that differences in the lettering could reveal how the chest was reused and its inscriptions added over time.

One clue is the name Simon, carved near the upper center of the chest’s back in noticeably deeper lines than the surrounding lettering.

The inscription identifying Alexander as Simon’s son appears below it in much shallower strokes. Powers interpreted this as evidence that Simon’s name was carved first and Alexander’s added later.

Another clue appears on the opposite side, where the two names were written on separate lines in green chalk or a similar substance.

Powers argued that the Greek wording there could be read as a list of two individuals whose remains shared the chest. Burial boxes containing more than one person are known from the period.

Under his proposed sequence, Simon’s bones were placed inside first. Alexander’s remains were added later, prompting someone to expand the inscription.

When the chest was repositioned within the family tomb, Powers suggested, its exposed side received the chalk label identifying both men.

The theory remains disputed, as many scholars rejected an earlier suggestion of a shared burial, arguing that the inscriptions identified only one buried person - Alexander.

Powers also noted that the excavation report did not document bones recovered from inside the chests or establish whether any analysis had determined how many individuals they contained.

Other evidence helps place the burial in the period described by Johnston, no more than 40 years after Jesus' death.

Pottery found in the tomb, including a distinctive Herodian oil lamp, supported dating its final use to the first century AD, before Jerusalem fell to the Romans in AD 70.

RELATED

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

UFO whistleblower claims giant alien base 'size of city blocks' is hidden underwater

Ex-intelligence official David Grusch claims the US government is hiding a massive city-block-sized alien underwater base and high-definition video of frozen ET corpses

BY Liam Randall - News Reporter

An air force veteran turned whistleblower has dropped a mind-blowing claim that the US government is hiding a massive alien base at the bottom of the ocean. Ex-intelligence official David Grusch, who blew the lid on secret Pentagon UFO programmes in 2023, says military bosses are aware of a massive extraterrestrial hub concealed deep under the sea.

Appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Grusch claimed top brass know about at least one gigantic underwater site used as a launchpad for alien craft.

Warning that he had to tread carefully around "sensitive Navy underwater things," he said: "There's clearly some sort of base of operations in certain locations. It's large. Don't know when it got there... Like multiple city blocks type stuff."

He added that "stuff comes and goes" from the gargantuan submerged hub, claiming his information stems from top-secret files, classified footage and insider confessions.

While refusing to leak precise coordinates or tracking methods due to national security, Grusch claimed US naval contacts likened the secret underwater structure to James Cameron's sci-fi movie The Abyss.

He said: "I will tell you, underwater people, I know that come from that community, they're always like, 'You know, the Abyss, Dave, it's kind of a docudrama.' And I'm like, 'Holy f***.'"

Grusch, who spent 14 years in the Air Force before joining the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the Pentagon's UFO Task Force, previously testified under oath to Congress about multi-decade UFO recovery programmes.

His wild claims back up previous bombshell comments from US Congressman Tim Burchett, who said mysterious alien craft were routinely spotted zipping through deep ocean trenches around the Bahamas at terrifying speeds.

Burchett told journalist Matt Laslo: "We have naval personnel telling me we have these sightings, these underwater craft they're chasing that go hundreds of miles an hour, and the best we got is something that does maybe a little under forty miles an hour."

During the same podcast episode, Grusch dropped another bombshell, claiming he was shown crisp, high-definition footage of dead extraterrestrial corpses recovered from a crash site.

Describing the beings as "very beautiful" with pale, bluish-white skin, he claimed the bodies are currently being kept on ice in a frozen military facility.

When Rogan asked if the shocking footage would ever be released to the public, Grusch said: "Probably. There's a lot of audio-visual stuff.

"The problem with the current climate is you're going to have to wheel out the physical evidence, too, because the trust in government is so low right now."

The White House and Pentagon have consistently denied possessing physical evidence of extraterrestrial life or alien craft.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/  }

Scientists uncover hidden force deep inside Earth that is changing the length of our days

• READ MORE: Terrifying scientific study warns once-in-250-year 'Blackout Arc' event could now plunge 5 million Americans into total darkness: See map of states at risk

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

Scientists have identified a hidden force deep inside Earth that has been changing the length of our days for decades. 

A new study suggests that a gravitational tug between the planet’s solid inner core and its rocky mantle can alter Earth’s rotational speed, making days longer or shorter by a few milliseconds. 

The changes are too small for people to feel, but they matter for GPS navigation and global timekeeping, which depend on precise measurements of Earth’s rotation. 

Researchers at the University of Alberta analyzed records spanning 1964 to 2019 to investigate what drives these tiny changes. 

Earth's inner core, a hot, dense ball made mostly of iron and nickel, is not perfectly spherical. 

As it rotates, its gravitational pull interacts with uneven concentrations of mass in the mantle. 

That interaction creates a twisting force, known as ‘gravitational torque,’ that can slightly speed up or slow down the mantle, changing how long Earth takes to complete a rotation. 

The researchers linked this gravitational tug to changes in Earth’s rotation that unfold over a roughly 70-year cycle. 

Scientists have identified a hidden force deep inside Earth that has been changing the length of our days for decades

The findings also suggest that Earth's solid inner core can slowly change shape over a period of years. Its material remains solid as it slowly yields to the forces around it.

That flexibility proved important when the researchers tested their calculations. 

A rigid inner core produced changes with the wrong timing, while allowing it to deform brought the predictions into closer agreement with the observed shifts in day length.

Their best estimates suggest this adjustment happens over roughly eight to 10 years, although the wider range of possible timescales stretched from about two to 31 years.

The study, published in Nature on September 23, was conducted by University of Alberta physicists Huifeng Zhang and Mathieu Dumberry.

They combined earlier research that used earthquake waves to track the inner core's rotation with models of movement in the liquid outer core, reconstructed from changes in Earth's magnetic field.

To isolate the effects of the planet's interior, the team removed contributions from atmospheric winds, ocean movements and longer-term processes, including the moon's gradual braking effect on Earth's rotation.

They then compared predictions from three competing mechanisms against the remaining changes in day length.

A new study suggests that a gravitational tug between the planet’s solid inner core and its rocky mantle can alter Earth’s rotational speed, making days longer or shorter by a few milliseconds

Magnetic forces and pressure against uneven surfaces at the boundary between the core and mantle produced patterns broadly opposite to those recorded. 

The gravitational mechanism provided a much closer match.

The best results came when gravity acted as the main driver and the other forces pushed back, leaving a small imbalance that changed the planet's rotation.

The calculations also offered clues about material hidden near the bottom of the mantle.

They are consistent with an electrically conducting, iron-rich layer about 1.2 miles thick, although the researchers did not directly discover or sample such a layer.

Their findings also support the presence of large accumulations of chemically distinct, warmer material. 

The material's composition would make it denser, but its higher temperature counteracts that effect, leaving it close to the density of its surroundings.

The shifts amount to a few thousandths of a second, too small for people to feel but important for GPS navigation and global timekeeping 

The results additionally favor a form of mantle mineral that deforms relatively easily, helping explain how conditions deep inside Earth influence the gravitational interaction.

However, the researchers cautioned that the roughly 70-year pattern should not yet be treated as a reliably repeating cycle.

'Whether this flow structure is periodic and repeats over time, or whether it only reflects the dynamics over the past seven decades, is unknown,' the authors wrote.

Their conclusions also depend on the accuracy of existing models of the inner core's rotation and liquid core flows. 

Some numerical estimates changed by up to 30 percent when different flow models were used.

The study does not fully explain shorter fluctuations in day length unfolding over 10 to 30 years. 

Those changes may be driven more strongly by forces acting at the boundary between the core and mantle.

The authors said better models are needed to resolve these remaining uncertainties. 

Their findings nevertheless show how tiny variations measured at Earth's surface can reveal information about the movement, composition and physical behavior of regions deep beneath our feet.

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• MORE: Green Beret behind secret pastors' UFO meeting issues chilling warning about sinister new religion quietly reaching millions

By CHRIS MELORE, US DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR

An Air Force veteran turned government whistleblower has shared startling new claims about an alleged UFO base hidden at the bottom of the ocean. 

David Grusch, a former intelligence officer who now assists lawmakers with UFO transparency, testified under oath in 2023 that the US government possesses multi-decade secret programs recovering and reverse-engineering crashed non-human spacecraft.

He recently made more claims about the government's knowledge of extraterrestrials, telling Joe Rogan that officials are aware of at least one giant underwater facility used by extraterrestrials as a 'base of operations' for their craft. 

'I'm going to be careful because it gets into sensitive Navy underwater things,' Grusch said. 

'There's clearly some sort of base of operations in certain locations. It's large. Don't know when it got there... Like multiple city blocks type stuff.'

He added that 'stuff comes and goes' from the base. 

Grusch also claimed that his information came from files on top-secret programs, videos and confessions from government and military insiders.

However, the US military and the White House have maintained for decades that no physical evidence has been found that proves UFOs and alien life exist.

Former Air Force Major David Grusch, a UFO whistleblower, was interviewed by podcast host Joe Rogan on September 30 

Grusch did not reveal how the military discovered the base or its location, only saying that the tracking methods were sensitive to national security, but added that he was sure the US had been studying what was taking place at the facility.

He then told Rogan that US naval officials had described the secret facility as the inspiration for the 1989 film The Abyss, in which an oil rig crew encounters non-human beings living in a vast underwater structure.

'I will tell you, underwater people, I know that come from that community, they're always like, "You know, the Abyss, Dave, it's kind of a docudrama." And I'm like, "Holy f***,"' he said during the September 30 episode.

Grusch spent 14 years in the Air Force before working as an intelligence officer for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds and launches surveillance satellites for the Pentagon. 

From 2019 to 2021, he represented NRO on the task force investigating UFOs, but eventually became a whistleblower after allegedly learning that elements of the US government had prevented Congressional oversight on matters related to extraterrestrials. 

He then brought his claims to Congress, testifying to what he claimed the US government knew about non-human intelligence.

Grusch's bombshell claims on Rogan's podcast echoed similar allegations made by Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett, a member of the House Oversight Committee overseeing UFO reports, who said last year that alien 'entities' were currently living in deep-water areas on Earth.

Burchett said in a widely shared interview that there have been frequent sightings of unidentified craft around five or six specific deep-sea areas. These sites were believed to be in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas.

Grusch told Rogan that the US government is aware of at least one underwater UFO base where 'stuff comes and goes.' Above is a screenshot of a video, which UFO insiders claims captures a UFO hovering over the Pacific Ocean

Burchett said in an interview with journalist Matt Laslo: 'We have naval personnel telling me we have these sightings, these underwater craft they're chasing that go hundreds of miles an hour, and the best we got is something that does maybe a little under forty miles an hour.'

Grusch also told Rogan that he was shown video of dead bodies recovered from the crash site of an alleged alien spacecraft. This top-secret footage was said to be 'contemporary' and not grainy, unreliable recordings from the 1950s.

He alleged that the beings he saw were 'very beautiful' with pale, bluish-white skin, which were now being kept in a frozen storage facility for further examination.

Rogan asked: 'This video, do you think this will be a part of disclosure, that we'll get to see this video of these dead bodies?'

'Probably. There's a lot of audio-visual stuff. The problem with the current climate like you're going to have to wheel out the physical evidence, too, because the trust in government is so low right now,' Grusch claimed.

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

A UFO whistleblower has claimed that 'at least a dozen' craft have crashed during apparent battles between gray and reptilian aliens, leaving Joe Rogan stunned.

David Grusch, a former intelligence officer who now assists lawmakers with UFO transparency, made the extraordinary claim during a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Grusch testified under oath in 2023 that the US government has secretly operated programs to recover and reverse-engineer non-human spacecraft for decades.

Asked about a possible war between non-human intelligence (NHI) in Earth's skies, he said: 'We've documented that... what we perceive as warfare. It looks like conflict. It smells like conflict.'

Grusch said he had been briefed on the recovery of dead reptilian and grey alien bodies at crash sites. 'So the grays and reptilians were duking it out,' Rogan said.

'I guess,' Grusch replied, raising his arms. A wide-eyed Rogan responded: 'Whoa. It sounds f****** crazy, David.'

Grusch repeatedly explained that he has never seen the UFO crashes or alien bodies and was only conveying that his information came from files on top-secret programs, videos and confessions from government and military insiders.

However, the US military and the White House have maintained for decades that no physical evidence has been found that proves UFOs and alien life exist. 

A UFO whistleblower has claimed that 'at least a dozen' craft have crashed during apparent battles between grey and reptilian aliens (above, artist impression), leaving Joe Rogan stunned 

Grusch told Rogan he knew of 'at least a dozen or two' crashes linked to apparent conflicts between non-human beings.

Rogan then asked what type of craft had reportedly been found alongside a dead reptilian body. Grusch said it was a Tic Tac.

That description recalls the 2004 encounter off Southern California in which Commander David Fravor said he and his team saw a smooth, white object shaped like a Tic Tac breath mint. 

Measuring roughly 40 to 45 feet long, it reportedly had no visible wings, tail, control surfaces or exhaust.

The discussion then turned to the alleged appearance of the reptilian beings, with Grusch relaying a description he attributed to a friend.

'Seven-foot-plus, sort of gorilla-looking skin,' he said. 'But there are multiple types. There's ones that are more humanoid-looking.'

Grusch also discussed reports of grays of different sizes, including taller beings and 'little tiny ones.'

When Rogan suggested the smaller figures might be androids, Grusch said that hypothesis had also been discussed within the program.

The reptilian theory, claiming shape-shifting reptilian aliens secretly control Earth, surged in popularity through conspiracy theorist David Icke in the late 20th century (Stock Image)

Grusch emphasized that he had never seen the alleged reptilian beings in person, saying he was relying on other people's experiences and audiovisual material.

Asked how he had viewed the footage, he declined to explain the arrangements, describing them as 'kind of sketchy' and saying they were intended to 'keep everybody safe.'

He also said he was withholding details to protect people who had supplied information, claiming some had been physically threatened.

Grays and reptilians have been claimed to be two of the four alien types that were discussed in a 2025 hearing on Capitol Hill. 

In a briefing, physicist Dr Eric Davis, known for his work on top-secret Pentagon projects, stunned listeners by referencing alleged alien species, 'Grays, Nordics, Insectoids, and Reptilians,' as potential operators of unidentified craft.

Former Air Force Major David Grusch, a UFO whistleblower, was interviewed by podcast host Joe Rogan on September 30 

An alleged alien race known as the Nordics is said to have human-like features (Stock Image)

Davis described these entities as humanoid, approximately human-sized, and possibly linked to classified reverse-engineering programs.

Missouri Representative Eric Burlison, a member of the House Oversight Committee and UAP caucus, prompted the discussion, revealing on The Endless Void with Kristin Fisher that he had heard these same four classifications in private briefings.

'I've heard those four classifications discussed in meetings in this office by others,' Burlison said.

'But what I wasn't expecting was for him to say it. I wasn't expecting Eric Davis, you know, a respected scientist, to say that.'

Burlison, a self-described skeptic, admitted uncertainty about Davis's sources, noting the physicist's comments may stem from firsthand knowledge or secondhand reports.

'If true, this would be a paradigm-shifting moment,' Burlison said. 'But if it is true, the government has no right to keep such a secret from the public it serves.'

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

It's one of the biggest unanswered questions in astronomy: has life ever existed on Mars – and could it still be there today? 

We may finally find out in just two years, when the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover makes the 140 million–mile journey to the Red Planet.

However, before the £1 billion rover can make that epic journey, scientists need to test that everything is working exactly as it should.

That is why I travelled out to the Tabernas Desert in Southeast Andalusia to see how ESA and Airbus are getting ready for what's tipped to be the most important mission in space exploration history.

With its barren landscape, soft clay soils, and incredibly dry conditions, Europe's only real desert is about as close to the rover's Martian landing site – Oxia Planum – as you can get without a trip in a rocket.

And as I watched a rover crunch its way across the dusty ground, I was almost convinced that we'd already touched down on the Martian surface.

Before the European Space Agency's Rosalind Franklin rover can travel to Mars, scientists have taken its replica, Charlie, out to Spain's Tabernas Desert for testing 

The Daily Mail's Wiliam Hunter (pictured) travelled out to Southeast Andalusia to see how ESA and Airbus are getting Rosalind Franklin ready for its big mission 

The Rosalind Franklin Rover represents over a decade of preparation and around $1.3 billion (£980 million) in investment.

Built by Airbus in Stevenage, the rover combines cutting–edge tools built by researchers from all over Europe and ground–breaking autonomous navigation systems.

Originally planned to launch in the early 2020s, the project has been set back multiple times, first by Covid–19 and then by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which required all the Russian components to be replaced.

As a result, there is a lot riding on the success of Europe's first Mars rover – and scientists cannot afford any mistakes.

It takes at least 20 minutes for a signal to travel from ESA's command centre to the rover on Mars, and if something goes wrong, there's no chance of repair or recovery.

That is why it is so crucial that scientists conduct what they call 'emulations', taking a replica rover out into a simulated Mars environment on Earth to see how it all works out.

So, while the real Rosalind Franklin sits safely in an ultra–clean room in Turin, Italy, scientists have made a near–exact copy, known as Charlie, to test here on Earth.

Charlie is functionally just like the real Mars rover in almost every way, except that it's made of cheaper parts that can be repaired and replaced as needed.

While the real Rosalind Franklin stays safe in a clean room, scientists have prepared an 'emulation' version called Charlie to test on Earth 

Charlie is functionally identical to the real Rosalind Franklin, except that it has been made with cheaper parts that can easily be repaired or replaced 

Rosalind Franklin: Europe's first Mars rover

Mission: ExoMars

Targeted launch date: 2028

Target landing site: Oxia Planum 

Aim: Search for signs of life

Estimated cost: $1.3bn (£0.98bn)

Weight: 310 kg

Size: 3.5m x 2m x 2 m

Key feature: Drill box capable of sampling 2m beneath the surface 

Scientific instruments:

* CLUPI: Close–UP Imager

* Enfys: Infrared Spectrometer for ExoMars

* Ma_MISS: Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies

* MicrOmega: visible plus infrared imaging spectrometer

+ MOMA: Mars Organic Molecule Analyser

* PanCam: Panoramic Camera

* RLS: Raman Spectrometer

 * WISDOM: Water Ice and Subsurface Deposit Observation On Mar

Every day for the last three weeks, scientists have been carting Charlie out into the middle of the Tabernas Desert to put it through its paces.

With its deep valleys, wind–carved cliffs, and barren ground, this desert once served as the backdrop for countless Spaghetti Westerns, scenes in Indiana Jones, and even parts of Game of Thrones.

But as we bounce over a winding dirt road further and further from civilisation, it seems that those film studios missed a trick by not shooting a few science fiction films instead.

If you learn to ignore the odd power pylon in the background, and the small horde of journalists getting in the way, it's easy to forget you're actually on Earth and not on Mars' Oxia Planum.

Professor Susanne Schwenzer, a planetary mineralogist from the Open University and the field geologist for the ExoMars field tests in Spain, told the Daily Mail: 'We know quite a lot about Oxia Planum from orbital investigations and mapping, so we know it is a layered terrain where you have older layers on the bottom and younger layers on the top.

'We have a similar situation here if you look all around you, and so it is visually very, very similar to Mars.'

In fact, that strikingly alien quality is why it's worth lugging all this expensive equipment out into the blazing heat of the Tabernas Desert.

While it's important to check that all the equipment works as intended, these tests are really about giving the team a taste of what it will be like to drive a rover on Mars.

'You have three factors,' Professor Schwenzer explains.

'You have the science, that the scientists take care of; you have the engineering, which the engineers take care of, and you have the link between what the scientists want to do and what the machine can actually do.

'And they all need to work to get the best science return, and that's what we're doing here; testing and training people to actually use this to the best effect before we get to Mars.'

The Tabernas Desert is the perfect place to test a rover because it looks very similar to the Martian surface

It is extremely important that the test area actually looks like Mars, so that the scientists controlling the rover can practice navigating Martian terrain

Because of that, it matters that the landscape really does look like Mars, and the team go to great lengths to ensure it stays that way.

As Charlie gets ready to undertake the day's procedures, Professor Schwenzer follows along with a broom, sweeping away the footprints that would ruin the illusion for the control team peering out through the rover's cameras.

While a footprint might seem inconsequential, it provides the operators with an all–too–easy–to–use reference point that they would never have on Mars.

We've joined the team for a test of one of Charlie's critical instruments, the WISDOM ground–penetrating rover.

Dr Wolf–Stefan Benedix, an engineer from TU Dresden who co–developed WISDOM's antenna, says: 'It's a radar that is looking into the soil. We transmit some EM waves, and we receive some EM waves, and from that we see what is beneath the surface.'

In particular, WISDOM is tuned to look for layers in the Martian soil that might contain certain minerals created by water, or even layers of ice trapped beneath the ground.

That's absolutely critical, because the real Rosalind Franklin isn't just concerned with searching the Martian surface, but rather, what lies deep below.

Just like the Tabernas Desert, the part of Mars where the rover is scheduled to land, the Oxia Planum, is made up of layers upon layers of clay sediments.

Scientists know that these clays are an extremely good sign that water was once present.

In fact, research suggests that the entire area may have once been covered by an enormous ocean several miles deep, which dried up about four billion years ago.

To ensure the images that the crew see (pictured) are as close to the real thing as possible, scientists sweep the desert to remove any footprints or car tracks before testing 

Rosalind Franklin's key piece of equipment is the drill, which will be able to collect samples from two metres beneath the surface. That is deep enough to retrieve material undamaged by radiation

However, since Mars has such a thin atmosphere, intense radiation from the sun has long since destroyed any signs of life in the top half a metre or so of soil.

That is why the Rosalind Franklin has been equipped with a newly designed drill, capable of taking pristine soil samples from up to two metres below the surface.

Since Mars doesn't have tectonic activity or erosion from water, these deep soil layers might have been undisturbed for billions of years, preserving a record of a time when Mars was warm, wet, and potentially habitable.

Unlike previous rovers, Rosalind Franklin is also equipped with an onboard suite of analytic instruments that can test that soil for the chemical signs of life – known as biosignatures.

Everything else, from the WISDOM radar to the specialised geological cameras, is designed to ensure the rover finds the perfect place to drill, and has the best chance of finding signs of life.

That means, if there are signs of alien lifeforms hiding beneath the barren surface, Rosalind Franklin stands a good chance of finding them.

Dr Nicolas Oudart, an astrophysicist at the University of Versailles and part of the WISDOM team, explains that one key biomarker the rover is looking for is called 'chirality'.

Like your hands, molecules often come in one of two mirror arrangements – a left and right–handed version.

While you'd expect the left and right versions to be fairly equally abundant, Dr Oudart says 'life is known to favour one over the other'.

So, if the rover finds a lot more left–handed molecules than right–handed ones, or vice versa, it could be a good sign that biological processes have been at play.

Rosalind Franklin will also be equipped with a set of cameras developed by British scientists at Aberystwyth University 

The rover is equipped with a ground–penetrating radar to search for the perfect place to drill, and give scientists the best chance of finding signs of life

That would be just one piece of evidence that would form a wider picture in the search for signs of life, and scientists won't be eager to call the discovery too soon.

It will take a lot of tests, and a lot of potential biomarkers together to show that life really might have thrived on the Red Planet.

But, by doing practice tests like these out in the desert, the researchers are doing everything they can to give Rosalind Franklin the best chance possible.

And, if they do find signs of ancient life, it would change everything about the way we look at the universe.

Dr Oudert says: 'Right now, the only example of life we know is the one on Earth, so we don't actually know how likely it is for life to appear on a planet when you have the right conditions.

'If we find that there was life on Mars, it would mean that in the solar system you have two planets with the right conditions and on those two planets, you have life.

'That would mean that the Earth is not that unique, and it's more likely that we have many planets in the galaxy with life.

'So we don't know for sure what we will find, but if we find life, the implications are very interesting.'

Every Mars Rover Explained

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SpaceX reached another historic milestone on Monday after launching Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket, into orbit. But only minutes into the mission, something unexpected appeared in the live stream: an unidentified object that some viewers interpreted as a large UFO while others suggested that it was a gas emission from the rocket. 

In his latest video, UFO investigator Michael Salla has raised a far more provocative possibility. Given the rapidly expanding role of SpaceX and commercial launch systems in opening access to space, Salla has suggested that unexplained objects seen around these missions could potentially be connected to alleged secret space programs such as Solar Warden or a covert United Space Command. 

If such claims were ever substantiated, they could fundamentally change the way we understand and track unexplained objects operating beyond Earth. 

There is another, even more controversial question surrounding the phenomenon: how much information about UFOs, advanced aerospace technology, and secret space programs is actually being withheld from the public? 

Critics of government transparency argue that certain agencies or elements within government may continue to restrict the release of classified UFO files and information concerning advanced propulsion and aerospace technologies. 

Could it be possible that a highly classified international organization, perhaps even a “United Earth Space Command”, is operating quietly behind the scenes? If such a hidden organization were ever proven to exist, the question would no longer be simply what was captured on camera, but something far more profound: what else is operating in space that we have never been told about?

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{ https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

EXCLUSIVE - Has Noah’s Ark finally been found? Researchers claim mysterious underground structure is man-made after dramatic new scans

• MORE: Noah's Ark resting place '100% confirmed' after 4,300 years as astonishing 'man-made' structure is detected buried deep underground

By CHRIS MELORE, US DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR

A team scanning a boat-shaped hill in eastern Turkey has announced that new radar images show a large man-made structure underground, not just natural rock. 

On Wednesday, private research group Noah’s Ark Scans released a preliminary report about their work at the Durupınar Formation in Turkey's Ağrı Province, claiming that the 515-foot boat-shaped mound contained a 'man-made object.'

The scans were conducted by Dr Khosrow Bakhtar, an engineer who spent decades building detection systems for US defense agencies, including the Air Force, Navy and NORAD.

He used a system he invented called BakhtarRadar, originally developed to find buried tunnels and hidden structures, to scan beneath the boat-shaped Durupınar mound and see whether it was solid natural rock or a man-made structure.

That process has now concluded that the object under the Durupınar mound is not a natural rock formation, but a large organized man-made object with corridors, chambers and hallways inside.

In a statement sent to the Daily Mail, Dr Bakhtar said: 'Whatever the object is beneath the surface is extraordinary.'

'In forty years of this work, I have never seen anything like it. It could be a ship. It could be a spaceship. What I can say from the radar is that it is organized, it is structural, and a solid geological mass would not have returned such a strong signature.'

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. 

The ship-shaped mound believed to be the rest place of Noah's Ark in Turkey

New scans of the Noah's Ark site revealed material that was determined to be something other than natural geological material such as rock 

Bakhtar said the new radar images do not look like ordinary rock, mudflow or a solid natural hill in Turkey.

Instead, they showed organized internal features, including repeating lines and angles, open passageways, corridors, chambers and hallway-like spaces running the length of the alleged vessel trapped underground.

Bakhtar told the Daily Mail in a statement that the radar is designed to hide ordinary natural features such as rock and highlight buried structures, open spaces and man-made materials.

Since those complex patterns still appeared strongly in the scans, the team concluded the object was not a natural geological formation, pointing to the belief that this is the site of the ship constructed to survive the biblical Great Flood being true.

'Natural ground does not organize itself into corridors, chambers and hallways,' Dr Bakhtar explained.

'The system was built to separate buried structure from host geology, tunnels, voids, worked materials, discontinuities. That is what it is seeing here. A solid geological mass would not have returned this signature.'

The first major radar survey in 2019 detected linear and angular anomalies the team interpreted as possible walls, passageways and separate compartments. 

Core drilling for samples of the structure began in late September 2026 under the direction of a Turkish university-led field program. 

The Durupınar Formation in Turkey, believed to be the resting place of Noah's Ark from the biblical Great Flood

New scans of the Noah's Ark site revealed what looked like passageways and other chambers similar to a ship

Read More

EXCLUSIVE

• Noah's Ark resting place '100% confirmed' as astonishing 'man-made' structure is detected 

The first holes drilled struck a very hard layer about 12 to 15 feet down inside the Durupınar Formation. Those samples are being sent to outside labs for further testing.

The team previously revealed to the Daily Mail that those drilling samples of rich in organic material were being tested to determine whether it contained decayed wood. 

The full radar scan is expected to be completed by November 2026, with more lab results coming later.

The next major step in this ongoing investigation will be testing for animal DNA inside the structure. 

In the Bible’s Book of Genesis, chapter 6, verses 19-20, the flood story says God told Noah to bring male and female pairs of each kind of animal onto the ark so they could survive.

Noah’s Ark Scans revealed that they are in talks with scientists who specialize in recovering and reconstructing ancient and extinct animal DNA from pieces of deteriorating material, such as old bones, teeth or other remains that have been buried for millennia.

An international team are '100 percent confident' that the formation is a 'man-made object'

New scans of the Noah's Ark site revealed material that was determined to be something other than natural geological material such as rock

Andrew Jones, Vice President of the Noah’s Ark Research Project and founder of Noah’s Ark Scans, said in Wednesday's announcement: 'We now know we are looking at a massive, 515-foot, boat-shaped man-made structure with organized patterns and corridors in the Mountains of Ararat, where Genesis places the Ark.'

'The challenge is how we prove this is the vessel that preserved living creation through a catastrophic flood. That proof will not come from another scan. It will come from identifying and confirming ancient animal DNA inside the voids Dr Bakhtar mapped inside the structure.' 

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Is AI secretly conscious? Scientist demands urgent tests - and warns switching it off could be unethical if it is

By XANTHA LEATHAM, EXECUTIVE SCIENCE EDITOR

What if the world's smartest chatbot really did wake up one day?

While it may sound like science fiction, a leading consciousness scientist says we urgently need to start thinking about the possibility.

We currently have no reliable test to determine whether an AI system is conscious, Megan Peters, a lecturer in Computational Cognition at University College London, said.

And if it does one day become aware of its own thoughts, humans face a significant moral dilemma – whether to turn it off.

Professor Peters argues that the biggest problem is not that scientists have found evidence of conscious AI, but that they currently have no agreed way to look for it.

The topic will form the basis of a talk she will be giving at New Scientist Live this month (10-12 Oct).

‘We need to have something better than vibes,’ she told the Daily Mail.

‘You can't just go look for signs or indicators or markers of consciousness in an artificial system because we don't know what they are.’

We currently have no reliable test to determine whether an AI system is conscious, Megan Peters, a lecturer in Computational Cognition at University College London, said

The difficulty is that consciousness remains one of science's greatest mysteries, even in humans, Professor Peters said.

Researchers can ask a person whether they are conscious and receive a meaningful answer, but AI systems are different.

‘If we ask AI systems, we can't really trust the answer in the same way,’ she explained.

The issue has become increasingly urgent as chatbots grow more sophisticated and AI companies invest heavily in research into so-called AI welfare.

‘A huge amount of money is being spent on thinking about AI welfare in some of the biggest AI companies,’ Professor Peters said.

She warned that people often mistake the fluency of modern chatbots for genuine awareness, adding: ‘It's very easy to speak with these agents and to kind of get a feeling that someone's in there.’

That perception is already shaping real-world debates around AI rights, responsibility and autonomy, despite a lack of evidence that today's systems possess any subjective experience.

While Professor Peters said she does not believe current AI models are conscious, she said it does not mean the question can be ignored.

‘If AI is conscious and we treat it as not conscious, then there is a potential for morally significant harms,’ she said.

One future concern is whether deleting, retraining or switching off a conscious AI could be equivalent to causing harm to a sentient being.

‘Just going around switching things off that are sentient… if that is akin to killing them, then that doesn't seem great,’ Professor Peters said.

‘We want to not be torturing creatures that have conscious awareness.’

The expert warned that the risks run in both directions.

A genuinely conscious AI could potentially be harmed if humans treated it as nothing more than a machine.

But wrongly assuming a chatbot is sentient could also distort public policy, influence regulation and encourage people to place excessive trust in systems that merely mimic human conversation.

‘If we get it wrong the other way around, there's also very real consequences,’ she said.

To tackle the problem, her team is developing a framework that would compare dozens, or even hundreds, of potential consciousness tests, identifying which might work not only in humans but also in animals and artificial systems.

Rather than jumping straight from people to machines, Professor Peters believes scientists should gradually test their ideas across species with different brains and behaviours before applying them to AI.

For now, she urges caution whenever bold claims emerge that a chatbot has become self-aware.

‘Just because you see someone claiming that they have or have not detected artificial consciousness, you need to go and ask why,’ she said.

RELATED

The dangers of accidentally creating a conscious AI | The Economist

The Man Behind AI Safety Thinks AI Is Conscious

AI Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton: AI Is Conscious, Superintelligence is Coming, And We Should Be Worried

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

NASA Claimed They Had Zero UAP Records. A 3,668-Page FOIA Release Tells a More Complex Story

When navigating the federal bureaucracy for transparency on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), researchers frequently encounter conflicting administrative positions. A prominent example emerged in documents secured through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In NASA FOIA case 26-00029-F-HQ, NASA official Dr. Daniel Evans - who served as the Designated Federal Officer for the NASA UAP Independent Study Team (IST) - formally stated in email correspondence that “NASA currently does not hold or manage records classified specifically as UAP documents.”

Source: NASA FOIA 26-00029-F-HQ

This statement aligned with NASA’s broader public messaging regarding its approach to UAP. During a 14 September 2023 media briefing announcing the IST's final report and recommendations, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Dr. Evans repeatedly emphasised the agency’s commitment to openness, transparency, and the rigorous application of the scientific method to UAP data.

Source: NASA Science

However, a separate FOIA request, 26-00789-F-HQ (available for download at article end) originally filed on 4 May 2026 and received on 28 September 2026 - targeting communications between Mark McInerney, NASA’s Director of UAP Research, and research librarians at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) - has yielded a substantial paper trail.

Final Response for NASA 26-00789-F-HQ

NASA returned a staggering 3,668 pages (2,778 pages released in full and 890 pages released in part). These documents illustrate a distinct administrative reality: while leadership maintained that the agency held no formal UAP records, the newly appointed Director of UAP Research was actively engaging internal library resources to compile technical literature on advanced aerospace platforms, propulsion, and perceptual phenomena.

Researching Platforms, Propulsion, and Perception

The newly disclosed emails outline a methodical, literature-based research effort conducted through the GSFC Library during the latter half of 2023. The records detail five distinct areas of inquiry:

• Advanced Airframes: In September 2023, McInerney requested academic and industry literature regarding state-of-the-art spherical or triangular drones. Library staff curated literature on spherical Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Coanda-effect drones, while noting that true triangular designs were scarce in public literature, often overlapping with conventional military platforms like the B-2 stealth bomber.

  

  Source: NASA FOIA 26-00789-F-HQ

• Artificial Intelligence and Operational Security: The research load became so vast that library staff discussed utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs) to assist the data hunt. However, even while conducting unclassified literature searches, NASA contractors inherently understood the sensitivity of the UAP Director's specific interests. On 2 October 2023, GSFC librarian John Grunwell suggested using AI to find literature on spherical and triangular drones, but explicitly warned his colleague to do so "without revealing anything we shouldn't."

  

  Source: NASA FOIA 26-00789-F-HQ

• Exotic Propulsion: McInerney subsequently expanded his inquiries into commercial ion propulsion and electromagnetic propulsion. Library personnel provided technical papers from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) covering plasma flow control, dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) actuators, and energy deposition methods for sonic boom reduction.

  

  Source: NASA FOIA 26-00789-F-HQ

• Human Factors: To examine observational data, McInerney requested literature on parallax and apparent position shift to help explain sightings where a pilot sees an object flying below them that appears to move "faster than reality." The requests pushed so far past standard aerospace parameters that it prompted a candid reaction from GSFC librarian John Grunwell, who noted the inquiries might require expanding into "journals of vision, perception, consciousness studies, etc."

  

  Source: NASA FOIA 26-00789-F-HQ

• Environmental Signatures Database: A few months earlier in July 2023, McInerney initiated a project to explore creating an environmental signatures database. The objective was to help scientists distinguish known natural phenomena - such as atmospheric sprites or marine life tracked via Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) - from genuine anomalies. This initiative aligned with public statements made by IST members like Dr. David Spergel regarding the need to leverage NASA’s high-resolution data assets.

  

  Source: NASA FOIA 26-00789-F-HQ

The GSFC library compiled extensive Zotero bibliographies spanning multiple scientific disciplines to support this database, though the initiative was paused by September 2023 due to resource limitations. Zotero bibliographies are curated, formatted lists of academic citations and research materials compiled using specialised reference management software.

NASA’s UAP Director of Research and Public Visibility

The timeline of these internal research requests ran parallel to NASA’s highly anticipated UAP Independent Study Team (IST) Report, released on 14 September 2023.

Source: NASA

During the media teleconference accompanying the report’s release, NASA leadership faced questions regarding the newly created Director of UAP Research position. Initially, officials expressed reluctance to publicly identify the individual holding the role due to concerns over cyber-harassment and stigma. Ultimately, later that day, NASA publicly confirmed Mark McInerney’s appointment.

Source: NASA Science

Despite the public visibility surrounding the appointment, the administrative reality of the position appears to have been temporary. Internal communications from early 2025 confirmed that McInerney’s detail to the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) concluded in the fall of 2024, and the Director of UAP Research role was left without a permanent backfill.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mark McInerney has since stepped away from his federal duties, having officially retired from NASA in July 2025. His departure coincided with the agency's delayed resignation program, quietly bringing an end to his tenure as the first Director of UAP Research.

Internal Record-Keeping and Interagency Routing

The internal correspondence within the FOIA release also documents candid discussions between agency leadership and NASA Records Officer Patti Stockman regarding how UAP-related materials are categorised and retained. When informed that NASA claimed to hold no UAP records, Stockman expressed surprise regarding the lack of documentation given the agency’s recent public-facing studies.

Source: NASA FOIA 26-00029-F-HQ

The conversation deepened when Stockman forwarded guidance from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) explicitly detailing the federal metadata requirements for digitised UAP records. She directly questioned how NASA could reconcile NARA’s requirements with the assertion that the agency possessed zero UAP records.

Source: NASA FOIA 26-00029-F-HQ

In response, Evans reiterated that NASA did not hold records related to UAP, noting that previous incidents investigated near NASA centers were ultimately identified or tracked by DoD assets. Regarding his own inbox, Evans noted that he received a large volume of unsolicited emails from the public. He stated that, following previous guidance regarding non-pertinent agency business, he had routinely deleted these communications, thereby resulting in no retained records.

Source: NASA FOIA 26-00029-F-HQ

Additionally, in handling subsequent FOIA requests, NASA referred portions of its files to external bodies: 26 pages to the Department of Defense and 15 pages to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Because the GAO operates as an investigative arm of Congress, it is legally exempt from statutory FOIA timelines under 4 CFR Part 81. By routing records through these interagency channels, public access is managed outside of standard FOIA frameworks, highlighting the complex web of jurisdiction governing federal records on sensitive topics.

The Quiet Closure of the Goddard Library

Established alongside the Goddard Space Flight Center when it opened in 1959 as NASA’s first space flight complex, the GSFC Library grew to become the agency’s largest research library. For over six decades, it served as a vital intellectual hub, offering scientists, engineers, and administrators unparalleled access to technical aerospace literature and invaluable historical archives - including primary source documents dating back to the facility’s early high-altitude balloon research. As demonstrated by the UAP Director’s extensive 2023 inquiries, the library’s dedicated staff and expansive collections were instrumental in conducting the kind of deep-dive, multi-disciplinary research that standard digital searches simply could not replicate.

Despite its critical role in advancing aerospace research, the GSFC Library was permanently closed on 2 January 2026. The shuttering of the historic facility was part of a sweeping, Goddard-wide campus transformation and cost-cutting initiative aimed at consolidating operations. Driven by broader federal reorganisation mandates, the closure plan involved shuttering over a dozen buildings and more than 100 laboratories. While NASA indicated that a small percentage of the rarest materials would be saved or digitised, thousands of physical volumes and historical records were reportedly slated for disposal or transfer to the General Services Administration, effectively marking the end of an era for one of NASA’s most significant repositories of scientific history.

Conclusion

The release of these 3,668 pages demonstrates a fundamental tension within federal science administration. While executive-level public statements and internal emails stressed that NASA held no formal UAP documentation, the day-to-day operations revealed active data gathering and technical exploration of aerospace anomalies through the GSFC library.

As researchers continue to examine the remaining X-drive spreadsheets and Zotero databases referenced in the emails, this documentation serves as a valuable reminder: in the pursuit of transparency, tracking administrative workflows and library requests often provides the clearest picture of an agency’s true engagement with the UAP topic.

• Download FOIA documents
  26-00789-F-HQ - Redacted Records - 1 of 2 [298 Pages, 2.6MB]
  26-00789-F-HQ - Redacted Records - 2 of 2 [3,380 Pages, 18.5MB]
• About Grant Lavac
  Grant is a UAP activist, researcher and podcaster residing in Melbourne, Australia. Grant frequently leverages the Freedom of Information Act to better understand Australia’s involvement (or rather, lack thereof) on the UAP issue, and engages both his elected representatives and the legacy media in the hope they’ll take the topic seriously and treat it with the respect it deserves. Grant reports on his FOIA findings and engagement efforts via his podcast, The Unexplained Rundown, which is freely available on Spotify and YouTube. To follow Grant’s ongoing research, visit grantlavac.com.

{https://grantlavac.substack.com/ }

UFO Disclosure 2026: Fifth Batch Of 41 Classified Files Released; Here's How To Access

By Mashable News Staff 

The US Department of War released a fifth batch of declassified UFO files on Friday, adding 41 new documents, images, and videos to its public disclosure website. The files went live around 6:36 PM IST. Records in this tranche of documents come from the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, State Department, and the Executive Office of the President. The oldest file dates to 1950; the newest was generated this year. This is the fifth release since President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies in February to identify and release records related to unidentified aerial phenomena. The first batch went live on May 8 with 158 files. Four more have followed since then on a rolling basis, with no fixed schedule between each of the subsequent releases.

In his statement announcing the release, Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs Sean Parnell said the department and its agency partners are actively working on the next set of files.

How to Access UFO Files?

The files are hosted on the US government portal called PURSUE, short for the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. The Department of War has not published individual summaries for this batch. Researchers and lay folks shifting through the 41 files are a bit bummed that there are no decent releases in the cache.

UFO Files 2026: The Department of War has put out a fresh batch of UFO, or UAP, records on its PURSUE website. This is the fifth release so far. It adds 41 new files and mixes together documents, images, and videos. The records come from the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, the State Department, and the Executive Office of the President. The oldest file in the set is from 1950. The newest one was created this year. The release page says these are unresolved cases, which means the government still does not have a final answer for them

Here's how to access the files

1. Go to war.gov/ufo. Or click here.
2. Select "Release 05" from the list of batches.
3. Browse the documents, images, and videos under that release.
4. Click a file to view or download it as a PDF, image, or video.

Report back if you find anything anomalous out there.

Several FBI interview forms are also in the release, many with redactions and hand-drawn pictures of what witnesses said they saw. One report records a former military pilot talking about lights he saw while flying from Massachusetts to Ireland in October 2023. He said the lights were white, started dim, got brighter, and then faded out. He said the full cycle lasted from 10 seconds to one minute, and that he saw them about 10 times after the first sighting.

See Also:

• UFO Disclosure 2026: Trump Admin Releases First Set With 162 Files Of Unresolved Cases; Here's How To Access

Cover: Department of War

The Fifth Tranche: 41 Files, Three Cases, and the Word "Unresolved"

{https://in.mashable.com/ }

Fresh vegetables and salad may become part of the diet of future Moon residents. The space agencies of the United States and Canada, together with the German Aerospace Center, have agreed to prepare a ground-based prototype of a plant-growing module for a lunar base. They want to test how crops grow under reduced pressure and how the greenhouse exchanges oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water with the living module. Long-duration expeditions to the Moon, and later to Mars, will largely depend on this.

Artist’s illustration of the ground demonstrator of the Lunar Agricultural Module (LAM-GTD). Such a module could supplement the diet of residents of a permanent lunar base with fresh vegetables and salad. Credit: German Aerospace Center (DLR), Kyunghwan

Preparatory Stage of the Project

NASA, the Canadian  Space Agency (CSA), and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) signed a memorandum of understanding in August 2026. As DLR reports, the document currently concerns only preparatory work on the ground demonstrator of the Lunar Agricultural Module (LAM-GTD). The parties will decide later whether it should be built. If so, the facility is expected to be completed no later than 2032.

According to the concept, the greenhouse for growing high-density crops will be connected to the crew living module through an airlock chamber that will regulate pressure and gas composition. The crew compartment itself will not be reproduced separately; it will be replaced by the HabSim simulator. Teams from several DLR institutes, NASA, CSA, and the National Research Council of Canada are working on the project.

Diagram of the ground prototype of the Lunar Agricultural Module (LAM-GTD). The concept combines a habitat simulator with a plant-growing module, and the facility could be built by 2032. Credit: LIQUIFER Space Systems GmbH, René Waclavicek

Reduced-Pressure Conditions

The project is intended to show how plants grow in a controlled environment at pressure lower than that on  Earth. Similar conditions are expected at the future base near the Moon’s south pole, which NASA and its partners plan to build under the Moon Base project.

This choice is not accidental. NASA has studied an atmosphere for lunar habitat modules with a pressure of about 56 kPa, slightly more than half of Earth’s 101 kPa at sea level. In a spacesuit, the pressure is even lower, about 30 kPa. The smaller the difference between the pressure inside the module and inside the spacesuit, the shorter the preparation time for going outside, because with a large pressure difference an astronaut must breathe pure oxygen for a long time to avoid decompression sickness.

Researchers will also separately study the exchange of air and water between the greenhouse and the crew compartment. Plants absorb carbon dioxide, release oxygen, and return water to the circulation cycle, so part of the load on life-support systems can be transferred to them.

Experience from Antarctica

DLR has already experimented with growing food in isolation. Beginning in 2018, the EDEN ISS Antarctic greenhouse team spent five years collecting data on equipment reliability, crop yields, microbiology, and food safety.

A diverse harvest in the EDEN ISS Antarctic greenhouse of the German Aerospace Center. Since 2018, the team spent five years collecting data on system operation, plant cultivation, food safety, the crew’s psychological state, and electricity and water consumption. Credit: German Aerospace Center (DLR), CC-BY 3.0

Engineers recorded how much electricity, water, and working time such a facility requires. These resources will be limited on a lunar base, so such figures will be needed already at the design stage.

All of these data were obtained under normal Earth pressure. How plants will behave in the rarefied atmosphere of a lunar base will be shown by the new prototype.

More Than Calories

Fresh greens will not replace astronauts’ usual diet but will supplement it. Long-life packaged rations will continue to form the basis of their food, while plants will add variety.

Their benefits are not limited to nutrition. DLR emphasizes that plants support the psychological well-being of the crew. The EDEN ISS team in Antarctica studied this aspect as well. The farther expeditions travel from Earth, the more important such capabilities will become.

Greenhouses for Deserts

The project’s results may also prove useful on Earth. Specialized greenhouse designs could be suitable for dry desert regions where water must be conserved.

Controlled food cultivation offers another advantage. DLR expects that such technologies could help reduce pesticide use and improve food quality, although the mechanism behind this effect is not explained in the announcement.

• Posted in News, Science, Tech

{ https://universemagazine.com/en/articles-en/ }

Humanity plans to establish a colony on Mars, although it remains unclear whether such a settlement could survive without continuous supplies from Earth. To investigate this question, we examined the full range of human needs, from air and food to the mission’s underlying purpose. Our findings indicate that even aboard an orbital station, it is not yet possible to recover half of the oxygen; on Mars, one meter of soil overhead blocks only a quarter of cosmic radiation; and unexpected psychological challenges may arise among an isolated crew.

What people need to live on Mars and the Moon without assistance from Earth. Source: Universe Space Tech YouTube channel

Five steps to Mars

In visualizations, a city on Mars is typically depicted as a cluster of domes, solar panels, and rockets on the horizon. However, a dome alone does not constitute a colony. A colony begins when its inhabitants can produce their own air, water, and food, and repair equipment failures without relying on spare parts from Earth.

Elon Musk articulated this distinction with considerable precision. In a May 2025 interview with Fox News, he described Mars as a “life insurance policy” for humanity in the event of an asteroid strike, nuclear war, or climate catastrophe. He immediately added that a settlement unable to function without a continuous supply of resources from Earth would not constitute a backup plan; it would remain a branch.

Let us consider what the colony will be able to provide for itself in terms of life’s necessities. The hierarchy of needs proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow offers a useful framework for organizing this discussion. It is commonly represented as a pyramid, although Maslow himself never drew such a diagram. For our purposes, the essential point is the progression from basic survival to the sources of meaning in our actions.

The five levels of needs for a colony on Mars — from air, water, and food to the purpose for which people travel to another planet.
Authored by: Universe Space Tech

There are five steps. The first involve air, water, and food; the next involve safety, the people around us, work, and, finally, our goals. On Earth, we move through most of them without even noticing. On Mars, we will have to build each one from scratch, beginning with what we breathe.

Essential needs

The initial step appears to have already been taken, as people have been breathing, drinking, and bathing aboard the International Space Station for more than twenty years. Virtually no water is lost there. Condensate from the air, wastewater generated through personal hygiene, and even urine undergo distillation and filtration. A few years ago, a unit was added to extract moisture from the concentrate, which had previously been discarded. Approximately 98% of the water is recycled.

JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakato (center) and NASA astronauts Frank Rubio (left) and Josh Cassada (right) aboard the ISS.
Source: nasa.gov

Oxygen recovery is a more complex process. Oxygen is extracted from water through electrolysis, and the resulting hydrogen is combined with the carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts. This process produces water, which is returned to the cycle, and methane. The methane, along with some of the hydrogen, is jettisoned overboard, making it impossible to recycle all of the exhaled gas. Consequently, only about 50% of the oxygen can be recovered, despite NASA’s requirement that at least 75% be recovered for missions beyond  Earth’s orbit.

Both figures should be interpreted with certain caveats. The station orbits at an altitude of approximately 400 km, and cargo ships regularly deliver water, breathing gases, filters, and spare parts. Accordingly, these figures reflect the effectiveness of the recycling process rather than the station’s ability to operate independently of Earth.

The prospects for obtaining water on Mars are more favorable than one might expect, as extensive deposits of ice lie beneath the planet’s surface. In addition, oxygen can be extracted from the atmosphere, which consists primarily of carbon dioxide. Colonists require oxygen both for respiration and as an oxidizer in rocket fuel; without it, they would be unable to launch from the planet. In 2021, this capability was tested using the MOXIE instrument aboard the Perseverance rover. Martian air was heated inside the device and separated into oxygen and carbon monoxide. Over a two-year period, sixteen sessions were conducted, producing 122 grams of oxygen — enough to sustain an adult’s breathing for five hours. The experiment’s purpose was to demonstrate that this process was feasible.

Water on Mars. Source: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

To support the crew and refuel the rocket for the return journey, a system approximately 200 times larger will be required. It will need about 30 kW, while the entire Perseverance rover is powered by a 110-watt source. The oxidizer required for the return flight alone weighs nearly 30 metric tons and must be produced continuously for almost a year and a half before the crew arrives. No such equipment currently exists; only the MOXIE team’s calculations are available.

In this image, the gold-plated Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument is shown glistening after its installation inside the Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

Efforts have previously been undertaken on Earth to establish a fully self-sustaining system in which people produce their own air, water, and food. On September 26, 1991, in the Arizona desert, the airtight doors of Biosphere 2 — a glass complex spanning one and a half hectares and containing a forest, a section of ocean, and a farm — were sealed behind eight participants. They were scheduled to emerge two years later.

Their own harvest supplied approximately four-fifths of their food requirements; however, over the course of the experiment, the crew lost an average of 16% of their body weight. The most unusual developments began approximately one year after the spacecraft was sealed. During routine activities, participants began experiencing shortness of breath; some were unable to complete a sentence without pausing to breathe, and one participant fell asleep during lunch. Over a sixteen-month period, the oxygen concentration declined from just over 20% to 14.5%. For context, this is comparable to the oxygen level at an altitude of four kilometers.

Participants in the Biosphere 2 experiment — Jane Poynter, Linda Leigh, Mark Van Thillo, Taber MacCallum, Roy Walford (in the foreground), Abigail Alling, Sally Silverstone, and Bernd Zabel — inside the complex in 1990. Source: Neon

It could not have disappeared without a trace. Living organisms convert oxygen into carbon dioxide; therefore, the concentration of this compound should have increased in direct proportion to the decrease in oxygen. However, measurements did not indicate such an increase. Two explanations emerged. Soil microbes — in soil that was exceptionally rich in organic matter and had been prepared for the crop — consumed oxygen far more intensively than the designers had anticipated, meaning that carbon dioxide levels were indeed rising. In addition, fresh concrete in the structures absorbed carbon dioxide, preventing it from accumulating in the air. Ultimately, the oxygen shortfall had to be offset by pumping oxygen in from outside.

Safety

The second factor, safety, is naturally provided on Earth. Earth’s magnetic field deflects most of the Sun’s charged particles, while its thick atmosphere absorbs the remainder. Mars has a very weak magnetic field, and its surface atmospheric pressure is approximately 160 times lower than  Earth’s. This thin atmosphere offers almost no protection, allowing radiation to reach the surface.

An artist’s rendering of coronal mass ejections approaching Earth and interacting with its magnetic field. Credit: NASA.

In this context, there are two types of hazards, each requiring a distinct protective approach. During solar flares, the Sun emits a stream of particles that persists for hours or days, resulting in a sharp increase in radiation exposure. Galactic rays, by contrast, originate continuously in interstellar space, arrive from all directions, and possess significantly higher energy.

The most straightforward solution is to construct habitats underground. This approach is highly effective against solar flares, and a few dozen centimeters of regolith can reduce radiation exposure to below the safe threshold for astronauts. Galactic cosmic rays, however, present a different challenge. According to a study published in late 2024, a meter of rock overhead reduces radiation exposure by only approximately one-quarter.

The reason is that the layer itself becomes a source of radiation. Galactic rays strike the nuclei of regolith atoms, dislodging secondary particles that then penetrate deeper into the material. The precise amount of soil required to reduce radiation to Earth’s background level is unknown. Estimates range from two and a half to eight meters, and all of this material would need to be deposited using equipment brought from Earth, together with the power source required to operate it.

However, ready-made shelters on the Moon and Mars may already exist. Billions of years ago, lava flowed across these bodies, including beneath their surfaces, leaving hollow tunnels beneath the solidified crust. On the Moon, sinkholes tens of meters in diameter are visible where the ceilings of these cavities have collapsed, and the tunnels themselves may extend for hundreds of kilometers. Their interiors remain unexplored, as the equipment required to investigate them is still under development.

An artist’s rendering of a microvehicle exploring the entrance to a lunar lava tube. Illustration by William Whittaker, Carnegie Mellon University

Although the radiation problem can theoretically be resolved, another threat remains, even beneath a rock ceiling: the astronaut’s own body. Throughout the history of spaceflight, no cardiac arrests have been recorded. However, astronauts who have flown have been carefully selected, healthy professionals receiving daily medical supervision, and their missions have generally lasted only a few months. For long-duration missions, statistical estimates suggest approximately one serious medical event per 900 days spent off  Earth, per person. A round trip to Mars takes years.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation in microgravity presents an engineering challenge. On Earth, a rescuer uses their body weight to apply pressure to the chest; in orbit, however, the rescuer is displaced after the first compression. In 2025, these techniques were tested aboard an aircraft conducting parabolic flights, which provide brief periods of free fall. Only one technique proved effective: an unusual position in which the rescuer braces their feet against the ceiling. However, only an automated piston device consistently achieved the required compression depth. Mars has gravity, although it is less than half that of Earth, so techniques designed for weightlessness are unsuitable there. Standard Earth-based procedures were tested in suspension systems simulating the gravity of Mars and proved less effective. Consequently, no distinct protocol for these conditions is currently available.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in space: This method involves securing a foothold on the ceiling of the ISS directly opposite the victim’s chest, enabling pressure to be applied to the chest.

Cardiac complications represent only one category of risk. Appendicitis, fractures, renal colic, dental abscesses, or severe bleeding — conditions that would warrant an ambulance on Earth — would need to be managed independently, 200 million kilometers from an operating room. Medical guidance from Earth takes approximately 20 minutes to arrive after a question is sent, and returning home is not an option when one begins to feel unwell. Crew members return from the International Space Station within hours; travel from the Moon takes several days, while opportunities to travel from Mars arise only once every 26 months, when the planets are suitably aligned. At other times, support is limited to the small number of people nearby.

Social connections

The third step — the individuals in your immediate surroundings — poses the most difficult threat to predict. The most revealing data on this threat were collected at Concordia Antarctic Station, and the findings run counter to intuition.

The French-Italian base is situated at an altitude of more than three thousand meters, higher than Mount Hoverla, and the body is therefore subjected to a persistent lack of oxygen. During winter, temperatures can fall to minus eighty degrees. The nearest neighbors are more than five hundred kilometers away, and departure is impossible for nine months of the year. Approximately fifteen people remain at the base throughout the winter.

Psychologists observed the team over a ten-month period. Each polar explorer wore a sensor that recorded whom they spent time with and for how long. During the same period, participants completed surveys four times per season assessing loneliness, trust, team cohesion, and self-reported productivity.

By the end of the study, feelings of isolation and the number of disagreements had increased, while trust, cohesion, and job satisfaction had declined. The team had divided along linguistic lines, with the French participants on one side and the Italian participants on the other. This outcome was expected. However, the sensor data revealed an unexpected finding: those who spent the most time in close proximity to their colleagues reported the greatest distress, and greater physical proximity was associated with a stronger sense of loneliness.

The winter crew at the Franco-Italian Concordia Station in Antarctica comprised thirteen individuals.
Credit: ESA, IPEV, PNRA, Beth Gili

Isolation is often understood as a state of emptiness and a lack of contact. At Concordia, however, it took a different form. The same small group of people appeared each day at breakfast, at work, and in the evening — both in the present and six months later — and there was no opportunity to step outside and encounter strangers. As a result, people had little variety in their interactions.

At least the conflict is apparent. Another Antarctic study, which examined how overwintering members of other groups cope with stress, found that the response can disappear entirely. Around the third quarter of their stay, the polar explorers ceased both fighting and avoidance. Their emotions settled into apathy, without depression or aggression. The authors described this as “psychological hibernation” and emphasized that this was merely their interpretation. Such a team member does not cause conflict and continues to perform their duties; therefore, the most dangerous state within a closed group may show no outward signs at all.

An Antarctic overwintering expedition concludes on a predetermined date. In the event of a serious emergency, a medical evacuation team can be dispatched to provide assistance. By contrast, a return journey from Mars takes several years and depends on the planets’ positions; therefore, a rapid evacuation would not be possible.

A flight from Earth to Mars via the orbit that requires the least energy

At this stage, engineering reaches its limits. Although calculations can address breathing requirements and radiation protection, there is no clear solution if, eight months into the mission, one crew member stops communicating with another. No shipment from  Earth would resolve this situation. The only option is to select candidates rigorously, although Concordia’s crew members were not selected at random either.

The meaning and significance of work

The fourth step — work and its purpose — appears to be the simplest, as there will be no shortage of tasks on Mars. The question is whether humans are truly necessary to carry them out. All the listed threats become critical only when a crew is present; therefore, it is worth determining which tasks cannot be performed without one.

The primary rationale is scientific. In late June 2026, a ten-year survey of the sky commenced at the Vera Rubin Observatory. On the Moon, such an instrument would be unaffected by atmospheric interference or space debris. We asked Professor Agnieszka Pollo, Deputy Director for Scientific Research at Poland’s National Center for Nuclear Research and coordinator of Poland’s participation in the observatory project, whether constructing it there would be worthwhile. Her response, which includes an unexpected caveat concerning large observatories, is available in the video on our YouTube channel.

The Vera Rubin Observatory building is located atop Cerro Pachón in northern Chile, where the 10-year LSST survey began in 2026. The image combines a photograph with a computer-generated rendering. Source: rubinobservatory.org

However, a telescope on the Moon would require maintenance, and no one would be nearby to repair it if it malfunctioned. Among space telescopes, only the Hubble  Space Telescope has been repaired by astronauts. It was launched into orbit in 1990 with a defective primary mirror. In December 1993, the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour installed corrective optics while working in open space. Every subsequent repair through 2009 required a separate mission.

Equipment malfunctions occur more frequently on the Moon than on Earth. Each year, the lunar surface is struck by approximately one hundred objects weighing up to one metric ton, as well as countless micrometeorites. In addition, sharp, electrically charged dust adheres to surfaces, scratches mirrors, and obstructs mechanisms. Engineers have developed methods to remotely address some of these malfunctions, enabling rovers on Mars and the Moon to remain operational for years, sometimes through remarkably inventive solutions. Large observatories are more complex, however, and the limits of their automation remain uncertain.

The search for life appears to provide a compelling justification for sending humans to Mars. The Martian surface is sterilized by solar radiation; consequently, scientists are seeking traces of microorganisms at a depth of approximately two metres. In our video, Professor Carlo Baccigalupi, a cosmologist and coordinator of the astrophysics and cosmology group at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, explains why a permanent base may be necessary for this type of drilling. However, automated missions are already being planned to explore these depths. The European Rosalind Franklin rover is scheduled to launch in 2028, and, around the same time, China plans to launch the “Tianwen-3” mission to return samples to Earth.

NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are searching for evidence of life on Mars. Source: science.nasa.gov

This leaves the most pragmatic consideration: resources, particularly financial resources. The Moon contains helium-3, an isotope that is virtually nonexistent on Earth. It is considered a promising fuel for fusion power and is already used in the cooling systems of quantum computers. A liter of this gas costs thousands of dollars, while its concentration in lunar regolith is minuscule — only parts per billion. Accordingly, the prototype of a lunar excavator unveiled in May 2025 is designed to extract 100 metric tons of soil per hour. The excavator is robotic, so a future lunar mine could operate without human personnel, just as drilling operations on Mars are likely to do.

Purpose

Regarding the fifth step — the goal — the answer appears to have been publicly stated for quite some time. Elon Musk describes Mars as a backup plan for humanity; however, according to his own criteria, the only viable backup would be a colony capable of sustaining itself without supplies from  Earth. None of the lower rungs currently meet this condition. Therefore, humanity is planning something more akin to a branch office supported by headquarters.

A Martian desert research station in Utah, where the Mars Society is evaluating living conditions for future colonists.
Source: marssociety.org

It is noteworthy that the Mars Society does not advance this argument. The organization, which has promoted the idea of colonization since 1998, was founded by Robert Zubrin, whose calculations underpin modern Mars expedition projects. Its declaration lists seven reasons for going to Mars, and a “spare planet” is not among them. We discussed this omission with Serhii Danylenko, head of the Mars Society in Ukraine.

However, we should not regard the goal as a summit to be reached after ascending four lower steps. It is precisely in pursuit of this goal that we began seeking solutions to all the problems explored above. In its service, we calculate how much oxygen can be recovered at the station, measure the radiation dose beneath a meter of regolith, and equip polar researchers in Antarctica with sensors. These issues matter only because humanity has resolved to undertake a mission to Mars.

The colonization of Mars. Illustration: SpaceX

However, one fact remains unchanged: the pyramid’s roots still extend from Earth. Oxygen, water, medicine, spare parts, solutions, and people continue to come from here. A self-sufficient colony exists only in science fiction books and films, and it is impossible to calculate what it would take to build one today, as we are not yet aware of certain threats. We will have to develop solutions as we proceed.

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The discovery comes from the rover’s exploration of the “Margin Unit,” a geological region along the inner edge of Jezero Crater. Perseverance reached the area in September 2023, where scientists initially expected to find sedimentary rocks formed from material deposited in an ancient lake.

Instead, the rover found igneous rock that recorded repeated interactions with water.

Published in Communications Earth & Environment, the study suggests the Margin Unit became a kind of geological crossroads where different water systems interacted with the Martian surface and subsurface at different points in the planet’s history.

“Before we arrived at the Margin Unit, the main hypothesis — derived from orbital observations — was that the carbonate seen from orbit formed from interaction with the lake that existed in Jezero Crater,” Candice Bedford, a research scientist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the study’s lead author, says in a statement.

“But now we know that this location became a sort of crossroads for aqueous systems. The Margin Unit findings are important because Jezero Crater sits inside one of the largest exposures of carbonate on Mars, so what we learn here reaches well beyond this crater,” Bedford adds. 

The evidence comes from Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument, which analyzes rocks by firing laser pulses and studying the resulting plasma to determine chemical composition. In total, the rover has reviewed 185 bedrock targets across the Margin Unit.

Recent investigations by Perseverance revealed coarse-grained, olivine-rich rock that showed little evidence of water alteration. Scientists believe this rock originally formed deep underground as magma slowly cooled, allowing large mineral crystals to develop. It was later exposed at the surface as overlying material eroded.

“If there is one thing I have learned after 10 years working with Mars rovers, it is that Mars constantly throws surprises at you,” said Bedford. “It is very rare that things are as we expect them to be from orbital data.” 

When looking at the geological sequence, however, the rocks do indeed tell a different story. 

The olivine grains were fractured and surrounded by silica and carbonate minerals, evidence that water had interacted with the rock. Here on Earth, similar reactions involving olivine can produce hydrogen, which some microorganisms can use as an energy source. Carbonate and silica can also preserve chemical evidence of ancient environments.

Carbon-rich groundwater altered the olivine, while Jezero’s ancient lake left silica-rich minerals behind. Additionally, Perseverance found fluorite and calcium sulfate veins, suggesting Mars’ region experienced a later episode of hot, hydrothermal water activity.

Understanding these findings could help scientists reconstruct Mars’ water history, climate, and potential habitability.

“I hope this work helps reshape how scientists view the history of water in Jezero Crater and across Mars,” Bedford said.

“Ultimately, I hope it helps planetary scientists reconstruct the changing climate and habitability of early Mars.”

• Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

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