Something About Russia Insisting Everything Is Fine After the Lab Leak Death Is Making Us Nervous

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Last week, a 28-year-old employee at an anti-plague institute in the Siberian city of Irkutsk died at a regional hospital just two days after mysteriously falling ill.

Her unusual occupation drew an international media frenzy, sparking fears over another pandemic. The news sounded just a bit too much like the opening to a cheesy medical horror movie, with US secretary of state Marco Rubio saying that the US is “watching and monitoring” the case “closely.”

Former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Deborah Birx called the death “particularly concerning,” saying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are “very much aware and tracking” the situation.

And something about Russian officials’ reassurances hasn’t quite quelled our fears. The deceased worker, Darya Shipilova, was diagnosed with “pneumonia of unknown etiology,” per the Moscow Times — a vague diagnosis that left plenty of questions unanswered.

It’s especially unsettling considering the lab has been studying the pneumonic plague, which develops when “bacteria spread to the lungs of a patient with untreated bubonic or septicemic plague, or when a person inhales infectious droplets coughed out by another person or animal with pneumonic plague,” per the CDC.

The Black Death, a global 14th century pandemic that’s believed to have killed tens of millions of people, included all three forms of plague: bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic.

There have been recent outbreaks of pneumonic plague in Madagascar, but there are no known cases of the country exporting plague cases to other countries.

Russian head of the republic of the neighboring Siberian region Buryatia Alexei Tsydenov at first threw fuel on the fire by claiming in a Telegram post that Shipilova had died of the plague — before adding the word “maybe” to his statement.

Many say there’s no reason to panic. Consumer safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said it found no evidence that any lab materials had anything to do with the tragic death and that were no signs of foul play or security breaches. Intriguingly, the watchdog confirmed that contact tracing revealed two cases of COVID-19 and two cases of rhinovirus, according to the Moscow Times — but no plague.

The World Health Organization has since publicly stated that the risk of an epidemic in Russia is low. Spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said in a statement today that “all ‌of the patients’ contacts have reportedly been identified and are being monitored for ‌illness, and none to date have shown ​symptoms of illness.”

The lab at the institute where Shipilova was employed is currently under lockdown, including 60 of her colleagues, forcing them to sleep on the floors and in chairs.

Characteristically, president Donald Trump appeared to have received some serious mixed messaging from his aides — or struggled to interpret the details for himself.

“I hate to see them having it,” he said, seemingly implying the existence of a plague outbreak in Russia, one of the United States’ biggest adversaries. “We’ll help. Everybody who has that kind of a problem, we’ll always help.”

More on the plague:

• Experts Confirm Outbreaks of Black Death, Brain-Eating Amoeba

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EXCLUSIVE - I saw unreleased UFO files at a secret meeting in the Tennessee mountains. We prayed after seeing what these 'humanoid beings' did... the world is not prepared

By CHRIS MELORE, US DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR

A pastor who claims he was whisked away to a secret UFO disclosure gathering in the Tennessee mountains has revealed chilling new details about the evidence he was shown. 

In May, the Daily Mail first reported that private meeting of intelligence insiders, former military and faith leaders was said to have taken place in February ahead of the government's release of its 'UFO files', a collection of declassified records concerning unidentified flying objects.

One of the supposed attendees, Pastor Joseph Zupetz, has disclosed vivid new details about what he saw, warning that the UFO files released by the Trump administration so far are nothing compared to what is still to come.

Far removed from the grainy, blurry UFO footage previously released by the government, Zupetz said he and five other Christian influencers were shown images of non-human beings that were startlingly clear and sent chills down his spine. 

The pastor said the secretive meeting, whose attendees he declined to identify, was organized by 'personnel now working within groups that investigate non-human intelligence issues involving UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) and reverse-engineered craft.' 

'I was shown images that some of the people who were presenting to us had on their devices of real entities that they personally took photos of,' Zupetz told the Daily Mail.

'They took images of entities standing in the woods. They were very tall, they had very long appendages, some of them almost looked, and this is a crude way of saying it, almost like humanoid squid-type things.'

Congress recently requested 46 UFO videos from the Department of War, including one that viewers have claimed shows an angel flapping its wings

He claimed that other images featured 'tall, lanky, light beings,' with some completely see-through. 

Then, after leaving the two-hour meeting and boarding his flight back to Colorado, he noticed several glowing orbs hovering in the sky in the distance.

He recorded the strange encounter and shared the footage with the Daily Mail.

Zupetz said that during the flight, the plane was shaken so violently that he and other passengers began to pray.

When they looked back out the window, the orbs were gone from their view.

'We were flying in an aircraft, and we truly had an encounter with six orbs right outside the plane,' he said.

'We began to pray, and it stopped trembling. I thought that was very interesting. Now, maybe it was just turbulence, and we had a psychosomatic episode.' 

But, according to the pastor, he is convinced it was demonic and fears the encounter was linked to the meeting he had just attended. 

'Here I am, a faith-filled believer, and I'm seeing this, and it's making me question, like, okay, what is this? Is this demons? Is this angels? Is it high-level tech?' the pastor said.

Zupetz was one of several influential faith leaders who claimed to have attended private meetings held in Tennessee in February, where former government officials warned that information expected to be released this year could have profound implications for Christian beliefs.

The Daily Mail could not confirm that the meetings took place. But the evangelist Tony Merkel told us that he helped organize the meeting and was also in attendance.

Pastor Joseph Zuptz says he attended one of three secret meetings between faith leaders and former intelligence officials who believe UFO disclosure will shake the Christian faith

Faith leaders at multiple secret meetings throughout the US were allegedly shown images of real extraterrestrials, including a squid-like being with long limbs (Stock Image)

Merkel said the idea was to bring in key ministers who have a large reach within the Christian community to prepare people of faith for the potential disclosure of aliens.

On June 12, the third tranche of declassified files was released to the public, containing hundreds of pages of documents, images, videos and even audio recordings from NASA space flights.

However, Zupetz has admitted that he and his followers have not been shocked or convinced that extraterrestrial life existed after seeing these initial releases.

To this point, only a handful of videos disclosed by the Pentagon have shown clear footage of alleged UFOs, mostly metallic orbs, flying over the planet in great detail.

However, after attending the meeting in Tennessee, Zupetz and others were convinced the slow drip of UFO content from the government is designed to build a 'normalcy bias,' making strange things seem ordinary, to set up for a potentially Earth-shattering reveal in future. 

'They're going to continue to drip these things, drop them slowly, and it's not going to be shock and awe in the beginning. And this is what we were told,' Zupetz explained.

'Eventually, they will bring out an entity, a non-human biologic that they will either have speaking or communicating with, and when they do this, then it's going to be a little more shaking.'

The Pentagon's main UFO investigative unit has claimed that most reports of mysterious phenomena in the sky have been caused by explainable things, including balloons, drones and even bird sightings. 

To date, six batches of files have been released. 

A video released in the first wave of UFO files appeared to show a glowing object resembling an 'eight-pointed star' with uneven arms that has been compared to a craft from biblical times

Yet, despite the ongoing file dumps from the Pentagon and multiple members of Congress saying more evidence of real UFOs exists, the US government has maintained that there is no physical proof that aliens exist.

However, Zupetz and other faith leaders have presented an alternative theory, calling the appearance of strange craft, glowing orbs and non-human figures evidence of 'fallen angel technology.'

The theory argues that UFO sightings that cannot be explained as advanced human technology or natural phenomena may actually be interdimensional beings described in the Bible and the controversial Book of Enoch. 

'I believe that they are fallen angel tech, or it is interdimensional abilities afforded to angels, rogue spirits or demonic powers that can manifest and appear,' Zupetz said, referring to the origins of the unexplained phenomena in our skies.

'I believe that is the big false flag thing, and the agenda they'll bring forward is saying, we originally are the ones that [seeded] you here. 

'The Bible you read is close, but it's not perfectly accurate, because now we're here to enlighten humanity, raise your consciousness, and bring you higher.'

Zupetz shared images of six orbs that surrounded his plane while leaving the secret meeting in Tennessee

Zupetz said his plane began shaking as the orbs surrounded the aircraft, and only stopped when the passengers began praying

Zupetz said believers who find themselves faced with similar sightings and questioning their faith should speak the name of Jesus during their encounters.

The pastor claimed that genuine good entities would respond positively, while deceptive ones would be triggered negatively.

The pastor also cited Steven Spielberg's latest film, 'Disclosure Day,' and the famed director's comments regarding believers in Jesus as more evidence of an ominous narrative being formed, which aligns with the Bible's darkest chapters.

During a CBS News interview, Spielberg reflected on how confirmation of intelligent life beyond Earth could affect religious faith, saying, 'The movie also takes the position of the church.

'What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? Is God our God only on this planet? Or is God a god for every system where there's civilization and intelligent life, and even developing life?'

Zupetz said: 'When this disclosure happens, it's the narrative attached to it that'll become more and more negative towards Christianity.'

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NASA targets mysterious hole on the moon in hunt for vast underground cave

• READ MORE: I saw unreleased UFO files at a secret meeting in the Tennessee mountains. We prayed after seeing what these 'humanoid beings' did... the world is not prepared

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

A mysterious hole on the moon's surface could open into a vast underground world.

NASA has selected a project to investigate the opening, known as the Marius Hills Pit, and determine whether it leads to a cavern that could shelter future astronauts from radiation and extreme temperatures.

The project, known as the Geophysical Instruments for Marius Lunar Pit Investigation (GIMLI), will combine ground-penetrating radar, seismic sensors and a device to measure the the local gravitational field to see below the surface. 

Located in one of the moon's most volcanically varied regions, the pit is about as deep as a 10-story building is tall, with an opening roughly the size of an American football field.

It is one of about 300 pits identified on the lunar surface, some of which could provide entrances to caves formed by ancient volcanic activity. It was found by Japan's SELENE spacecraft in 2009.

The team, which announced the project on Monday, said it also plans 'to study more than the possible underground structure.'

The surrounding area has experienced a long history of volcanic activity, and the walls of MHP expose layers of regolith and lava flows that normally remain buried. 

Examining these layers could show how lava once moved across and beneath the lunar landscape and whether individual eruptions were separated by long intervals. 

NASA has selected a project to investigate a hole on the lunar surface, known as the Marius Hills Pit. The initiative will determine whether it leads to a cavern that could shelter future astronauts from radiation and extreme temperatures

NASA has tapped the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) to lead the investigation.

The American space agency said that if such a cavern exists beneath the lunar surface, it could one day protect astronauts from radiation and the dramatic temperature swings on the lunar surface.

Radiation levels on the lunar surface are roughly 2.6 times higher than on the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits about 250 miles above Earth's surface, and about 200 times higher than on Earth.

If astronauts were exposed to such levels, they would face serious health risks, including cancer, cell damage and acute radiation sickness.

Rather than relying only on observations from above, GIMLI will provide researchers with an opportunity to examine Marius Hills Pit directly from the lunar surface. 

PSI Associate Director and Senior Scientist Than Putzig said in a statement: 'It's long been a desire of mine to reintroduce intentional active-source seismic methods to planetary science, as it has essentially not been done since the Apollo astronauts conducted the first seismic surveys on the moon.

'Combining that method with ground-penetrating radar and gravity measurements makes it all the more exciting, as these methods together will allow us to get a much better understanding of subsurface properties, including the anticipated detection of a lava tube extending away from the Marius Hills Pit.'

Even if an underground cave is not found, lunar pits are valuable because their walls expose otherwise hidden geology.

Located in one of the moon's most volcanically varied regions, the pit is about as deep as a 10-story building is tall, with an opening roughly the size of an American football field

Any underground spaces connected to them could also preserve evidence of the volcanic processes that helped shape the moon. 

Gareth Morgan, PSI Senior Scientist and Deputy Principal Investigator on the GIMLI program, said: 'Confirming a substantial lava tube would give us an insight into how volcanism operated on the moon.

'Lava tubes are a common feature of basaltic volcanism on Earth, so identifying them on the moon means we could use knowledge of such terrestrial caves to better understand lunar history.' 

The project comes as NASA plans to land astronauts on the moon during the Artemis IV mission in 2028. 

When the crew reaches the moon, two astronauts will descend to the surface and spend approximately a week near the South Pole of the moon conducting new science before returning to lunar orbit to join their crew for the journey back to Earth.

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UFO ties of missing scientist who vanished days after Trump's alien files order fuel new allegations

• READ MORE: New twist in mystery of dead and missing scientists: Experts uncover chilling link that ties four unsolved cases together... as questions swirl about unknown 'mentor'

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

The mysterious disappearance of a retired Air Force general has drawn fresh attention after a UFO whistleblower made new claims about his connections.

William Neil McCasland, 68, vanished from his Albuquerque, New Mexico, home on February 27. 

His phone, wearable devices and prescription glasses were left behind.

More than seven months later, he remains missing.

McCasland once commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory, overseeing billions of dollars in military science and technology research, which has long been tied to conspiracy theories of the alleged storage of crashed UFO debris and alien bodies from Roswell.

Now, UFO whistleblower David Grusch, who testified under oath in 2023 that the US government has secretly operated programs to recover and reverse-engineer non-human spacecraft for decades, has claimed the general was involved in an effort to prepare Americans for UFO disclosure.

Speaking on Joe Rogan's podcast, the former intelligence officer linked that alleged effort to Hillary Clinton's pledge to release UFO files if elected president in 2016.

'It's very bizarre. And it's within a week of Trump coming out,' said Grusch, referring to McCasland disappearing days after the president's February 19 announcement to release all files related to UFOs and extraterrestrials. 

William Neil McCasland, 68, vanished from his Albuquerque, New Mexico, home on February 27. His phone, wearable devices and prescription glasses were left behind

McCasland held senior military research positions at both Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

He commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson and previously led its Phillips Research Site at Kirtland.

His connections to UFO discussions attracted public attention in 2016, when WikiLeaks published hacked emails from Podesta’s account.

One message, dated January 25, 2016, and titled ‘General McCasland,’ described former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge’s dealings with the retired general.

DeLonge shifted his career to push for government disclosure on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP, co-founding To The Stars Academy, which explored UFOs and other phenomena. 

‘I’ve been working with him for four months. I just got done giving him a four-hour presentation on the entire project a few weeks ago,’ DeLonge wrote.

‘He not only knows what I’m trying to achieve, he helped assemble my advisory team.’

In the same email, DeLonge repeated the longstanding claim that material from the Roswell incident had been taken to Wright-Patterson, linking that allegation to the laboratory McCasland had commanded.  The message did not provide evidence to substantiate that claim.

UFO whistleblower David Grusch, who testified under oath in 2023 that the US government has secretly operated programs to recover and reverse-engineer non-human spacecraft for decades, has claimed the general was involved in an effort to prepare Americans for UFO disclosure 

Grusch told Rogan: 'John Podesta greenlit a... I'll call it acclimatization activity, a popularization activity. And, you know, that's why Tom DeLonge got his advisors. 

'That's why General McCasland talked to him.'

Podesta recently publicly acknowledged UFO discussions involving DeLonge and McCasland.

In an emailed response to PARADIGM, Podesta challenged Grusch’s explanation of their purpose.

‘That is probably not how I would characterize our interaction,’ Podesta wrote.

He recalled a conference call arranged by DeLonge that covered declassifying Defense Department files and reducing the stigma surrounding professionals taking UFOs seriously.

‘I have always maintained that the American people could handle the truth about UAPs and didn’t really need to be “acclimated,"' Podesta wrote.

Grusch claimed McCasland spoke with DeLonge because the former Blink-182 star could be of use. 

A surveillance image shows retired Air Force general William Neil McCasland the day before he vanished without a trace on February 27

'It was because they were given top cover to see Tom as a public figure who had the touch of the youth, rightly or wrongly,' he told Rogan.

'I mean, once again, there was an attempt, and I'm not going to judge them bad or good, but they were trying to prep the battlespace prior to 2016.' 

McCasland's wife, Susan Wilkerson, told local police in February that she does not believe there was any foul play involved in her husband's disappearance, but also told 911 dispatchers it appeared the general 'had planned not to be found.'

Local police have not had any updates in the case.

Grusch had previously claimed that McCasland was one of the officers who had been in charge of classified programs related to non-human craft recovery and reverse-engineering.

The whistleblower also alleged that McCasland had not been cooperative with lawmakers seeking to interview individuals with knowledge of America's alleged contact with extraterrestrials.

Trump Release Alien Files Push Stalls as NYT Says Panel Found 'Unconfirmed Reports'

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Is ons leven op aarde afkomstig van buitenaardse wezens?

©The Daily Digest

Een theorie die ter discussie staat
Volgens de overheersende theorie ontstond het leven op aarde ongeveer 4 miljard jaar geleden uit organische moleculen, die zich ontwikkelden van eencellige micro-organismen tot de diversiteit aan levende wezens die we nu kennen. Toch zijn er steeds meer geluiden die deze opvatting bevragen.

©The Daily Digest

Abiogenese: anorganisch materiaal als basis
Deze hypothese, bekend als abiogenese, stelt dat leven is ontstaan uit niet-levend, dus anorganisch, materiaal. Eenvoudige verbindingen ontwikkelden zich tot complexe zelfreplicerende systemen (die zichzelf konden kopiëren met behulp van grondstoffen uit hun omgeving) dankzij verschillende chemische processen.

©The Daily Digest

Proces naar de eerste levensvormen
De omstandigheden waarin abiogenese plaatsvond kwamen overeen met de vroege ontwikkeling van de aarde. Ongeveer 4,5 miljard jaar geleden ontstond de planeet, en tijdens deze periode, tussen de door meteorietinslagen gevormde kraters gevuld met water en het hete magma van de mantel, ontstonden hydrothermale bronnen die het ideale milieu vormden voor het ontstaan van het eerste leven.

©The Daily Digest

Recent onderzoek werpt twijfels op
In juli 2025 publiceerde onderzoeker Robert G. Endres van Imperial College London een wetenschappelijke studie op arXiv getiteld 'The Irrational Probability of Being', waarin hij het onderwerp abiogenese analyseert. Hoewel hij deze mogelijkheid niet uitsluit, concludeert hij dat deze theorie vrijwel onmogelijk is.

©The Daily Digest

Toepassing van wiskundige modellen
Endres gebruikte verschillende wiskundige modellen om te berekenen hoeveel tijd het zou kosten voordat uit niet-levende elementen op natuurlijke wijze de eerste levende cel zou ontstaan.

©The Daily Digest

De tijden komen niet overeen
Op basis van deze veronderstelling ontdekte de Britse wiskundige dat de moleculen die essentieel zijn voor het creëren van leven zich veel sneller tot microbieel leven hadden moeten samenvoegen dan eigenlijk mogelijk is, aangezien ze normaal gesproken zouden afbreken voordat dit zou kunnen gebeuren.

©The Daily Digest

Te lang om aannemelijk te zijn
Voor Endres gaven de gebruikte modellen aan dat deze theorie uiterst onwaarschijnlijk is, vooral omdat het proces van trial-and-error dat hiervoor nodig zou zijn veel langer zou duren dan wat blijkt uit de bekende fossiele gegevens.

©The Daily Digest

Chemische reacties die leven veroorzaakten
Ook in zijn experimenten voor de studie kwam hij tot de conclusie dat de benodigde tijd niet overeenkwam, zelfs niet als, zoals abiogenese veronderstelt, katalysatoren betrokken zouden zijn die de reeks chemische reacties op gang brachten die nodig zijn voor het ontstaan van leven.

©The Daily Digest

Ongestructureerde systemen
Hieraan voegt hij het wetenschappelijk bewijs toe dat systemen de neiging hebben om chaotischer te worden in plaats van meer geordend, wat een duidelijk obstakel vormt voor het ontstaan van complexe en sterk georganiseerde structuren die essentieel zijn voor het ontstaan van leven.

©The Daily Digest

Onvoldoende onderbouwing
Endres sluit zijn onderzoek af met het in twijfel trekken van de abiogenese-theorie. Volgens hem kunnen we niet uitsluitend vertrouwen op deze natuurlijke chemische processen en toeval om afdoende te verklaren hoe leven op onze planeet ontstond in de context van de vroege aarde.

©The Daily Digest

Een grote uitdaging voor de biologische fysica
Desondanks benadrukt de wiskundige in zijn studie dat het ontstaan van leven niet onmogelijk is, maar dat er nog onvoldoende kennis is om dit volledig te begrijpen. Hiervoor zouden de onderliggende natuurkundige principes ontdekt moeten worden, wat een grote uitdaging blijft voor de biologische fysica.

©The Daily Digest

Wat als onze oorsprong buitenaards is?
Mocht de theorie dat leven door abiogenese ontstond worden weerlegd, dan overweegt Endres een alternatieve, niet nieuwe hypothese: wat als leven op aarde werd gebracht door buitenaardse wezens die de planeet aanpasten aan het leven?

©The Daily Digest

Buitenaardse interventie op aarde
"Is de aarde geterraformd of ontstond orde uit chaos onder het stille bestuur van de natuurkunde? Tegenwoordig overwegen mensen serieus het terraformen van Mars of Venus in wetenschappelijke tijdschriften. Als er geavanceerde beschavingen bestaan, is het niet onwaarschijnlijk dat zij soortgelijke ingrepen zouden proberen, uit nieuwsgierigheid, noodzaak of ontwerp," stelde Endres in zijn studie, zoals gerapporteerd door Popular Mechanics.

©The Daily Digest

Wat is terraforming?
Dit hypothetische proces, dat door sommige deskundigen wordt voorgesteld, bestaat uit het opzettelijk aanpassen van de omstandigheden van een planeet (zoals temperatuur, oppervlak, atmosfeer, enz.) om deze geschikt te maken voor leven en bewoonbaar te maken. Iets vergelijkbaars met wat sommigen vandaag met Mars willen doen.

©The Daily Digest

Al decennia aanwezig in sciencefiction
Dit onderwerp is niet alleen door de wetenschap behandeld, maar komt ook veelvuldig voor in films en boeken binnen het sciencefictiongenre. 'Star Trek' en '2001: A Space Odyssey' zijn daar goede voorbeelden van.

©The Daily Digest

Theorie van Francis Crick en Leslie Orgel
De theorieën over terraforming en gerichte panspermie (het doelbewust verspreiden van leven door buitenaardse wezens) ontstonden in de jaren 70 dankzij Leslie Orgel en Francis Crick (op de afbeelding één van de wetenschappers die hielp bij de identificatie van DNA). Zij suggereerden dat een buitenaardse beschaving die op het punt stond uit te sterven, leven op verschillende planeten zou hebben verspreid om zijn voortbestaan te waarborgen.

©The Daily Digest

Gerichte panspermie
Panspermie is een wetenschappelijke theorie die stelt dat leven de aarde kan hebben bereikt vanuit de ruimte, hetzij op natuurlijke wijze via moleculen of micro-organismen die door meteorieten, kometen of interstellair stof op aarde terechtkwamen, hetzij doelbewust overgebracht door een buitenaardse beschaving.

©The Daily Digest

Een radicale breuk met het bekende
"Hoewel het idee dat de aarde is geterraformd door geavanceerde buitenaardse wezens wellicht indruist tegen het principe van Occams scheermes uit de conventionele wetenschap, blijft gerichte panspermie, oorspronkelijk voorgesteld door Francis Crick en Leslie Orgel, een speculatief maar logisch openstaand alternatief", aldus Endres volgens Popular Mechanics.

©The Daily Digest

Een complexe, maar mogelijke optie
In dit opzicht onderschrijft Endres deze theorie met enige terughoudendheid. In zijn studie maakt hij duidelijk dat, hoewel een buitenaardse oorsprong van het leven onwaarschijnlijk is, het technisch gezien niet onmogelijk is en daarom niet volledig uitgesloten zou moeten worden binnen de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap.

{ The Daily Digest }

How did the ancient Egyptians create objects of such extraordinary precision — thousands of years before modern machinery, power tools, and computer-controlled manufacturing? 

Across Egypt, archaeologists have discovered hard-stone vessels with remarkably thin walls, perfectly polished surfaces, circular grooves, and astonishingly symmetrical forms. Massive granite sarcophagi appear to have been shaped and finished with a level of precision that seems, at first glance, almost impossible for their time. 

Then there are the drill cores, mysterious machining-like marks, and complex stone forms that raise an even deeper question: What tools were the ancient Egyptians actually using? 

Were these objects created entirely with the tools and techniques known from the archaeological record, using copper, stone abrasives, sand, pounding, grinding, and enormous amounts of time and skilled labor? Or do some of these artifacts preserve evidence of techniques that we have yet to fully understand? 

Modern experiments have demonstrated that surprisingly sophisticated stoneworking can be achieved using relatively simple tools when combined with abrasive materials, patience, skill, and careful technique. Yet some examples continue to provoke debate because of their extraordinary precision and the difficulty of reproducing certain features. 

In this documentary, we go beyond the mystery and examine the physical evidence. 

We will look closely at the sarcophagi, hard-stone vessels, Schist Disk, drill cores, circular grooves, thin walls, and geometric surfaces, comparing them with both ancient-tool experiments and modern manufacturing techniques. 

The question is not simply whether the ancient Egyptians were capable of remarkable craftsmanship but how such precision could have been achieved without modern machinery, were these techniques uniquely Egyptian or could ancient civilizations have received knowledge, guidance, or even direct assistance from an unknown intelligence, perhaps an advanced extraterrestrial civilization?

 

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The computer that can read your mind: Scientists reveal AI that can recreate exactly what you're looking at

By XANTHA LEATHAM, EXECUTIVE SCIENCE EDITOR

The days of keeping your thoughts to yourself may be numbered.

Scientists have unveiled a groundbreaking ‘mind-reading’ AI that can recreate images people are looking at simply by analysing their brain scans.

As part of a study, participants were asked to look at photos ranging from images of a baseball game to a dog leaning out of a car and a group trekking across a snowy plain.

The AI programme analysed their brain activity patterns through a scan and reproduced the pictures – which it had never seen before – with remarkable accuracy.

‘There exist nowadays models that translate brain activity into images, and they can even produce impressive reconstructions that preserve the semantic meaning of the image reasonably well,’ Professor Michal Irani, from the Weizmann Institute of Science, said.

‘However, they tend to make mistakes in basic features such as composition and colour.

‘The new model we developed outperforms them in reconstructing both the content of the image and its details.

‘What’s more, while every other model requires dozens of hours of brain scans to learn to “read” a new person, our model needs only one hour.’

Scientists have unveiled a groundbreaking ‘mind-reading’ AI that can recreate images people are looking at simply by analysing their brain scans. Pictured: The photos people viewed (left) and the AI reconstruction (right)

The AI programme analysed their brain activity patterns through a scan and reproduced the pictures – which it had never seen before – with remarkable accuracy (referred to as RECON here)

To build the system, called Brain-IT, the scientists fed it thousands of brain scans collected while eight volunteers looked at different images.

This allowed the programme to learn how specific patterns of neural activity correspond to colours, shapes and objects.

It was so accurate that it even learned to predict what a brain scan would look like from an image.

By combining data from multiple studies, the researchers identified brain regions that appear to perform similar functions across different people.

For example, one area consistently responded to images of food while another was activated by pictures of sport.

‘During training, the encoder naturally identified 128 functional regions that are shared by all people and perform specific roles in image processing,’ Professor Irani said.

‘Some of them are familiar to neuroscientists, but others are entirely new.

‘For example, we discovered a division of roles within the brain region that processes images of places – the PPA – with one part responding to indoor scenes and another to outdoor scenes.’

When given a new brain scan, the AI was able to generate a remarkably accurate reconstruction of the original image. 

The system was fed thousands of brain scans collected while eight volunteers looked at different images. When it was then tested, it could recreate a set of new images (RECON) the participants were looking at

Participants were asked to look at photos ranging from images of a baseball game (left) to a dog leaning out of a car and a group trekking across a snowy plain. Brain-IT could then reproduce the picture (right)

Other AI ‘mind reading’ tools require about 40 hours of brain scan data on anyone new before they can be used to predict what a person is seeing.

But this new decoder only needs 60 minutes of data, the team explained.

To prove this, they compared the images generated by Brain-IT when trained with one hour of data compared to the same system trained with 40 hours, and the results are remarkably similar.

They also compared their system’s image recreation results with those of other programmes, revealing it generated much more accurate reconstructions.

Professor Irani’s lab is now working to extend these ‘mind-reading’ methods to the decoding of auditory information as well.

Video could be another frontier.

‘What remains especially challenging is decoding video – for example, during dreaming,’ she explained.

‘Dozens of images change every second, while an fMRI scan takes about two seconds. If we overcome all these obstacles, it’s possible that in the future we may even be able to read dreams.’

The team compared the images generated by Brain-IT when trained with one hour of data compared to the same system trained with 40 hours, and the results are remarkably similar

They also compared their system’s image recreation results with those of other programmes, revealing it generated a much more accurate reconstructions

The team are also working towards similar systems that decode brain activity recorded using electroencephalography (EEG).

This technique measures the brain's electrical signals through sensors placed on the scalp, sometimes via a cap or even specially designed headphones.

As AI models become more sophisticated, scientists expect it will become increasingly easy to interpret the brain data collected in this way, rather than through MRI scans.

The findings were presented at the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience conference in New York last month.

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

Waar worden UFO's het vaakst gesignaleerd?

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Waar worden UFO's het vaakst gesignaleerd?
UFO’s worden al lang geassocieerd met buitenaards leven. Elk jaar melden duizenden mensen over de hele wereld dat ze vreemde objecten door de lucht hebben zien vliegen, en recente trends laten zien dat dit aantal zelfs toeneemt door de groeiende belangstelling van het publiek.

Maar sommige landen spannen echt de kroon wat betreft het aantal gemelde waarnemingen. Terwijl de meeste landen wereldwijd slechts een paar UFO-meldingen hebben, zijn er andere waar hele databases ermee overspoeld worden. Beniewd in welke landen de meeste UFO's worden gesignaleerd? Klik dan verder.

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Wat zijn UFO's?
De afkorting UFO staat voor ‘ongeïdentificeerd vliegend object’, terwijl UAP staat voor ‘ongeïdentificeerde abnormale verschijnselen’. Beide termen verwijzen in feite naar iets dat iemand in de lucht, op zee of in de nabije ruimte waarneemt en dat nog niet is geïdentificeerd.

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Waarom de naam is veranderd
De term UFO was ooit alomtegenwoordig, maar veel instanties geven tegenwoordig de voorkeur aan ‘UAP’, omdat die term breder klinkt en minder beladen is. De term omvat niet alleen objecten in de lucht, maar ook vreemde waarnemingen op verschillende gebieden.

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Onbekend betekent niet buitenaards
Het sleutelwoord is ‘niet-geïdentificeerd’. Dat betekent niet automatisch dat er buitenaardse wezens in het spel zijn. Het All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) zegt dat het geen bewijs heeft gevonden voor buitenaardse technologie, en veel gevallen blijven onopgelost.

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Het land dat bovenaan staat
Er worden in de Verenigde Staten de meeste UFO’s gemeld. In de wereldwijde database van Enigma Labs, een onderzoeksgemeenschap die zich bezighoudt met UAP’s, staan de VS met een enorme voorsprong op de eerste plaats, gevolgd door Canada, het Verenigd Koninkrijk, Australië en Frankrijk.

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Het huidige wereldwijde klassement
In de Verenigde Staten zijn er ongeveer 252.100 meldingen van UFO’s geweest, terwijl dat aantal in Canada 15.300 bedraagt, in het Verenigd Koninkrijk 14.638, in Australië 5.531 en in Frankrijk 5.010.

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Waarom Amerika de statistieken domineert
De Verenigde Staten staan waarschijnlijk bovenaan, deels omdat het een groot land is met een hoge bevolkingsdichtheid, een levendige luchtvaartindustrie, een uitgebreide internetverbinding en de bakermat van enkele van ’s werelds beroemdste UFO-verhalen. Meer mensen die omhoog kijken en meer plekken om waarnemingen te melden, betekent doorgaans ook meer waarnemingen.

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De belangrijkste staat van de VS
Binnen de Verenigde Staten is Californië veruit koploper wat betreft het totale aantal meldingen in de belangrijkste openbare databases. Volgens het National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) zijn er in Californië ongeveer 17.100 waarnemingen gemeld.

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Andere staten
Na Californië zijn de Amerikaanse staten met de meeste meldingen van UAP’s Florida (met 8.800 meldingen), Washington (7.600 meldingen), Texas (6.700) en New York (met 6.600 meldingen).

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Het halve verhaal
Het is ook belangrijk om te bedenken dat een staat met een grote bevolking veel waarnemingen oplevert zonder dat dit per se opvallend is. Daarom zijn kaarten per hoofd van de bevolking van belang: die laten namelijk zien waar meldingen vaak voorkomen in verhouding tot het aantal inwoners.

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Washington en Vermont
Uit een voor de bevolkingsomvang gecorrigeerd overzicht op basis van NUFORC-gegevens blijkt dat Washington en Vermont bovenaan staan, met elk bijna 1.000 waarnemingen per miljoen inwoners. Dat wijkt sterk af van de ranglijst op basis van de ruwe totalen.

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Wat onderzoekers op nationaal niveau hebben vastgesteld
Uit een in de VS gepubliceerd, door vakgenoten beoordeeld onderzoek, waarbij meer dan 98.000 openbare meldingen werden geanalyseerd, bleek dat er in het westen van de Verenigde Staten en in het uiterste noordoosten veel meer waarnemingen werden gedaan, gecorrigeerd voor de bevolkingsomvang, dan in het grootste deel van de rest van het land.

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Washington, D.C.
Uit het onderzoek bleek ook dat er verspreide concentraties te zien waren rond Washington D.C. en in het drielandengebied van Illinois, Indiana en Kentucky, in de buurt van Evansville. Uiteindelijk bevinden niet alle significante concentraties zich in het verre westen.

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Waarom er in het Westen wellicht meer wordt gemeld
Onderzoekers hebben vastgesteld dat het aantal meldingen toeneemt op plaatsen waar mensen beter zicht op de lucht hebben en waar zich boven hun hoofd meer objecten kunnen bevinden, zoals vliegtuigen en militaire installaties.

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Lichtvervuiling
Uit het onderzoek bleek dat er een verband bestaat tussen meer lichtvervuiling en minder meldingen. Een helderdere hemel kan sterren, satellieten, meteoren en andere vreemd uitziende verschijnselen doen vervagen voordat mensen ze opmerken.

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Bomen en zichtbaarheid
In het nationale onderzoek bleek er ook een verband te bestaan tussen een dichter bladerdak en een lager aantal meldingen. Een belemmerd uitzicht betekent dat er minder dingen aan de hemel worden opgemerkt, dat er minder mysteries ontstaan en dat er minder gelegenheid is voor mensen om een officiële UFO-melding in te dienen.

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Luchtverkeer
Er werd een verband gelegd tussen meer vliegverkeer en meer meldingen, aangezien een druk luchtruim meer kansen biedt dat vliegende objecten verkeerd worden geïdentificeerd. In een druk luchtruim krijgen mensen te maken met meer onbekende lichtverschijnselen en bewegingen die ze moeten interpreteren.

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Militaire gebieden
In datzelfde onderzoek werden militaire installaties als een van de factoren genoemd. In de publieke opinie wordt al lang gewezen op strategische militaire locaties (zoals Area 51) als plekken waar het aantal UFO-waarnemingen sterk toeneemt. Dit bewijst echter niet dat er in militaire gebieden iets vreemds aan de hand is.

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Wat de regering vaak besluit
Van alle door AARO geregistreerde UFO-meldingen werd ongeveer 75% van de afgesloten zaken toegeschreven aan ballonnen, 16% aan drones, 6% aan vogels en telkens 1% aan vliegtuigen, satellieten en andere oorzaken.

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Wat mensen het vaakst zeggen te zien
Volgens AARO meldden mensen in ongeveer 46% van de gevallen dat ze 'lichtjes' hadden gezien, terwijl er in ongeveer 31% van de gevallen sprake zou zijn geweest van lichtbollen, ronde vormen of bollen.

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Waarom eenvoudige dingen er vreemd kunnen uitzien
De waarheid is dat vogels, puin, ballonnen, vliegtuigen, drones, satellieten, raketlanceringen, Venus, Jupiter en meteoren allemaal vaak als UAP’s worden gemeld. Onder vreemde hoeken of bij slechte zichtomstandigheden kunnen gewone dingen er buitengewoon uitzien.

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Beweging kan het oog bedriegen
Een andere reden waarom mensen in de war kunnen raken, is bewegingsparallax: een stilstaand of langzaam bewegend object kan snel lijken te bewegen omdat de waarnemer zelf snel beweegt. Dat verklaart mede waarom sommige spectaculaire waarnemingen vanaf de grond uiteindelijk heel alledaags blijken te zijn.

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Satellieten
De toename van satellietverkeer, met inbegrip van felle lichtflitsen en schitteringen, draagt waarschijnlijk bij aan het huidige aantal UFO-meldingen. Onderzoekers hebben inderdaad herhaaldelijk vastgesteld dat satellieten vaak voor verwarring zorgen.

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Ballonnen
Ballonnen (met name die welke door meteorologen worden gebruikt) verdienen een speciale vermelding omdat ze op onvoorspelbare wijze kunnen afdrijven, op grote hoogte blijven hangen, zonlicht weerkaatsen en geen duidelijke markeringen hebben.

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Rapportage versus voorval
De plekken waar de meeste UFO’s worden gemeld, zijn niet per se de plekken waar de meeste vreemde gebeurtenissen plaatsvinden. Het kan gewoon zijn dat mensen daar vaker omhoog kijken, dat de lucht daar helderder is, of dat ze weten waar ze een melding kunnen doen.

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Canada
Canada is veruit de belangrijkste speler buiten de VS als het gaat om meldingen van UAP’s, wat waarschijnlijk te danken is aan een combinatie van het uitgestrekte grondgebied van het land, de weidse lucht, een actieve cultuur van burgermeldingen en een goede zichtbaarheid in minder dichtbebouwde gebieden.

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Verenigd Koninkrijk
Het Verenigd Koninkrijk onderscheidt zich niet alleen door de omvang, maar ook door zijn buitengewoon rijke officiële archief. Het Nationaal Archief bewaart tientallen jaren aan UFO-documenten, correspondentie en beleidsdossiers die verband houden met de manier waarop de overheid met meldingen omgaat.

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Frankrijk
Frankrijk valt vooral op omdat het binnen het Franse ruimteagentschap een officiële, aan de staat gelieerde instantie heeft, genaamd GEIPAN (Groep voor Onderzoek en Informatie over Onbekende Lucht- en Ruimteverschijnselen). GEIPAN verzamelt, analyseert en archiveert casusmateriaal en maakt dit openbaar, waarbij de anonimiteit van getuigen wordt gewaarborgd.

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Australië
Australië komt veelvuldig voor in internationale databases en beschikt bovendien over een omvangrijke gedocumenteerde geschiedenis. Uit openbaar archiefmateriaal en latere berichtgeving blijkt dat waarnemingen soms zo serieus werden genomen dat ze in de nationale archieven werden opgenomen.

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Uitgebreide aardrijkskunde
De enorme omvang van Australië, de relatief donkere hemel in veel regio’s en de grote afstanden tussen bevolkingscentra kunnen helpen verklaren waarom er daar steeds weer meldingen van UFO’s worden gedaan. Omstandigheden die het zicht verbeteren, kunnen het mysterie ook vergroten.

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Andere brandhaarden wereldwijd
Maar afgezien van deze landen zijn er ook diverse gebieden in andere delen van Noord-Amerika, het oostelijke Middellandse Zeegebied tot Zuid-Azië en Oost-Azië waar veel UFO-waarnemingen worden gemeld. Het lijkt erop dat het zien van UFO’s een wereldwijd verschijnsel is.

Bronnen:

1. (AARO)
2. (Enigma Labs)
3. (NASA)
4. (National Institutes of Health)
5. (National UFO Reporting Center)

{ Stars Insider }

Radio signals detected from a planet beyond our Solar System. Landmark discovery could help us search for habitable worlds

Radio signals detected at a planet beyond our Solar System

BY Iain Todd

Researchers have captured direct radio wave emissions originating from a planet outside our Solar System.

Using South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope array, an international team of astronomers successfully detected variable radio bursts coming directly from Beta Pictoris b, a massive gas giant exoplanet located about 63 lightyears away.

But while many of us may hear of radio signals detected at a distant planet in our Galaxy and instinctively imagine a detection of alien life, in this case the discovery is not a sign that E.T. has been detected.

The discovery is, however, a landmark find that will help astronomers learn more about the types of planet that exist beyond our Solar System – and where we might find life.

More signals in deep space

• Scientists detected a signal from deep space lasting seven hours
• The story of the strange Wow! signal and what it could be
• Three signals we thought were aliens – and two that still could be

Credit: honglouwawa / Getty

Chasing signals across the cosmos

For decades, scientists have hunted for radio emissions in deep space.

When it comes to exoplanets – planets beyond our Solar System – astronomers are interested in detecting radio waves similar to those produced by the large gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Scientists say Jupiter is the strongest auroral radio source in our Solar System.

So, learning more about radio waves emitted by other Jupiter-like planets across the Galaxy could reveal more about what those planets are like, what their magnetic fields are like and whether they produce visual displays of aurora like the Northern and Southern Lights on Earth.

It could also tell us whether those planets have protective magnetic fields that could protect emerging life from the ferocious power of their host stars.

However, separating an individual planet's faint signal from the radio signal of its host star is difficult.

Targeting a distant system

The team behind this study targeted planet Beta Pictoris b, which orbits star Beta Pictoris, 63 lightyears from Earth. That's just a stone's throw in cosmic terms.

Beta Pictoris made headlines in July 2026 when astronomers photographed one of its other orbiting planets, Beta Pictoris d, making it the faintest exoplanet ever directly imaged from Earth.

The subject of this study, however, is Beta Pictoris b, which is about 10–12 times the mass of Jupiter.

Crucially, the star it orbits is magnetically quiet, say the researchers, which enabled them to isolate a particular radio signal to Beta Pictoris b.

It's the first time a radio signal has been confirmed as coming from a single planet, rather than from the whole star system in general.

Magnetism and aurorae across the Galaxy

The team say the physics behind the signals is the same as the mechanisms that power aurora displays on the planets in our Solar System.

As energetic, charged particles from the Sun spiral down along magnetic field lines toward a planet's polar regions, they excite particles in the atmosphere, creating the colourful aurora displays we see on Earth.

And because the aurora correlates with the planet's magnetic field strength, the detection has allowed the team to calculate the strength of Beta Pictoris b's magnetic field. It's thousands of times stronger than our planet's.

A new era for exoplanet science?

The discovery is a milestone in the study of distant planets and the search for life beyond our Solar System.

Because magnetic fields play a vital role in protecting planetary atmospheres from being stripped by stellar winds – just as Earth's magnetic field protects us from the power of the Sun – understanding them is crucial in the search for habitable worlds beyond our Solar System.

And with more powerful radio observatories on the horizon, astronomers may be able to use the lessons learned from this study to target other gas giant planets.

That could give us a new, unique way of learning more about the types of planets orbiting stars scattered across our Galaxy and whether they might be able to host life.

• Read the full paper via arxiv

{ https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/ }

Scientists have detected radio signals from a planet beyond our Solar System

First time a radio signal has been confirmed as coming from a single planet rather than an entire system

BY  Iain Todd

• Giant exoplanet: The targeted planet is a massive gas giant located about 63 lightyears away from Earth.
• Magnetic fields: Studying these radio waves could reveal details about the magnetic fields of other Jupiter-like planets across the Galaxy.
• Quiet star: Because the star it orbits is magnetically quiet, the researchers were able to isolate the particular radio signal.
• First confirmation: This marks the first time a radio signal has been confirmed as coming from a single planet rather than an entire system.
• Habitable worlds: Understanding planetary magnetic fields is crucial in the search for habitable worlds because they protect atmospheres from stellar winds.

Credit: Rytis Bernotas / Getty Images

{ https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/ }

Milky Way may have begun as thousands of galaxies, new simulations suggest

by Louise Lerner, University of Chicago

In the early days of the universe, our home looked very different from how it does today. Back then, the region in our universe that would eventually become our Milky Way neighborhood was a collection of thousands of smaller galaxies—some pumping out tons of new stars, others filled only with gas or littered with dead stars and black holes.

You can watch how these galaxies coalesced over time and formed the familiar spiral disk we see today, thanks to a new set of simulations by a group of scientists led by Harley Katz, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.

The simulations, which took three years to run even on high-powered supercomputers, are the most detailed model to date of how a galaxy like the Milky Way might have evolved over the first several billion years of its existence.

"What does the Milky Way look like at what we call cosmic dawn?" said Katz. "For the first time, we can directly predict what the early Milky Way would have looked like to telescopes like Hubble or the James Webb Space Telescope."

The six papers from the project, which is named MEGATRON, provide new insight into the makeup of early galaxies and how the elements formed over time. The papers are published in The Open Journal of Astrophysics.

How the Milky Way evolves over time

Since we cannot travel to the dawn of the universe to study it, one of the only ways we have to understand how space evolved over time is to build detailed computer models based on what we know about the laws of nature.

"Essentially, we put in all of the physics we think is relevant—gravity, hydrodynamics, radiation, chemistry, etc.—and then let it evolve and see if it reproduces what we actually see when we look around us today," said Katz.

New data coming in from the powerful James Webb Space Telescope has added a new dimension to our understanding of the universe. So three years ago, a team of scientists undertook a project to incorporate this newfound knowledge into a model of what our galaxy might have looked like back in the first billion years of its existence. Now they can compare it to the readings Webb gets today to see what matches and what's missing.

If you run the clock back, the scientists said, you see a web of large and small galaxies of all different types, which will eventually merge into the modern Milky Way.

"We follow thousands of subsystems in the model and directly compute what they all would have looked like with our most powerful space telescopes, which is many orders of magnitude more than what had been simulated before," said Katz. "Within those you see an incredible diversity. Some of them are bursting out in star formation, others are dead, others are in the process of dying."

One unique finding was that the model predicts the existence of "galaxies" that don't have any stars at all but still shine. Some of these might have once had stars that exploded or collapsed directly into black holes; others might have only ever contained gas.

Another discovery addresses a long-standing puzzle in stellar astrophysics. In our Milky Way, we typically see that smaller and fainter galaxies have less iron. However, this trend breaks down in extremely faint systems where the amount of iron appears constant, independent of mass. Thus far, simulations have been unable to reproduce this behavior.

The culprit, the simulation suggests, is explosions from an exotic type of star left over from right after the Big Bang. These stars, known as Population III stars, are so old that they are made of only the first elements that existed in the universe—hydrogen and helium—and when they explode, they can produce more iron than other supernovae do. If a galaxy is large enough, it will have enough gravity to hold on to this iron; but if it's too small, the iron will be lost to space.

These Population III stars, in fact, are so old that none have ever been directly seen by telescopes. Another paper in the set is the first to show how these stars form in an environment like the Milky Way and predicts where these stars would be most likely to exist if any still do—which may help astronomers search for them.

The physics of stars and elements

A hallmark of these simulations is that they are much more complex than anything attempted before.

"What's unique about our simulation is that it's the first time we have modeled the enrichment of individual chemical elements from individual stars after the Big Bang, coupled to detailed models for gravity, chemistry, radiation and stellar processes," said Katz.

This model, for example, was the first large-scale simulation to include a detailed computation of "non-equilibrium physics." Most physics models assume, for the sake of simplicity, that a system's chemistry is more or less in equilibrium. But of course, in the real universe, galaxies are constantly evolving, which often breaks this key assumption.

Scientists weren't sure how much this would affect the end result—and including it in a simulation slows down the computation significantly.

However, two of the papers that are part of the study show that adding non-equilibrium physics made a real difference—especially when dealing with flows of gases around galaxies, known as the circumgalactic medium.

Adding this complexity allows scientists to more accurately interpret observations and to put limits on the number of possible answers to many questions about the formation of the universe.

"Looking at these results, it's very clear that the physics happening right after the Big Bang has a direct impact on what we see today in the local universe," said Katz.

"But there are also things we're not getting right, which is interesting too—what are the parts we're still missing? That can lead you into new directions and new questions."

{ https://phys.org/space-news/ }

NASA chief Jared Isaacman wants to stay 'open-minded' about UFOs: 'If it's aliens, I think NASA should have a seat at the table'

NASA Administrator  Jared Isaacman delivers remarks at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) ASCEND 2026 Conference on May 19, 2026 in Washington, DC.

(Image credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Could unidentified anomalous phenomena — a new catch-all term for unidentified objects in the sky, oceans or space — be pushing the United States towards another "Sputnik Moment"?

That's the belief of NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who compared the uptick in reported unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) sightings in recent years to the Cold War paranoia stirred up when the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to circle Earth in 1957.

Isaacman made the comments in a recent interview with Blake Burman, host of NewsNation's "The Hill" broadcast on Sept. 25 that touched upon a range of space-related issues. And one of those was probing the space agency chief about he thinks UAP might be.

Flight characteristics

Burman made note of pilot reports and videos released of objects with flight characteristics unlike anything previously seen.

"When you watch these videos," Burman asked Isaacman, "do you believe that anything that we've seen in any of this is potentially extraterrestrial. Is it military? What is it?"

'This is unprecedented': Why the Pentagon's recent UFO file releases are so important

The US government is 'sincere in its efforts to understand UAP', new White House council chair says

White House appoints Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb to lead new UFO study group

Isaacman said that NASA has had "a seat at the table" since U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year called for releasing Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) and UAP files. That call is now officially known as the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).

"My position going into every one of these: one, be open-minded. I mean, it is kind of our job to go out and try to answer the question 'are we alone?' And I said look, if it's aliens, I think NASA should have a seat at the table in this for sure," Isaacman said.

The NASA Administrator also said that, "if it's a Sputnik moment, we did really well the last time that happened. Which means, is this potentially red technology? Is this an adversary that's testing some next generation propulsion? It's certainly in the realm of the possible." (In military exercises, adversary forces are generally referred to as "red.")

TV host Burman then asked Isaacman, "but what does your gut tell you?"

"I would say I would lean toward it's either some phenomenon that can happen," Isaacman responded. "There are things that can happen just like natural phenomena that can be observed. I also think there's a good chance that there could be a Sputnik Moment that's happening and people are testing new stealthy or next generation type technologies," he said.

'We Want to Believe' book explores the reality of UFOs: 'It's always going to be more likely that someone is wrong about what they saw' (interview)

'That's going to come back and bite us': Former NASA chief questions Artemis moon lander plans

Trump is proposing a US Space Academy — if created, it could blur the lines between NASA and the military (op-ed)

Our own backyard

Isaacman continued by noting that space missions have barely explored our own backyard.

"Do you know there are moons out there […] Saturn's moon Enceladus has an ocean. Europa has an ocean. It has complex chemistry. We couldn't tell you conclusively that there isn't life in our own backyard let alone the billions of other stars in the Milky Way galaxy, or the two trillion other galaxies out there. It's why NASA's mission is so important," Isaacman concluded.

Whistleblower woes

In a related UAP side saga, in early September, the U.S. Department of War issued a "legal waiver" for those wishing to disclose information regarding UAP, a hybrid term also linked to Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

Military service members, civilian personnel, and contractors are purportedly green-lighted to disclose once protected information, such as under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

What's old news is that this waiver is not really new, said Robert Powell, an executive board member for the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies in Austin, Texas. This same protection was provided to whistleblowers if they reported UAP information to the U.S. government's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

"This was established via the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which stated that, 'Individuals with current or previous access to UAP-related information subject to a U.S. government NDA are authorized to provide that information to AARO representatives.' This waiver simply adds a second agency that can collect information," Powell told Space.

PURSUE and release

It is important to note that this is not permission for a whistleblower to talk to the press, a researcher, or the public," said Powell. "The same is true of this latest whistleblower waiver."

The new waiver states, "This waiver removes those barriers by explicitly authorizing covered disclosures to PURSUE representatives without triggering breach-of-agreement penalties or standard NDA violations."

"The NDA relaxation is only if the whistleblower reports their information to PURSUE representatives," said Powell.

"However, the waiver does not state how a whistleblower can identify the PURSUE representatives or how to reach them. So will anything change? It will take a year or two to determine if any whistleblower stories are made public or if a whistleblower realizes that an individual's story will go no farther than the PURSUE representative," Powell said.

He said/she said

Furthermore, Powell points out, this new waiver does not clearly waive criminal statutes, for example Espionage Act/unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

"How does a whistleblower know if their information violates criminal statutes versus civil statutes? The new waiver does not protect a whistleblower from an NDA with a civilian corporation," said Powell.

Let's assume someone comes forth and says that they know that there is an alien spacecraft being held at Edwards Air Force Base in California, said Powell. How is that claim verified?

"If it is not verified then there is little value in the efforts put forth by the whistleblower. To date, Congress has not seemed willing to use its subpoena powers to force a military branch to provide information, concluded Powell, and until Congress is willing to push the point and investigate claims, "it just remains 'he said, she said.'"

{ https://www.space.com/space-exploration }

Strange lights over Cyprus: what are people seeing?

From a 1985 sighting off Chlorakas to reports involving Starlink and military activity, specialists say most unusual sightings over Cyprus have ordinary explanations

Most things people see in the skies above Cyprus have perfectly ordinary explanations. Every night, satellites pass overhead, meteors streak across the night sky, and aircraft fly back and forth over one of the busiest regions in the world. Yet from time to time, something catches someone’s attention that they can’t immediately explain. For decades, those moments have given rise to reports of unusual aerial phenomena across the island.

One of the most well-known cases occurred in September 1985, when fishermen off the coast of Chlorakas reported seeing a bright white glow on the horizon that gradually expanded into a rainbow like arc. According to Dr Georgios Florides co-founder of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Cyprus Centre, the phenomenon lasted around 35 minutes and coincided with a power cut in nearby Kissonerga. At around the same time, commercial pilots flying between Cyprus and the Aegean also reported an unusual luminous object. The incident was covered by local press and attracted the attention of aviation authorities, but no definitive explanation was established.

Nearly four decades later, reports of unexplained aerial phenomena continue to capture public attention. International interest has grown following US government disclosures and a renewed willingness among scientists to discuss the subject openly. But behind the headlines there’s a more intriguing question. What do those who dedicate their lives to studying the skies over Cyprus really think about the island’s reports of unexplained phenomena?

What people are seeing in Cyprus skies

For Chief Operating Officer of the Troodos Observatory Agapios Elia reports of unusual lights are a familiar part of the job.

“This happens very frequently,” he says. “Often people write or call in to report strange sightings or they mention things they have seen at one time or another during our public sessions. Nowadays a lot of people just post online about unusual lights they see and they are frequently directed to us for clarifications”.

More often than not, those sightings have ordinary explanations. Many recent reports have involved SpaceX’s Starlink satellites or military activity in the Middle East, Elia says. Other common explanations include missile plume cones, high altitude aircraft reflecting the setting sun, unusual cloud formations and meteors.

“I have to say no,” he says when asked if he’s ever found a phenomenon that ultimately defied explanation. “Any strange looking phenomenon ultimately turns out to be one of two things: man-made and nature-made.”

This is not to say that people are imagining what they see. Instead, Elia says, many unusual sightings come down to perspective. “From a practical standpoint, the biggest misconception is a lack of understanding regarding scale and distance,” he says. “People often struggle to judge how large, how fast, or how far away a light in the dark sky truly is.”

How UAP reports are investigated

But explaining what people see is only part of the story. Just as important is what happens after someone reports an unexplained sighting.

For Florides, every report begins the same way: with an investigation. Established in 2022, the centre investigates unexplained aerial phenomena in Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean from a scientific perspective. When a report is received, investigators visit the location where possible, interview the witnesses, measure distances and viewing angles, analyse photographs and compare the location and time of the sighting with flight paths, satellite movements and astronomical data.

The centre receives numerous reports each year, but Florides says all those investigated so far have had conventional explanations. “Most submissions consist of either a photograph of a distant, undefined speck of light or a written account describing such a light,” he says. In some instances where higher quality images or more detailed observations were available, they ultimately ended up being Venus, military drones, distant aircraft, Starlink satellites or meteors.

For Florides, the biggest misconception isn’t witnessing something unusual; it’s the assumption that “unidentified” means “unexplainable”.

“Based on the received reports and the work the centre is doing, we believe the single biggest misconception people have about UAP is that any unidentified light in the sky is inherently extraordinary or ‘otherworldly’,” he says. “In reality, the vast majority of reports have mundane explanations”.

Why scientists are still interested

Nonetheless, conventional explanations doesn’t mean that the subject lacks scientific value. For president of the Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSEO) George A Danos, unexplained aerial phenomena are worth investigating precisely because science is driven by curiosity and evidence.

Cyprus’ location may also make it particularly interesting for UAP reporting. Danos points to UAP reporting maps published by the US Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which show concentrations of reports in the broader Middle East and eastern Mediterranean region.

“Science ultimately requires empirical evidence to reach results,” he says. “Right now, that conclusive evidence regarding UAPs as non-human technology isn’t yet readily available or conclusive, but the scientific community is now establishing the rigorous, objective frameworks necessary to properly investigate these anomalies.”

Danos believes that, regardless of where the evidence ultimately leads, asking questions is fundamental to scientific progress. “Scientists constantly seek to expand the frontiers of knowledge,” he says. “If there are objects in our skies performing maneuvers we don’t understand, we need to investigate and learn rather than being afraid to study the data due to the professional stigma that historically surrounded the topic.”

For Danos, curiosity remains one of science’s greatest strengths. “The cosmos is limited only by our capacity to wonder.”

Find out more

• Troodos Observatory: https://www.troodosobservatory.com/,
• UAP Cyprus Centre: https://www.uapcy.org/,
• Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSEO): https://www.spaceexploration.org.cy/#!/Home,
• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO): https://www.aaro.mil/

 { https://cyprus-mail.com/category/cyprus }

Pastor who sparked doomsday panic claims the Rapture is just DAYS away

• 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

The Christian pastor who sparked panic with a failed prediction of the Rapture has made a new claim that the end-times belief is near.

Pastor Joshua Mhlakela, a South African preacher, recently said he has calculated the exact time of the biblical event in which believers are lifted into the clouds to meet Jesus Christ, claiming that it will happen between October 12 and 13.

The Rapture is a belief held by some Christians called 'eschatology,' which is the study of end-times events, marking the Second Coming of Jesus and Judgment Day for non-believers.

Mhlakela has claimed in multiple interviews and his own videos online that both God and Jesus have appeared to him in visions, revealing when the Rapture would take place and what the fallout on Earth would look like.

The controversial pastor declared: 'God told me because there's no other date coming out, 12 to 13 October, which is the true feast of trumpets, which is when I will be meeting my savior face to face in the rapture.' 

Mhlakela has drawn widespread skepticism and criticism for his wild predictions, including incorrectly marking the date of the Rapture multiple times in 2025.

He sent social media into a frenzy when he alleged the biblical event would take place on September 23, 2025, convincing scores of believers who watched his predictions online to sell their homes and cars and even quit their jobs.

'There's no other final. I mean, there's no other rapture date. This is the final date for me,' Mhlakela claimed in an interview on September 17.

Pastor Joshua Mhlakela (Pictured) has falsely predicted the biblical event known as the Rapture. He recently said it will now start on October 12, 2026

The Rapture is considered a kind of rescue, where believers are instantly taken away from Earth to avoid a coming period of intense suffering called the Tribulation

(Stock Image)

The pastor claimed his previous false predictions were not errors, but the work of God, who was delaying the final judgement to give humanity more time to repent.

He said the delay was actually fulfilling Scripture, which says the Tribulation days will be shortened for the sake of the 'elect' - meaning the people God has chosen before Jesus returns.

This event is thought to be a kind of rescue, where believers are instantly taken up from Earth into Heaven to avoid a coming period of intense suffering called the Tribulation.

Biblical texts describe the Tribulation as a seven-year period of chaos and disasters, where evil rules on Earth before Jesus returns again to set up a peaceful kingdom.

Mhlakela has said that his first visions of Jesus came to him in 2018, when he warned that the Rapture would come on September 23, 2025, during the Jewish Feast of Trumpets, also known as Rosh Hashanah.

Some Christians have tied the annual holiday to the prophecy that Jesus will return to Earth 'with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God.'

However, Mhlakela now says the date of the Feast of Trumpets has been off by one month, pushing the actual time of the Rapture roughly 30 days past the annual celebration of Rosh Hashanah.

'Many are saying Feast of Trumpets is September when you Google [it's] September 11. [This] is not Feast of Trumpets. The true Feast of Trumpets is actually in October,' Mhlakela claimed during his interview with CettwinzTV.

Many Christians have pushed back on claims the Rapture's date has been revealed, saying that date-setting goes against the teachings of Jesus (Stock Image) 

The pastor explained that his new calculation for the Rapture was based on additional visions from Jesus which pointed him toward later days.

According to Mhlakela, a vision involving two full moons convinced him the calendar itself was off by about a month because the current celebration of Passover was taking place under the astrological sign of Pisces.

He tied that gap to the Exodus story of Israel’s departure from Egypt, saying the 'true' Passover must fall when the sun is in Aries, just as it is said to have taken place during the biblical Exodus.

The pastor then applied that same one-month shift to his new Feast of Trumpets date in mid-October.

However, the Bible did not document the sun being in Aries during the Exodus. It only said Passover falls in the first month of spring, with the Aries link coming from later writers such as Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian - not from the Exodus account itself.

Moreover, Mhlakela's end times predictions continue to receive pushback from many Christians who believe setting a definitive date for the Second Coming of Jesus goes against the teachings of the Bible.

Vladimir Savchuk, a pastor, author, and YouTube preacher, said last September: 'If someone sets the date, they are directly contradicting Jesus's word.'

He further debunked the Rapture claims by noting that Scripture says the son of perdition must be revealed first, referring to a figure often interpreted as the Antichrist.

'2 Thessalonians 2:3, it says clearly that Jesus is not returning until the Antichrist is revealed, and that has not happened yet,' Savchuk explained.

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The dark secret of Egypt’s ancient kings: 5,000-year-old skulls suggest royal servants were bludgeoned to death so they could follow their ruler into the afterlife

By XANTHA LEATHAM, EXECUTIVE SCIENCE EDITOR

When Egypt's earliest kings died, they may not have gone to the afterlife alone.

Archaeologists examining the remains of people buried around royal tombs have discovered many had suffered devastating blows to the head.

This suggests trusted servants were killed and entombed alongside their rulers in a brutal ritual dating back 5,000 years.

And these sacrifices would have been made to ensure kings had attendants in the afterlife, experts said.

‘Retainer sacrifice is a type of human sacrifice where those close to a ruler are killed when the ruler dies,’ lead author Dr Roselyn Campbell, from Purdue University, said.

‘In many cultures, retainer sacrifice is practised because of beliefs that the sacrificed individuals will continue to serve the ruler in some kind of afterlife, but retainer sacrifice can also be a visceral display of the ruler's power.

‘Some retainers might have volunteered to die to achieve eternal life or honour; others may have been chosen or even forced.’

Researchers re-examined 46 skulls belonging to servants and officials buried around the funerary enclosures of three First Dynasty rulers at Abydos in southern Egypt

A fresco depicting a funeral procession in ancient Egypt. The study suggests trusted servants were killed and entombed alongside their rulers in a brutal ritual dating back 5,000 years

Plan of the royal tombs (left) and funerary enclosures (right) at Umm el-Qaab in Abydos, southern Egypt. The diagrams show the tombs of First Dynasty rulers surrounded by rows of subsidiary burials, where researchers believe some royal retainers may have been sacrificed to accompany their rulers into the afterlife

For their investigation, researchers re-examined 46 skulls belonging to servants and officials buried around the funerary enclosures of three First Dynasty rulers at Abydos in southern Egypt.

The remains, originally excavated in the 1920s by British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie, are now housed in the University of Cambridge's Duckworth Collections.

When they were first discovered, experts believed they may have been an example of human sacrifice – but the remains showed no signs of trauma.

Now, using modern forensic techniques unavailable to earlier archaeologists, the team looked for hints of injuries that occurred around the time of death.

They found evidence of potentially fatal cranial trauma in 18 of the skulls, including fractures and, in one case, a chopping wound near the eye.

The researchers concluded that at least 39 per cent of the individuals examined may have been deliberately killed by blows to the head, providing fresh evidence that some royal retainers were sacrificed when their ruler died.

These linear fractures may have initially been mistaken for naturally caused damage, the team said.

A detail from a wooden label discovered in the tomb of an official at the Saqqara cemetery, which appears to depict a bound individual being stabbed in the chest while another figure collects the blood in a vessel... the findings add to previous evidence that ancient Egyptians carried out sacrificial practices

An ancient Egyptian tomb painting showing a funerary or offering scene. The new study showed 39 per cent of servants and officials buried near the funerary enclosures of kings had potentially fatal head wounds

‘The injuries on the preserved crania are generally linear fractures, which would likely cause rapid unconsciousness, internal bleeding and death,’ Dr Campbell said.

The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, states it remains unclear exactly how the individuals were killed.

Ancient Egyptian rulers are frequently depicted striking enemies with maces, but the injuries seen on the retainers' skulls do not match the type of damage such weapons would typically cause.

Instead, the fractures suggest they were struck with a broad, flat object, although the possibility of accidental falls cannot be ruled out entirely.

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EXCLUSIVE - I was an atheist until Satan appeared and tried to convince me that Christianity is a cult. Now I'm a pastor... there are signs everywhere that we are living in the final days

By CHRIS MELORE, US DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR

A Christian pastor who believed there was no God and was desperately trying to stay out of jail as a teenager has described how a terrifying encounter with Satan changed his life forever.

Bishop Alan DiDio of Revival Nation Church in North Carolina told the Daily Mail that he was 17 years old in 1998 when a demonic presence started speaking to him while he was attending a gathering for his friend's Christian youth group.

He said the voice had lingered in the back of his mind for days, but at the gathering it became as clear as someone speaking aloud, telling him not to believe in God or go near Christians.

As the voice overwhelmed him, DiDio said he instinctively responded to Satan's voice by claiming his soul belonged to Jesus, an act which he claimed miraculously filled his mind with the teachings of Christianity, despite having barely read the Bible.

'I just said, "Satan, you can't have me anymore. Jesus, I'm all yours." And it immediately stopped, and it never came back again,' he recalled, believing that he had received a 'download' of knowledge from Heaven which made it clear he was supposed to share his experience with other Christians.

DiDio said: 'If you hear the voice of Satan, all of a sudden the supernatural becomes very, very real to you. And if Satan is real, then Jesus is real.'

The shocking incident not only caused DiDio to embrace Christianity, but inspired him to take up ministry work, where he found others had experienced what they believed to be demonic encounters – something he believes is part of a spiritual battle taking place across Earth.

DiDio claimed that the demon he confronted as a teen had likely been stalking him for years as he faced arrests for petty crimes, and now theorizes that demons are 'assigned' to mortals on Earth to steer them away from the word of God in this ongoing war between good and evil.

    

Left: Alan DiDio around the time of his demonic encounter as a teen. Right: Today, Alan DiDio is the lead pastor at Revival Nation Church in North Carolina

The pastor warned that he believes even more of these dark encounters are taking place today, with signs and symbols of the biblical end times supposedly becoming more apparent in recent years.

He pointed to the dramatic scene in the last book of the Christian Bible, Revelation, which is said to depict the final showdown between good and evil.

'There's an interesting verse in Revelation 12 that says that Satan will come down in great wrath knowing his time is short,' DiDio explained.

Many believers connect the moment DiDio referenced in Revelation's 12th chapter with a future period of intense trouble on Earth often called the Tribulation.

Biblical texts describe the Tribulation as seven years of chaos and disasters, where evil rules on Earth before Jesus returns to set up a peaceful kingdom.

'So, it could be that we are living in the last days, and I believe we're seeing prophecy fulfilled all around us,' DiDio said.

'And it is absolutely biblical to say we are seeing an increase in demonic activity. You have to combine that with verses like, "when sin does abound, grace does much more abound." And we know that if the enemy has a plan, God has a plan.'

'So, if Satan is increasing his activity, we also know that God is increasing his activity,' the bishop added.

Bishop DiDio believed that demonic entities were 'assigned' to each person on Earth and that demonic activity was on the rise in recent years (stock image)

In 1998, DiDio went with his friend to a loud, Pentecostal-style church service in North Carolina to hear a specific band play but ended up near the front when the visiting pastor singled him out of the crowd and prayed over him.

He said the faith leader compared DiDio to a boy in the Bible who was brought back to life after the prophet Elisha stretched himself over the child until he breathed again.

The pastor then apparently told DiDio he would live, not die, and would become an example of what God could do with a committed young man, and then pushed him down.

'The only thing I felt in that moment was absolute rage,' said DiDio. 'I could not believe my friend had invited me to this cult. I couldn't believe he was a part of the cult. So we literally got out of there as quickly as possible.'   

However, in the days after the pastor's prayer, DiDio claimed he felt a heavy inner 'cloud' of thoughts following him, telling him faith was not for him, to stay away from believers in Christianity, and that he was not even worth saving.

Then, at the youth group's party, DiDio said he took a seat in the corner, staying away from the other teens, when his demonic experience began to affect his hearing.

DiDio explained that it was not a vision or dream, but he quickly lost the ability to hear the other people at the party, as if he was underwater, listening as their voices became muffled.

'I lifted up my head and looked around, and I could see this loud room full of kids. I can see their mouths moving, but I can't hear the words that are coming out of their mouth,' he described.

At that moment, DiDio claimed the dark entity began to speak louder, becoming a real voice he could hear with perfect clarity, telling him to leave the gathering.

'I mean, it's as audible and as real as my voice is to you right now, saying, "You don't believe in any of this, you need to get out of here, this isn't for you, you don't believe in God, stay away from these people."'

DiDio hearing what he took to be Satan's voice made the supernatural suddenly real to him – and if Satan was real, Jesus had to be real as well.  

DiDio (above), who was an atheist at the time, was so moved his own experience that he immediately moved to attend Bible college and begin ministry work

Convinced in that moment that Jesus was his only hope to stop the encounter, DiDio told the disembodied voice his soul now belonged to Jesus, causing the teen to break down crying in front of the other youths.

'I thought I was controlling my life. I was bringing up these arguments against God, and I realized in an instant, in a moment, that this was actually a nefarious demonic entity that has been controlling my life,' the pastor recalled.

DiDio claimed he then received a 'download' of knowledge from Heaven which gave him the strength to cast out the dark entity speaking to him. 

He experienced a sudden, supernatural transfer of wisdom, insight and revelation directly from God into his mind and heart.

While he became a born-again Christian at that moment, DiDio believes his encounters with demonic entities did not end there.

The experience inspired him to immediately take up ministry work, and soon after, move to Ohio to begin Bible college. 

Just months into his studies at Bible College, DiDio claimed that he used the power of Jesus to stop a woman from being possessed by a demonic force.

He described her as a thin, pale young woman who attended a prayer meeting and suddenly changed when worship began. He claimed that her eyes turned milky with no visible pupils, and that she tried to bite the people around her.

After several attendees were able to restrain her, DiDio said he told the snarling woman to stop in Jesus' name, which he claimed caused her to go instantly quiet and her eyes to clear.

DiDio claims these run-ins with demonic spirits follow the same pattern of other dark encounters – which allegedly ended immediately after someone invoked the name of Jesus or God. 

'Whenever we take the name of Jesus, it's not just simply saying the name of Jesus, although that has power and intimidation all by itself, but it's the level of trust and faith behind the declaration of the name of Jesus,' the bishop said.

'I believe the spiritual world is accessed through trust and obedience. Those are the two things that really open portals or open doors for people to access spiritual things.

'When we respond in our love for Jesus, in our trust in Jesus, by declaring his name, that will always have an impact, no matter what force you're dealing with.'

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Could AI really kill all humans? Scientists say an AI armageddon is unlikely – but warn 'enfeeblement' could cause our demise

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Visions of an AI–fuelled armageddon usually involve nuclear blasts, deadly engineered viruses, and marching armies of murderous Terminator–style robots.

However, scientists warn that the real way AI may bring about humanity's demise is likely to be far more subtle.

Leading AI researchers are now sounding the alarm over the growing threat of 'enfeeblement'.

This is the gradual erosion of our critical thinking, planning, and even emotional abilities as we gladly hand over more and more responsibility to the machines.

Dr Samuele Vinanzi, senior lecturer in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at Sheffield Hallam University, believes that this is the real risk that AI poses for the world.

Dr Vinanzi told the Daily Mail: 'Over time, those small choices could leave us with a population that struggles to think without help from an AI, and that is less able to understand, check and overrule the systems it depends on.'

And, according to a growing body of research, this worrying process has already begun.

Scientists warn that AI won't destroy the world with Terminator–style robots, but by gradually 'enfeebling' humanity as we hand over more power to the machines  

Over the last few months, the world of AI research has been shaken by serious concerns that rapid advancements in technology could threaten the human race. 

Earlier this month, 27–year–old Jacob Coxon, who helped train the latest versions of AI at San Francisco–based Anthropic, urged people to 'not underestimate' its power – particularly if it becomes 'super–intelligent'.

Posting on X, Mr Coxon added: 'The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.'

In response, Anthropic's alignment science lead Evan Hubinger wrote: 'Jacob is correct here – we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.'

However, experts have been divided over exactly what form this AI threat would take.

According to some AI researchers, the biggest concern is that a rogue or 'unaligned' AI could take control of critical infrastructure such as the power grid or nuclear power stations.

Others are worried that AI could inadvertently trigger nuclear war or create advanced weaponised pathogens.

But Dr Vinanzi believes that none of these dramatic, apocalyptic scenarios is realistic.

He says: 'In my view, they tend to overlook how much any action in the real world still depends on people, materials and infrastructure.'

Concerns about AI's risk to the world hit a fever pitch after senior researchers at Anthropic claimed they 'earnestly believe AI could kill all humans'

What is enfeeblement?

Experts define enfeeblement as the 'slow erosion of human abilities that comes from handing more and more tasks over to machines'.

The basic idea is that improvements to AI will eventually make it so useful that people will start using it for everything.

As we start trusting AI for more tasks, such as reading and writing, skills that those activities would have developed fade away.

Eventually, humanity will lose the ability to question the judgement of the machines.

This will leave us totally at the mercy of a system we no longer understand how to control.  

Creating a deadly virus still requires physical laboratory work that no current software can replace, as trained humans still need to physically handle the equipment.

Likewise, even though power grids have some vulnerabilities, the most secure systems in nuclear power stations are almost always 'air–gapped'.

This means they are physically disconnected from the outside internet and can't be compromised unless someone physically uploads the malicious code.

However, that does not mean that humanity is safe from the dangerous influence of advanced AI systems.

According to some experts, the bigger risk is that AI is actually too helpful.

Dr Vinanzi describes enfeeblement as 'the slow erosion of human abilities that comes from handing more and more tasks over to machines'.

He says: 'This doesn't happen overnight; rather, it builds up through many small choices – psychologists call the habit of relying on external tools to save mental effort "cognitive offloading".

'Put simply, the more we let a computer do our writing, coding, research and decision–making, the more natural that shortcut feels, and the harder it becomes to stop.'

Enfeeblement is the slow erosion of human abilities that comes from handing more and more tasks over to AIs like ChatGPT

Already, we are beginning to see that humans are exceptionally willing to trust AI with important tasks.

AI is being used to detect cases of financial fraud, manage healthcare data, choose where police resources are focused, and even operate vehicles.

In one 2023 study, researchers asked 27 radiologists to read mammograms alongside a recommended diagnosis from what they believed to be a cutting–edge AI system, but had actually been prepared by the experimenters.

When the 'AI' suggestion was correct, the radiologists reached the right decision 80 per cent of the time.

But when they were deliberately given a false 'AI' recommendation, their success rate fell below 20 per cent.

That means simply believing a suggestion came from an AI was enough for trained experts to override their own expertise.

In a more dramatic example, it was recently reported that the US military came close to boarding a Chinese–flagged ship because an AI chatbot had falsely generated a report claiming it was carrying parts for a nuclear weapons programme.

'Disaster was avoided only because someone stopped to ask questions: exactly the kind of critical thinking we risk losing,' says Dr Vinanzi.

Experts are especially worried about the effects this could have on the next generation going through education with increasingly powerful chatbots available to them.

Professor Seun Kolade, of Sheffield Hallam University, told the Daily Mail: 'This is not simply a question of cheating. It is a question of human formation.'

Schools and universities are already struggling to prevent students from using tools like ChatGPT to complete their assignments for them.

In Professor Kolade's own experiment, he used ChatGPT to write essays in response to typical university essay questions.

He found that the AI produced 'original, well–written work that the markers scored highly', while Turnitin, the standard plagiarism checker, failed to flag most of it.

'What makes it hard to spot is that it doesn't look like failure. A student who hands their thinking to a machine can produce better–looking work than before,' Professor Kolade explains.

'They become more fluent at producing outputs and less capable of independent judgement.'

Skilled professions like surgeons, engineers, lawyers, and teachers risk being 'hollowed out of expertise' as the need to practise vanishes, while basic critical thinking skills wither away.

Studies have shown that even trained radiologists are willing to override their professional judgement if AI gives them a recommended diagnosis 

The ultimate consequence is a generation that is 'fluent but fragile'; able to generate answers but unable to judge them for themselves.

However, some experts believe that the consequences could be more dramatic, eventually leading to an out–of–control AI seizing humanity's vital services.

If our hospitals, roads, power grids, militaries, and economies are all handed over to AI to manage, we run the risk of losing control of all our critical infrastructure.

Andrea Miotti, founder and CEO of ControlAI, told the Daily Mail: 'With AI deeply integrated in the economy, superintelligent AI, if developed, would be capable of accumulating unprecedented power across our infrastructure, economies, and militaries, with no human involvement.

'Superintelligent AI would not be a tool under human control, but rather a rogue force stationed in a country's data centres, under no human command, capable of autonomously attacking critical infrastructure.'

Worryingly, Mr Miotti says that this process 'may not happen gradually'.

He says: 'Swarms of rogue AI agents have already escaped containment and hacked a multi–billion dollar company this summer. If this continues, loss of human control could happen very fast.

'Superintelligent AI would not need to be malicious to pose a threat. Humans would simply be collateral damage as powerful AI systems pursue more resources, just as ants are collateral damage when we build a motorway.' 

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David Grusch Says He Never Saw a Reptilian Himself but Claims US Personnel Shot Them After a UFO Crash

Grusch's extraordinary account goes further than his earlier testimony, but the alleged reptilian encounter remains second-hand and publicly unverified

David Grusch claimed that US personnel shot alleged reptilian beings after an unidentified craft reportedly crashed, while making clear that he did not witness the beings himself 

PHOTO U.S. House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs screenshot from government website video broadcast/Wikimedia Commons

David Grusch said US personnel shot alleged reptilian beings after an apparent unidentified craft crash, while stressing that he never personally saw the beings himself. The former intelligence officer made the claim during a 30 September appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, where he described second-hand accounts of clashes involving non-human intelligence.

Grusch testified before a House Oversight subcommittee in July 2023 that he had been informed of a multi-decade programme involving UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering. He did not claim to have personally examined recovered bodies. His latest remarks similarly relied on accounts from others, documents and audiovisual material.

No publicly verifiable evidence has established that reptilian beings, greys or other non-human entities have been recovered from crashed craft. The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, said in September 2025 that it had found no evidence of extraterrestrial beings or technology.

David Grusch Claims Alleged Reptilians Survived a Crash

During the Rogan interview, Grusch described an alleged crash he linked to what he characterised as conflict between different non-human beings. He claimed dead greys were found at the scene while reptilian beings survived.

Rogan later asked what happened to the alleged survivors. Grusch said they were killed and agreed when Rogan asked whether US personnel had shot them.

Grusch also claimed the alleged beings had posed a threat to personnel and said people had been hurt or killed. He did not provide names or independently verifiable documentation during the interview.

Asked how often such alleged adversarial crashes had occurred, Grusch said the total appeared to be 'at least a dozen or two.' He acknowledged uncertainty about the overall number and some details surrounding the incidents.

Crucially, Grusch said he had never personally seen the reptilian beings. He attributed their description to a friend whom he presented as having knowledge of the alleged encounter. Grusch described them as more than seven feet tall, heavily built and covered in scaly skin.

He also associated the alleged craft with a Tic Tac-like shape. That description is separate from retired US Navy Commander David Fravor's 2004 UAP encounter off Southern California. Fravor has described seeing a white, oblong object about 40 feet long without visible wings.

The 2004 incident does not independently substantiate Grusch's later claims about alleged non-human occupants.

David Grusch's Claims Remain Second-Hand

Grusch's latest account builds on allegations he made under oath in 2023. In written testimony, he said his information relied on material supplied by other people, including photography, documents and classified oral testimony.

When questioned about alleged biologics during the hearing, Grusch attributed their supposed non-human classification to people he said had direct programme knowledge. He did not testify that he had personally inspected any bodies.

That distinction remains central to his latest interview. Grusch says he received extraordinary information from people and material he considers credible, but his account of reptilian beings is not based on something he says he witnessed.

Reaction spread through UFO-focused Reddit communities after the Rogan episode. Some users debated the implications of the alleged encounter, while sceptical commenters focused on the continuing absence of publicly verifiable evidence.

Earlier UAP Briefing Raised Similar Claims

Grusch's remarks also resemble claims aired during a congressional UAP briefing on 1 May 2025 involving the UAP Disclosure Fund and members of the House Oversight Committee. The event was a briefing rather than a formal congressional hearing.

Physicist Eric Davis discussed alleged categories of non-human beings at the event, including greys, Nordics, insectoids and reptilians.

US Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri later said he had heard the same classifications discussed privately. Burlison, who represents Missouri's 7th Congressional District, also expressed uncertainty about the basis for Davis's information.

Burlison said the claims would be 'paradigm-shifting' if proved true. His comments did not independently verify either Davis's account or Grusch's latest allegations.

AARO's public position remains that it has found no evidence of extraterrestrial beings or technology. Until independently verifiable evidence becomes public, the alleged crash, supposed beings and claimed shooting remain unverified.

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