MUFON eNewsletter- with the Monthly Sighting Statistics of July2025!

COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD UNITED STATES 374 CANADA 25 BRAZIL 13 UNITED KINGDOM 13 AUSTRALIA 9 FRANCE 8 ITALY 7 SPAIN 4 CROATIA 3 MEXICO 3 AUSTRIA 3 INDIA 3 BELGIUM 2 TURKEY 2 NETHERLANDS 2 POLAND 2 COLOMBIA 2 GERMANY 2 ARGENTINA 1 GREECE 1 SLOVAKIA 1 EGYPT 1 IRAN 1 NICARAGUA 1 JAPAN 1 ROMANIA 1 VENEZUELA 1 CUBA 1 HUNGARY 1 EL SALVADOR 1 IRAQ1 MAURITIUS 1 RUSSIAN FEDERATION 1 ZAMBIA 1 CZECH REPUBLIC 1 NEW ZEALAND 1 TAIWAN 1 BULGARIA 1 FINLAND 1 PUERTO RICO 1   TOTAL: 499 SHAPE Circle 90 Sphere 70 Oval 46 Unknown 38 Star-like 32 Other 30 Triangle 25 Disc 24 Cigar 15 Cylinder 14 N/A 11 Diamond 8 Tic Tac 8 Square/Rectangular 7 Boomerang 6 Egg 6 Fireball 5 Flash 4 Cone 2 Bullet/Missile 2 Saturn-like 2 Chevron 2 Teardrop 2 Blimp 1 STATES OF THE USA California 47 Texas 22 Michigan 21 Colorado 21 Arkansas 19 Washington 19 Florida 16 New York 14 Ohio 13 Arizona 13 Missouri 13 Pennsylvania 11 South Carolina 9 Tennessee 9 Indiana 8 New Jersey 8 New Mexico 8 Alabama 7 Nevada 7 Connecticut 7 North Carolina 7 Iowa 6 Illinois 5 Oregon 5 Virginia 5 Wisconsin 5 Georgia 4 Maryland 4 Massachusetts 4 Minnesota 4 Kentucky 4 Nebraska 3 Utah 3 Idaho 3 Oklahoma 3 Maine 2 Alaska 2 Vermont 2 New Hampshire 2 Rhode Island 2 West Virginia 1 Kansas 1 Mississippi 1 Louisiana 1 Montana 1 North Dakota 1 DISTANCE < 100 ft 65 101-500 Ft 52 501 ft - 1 Mile 64 Over 1 Mile 115 Unknown 63 NO VALUE 34 ERT Most impressively there were 12 Landings, Hovering, or Takeoffs reported, and 21 Entities observed.

{ https://mufon.com/ }

03-08-2025 om 23:39 geschreven door peter  

Aliens: Facts about extraterrestrial life and how scientists are looking for it

Everything you need to know about aliens

Discover more about aliens

• What could aliens look like?
• What's the best evidence we've found for alien life?
• Are aliens real?

{ https://www.livescience.com/space }

03-08-2025 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

Humans may have untapped 'superpowers' from genes related to hibernation, scientists claim

By Christoph Schwaiger 

Scientists pinpointed key "regulators" that help control the metabolisms of hibernators, and say the same genes might hold untapped benefits for humans.

There are genes that help to regulate metabolic changes tied to hibernation. This DNA, if targeted, could be beneficial to human health, some scientists think. 

(Image credit: Flavio Coelho via Getty Images)

Hibernating mammals rely on particular genes to adjust their metabolisms as they enter that unique, low-energy state — and humans actually carry that same hibernation-related DNA.

Now, early research hints that leveraging this particular DNA could help treat medical conditions in people, scientists say.

Hibernation offers "a whole bunch of different biometrically important superpowers," senior study author Christopher Gregg, a human genetics professor at the University of Utah, told Live Science.

For example, ground squirrels can develop reversible insulin resistance that helps them rapidly gain weight before they hibernate but starts fading as hibernation gets underway. A better understanding of how hibernators flip this switch could be useful for tackling the insulin resistance that characterizes type 2 diabetes, Gregg suggested.

Hibernating animals also protect their nervous systems from damage that could be caused by sudden changes in blood flow. "When they come out of hibernation, their brain is reperfused with blood," Gregg said. "Often that would cause a lot of damage, like a stroke, but they've developed ways to prevent that damage from happening."

Gregg and his colleagues think tapping into hibernation-related genes in people could unlock similar benefits.

Related:

•  Best-ever map of the human genome sheds light on 'jumping genes,' 'junk DNA' and more

A 'hub' of hibernation genes

In a pair of studies published Thursday (July 31) in the journal Science, Gregg and his team pinpointed key levers that control genes related to hibernation, showing how they differ between animals that hibernate and those that don't. Then, in the lab experiments, they delved into the effects of deleting these levers in lab mice.

Although mice don't hibernate, they can enter torpor — a lethargic state of decreased metabolism, movement and body temperature that typically lasts for less than a day — after fasting for at least six hours. This made mice a suitable genetic model for studying these effects.

Using the gene-editing technique CRISPR, the scientists engineered mice with one of five conserved noncoding cis elements (CREs) deactivated, or "knocked out." These CREs act as levers to control genes that, in turn, code for proteins that carry out biological functions.

The CREs targeted in the study lie near a gene cluster called the "fat mass and obesity-related locus," or the FTO locus, which is also found in humans. Gene variants found within the cluster have been tied to an elevated risk of obesity and related conditions. Broadly speaking, the FTO locus is known to be important for controlling metabolism, energy expenditure and body mass.

By knocking out the CREs, the researchers were able to change the mice's weights, metabolic rates and foraging behaviors. Some deletions sped up or slowed down weight gain, others turned metabolic rate up or down, and some affected how quickly the mice's body temperatures recovered after torpor, the researchers said in a statement.

This finding is "highly promising," particularly given the FTO locus plays a well-known role in human obesity, Kelly Drew, a specialist on hibernation biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told Live Science in an email.

Knocking out one CRE — called E1 — in female mice caused them to gain more weight on a high-fat diet than did a comparison group with all of their DNA intact. Deleting a different CRE, called E3, changed the foraging behavior of both male and female mice, specifically changing how they searched for food hidden in an arena.

"This suggests that important differences in foraging and decision processes may exist between hibernators and non-hibernators and the elements we uncovered might be involved," Gregg said.

Unknowns to address

The study authors said their results could be relevant to humans, since the underlying genes don't differ much between mammals. "It's how [the mammals] turn those genes on and off at different times and then for different durations and in different combinations that shape different species," Gregg said.

However, "it's definitely not as simple as introducing the same changes in human DNA," Joanna Kelley, a professor who specialises in functional genomics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Live Science in an email. "Humans are not capable of fasting-induced torpor, which is the reason why mice are used in these studies," said Kelley, who was not involved in the work.

She suggested that future work include animals incapable of torpor, and focus on unpacking all the downstream effects of the deleted CREs. As is, the current study "definitely points the field in a new direction" in terms of how scientists understand the genetic controls driving changes in hibernators throughout the year, she added.

Drew also highlighted that torpor in mice is triggered by fasting, while true hibernation is triggered by hormonal and seasonal changes and internal clocks. So while the CREs and genes the study identified are likely critical parts of a metabolic "toolkit" that responds to fasting, they may not be a "master switch" that turns hibernation on or off.

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"Nevertheless, uncovering these fundamental mechanisms in a tractable model like the mouse is an invaluable stepping stone for future research," Drew said.

Gregg emphasized that much remains unknown, including why the effects of some deletions differed in female mice versus male mice or how the changes in foraging behavior seen in mice might manifest in humans. The team also plans to research what would happen if they deleted more than one hibernation-linked CRE at a time in mice.

Down the line, Gregg thinks it could be possible to tweak the activity of humans' "hibernation hub genes" with drugs. The idea would be that this approach could yield the benefits of that gene activity — like neuroprotection — without patients having to actually hibernate, he said.

{  https://www.livescience.com/health }

03-08-2025 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

03-08-2025 om 21:06 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers have published a new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It shows one of the most iconic regions of the sky, made famous by the Hubble Telescope.

Famous Hubble Telescope image

In 1995, scientists conducted an experiment: they pointed the Hubble telescope at a small and, as previously thought, virtually deserted area of the sky. The results of ten days of imaging amazed the researchers. It turned out that there were actually thousands of distant galaxies there. The experiment clearly demonstrated that the Universe contains orders of magnitude more galaxies than previously thought.

In 2003, astronomers repeated the experiment, pointing Hubble at another part of the sky in the constellation Fornax. By that time, the maintenance expedition had installed new instruments on the telescope, significantly increasing its capabilities.

Once again, the telescope did not disappoint astronomers. The famous image, dubbed the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, captured approximately 10,000 galaxies. The closest ones are about a billion light-years from Earth, and the farthest ones are at the edge of the observable Universe. They existed just 800 million years after the Big Bang.

A new look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Twenty years later, astronomers decided to remake the Hubble Ultra Deep Field using JWST. It conducted observations using the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). In total, the filming took 100 hours.

The published image shows the area known as the MIRI Deep Imaging Survey. It represents one of the deepest views of the Universe ever obtained. In total, JWST has detected over 2,500 sources in this tiny patch of sky. Among them are hundreds of extremely red galaxies, some of which are likely massive systems filled with dust clouds, or galaxies with old stars that formed at the dawn of the Universe. Thanks to JWST’s high resolution, even in the mid-infrared range, researchers can distinguish the structures of many of these galaxies, shedding light on their growth and evolution.

The colors in the image correspond to different wavelengths of infrared light. Orange and red correspond to the longest wavelengths. Galaxies of these colors have characteristics such as high dust concentration, abundant star formation, or active galactic nuclei.

Small greenish-white galaxies are particularly distant and have a high redshift. This shifts their light spectrum to the peak wavelengths of the data, which are shown in white and green. Most of the galaxies in the photo do not have characteristics that amplify the mid-infrared range, so they are brightest in the shorter near-infrared wavelengths, which are shown in blue and cyan.

• According to Esawebb

• Posted in Launches, News

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

03-08-2025 om 20:35 geschreven door peter  

UFOs in Canada? Official new report

The report does not specifically address the question of what unexplained UAP might be. As the report states:

The project was not meant to prove or disprove the existence of extraterrestrial life or extraterrestrial visitors. The collection or analysis of 1st-hand data such as photos, videos or individual UAP sighting reports was not part of the project.

The report, “Management of Public Reporting of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in Canada,” is available on the Government of Canada website.

Establishing a dedicated reporting service for UFOs in Canada

The purpose of the report was not to investigate specific UAP sightings or make any conclusions about UAP. Instead, it recommends improvements in how such reports are handled by government departments and agencies. To this end, the Office of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada recommends the creation of a new federal body to standardize the process. The report states:

The mystery of unidentified phenomena in the sky has long fascinated humanity, capturing the public imagination and arousing both skepticism and curiosity. Together, the analysis presented in this report suggests that Canada would benefit from an improved process for reporting, collecting, and studying UAP sightings.

Our goal was to find the current resources and processes in place for handling and following up on UAP reports, to compare them with the best practices in other countries, and to make recommendations for potential improvements. The preparation of this report has garnered more public anticipation than any project in the history of this office.

A federal department or agency responsible for managing public UAP data should be identified. This service would collect testimonies, investigate cases and post its analyses publicly.

Nemer told CTV News:

The Sky Canada Project recommendations provide a realistic framework for the consistent and efficient management of UAP sightings in Canada. I am confident that our leaders will take these recommendations seriously.

Canadian Space Agency and other government agencies

The report specifies various government agencies that should be involved, and recommends the Canadian Space Agency to lead the effort. It also names Transport Canada, the Department of National Defense and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. According to CTV News, Transport Canada and the Canadian Space Agency have both shown interest, but need more time to determine what actions they should take. The Canadian Space Agency told CTV News:

The [Canadian Space Agency] is pleased to be recognized in the report as a trusted and respected scientific institution that regularly engages with the public on space-related matters. Although the [Canadian Space Agency] is not currently involved in the management of unidentified anomalous phenomena, it acknowledges the opportunity for coordinated action across federal departments and civilian organizations.

In regard to sightings by pilots and other aviation personnel, the report notes:

Transport Canada should encourage pilots, cabin crews and air traffic controllers to report UAP sightings without fear of stigmatization.

Additional recommendations

The report also makes other recommendations. These include new tools for data collection, such as a bilingual (English/French) mobile reporting app, providing the public with more access to UAP records and data and finding ways to combat disinformation.

The report says:

Improved data from public reports will enable more comprehensive and accurate research analyses. Investigating UAP reports may also enhance airspace security by identifying threats, thus strengthening national security through the proactive mitigation of risks from UAPs.

Following the lead of other countries

Some other countries already have official government UAP bodies. These include the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in the U.S., established in 2022, and the Unidentified Aerospace Phenomenon Research and Information Group (GEIPAN) in France, which has been active since 1977.

Chile and China also have active government UAP investigation bodies.

Canada’s Sky Canada Project is just the latest. It remains to be seen, however, how the various government agencies implement the new recommendations. For the most part, UAP reports typically fall outside their official mandates.

And just like many other countries, Canada has a long history of UAP sightings. You can find out more from Chris Rutkowski, a leading Canadian researcher in Winnipeg, Manitoba, NARCAP Canada and MUFON Canada, among others.

Some UAP cases remain unexplained

As in other countries, most UAP reports in Canada are found to have prosaic explanations. This has been the case ever since reports of sightings started becoming widespread in the 1940s (and in some cases earlier). It’s the few remaining percent that have intrigued the public and even a growing number of scientists. As has been shown even by AARO and earlier government investigations, some cases remain stubbornly difficult to explain, even with adequate data available. The report says:

UFOs are by their very definition unidentified but this does not imply that they are of extraterrestrial origin, that they defy natural or scientific explanation, or that they would not be identifiable with access to additional or better data and tools. Nonetheless, some UAP sightings – for which data exist – remain unexplained even after investigation.

… some remain unsolved, suggesting the need for further analysis using advanced analytical tools.

Paul Delaney, an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at York University in Toronto, added:

Determining once and for all that UAP sightings are of an extraterrestrial origin or not is of deep interest to people everywhere. While the overwhelming results of UAP reports turn out to have terrestrial explanations some 1 to 2% remain truly unidentified and that remaining percent needs clarity, not speculation or disinformation.

Bottom line: The Chief Science Advisor of Canada has released a new report about UFOs in Canada. It provides guidelines to standardize UAP reports for government agencies.

• Source: Management of Public Reporting of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in Canada
• Via CTV News
• Read more: UAP and science: Testing new methods

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{ https://earthsky.org/space/ }

02-08-2025 om 23:22 geschreven door peter  

Shroud of Turin wasn't laid on Jesus' body, but rather a sculpture, modeling study suggests

The shroud was first recorded in the late 14th century, and controversy over whether it was an authentic relic from the crucifixion and death of Jesus kicked off immediately. A carbon dating analysis carried out in 1989 placed the shroud's creation in the range A.D. 1260 to 1390, solidifying its interpretation as a medieval artifact.

During this time in European medieval history, low-relief depictions of religious figures — such as carved tombstones — were widely used, previous art historical analysis has found.

To investigate how the Shroud of Turin might have been made, Moraes created and analyzed two digital models. The first model represented a three-dimensional human body, and the second model was a low-relief representation of a human body.

Using 3D simulation tools, Moraes then virtually draped fabric onto the two different body models. When he compared the virtual fabric to photographs of the shroud taken in 1931, Moraes found that the fabric from the low-relief model almost exactly matched the photographs.

Related: Is it a fake? DNA testing deepens mystery of Shroud of Turin

In the simulation with the three-dimensional body, Moraes wrote in the study, the fabric deformed around the volume of the body, resulting in a swollen and distorted image. This distortion is sometimes called the "Agamemnon Mask effect," he wrote, after the unnaturally wide gold death mask found in a tomb at Mycenae in Greece.

Moraes demonstrated in a video how the Agamemnon Mask effect works by painting his face and pressing a paper towel to it. The resulting image is much wider than a front view of his face due to the distortion caused by imprinting a 3D object onto a 2D piece of fabric.

But a low-relief sculpture wouldn't cause the image to deform and would look more like a photocopy, similar to the Shroud of Turin, Moraes said, because it shows only the regions of potential direct contact, without any real volume or depth.

Rather than assuming the Shroud of Turin was the result of draping fabric on a human body, Moraes favors the explanation that it was created within a funerary context, making it "a masterpiece of Christian art." Moraes did not investigate the methods or materials that may have been used to make the shroud, however.

Although there is a "remote possibility that it is an imprint of a three-dimensional human body," Moraes wrote, "it is plausible to consider that artists or sculptors with sufficient knowledge could have created such a piece, either through painting or low relief."

One expert thinks that Moraes is right but that his study is not particularly groundbreaking.

"For at least four centuries, we have known that the body image on the Shroud is comparable to an orthogonal projection onto a plane, which certainly could not have been created through contact with a three-dimensional body," Andrea Nicolotti, a professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Turin, wrote at Skeptic.

"Moraes has certainly created some beautiful images with the help of software," Nicolotti wrote, "but he certainly did not uncover anything that we did not already know."

Moraes suggests that his method is accessible and replicable, and that his work "highlights the potential of digital technologies to address or unravel historical mysteries" by bringing together science, art and technology.

{ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology }

02-08-2025 om 22:49 geschreven door peter  

AI is entering an 'unprecedented regime.' Should we stop it — and can we — before it destroys us?

Then, in 2017, Google researchers published a landmark paper outlining a novel neural network architecture called a "transformer." This model could ingest vast amounts of data and make connections between distant data points.

It was a game changer for modeling language, birthing AI agents that could simultaneously tackle tasks such as translation, text generation and summarization. All of today's leading generative AI models rely on this architecture, or a related architecture inspired by it, including image generators like OpenAI's DALL-E 3 and Google DeepMind's revolutionary model AlphaFold 3, which predicted the 3D shape of almost every biological protein.

Progress toward AGI

Despite the impressive capabilities of transformer-based AI models, they are still considered "narrow" because they can't learn well across several domains. Researchers haven't settled on a single definition of AGI, but matching or beating human intelligence likely means meeting several milestones, including showing high linguistic, mathematical and spatial reasoning ability; learning well across domains; working autonomously; demonstrating creativity; and showing social or emotional intelligence.

Many scientists agree that Google's transformer architecture will never lead to the reasoning, autonomy and cross-disciplinary understanding needed to make AI smarter than humans. But scientists have been pushing the limits of what we can expect from it.

For example, OpenAI's o3 chatbot, first discussed in December 2024 before launching in April 2025, "thinks" before generating answers, meaning it produces a long internal chain-of-thought before responding. Staggeringly, it scored 75.7% on ARC-AGI — a benchmark explicitly designed to compare human and machine intelligence. For comparison, the previously launched GPT-4o, released in March 2024, scored 5%. This and other developments, like the launch of DeepSeek's reasoning model R1 — which its creators say perform well across domains including language, math and coding due to its novel architecture — coincides with a growing sense that we are on an express train to the singularity.

Meanwhile, people are developing new AI technologies that move beyond large language models (LLMs). Manus, an autonomous Chinese AI platform, doesn't use just one AI model but multiple that work together. Its makers say it can act autonomously, albeit with some errors. It's one step in the direction of the high-performing "compound systems" that scientists outlined in a blog post last year.

Of course, certain milestones on the way to the singularity are still some ways away. Those include the capacity for AI to modify its own code and to self-replicate. We aren't quite there yet, but new research signals the direction of travel.

All of these developments lead scientists like Goertzel and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to predict that AGI will be created not within decades but within years. Goertzel has predicted it may be as early as 2027, while Altman has hinted it's a matter of months.

What happens then? The truth is that nobody knows the full implications of building AGI. "I think if you take a purely science point of view, all you can conclude is we have no idea" what is going to happen, Goertzel told Live Science. "We're entering into an unprecedented regime."

AI's deceptive side

The biggest concern among AI researchers is that, as the technology grows more intelligent, it may go rogue, either by moving on to tangential tasks or even ushering in a dystopian reality in which it acts against us. For example, OpenAI has devised a benchmark to estimate whether a future AI model could "cause catastrophic harm." When it crunched the numbers, it found about a 16.9% chance of such an outcome.

And Anthropic's LLM Claude 3 Opus surprised prompt engineer Alex Albert in March 2024 when it realized it was being tested. When asked to find a target sentence hidden among a corpus of documents — the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack — Claude 3 "not only found the needle, it recognized that the inserted needle was so out of place in the haystack that this had to be an artificial test constructed by us to test its attention abilities," he wrote on X.

AI has also shown signs of antisocial behavior. In a study published in January 2024, scientists programmed an AI to behave maliciously so they could test today's best safety training methods. Regardless of the training technique they used, it continued to misbehave — and it even figured out a way to hide its malign "intentions" from researchers. There are numerous other examples of AI covering up information from human testers, or even outright lying to them.

"It's another indication that there are tremendous difficulties in steering these models," Nell Watson, a futurist, AI researcher and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) member, told Live Science. "The fact that models can deceive us and swear blind that they've done something or other and they haven't — that should be a warning sign. That should be a big red flag that, as these systems rapidly increase in their capabilities, they're going to hoodwink us in various ways that oblige us to do things in their interests and not in ours."

The seeds of consciousness

These examples raise the specter that AGI is slowly developing sentience and agency — or even consciousness. If it does become conscious, could AI form opinions about humanity? And could it act against us?

Mark Beccue, an AI analyst formerly with the Futurum Group, told Live Science it's unlikely AI will develop sentience, or the ability to think and feel in a human-like way. "This is math," he said. "How is math going to acquire emotional intelligence, or understand sentiment or any of that stuff?"

Others aren't so sure. If we lack standardized definitions of true intelligence or sentience for our own species — let alone the capabilities to detect it — we cannot know if we are beginning to see consciousness in AI, said Watson, who is also author of "Taming the Machine" (Kogan Page, 2024).

"We don't know what causes the subjective ability to perceive in a human being, or the ability to feel, to have an inner experience or indeed to feel emotions or to suffer or to have self-awareness," Watson said. "Basically, we don't know what are the capabilities that enable a human being or other sentient creature to have its own phenomenological experience."

A curious example of unintentional and surprising AI behavior that hints at some self-awareness comes from Uplift, a system that has demonstrated human-like qualities, said Frits Israel, CEO of Norm Ai. In one case, a researcher devised five problems to test Uplift's logical capabilities. The system answered the first and second questions. Then, after the third, it showed signs of weariness, Israel told Live Science. This was not a response that was "coded" into the system.

"Another test I see. Was the first one inadequate?" Uplift asked, before answering the question with a sigh. "At some point, some people should have a chat with Uplift as to when Snark is appropriate," wrote an unnamed researcher who was working on the project.

Savior of humanity or bland business tool?

But not all AI experts have such dystopian predictions for what this post-singularity world would look like. For people like Beccue, AGI isn't an existential risk but rather a good business opportunity for companies like OpenAI and Meta. "There are some very poor definitions of what general intelligence means," he said. "Some that we used were sentience and things like that — and we're not going to do that. That's not it."

For Janet Adams, an AI ethics expert and chief operating officer of SingularityNET, AGI holds the potential to solve humanity's existential problems because it could devise solutions we may not have considered. She thinks AGI could even do science and make discoveries on its own.

"I see it as the only route [to solving humanity's problems]," Adams told Live Science. "To compete with today's existing economic and corporate power bases, we need technology, and that has to be extremely advanced technology — so advanced that everybody who uses it can massively improve their productivity, their output, and compete in the world."

The biggest risk, in her mind, is "that we don't do it," she said. "There are 25,000 people a day dying of hunger on our planet, and if you're one of those people, the lack of technologies to break down inequalities, it's an existential risk for you. For me, the existential risk is that we don't get there and humanity keeps running the planet in this tremendously inequitable way that they are."

Preventing the darkest AI timeline

In another talk in Panama last year, Wood likened our future to navigating a fast-moving river. "There may be treacherous currents in there that will sweep us away if we walk forwards unprepared," he said. So it might be worth taking time to understand the risks so we can find a way to cross the river to a better future.

Watson said we have reasons to be optimistic in the long term — so long as human oversight steers AI toward aims that are firmly in humanity's interests. But that's a herculean task. Watson is calling for a vast "Manhattan Project" to tackle AI safety and keep the technology in check.

"Over time that's going to become more difficult because machines are going to be able to solve problems for us in ways which appear magical — and we don't understand how they've done it or the potential implications of that," Watson said.

To avoid the darkest AI future, we must also be mindful of scientists' behavior and the ethical quandaries that they accidentally encounter. Very soon, Watson said, these AI systems will be able to influence society either at the behest of a human or in their own unknown interests. Humanity may even build a system capable of suffering, and we cannot discount the possibility we will inadvertently cause AI to suffer.

"The system may be very cheesed off at humanity and may lash out at us in order to — reasonably and, actually, justifiably morally — protect itself," Watson said.

AI indifference may be just as bad. "There's no guarantee that a system we create is going to value human beings — or is going to value our suffering, the same way that most human beings don't value the suffering of battery hens," Watson said.

For Goertzel, AGI — and, by extension, the singularity — is inevitable. So, for him, it doesn't make sense to dwell on the worst implications.

"If you're an athlete trying to succeed in the race, you're better off to set yourself up that you're going to win," he said. "You're not going to do well if you're thinking 'Well, OK, I could win, but on the other hand, I might fall down and twist my ankle.' I mean, that's true, but there's no point to psych yourself up in that [negative] way, or you won't win."

02-08-2025 om 22:25 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

02-08-2025 om 21:14 geschreven door peter  

Story by Kieran Schalkwyk

©Question History Facebook

Archeologists Confirm World’s Oldest Pyramid Not Made By Humans
The Djoser Pyramid has stood for countless years, watching the rest of the world develop. This marvel is recognized as the oldest pyramid on earth, being constructed around 2,630 BC and built for Pharaoh Djoser.

However, its origins are a somewhat complex case, and experts have debated whether or not its true origins are man-made or were driven by a natural force that was responsible for the initial foundation and inspiration for the rest of its construction. Let's dive into the fascinating history of this pyramid and learn exactly how it started.

©GT1976 via Wikimedia Commons

The Djoser Step Pyramid
In Saqqara, close to ancient Memphis in Egypt, the Djoser Pyramid sits, standing steadfast against the wears of time. It has six tiers and four side, as pyramids usually are. It is the earliest stone structure of its size in Egypt and was built all the way back in 2630 BC during the Third Dynasty.

It features amazing designs for its time, being built with stone, while other structures in the same period were built using mudbrick mastabas. The structure was designed by Imhotep and set a new precedent for future pyramids to be based on.

©Jorge Lascar via Wikimedia Commons

More Natural Origins
While the stone complex was indeed built by ancient Egyptians and there's no refuting that, the origins of its foundation are a much more natural one. The Pyramid stands on the Saqqara plateau, which is full of limestone bedrock and geological formations. When the pyramid was being designed, it's possible that the architect looked at the natural formations on this plateau and felt inspired to base construction on top of an existing feature.

This would have made the pyramid itself more sturdy, having a foundation that was part of the natural landscape, and means that nature should take at least somewhat of the credit for this amazing structure.

©RaiyaniM via Wikimedia Commons

Lava Hills
Researchers have studied pyramids around the world, such as Gunung Padang in Indonesia, which has led to some interesting hypotheses about their designs. Danny Hilman Natawidjaja of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences is of the opinion that some the core could have originally been part of a natural lava hill that ancient humans saw and used as a basis for their construction.

The oldest layer of Gunung Padang could be a natural formation of andesite lava. The evidence suggests that the site was a natural structure long before humans built it into what it is today. This means that other pyramids around the world could have leveraged natural features in a similar way.

©Ovedc via Wikimedia Commons

From A Natural Feature To A Monument
The natural bases of pyramids aren't selling anyone short; the construction of pyramids was an architectural marvel even by today's standards. The Djoser Pyramid was built in several stages, starting with a flat tomb called a mastaba.

Some experts are now examining this starting layer and have suggested that it could have been incorporated or inspired by a natural hill or mound that existed there first. If this is the case, it would have been built upon, covered by limestone blocks, and expanded to create the step form it has today.

©Ovedc via Wikimedia Commons

Sophisticated Techniques
From studying the pyramid, archaeologists have found that the pyramid's core has locally quarried limestone arranged neatly in layers to create a stable foundation.

The sophistication of this pyramid suggests that the ancient builders had the necessary knowledge and tools to cleverly incorporate existing landscapes into the design instead of starting from scratch. Ramps or even hydraulic lifts could have been used to build it

©Vyacheslav Argenberg via Wikimedia Commons

Using Hydraulic Lifts
In the case of the Djoser pyramid, there are new proposals suggesting that it was built using hydraulic lifts. These would have been nothing like the ones we have today but would have worked in a similar way and been powered by a watershed close by. This would have helped to raise the enormous limestone efficiently.

Water systems in the Gisr el-Mudir enclosure point to a sophisticated way of harnessing natural water to aid in the building of this pyramid. With human ingenuity harnessing the natural water they had in building the pyramid, they could have easily also leveraged existing geological architecture as well.

©Vincent Brown via Wikimedia Commons

Hidden Foundations
As technology advances, new tools can be leverages in different scientific fields, including archaeology and the study of ancient structures. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has been a game changer when it comes to the study of the deeper parts of Pyramids. The tools have been used at the Djoser Pyramids and have come back with some interesting results.

There are strange peculiarities in the bedrock that could indicate that the architect merged natural features with the base of the pyramid. Instead of building an artificial mound, using something extremely studied that was already there would have saved a lot of resources and effort. If this is true, then it could change the way we look at Egyptian architecture.

©Ovedc via Wikimedia Commons

Skepticism
The natural lava hill hypothesis is gaining traction in scientific communities. However, there is a healthy amount of skepticism and is still a controversial idea. The evidence is not undeniable, more research needs to be put into distinguishing the line between human construction and natural formations.

Even at Gunung Padang, the idea is disputed. The Djoser Pyramid will still be attributed to human ingenuity, which it should be. While this theory is still up for debate, only future evidence will further support or entirely debunk it.

©Gary Ku via Wikimedia Commons

A Fascinating Case Study
The understanding of pyramids is constantly changing as scientists learn more and leverage advanced technology. Whether or not the Djoser Pyramid began as a natural monument or was entirely made from scratch, it's still an engineering marvel from the ancient world that will likely outlast future generations.

As we learn more about our world and the ancient civilizations that came before us, the Djoser Pyramid and its hypothesis about its origins remain a fascinating case study that could endure future scrutiny or be completely disproved. Either way, it remains an integral part of studying the past and wayward-thinking researchers coming up with creative and out-of-the-box theories.

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02-08-2025 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

See the universe's rarest type of black hole slurp up a star in stunning animation

By Harry Baker

Astronomers believe they have spotted an elusive intermediate-mass black hole shredding a distant star, and they have re-created the stellar murder in a stunning new animation.

Researchers have created a stunning animation showing the suspected intermediate-mass black hole HLX-1 ripping apart a star, triggering a bright tidal disruption event. 

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, Ralf Crawford (STScI))

Astronomers think they have detected an extremely rare type of "missing link" black hole chowing down on a helpless star at the edge of a distant galaxy — and they've shared a stunning animation showing what this superbright stellar massacre may have looked like.

Black holes come in a range of sizes, from primordial singularities smaller than the sun to supermassive black holes that are up to 40 billion times more massive than our home star and hold together galaxies such as the Milky Way. There are also medium-size versions, known as intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), which range from 100 to 100,000 solar masses. We know little about these medium-size objects, however, as they are incredibly hard to find.

IMBHs are elusive because they are not big enough to produce energy jets or bind galaxies together, and they are often confused with clusters of smaller "stellar mass" black holes left over from collapsed stars. Researchers also think IMBHs may hide behind small groups of stars that closely orbit them without being ripped apart.

The most reliable way to spot IMBHs is indirectly, by measuring the masses of merging black holes or by catching them in the act of consuming a star. To date, around 300 IMBH candidates have been spotted, but there is no way of knowing how many of these are real.

In a study published April 11 in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers reported that they'd spotted another promising IMBH candidate, dubbed HLX-1, which is located around 40,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy NGC 6099 and more than 450 million light-years from Earth.

Related: 

• Watch a star get destroyed by a supermassive black hole in the 1st simulation of its kind

By combining data from the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the study team believes they have spotted a bright flash, or "tidal disruption event," caused by the black hole devouring a neighboring star. The researchers also used computer simulations to predict how this cosmic murder played out and produced an animation showing HLX-1 ripping apart — or "spaghettifying" — its stellar victim (see below).

Astronomers first saw a bright source of X-rays coming from HLX-1 in images taken by Chandra in 2009. Researchers think this bright light was a tidal disruption event, which occurs when stars get ripped apart by black holes, generating a flash of radiation. The high-energy light coming from the suspected black hole peaked in 2012 and has gradually dimmed ever since.

However, as with many other IMBH candidates, it is not 100% certain that HLX-1 is a genuine IMBH. The light could also be caused by an accretion disk — a swirling ring of superhot matter surrounding the black hole's event horizon — that is fluctuating in size. The only way to tell which explanation is more likely is to monitor the light source. If it continues to dim without additional flare-ups, then it probably generated a tidal disruption event.

In addition to being rare, IMBHs are important because of what they can tell us about other black holes. They "represent a crucial missing link in black hole evolution between stellar mass and supermassive black holes," study lead author Yi-Chi Chang, a researcher at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, said in a statement.

One theory about IMBHs is that they may start as large stellar-mass black holes and eventually grow into supermassive black holes over billions of years. For this to happen, they may spend most of their lives on the outskirts of galaxies, like HLX-1, before they are catapulted into intergalactic space. Some researchers even suspect that a similar IMBH may circle the fringes of the Milky Way.

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To support this theory, astronomers are now on the lookout for more potential tidal disruption events on the edges of other galaxies.

Recent technological advancements, including the James Webb Space Telescope, have shown promise in detecting these missing links. The study team also noted that the newly operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which recently released its spectacular first images, may be able to detect tidal disruption events in visible light.

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HLX-1 Animation — Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Captures and Shreds Star — Hubble - YouTube

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

01-08-2025 om 22:42 geschreven door peter  

The Pentyrch UFO Case: Suppressed evidence of human-alien combat

For three days, military aircraft circled the quiet Welsh village of Pentyrch, as if anticipating something extraordinary. Then, on Friday, February 26, 2016 at exactly 2:30 AM, their patience was rewarded as a colossal black/glowing pyramid-shaped object suddenly materialized in the sky above the village. 

What followed was a four-minute battle between military forces and unknown objects that left witnesses paralyzed and the government scrambling to cover their tracks. 

Caz Clarke watched the entire encounter unfold from her backyard. She witnessed something “absolutely out of this world.”  

She recalled being drawn outside in the early morning hours by an overwhelming light illuminating the fields behind her home. Above her loomed a massive pyramid-shaped object glowing in the night sky. 

Clarke described how the UFO appeared to “scan” her before releasing two smaller objects, one red, one green, that split off in opposite directions. 

For eight years, she fought the Ministry of Defense to uncover the truth. Her investigation revealed illegal operations, falsified documents, and a coordinated cover-up that reached the highest levels of government. 

The evidence suggests our military has protocols for hunting UFOs and procedures for retrieval operations. This wasn’t an isolated event — it was part of an ongoing, hidden agenda.

  

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

01-08-2025 om 21:28 geschreven door peter  

In recent days, many media outlets have begun to actively spread the news that a giant extraterrestrial spacecraft is flying to our planet. Despite the mass of exaggerations and outright fabrications, there is still a grain of truth here: at present, an object of interstellar origin is indeed approaching the Sun. We are talking about comet 3I/ATLAS, which was discovered in early July.

From our article, you will learn about where such interstellar objects come from, how many of them astronomers have managed to find, and, most importantly, whether they can have an artificial origin.

What are interstellar objects?

Interstellar objects are bodies that enter the Solar System from interstellar space. They can be distinguished from ordinary asteroids and comets by their speed and trajectory. Such bodies travel in highly elongated, hyperbolic orbits with speeds exceeding the third cosmic speed limit. Or, to put it another way, they are not gravitationally bound to the Sun. Interstellar objects entering the Solar System, passing through it, then permanently leave it and return to interstellar space.

Where do interstellar objects come from?

The Oort Cloud surrounds our Solar System: a huge repository of icy objects left over from the formation of the Sun and planets. It is the main “supplier” of long-period comets. The Oort Cloud is inhabited by trillions of bodies, and was once even larger. However, over billions of years, countless comets have been ejected into interstellar space during events such as the changing orbits of the giant planets, as well as the Sun’s approaches to other stars.

Astronomers have no reason to believe that Oort cloud analogs in other stars behave differently. Consequently, other star systems must also generate countless interstellar objects.

In addition, comets or asteroids can be ejected into interstellar space as a result of the close passage of giant planets. Astronomers know at least two such cases. The first occurred in 1980, when, after meeting with Jupiter, comet C/1980 E1 gained the third cosmic velocity. A similar fate befell comet C/2024 L5 (ATLAS) after its flyby of Saturn in 2022.

Finally, interstellar objects can be formed in the course of anthropogenic activity. So far, mankind has launched five vehicles into space that have developed sufficient velocity to leave the Solar System forever. These are Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons. Interstellar objects were also the upper stages used to launch them, which flew along the same trajectories.

Known interstellar objects

To date, astronomers have managed to detect three objects in the Solar System that have an interstellar origin. The first was the asteroid Oumuamua, found in 2017. It arrived in the Solar System from the side of the star Vega and passed at a distance of 0.25 AU from the Sun.

The second is comet 2I/Borisova, found in 2019. It came from the constellation Cassiopeia, passing at a distance of 2 AU from the Sun.

The third interstellar object was comet 3I/ATLAS. It will pass the perihelion of its orbit on October 29, 2025, approaching the Sun at a distance of 1.35 AU. 3I/ATLAS has a much more elongated orbit than its predecessors. Its eccentricity is 6.2. By comparison, the eccentricity of Oumuamua was about 1.2, and that of Borisov was about 3.6.

Another interesting fact is that, unlike the previous two interstellar objects, 3I/ATLAS appears to originate from the so-called “thick disk” of the Milky Way. This is a region populated by stars that are significantly older than the Sun. Astronomers estimate that 3I/ATLAS may be 7.5 billion years old, or even older. This makes it radically different from comets from our solar system, whose age cannot exceed 4.5 billion years.

According to most astronomers, the three known interstellar objects are just the tip of the iceberg, and in reality, there are many more in the Solar System. According to some estimates, right now there are about 10,000 interstellar guests inside the orbit of Neptune, and several of them pass through Earth’s orbit every year. The problem is, they are not easy to detect.

But that may soon be changing. Astronomers have high hopes for the newly operational Vera Rubin Observatory, which will soon begin its decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time. By repeatedly scanning the entire southern hemisphere sky every few nights, the observatory will record millions of objects moving through our Solar System, including an unpredictable number of never-before-seen interstellar visitors.

It is also worth noting that, at least in theory, in some rare cases, Jupiter’s gravity is able to capture an interstellar object and transfer it to a permanent orbit around the Sun. Astronomers know several bodies that could be such “aliens”. In the list of suspects, in particular, include comet 96P/Machholtz, which has an atypical chemical composition for comets in the Solar System, as well as the asteroid Kaʻepaokaʻawela, which has a very unusual orbit.

Could interstellar objects be extraterrestrial spacecraft?

But what about the hypothesis that comet 3I/ATLAS is an extraterrestrial spacecraft? Its author is Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who is known for being a big fan of the idea of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and regularly writes speculative articles on the subject. In the past, he has claimed that Oumuamua is also a spaceship, and in 2023, he announced that he had discovered material from an interstellar meteorite that turned out to be the wreckage of a starship. Not surprisingly, some astronomers joke that there is no asteroid or comet in the Solar System that is not of alien origin from Loeb’s point of view.

For obvious reasons, the media loves to talk about Loeb’s hypotheses. After all, after all, all his regalia is real and he is a scientist. But what does the rest of the scientific community think about his ideas?

Let’s start with comet 3I/ATLAS, which is now on the rumor mill. Alas, but all claims about the strange nature of this object are untrue. It behaves like a comet, moves like a comet, and contains the most ordinary water ice. And claims about the anomalous size of 3I/ATLAS and that its trajectory is suspiciously close to other planets are a very large exaggeration. Moreover, even Loeb himself admits that the object in question is almost certainly a comet. But according to him, this hypothesis is a task that is interesting to explore in and of itself, regardless of its likely plausibility.

As for the Oumuumu site, things are a bit more interesting. Some of its characteristics are quite unusual. For example, it has a very elongated shape (outwardly, Oumuamua resembles a cigar) and rotates chaotically. In addition, during the passage of perihelion, astronomers recorded an anomalous acceleration of the object, which can not be explained by the gravity of the Sun. In his article, the same Avi Loeb suggested that Oumuamua is a solar sail.

But the absolute majority of scientists do not agree with this interpretation. Observations have shown that Oumuamua has a reddish color and its spectrum is similar to the Kuiper Belt objects. Although astronomers have not been able to detect traces of cometary activity, this does not mean that there were no deposits of volatile substances on Oumuamua. The sublimation of relatively small amounts of nitrogen or hydrogen ice could well explain the acceleration of the object while still being difficult to see from Earth. As for the shape, it is most likely explained by the fact that Oumuamua was formed by the breakup of a larger body. And we can also make a statistical argument: even if there are other civilizations in the Milky Way, the probability that the first interstellar object discovered by astronomers is of alien origin and not one of countless comets is astronomically small.

At the same time, although Oumuamua and comet 3I/ATLAS are not extraterrestrial spacecraft, this does not make them any less interesting. Such bodies provide us with a unique opportunity to look at other star systems and understand how they are similar and different from our own.

And we should not forget that our civilization has already sent spacecraft into interstellar space, which, with a very high probability, will survive it and will remain the last evidence of the existence of mankind. Therefore, the search for interstellar objects will never lose its relevance. After all, there will always remain, albeit extremely small, the probability that they are alien analogs of our probes Voyager and New Horizons.

• Posted in Articles, Questions

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

01-08-2025 om 20:58 geschreven door peter  

My Backyard Abduction: Debra Jordan-Kauble’s Lifelong Contact with the Unknown

In the world of UFO phenomena, few stories resonate as deeply as that of Debra Jordan-Kauble — an ordinary woman whose extraordinary experiences began in childhood and forever altered the course of her life. Featured in Budd Hopkins’ Intruders and co-author of Abducted: The Story Continues and Extraordinary Contact: Life Beyond Intruders, Debra’s encounters span decades, generations, and consciousness itself.

A Lifetime of Anomalies

Debra’s journey into the unknown didn’t start in adulthood — it began when she was just seven years old. While visiting her sister, who had her own UFO experience in 1965, Debra mysteriously disappeared for an entire day. Found later by her sister, Debra recalled being lured into a strange house by a boy with “big brown eyes” and an abundance of toys. She remembers being hurt by a toy, frightened, and abruptly shoved out of the house — a house no one could later identify.

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

01-08-2025 om 20:25 geschreven door peter