Credit: Wikimedia Commons/NASA Earth Observatory

Ocean data is also essential for tracking global warming, as 90% of the heat increase over the last 50 years has been stored in the ocean. The difficult-to-measure regions beneath ice shelves provide some of the most critical data for calculating sea-level rise. These temperature and salinity readings, collected at five-day intervals, are the first of their kind ever collected beneath the East Antarctic ice shelf.

Ice shelves are floating glaciers that mark where Antarctica’s ice mass meets the sea, departing from the frozen continent’s solid bedrock. They prevent continental ice from entering the sea, yet remain vulnerable to warm water flowing beneath them, which melts the ice shelves.

The collapse of these ice shelves hastens sea level rise, and as such, scientists are very interested in monitoring them. Yet, one of the most critical factors, the warm water entering the ice shelves from below, is notoriously difficult to observe directly. In the past, scientists have at times relied on drilling holes and lowering sensors into them to obtain data, though this is costly and is therefore rarely done.

A Journey Through Antarctica

The Totten Glacier, which the researchers originally studied, contains enough ice to raise the global sea level by 3.5 meters if it were to melt completely. Their previous investigation of Totten suggested that sufficient warm water lay beneath the ice shelf, placing it at significant risk of rapid melting. Given the global ecosystem’s obvious concern, the team was displeased when their Argo float drifted away from its target.

Fortunately, they did not have long to wait before the Argo ran into another suitable target: the Denman glacier, capable of producing a 1.5-meter sea-level rise if completely melted. Previous analyses of radar data suggest that Denman may be unstable, but collecting corroborating oceanic data has proven challenging. The wayward Argo, however, discovered that warm water can indeed penetrate beneath the shelf.

After nine months lost beneath the ice, the team began to suspect that their Argo float may have ended beneath a glacial mass, never to transmit again. But then, most unexpectedly, there Argo emerged from beneath Denman and Shackleton, sending the researchers data from never-before-visited regions beneath the Antarctic ice.

Analyzing the Antarctic Data

One major snag for the researchers was that without the Argo float regularly surfacing, the data could not be tagged with GPS locations. Still, the team managed to overcome this hurdle in their analysis. Each time the robot approached the surface and encountered ice, it recorded an essential measurement of ice thickness at the point of contact. By collating those readings with known ice thickness measurements obtained from satellites, the team could then chart the Argo floats ‘path beneath the ice shelf.

Fortunately, the data indicates that warm water is not currently penetrating the Shackleton Ice Shelf, meaning that at least the ice in this area is relatively stable, for now. However, the discovery of warm water beneath Denman remains a serious concern, as even a slight increase in the amount of warm water there could accelerate melt, and thereby drive further instability.

• Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

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Earth's North Pole is moving... and could have huge consequences for your holiday travel

• MORE:  Travel nightmare as US airspace hits maximum capacity, triggering widespread flight delays

By SCOTT BRAME, CLEMSON UNIVERSITY and CHRIS MELORE, US ASSISTANT SCIENCE EDITOR

An expert on the inner workings of the Earth has revealed that the planet actually has two North Poles, and the movement of one of them could quietly disrupt global travel. 

Scott Brame of Clemson University explained that the shifting 'magnetic North Pole' changes the direction a compass points, so without regular updates to navigation systems, everyday tools like smartphone maps could give wrong directions. 

If the pole shifts faster than expected and models aren't updated in time, this could lead to bigger errors in phone or car GPS apps, potentially causing people to get lost, take longer routes, or even face safety risks in remote areas. 

Brame is a research professor who has studied geology and underground water sources hidden under the Earth's surface, also known as hydrogeology.

Although the world has a point that's called 'true north,' which sits at the top of the Earth's axis, Brame said there's also a 'magnetic north' which has been shifting across northern Canada for centuries.

Since the 1990s, however, that movement has accelerated dramatically, increasing from roughly six to nine miles per year to about 34 miles per year, according to scientists. 

A 2020 study in the journal Nature Geoscience has explained that this acceleration was mainly caused by changes in the flow of molten iron in Earth's outer core that alter the planet's magnetic field, but the exact trigger is still unclear. 

So, when Santa is done delivering presents on Christmas Eve, he could use a compass, but then he has a challenge: He has to be able to find the right North Pole, since the one on a map and the one a compass relies on aren’t the same.

The magnetic North Pole has wandered since the late 1500s, picking up speed in the recent century

Earth's magnetic North Pole has been in constant motion for centuries, but the speed accelerated dramatically in the 1990s (Stock Image)

The two North Poles

The geographic North Pole, also called true north, is the point at one end of the Earth’s axis of rotation.

Try taking a tennis ball in your right hand, putting your thumb on the bottom and your middle finger on the top, and rotating the ball with the fingers of your left hand. The place where the thumb and middle finger of your right hand contact the tennis ball as it spins define the axis of rotation. The axis extends from the south pole to the north pole as it passes through the center of the ball.

Earth’s magnetic North Pole is different.

Over 1,000 years ago, explorers began using compasses, typically made with a floating cork or piece of wood with a magnetized needle in it, to find their way. The Earth has a magnetic field that acts like a giant magnet, and the compass needle aligns with it.

The magnetic North Pole is used by devices such as smartphones for navigation – and that pole moves around over time.

Why the magnetic north pole moves around

The movement of the magnetic North Pole is the result of the Earth having an active core. The inner core, starting about 3,200 miles below your feet, is solid and under such immense pressure that it cannot melt. But the outer core is molten, consisting of melted iron and nickel.

Heat from the inner core makes the molten iron and nickel in the outer core move around, much like soup in a pot on a hot stove. The movement of the iron-rich liquid induces a magnetic field that covers the entire Earth.

As the molten iron in the outer core moves around, the magnetic North Pole wanders.

Although the world has a point that's called 'true north,' which sits at the top of the Earth's axis, the 'magnetic North Pole' continues to shift across Canada, moving at 34mph

Santa Claus is believed to live at the North Pole, but a researcher has revealed that there's actually two North Poles on Earth (Stock Image)

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EFor most of the past 600 years, the pole has been wandering around over northern Canada. It was moving relatively slowly, around six to nine miles per year, until around 1990, when its speed increased dramatically, up to 34 miles per year.

It started moving in the general direction of the geographic North Pole about a century ago. Earth scientists cannot say exactly why other than that it reflects a change in flow within the outer core.

Getting Santa home

So, if Santa’s home is the geographic North Pole - which, incidentally, is in the ice-covered middle of the Arctic Ocean - how does he correct his compass bearing if the two North Poles are in different locations?

No matter what device he might be using - compass or smartphone - both rely on magnetic north as a reference to determine the direction he needs to move.

While modern GPS systems can tell you precisely where you are as you make your way to grandma’s house, they cannot accurately tell which direction to go without your device knowing the direction of magnetic north. 

If Santa is using an old-fashioned compass, he’ll need to adjust it for the difference between true north and magnetic north. To do that, he needs to know the declination at his location - the angle between true north and magnetic north - and make the correction to his compass. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an online calculator that can help.

If you are using a smartphone, your phone has a built-in magnetometer that does the work for you. It measures the Earth’s magnetic field at your location and then uses the World Magnetic Model to correct for precise navigation.

Whatever method Santa uses, he may be relying on magnetic north to find his way to your house and back home again. Or maybe the reindeer just know the way.

This article is adapted from The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge of experts. It was written by Scott Brame, a research assistant professor of Earth Science at Clemson University.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

Flight tracking data has revealed the path of a top-secret Air Force jet landing at the highly classified Area 51 in the Nevada desert on Monday.

The plane is part of the military’s Janet fleet, which transports contractor employees, Department of Defense staff and military personnel to secure facilities housing classified information.

The Janet departed Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas’ main airport, at 8:25am PT and touched down at Area 51 at 8:42am.

While the purpose of the flight remains unclear, Area 51 is located within the US Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range, used for large-scale military exercises. 

The site has long been rumored to host crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft and other mysterious technologies.

Designed by Boeing, Janet jets are white with a single red stripe running from nose to tail. 

They operate from a dedicated terminal and parking area in Las Vegas, as the remote facility does not support commuting by vehicle.

Monday's light was just one of six Janet flights to Area 51 over the past week. 

Flight tracking data has revealed the path of a top-secret Air Force jet landing at the highly classified Area 51 in the Nevada desert on Monday

Flight data shows a Janet flight taking the same path every day last week, and all taking off from Las Vegas between 8.25am and 8.29am.

The flights take no more than 20 minutes, depending on the exact path and wind speed. 

A known reason for military personnel to travel to Area 51 is for testing and developing highly classified aircraft and weapons systems.

Area 51 gained notoriety during the Cold War when it was used to test the U-2 spy plane, which was crucial for intelligence gathering against the Soviet Union.

The craft is still used today to monitor Mexican drug cartels and other threats to the US.

The secret Janet fleet started operations in 1972, making their first flight to Area 51, established in 1955.

Area 51 has six runways for the Janet planes to land, including a monster 12,000-foot-long strip that is among the longest in the world.

The secrecy surrounding Area 51 has fueled widespread conspiracy theories about its true purpose, but a resurfaced interview from an aviation journalist with firsthand sources who have worked there said the truth could be revealed this year.

The Janet, designed by Boeing, is a white jet with a single red strip from front to back. The fleet flies contractor employees, Department of Defense staff and military personnel to secure spaces that house classified information

Jim Goodall gave an interview in the mid-1990s where he discussed top-secret technologies at the site that 'would make George Lucas envious.'

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'One gentleman spent 12 of his 30 years in black programs at Groom Lake [as Area 51 is also known],' Goodall explained in the unearthed documentary interview.

'I asked him, 'Can you really tell me what's happening out there?'' he continued.

'And he said, 'Well, there are a lot of things going on there that I won't be able to tell you until the year 2025.''

The mention of '2025' could refer to an executive order by then-President Bill Clinton, which established a 25-year timer for the 'automatic declassification' of government secrets.

This means many top-secret projects from the 1990s could soon be declassified.

Goodall recounted a conversation with a 'safety specialist' and US Air Force chief master sergeant who worked at the Nevada test site.

The specialist reportedly told him: 'We have things out there that are literally out of this world… better than Star Trek, or anything you can see in the movies.'

When Goodall asked his anonymous source, 'Do you believe in UFOs?' the answer was unequivocal.

Area 51 is a US Air Force facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range

'He looked at me with a straight face, one-on-one, and said, 'Absolutely. Positively. They do exist,'' Goodall recalled in the documentary.

'I said, 'Can you expand upon that?' And he replied, 'No, I can't.''

From his vantage point spying on Area 51 in the Nevada desert, Goodall caught glimpses and heard firsthand accounts of exotic craft that defied conventional understanding.

'There is a stealth or low-observable electronic warfare aircraft. It's been referred to as "Excalibur," he said in the interview.

'There's an aircraft designed to fly very, very high, but also very, very slow and incredibly quiet,' he added.

Goodall also discussed how witnesses near the Skunk Works facility reported seeing three triangle-shaped craft that made 'no noise,' even when flying at relatively low altitudes.

He then shared reports of an aircraft tracked by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) out of the San Francisco Bay Area TRACON (Traffic Control) in Oakland, California.

This craft, spotted at least eight times since 1986, reportedly flew through controlled airspace at speeds exceeding 10,000 miles per hour.

'And it's a very, very large aircraft at that,' he added.

Goodall's accounts align with claims made on the record by Ben Rich, the late director of Lockheed Martin's classified Skunk Works division.

'Ben Rich told me twice before he died,' Goodall recounted, ''We have things at Area 51 that you and the best minds in the world won't even be able to conceive of for another 30 or 40 years—and they won't be made public for another 50.''

Rich died on January 5, 1995.

But Goodall today noted that Area 51 has become much more difficult to penetrate than during his 1990s heyday, which might indicate it will hold on to its secrets well beyond 2025, matching a timeline closer to Rich's 50-year window.

'That veil is pretty thick today,' Goodall told Las Vegas TV news reporter George Knapp in 2019. 'The security around Area 51 is thicker than we've ever seen.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

It Had No Surface — The UFO case that challenges the idea of ‘Objects’

Is it a craft, or is it a doorway to somewhere else? What if some UFOs aren’t objects at all? A UFO with no surface. A daylight sighting that didn’t move like an object. Some researchers say these rare cases challenge what “UFO” even means. 

A growing subset of UAP reports describes something far stranger than metallic craft, anomalies that appear to lack a surface, structure, or even physical form. 

Illustration representing a reported aerial anomaly lacking visible structure. On May 29, 2021 a weird ring of lights appears in the sky over Bloomington, Minnesota. 

In a February 2023 Richard Dolan Members discussion, researcher Erling Strand described one such encounter. His account raises a quiet but profound question: are some sightings not vehicles, but temporary distortions of the environment itself? 

The encounter occurred near Oslo, Norway, in broad daylight. Strand observed a dark, indented square-like form suspended in the sky. It did not reflect light. It did not behave like an aircraft. And it did not move in a way consistent with known atmospheric phenomena. 

There were no visible edges. No metallic sheen. Just a region where the sky appeared… wrong. 

Strand who has investigated anomalous aerial phenomena for decades, including documented optical and atmospheric anomalies, later said the most striking aspect was not the shape, but the perception that he was not looking at something, he was looking into something. 

Strand's encounter is not an isolated report. Such transient anomalies are rare, but they appear repeatedly in UFO case files. 

Dolan linked Strand’s experience to an obscure 1973 sighting in Hawaii, where multiple witnesses described a bright, door-like opening appearing briefly among the stars. 

In both cases, observers emphasized the same detail: The phenomenon did not travel across the sky. It appeared in place. Then it was gone. 

From a research standpoint, these reports matter because they don’t fit easy categories. Possible explanations range from: Rare optical or atmospheric effects. Advanced light-manipulation or cloaking concepts or short-lived electromagnetic or space-time anomalies. But none are confirmed. All remain speculative. 

Not everything unidentified may be traveling here. Some things may simply open.

  

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

10 U.S. States with the Most UFO Sightings - AOL.com

{ https://usubjects.com/  }

The year 2025 is coming to an end. During this time, astronomers have made many scientific discoveries that have enriched our knowledge of the Solar System, the Milky Way, and the universe as a whole. We have selected the 10 most important ones.

Astronomical events of the year

The most important scientific discoveries

Science is something that cannot be rushed and does not focus on studying just one thing. Scientists explore everything that seems interesting to them, and the results of their work can sometimes only be assessed decades later. This is especially true for a science such as astronomy, which studies processes that can last hundreds of millions of years.

Nevertheless, we have attempted to highlight ten of the most significant scientific discoveries that are worth mentioning when discussing the direction in which astronomical science has been moving this year.

1. Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

When scientists realized in July this year that the speck in the images from the ATLAS automated observation system was a comet, and that it had come to us from interstellar space, they already knew it would be a sensation. But no one expected it to be so unhealthy, because for several months, people were in hysterics: “An alien ship is flying towards us, there will be a landing.”

Photo 3I/ATLAS. Source: avi-loeb.medium.com

Scientists did not find any alien spacecraft. However, the chemical composition of this celestial body was studied in detail. Astronomers have confirmed that it is very similar to the “comets” that orbit the Sun. At the same time, differences were found between 3I/ATLAS and the two previous visitors from space, indicating that they can form under very different conditions.

2. Dark energy can evolve over time

In March, scientists working with a spectroscopic instrument to search for dark energy published the results of observations of 15 million galaxies that we see in a time range from the present to 11 million years in the past. And the results of these studies show that dark energy not only exists, but also changes over time.

This differs greatly from the standard model of the universe, according to which it remains constant. However, scientists are not yet rushing to talk about a revolution. Ideas about the variability of dark energy over time have been expressed before, and the results of the research do not prove anything conclusively. But now scientists have a new, powerful tool for revising existing theories.

Dark energy may evolve. Source: www.ucl.ac.uk

3. The most energetic neutrino in history

In early February, the KM3NeT neutrino detector located in the Mediterranean Sea detected a particle with an energy of 220 petaelectronvolts (PeV). This is tens of thousands of times more than the most powerful accelerator on Earth can provide. Therefore, this particle is considered the most energetic neutrino ever seen by scientists.

There is no doubt that the particle came to us from space. At the same time, its origin remains a mystery, as scientists are still unable to confidently identify the process that could have caused it to appear. Among the possible explanations, they are even considering the explosion of a primordial black hole near the Sun.

4. A satellite has been discovered in Betelgeuse…

Betelgeuse is a giant red star in the Orion constellation, known to mankind since the dawn of history, but in the last decade, it has caused everyone to rack their brains over its behavior. It seemed as if it was about to explode as a supernova.

Betelgeuse and its companion. Source: phys.org

And in July 2025, scientists confirmed the presence of a companion star, whose mass is 1.5 times greater than that of the Sun. It is located so close that in about 10,000 years, the stars may merge into one. The very existence of this companion explains the long-term changes in Betelgeuse’s brightness.

5. …and Saturn has as many as 128

Saturn is a planet known not only for its rings but also for having the largest number of moons in the Solar System. In March 2025, scientists announced the discovery of 128 new bodies orbiting it. So now their total number is 274.

Most of them are very small bodies, with a diameter of less than a kilometer. However, they make you wonder how many more objects are flying around this planet. After all, among all the worlds revolving around the Sun, there is perhaps the most debris of all kinds.

6. Possible traces of life on Mars

In early September 2025, NASA employees released data showing that in 2024, the Perseverance rover found something that could be traces of life on the Red Planet. At that time, it was working at the bottom of an ancient river near the Bright Angel formation. The sample collected was once a layer of silt.

“Leopard spots” on a Martian rock, which may be evidence of ancient microbial life.
Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

It is in such places that scientists expect to find traces of life, and this time they saw something resembling leopard spots or ripples on water. Researchers believe that this is very similar to the result of the vital activity of microorganisms that lived here when water still flowed through the valley and fed on the available minerals.

7. Space Quipu

In January 2025, the Internet was abuzz with news of the discovery of yet another largest structures in the universe. In fact, the galaxy cluster, dubbed Quipu, is significantly smaller than objects such as the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, but its size is still impressive.

With a length of 1.3 billion light-years, it exceeds the Sun in mass by 200 quadrillion times and is the largest neighbor of the Laniakea Supercluster, which includes the Local Group, including the Milky Way galaxy.

The closest superclusters to us. Quipu is shown in red, the Shapley supercluster in blue, Hercules in purple, Serpens-Corona Borealis in green, and Sculptor Pegasus in yellow. Gray dots are other superclusters, and the avoidance zone is marked with a blue line. Source: Bohringer et al.

8. Waves run across the Milky Way disc

For many years, scientists have suspected that the Milky Way disc is not perfect, but warped at the ends. After observing millions of stars with the Gaia space telescope, they are now certain of this.

However, in 2025, based on the same data set, they discovered that this distortion is the result of waves running across the disk of our galaxy. In some places, stars shift upward relative to their plane, in others – downward.

Scientists suspect that this is due to a collision with another star system that the galaxy experienced in the past. However, there is also a theory that dark matter is to blame.

Waves on the Milky Way disc. Source: www.esa.int

9. Signs of life on exoplanet K2-18b

Perhaps the most controversial discovery in astronomy this year was made in April by a group of astronomers studying the exoplanet K2-18b. It was known that it contained water, one of the main elements necessary for life to exist. This year, scientists confirmed the existence of two other substances on the planet: dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide.

Both of them appear on Earth mainly as a result of biological processes. So the news quickly became a sensation about the discovery of signs of life, although it was already clear at that point that K2-18b was too hot for that. However, this discovery is important in that it allowed scientists to take a fresh look at which substances are reliable biomarkers and which are not.

10. Formation of an exomoon

In September, scientists announced that they had discovered a satellite in the process of formation around the exoplanet CT Cha b. Previous discoveries of moons around planets outside the Solar System have been reported, but each time these discoveries have been refuted.

Disk around an exoplanet (illustration).
Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Gabriele Cugno (University of Zürich, NCCR PlanetS), Sierra Grant (Carnegie Institution for Science), Joseph Olmsted (STScI), Leah Hustak (STScI)

This time, we are talking about a young planet, near which scientists have detected seven different organic substances. It is believed that their molecules are contained in the dust disk surrounding the planet, from which a satellite is gradually forming.

• Posted in News, Science

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

Located 611 meters above sea level, the Gradina site was discovered after reports involving the illegal excavation of “silver coins from Voćin” began surfacing amid Europe’s illicit antiquities markets. Efforts to track down information about the looted coin hoard ultimately helped lead archaeologists to the long-overlooked Croatian site.

Excavations Underway

Currently, excavations at the site are being led by Hrvoje Potrebica, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at the University of Zagreb. Working with colleagues, including researchers Franka Ovčarić and Luka Drahotusky-Bruket, systematic surveys and initial excavations at the site revealed the presence of stone ramparts and other features.

The site is now believed to potentially be one of the best-preserved prehistoric settlements ever uncovered in the region.

“These are some of the most visible ramparts, very well preserved, of a prehistoric settlement in this part of Croatia,” Potrebica said in a statement.

“Usually they were built of earth and wood, so they fell into disrepair,” Potrebica added, “but here it is different.”

An Ancient Site Emerges

Initial assumptions suggested the site dated to the La Tène culture of the late Iron Age, around the 1st century BCE, consistent with the Celtic silver coins first linked to the area.

That all began to change for Potrebica and his colleagues as their investigations continued, revealing discoveries that hinted at a much deeper origin for the ancient site. These included ceramic fragments the team uncovered, dating to the Late Bronze Age, roughly 1200 to 1000 BCE.

“These findings are very rare,” Potrebica said, adding that the ancient fortress structure encloses an area estimated to comprise ​​four hectares.

“At one point we decided to cut through the rampart, and we established a monumental construction consisting of three layers, earth, stone, and rammed earth, up to 2 meters high, in some places 7 to 8 meters on the outside,” Potrebica said.

A Remarkably Well-Preserved Site

In some sections, the archaeologists also uncovered a dry-stone defensive wall more than 1.5 meters thick, an exceptional level of preservation for prehistoric fortifications in this part of Europe.

Most prehistoric settlements in the region relied on perishable materials, including earth and timber defenses, and thus have largely deteriorated over time. The stone-built ramparts at Gradina, by contrast, remain clearly visible on the landscape, marking the site as a significant outlier.

This suggests a level of organization exhibited by its ancient builders, the likes of which had never been documented previously in the region during this period. Additionally, evidence of domestic structures and other signs of daily life point to its apparent use as a long-term habitation site.

“Here, at this place, we did not expect anything like this,” Potrebica said, adding that the team’s discoveries were unlike anything he had encountered in his profession in the last quarter century.

Fundamentally, the site’s rediscovery underscores both the scientific potential—and the risks—associated with illicit antiquities trafficking. Although illegal looting by metal detectorists at the site helped lead to its discovery, such activities also destroyed the original archaeological context of the artifacts removed.

Nevertheless, in this case, the removal and eventual black-market sale of coins from the ancient site led archaeologists to a novel discovery—one that is expanding our knowledge of the region’s inhabitants’ activities long before Roman or medieval times.

For Potrebica, the discoveries his team has made during their excavations are truly one of a kind.

“I have never seen anything like this,” Potrebica said.

Additional details about the team’s discovery, along with photos of the ancient site, can be found here courtesy of vpz.hr and Kristijan Toplak.

• Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

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

In a new paper titled “Agnosticism About Artificial Consciousness,” Tom McClelland, a philosopher at the University of Cambridge, argues that both sides are overconfident. The only honest answer right now, he says, is that we probably won’t know any time soon.​

Many users of large language models like ChatGPT have been convinced that the machine they are speaking to seems like a real person. Recent stories detail users falling in love with their chatbots, and due to the human-like interactions they can provide, these AI tools are increasingly being viewed as a substitute for real human connections in the 21st century. 

McClelland’s central idea concerns the confusion many people feel when dealing with an LLM. What does it mean to be conscious, and can all those zeroes and ones ever actually achieve it?

Everything scientists currently understand about consciousness comes from studying biological creatures like humans, and to a lesser extent, animals like octopuses and monkeys. When we try to apply those findings to computer systems built from silicon chips instead of neurons, he argues, we hit what he calls an “epistemic wall.” That is, a point at which our knowledge runs out and we can’t go further with the evidence we currently have.​​ We ‘guess,’ rather than ‘know.’

McClelland insists that claims about AI consciousness should follow a principle he calls “evidentialism.” So, if you say an AI is or isn’t conscious, your claim should be grounded in solid scientific evidence, not vibes, sci‑fi stories, or metaphysical faith. And that, he says, is exactly where current discussion fails.

In humans, the science of consciousness relies on messy but workable tools such as brain scans, behavioural experiments, and models like Global Workspace Theory, which link specific kinds of information processing with awareness rather than unconscious processing. Those tools allow reasonably confident judgments, say, about whether a patient in a coma shows signs of awareness or whether an octopus is likely to feel pain.

But none of these tools explains the “why” at the heart of the so‑called hard problem of consciousness. 

“We do not have a deep explanation of consciousness,” McClelland explains in the paper. “There is no evidence to suggest that consciousness can emerge with the right computational structure, or indeed that consciousness is essentially biological.”

Because we don’t understand the nuts and bolts behind consciousness, McClelland argues that confident ‘yes‑or‑no’ answers about future conscious-like AI systems are not scientifically responsible. In other words, we get lost in the “this thing is genuinely conscious” versus “this thing is a perfect non‑conscious mimic.”

At first glance, this might sound like a technical quarrel among philosophers in their ivory towers, but McClelland’s agnosticism has direct implications for the rest of us, because laws, policies, and social norms are already being written under the assumption that we will soon have tests for machine consciousness.

In the immediate future, large tech companies are already pumping out rhetoric concerning the stages of their AI tools and marketing the next leaps in AI development. 

“There is a risk that the inability to prove consciousness will be exploited by the AI industry to make outlandish claims about their technology,” he writes. “It becomes part of the hype, so companies can sell the idea of a next level of AI cleverness.”  

In turn, McClelland is concerned that research grants and funding will be diverted to the study of AI consciousness, when in reality those funds could be used more effectively.

“A growing body of evidence suggests that prawns could be capable of suffering, yet we kill around half a trillion prawns every year. Testing for consciousness in prawns is hard, but nothing like as hard as testing for consciousness in AI,” he explains.

Beyond the financial interests of tech firms and their investors, there are obvious social, cultural, and even personal implications that we have already seen manifest. 

If we wrongly assume that advanced AIs are not conscious when they are, we could be creating and exploiting beings capable of suffering. But if we wrongly assume they are conscious when they are not, we risk pouring care, legal rights, and empathy into systems that do not actually feel anything, potentially at the expense of humans and animals who do. And this is the philosophical rub.

McClelland says that both mistakes become more likely if we pretend to know more than we do. He points out that people are already treating chatbots as if they were conscious companions, with surveys finding that more than a third of people have felt a system “truly understood” their emotions or seemed conscious. AI companies, meanwhile, have strong incentives to play up that impression. Without a clear scientific basis for deciding who, if anyone, is really conscious, public belief and marketing could drift far from reality.

According to the paper, McClelland suggests shifting the ethical spotlight from consciousness in general to a narrower and more morally urgent notion: sentience.

In simple terms, sentience is the capacity for experiences that are good or bad for the subject. For humans, it’s our ability to feel pleasure or suffering. Many moral theories already treat sentience as what really matters ethically, whether in humans, animals, or potentially even in digital minds. McClelland argues that even if we remain agnostic about whether an AI is conscious at all, we can still ask a slightly different question: if this system were conscious, what kinds of experiences would it be having?

Instead of trying to build a “consciousness meter” for AI, researchers and regulators could focus on designing systems whose internal states, as far as we can tell, would not naturally correspond to pain, fear, or despair if they were conscious. 

This shift opens up a practical path that, if applied, could change how companies and governments talk about and design advanced AI. It would encourage more transparency about architectures, more interdisciplinary work on the science of sentience and emotion, and a cautious approach to systems that imitate human distress or self‑awareness for persuasive effect.

As AI companies continue to push ever farther and faster in their race to stay ahead and generate revenue, the question of whether the things they are building are “alive” becomes increasingly important. Equally, as AI systems grow more capable and more lifelike, the primary risk is not just whether they become conscious, but whether our beliefs about their minds—right or wrong—reshape how we treat each other, structure our laws, and allocate our morals.

By avoiding leaps of faith and remaining skeptical, McClelland argues, the race towards future AI could be slowed down, thereby allowing for better regulation and transparency. 

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

Aliens will be found by 2075, top scientist insists - 'I am absolutely convinced there is life out there'

• READ MORE: Saturn's moon could harbour alien life, scientists announce 

By XANTHA LEATHAM, EXECUTIVE SCIENCE EDITOR

It's one of life's biggest questions – are we alone in the universe?

Now, in good news for sci–fi fans, one of Britain's top space scientists has declared she is 'absolutely convinced' there are aliens out there – and they will be found within the next 50 years.

Dame Maggie Aderin–Pocock, from University College London's Department of Physics and Astronomy, said she expects a 'positive detection' of life on another planet by 2075.

And, while it could be something very primitive, it's possible we could encounter a presence that has technology 'far superior' to ours.

'In the whole of the universe there are approximately 200 billion galaxies,' Dame Maggie told the Daily Mail.

'And so although certain conditions were in place for life to start here on Earth, and this is the only example we have of life, I'm absolutely convinced that there's life out there, because with so many stars, so many planets, why would it just occur here?'

Dame Aderin–Pocock made her prediction in an interview with the Daily Mail ahead of giving the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, which will air at the end of this month.

They are Britain's most prestigious public science lectures, and this year's focus is on the big questions space science still has to answer.

Dame Maggie Aderin–Pocock, from University College London's Department of Physics and Astronomy, said she expects a 'positive detection' of life on another planet by 2075

An illustration of a Hycean world, which experts believe K2–18b could be, orbiting its red dwarf star. Dame Maggie said we are getting 'tantalising glimpses' of possible life on planets such as this

A theory first put forward in 1961 argues that there is a high probability life must exist somewhere else due to the sheer number of planets in the universe.

Dame Maggie said this 'numbers game', also known as the Drake equation, is why she believes we are not alone.

She explained that in just our galaxy – the Milky Way – there are 300 billion stars.

'Each of those stars is a sun like our sun,' she said, 'and now we're detecting planets going around those stars.'

We are already getting 'tantalising glimpses' of possible life from some of these planets, she added, referencing a recent discovery regarding exoplanet K2–18b, which is 124 light–years from Earth.

Earlier this year, scientists detected molecules in the planet's atmosphere that can only persistently exist if there is some form of life.

The discovery was hailed as the most promising sign of life yet outside our solar system, with experts claiming the distant world is likely covered by an ocean and 'teeming' with living organisms.

When asked if she thinks we will find solid proof of life anytime soon, Dame Maggie replied: 'I think that's where the challenge lies – concrete evidence. But to put my money where my mouth is, in terms of getting a positive detection, I would say definitely in the next 50 years.'

The James Webb Space Telescope (pictured) is a powerful infrared observatory searching for signs of life on other planets

K2–18b is thought to be a a class of exoplanet possessing key ingredients for alien species because of their hydrogen–rich atmospheres and oceans of water

In September, NASA announced the discovery of what it believed to be the clearest sign of life ever found on Mars after findings unusual markings on mudstones in a dusty riverbed. 

Scientists think these features contain minerals produced by chemical reactions that could be associated with ancient Martian life.

But while aliens are, traditionally, depicted as little green men in a spaceship, the reality is likely very different.

'Grey sludge is probably the most likely thing we're going to find,' Dame Maggie said. However, there's a chance we could find something more sophisticated.

'We might find something that does evolve and that can communicate – and of course, their technology might be far superior to ours,' she added.

'I love the idea of aliens on the other side of the moon looking back at us, hoping we'll "grow up" soon.'

If – and when – we find life, we will have to be 'incredibly careful' about how we handle it, she warned.

'If there is any form of life, we need to make sure it is totally isolated,' she said. 'It cannot come into contact with any sort of human presence.

While it's likely any life discovered is microscopic, like marine phytoplankton (pictured), Dame Maggie said it's also possible alien life is more sophisticated than us 

In 2024, NASA's Perseverance rover spotted a vein–filled arrowhead–shaped rock on Mars that featured chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by microbial life billions of years ago

'But we're building facilities to do just that so we can analyse them. Because it's hard to take all our scientific equipment to Mars, for example, but if we can bring samples from Mars to Earth and analyse them here on Earth, we can get a lot more understanding.

'Of course, the ultimate solution is to send me. Some people retire and potter around their garden, and my retirement plan is to potter around Mars.'

When questioned on the future of human space exploration – and possible settlement – Dame Maggie concluded: 'I see us as a space–faring people – I see that as the way forward.

'And I find that exciting that we won't just be Earth–bound. We will expand outwards.

Read More 

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'It's the stuff of science fiction, literally, but science fiction does become science fact.

'One of the things I love about space is when you look at planet Earth from space, you don't see boundaries, you don't see country borders. You just see our planet. And that's what I would like space to be.

'I think space might be a way that we unite.'

The 2025 Christmas Lectures from the Royal Institution – 'Is there life beyond Earth?', with Dame Dr Maggie Aderin–Pocock, will be broadcast on BBC Four and iPlayer on 28th, 29th and 30th December at 7pm.

KEY DISCOVERIES IN HUMANITY'S SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE

Discovery of pulsars

British astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the first person to discover a pulsar in 1967 when she spotted a radio pulsar.

Since then other types of pulsars that emit X-rays and gamma rays have also been spotted.

Pulsars are essentially rotating, highly magnetised neutron stars but when they were first discovered it was believed they could have come from aliens.

'Wow!' radio signal

In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the night sky above Ohio spotted a radio signal so powerful that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data.

In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the night sky above Ohio spotted a radio signal so powerful that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data

The 72-second blast, spotted by Dr Jerry Ehman through a radio telescope, came from Sagittarius but matched no known celestial object.

Conspiracy theorists have since claimed that the 'Wow! signal', which was 30 times stronger than background radiation, was a message from intelligent extraterrestrials.

Fossilised Martian microbes

In 1996 Nasa and the White House made the explosive announcement that the rock contained traces of Martian bugs.

The meteorite, catalogued as Allen Hills (ALH) 84001, crashed onto the frozen wastes of Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984. 

Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike.

Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike (pictured)

However, the excitement did not last long. Other scientists questioned whether the meteorite samples were contaminated. 

They also argued that heat generated when the rock was blasted into space may have created mineral structures that could be mistaken for microfossils. 

Behaviour of Tabby's Star in 2005 

The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astronomers since being discovered in 2015.

It dims at a much faster rate than other stars, which some experts have suggested is a sign of aliens harnessing the energy of a star.

The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astonomers since being discovered in 2015 (artist's impression)

Recent studies have 'eliminated the possibility of an alien megastructure', and instead, suggests that a ring of dust could be causing the strange signals.

Exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone in 2017 

In February 2017 astronomers announced they had spotted a star system with planets that could support life just 39 light years away.

Seven Earth-like planets were discovered orbiting nearby dwarf star 'Trappist-1', and all of them could have water at their surface, one of the key components of life.

Three of the planets have such good conditions, that scientists say life may have already evolved on them. 

Researchers claim that they will know whether or not there is life on any of the planets within a decade, and said: 'This is just the beginning.' 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

We come in peace! Scientist reveals exactly what our first contact with aliens will look like - and it's nothing like the movies

• READ MORE: Aliens will be found by 2075, top scientist insists

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

As astronomers scour the universe for traces of alien life, one researcher has revealed exactly what first contact will look like.

However, that meeting won't look like the close encounters of a Hollywood blockbuster.

According to the 'Eschatian Hypothesis', the first extraterrestrial civilisation we encounter is likely to be in its final moments of total collapse.

This is because, just like dying stars and supernovae, civilisations are likely to burn their brightest just before they vanish into darkness.

According to Dr David Kipping, of Columbia University, this theory means the first aliens are likely to be 'unusually loud'.

In a YouTube video, Dr Kipping says: 'Hollywood has preconditioned us to expect one of two types of alien contact, either a hostile invasion force or a benevolent species bestowing wisdom to humanity.

'But the Eschatian hypothesis is neither.

'Here, first contact is with a civilisation in its death throes, one that is violently flailing before the end.'

A scientist has revealed what our first encounter with aliens will be like, and it won't look anything like what we have seen in movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (pictured)

In a new paper, due to appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr Kipping argues that finding aliens should follow the same rules as all other astronomical discoveries.

That means the first examples we discover are not typical of their class, but rather 'rare, extreme cases'.

To understand how this 'detection bias' works, imagine looking up at the night sky on a clear night.

Of the thousands of stars you can see, about a third will be giant, dying stars in the final stages of their lives.

This transitory period lasts less than 10 per cent of a star's lifetime, and only about one per cent of stars in the universe are in this giant phase.

However, since dying stars are so much brighter than their typical neighbours, they make up a huge proportion of the stars we can detect with the naked eye.

The same is even true of more extreme events such as supernovae - the vast explosions which occur when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse.

These explosions are staggeringly rare, with a Milky Way-sized galaxy only experiencing one every 50 years.

The supernovae from dying stars (pictured) are incredibly rare, but we see thousands every year because they are so bright. Scientists say that alien civilisations should be the same, in that we are more likely to find one burning brightly in its final moments - even if these are rarer 

For example, a nuclear war would produce a huge burst of energy that intelligent civilisations would be able to detect. Pictured: The Castle Union Nuclear Test, 1954

However, astronomers routinely discover thousands of supernovae every year, just because they are so incredibly bright.

According to Dr Kipping, there's no reason that our first discovery of alien life shouldn't follow the exact same rules.

He says: 'So, by extension, we should expect that the first detection of an alien civilisation to be someone who is being unusually loud.

'Their behaviour will probably be atypical, but their enormous volume makes them the most likely candidate for discovery.'

This means the first aliens we meet will be like a loud, obnoxious party guest - most people in the room don't act like that, but the ones that do get noticed by everyone.

However, when we consider what could cause a civilisation to become loud, the situation becomes a lot more bleak.

As civilisations become more advanced, they become more efficient - wasting less energy and using the energy they do have more sustainably.

Just like how a well-maintained modern house leaks less heat than an old, crumbling home, healthy civilisations shouldn't be giving off huge amounts of excess energy

This means our first encounter with aliens won't be a purposeful communication, like in the new film Disclosure Day. Instead, we are more likely to hear a civilisation's last desperate shouts 

In this sense, the volume of a civilisation is a sign of 'extreme disequilibrium' that heralds impending collapse.

For example, the intense heat and energy released by a nuclear war would cause a planet to light up in a way that sensitive telescopes could detect.

Likewise, some scientists have suggested that aliens could even use rapid human-caused climate change as a sign of intelligent life on our planet.

Some civilisations in total free-fall may even begin broadcasting signals into space in an attempt to reach other life.

Read More

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Dr Kipping has suggested that the famous 'Wow! Signal', detected by scientists in 1977, could have been a civilisation broadcasting one last desperate shout.

Instead of doing deep studies of promising star systems or patiently waiting for a coherent message, Dr Kipping says scientists should frequently scan the entire sky.

Brief unexplained signals, sudden flashes, or systems undergoing rapid, anomalous changes could all be signs of a loud civilisation going through collapse.

So, while it might not be a cheering thought, this theory could help find our first signs of life out amongst the stars.

WHAT IS THE FERMI PARADOX?

The Fermi Paradox questions why, given the estimated 200-400 billion stars and at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy, there have been no signs of alien life. 

The contradiction is named after its creator, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.

He first posed the question back in 1950.

Fermi believed it was too extraordinary that a single extra-terrestrial signal or engineering project has yet to be detected in the universe — despite its immense vastness. 

Fermi concluded there must a barrier that limits the rise of intelligent, self-aware, technologically advanced space-colonising civilisations.

This barrier is sometimes referred to as the 'Great Filter'.

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi devised the so-called Fermi Paradox in the 1950s, which explores why there is no sign of alien life, despite the 100 billion planets in our galaxy

If the main obstacle preventing the colonisation of other planets is not in our past, then the barrier that will stop humanity's prospects of reaching other worlds must lie in our future, scientists have theorised.  

Professor Brian Cox believes the advances in science and engineering required by a civilisation to start conquering the stars will ultimately lead to its destruction.

He said: 'One solution to the Fermi Paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself.

‘It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster.'

Other possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox include that intelligent alien species are out there, but lack the necessary technology to communicate with Earth.

Some believe that the distances between intelligent civilisations are too great to allow any kind of two-way communication.

If two worlds are separated by several thousand light years, it's possible that one or both civilisations would become extinct before a dialogue can be established. 

The so-called Zoo hypothesis claims intelligent alien life is out there, but deliberately avoids any contact with life on Earth to allow its natural evolution. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

AI is solving 'impossible' math problems. Can it best the world's top mathematicians?

AI is making gains in solving pure math problems. Can it crack the hardest problems in mathematics?

By Kit Yates  

AI has now cracked several rather difficult problems in math. How close is it to supplanting the world's best mathematicians? 

(Image credit: Adrián A. Astorgano for Future)

In October 2024, news broke that Facebook parent company Meta had cracked an "impossible" problem that had stymied mathematicians for a century.

In this case, the solvers weren't human.

An artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by Meta determined whether solutions of the equations governing certain dynamically changing systems — like the swing of a pendulum or the oscillation of a spring — would remain stable, and thus predictable forever.

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The key to the problem was finding Lyapunov functions, which determine the long-term stability of these systems.

Meta's work made headlines and raised a possibility once considered pure fantasy: that AI could soon outperform the world's best mathematicians by cracking math's marquee "unsolvable" problems en masse.

After looking under the hood, however, mathematicians were less impressed. The AI found Lyapunov functions for 10.1% of randomly generated problems posed to it. This was a substantial improvement over the 2.1% solved by previous algorithms, but it was by no means a quantum leap forward. And the model needed lots of hand-holding by humans to come up with the right solutions.

A similar scenario played out earlier this year, when Google announced its AI research lab DeepMind had discovered new solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics. The solutions were impressive, but AI was still some distance from solving the more general problem associated with the equations, which would garner its solvers the $1 million Millennium Prize.

Beyond the hype, just how close is AI to replacing the world's best mathematicians? To find out Live Science asked some of the world's best mathematicians.

While some experts were dubious about AI’s problem solving abilities in the short term, most noted that the technology is developing frighteningly fast. And some speculated that not so far into the future, AI may be able to solve hard conjectures — unproven mathematical hypotheses — at a massive scale, invent new fields of study, and tackle problems we never even considered.

"I think what's going to happen very soon — actually, in the next few years — is that AIs become capable enough that they can sweep through the literature at the scale of thousands — well, maybe hundreds, tens of thousands of conjectures," UCLA mathematician Terence Tao, who won the Fields Medal (one of mathematics' most prestigious medals) for his deep contributions to an extraordinary range of different mathematical problems, told Live Science. "And so we will see what will initially seem quite impressive, with thousands of conjectures suddenly being solved. And a few of them may actually be quite high-profile ones."

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From games to abstract reasoning

To understand where we are in the field of AI-driven mathematics, it helps to look at how AI progressed in related fields. Math requires abstract thinking and complex multistep reasoning. Tech companies made early inroads into such thinking by looking at complex, multistep logical games.

In the 1980s, IBM algorithms began making progress in games like chess. It's been decades since IBM's Deep Blue beat what was then the world's best chess player, Garry Kasparov, and about a decade since Alphabet's DeepMind defeated the period's best Go player, Lee Sedol. Now AI systems are so good at such mathematical games that there's no point to these competitions because AI can beat us every time.

But pure math is different from chess and Go in a fundamental way: Whereas the two board games are very large but ultimately constrained (or, as mathematicians would say, "finite") problems, there are no limits to the range, depth and variety of problems mathematics can reveal.

In many ways, AI math-solving models are where chess-playing algorithms were a few decades ago. "They're doing things that humans know how to do already," said Kevin Buzzard, a mathematician at Imperial College London.

"The chess computers got good, and then they got better and then they got better," Buzzard told Live Science. "But then, at some point, they beat the best human. Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov. And at that moment, you can kind of say, 'OK, now something interesting has happened.'"

That breakthrough hasn't happened yet for math, Buzzard argued.

"In mathematics we still haven't had that moment when the computer says, 'Oh, here's a proof of a theorem that no human can prove,'" Buzzard said.

Mathematical genius?

Yet many mathematicians are excited and impressed by AI's mathematical prowess. Ken Ono, a mathematician at the University of Virginia, attended this year's "FrontierMath' meeting organized by OpenAI. Ono and around 30 of the world's other leading mathematicians were charged with developing problems for o4-mini — a reasoning large language model from OpenAI — and evaluating its solutions.

After witnessing the heavily human-trained chatbot in action, Ono said, "I've never seen that kind of reasoning before in models. That's what a scientist does. That's frightening." He argued that he wasn't alone in his high praise of the AI, adding that he has "colleagues who literally said these models are approaching mathematical genius."

To Buzzard, these claims seem far-fetched. "The bottom line is, have any of these systems ever told us something interesting that we didn't know already?" Buzzard asked. "And the answer is no."

Rather, Buzzard argues, AI's math ability seems solidly in the realm of the ordinary, if mathematically talented, human. This summer and last, several tech companies' specially trained AI models attempted to answer the questions from the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), the most prestigious tournament for high school "mathletes" around the world. In 2024, Deepmind's AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2 systems combined to solve four of the six problems, scoring a total of 28 points — the equivalent of an IMO silver medal. But the AI first required humans to translate the problems into a special computer language before it could begin work. It then took several days of computing time to solve the problems — well outside the 4.5-hour time limit imposed on human participants.

This year's tournament witnessed a significant leap forward. Google's Gemini Deep Think solved five of the six problems well within the time limit, scoring a total of 35 points. This is the sort of performance that, in a human, would have been worthy of a gold medal — a feat achieved by less than 10% of the world's best math students.

Research-level problems

Although the most recent IMO results are impressive, it's debatable whether matching the performance of the top high school math students qualifies as "genius-level."

Another challenge in determining AI's mathematical prowess is that many of the companies developing these algorithms don't always show their work.

"AI companies are sort of shut. When it comes to results, they tend to write the blog post, try and go viral and they never write the paper anymore," Buzzard, whose own research lies at the interface of math and AI, told Live Science.

However, there's no doubt that AI can be useful in research-level mathematics.

In December 2021, University of Oxford mathematician Marc Lackenby's research with DeepMind was on the cover of the journal Nature.

Lackenby's research is in the area of topology which is sometimes referred to as geometry (the maths of shapes) with play dough. Topology asks which objects (like knots, linked rings, pretzels or doughnuts) keep the same properties when twisted, stretched or bent. (The classic math joke is that topologists consider a doughnut and a coffee cup to be the same because both have one hole.)

Lackenby and his colleagues used AI to generate conjectures connecting two different areas of topology, which he and his colleagues then went on to try to prove. The experience was enlightening.

It turned out that the conjecture was wrong and that an extra quantity was needed in the conjecture to make it right, Lackenby told Live Science.

Yet the AI had already seen that, and the team "had just ignored it as a bit of noise," Lackenby said.

Can we trust AI at the frontier of math?

Lackenby's mistake had been not to trust the AI enough. But his experience speaks to one of the current limitations of AI in the realm of research mathematics: that its outputs still need human interpretation and can't always be trusted.

"One of the problems with AI is that it doesn't tell you what that connection is," Lackenby said. "So we have to spend quite a long time and use various methods to get a little bit under the hood."

Ultimately, AI isn't designed to get the "right" answer; it's trained to find the most probable one, said Neil Saunders, a mathematician who studies geometric representation theory at City St George's, University of London and the author of the forthcoming book "AI (r)Evolution" (Chapman and Hall, 2026), told Live Science.

"That most probable answer doesn't necessarily mean it's the right answer," Saunders said.

"We've had situations in the past where entire fields of mathematics became basically solvable by computer. It didn't mean mathematics died."

AI's unreliability means it wouldn't be wise to rely on it to prove theorems in which every step of the proof must be correct, rather than just reasonable.

"You wouldn't want to use it in writing a proof, for the same reason you wouldn't want ChatGPT writing your life insurance contract," Saunders said.

Despite these potential limitations, Lackenby sees AI's promise in mathematical hypothesis generation. "So many different areas of mathematics are connected to each other, but spotting new connections is really of interest and this process is a good way of seeing new connections that you couldn't see before," he said.

The future of mathematics?

Lackenby's work demonstrates that AI can be helpful in suggesting conjectures that mathematicians can then go on to prove. And despite Saunders' reservations, Tao thinks AI could be useful in proving existing conjectures.

The most immediate payoff might not be in tackling the hardest problems but in picking off the lowest-hanging fruit, Tao said.

The highest-profile math problems, which "dozens of mathematicians have already spent a long time working on — they're probably not amenable to any of the standard counterexamples or proof techniques," Tao said. "But there will be a lot that are."

Tao believes AI might transform the nature of what it means to be a mathematician.

"In 20 or 30 years, a typical paper that you would see today might indeed be something that you could automatically do by sending it to an AI," he said. "Instead of studying one problem at a time for months, which is the norm, we're going to be studying 10,000 problems a year … and do things that you just can't dream of doing today."

Rather than AI posing an existential threat to mathematicians, however, he thinks mathematicians will evolve to work with AI.

"We've had situations in the past where entire fields of mathematics became basically solvable by computer," Tao said. At one point, we even had a human profession called a "computer," he added. That job has disappeared, but humans just moved on to harder problems. "It didn't mean mathematics died," Tao said.

Andrew Granville, a professor of number theory at the University of Montreal, is more circumspect about the future of the field. "My feeling is that it's very unclear where we're going," Granville told Live Science. "What is clear is that things are not going to be the same. What that means in the long term for us depends on our adaptability to new circumstances."

Ancient Astronomical Alignments: Reading and Mapping the Stars at Early Advanced Civilization Sites

Walter Cruttenden

Many of the cuneiform tablets of Mesopotamia and hieroglyphs of Egypt make reference to the sun, stars, or planetary positions. Also, a number of ancient structures in many parts of the world are aligned with, or directly oriented toward, the cardinal points (East, North, South, and West) or celestial objects. A recent study by astronomy historian Michael Horkin involved cataloging 2000 Neolithic tombs and researching over 1000 others in France, Portugal, Spain, and North Africa. His paper, presented to the Royal Astronomical Society in England, points out that thousands of Neolithic structures erected prior to 1000 BC were apparently built to face the sun or key constellations.

Commenting on the study, E.C. Krupp, an archaeoastronomer with the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, states, “It implies a certain social organization in the commitment to build the construction of these monuments, as well as a system of celestial observation.” Yet, Horkin says about one part of the study, “We do not know much about the constellations as viewed by the [ancient peoples], since they were not literate.” Illiteracy is the common assumption about ancient and unknown cultures – but what are we to make of the vast number of megalithic structures, dolmans, cairns, and henges (like Stonehenge) that we find built and precisely aligned with astronomical coordinates?

Stonehenge.

(LuckyStep/Fotolia)

A Belief that ‘Prior’ Meant ‘Primitive’

If myth tells us there was a time when man was regularly reading the stars, communing with the Earth and the heavens, and generally studying from the book of Nature rather than symbols on paper, can we really say he was illiterate?

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Most early and literate explorers did not recognize the astronomical alignments and mathematical characteristics inherent in the pyramids, Egyptian temple ruins, and other ancient megaliths. Since it was assumed that the people who built them must have been more primitive than the later people of Greece, and especially Rome, no one was looking for architectural features that required celestial calculations.

It wasn’t until the late 19th century, when the prominent British Astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer first seriously began to look at ancient temples around the world, that many astronomical alignments were noted. And even then, most archaeologists downplayed such observations as coincidence or merely structural aspects of primitive religious beliefs.

British Astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer.

(Public Domain)

Astronomical Alignment and Mathematical Feats at the Great Pyramid

Astonishingly, we had to wait until the 1960’s before any serious study of celestial alignment was undertaken at Stonehenge (which we now know can be used to predict eclipses), one of the most famous megalithic sites in the world. Because of this lack of interest in connecting the dots, so to speak, important clues that resided in temple alignments with solstices, equinoxes, and other celestial phenomena were completely missed and went undiscovered for centuries. Still today, many archaeologists dismiss much of this astronomical information as unimportant because it does not fit well with accepted interpretations of archaic civilizations.

Over the past few decades, though, the tide has slowly begun to turn, as irrefutable evidence reveals that sophisticated astronomy, mathematics, and other higher sciences were indeed incorporated into many ancient structures. The most obvious candidate for study is the Great Pyramid at Giza, which is larger than anything the Romans or Greeks ever built, and still the largest stone building on Earth.

The Great Pyramid of Egypt.

Credit: BigStockPhoto

With its original white (or possibly gold) capstone and limestone siding, it must have been an amazing sight, visible for miles (some ancient people referred to it as “The Light”). It is aligned to within 1/20th of a degree of the direction of the Earth’s rotation – not an easy feat. The massive base of the pyramid today appears to be level to within one centimeter, yet this accomplishment is said to have been performed with stone hammers, an assumption impossible to believe.

J. H. Cole, using modern surveying techniques, has accurately measured the pyramid, finding the ratio of the perimeter to the height a perfect imitation of a sphere (2 times Pi, the radius to circumference ratio of a sphere). Peter Tompkins, in his Secrets of the Great Pyramid, points out several other mathematical representations as well. Dividing the surface area of the Great Pyramid by the area of its base results in a number very near the golden mean (1.618), “a famous ratio in art and architecture.” In addition, he shows that the three great pyramids as they are laid out fit exactly into a rectangle aligned to the cardinal directions, measuring 1414 cubits by 1732 cubits, “a thousand times the square roots of 2 and 3 respectively.”

Still more interesting, in 1993 Robert Bauval (co-author of several books on the pyramids) noticed that the three main pyramids on the Giza Plateau were a mirror reflection of the three belt stars in the constellation Orion, a constellation important to the Egyptians. Bauval and others have also pointed out that the shafts in the Great Pyramid extending from the King’s and Queen’s Chambers also represent stellar alignments. Cutting such stones to the precise angles, placing them in a position so that their sides form a diagonal shaft that aligns with key astronomical coordinates (which must be calculated when most of the stars are not visible in that position, due to precession), embedding them in a massive structure comprised of millions of stones – some up to 70 tons – and doing it all without harder-than-stone tools or instruments or math, or even wheels, is pretty amazing stuff for a “primitive” culture. Or maybe that simplistic assumption is wrong.

Giza pyramids superimposed over the three stars of Orion's Belt.

(Davkal/CC BY SA 3.0)

The Mark of Early Advanced Civilizations?

One of the great enigmas presented by the ruins of many of these ancient cultures, most notably Egypt, is that they seemed to have arisen very quickly out of nothing. The Great Pyramid is supposed to have been built near the presumed beginning of this mysterious civilization. As author and rebel Egyptologist John Anthony West states, “The evidence for these advanced civilizations is almost universal in the sense that they all seem to be at their height near the beginning...practically all of them have deluge myths, practically all of them talk about earlier times, Golden Ages when people lived longer and were much more enlightened and advanced.”

• Has the Function of the Great Pyramid of Giza Finally Come to Light?
• Archeoastronomy Reveals Cosmic Dynastic Divide in Chinese Burial Pyramids
• Wild Animals in the Sky? Prehistoric Cave Art Suggests Ancient Advanced Astronomy

When Mesopotamia was being unearthed and some of the Biblical royal and city names could for the first time be confirmed as actual historical sites, there began to be good reason to take the stories of the Old Testament more literally, as well as some of the other myths and legends from prehistory.

There really might have been a flood of Biblical proportions, and a type of Noah’s Ark and the near loss of all that came before. It may not have happened exactly like the story, but there could have been massive flooding in some parts of the world that wiped away much evidence of prior civilizations. How else could civilization seem to develop out of nothing in Mesopotamia or Egypt 5000 years ago? The plant may have been chopped to the ground, but the roots would still be there.

‘The Deluge’ by Francis Danby, 1840.

( Public Domain )

• Top Image: Egyptian pyramids under a night sky. Several researchers believe astronomical alignments at this site point to signs of an ancient advanced civilization.
• Source: CC0

By Walter Cruttenden

• Extract from Chapter 1: Astronomical Alignments in ‘Lost Star of Myth and Time’ by Walter Cruttenden.

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions }

ESA's JUICE Mission Reveals More Activity from 3I/ATLAS

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

Overview

A former U.S. Army insider has come forward with explosive claims about classified UFO programs, revealing his identity publicly for the first time. In an interview released on the YouTube channel "Redacted," Jorge Pabon, known previously only as "JP," describes his years working on secretive military projects involving underground ocean bases, alleged extraterrestrial cooperation, and advanced healing technologies. The interview, which is the first in a two-part series, delves into Pabon’s background, the risks of disclosure, and the broader implications for UFO transparency in the United States.

Insider Profile: From Shadows to Spotlight

Pabon, who served as an E4 with the U.S. Army and was attached to the Seventh Group Special Forces unit, outlined his official capacity during the interview. “I was a 91 Juliet—that’s a quartermaster of chemical repairs. I deal with water purification and I also do translation,” Pabon explained, noting his proficiency in three languages and experience as a paratrooper. While Pabon emphasized he was not a Green Beret, he clarified his role as a "Red Beret," attached to, but not formally part of, the Special Forces.

This distinction, according to Pabon, is significant when considering how information about classified operations is compartmentalized. “People that are higher ranks…have to stay [in] secure facilities. The people that are lower enlisted…go out to do the missions,” he said, highlighting a trend where lower-ranked soldiers often witness extraordinary events but remain in the shadows.

Claims of Hidden Technologies and Secret Bases

Pabon alleges that during his service, he was involved with programs related to advanced technologies, including so-called 'med beds' capable of healing human bodies within hours. He referenced a deleted tweet by former President Donald Trump as having hinted at such technology. Additionally, he discussed his alleged work on clandestine bases both on the moon and under the ocean, suggesting that these installations are part of ongoing secret operations.

The interview also broached the subject of cooperation between the U.S. government and non-human entities. While Pabon refrained from providing specific details due to national security concerns, he implied that the scope of these activities is vast and involves “hundreds of thousands” of personnel worldwide who have had similar experiences. “We’re doing the grunt work. When I say ‘we,’ it’s not only me, it’s more soldiers like me,” he stated.

Risks and Reluctance in Disclosure

Coming forward with such claims, Pabon acknowledged, carries significant risks. He cited both personal safety concerns and the potential spiritual and interdimensional implications of the information. “It goes beyond…it connects to the spiritual and interdimensional realm of things. I can’t really talk about it because of national security,” Pabon said, adding that many of his peers are hesitant to speak out due to these risks.

Pabon’s testimony adds a new voice to the growing chorus of whistleblowers advocating for greater UFO transparency. While his claims have not been independently verified and remain controversial, the interview provides a rare glimpse into the mindset and experiences of those who allege firsthand involvement in the U.S. government’s most secretive UFO programs.

The Path Forward

As the conversation around UFO disclosure continues to gain momentum in Washington and beyond, testimonies like Pabon’s highlight the complexities involved in bringing classified information to light. The second part of the interview is expected to explore these issues further, potentially shedding more light on what some believe could be the most significant story of our time: humanity’s relationship with advanced non-human intelligence.

{ https://usubjects.com/ }

NASA Now Letting Mars Rover Drive Autonomously

NASA

Think self-driving cars are impressive? Try a self-driving rover on a planet over a hundred million miles away.

On Wednesday, NASA announced that its Mars Perseverance rover had pulled off a stunning feat of endurance and self-sufficiency. Over the course of four hours and 24 minutes, the intrepid little robot managed to traverse 1,350.7 feet, or about a quarter mile. It’s the most any Mars explorer has traveled in a single Martian day — or “sol,” in the lingo — and it did it pretty much on its own.

That’s because the rover is largely autonomous. The human scientists choose its destinations, but the bot’s navigation software charts its actual course. 

“Engineers at [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] meticulously plan each day of the rover’s activities on Mars,” NASA explained in a statement. “But once the rover starts driving, it’s on its own and sometimes has to react to unexpected obstacles in the terrain.”

One navigation tool is Enhanced Autonomous Navigation, or ENav, which can scan for potential obstacles and hazards up to 50 feet ahead of the rover, which is farther in advance than previous Mars robots, and automatically plan around them.

“More than 90 percent of Perseverance’s journey has relied on autonomous driving, making it possible to quickly collect a diverse range of samples,” said Hiro Ono, a JPL autonomy researcher and lead author of a new paper published in IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics describing ENav, said in the NASA statement.

A video captured by the rover’s navigation cameras shows its epic journey, which took place on June 19, 2025. The images were taken every 16 feet for the first third of the journey, and every 3.3 for the final two thirds, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and then combined with virtual frames which were created by reconstructing using the rover’s detailed data in a computer environment.

The distance feat comes as the Mars Perseverance rover reaches another milestone. After nearly five years of roaming the Red Planet, it’s now traveled almost 25 miles. With the help of autonomous software, JPL scientists hope that the rover will amble on at least another 37 miles more.

“As humans go to the Moon and even Mars in the future, long-range autonomous driving will become more critical to exploring these worlds,” Ono said.

More Mars: 

• NASA’s Mars Spacecraft Spinning Helplessly After Signal Lost

{ https://futurism.com/category/space }

An Area 51 Worker, an Underground Encounter, and the Question We Can’t Ignore

Some stories don’t sound dramatic because they’re polished or rehearsed.
They sound dramatic because the person telling them never wanted to tell them at all.

This is one of those stories.

What follows is not a claim of proof, nor an attempt to convince. It is a human account—filtered through trusted witnesses—of something that allegedly happened deep beneath Area 51, a place already wrapped in secrecy, silence, and unanswered questions.

A Casual Lunch That Took an Unexpected Turn

The story begins far from restricted airspace and warning signs. It starts at a lunch table in Las Vegas.

Legendary big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara, known for riding record-breaking waves in Nazaré and for the HBO documentary series The 100 Foot Wave, was eating with close friends. Someone brought along another guest—an older man with a long career in aerospace and defense work.

At first, nothing seemed unusual. Until someone, half-jokingly, asked the question people always ask when Area 51 comes up:

“So… did you ever see any aliens?”

Instead of laughing, the man reportedly went pale.

That moment, according to those present, changed the entire mood of the table.

Taken Underground

After some hesitation, the man allegedly explained that during his time working at Area 51, he had been escorted deep underground, into sections far removed from aircraft testing and conventional military research.

What he claimed to have seen there was not technology.

It was a being.

Described as reptilian in appearance, the entity was reportedly restrained, possibly chained, and held in some form of custody. The most unsettling part of the account was not how the being looked—but how it communicated.

The man claimed the entity spoke to him telepathically, directly into his mind.

There were no words spoken aloud. No interpreters. Just a sudden, overwhelming sense of communication that caused immediate panic.

He ran.

According to those retelling the story, the experience affected him so deeply that he later went on long-term medical leave, struggling with trauma ever since.

Importantly, the people sharing this story emphasized something crucial:
they were not seeking attention, publicity, or belief. They were simply repeating what a visibly shaken man told them—reluctantly.

A Second Story: “The Mantis Beings Don’t Want Humans Present”

As unsettling as the first account is, it wasn’t the only one mentioned.

Another individual—allegedly involved in monitoring or transcribing communications—overheard references to activities at S-4, a rumored installation often associated with advanced or non-human technology.

The statement he overheard was chilling in its simplicity:

“The Mantis beings don’t want any humans in the room.”

This detail matters because mantis-like entities appear repeatedly across UFO and abduction lore. They are often described as:

• Tall
• Insectoid
• Highly intelligent
• Authoritative, almost supervisory

In many accounts, they are not experimenters—but overseers.

The implication is uncomfortable:
humans may not be participants, but observers tolerated only when allowed.

Area 51 Was Never Just About Airplanes

To understand why stories like this persist, we have to look backward.

Presidential adviser Harold Malmgren publicly stated that he was briefed on “other world technologies” by Richard Bissell, the CIA official credited with founding Area 51.

This suggests something important:
non-human technology may not have arrived later—it may have been part of the original reason Area 51 existed at all.

Before spy planes, the region was an atomic test site. And nuclear facilities, time and again, appear linked to unexplained aerial phenomena.

That connection raises a disturbing but logical question:
Was Area 51 created to hide aircraft… or to hide something far stranger?

Prisoner, Partner, or Something Else Entirely?

One of the most troubling elements of this story is the idea of a non-human entity being held captive.

It doesn’t sit comfortably—even with those who believe in extraterrestrial contact.

Some attempt to reconcile this contradiction by suggesting:

• The entity may not have been a true biological being, but a controlled avatar or drone
• There may have been conflict or rule violations
• Human–non-human cooperation may exist, but not without tension

Claims by figures like Phil Schneider echo similar themes—underground bases, restricted levels, and violent encounters following misunderstandings or breaches of protocol.

Whether these stories are literal, exaggerated, symbolic, or intentionally distorted remains unknown.

Why Serious People Take These Stories Seriously

What stands out in this account is not certainty—but caution.

The speakers repeatedly emphasize that these ideas should be handled with low conviction:

• Don’t dismiss them outright
• Don’t accept them as fact
• Look for patterns, not conclusions

Physicist Hal Puthoff is mentioned as someone who often hints at extraordinary possibilities without direct confirmation—encouraging researchers to connect dots rather than chase headlines.

This approach closely mirrors the thinking of Jacques Vallée, who argued that the UFO phenomenon may involve consciousness, control systems, and intelligence far stranger than “aliens in spaceships.”

The Fringe Is Where the Future Often Hides

History shows us something uncomfortable:
many ideas that later reshaped science and society began at the fringe.

That doesn’t mean every strange story is true.
But it does mean automatic dismissal can be just as unscientific as blind belief.

This account—of a traumatized worker, an underground encounter, and beings who may not want us present—forces us to confront a deeper question:

What if we are not as informed, as central, or as important as we assume?

No one is asking you to “take this to the bank.”

But perhaps it deserves a place on the table—examined calmly, critically, and without ridicule.

Because if even a fraction of these stories reflect reality, then the mystery isn’t just about aliens.

It’s about how long humanity has been standing at the edge of a much larger truth, unsure whether we’re guests… or something closer to bystanders.

And maybe that’s why these stories refuse to disappear.

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

Steven Spielberg drops trailer for UFO thriller 'Disclosure Day' revealing humanity's first contact with aliens

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

Legendary director Steven Spielberg, the visionary behind 'E.T.' and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' has returned to the big screen with his latest project, 'Disclosure Day.' 

The first trailer offers a tantalizing glimpse into a story that promises to shake the world with revelations about alien life, while keeping much of the plot shrouded in mystery.

The star-studded cast includes Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson and Wyatt Russell.

Clocking in at two minutes and seven seconds, the teaser opens with a haunting question: 'If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you?'

Viewers are then thrust into Blunt's world, as she portrays a meteorologist abruptly seized by a mysterious extraterrestrial force during a live broadcast. 

O'Connor plays a determined man on a mission to reveal the truth about alien life to the world.

The trailer is packed with cryptic crop circles, high-speed chases, eerie creatures and chilling hints that humanity may not be alone in the universe.

Adding to the buzz, cryptic billboards appeared in Times Square and Los Angeles on December 10, bearing the message: 'All will be disclosed — Spielberg 06.12.26.'

This is a developing story... More updates to come 

Emily Blunt portrays a meteorologist abruptly seized by a mysterious extraterrestrial force during a live broadcast

Adding to the buzz, cryptic billboards appeared in Times Square and Los Angeles on December 10, bearing the message: 'All will be disclosed — Spielberg 06.12.26'

Spielberg's fascination with UFOs and outer space began in childhood, when his father woke him one night to watch the Perseid meteor shower from a field near their home in Haddon Heights, New Jersey. 

That early wonder inspired his first amateur film project at just 17, a 1964 feature, length sci-fi movie called 'Firelight', which he screened at a local Phoenix theater for family and friends, charging $1 per ticket.'

That film seemed to set the director on path about the unknown, as hist 1977 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' was released, followed by 'E.T' in 1982.

Both films were blockbuster hits, with ET becoming the highest-grossing film of all time for over a decade, surpassing Star Wars.

More recently, in 2005, Spielberg revamped the timeless 'War of the Worlds' that was one of that year's top films.

He has returned to his roots with 'Disclosure Day,' which was based on an his original story, but penned by r David Koepp, who helped write 'Jurassic Park,' 'Jurassic Park: The Lost World,' and 'War of the Worlds.'

'Just watched this chilling clip from Steven Spielberg's new UFO film Disclosure Day (trailer dropped [Tuesday])—Emily Blunt's weather forecast turns into straight-up ALIEN NOISES live on air, a UFO enthusiast posted on X.

'These eerie clicks and guttural sounds are TERRIFYING.' 

The trailer is packed with cryptic crop circles, high-speed chases, eerie creatures and chilling hints that humanity may not be alone in the universe

Steven Spielberg fascination with UFOs and outer space began in childhood, when his father woke him one night to watch the Perseid meteor shower from a field near their home in Haddon Heights, New Jersey

Josh O'Connor plays a determined man on a mission to reveal the truth about alien life to the world

Another fan shared online: 'For a half-century, every new Steven Spielberg release has always felt like a must-see event. 

'Already looking forward to seeing 'Disclosure Day' next year -- and I love that Emily Blunt is playing a Kansas City TV meteorologist. Midwest meteorologists are the best!'

Mysterious movie posters for the film recently appeared under the bright lights of New York's Times Square, showing an eerie eye peering through the silhouette of a bird.

While the image sparked many questions, the trailer appears to answer at least one.

In the newly released clip, there is a shot of bizarrely behaving robins that flying into an apartment where Blunt and O'Connor are sitting.

One social media users posted on X about the billboard, saying: 'This billboard in Times Square is not just promoting another movie. 

'It is signaling the return of the filmmaker who reshaped the medium itself. Spielberg, the most influential director in the history of cinema, the man whose last name is a synonym for Hollywood, is about to debut his first original sci-fi story in years.' 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

UFO expert reveals why you're more likely to see an 'alien' over Christmas

By JORDANA SEAL, NEWS REPORTER

It's not just Santa people should be looking out for next week as experts say you're more likely to see an 'alien' over Christmas. 

In December, the UFO Reporting Centre see a huge surge in UFO sightings with a massive spike on Christmas Day.

Christian Stepien, technical director at the centre in America said the reason for the increased reporting could be due to festive firework and light displays. 

Ron James from the Mutual UFO Network told The Daily Beast: 'We do have a slight uptick twice a year in the summer and around the holidays. 

'There are a few reasons why people might be paying more attention: they might be off work, they're doing family activities and things they don't normally do, so there are more possibilities for people to encounter things. Then, of course, there's always Santa Claus and the reindeer. 

'If there is an uptick, I can understand that because there's a lot of people out during time shopping and doing things. 

'They might be looking up in the air so I can understand it if there is.'

In 2021, there were a whopping 75 sightings reported on December 25. 

File image: In December, the UFO Reporting Centre see a huge surge in UFO sightings with a massive spike on Christmas Day

Accounts of UFOs peaking during the festive period go all the way back to Christmas 1965.

Astronaut Wally Schirra Jr. was aboard Gemini 6 when he spotted an usual 'object'.

At the time, he stated: 'We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in polar orbit. Looks like he might be going to re-enter soon.You just might let me pick up that thing.'

Adding to his report, fellow astronaut Thomas Stafford noted: 'I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit.' 

Mission control was sent into hysteria until Wally began to play Jingle Bells on the harmonica and revealed it was all a joke. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

Space challenge

The Space Shuttle program was the first full-fledged attempt to create a partially reusable space system. Within its framework, the shuttle itself was reused, as well as a pair of solid-fuel boosters that landed on parachutes. However, due to a number of technical compromises inherent in the program’s architecture and the immaturity of the technologies involved, it cannot be considered a success from an economic point of view. Yes, the shuttles were reused. However, their restoration and preparation for a new launch required much more time and money than had been anticipated during the development phase. As a result, the cost of launching a shuttle far exceeded the cost of launching a conventional rocket.

Launch of the Atlantis shuttle. Source: NASA

Several rocket designs were also developed that involved reusing first-stage engines, which, according to the designers’ concept, were to be dropped by parachute. However, these designs were never implemented. One of the main reasons for this was that the space industry was still predominantly the preserve of countries. With guaranteed government contracts, there was no point in rocket manufacturers reducing the cost of launches.

This situation began to change at the beginning of the 21st century with the emergence of a number of private companies ready to challenge the traditional aerospace giants. One of them was SpaceX. When the company first announced its plans to reuse the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, most experts were extremely skeptical. Some even openly ridiculed them. But SpaceX was ready to take on the challenge.

From parachutes to jet landing

Initially, SpaceX chose a traditional approach and attempted to implement the idea of returning the stage using parachutes. Attempts were made during the first two Falcon 9 launches. In both cases, the stage disintegrated in the atmosphere upon re-entry. Experts quickly realized that this was a dead end. Even if the stage had survived re-entry, the parachute system had a number of problems, one of which was its considerable weight, and another was that the stage would land in seawater, which could damage the engines.

Grasshopper launch. Source: SpaceX

Instead, a controlled reentry and jet landing scheme was chosen. To develop the necessary technologies, SpaceX built Grasshopper, a vehicle capable of vertical takeoff and landing. Testing began in 2012.

At the same time, engineers tried to obtain as much data as possible about the rocket’s behavior during actual space flight and actively experimented. In 2013, SpaceX succeeded in reactivating the engines of the separated first stage for the first time. And in 2014, the first controlled splashdown in the ocean took place. The company also began preparing autonomous barges, which were to be used for most of the landings. However, even then, most experts still did not believe in SpaceX. It was believed that even if the company recovered the stage, the cost of servicing it would negate the whole idea of reusability.

Historic landing

The first real attempt to land the Falcon 9 stage was made in January 2015. It failed. The next time, the company came extremely close to success, but during contact, the stage tipped over onto the barge and exploded.

First successful landing of Falcon 9 on land. Source: SpaceX

On December 22, SpaceX made another attempt to recover a stage from space. The task was made easier by the fact that this time the landing was not on a barge, but on land. And this time, SpaceX was successful. The stage with the serial number B1019 made a historic landing at Cape Canaveral, proving the viability of the idea.

First successful landing of Falcon 9 on a barge. Source: SpaceX

The final confirmation was to be the landing on a barge. After two more failures, on April 8, 2016, SpaceX finally succeeded in solving the problem. For the first time in history, humanity had a rocket with a reusable first stage.

The Reusable Revolution

However, even after all this, not everyone was ready to believe in success. After all, it is not enough to simply return the stage; it must be possible to launch it into space again, and it must be cheaper than using a new stage.

Falcon 9 launch. Source: SpaceX

This task was accomplished a year later when the stage with the side number B1021 successfully returned from space for the second time. The final step was the commissioning of Falcon 9 Block 5, the “final” modification of the rocket, whose design incorporated the results of all SpaceX experiments. It was destined to become SpaceX’s workhorse, which ultimately changed the landscape of global space exploration. As of December 16, 2025, 523 of the 524 launches of this modification of Falcon 9 were successful.

As for reusing stages, out of 531 attempts, SpaceX failed to recover the stage in only six cases. This number is higher than the total number of Falcon 9 launches because its first stages are also used in Falcon Heavy launches.

Falcon 9 first stage landing. Source: SpaceX

Over the years, SpaceX has raised the bar for the maximum number of launches for first stages several times. Initially, it was 10 launches, then 20, and now 40. At the time of writing, the record was held by stage B1067. It has flown into space 32 times.

Thanks to a combination of unprecedented reliability and lower prices than its competitors, reusability has allowed SpaceX to capture a huge share of the global launch market. Falcon 9 launches are now effectively produced on an assembly line basis. It is launched more often than all other rockets combined.

The first stage of the New Glenn rocket after landing on a barge. Source: Blue Origin

Only in 2025 did several companies come close to repeating SpaceX’s success. Blue Origin has achieved the most significant results so far. On its second attempt, it managed to land the New Glenn rocket stage on a barge. China’s Landspace could have gone down in history as the third company to build a reusable rocket. However, the first attempt to land the Zhuque-3 stage was unsuccessful. Next in line are Long March 8, built by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, and Neutron from Rocket Lab.

SpaceX, in turn, is preparing to take the next step and create the first fully reusable space system in history. In recent years, the company has been actively testing its giant Starship rocket. If all goes well, its first landing could take place as early as 2026.

The fourth launch of Starship. Source: SpaceX

Whatever the future holds for all these rockets, one thing is certain: space exploration will never be the same again. And the beginning of this new path was laid ten years ago, when Falcon 9 managed to do what was previously considered impossible.

• Posted in Articles, Questions 

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

The incredible true story of the Men In Black: Harry saw six aircraft over the bay. Then the suits came out of shadows... and the bodies followed

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

Before the movies, before the comic books, and before Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith brought their suits to the big screen, the Men in Black were known only in whispers.

The legend of these shadowy figures - men in dark suits who threatened people who reported UFO sightings - was born in 1947, when a Washington state logger claimed he saw six flying orbs over Puget Sound.

On June 21, Tacoma resident Harold Dahl was out on the bay with his son, their dog and two crewmembers when he claimed to have spotted six massive, metallic, doughnut-shaped aircraft - each about 100ft across and gliding roughly 2,000ft overhead.

Dahl later described the sighting to an undercover intelligence agent, someone he believed was simply his supervisor.

The very next morning, a man in a black suit appeared at Dahl's home and invited him to breakfast, delivering a warning that would echo through UFO lore for generations.

Dahl's account was printed in the Tacoma Times, and months later, the 29-year-old journalist who covered it was dead under mysterious circumstances.

The story, now known as the Maury Island incident, is detailed in the newly released book Catastrophic Disclosure: The Deep State, Aliens, and the Truth, which argues Dahl's may be one of the first 'modern' UFO sightings.

'This might mark the first appearance of mysterious figures, either from the military or what has become known as the "men in black,"' authors Kent Heckenlively JD and Michael Mazzola wrote. 

A new book has detailed the origins of the legendary Men in Black, which started in 1947 when a man reported seeing six objects flying over Washington state. Pictured is an artist impression of what the man said he saw

On June 21, Tacoma resident Harold Dahl (pictured) was out on the bay with his son, their dog and two crewmembers when he spotted six massive, metallic, doughnut-shaped aircraft - each about 100ft across and gliding roughly 2,000ft overhead

The summer of 1947 became a landmark period for UFO sightings, from Ken Arnold's mysterious 'flying discs' near Mt Rainier to the infamous Roswell incident in New Mexico. 

Across the nation, Americans were captivated by reports of objects that defied explanation, and the federal government was paying close attention. 

But it was Dahl's encounter with the man in the black suit that cemented one of the most enduring legends in UFO history.

According to Heckenlively and Mazzola, such figures - whether military, intelligence or something altogether stranger - appeared in response to sightings like Dahl's, warning witnesses to keep quiet.

Dahl claimed he first saw five of the objects circling while a sixth appeared to be in distress. The craft made no sound, Dahl said, and he saw no propellers, motors or visible means of propulsion.

'A dull explosion followed, and the troubled craft ejected a stream of light metal that looked like thousands of newspapers, then heavier, darker rock, almost like lava,' the authors wrote.

Dahl reported that the damaged craft drifted out over the Pacific Ocean and vanished. He said the falling debris wrecked his boat, killed his dog and injured his son. 

He relayed everything to his supervisor, Fred Crisman, who, the authors note, was actually a former intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA. It is not known how long Crisman and Dahl had been working at the same company.

Before the movies, before the comic books, and before Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith brought them to the big screen, the Men in Black were known only in whispers

Dahl's story appeared in the Tacoma Times the next day. The reporter, Paul Luntz, was said to have also been visited by two men in black suits who threatened him to stop writing about the incident

The next morning, Dahl claimed, a man in a black suit knocked on his door and escorted him to a local diner.

'This was not as unusual as it might seem,' the authors explained. 'Many lumber buyers visited men in Dahl's trade to negotiate for salvaged logs.'

Over breakfast, the mysterious visitor calmly repeated Dahl's entire story back to him, then added: 'I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe.'

According to the book, he leaned in and warned Dahl never to speak of the sighting again, insisting the incident 'never happened' and hinting that if Dahl valued his family's safety, he would remain silent.

The story ran in the Tacoma Times the next day, reported by journalist Paul Lantz, who printed Dahl's description of the objects and confirmed the logger had alerted Crisman. 

Reports have suggested that Crisman shared the story with the news outlet.

Reports later suggested Lantz and his wife were also visited by two men in black suits after he published the article.

In a 2014 book, The Maury Island UFO Incident, authors Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson quote Lantz's granddaughter: 'My grandmother went into the kitchen to cook while they talked to Paul in the living room.

'She tried to listen. She said they were basically threatening Paul to stop… but Paul was bold and not afraid of them.'

What is now known as the Maury Island incident happened over Puget Sound (pictured)

A few months later, in August, Lantz published another startling report suggesting an Army plane crash in Kelso may have been 'sabotage.'

'The mystery of the 'Flying Saucers' soared into prominence again,' he wrote, after an informant claimed the aircraft was destroyed to prevent flying-disc fragments from reaching Hamilton Field for analysis.

The informant alleged the debris came from 'one of the mysterious platters' that had fallen near Maury Island. 

Lantz died on January 10, 1948. Some accounts stated his cause of death was 'a short, unspecific illness,' while his death certificate reportedly cited meningitis. 

His death was described by family as sudden and unexpected.

Dahl was later interrogated by the Seattle FBI, which publicly declared the story a hoax, though internal accounts painted a different picture.

Reports claim FBI Director J Edgar Hoover wrote: 'Please be advised that Dahl did not admit… his story was a hoax, but only stated that if questioned by authorities, he was going to say it was a hoax because he did not want further trouble in the matter.'

To this day, no one has definitively explained what Dahl saw on Maury Island, why an intelligence agent posed as his supervisor or why a man in a black suit knew details of the incident before Dahl ever repeated them. 

The FBI closed the case, the debris vanished, and the people closest to the story either recanted under pressure or never spoke about it again.

But in the years that followed, dozens of witnesses across the country reported their own encounters with men in black suits who arrived without warning, knew too much and left no trace.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

EXCLUSIVE - I was dead for 105 minutes and learned exactly how you get into heaven... then Jesus spoke six words into my mind and sent me back

A man who was clinically dead for an astonishing 105 minutes has said his experience in heaven gave him a mission: sharing what he learned about the afterlife with the world.

Dean Braxton, 68, told the Daily Mail how a simple hospital procedure to remove kidney stones in 2006 went horribly wrong, causing a massive infection that stopped his heart.

Doctors failed to resuscitate the Christian minister from Washington state, and had already begun filling out the paperwork before sending his body to the morgue, when he miraculously woke up.

Braxton said hospital staff dubbed him the 'Miracle Man' after doctors reported he suffered no brain damage and returned to perfect health, despite his body being clinically dead for one hour and 45 minutes.

Normally, the human brain begins to experience irreversible damage within five to 10 minutes of being without oxygen, highlighting the extraordinary nature of his survival.

Braxton said he was not afraid during his near-death experience (NDE), rather he felt overwhelming joy, peace and comfort - a revelation that transformed his outlook on life and gave him an 'eternal perspective.'

The Washingtonian said he was taken into another realm he called heaven, where he was met by dead relatives, angels, Jesus and God.

'It's not your time, go back,' Braxton recounted about what Jesus told him before sending him back to Earth. That moment, as he remembers it, has inspired his mission to help others encounter God themselves.

Dean Braxton (pictured) was clinically dead for 105 minutes and claims he journeyed into the afterlife

Braxton, a Christian minister, has been talking about his experience with audiences around the world for 20 years

Once in this realm, the minister said that everything he encountered, which he referred to as 'creations,' made him feel welcomed - even the trees and animals.

'I felt like everything was alive, nothing was dead - and I don't mean just alive in a sense of like grass that I have in my front yard. I mean, they were alive where they were intelligent,' Braxton told the Daily Mail.

'It seemed like everything had an attitude - a good attitude, not a bad one - and they were glad I showed up.'

The pastor went on to say he was greeted by his family members who had already passed away, led by his grandmother, Mary.

This welcome eventually extended to generations of Braxton's ancestors, including those he had never met during his lifetime.

Braxton said that this encounter was life-changing and revealed how important family is to God. He said it showed him that individual families matter just as deeply as the broader 'family of God.'

'I didn't know that until I got there, how important it was. So that really changed my outlook upon my own family,' Braxton said.

He added that his wife, Marilyn Braxton, had to adjust to an entirely new husband after his NDE.

Braxton said his wife, Marilyn Braxton (right), had to adjust to an entirely new husband after his near-death experience changed his perspective on life

Braxton said all of his family members who had previously passed away greeted him in heaven

(Stock Image) 

While the people Braxton said he encountered in heaven could speak verbally, he claimed the primary way those in the afterlife communicated was thought-to-thought.

Most often, he said this took the form of instant pictures rather than words. Braxton told the Daily Mail that if someone wanted to talk about a table, for example, they would directly transmit the complete picture of that table into his mind.

He said this concept was ideal because it gave the fullness of the thought instantly. There were no misunderstandings and no need for lengthy explanations, making every conversation deeply intimate, even if the meeting was brief.

Eventually, Braxton said he approached what he called 'the edge of heaven,' a place he couldn't physically describe but believed would mean leaving the realm of Earthly reality if he crossed that barrier.

Braxton (pictured) has been called the 'Miracle Man' after suffering no brain injuries despite being dead for one hour and 45 minutes

After reaching that point, Braxton detailed how Jesus communicated with him and said, 'It's not your time. Go back.'

As many near-death experiencers have expressed in the past, Braxton said he didn't want to leave heaven, but was told by Jesus three separate times that it was time to return to Earth.

The pastor said he still remembers viewing his lifeless body and the family and nurses gathered around him in the hospital before reentering the living world.

'I just remember that my heart started beating again, and the doctors ran over, and they started doing all their stuff,' Braxton told the Daily Mail. 'They didn't expect me to live even after I came back.'

Braxton explained that his NDE did not change his physical body, but did transform his entire outlook on the world and the message he spreads through his ministry.

'I came back a different person, and my wife had to adjust because she had a whole different husband,' he said.

Before he experienced near-death, Braxton said he made decisions based on what felt good or practical in the moment. After, however, he asks: 'How does this impact eternity?'

He realized that almost everything on Earth - possessions, achievements, even many problems - will eventually deteriorate or fall apart, so he has invested his time and energy in things that last forever, especially relationships with people and helping them connect with God.

'I want people to meet Jesus really badly because of my encounter with him,' Braxton said. 'Sometimes I'll go to a place, and people come, and I say, "It's not about me, it's about your encounter with God. You're here, he's here, that's all that matters."

'My words don't get you in, Jesus does.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

The puzzled voice of a US Air Force pilot reporting his terrifyingly close call with a UFO has been heard for the first time.

Traveling at supersonic speed, the unknown craft came within a 10 feet of the pilot's wing, who was conducting a secret mission over California.

The pilot, who identified as 'Troy 21,' told local air traffic control (ATC) in Los Angeles: 'This is going to sound weird, but I just had something pass underneath my wing, maybe a football-sized object right underneath my wing.'

During the September 17, 2024 incident, ATC is heard asking Troy 21 if he thought the object might have been a drone, but the stunned pilot couldn't tell.

Troy 21 replied that his sensor operator was looking for the UFO on the plane's cameras, adding that it was a 'dark gray cylindrical object' no bigger than a football.

The pilot quickly informed ATC that they had spotted the UFO again about 60 miles from where it first buzzed Troy 21's plane.

Later in the recording, another air traffic controller in Los Angeles can be heard on the radio dismissing the incident, saying that 'there was UFO reported here, but that's all taken care of now. So you don't have to worry about it... it's gone.'

Former FBI agent Ben Hansen told NewsNation the mysterious object must have be traveling at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, to get so far away so fast.

The strange object then moved off at high speed and was seen minutes later 60 miles away from the aircraft

The Air Force pilot was not able to tell if the object was a drone, but UFO expert and former FBI agent Ben Hansen said the chances of that were unlikely

'You hear them call out what they believe they're tracking this object, about 60 miles away, because they've got their own airborne radar,' Hansen told NewsNation.

'If true, within the two minutes when they called back, that would place this object going about Mach 2... That would absolutely, in my opinion, eliminate any prosaic explanation of a drone,' Hansen added.

Hansen was able to secure a copy of the recording after it was not released to the public.

According to the UFO expert, the air traffic controller involved reported the incident to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recognizes NUFORC as one of the official channels pilots are able to use to make reports about UFOs and other strange sightings.

Hansen noted that this pilot and his crew were likely carrying out a drug interdiction mission for the US Department of Homeland Security when they encountered the tiny UFO.

He added that their aircraft, a Beechcraft 350C, has been converted by the government to house a sophisticated radar system.

Typically it can spot drug traffickers and other illegal activity, but during this flight, the military crew caught a glimpse of an unknown object around 2:30pm on a clear day.

'It's broad daylight. They got a good look at this thing, a cylindrical dark object that passes underneath their wing so close,' Hansen said.

'There's big problems with that happening in controlled airspace like they were and they weren't notified of any air traffic that was supposed to be in the area,' the former FBI special agent continued.

The host of UFO Witness, Ben Hansen, said the 2024 UFO report raises serious concerns since the object passed so close to a manned airplane

Troy 21's plane had advanced radar that reportedly tracked the UFO up to 60 miles away, but air traffic controllers later said there was nothing else to worry about and that the object was now 'gone'

Hansen noted that his team has not spoken to the crew of the aircraft at this point.

He added that because of the secret nature of their flight, the pilot and crew wouldn't be able to say much about the September 17 encounter.

Hansen's computer simulation seen during his interview is based completely on the audio recording of the incident.

The host of 'UFO Witness' on Discovery+ admitted that the object could have passed under the wing from a different direction than the one seen in the video, but this was the best guess of what happened.

'We do know their description is pretty exact,' Hansen added.

As for the possibility of the UFO being a drone, Hansen noted that military drones and some hobby drones can go as high as 20,000 feet (where this encounter took place) but he believes the chances it was drone are unlikely.

The UFO was spotted near what Hansen calls a 'military operations area,' but the object was not in that zone, meaning anyone flying a commercial drone would have had to report their activity.

The incident is one of the latest close encounters that have many Americans believing alien life has been visiting Earth for decades.

Now, some government officials are looking to expose whatever is allegedly being hidden, including Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna.

After a classified meeting with Air Force whistleblowers, she revealed to The Grant Mitt Podcast this week that she 'absolutely believes' that the UFOs they and others have described are 'of non-human origin.'

Rep. Luna and others believe the Trump administration will soon declassify what the US government knows about UFOs and alien encounters.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

• READ MORE: Joe Rogan uses three haunting words to predict Americans' reaction to UFO disclosure

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

The pilot of a private jet was left stunned after spotting a small, silver cylinder hovering near his wing thousands of feet above Rhode Island.

A newly released video of the live air traffic control (ATC) broadcast captures the tense moment, with the pilot telling the ground team, 'It appears to be standing still,' as the mysterious object floated beside him.

The object hovered near the wing tip, briefly pacing the aircraft, before drifting out of view.

ATC confirmed there were no other reports in the area and asked whether the object could have been a drone or a balloon.

Flying a Piper PA-32RT-300T Turbo Lance II, which seats up to five passengers, the pilot said he could see no attachments on the object and described it as 'astonishing' while maintaining an altitude of roughly 3,500 feet.

Other pilots in the region chimed in over the radio, with one remarking, 'I want to believe him,' while ATC joked, 'Good luck with the aliens.'

No official FAA or NTSB report has been made public, a common occurrence for unexplained aerial phenomena unless they pose a direct hazard.

The video was uploaded to the YouTube channel VASAviation, run by a corporate pilot and certified flight instructor from Spain, which regularly posts ATC frequency conversations. 

The pilot of a private jet was left stunned after spotting a small, silver cylinder hovering near his wing thousands of feet above Rhode Island (STOCK)

The clip, which has been viewed more than 14,000 times, was posted about a month ago, indicating that the sighting likely occurred around that time.

Recently, the broadcast made its way to social media, appearing on X this week, where it has quickly gone viral.

While the pilot did not believe the object was a balloon, some experts offered alternative explanations. 

Mick West, a British-American science writer and conspiracy theory investigator, suggested that a weather balloon was the most plausible scenario.

Other social media users speculated that it could have been a military test of new technology. 

'UFOs are a brilliant cover,' one X user commented, while another questioned, 'Do you think they'd really test it on a commercial flight?' 

Michael Harrison added, 'Truthfully? Yeah, I do. It also has the benefit of keeping the UFO narrative fresh.'

Aviation enthusiast Anthony Dohrmann, founder and CEO of AI-powered virtual caregiver company Electronic Caregiver, offered a more grounded perspective. 

A newly released video of the live air traffic control (ATC) broadcast captures the tense moment, with the pilot telling the ground team, 'It appears to be standing still,' as the mysterious object floated beside him. Pictured is flight data of the plane

Flying a Piper PA-32RT-300T Turbo Lance II (STOCK), which seats up to five passengers, the pilot said he could see no attachments on the object and described it as 'astonishing' while maintaining an altitude of roughly 3,500 feet

He suggested that the object could have been a weather balloon, which are often launched at night and carry cylindrical payloads.

'[They] have a kind of translucent material that can reflect city lights or catch sunlight higher up, making it hard to judge their true altitude,' Dohrmann explained. 

He added that such balloons can appear to hover or rise slowly, sometimes at about 1,000 feet per minute, and noted that many are launched in nearby Massachusetts.

Dohrmann also pointed out that amateur hobbyists frequently experiment with balloons and other small devices at lower altitudes. 

Read More

• The incredible true story of the Men In Black: Harry saw six aircraft over the bay. Then the suits came out of shadows... and the bodies followed 

'They're supposed to go in a certain direction, but things don't always work like they're supposed to,' he said.

The broadcast incident comes just months after a veteran US fighter pilot broke his silence about a near-collision with a UFO that defied the laws of physics and left the Air Force in stunned disbelief.

Major Ryan Bodenheimer, a retired F-15 and F-16 combat pilot, revealed in a YouTube video that one of the 'wildest experiences' of his career involved a close encounter with a rectangle-shaped UFO as he flew with his squadron over southern Wyoming.

Bodenheimer, who served in the Air Force for 13 years, said the large craft suddenly appeared out of nowhere during a training mission and looked to be on a collision course with his plane.

'Then I realized we weren't going to hit, and all of a sudden it came more into view, and it was a rectangular shape. This was like essentially a perfect rectangle,' Bodenheimer revealed in his video on June 8.

The military veteran described the UFO as being 30 to 50 feet in height and appearing to be glowing around the edges of its bright white body as it flew alongside the Thunderbirds, the Air Force's elite aerobatic demonstration squadron.

Bodenheimer added that this craft had no visible vapor trail coming from an engine, no radar signal, and was traveling at approximately 400 knots (460 miles per hour).

'It really was defying any type of aeronautical laws that I've learned,' Bodenheimer said.

Major Ryan Bodenheimer (pictured) spent 13 years flying F-15s and F-16s for the US Air Force and revealed this summer that he had two encounters with unexplainable UFOs over the US

Bodenheimer then revealed that his report to air traffic control left officials in 'dead silence' before the entire matter was apparently dismissed as an 'anomalous object.'

The strange rectangle UFO got so close to Bodenheimer's F-16 Falcon at 30,000 feet in the air that he said he could make out every detail of the craft before it eventually flew off and was never seen again.

When air traffic controllers in Denver asked Bodenheimer if he could give them any more details about the UFO, he revealed that it had a cream-colored interior that became transparent or had a hole in its center.

'I know it sounds like I'm talking about a delicious pastry, but this was the wildest experience I've ever had,' the fighter pilot joked.

The only evidence of Bodenheimer's sighting was a report made by air traffic control saying that an object had been spotted in the area where the Thunderbirds were training that day, but he never heard from anyone about the incident again.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

Geoscientists Find Explanation for Mysterious Structures within Earth’s Mantle

For decades, scientists have been baffled by two enormous structures buried deep inside Earth. These anomalies may retain geochemical signatures distinct from the surrounding mantle. Yet, their origin remains enigmatic. Rutgers University geodynamicist Yoshinori Miyazaki and colleagues offer a striking explanation for these anomalies and their role in shaping Earth’s ability to support life.

The illustration shows a cutaway revealing the interior of early Earth with a hot, melted layer above the boundary between the core and mantle.

Image credit: Yoshinori Miyazaki / Rutgers University.

The two enigmatic structures, known as large low-shear-velocity provinces and ultra-low-velocity zones, sit at the boundary between Earth’s mantle and its core, nearly 2,900 km (1,800 miles) beneath the surface.

Large low-shear-velocity provinces are continent-sized blobs of dense, hot rock.

One sits beneath Africa; the other is perched under the Pacific Ocean.

Ultra-low velocity zones are thin, molten patches clinging to the core like lava puddles.

Both types of structures slow seismic waves dramatically, signaling unusual composition.

“These are not random oddities,” said Dr. Miyazaki, co-author of a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“They are fingerprints of Earth’s earliest history.”

“If we can understand why they exist, we can understand how our planet formed and why it became habitable.”

“Billions of years ago, Earth was covered by a global ocean of magma.”

“As it cooled, scientists expected the mantle to form distinct chemical layers, similar to frozen juice separating into sugary concentrate and watery ice.”

“But seismic studies show no such strong layering. Instead, large-low shear velocity provinces and ultra-low velocity zones form irregular piles at the planet’s base.”

“That contradiction was the starting point. If we start from the magma ocean and do the calculations, we don’t get what we see in Earth’s mantle today. Something was missing.”

The team’s model suggests that over billions of years, elements such as silicon and magnesium leaked from the core into the mantle, mixing with it and preventing strong chemical layering.

This infusion could explain the strange composition of large low-shear-velocity provinces and ultra-low-velocity zones, which can be seen as solidified remnants of what the scientists termed a basal magma ocean contaminated by core material.

“What we proposed was that it might be coming from material leaking out from the core,” Dr. Miyazaki said.

“If you add the core component, it could explain what we see right now.”

“The discovery is about more than deep-Earth chemistry.”

“Core-mantle interactions may have influenced how Earth cooled, how volcanic activity unfolded and even how the atmosphere evolved.”

“That could help explain why Earth has oceans and life, while Venus is a scorching greenhouse and Mars is a frozen desert.”

“Earth has water, life and a relatively stable atmosphere.”

“Venus’ atmosphere is 100 times thicker than Earth’s and is mostly carbon dioxide, and Mars has a very thin atmosphere.”

“We don’t fully understand why that is. But what happens inside a planet, that is, how it cools, how its layers evolve, could be a big part of the answer.”

By integrating seismic data, mineral physics and geodynamic modeling, the authors reconceived large low-shear velocity provinces and ultra-low-velocity zones as vital clues to Earth’s formative processes.

The structures may even feed volcanic hotspots such as Hawaii and Iceland, linking the deep Earth to its surface.

“This work is a great example of how combining planetary science, geodynamics and mineral physics can help us solve some of Earth’s oldest mysteries,” said study co-author Dr. Jie Deng, a researcher at Princeton University.

“The idea that the deep mantle could still carry the chemical memory of early core–mantle interactions opens up new ways to understand Earth’s unique evolution.”

“Each new piece of evidence helps fill in gaps in Earth’s early history, turning scattered clues into a clearer picture of its evolution.”

“Even with very few clues, we’re starting to build a story that makes sense,” Dr. Miyazaki said.

• J. Deng et al. 2025. Deep mantle heterogeneities formed through a basal magma ocean contaminated by core exsolution. Nat. Geosci 18, 1056-1062; doi: 10.1038/s41561-025-01797-y

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

Joe Rogan invoked three words that still haunt Americans more than two decades later while discussing how the country might react to an alien threat.

Speaking on his podcast, Rogan said such a world-changing event could evoke reactions similar to those seen 'after September 11th.'

'It was a horrible tragedy, but there was a beautiful result temporarily, where everybody was really united,' he said on Thursday.

'There were American flags on everybody's cars in Los Angeles. In New York, everyone was friendly.' 

Rogan added that Americans had all decided that we were together and that we were faced with a real threat and that we had to be united, suggesting a similar reaction would unfold in the event of visitors from another world.

Along with the widespread displays of American flags, there were spontaneous memorial vigils, national unity under the 'United We Stand' theme, lawmakers singing 'God Bless America,' and a surge in support for military and first responders.

The discussion was sparked when Rogan referenced a famous moment from history, recalling Ronald Reagan's speech at the United Nations. 

'Imagine how united we would be if faced with an alien threat from another world,' he said. 'We'd forget our differences and realize that, at the core, we're all connected.' 

Joe Rogan released a new podcast on Thursday, where he shared his feelings about how Americans could react to an alien threat

Rogan said such a world-changing event could evoke reactions similar to those seen 'after September 11th'

Rogan's guest, Michael P. Masters, a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Tech, agreed, expanding on the idea by suggesting humanity may be linked by a deeper, shared consciousness, an idea he said some researchers associate with the UFO phenomenon.

'If we recognize that we are just fingerprints on the same hand, then we're all iterations of the same overarching consciousness,' Masters said. 

'And there may be aspects of that reflected in the UFO phenomenon.'

Rogan has a long-standing obsession with the topic of extraterrestrial life and UFOs, and in his stand-up comedy. 

He often expresses the view that aliens 'are out there' and that the government might be covering up the truth.

The podcaster also believes that, given the 'hundreds of billions of galaxies' and stars in the universe, it is mathematically certain that 'for sure there's something else out here.'

While often focusing on the physical evidence, he has also explored alternative theories with guests, such as the idea that aliens might be interdimensional beings or human time travelers from the future, which aligns with Masters' theories.

Masters, who holds a PhD in anthropology from The Ohio State University, has gained attention beyond academia for his unconventional theories about UFOs. 

'Imagine how united we would be if faced with an alien threat from another world,' he said. 'We'd forget our differences and realize that, at the core, we're all connected.'

Rogan's guest, Michael P. Masters, a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Tech, agreed, expanding on the idea by suggesting humanity may be linked by a deeper, shared consciousness, an idea he said some researchers associate with the UFO phenomenon

In his books, including Identified Flying Objects and The Extratempestrial Model, he argues that some UFO encounters may not involve extraterrestrials at all.

Instead, Masters has proposed that the beings described in many sightings could be future human descendants traveling back through time, a hypothesis he has publicly discussed for years.

'The phenomenon may be our own distant descendants coming back through time to study us in their own evolutionary past,' he said in a 2019 interview.

While Rogan expressed confidence that something unexplained is occurring, Masters emphasized caution, noting that many claims surrounding UFOs and alien encounters require further study as stigma around the topic continues to fade.

Masters also argued the 'gray' alien archetype, large heads, big eyes, thin bodies, mirrors projected human evolution amid declining robustness, fertility issues and genetic engineering. 

He linked abductions involving reproductive material extraction to future humans addressing fertility crises, citing cases like Jim Penniston's Rendlesham Forest message, claiming the need for genetic material.

Rogan and Masters touched on government reverse-engineering, whistleblowers like Bob Lazar, transmedium craft, and Peruvian tridactyl mummies resembling grays, with Masters cautious pending further study.

Rogan expressed conviction in the phenomenon, while Masters shared a personal sighting and childhood 'tasking' inspiring his research. 

The episode framed UFOs as potentially intratemporal, urging discernment of encounter reports amid diminishing stigma. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is rapidly moving away from us. Can we 'intercept' it before it leaves us forever? - PART I

3I/ATLAS has passed its closest point to Earth, meaning we will soon lose sight of it for good. Some scientists want to send a spacecraft to chase down the alien comet — or the next interstellar object.

Astronomers want to send a spacecraft to "intercept" 3I/ATLAS or the next interstellar object. Doing so would help researchers learn more about distant star systems in the Milky Way. 

(Image credit: Nicholas Forder/Future)

We've watched it speed through the solar system using the most powerful telescopes in human history. We've studied its light with probes whipping around the sun and robots marooned on Mars. Countless eyes watched it make its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 19 — and yet, for all of this, the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS remains little more than a blur of gas, shrouded in mystery.

Since its discovery in early July, 3I/ATLAS has been studied more enthusiastically than practically any other celestial object in recent memory. Still, for all its fame, much remains unknown about it. The comet’s origins, from somewhere far across our galaxy, may never be known. Its true age, size, composition, and shape are also poorly constrained.

But how can we learn more about this alien interloper — or indeed, the next one — when we’re already studying it with everything we’ve got?

Two spacecraft will pass right through comet 3I/ATLAS' tail

NASA eyes 3I/ATLAS with alien-hunting Clipper spacecraft in new image

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may come from the mysterious frontier of the early Milky Way, new study hints

Some scientists are proposing a bold solution: We have to "intercept" it with a spacecraft.

Doing so would not only help us to better understand its key characteristics but also photograph its surface and potentially collect our first-ever interstellar samples, which could help reveal how alien exoplanets form, how common our type of solar system is and maybe even help answer the question of whether or not we are alone in the universe.

"We only have one shot at this object and then it's gone forever," Darryl Seligman, an astronomer at Michigan State University and the lead author of the first paper published about 3I/ATLAS, previously told Live Science. "So we want as much information from all of our observatories as we can possibly get."

Alien interlopers

On July 1, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) revealed they had spotted a mysterious object traveling toward us from beyond Jupiter, at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h). ATLAS, which automatically scans the skies using telescopes in Hawaii, Chile and South Africa, was hunting for potential threats to Earth. It found something else entirely.

Less than 24 hours later, NASA confirmed that the speeding blur of light was an interstellar object — an alien asteroid or comet that originated outside the solar system — and named it 3I/ATLAS. It was only the third-ever detection of an interstellar object in our solar system, after the anomalous space rock 'Oumuamua in 2017 and Comet 2I/Borisov in 2019.

Despite the rapid spread of unfounded theories that the object could be an alien probe, early observations confirmed that 3I/ATLAS is a comet — potentially the oldest of its kind ever seen — that likely originated from the Milky Way's "frontier" region.

Interstellar visitors like this are exciting to astronomers because they are one of the few opportunities we have to explore neighboring star systems, which would take generations and the invention of sci-fi technology to reach aboard a spacecraft.

Two spacecraft will pass right through comet 3I/ATLAS' tail

NASA eyes 3I/ATLAS with alien-hunting Clipper spacecraft in new image

Today's biggest science news: Farewell comet 3I/ATLAS | Starlink tumbles from orbit | AI’s giant carbon footprint

"ISOs are relics from planetary formation, so studying these objects and comparing them to what we have closer to us [could] lead to an interesting view of how other planetary systems in the galaxy formed," Pedro Bernardinelli, a planetary scientist at the University of Washington's DiRAC Institute, told Live Science in an email.

But our Earth-based observatories, and even orbiting spacecraft such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), can only tell us very rough information like general size, shape and composition. To really reveal ISO secrets, we will need to get much, much closer — possibly even close enough to grab a fragment.

Doing so won't be easy, but given the valuable insights it could reveal about the star systems beyond our own, it would be well worth the effort, experts say.

"Each one of these ISOs is a little piece of low-hanging fruit from a tree that can tell us a great deal about the trees growing in some other neighborhood," Wesley Fraser, an astronomer with the National Research Council Canada, previously told Live Science.

Giving chase

But the time to catch this speeding comet is fast approaching. 3I/ATLAS is now reaching its closest point to Earth, around 168 million miles (270 million km) miles away. From there it will move quickly away from us and will likely be beyond Neptune within another year.

Because it is now too late to intercept 3I/ATLAS within the inner solar system, most researchers agree that there is now only one viable option to study this object: to chase it down as it leaves the solar system.

This would require the spacecraft to carry out what researchers call "Oberth maneuvers," where a probe is gravitationally slingshotted around massive objects, such as the sun, to pick up enough speed to allow it to catch up to and intercept an ISO at a specific point along its predicted trajectory.

This idea was first proposed in 2022 to catch up with the first known interstellar object, 'Oumuamua. The plan, dubbed Project Lyra, was to launch a probe in 2028 that would intercept and investigate that object, after completing an Oberth maneuver around Jupiter.

But this chaser method has a huge limitation: Scientists would need to wait decades for data to come back. For example, if Project Lyra launched a spacecraft in 2030, it would not intercept 'Oumuamua until 2052 at the earliest, Adam Hibberd, a researcher with the U.K.-based nonprofit Initiative for Interstellar Studies (I4IS) who worked on Project Lyra, told Live Science.

So far, Project Lyra has not moved past the planning stage — making a 2028 launch highly unlikely — but the project could still reach 'Oumuamua if launched in 2030 or 2033, Hibberd said. This means we would likely still have plenty of time to chase down 3I/ATLAS, if we want to.

Future propulsion methods, such as a solar sail, could drastically cut the travel time of missions like this from decades down to just a few years, he added. But these technologies are decades away from becoming a reality themselves.

{ https://www.livescience.com/space }

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is rapidly moving away from us. Can we 'intercept' it before it leaves us forever?- PART II

3I/ATLAS has passed its closest point to Earth, meaning we will soon lose sight of it for good. Some scientists want to send a spacecraft to chase down the alien comet — or the next interstellar object.

Playing "hide-and-seek"

But given that 3I/ATLAS will be very hard to chase down, some astronomers argue that we shouldn't bother hunting it. Rather we should prepare to intercept the next interesting ISO.

By launching an interceptor spacecraft and parking it in a gravitationally stable position around Earth, known as a Lagrange point, we could, in theory, be ready to quickly intercept a passing object, they argue.

This idea, also first proposed in 2022, has been dubbed the "hide-and-seek" approach. However, unlike Project Lyra, it is much closer to becoming a reality.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing the Comet Interceptor mission, which is currently scheduled to launch in 2029, on board the same rocket as ESA's Ariel space telescope, said Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland who specializes in comets and was the deputy project investigator on the proposal for this mission.

The Comet Interceptor probe isn't specifically aimed at interstellar visitors. Instead, it's designed to hunt nonperiodic comets like Comet Lemmon, which has been visible in the night sky, alongside 3I/ATLAS, in recent months. These comets drift toward the sun every few hundred or thousand years and have poorly defined orbital pathways around the sun.

When ESA researchers spot a comet they can reach, they will "fire the rockets, get to the right place in space to cross the path of the comet and have this fast flyby encounter, where we go shooting past the comet, getting as much data as we can," Snodgrass told Live Science.

And while the mission is not designed to study interstellar objects, the project will be perfectly placed to intercept them.

"The whole science team is very much in agreement that if an interstellar object was to pop up, we wouldn't let that opportunity go by," Snodgrass said.

The main advantage of the hide-and-seek approach is that we wouldn't have to wait decades for a probe to catch up to its target. Additionally, we'd be reaching it at the best time to study it. That's because interstellar comets, like 3I/ATLAS, soak up more solar radiation when in the inner solar system — which, in turn, means they give off more light, gas and dust, giving us a better chance to learn about their composition.

However, a hide-and-seek mission might not be able to catch all the objects we care about. For example, ESA's Comet Interceptor probe would have been unlikely to reach 3I/ATLAS, had it been in orbit when the ISO was first discovered, because the comet was too far away from us, a recent study from Snodgrass and others found.

Collision course

A major limitation of both the chaser and hide-and-seek missions is that ISOs travel too fast for their respective spacecraft to travel alongside, or rendezvous with, these objects.

This makes it "almost impossible" for the probes to directly obtain samples from the objects' surfaces as NASA did during its OSIRIS-REx mission, which successfully landed a probe on the asteroid Bennu in 2020 and collected samples that were later returned to Earth, Hibberd said. Due to fuel limitations, it is also unlikely that these samples could be easily returned to Earth, especially during a chaser mission, he added.

However, there is a third option that could yield valuable interstellar samples: the "impactor" method.

Similar to NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which successfully deflected the asteroid Dimorphos after smashing into the space rock in 2022, an interceptor probe could also be sent to crash into an ISO, Hibberd suggested. While this probe would be destroyed, a second spacecraft could be deployed to analyze the debris field and potentially even collect leftover fragments of the alien object, he added.

But an impactor mission would need to overcome serious technical challenges. First, ISOs travel much faster than solar system objects, like Dimorphos, meaning it's more difficult to smash them apart. Second, this method would likely work only on an asteroid, not on comets, which have hard, icy shells. And third, a collision could accidentally send chunks of debris on a collision course with Earth, like DART did. As a result, most of the experts who talked to Live Science, including Hibberd, agreed that it is probably too risky to attempt an impactor mission until more research has been done on the subject.

The perfect mission

If money were no object, we could pursue all of these options. But if an agency like NASA has the budget for only one such mission, which one should be selected?

A chaser mission would allow astronomers to target a specific object they know they want to study, while a hide-and-seek mission would be limited to objects that happened to pass nearby. On the other hand, the hide-and-seek mission could reliably predict objects' locations in the inner solar system, whereas the chaser method would target objects in the dark, more chaotic outer solar system, where it would be harder to find and photograph them, Snodgrass said.

Another issue is that signals from a more distant chaser mission would take longer to send and receive, so mission operators would be unable to monitor and adjust an ISO flyby in real time or fix technical difficulties easily — a difficulty NASA faces with its distant Voyager probes, Snodgrass said.

There is also the matter of money. Project Lyra would likely cost the same as NASA's New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015 and cost at least $700 million, Hibberd said. Meanwhile, ESA's Comet Interceptor mission has a budget of around $150 million, Snodgrass said.

As a result, most researchers who spoke to Live Science agreed that a hide-and-seek interceptor would likely be the best way of studying an ISO up close.

But if this is the method we end up using, how should we design the resulting spacecraft to maximize its chances of collecting useful data?

While ESA's Comet Interceptor is relatively inexpensive, a dedicated ISO interceptor mission — with a bigger budget — would allow us to launch a faster probe that could carry more fuel and thus travel farther. However, the craft doesn't need to be fancy.

A "fairly stripped-back" probe with a decent camera and a few spectrographs, capable of analyzing the light given off by the different gases, would be more than enough to collect sufficient data from any flyby, Snodgrass said.

If the probe were intercepting a comet, and not an asteroid, it could also be fitted with a device to catch specks of dust from the comet's coma or tail during a superclose approach, just as NASA's Stardust probe did with "Comet Wild 2" in 2004.

Assuming that the interceptor hasn't depleted its fuel reserves and can be returned to Earth, this may be the only reliable way of actually getting our hands on interstellar samples, Snodgrass said.

To intercept or not to intercept

Once the "perfect" interceptor is in position around Earth, researchers will have to choose which ISO to go after. And because any spacecraft is unlikely to be reusable, it may get only one shot at picking the right target.

We may soon be spoiled for choice. ISOs may be far more common than we realize. "There are likely thousands of other ISOs in the solar system right now," Fraser said. "We just can't see them because they are too faint, too far and too fast."

But thanks to the newly operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, which is designed to spot more small and dim objects in the outer solar system, we are likely to find many more ISOs in the coming decades and, more importantly, spot them much earlier on their journey toward us, which would give us a better chance of studying them.

The first thing to consider is whether to go after an asteroid or a comet. Because comets become more active near the sun and present the most likely route for collecting interstellar samples, they would likely take priority, Snodgrass said.

The next consideration would be the target's distance from Earth. As we have already seen, ESA's Comet Interceptor may have struggled to reach 3I/ATLAS on its journey through the inner solar system. Therefore, it might pay to wait for an ISO that is on a favorable trajectory relative to Earth.

{ https://www.livescience.com/space }

NASA's Galileo spacecraft first photographed a bizarre spider-like structure lurking within a large crater on Europa during a close flyby of the moon on March 29, 1998. 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

A mysterious, spider-like structure lurking on Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, Europa, may finally have a proper explanation nearly 30 years after it was discovered. The arachnid imposter has also been given a demonic new name.

In March 1998, NASA's Galileo spacecraft — which studied Jupiter and its major moons between 1995 and 2003 — made a close flyby of Europa, a frozen ocean moon often considered one of the most likely places for extraterrestrial life to exist in the solar system. During this flyby, the probe mapped out a roughly 13.7-mile-wide (22 kilometers) impact structure, dubbed Manannán Crater, on the moon's icy surface, and found something strange lurking within it.

Hidden inside a deep pit near the crater's center was a sprawling dendritic shape. The researchers initially believed the dark feature was caused by the extreme gravitational force exerted on Europa by Jupiter, which is responsible for carving multiple fracture lines across the water world's surface. Other experts have since proposed that it was created by eruptions from hydrothermal vents on the floor of Europa's subsurface ocean. However, neither of these explanations fully explain this unusual shape.

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But in a new study, published Dec. 2 in The Planetary Science Journal, researchers proposed an alternative explanation: that the Jovian spider formed in a similar way to how dark dendritic patterns on Earth, known as "lake stars," typically do. These features form when snow falls on frozen lakes and water seeps up through tiny holes in the ice.

With this in mind, the researchers used a similar technique to partially recreate the Manannán Crater's mysterious shape in the lab. The study team also finally named Europa's arachnid-like asterisk Damhán Alla, meaning "spider" or "wall demon" in Irish. (Manannán is a Celtic god from Irish mythology, which partly inspired the new name.)

"Lake stars are really beautiful, and they are pretty common on snow or slush-covered frozen lakes and ponds," study lead-author Laura Mc Keown, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida, said in a statement. "It is wonderful to think that they may give us a glimpse into processes occurring on Europa and maybe even other icy ocean worlds in our solar system."

However, rather than water rising through tiny holes, as happens when lake stars form on Earth, Damhán Alla was likely birthed by an asteroid impact — which created a small crack in Europa's icy shell that enabled salty water to seep upward and paint the spider-like pattern on the surface. (This asteroid impact likely happened after the Manannán Crater was already formed.)

The researchers also noted similarities between Damhán Alla and the infamous "spiders on Mars," which are dusty deposits on the Martian surface that look like swarming spiders when viewed from above. These fake arachnids, known as araneiform terrain, form when submerged carbon dioxide ice sublimates, or turns directly into a gas. Mc Keown's team has previously recreated these features on Earth too.

The similarities in shape between Damhán Alla and the spiders on Mars are due to how "fluid flows through porous surfaces," Mc Keown said. In theory, similar spider features could also form on other frozen ocean worlds, such as Saturn's moon Enceladus, Jupiter's other moon Ganymede and the dwarf planet Ceres, which resides in the asteroid belt beyond Mars.

Mc Keown is now setting up a new laboratory, which will focus on studying how these various spider-like features may form on different solar system moons. She hopes to be able to provide valuable insight that could help inform NASA's Europa Clipper mission, which launched in October 2024 and will arrive to extensively study Jupiter's watery moon in 2030.

"The significance of our research is really exciting," Mc Keown said. "Surface features like these can tell us a lot about what's happening beneath the ice. If we see more of them with Europa Clipper, they could point to local brine pools below the surface," she added.

And these pools could be a good place to start looking for signs of extraterrestrial life.

{ https://www.livescience.com/space }

These ancient cities were built underground — and no one knows exactly why

Some ancient cities were carved deep below the Earth to house thousands — but no one can say for sure why they were built, or what they were hiding from.

byIvan Petricevic

Derinkuyu Underground City in Cappadocia, Nevsehir, Turkey

Long before steel and concrete-shaped skylines, entire cities were carved deep below the Earth. These were not just emergency shelters — these were fully developed with food storage, schools, temples, and homes. Mind-boggling ancient cities. One could hold over 20,000 people. But despite decades of research, no one knows exactly why they were built. Were they designed to protect from war, climate disaster, or something more mysterious? These hidden cities remain one of archaeology’s most enduring riddles.

Derinkuyu: A vast city buried beneath Cappadocia

In central Turkey’s Cappadocia region, the ancient city of Derinkuyu plunges 18 stories below ground. Discovered by accident in 1963 when a homeowner knocked down a wall and found a hidden room behind it, Derinkuyu revealed an enormous underground complex — complete with kitchens, wine presses, churches, ventilation shafts, and even livestock pens.

Tunnels in the ancient underground city of Derinkuyu.

At its peak, Derinkuyu could accommodate more than 20,000 people. Stone doors could seal off sections of the city in case of invasion, and long vertical shafts provided fresh air to the deepest levels. The earliest sections may date back to around 800 BCE, with possible Hittite origins, though some scholars argue it could be even older. It was later expanded and used by early Christians fleeing persecution.

Kaymakli: A connected city beneath the stone

A room in the underground city of Kaymakli. Wikimedia commons.

Not far from Derinkuyu lies Kaymakli, another underground settlement likely connected by tunnels to its larger neighbor. Unlike the vertical structure of Derinkuyu, Kaymakli spreads out horizontally, with a maze of rooms across at least five known levels — though many believe there are more yet to be discovered.

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Kaymakli was designed for community living, with homes, kitchens, storage areas, and stables all organized into clusters. Its structure suggests it was built not just for hiding, but for long-term habitation. Most experts date its active use to the Byzantine era, especially during times of regional conflict, but some of the rock-cut foundations could be much older.

Mazı: A hidden vertical city carved into the rock

Mazı is a lesser-known but equally fascinating example of ancient underground cities in the Cappadocia region. Unlike the more spacious layouts of Derinkuyu or Kaymakli, Mazı is a vertical settlement, built deep into the volcanic stone with narrow passageways, hidden doors, and steep staircases.

The underground city of Masi. Credit httpsmuze.gov.tr

Its design suggests a focus on defense. Invaders could be slowed or trapped in tight corridors, while residents could escape or defend themselves using hidden exits and small observation holes. Archaeological evidence links Mazı to the Roman or early Christian period, but the full timeline of its use is still uncertain.

Özkonak: Engineered for siege survival

Located in northern Cappadocia, Özkonak may be smaller than Derinkuyu, but it features some of the most sophisticated defense features ever found in ancient cities. Built with narrow shafts that allowed residents to pour boiling oil or water on attackers, it also had communication pipes that ran between levels — a rare feature not seen in other sites.

One of the doors inside the underground city of Özkonak. Wikimedia commons.

Only four levels of Özkonak have been excavated so far, but archaeologists believe there are deeper chambers waiting to be uncovered. Like many of Cappadocia’s subterranean settlements, the exact age of Özkonak is still debated, though its structure suggests it was built with long-term survival in mind.

Tatlarin: A mysterious city still under excavation

Tatlarin is one of the lesser-explored ancient cities in the region. Located near Nevşehir, it features a chapel, storage rooms, and stables — all carved into the rock. Unlike the larger underground complexes, Tatlarin remains only partially excavated, and much of it is still hidden beneath the surface.

One of the rooms of the underground city of Tatlarin. Credit: www.turkishmuseums.com/

Its layout and architecture suggest it may have served both residential and religious purposes. The lack of large-scale tourism or full excavation gives Tatlarin a unique role in understanding the broader underground building tradition in ancient Anatolia.

Why were entire cities built underground?

I believe that the real mystery behind these ancient cities isn’t just their size, but the decision to build them underground at all. Excavating stone, carving tunnels, and creating entire living systems beneath the surface was no small task. It required time, planning, and purpose.

Some historians believe the cities were designed as defensive strongholds, built to protect people from invasions during unstable periods. With hidden entrances, stone doors, and narrow corridors that could be easily defended, the idea holds weight. Others argue that the underground environment offered relief from extreme weather or natural disasters, allowing communities to survive in harsh conditions.

There is also evidence of religious use. In many of these cities, archaeologists have found chapels, altars, and Christian symbols carved into the rock. This suggests they may have served as places of refuge during times of persecution, particularly in the early centuries of Christianity.

Still, these explanations only go so far. The scale of some cities, with facilities for wine production, animal shelters, and food storage, points to long-term habitation. They were not simple hideouts. They were meant to sustain life.

Perhaps the true answer is a combination of factors, or perhaps we are still missing the bigger picture. Until more evidence comes to light, the reasons why these ancient cities were built underground will remain one of the most compelling questions in archaeology.

! https://curiosmos.com/category/ancient-civilizations/ }

 

Blind psychic Baba Vanga's prophecies for 2026 hint at humanity facing a mysterious new civilization

• READ MORE: Blind psychic Baba Vanga's world-changing 2025 prophecy feared to occur in just DAYS

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

A blind psychic, who allegedly foretold 9/11 and the Covidpandemic, shared several world-changing prophecies for 2026 before her death nearly 30 years ago.

Baba Vanga was a Bulgarian mystic and clairvoyant who became a cult figure among conspiracy theorists after several of her eerie pronouncements were proved true.

Her prophecies for next year have resurfaced, with the most shocking prediction that humans will make contact with a new civilization in November.

The claim speaks of a 'massive spacecraft' arriving on Earth, marking a historic turning point for humanity. 

However, scientists remain highly skeptical about any near-term contact with alien life, and the US government has found no evidence of such beings.

Another alarming prophecy was the possibility of World War III, as she warned of rising tensions between major global powers, including China, Russia and the US.

One of Baba Vanga's most talked-about predictions involves a wave of catastrophic natural disasters. 

She foresees massive earthquakes, violent volcanic eruptions, and extreme weather striking roughly 8 percent of the planet's land. 

However, Baba Vanga, who died from breast cancer in 1996, reportedly also saw visions of world-changing breakthroughs, such as cancer blood tests and mining for energy in space.

Baba Vanga, who lost her sight at age 12, became a cult figure among conspiracy theorists after several of her eerie pronouncements were proved true

She left no written records of her predictions. Most of the accounts come from her niece, Krasimira Stoyanova, or other followers who documented her alleged visions after her death, and who have been accused of misinterpreting what she said. 

Born in 1911 as Vangeliya Pandeva Dimitrova, she was a famous blind Bulgarian mystic, clairvoyant, and herbalist known as the 'Nostradamus of the Balkans.' 

She lost her sight at age 12 after being caught in a tornado, an event that coincided with the emergence of her purported psychic abilities.

After turning 30, her powers of foresight, healing, and fortune-telling became prominent, attracting believers who sought her guidance.

She made numerous prophecies, often vague, about natural disasters, political shifts and future technologies, some of which supporters claim foretold events like the Kursk submarine disaster, Brexit and the rise of ISIS.

While she has legions of followers, experts warn her prophecies are speculative and not grounded in fact.

Regardless, her predictions for 2026 are flooding the internet.

The prophecy of alien contact seemed to align with reports that President Donald Trump has been briefed about UFOs and alien life living among humans.

Her prophecies for next year have resurfaced, with the most shocking prediction that humans will make contact with a new civilization in November (file photo)

The claims have suggested that Trump could be the one to reveal such details to the world. 

Along with alien contact, WWIII and natural disasters, she also foresaw AI taking over major industries, causing not only job upheaval but also complex ethical challenges, Sky History reported.

Industry experts have echoed the claims, saying the technology could advance to hyper-personalized AI agents acting as digital coworkers.

They also see new roles created, including chief AI agent officers.

While Baba Vanga’s prediction of mining energy from Venus is officially scheduled for 2028, experts note that space exploration is a long, gradual process. 

If her forecast that humanity will begin harvesting energy from the planet by then comes true, preparations and groundwork could start as early as 2026. 

One alarming prophecy was the possibility of World War III, as she warned of rising tensions between major global powers, including China, Russia and the US

She also predicted mass-produced synthetic organs by 2046, and 2026 could mark a crucial phase in their development toward that goal. 

Progress may include gene-edited pig kidney transplants, building on programs that began in 2024 and 2025, early clinical trials for bio-artificial liver devices, and bio-printed living-tissue implants, such as 3D-printed ears. 

These developments could lay the foundation for realizing her long-term vision of synthetic organ production. 

Supporters credit her with foreseeing major medical breakthroughs, including improvements in cancer detection and treatment. 

In 2026, multi-cancer early-detection blood tests could move from pilot programs to national screening initiatives in at least one major country.

This would help doctors catch hard-to-detect cancers, like pancreatic and ovarian, much earlier, while sparking debates over false positives, rollout costs, and which patients should be screened first. 

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 { https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

Mystery as flock of UFOs seen hovering above power station for more than a year

By JACK TOLEDO

A small town sheriff has admitted he is perplexed by a series of mysterious flying objects which have been bewildering locals in his Wyoming community for more than a year.

Unidentified flying objects [UFOs] have been regularly spotted for 13 months above the Jim Bridger Power Plant and Sweetwater County's Red Desert.

John Grossnickle, the Sheriff of Sweetwater County, saw lit-up, drone-like objects as recently as December 13, his spokesman Jason Mower told Cowboy State Daily.

Mower said they've worked with everyone they can possibly think of to try and solve the mystery in the sky.

'We've done everything we can to figure out what they are, and nobody wants to give us any answers,' he said.

Locals are now so accustomed to the strange sightings that the Sheriff's office has stopped receiving calls about them, the spokesman told the outlet.

'It's like the new normal,' Mower said.

He also noted that the objects are thousands of feet above the earth, making them too high to shoot from the ground. 

The Jim Bridger Power Plant has been hub for Unidentified flying objects [ UFOs] for 13 months above 

John Grossnickle, the Sheriff of Sweetwater County, saw lighted, drone-like objects as recently as December 13

Mower said there have been no issues or concerns among locals in the region, other than their presence. 

However, if the UFOs were to cause danger, 'rest assured … we'll certainly act accordingly,' Mower added.

The first drone sightings in Sweetwater came as New Jersey was gripped by mass hysteria when drones were seen repeatedly lighting up the night sky.

A private contractor seemingly solved that mystery after revealing at the Army's UAS and Launched Effects Summit at Fort Rucker in August that they had launched the objects to 'test out their capabilities,' according to the NY Post.

'You remember that big UFO scare in New Jersey last year? Well, that was us,' an employee of the unnamed contractor allegedly told a crowd at the event.

According to a source at the summit, the employee went on to claim there was no need to disclose their work to the public because they had a private government contract.

Locals in Sweetwater County are used to the strange sightings that the Sheriff's office no longer receives calls about them

Some 964 sightings of flying objects were logged in the state between November 19 up until December 13 of 2024, according to statistics collected by the state’s Office of Emergency Management.

At the first press briefing of President Trump's second administration on January 28, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had authorized drones and that they did not pose a national security threat.

The FAA last attributed the sightings to 'lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, law enforcement drones, manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones'.

The agency then issued a temporary ban on flying drones, but as the sightings continued, warned that 'deadly force' could be used against drones that present an 'imminent security threat.'

Exclusive polling from DailyMail.com and J.L. Partners found that nearly half (45 percent) of people believe the bizarre activity was more than just recreational or normal drone use, with the majority (26 percent) of those respondents pointing to foreign surveillance.

Similar sightings caused mass hysteria in New Jersey last year around the same time as the UFOs were seen in Sweetwater

A private unnamed contractor took responsibility for the drone activity and claimed that they were working under contract for the government

The foreign powers mentioned were China or Russia, which has been suspected among lawmakers like Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who said some of the unidentified aircraft are 'spy drones.'

But 19 percent of Americans do believe the sightings are nothing more than hobby drones and 18 percent stated they are 'normal flying actives that have been exaggerated.'

There are some Americans (17 percent) who believe the drones were government surveillance tools, but 10 percent said the craft was actually protecting citizens.

And a small eight percent are sure the drones are alien vehicles.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

Menselijke Oorsprong op Aarde en de “Prison Planet” Theorie: Een Diepgaande Verkenning

Zijn mensen hierheen gebracht vanaf een andere planeet?

Inleiding

De vraag naar de ware oorsprong van de mensheid heeft altijd een centrale plek ingenomen in menselijke geschiedenis, filosofie en wetenschap. Van de oude mythes en religieuze overtuigingen tot de moderne evolutietheorie, de zoektocht naar ons verleden blijft een fascinerend en complex onderwerp. In de afgelopen decennia zijn echter ook alternatieve theorieën naar voren gekomen die ver naast de traditionele wetenschappelijke kaders liggen. Een van de meest intrigerende en controversiële hiervan is de “Prison Planet” theorie, die beweert dat de aarde functioneert als een soort gevangenis of controlecentrum, beheerd door geavanceerde buitenaardse of geheime menselijke krachten.

Dit artikel onderzoekt zowel de wetenschappelijke inzichten over de menselijke oorsprong als de uitgebreide achtergrond van de “Prison Planet” theorie. We zullen de historische context, de bewijzen, de populaire theorieën en de kritische standpunten bespreken, met als doel een evenwichtige en gedetailleerde analyse te bieden van dit onderwerp dat velen intrigeert en uitdaagt.

De Wetenschap Achter de Oorsprong van de Mens

1. De Evolutionaire Theorie

De meest breed geaccepteerde theorie over de menselijke oorsprong is de evolutietheorie, ontwikkeld door Charles Darwin en verder verfijnd door talloze wetenschappers. Volgens deze theorie zijn moderne mensen (Homo sapiens) het resultaat van een lange evolutie die miljoenen jaren overspant, met afstamming van gemeenschappelijke voorouders met andere apensoorten.

De fossiele geschiedenis toont een voortdurende ontwikkeling: van vroege homininen zoals Sahelanthropus tchadensis en Australopithecus, tot de genus Homo, inclusief Homo habilis, Homo erectus, en uiteindelijk Homo sapiens. DNA-analyse, vooral van mitochondriaal DNA, ondersteunt de evolutie-uitgangspunten en bevestigt dat de mens afstamt van een gemeenschappelijke voorouder die ongeveer 200.000 jaar geleden in Afrika leefde.

2. De Overgang naar Bewustzijn

Een belangrijke onderzoekslijn richt zich op de ontwikkeling van cognitieve vermogens bij de vroege mens. De anatomische veranderingen gingen gepaard met een toenemende hersengrootte en complexiteit, wat leidde tot een sprong in taal, cultuur en zelfbewustzijn. Archeologische vondsten, zoals kunst, sieraden en religieuze rituelen, tonen dat onze voorouders al vroeg symbolisch denken en sociaal gedrag ontwikkelden.

3. Open Vragen en Speculaties

Ondanks de uitgebreide bewijsvoering blijft de exacte aard van het proces en de details rond de overgang van aap naar mens onderwerp van discussie. Vragen over het ontstaan van bewustzijn, de rol van genetische mutaties en de mate van invloed van omgevingsfactoren blijven open.

De Historische Context en Mystiek

1. Oude Beschavingen en Mythes over Oorsprong

Door de eeuwen heen hebben verschillende culturen verhalen ontwikkeld over de herkomst van de mens. In de Griekse mythologie bijvoorbeeld, werden mensen vaak gecreëerd door goden zoals Prometheus en Athena. In het Oude Egypte speelden scheppingsverhalen een centrale rol in religieuze overtuigingen. Veel van deze verhalen bevatten een scheppingshandeling die de mens verbindt met goddelijke krachten of kosmische energieën.

2. Mystiek en Esoterisch Denken

Naast religieuze verhalen bestaan er ook esoterische theorieën die proberen de menselijke oorsprong te verklaren vanuit geheime kennis. Sommige van deze theorieën suggereren dat de mens oorspronkelijk een buitenaards schepsel is dat op aarde werd neergestort of hier kwam als deel van een kosmische missie. Andere geloven dat de mens betrokken is bij een voortdurende, geheime strijd tussen goed en kwaad, met aardse en buitenaardse machten die onze geschiedenis manipuleren.

Theorieën over de "Prison Planet"

1. Wat is de "Prison Planet" Theorie?

De "Prison Planet" theorie is een controversiële en vaak gepromote ideeënbundel die stelt dat de aarde niet simpelweg een planeet is waarop de mensheid evolueert, maar eerder een soort gevangenis of gecontroleerd speelveld. Volgens deze theorie worden de bewoners van de aarde onderworpen aan controle door geavanceerde buitenaardse beschavingen, geheime regeringen, of beide samen. Deze machtige entiteiten zouden de mensheid gevangen houden om te experimenteren, te gebruiken als energiebron, of te onderdrukken in een illusie van vrijheid.

2. De Oorsprong van de Theorie

De theorie kreeg haar modern most in de late 20e eeuw, vooral via zelfverklaarde onderzoekers en alternative denkers zoals David Icke, Richard Dolan en andere prominente figuren in de UFO- en conspiracy gemeenschap. Icke, bijvoorbeeld, beschrijft in zijn werken dat de wereld wordt gecontroleerd door een trotskistische, buitenaardse parasitaire elite die hij "Reptilians" noemt. Volgens hem zijn deze reptielachtige buitenaardse wezens verantwoordelijk voor de wereldwijde machtsstructuren en houden zij de mensheid gevangen in een illusie van vrije wil.

3. Kernpunten van de Theorie

• Controlerende Entiteiten: Buitenaardse beschavingen of geheime menselijke genootschappen die de wereld domineren.
• Aardse "gevangenschap": Mensen functioneren als slaven, energiebronnen of proefpersonen zonder dat ze dit bewust doorhebben.
• Manipulatie via Technologie en Media: Globalistische elites gebruiken geavanceerde technologie, media en mind control technieken om de massa te manipuleren.
• De Rol van Geheime Overheden: Veel verhalen vertellen over geheime projecten, zoals de Montauk-projecten, die bedoeld zouden zijn om de controle uit te breiden of om bewustzijnsveranderingen te induceren.

4. Bewijs en Argumenten

Aanhangers van de "Prison Planet" theorie baseren hun claims op verschillende soorten "bewijzen":

• UFO-waarnemingen en buitenaardse ontmoetingen: Vaak worden ufo's en vermeende buitenaardse contactmomenten geïnterpreteerd als bewijs dat buitenaardse wezens de aarde controleren.
• Archieven en geheime documenten: Sommige beweren dat er geheime documenten bestaan die de waarheid over de controle en manipulatie door krachtgroepen onthullen.
• Anciente Aliens en Megalieten: Theorieën die aangeven dat oude beschavingen en monumenten het resultaat zijn van buitenaardse interventies, en dat deze beschavingen de aarde gebruiken voor hun eigen doelen.
• Technologie en mind control: Beschuldigingen dat technologieën zoals HAARP, 5G, en chemtrails worden gebruikt om de mensheid te beheersen.

Kritische Analyse en Wetenschappelijke Standpunten

1. De Wetenschappelijke Tegenargumenten

De meeste wetenschappers en academici staan sceptisch tegenover de “Prison Planet” theorie, omdat het gebrek aan direct bewijs en de vaak speculatieve aard ervan in strijd is met de principes van de empirische methode.

• Gebrek aan empirisch bewijs: Er is geen concreet en verifieerbaar bewijs dat wijst op een planetaire controle door buitenaardse wezens of geheime machtsstructuren.
• Misbruik van wetenschap en geschiedenis: Veel van de beweerde bewijzen worden gebaseerd op interpretaties van oude artefacten, cryptische teksten, of geluidsfragmenten die niet wetenschappelijk verifiëerbaar zijn.
• Psychologische verklaringen: Sommige theorieën over geheime controle en buitenaardse overheersing kunnen worden verklaard door psychologische factoren zoals paranoia, cognitieve bias, en het zoeken naar verklaringen voor complexe, onbegrepen situaties.
• Mislukking van simulaties: Terwijl technologie snel vordert, is er geen bewijs dat we in een door buitenstaanders gecreëerde simulatie of gevangenis leven.

2. Kritiek op de Conspiracy Circuits

Veel critici beschouwen de “Prison Planet” theorie als een vorm van pseudowetenschap of pseudohistorie, gebouwd op selectief gebruik van feiten en speculatie. Ze wijzen op het gevaar van het verspreiden van vermeende “waarheden” die de publieke angst en desinformatie vergroten.

3. Alternatieve verklaringen voor de verhalen

Het verlangen naar een gevoel van controle of het zoeken naar zingeving en geheime kennis kunnen verklaren waarom zoveel mensen zich aangetrokken voelen tot deze theorieën. Gebrek aan transparantie binnen de overheid en de complexiteit van mondiale machtstructuren dragen ook bij aan deze overtuigingen.

Afbeeldingsbron: Anomalien.com

Conclusie

De vraag naar de menselijke oorsprong is een fascinerend samenspel tussen wetenschap, mythologie, religie en moderne alternatieve theorieën. De evolutietheorie biedt een robuuste en door bewijs onderbouwde verklaring voor hoe wij als soort zijn ontstaan. Tegelijkertijd blijven mystiek, oude verhalen en geheime ontdekkingen de menselijke verbeelding prikkelen.

De “Prison Planet” theorie vertegenwoordigt een radicale alternatieve kijk die inspeelt op diepgewortelde angsten en het verlangen naar geheime kennis. Hoewel er geen wetenschappelijk bewijs is dat deze theorie ondersteunt, blijft het een krachtig cultureel fenomeen dat ons dwingt na te denken over machtsstructuren, controle en de aard van realiteit.

Het is essentieel dat we kritisch blijven nadenken, onderscheid maken tussen feit en fictie, en openstaan voor nieuwe inzichten, terwijl we de waarde van goed onderbouwde wetenschap omarmen. Pas door een evenwichtige benadering kunnen we de mysteries van ons verleden en onze huidige wereld op een verantwoorde manier onderzoeken.

Epiloog

De zoektocht naar de ware oorsprong van de mens en de waarheid achter de wereld waarin we leven, blijft een boeiend avontuur. Of we nu geloven in natuurlijke evolutie, oude mythes, of zelfs dat we gevangen zitten in een “Prison Planet”, het vraagt ons allen om kritisch te denken, open te staan voor nieuwe ideeën, en altijd te zoeken naar kennis en inzicht.

Door onze geschiedenis en de vele verhalen die daaruit voortvloeien te bestuderen, kunnen we een dieper begrip krijgen van wie we zijn, waar we vandaan komen en welke wereld we creëren voor de toekomst. Het is onze menselijke drang om te begrijpen en te verbinden, die ons blijft drijven in deze eeuwigdurende zoektocht naar de waarheid.

Noten en Referenties

Omdat dit artikel gebaseerd is op een breed scala aan bronnen, campagnethema's en theorieën, wordt aanbevolen om verder te lezen in de werken van Charles Darwin (The Origin of Species), David Icke (The Robots), Richard Dolan (UFOs and the National Security State), en verschillende academische en kritische bronnen over conspiratietheorieën en de geschiedenis van de menselijke evolutie.

• Let op: De "Prison Planet" theorie wordt niet erkend door de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap en wordt beschouwd als een alternatief idee zonder substantieel bewijs. Het is belangrijk om informatie kritisch te beoordelen en te vertrouwen op wetenschappelijk verifieerbare feiten.

{ PETER2011 }

 { https://scientias.nl/nieuwsbrief/ }

Celestial citrus! Scientists are baffled by a LEMON–shaped planet that 'defies explanation'

• READ MORE: Scientists find 'slushy tunnels' on Titan that could harbour life

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Scientists have been baffled by a bizarre lemon–shaped planet that 'defies explanation'.

The Jupiter–size planet was discovered by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and is so strange that it challenges everything we know about how planets form.

Dubbed PSR J2322–2650b, the gas giant has an exotic carbon and helium atmosphere that is unlike any other known exoplanet.

Soot clouds float through the super–heated reaches of its upper atmosphere and condense into diamonds deep in the planet's heart.

This unusual composition is made even stranger by the fact that this planet doesn't orbit a star like our sun.

Instead, this world orbits a type of neutron star known as a pulsar – the ultra–dense core of a dead star that compresses the mass of the sun into something the size of a city.

Located 750 light–years from Earth, this pulsar is constantly bombarding its captive planet with gamma rays and stretching it under gravity into a unique 'lemon' shape.

This produces some of the most extreme temperature differences ever seen on a planet, with temperatures ranging from 650°C (1,200°F) at night to 2,030°C (3,700°F) in the day.

Scientists have been baffled to discover a bizarre lemon–shaped planet that defies everything we know about planetary formation 

Even by the standards of exotic exoplanets, PSR J2322–2650b stands out as exceptionally odd.

And, in a new paper, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers used the JWST to reveal that the planet is even stranger.

Co–author of the study Dr Peter Gao, of the Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory, says: 'I remember after we got the data down, our collective reaction was "What the heck is this?"

'It's extremely different from what we expected.'

Of the 6,000 or so known exoplanets, this is the only gas giant that orbits a neutron star.

This is hardly surprising given that neutron stars tend to tear their neighbours apart with gravity or evaporate them with a bombardment of powerful radiation.

PSR J2322–2650b is also extraordinarily close to its star at just one million miles (1.6 million km) away, compared to the distance of 100 million miles (160 million km) between Earth and the Sun.

That means a year on this strange world takes just 7.8 hours as it whizzes around the neutron star at incredible speed.

The planet, dubbed PSR J2322–2650b, orbits a type of neutron star called a pulsar – the ultra–dense core of a dead star that compresses the mass of the sun into something the size of a city

But what really makes the planet a total anomaly is the composition of its atmosphere.

Co–author Dr Michael Zhang, of the University of Chicago, says: 'This is a new type of planet atmosphere that nobody has ever seen before.

'Instead of finding the normal molecules we expect to see on an exoplanet — like water, methane, and carbon dioxide — we saw molecular carbon, specifically C3 and C2.'

This is really weird because, at temperatures as high as they are on the planet, carbon should bond with any other atoms in the atmosphere.

That means molecular carbon can only be dominant when there is almost no oxygen or nitrogen present.

Out of the roughly 150 planets that scientists have analysed in depth, not a single one has molecular carbon in its atmosphere.

However, scientists still genuinely have no idea how such a weird planet could have formed.

'Did this thing form like a normal planet? No, because the composition is entirely different,' says Dr Zhang.

This pulsar is constantly bombarding its captive planet with gamma rays and stretching it under gravity into a unique 'lemon' shape (artist's impression)

Likewise, the planet couldn't have formed by stripping the outer layers of a star since the nuclear reactions in stellar cores don't make pure carbon.

Dr Zhang adds: 'It's very hard to imagine how you get this extremely carbon–enriched composition. It seems to rule out every known formation mechanism.'

Currently, the researchers' best theory is that carbon and oxygen crystallised in the planet's interior as it cooled.

The pure carbon crystals might have then floated to the top and mixed with helium, which is what the scientists would be seeing in their data.

However, co–author Professor Roger Romani, of Stamford University, says that this doesn't solve all the problems.

He says: 'Something has to happen to keep the oxygen and nitrogen away. And that's where the mystery comes in.

'But it's nice not to know everything. I'm looking forward to learning more about the weirdness of this atmosphere. It's great to have a puzzle to go after.'

Scientists study the atmosphere of distant exoplanets using enormous space satellites like Hubble

Distant stars and their orbiting planets often have conditions unlike anything we see in our atmosphere. 

To understand these new world's, and what they are made of, scientists need to be able to detect what their atmospheres consist of.  

They often do this by using a telescope similar to Nasa's Hubble Telescope.

These enormous satellites scan the sky and lock on to exoplanets that Nasa think may be of interest. 

Here, the sensors on board perform different forms of analysis. 

One of the most important and useful is called absorption spectroscopy. 

This form of analysis measures the light that is coming out of a planet's atmosphere. 

Every gas absorbs a slightly different wavelength of light, and when this happens a black line appears on a complete spectrum. 

These lines correspond to a very specific molecule, which indicates it's presence on the planet. 

They are often called Fraunhofer lines after the German astronomer and physicist that first discovered them in 1814.

By combining all the different wavelengths of lights, scientists can determine all the chemicals that make up the atmosphere of a planet. 

The key is that what is missing, provides the clues to find out what is present.  

It is vitally important that this is done by space telescopes, as the atmosphere of Earth would then interfere. 

Absorption from chemicals in our atmosphere would skew the sample, which is why it is important to study the light before it has had chance to reach Earth. 

This is often used to look for helium, sodium and even oxygen in alien atmospheres.  

This diagram shows how light passing from a star and through the atmosphere of an exoplanet produces Fraunhofer lines indicating the presence of key compounds such as sodium or helium 

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Bon voyage! Interstellar comet 3l/ATLAS safely passes Earth and is now whizzing towards Jupiter

• READ MORE: Nasa's wise scientist finally 'finds the Star of Bethlehem' 

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

The interstellar comet that has had scientists around the world mesmerised for months safely passed Earth this morning. 

At roughly 06:00 GMT, 3I/ATLAS reached its closest point to Earth, coming within 168 million miles (270 million km) of our planet.

To put that into perspective, that is still nearly twice the average distance between Earth and the sun.

The comet is now whizzing towards Jupiter, where it will make a relatively close pass of the gas giant at a distance of 33 million miles (53 million km) on March 16, 2026.

From there, 3I/ATLAS will make its way past the orbit Saturn by July, without coming close to the planet, and cross the orbit of Uranus in June 2027.

In 2028, the interstellar object will travel beyond the last of the planets as it shoots by Neptune at 137,000 miles per hour (221,000 km/h).

Astronomers predict that the comet will reach the orbit of Pluto in April 2029, before striking out into the outer reaches of the solar system.

Finally, 3I/ATLAS will wave goodbye to our stellar neighbourhood as it returns to interstellar space sometime in the mid 2030s.

The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS safely passed Earth this morning, reaching its closest distance to our planet at 168 million miles (270 million km) away 

3I/ATLAS was discovered in July and marks only the third time that astronomers have been able to find an object that formed around another star in our own solar system

3I/ATLAS was discovered on July 1 by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescope in Chile.

When scientists traced back the approaching object's trajectory, they made the startling discovery that it had arrived from outside the solar system.

This was just the third time astronomers had detected a visitor from another solar system, following 1I Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I Borisov in 2019.

Scientists believe that 3I/ATLAS formed around a distant star around eight billion years ago.

That makes the comet older than our solar system, and the oldest thing that we have ever been able to study close up.

On October 3, the comet reached its closest distance to Mars as it passed just 19 million miles (30 million km) from the Red Planet.

Then, on October 29, the interstellar object reached its closest point to the sun at a distance of 130 million miles (210 million km).

While some immediately leapt to wild conclusions about alien spacecraft, this was actually a fantastic opportunity for scientists to learn more about the history of the galaxy. 

Astronomers believe that 3I/ATLAS is around eight billion years old, making it older than our own solar system 

All of the objects behaviour is consistent with that of a comet heating up and releasing gas and dust as it approaches the sun 

3I/ATLAS' journey through the solar system

July 1: 3I/ATLAS is discovered by the ATLAS telescope in Chile

October 3: The object passes Mars at 19 million miles (30 million km)

October 29: 3I/ATLAS reaches perihelion, passing the sun at 130 million miles (210 million km)

December 19: Object reaches its closest distance from Earth at 168 million miles (270 million km)

March 16, 2026: 3I/ATLAS passes Jupiter

July 2026: 3I/ATLAS reaches Saturn's orbit

June 2027: Object crosses the orbit of Uranus

2028: The comet passes the last planet as it reaches Neptune's orbit

2029: The object passes Pluto and heads for interstellar space 

Mid 2030s: 3I/ATLAS leaves the solar system 

All that time, telescopes on Earth and out in space were redirected towards gathering information about the interstellar traveller.

NASA even used spacecraft orbiting Mars, normally used for recording the planet's surface, to capture data about the passing object.

Professor Chris Lintott, an astronomer from the University of Oxford, told Daily Mail: 'We've been scrambling to observe 3I/ATLAS with everything we've got since it was discovered.

'So far, it's a fairly normal, active comet - plenty of carbon monoxide, some water, a sprinkling of Nickel.'

As comets approach the sun, their outer layers of ice and dust evaporate into a glowing cloud known as a coma and several long tails stretching out in different directions.

The closer 3I/ATLAS got to the sun, the brighter and more active the coma and tails became, and the more layers of the comet's outer surface were burned away.

'Because it's being heated by the Sun, it's changing all the time, and it'll take some time to work out what it's really made of,' says Professor Lintott.

'One idea is that it's like a baked Alaska, with a crunchy outer layer affected by the billions of years it spent in outer space, surrounding a nice fresh ice core.'

Scientists have been 'scrambling' to observe the comet ever since it was discovered. This diagram shows all the spacecraft the European Space Agency has repurposed for investigating the object  

NASA was able to use spacecraft in orbit around Mars to capture to spectrum of light coming from the glowing cloud of gas and dust surrounding the comet (pictured) 

And, while it might take scientists months to comb through all the data, researchers have already learned enough to decisively conclude that it is not an alien spacecraft.

All of the object's supposedly anomalous behaviours, such as changing trajectory or producing jets of sublimating gas, are entirely consistent with what we know about comet behaviour.

Dr Matthew Genge, an expert on near-Earth objects and astrobiology from Imperial College London, says: 'Suggestions that 3I/Atlas was an alien spacecraft on route to Earth have thus been shown to be very wrong indeed.'

However, one of the most important lessons that scientists have learned from this encounter is that we need to be better prepared for the next interstellar object.

Interstellar objects are not particularly rare, as scientists predict there are around a billion billion billion of them in the galaxy, we are just very bad at spotting them.

But as telescopes like the newly-completed Vera C Rubin Observatory start to survey the sky, we should start to find many more.

Professor Mark Burchell, a space scientist from the University of Kent, told Daily Mail: 'Now we know how to spot them, it gets easier each time.

'The next science goal to my mind is to prepare to see a 'fresh' comet from the outer solar system, which means parking a spacecraft in space in advance.'

Having passed Earth, 3I/ATLAS is now whizzing towards Jupiter, where it will make a relatively close pass of the gas giant at a distance of 33 million miles (53 million km) on March 16, 2026

Read More

• Maven, we have a problem: NASA loses contact with spacecraft orbiting Mars for more than a DECADE 

Normally, it takes years to plan, build, and launch a new spacecraft - which isn't possible within the window we have to catch an interstellar object.

Yet with a spacecraft waiting out in space, scientists could simply redirect this interceptor craft to catch suitable comets when they approach.

Professor Burchell says this might be much harder to do with interstellar objects, since they are so much rarer than comets.

But if scientists were suitably prepared, the potential for learning about the formation of the galaxy could be incredible.

Explained: The difference between an asteroid, meteorite and other space rocks

An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.

A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system.

A meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up.

This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere.

If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite.

Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets.

For example, if Earth passes through the tail of a comet, much of the debris burns up in the atmosphere, forming a meteor shower.

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Saturn's moon could harbour ALIEN life: Scientists discover 'slushy tunnels' on Titan – and they might be habitable

• READ MORE: 'Wall demon' discovered on Jupiter's moon that could hint at life

By JONATHAN CHADWICK, ASSISTANT SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR 

Saturn's largest moon Titan has 'slushy tunnels' beneath its surface that could potentially harbour alien life, a new study shows.

Scientists at NASA and the University of Washington have analysed data captured by the Cassini space probe, which completed more than 100 targeted flybys of Titan. 

They reveal that the faraway moon has 'a slushy high–pressure ice layer' similar to the melting Arctic that could hide extraterrestrial life. 

What's more, it means Titan may not have a waterworld–style liquid ocean under its frozen surface as previously thought. 

'Instead of an open ocean like we have here on Earth, we're probably looking at something more like Arctic sea ice or aquifers,' said study author Professor Baptiste Journaux at the University of Washington. 

'[This] has implications for what type of life we might find, the availability of nutrients, energy and so on.'

Around 3,200 miles in diameter, Titan is described by NASA as an icy world whose surface is completely obscured by a golden hazy atmosphere. 

It is the sole other place in the solar system known to have an Earth–like cycle of liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface, filling lakes and seas, and evaporating back into the sky – akin to the water cycle of our planet. 

The six infrared images of Titan above were created by compiling data collected over the course of the Cassini mission. They depict how the surface of Titan looks beneath the foggy atmosphere, highlighting the variable surface of the moon

Titan's frozen surface is thought to have water beneath it. According to the study, this is neither uniformly liquid, nor frozen solid, but slushy. This illustration shows the various ways Titan might respond to Saturn's gravitational pull depending on its interior structure. Only the slushy interior produced the bulge and lag observed in the new study

NASA's spacecraft Cassini launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in October 1997 and spent two decades observing Saturn and its moons. 

As Titan circled Saturn in an elliptical (not perfectly circular) orbit, the moon was observed changing shape depending on where it was in relation to Saturn. 

In 2008, researchers proposed that Titan must possess a huge ocean beneath the surface to allow such significant 'stretching and smushing'. 

'The deformation we detected during the initial analysis of the Cassini mission data could have been compatible with a global ocean,' Professor Journaux said.

'But now we know that isn't the full story.' 

For the study, scientists performed a reanalysis of radiation data acquired by Cassini using improved modern techniques. 

Interestingly, they found that Titan's shape–shifting or 'flexing' occurs about 15 hours after the peak of Saturn's gravitational pull. 

This time delay allowed scientists to estimate how much energy it takes to change Titan's shape, allowing them to make conclusions about the moon's interior. 

Titan, imaged by the Cassini orbiter, December 2011. A thick shroud of organic haze permanently obscures Titan's surface from viewing in visible light

Cassini is depicted here in a NASA illustration. Cassini launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in October 1997

Titan: Basic facts 

• Parent planet: Saturn
• Discovered: March 25, 1655 
• Type: Icy moon 
• Diameter: 3,200 miles 
• Temperature: Around –297 degrees Fahrenheit 
• Orbital period: Nearly 16 Earth days
• Mass: 1.8 times Earth's moon

Essentially, the amount of energy lost, or dissipated, in Titan was 'very strong' and much greater than would be observed if Titan were to have a global liquid ocean. 

'That was the smoking gun indicating that Titan's interior is different from what was inferred from previous analyses,' said study author Flavio Petricca at NASA. 

According to the study, Titan's frozen exterior hides more ice giving away to pockets of meltwater (water formed by the melting of snow and ice) near a rocky core. 

The model they propose in their paper, published in Nature, features more slush and quite a bit less liquid water on Titan than previously thought. 

The discovery of a slushy layer on Titan has 'exciting implications' for the search for life beyond our solar system as it expands the range of environments considered habitable.   

Although the idea of a liquid ocean on Titan was a promising indication of life there, researchers believe the new findings might improve the odds of finding it. 

Analyses indicate that the pockets of freshwater on Titan could reach 68°F (20°C) – which is the optimal temperature for life on Earth to thrive. 

Any available nutrients would be more concentrated in a small volume of water, compared to an open ocean, which could facilitate the growth of simple organisms.

Below Titan's frozen exterior is more ice giving way to slushy tunnels and pockets of meltwater (water formed by the melting of snow and ice) near a rocky core

Read More

• 

More could be revealed about the moon's habitability after NASA's upcoming Dragonfly mission to Titan launches in July 2028. 

The Dragonfly lander is expected to launch in July 2028 and take six years to reach Titan, arriving by 2034.

Scientists are still reaping the rewards of the rich data obtained by the Cassini robotic spacecraft, which was active for nearly 20 years after launching in October 1997.

Cassini's mission ended in September 2017 when it was deliberately flown into Saturn's upper atmosphere before it ran out of fuel.

In 2019, Cassini data revealed that a lake on Titan is rich with methane and 300 feet deep.

WHAT DID CASSINI DISCOVER DURING ITS 20-YEAR MISSION TO SATURN?

Cassini launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1997, then spent seven years in transit followed by 13 years orbiting Saturn.

An artist's impression of the Cassini spacecraft studying Saturn 

In 2000 it spent six months studying Jupiter before reaching Saturn in 2004.

In that time, it discovered six more moons around Saturn, three-dimensional structures towering above Saturn's rings, and a giant storm that raged across the planet for nearly a year.

On 13 December 2004 it made its first flyby of Saturn's moons Titan and Dione.

On 24 December it released the European Space Agency-built Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan to study its atmosphere and surface composition.

There it discovered eerie hydrocarbon lakes made from ethane and methane.

In 2008, Cassini completed its primary mission to explore the Saturn system and began its mission extension (the Cassini Equinox Mission).

In 2010 it began its second mission (Cassini Solstice Mission) which lasted until it exploded in Saturn's atmosphere.

In December 2011, Cassini obtained the highest resolution images of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

In December of the following year it tracked the transit of Venus to test the feasibility of observing planets outside our solar system.

In March 2013 Cassini made the last flyby of Saturn's moon Rhea and measured its internal structure and gravitational pull.

Cassini didn't just study Saturn - it also captured incredible views of its many moons. In the image above, Saturn's moon Enceladus can be seen drifting before the rings and the tiny moon Pandora. It was captured on Nov. 1, 2009, with the entire scene is backlit by the Sun

In July of that year Cassini captured a black-lit Saturn to examine the rings in fine detail and also captured an image of Earth.

In April of this year it completed its closest flyby of Titan and started its Grande Finale orbit which finished on September 15.

'The mission has changed the way we think of where life may have developed beyond our Earth,' said Andrew Coates, head of the Planetary Science Group at Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London.

'As well as Mars, outer planet moons like Enceladus, Europa and even Titan are now top contenders for life elsewhere,' he added. 'We've completely rewritten the textbooks about Saturn.'

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a Main Target in the Search for Life Beyond Earth

One of 274 moons orbiting Saturn, Titan has long fascinated scientists due to its unique surface features. For example, Titan is the only solar system body besides Earth that may potentially have liquids on its surface, in the form of methane and ethane. The moon also experiences periodic rainfall, making it the only moon known to experience precipitation that reaches its surface.

But unlike Earth’s oceans, Titan’s lakes, rivers, and rains are made of hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, not liquid water. When combined with its icy surface temperature of –290 degrees Fahrenheit (–179°C), it is considered unlikely that life could exist in any of those liquid environments.

When NASA scientists first analyzed data from Cassini’s decade-plus mission to Saturn and its moons, the initial readings suggested that a large, liquid-water ocean may exist beneath Titan. The discovery fueled speculation about possible extraterrestrial life forms living in such an ocean, including whether more complex life could exist under such conditions.

More recently, evidence has mounted that several other solar system moons, including Saturn’s “Death Star” moon Mimas and Jupiter’s Ganymede and Europa, may also have massive seawater oceans underneath their icy shells. Those discoveries have once again increased optimism that future missions to those space bodies could discover the first irrefutable evidence of life beyond Earth.

New Models Predict ‘Slushy’ Interior Instead of a Liquid Ocean

In the new analysis, the team set out to characterize Titan’s potential subsurface ocean. Specifically, they wanted to understand the degree to which the moon stretches in response to Saturn’s gravitational pull and the duration of that stretching to determine the energy required. The team said this is critical because the moon’s stretching was the first major clue that led researchers to propose the possibility of an ocean back in 2008.

“The deformation we detected during the initial analysis of the Cassini mission data could have been compatible with a global ocean,” explained Baptiste Journaux, a University of Washington assistant professor of Earth and space sciences.

Still, the researcher explained, the moon’s “degree of deformation” depends on Titan’s internal structure.

“A deep ocean would permit the crust to flex more under Saturn’s gravitational pull, but if Titan were entirely frozen, it wouldn’t deform as much,” Journaux said.

Where previous models had supported the possibility of an ocean beneath Titan, the team’s newest models added a component not included in earlier versions: the timing of the deformations. The NASA-led team said that adding this variable was critical, since a closer analysis of the Cassini data showed that Titan’s most considerable deformation occurs roughly 15 hours after Saturn’s peak gravitational pull.

After adding this delay to the updated models, the team found that much more energy was being dissipated in Titan than previously estimated. This increased energy dissipation allowed them to make more informed inferences about the moon’s interior structure. Specifically, the long deformation delay indicated the interior structure was much thicker and viscous than simple water, since more energy was needed to cause a change in Titan’s shape.

“Nobody was expecting very strong energy dissipation inside Titan,” said the study’s leader, Flavio Petricca, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “That was the smoking gun indicating that Titan’s interior is different from what was inferred from previous analyses.”

Journaux said the results suggest Titan’s icy surface has a thick, slushy layer beneath that requires more energy to deform than water does.

“Instead of an open ocean like we have here on Earth, we’re probably looking at something more like Arctic sea ice or aquifers,” the researcher explained.

Improved Odds of Finding Extraterrestrial Life?

When discussing the new analysis, Journaux said that a slushier Titan interior could have “implications for what type of life we might find.” For instance, a thicker or more viscous environment might lead to nutrients gathering in small areas of water rather than being dispersed throughout an entire global ocean. The team said this increased nutrient density could “facilitate the growth of simple organisms.”

The new model also suggested that these theoretical pockets of nutrient-dense water could reach 68 degrees Fahrenheit in highly localized, transient briny areas under specific conditions, influenced by Saturn’s gravity. The researchers said this warmer environment could also increase the chances of extraterrestrial life on Titan.

“The discovery of a slushy layer on Titan also has exciting implications for the search for life beyond our solar system,” Journaux said. “It expands the range of environments we might consider habitable.”

The team said their updated models suggest that future missions to Titan, such as NASA’s Dragonfly Mission, which includes Journaux as part of the team, may not discover “fish wriggling through slushy channels.” Instead, if a future mission does find signs of life on Saturn’s enigmatic moon, it may resemble the simpler life forms found on Earth’s polar ecosystems.

• The study “Titan’s strong tidal dissipation precludes a subsurface ocean” was published in Nature.
• Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

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

Is AI already conscious? Evidence is 'far too limited' to definitively say artificial intelligence hasn't made the leap, expert claims

• READ MORE: There may already be a 'slightly conscious' AI out in the world 

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already helping to solve problems in finance, research and medicine. 

But could it be reaching consciousness? 

Dr Tom McClelland, a philosopher from the University of Cambridge has warned that current evidence is 'far too limited' to rule this dystopian possibility out.

According to the expert, the only sensible position on the question of whether AI is conscious is one of 'agnosticism'.

The main problem, he claims, is that we don't have a 'deep explanation' of what makes something conscious in the first place, so can't test for it in AI.

'The best–case scenario is we're an intellectual revolution away from any kind of viable consciousness test,' Dr McClelland explained. 

'If neither common sense nor hard–nosed research can give us an answer, the logical position is agnosticism.

'We cannot, and may never, know.'

Artificial intelligence ( AI) is already helping to solve problems in finance, research and medicine. But could it be reaching consciousness? Pictured: Terminator Genisys 

AI companies are investing vast sums of money into pursuing 'artificial general intelligence' – the point at which AI can outperform humans in any area.

But as they work towards this goal, some also claim that increasingly sophisticated AI may develop consciousness.

This means AI could develop the capacity for perception and become self–aware.

While this idea might evoke visions of killer robots, Dr McClelland argues that AI could make this jump without us even realising, because we don't really have an agreed–upon theory of consciousness to begin with.

Some theories say consciousness is a matter of processing information in the right way, and that AI could be conscious if only it could run the 'software' of a conscious mind.

Others argue it is inherently biological, meaning AI can only imitate consciousness at best.

Until we can figure out which side of the argument is right, we simply don't have any basis on which to test for consciousness in AI.

In a paper published in the journal Mind and Language, Dr McClelland claims both sides of the debate are taking a 'leap of faith'.

We can't tell whether an AI, like in the sci–fi film Ex Machina (pictured), really has conscious experience or whether it is just simulating consciousness

Whether something is conscious radically changes the kinds of ethical questions we need to consider.

For example, humans are expected to behave morally towards other people and animals, because consciousness gives them 'moral status'.

In contrast, we don't have these same values towards inanimate objects, like toasters or computers.  

'It makes no sense to be concerned for a toaster's well–being because the toaster doesn't experience anything,' Dr McClelland explains.

'So when I yell at my computer, I really don't need to feel guilty about it. But if we end up with AI that's conscious, then that could all change.'

While that might make dealing with AI an ethical nightmare, the bigger risk may be that we start to consider AIs as conscious or sentient when they are not.

Dr McClelland explained: 'If you have an emotional connection with something premised on it being conscious and it's not, that has the potential to be existentially toxic.'

Worryingly, the philosopher says that members of the public are already sending him letters written by chatbots 'pleading with me that they're conscious'.

He added: 'We don't want to risk mistreating artificial beings that are conscious, but nor do we want to dedicate our resources to protecting the "rights" of something no more conscious than a toaster.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

Scientists reveal what ancient Martians might have looked like - as NASA announces strongest evidence yet for life on the Red Planet

• READ MORE:NASA finds clearest sign of life on Mars

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Yesterday, NASA made the startling announcement that its scientists have uncovered the 'clearest evidence' yet for the existence of life on Mars.

Last year, NASA's Perseverance rover discovered that a dry riverbed just north of the Martian equator is dotted with rusty circular markings known as 'leopard spots'.

According to NASA administrator Sean Duffy, the space agency now believes these marks could have been left by ancient lifeforms which lived billions of years ago.

Now, scientists have revealed what these alien organisms might have looked like. 

Any life that evolved on Mars would have had to contend with harsh radiation, weak gravity, and temperatures that can swing between 20°C (70°F) in the day and -153°C (-225°F) at night. 

However, the scientists behind this groundbreaking research say that it is still possible for some forms of life to evolve. 

If there were life on Mars, it would almost certainly consist of very simple microbial organisms like bacteria.

In the unlikely case that more complex life did evolve somewhere on the Red Planet, it would need to develop special adaptations to survive this impossibly harsh climate.

NASA has revealed the 'clearest evidence' yet for the existence of life on Mars, as it claims that 'leopard spots' on Martian rocks could have been created by ancient microbes

Scientists say that Mars' Jezero Crater was once filled with water that would have been 'clement' for microbial life to develop. Pictured: AI-generated impression 

What did NASA find on Mars?

While investigating a region known as the 'Bright Angel', NASA's Perseverance rover spotted a group of unusual markings that resemble leopard spots.

Scientists call these spots 'reaction fronts', and they are points of contact where chemical and physical reactions have occurred in the past. 

Critically, Perseverance's on-board lab found that these spots contained two iron-rich minerals: Vivianite, which is found in decaying organic matter, and greigite, which is produced by microbes on Earth.

Dr Keyron Hickman-Lewis, an Earth scientist from Birkbeck, University of London and co-author of the NASA report, told Daily Mail: 'The kinds of organic–mineral associations observed at Bright Angel that are reported in this paper are known to be generated by microbial life on Earth, and so it is a very promising observation to see something so similar on Mars.

'Certainly, I think that this is the most compelling potential evidence of life on Mars found to date.'

The scientists can't yet rule out that these spots could be caused by non-biological processes, and Dr Hickman-Lewis says that this is not a 'smoking gun'.

However, after spending a year reviewing the evidence and looking for alternative explanations, the researchers are now confident enough to say that this could be a 'biosignature', an elusive sign which proves the existence of life.

These signs of life were found by the Perseverance rover in a region called 'Bright Angel'. Researchers say that chemicals found in the leopard spots are produced by biological processes on Earth 

Although Mars is now a barren desert, billions of years ago, it would have been covered with rivers and lakes that could have supported life 

Dr Hickman-Lewis adds: 'The Mars 2020 team does not use the term "potential biosignature" lightly.'

What would this life look like?

The potential signs of life were found in a region called Jezero Crater, an impact basin just north of the equator.

Although it is now a barren wasteland, billions of years ago, the Jezero Crater was filled with water that could have been home to life.

If life did exist in these waters, the most plausible explanation is that it was some sort of simple microorganism.

Dr Hickman-Lewis says: 'The environment in which these potential biosignatures were found seems to be a low-temperature water-rich setting and therefore very clement for microbial life.'

In their paper, published in Nature, the researchers suggest that microbes could have fed on the naturally occurring carbon, sulphur, and phosphorus in the rocks.

These microbes would have then 'excreted' the minerals which we now see as leopard spots.

NASA Administrator Sean Duffy (center) revealed that a sample collected by Perseverance is the 'clearest sign of life' on Mars ever found in 30 years

The Jezero Crater, where the potential signs of life were found, was once a river delta. Observations from orbiting spacecraft show patterns of sediment that are similar to those made by rivers on Earth.

Pictured: AI-generated impression 

As microbes fed on the carbon, sulphur, and phosphorus in the rocks, they might have released iron-rich chemicals which permanently stained the rocks to leave 'leopard spots'. Pictured: AI-generated impression 

The conditions on the surface would have been incredibly harsh, but the researchers say that life still could have eked out a simple existence.

Dr Sanjeev Gupta, an Earth scientist from Imperial College London and member of the research team, told Daily Mail: 'There was liquid water present at the surface at the time billions of years ago, so it was a habitable environment. 

'This would have been simple microbial life. We can say much more than that.'

Since we can only see the possible traces left behind by these microorganisms, it's difficult to know what they might have looked like or how they behaved.

However, it is possible to make some very general predictions based on parallels from Earth.

Professor Michael Garrett, an astronomer from the University of Manchester and Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics who was not involved in the study, told Daily Mail: 'Think of hardy bacteria, similar to terrestrial extremophiles that thrive in very salty, cold, or low-oxygen conditions here on Earth.

'Good analogues are the microbial mats in very salty lakes or microbes that live kilometres underground in Earth’s crust or in the high desert in Chile.

'These examples show us that life can be tough, minimalistic, and persistent even in places where surface conditions are brutal.'

Scientists say that the best parallels for what life might have looked like are the microbial mats that form in extremely salty lakes on Earth. Pictured: AI-generated impression 

It is unlikely that more complex life could have evolved since Mars' climate changed rapidly about a billion years after the first microbes could have appeared. This means complex organisms like animals probably didn't have time to develop.

Pictured: AI-generated impression 

Could more complex life have evolved? 

If these leopard spots really are biosignatures, then the researchers say it's unlikely that they only existed in one place.

Perseverance is currently studying very ancient rocks outside of the Jezero Crater to look for signs of more widespread life.

However, it is extremely unlikely that more complex life evolved anywhere on the Red Planet.

The researchers think that microbes emerged on Mars around the same time that life was getting started on Earth.

However, after about one billion years, Mars' climate began to change rapidly as solar winds stripped away its atmosphere - leaving the planet very cold and dry.

Professor Garrett says: 'Those harsh conditions on Mars after 1 billion years would put strong limits on body size and complexity of any lifeform.

'It took really complex life, like animals, another 3 billion years before they appeared on the Earth, where the conditions were much better to support energy-hungry complex life forms.'

If complex life had emerged, it would have needed to develop adaptations like thick skin or live underground to avoid the intense radiation of the Martian surface. Pictured: AI-generated impression 

On Earth, some of the first animals to evolve were simple filter feeders. Filter feeders also survive in extreme environments such as hydrothermal vents, so complex Martian life might have followed a similar evolutionary trajectory. Pictured: AI-generated impression 

Read More

• Earth-sized planet just 40 light-years away could have an atmosphere capable of sustaining life 

In the unlikely case that more complex life did evolve, Mars' harsh conditions would also put strong constraints on what it might look like.

'It would need to be adapted to survive the intense UV radiation from the Sun, extreme cold, and limited liquid water - we don’t really see complicated animal life in such environments,' says Professor Garret.

He adds: 'If they were present, they would need protection from the UV radiation from the sun – maybe a thick skin, for example, or perhaps mostly living under the Martian soil.'

That means complex life might resemble creatures on Earth that live in exceptionally harsh environments, such as desert-dwelling lizards or the simple filter-feeders that survive near hydrothermal vents.  

MARS: THE BASICS

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, with a 'near-dead' dusty, cold, desert world with a very thin atmosphere. 

Mars is also a dynamic planet with seasons, polar ice caps, canyons, extinct volcanoes, and evidence that it was even more active in the past. 

It is one of the most explored planets in the solar system and the only planet humans have sent rovers to explore.

One day on Mars takes a little over 24 hours and a year is 687 Earth days.

Facts and Figures 

Orbital period: 687 days

Surface area: 55.91 million mi²

Distance from Sun: 145 million miles

Gravity: 3.721 m/s²

Radius: 2,106 miles

Moons: Phobos, Deimos