Unravelling the mystery of the Devil's Arrows: Study reveals how prehistoric builders hauled 25-tonne rocks 11 miles across Yorkshire to build the landmark 5,000 years ago

By SHIVALI BEST, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR 

When it comes to ancient stone structures, Stonehenge is usually the first landmark to spring to mind. 

But over in Yorkshire, another prehistoric monument has left scientists stumped for centuries. 

The Devil's Arrows is a set of three huge stones near Boroughbridge, dating back around 4,500–5,000 years. 

Each weighing around 25 tonnes and standing at almost 23ft (seven metres) tall, how the enormous stones got there has remained unclear. 

Now, scientists from the University of York and Curtin University think they've cracked it. 

Their new analysis suggests the stones were collected and transported from Brimham Rocks, about 11 miles (18km) away.

'Sites in southern England and Scotland receive considerable attention, but monuments like the Devil's Arrows have remained comparatively understudied despite their significance,' said Dr Jim Leary, from the University of York.

'We have now proved that Neolithic communities moved several 25–tonne stones 18km across Yorkshire, transforming a familiar site into an epic quest to create a sacred landscape.'

The Devil's Arrows are positioned across 174 metres on the western outskirts of Boroughbridge, and date back to roughly 2500–2000 BC, making them some of the oldest stone structures in the UK 

The Devil's Arrows are positioned across 174 metres on the western outskirts of Boroughbridge, and date back to roughly 2500–2000 BC, making them some of the oldest stone structures in the UK. 

Although they're slightly younger than Stonehenge, the stones are actually even taller, at almost 23ft (seven metres). 

While the Devil's Arrows stand on Triassic Sherwood Sandstone, the stones themselves are made of Pennine Basin Millstone Grit. 

This has raised questions about how they got to their location in Boroughbridge. 

Some experts have argued they were hauled there by humans, while others are convinced they were transported by ice–age glaciers. 

To settle the debate once and for all, the researchers analysed the minerals in the stones.

Dr Anthony Clarke, geochemist at Curtin University in Australia, said: 'Our research shows these stones weren't simply taken from the nearest available source – they were deliberately chosen from a challenging landscape 18 kilometres away.

'Plumpton Rocks, which is closer to the Devil's Arrows, had previously been identified as the probable source of the stones. 

Their new analysis suggests the stones were collected and transported from Brimham Rocks (pictured), about 11 miles (18km) away

Although they're slightly younger than Stonehenge, the stones are actually even taller, at almost 23ft (seven metres)

'Our findings instead point to Brimham Rocks, showing that prehistoric builders transported these enormous stones significantly further than thought.

'Each stone weighs more than 25 tonnes, so moving them would have required incredible planning, coordination and engineering skill.

'This tells us prehistoric people placed real importance on the landscape itself. It wasn't just about convenience – the location the stones came from likely held meaning for them.'

While three stones remain today, historical accounts suggest the site once held at least five stones. 

In the mid–16th century, Tudor antiquarian John Leland recorded a fourth standing stone, but decades later it was said to be missing. 

In 1687, it was recorded that locals had broken up a fallen stone, using part of it to construct Peg Bridge over the River Tutt and taking the top segment to Aldborough manor.

Then, in the 19th century, antiquarian J.R. Walbran proposed that another fallen monolith had been recycled into the Battle Cross – an 18ft (5.5 metre) monument crafted in the 15th century to commemorate the 1322 Battle of Boroughbridge.

In the new study, the researchers were able to confirm Walbran's theory.

Location and appearance of the Devil’s Arrows on the western outskirts of Boroughbridge, Yorkshire. The insets show the alignment and spacing of the three surviving stones, along with scaled profiles of the Devil’s Arrows and the Battle Cross Monument. The bottom panels show photographs of the three surviving megaliths.

Credit: A. Clarke et al., Proceedings. Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences (2026)

While three stones remain today, historical accounts suggest the site once held at least five stones

Mineral fingerprinting proved that the medieval cross – which stands in Aldborough today – is a carved segment of a long–lost Devil's Arrow.

Justin Scully, General Manager for Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal and Brimham Rocks, said: 'The Devil's Arrows have inspired stories and sparked curiosity for generations.

'Local legend tells of the Devil standing on How Hill and hurling giant stone arrows towards Boroughbridge, only for them to fall short and land where they stand today.

'While the folklore remains a much–loved part of their story, it's wonderful to discover that the real journey of these stones is every bit as extraordinary.

'This fascinating research reveals a direct link between Brimham Rocks and the Devil's Arrows, connecting two remarkable Yorkshire landscapes in our care. 

'We're incredibly grateful to the researchers for helping us uncover this new chapter in the stones' story and deepen our understanding of the people who shaped this landscape thousands of years ago.'

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‘China’s Nostradamus’ makes 5 grim predictions for 2027

Steve Charnock | Audience Writer

Jiang Xueqin has issued a bleak set of predictions for America (Picture: Youtube/Theo Von)

A man known as ‘China’s Nostradamus’ has issued five rather bleak predictions for the United States in 2027, including a compulsory military draft and nationwide unrest. Oh, and a full-on economic collapse.

Jiang Xueqin believes ‘all the ingredients for a civil war’ could be in place during 2027. However, he has clarified that he’s not predicting two rival armies fighting for control of the country.

The Chinese-Canadian educator and presenter attracted attention after forecasting Donald Trump’s return to The White House. He made the prediction in May 2024, months before Trump won a second presidential term.

Xueqin also said there was ‘a very strong likelihood’ the US would go to war with Iran. He claimed there was ‘absolutely no way’ America would win such a conflict.

Xueqin has made five big predictions about what could happen next year in America (Picture: YouTube/Predictive History)

His nickname compares him to Nostradamus, the 16th-century French astrologer whose writings have been credited with correctly predicting a number of major world events. Plenty of those supposed prophecies rely on extremely generous interpretation, but Xueqin’s latest claims leave rather less room for ambiguity.

With 2027 approaching, he has turned his attention to what could happen next. If the man’s right, failing a Dry January by the second weekend may be the least of anyone’s problems…

1. ICE will be given more power

ICE will be given increased federal powers, according to Xueqin

(Picture: REUTERS)

Xueqin predicts that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, will be handed greater power by President Trump over the coming year.

The federal agency is responsible for enforcing immigration laws and has played a central role in the Trump administration’s crackdown.

ICE operations and the wider restrictions on immigration have already prompted protests across the country. Xueqin also believes the National Guard could be deployed in all major American cities in preparation for economic turmoil and a military draft.

2. ‘Nationwide discontent and riots’

Mentions of a ‘civil war’ may sound scary, but the prediction is really for more civil unrest (Picture: REUTERS)

Xueqin doesn’t claim to be clairvoyant, however. His forecasts are based on his interpretation of political and geopolitical events rather than any professed ability to see the future.

He believes that ‘all the ingredients for a civil war’ will be in place during 2027.

However, he isn’t forecasting a conventional conflict between two rival armed forces. Instead, he expects protests, riots and insurgencies to produce a period of ‘low level conflict’.

He said: ‘I don’t mean actually two militaries fighting each other, but I’m saying like nationwide discontent and riots and protests and insurgencies.’

3. The US will start military conscription

America does not currently have an active military draft but it might soon introduce it, according to Xueqin (Picture: Getty Images)

His third prediction is that America will establish the framework for a national military draft during 2027. Xueqin believes it would be introduced to provide troops for a continuing and escalating conflict with Iran.

A prediction published on his Predictive History website says: ‘The United States will use ground troops in Iran, requiring a national military draft. Men as young as 18 will be conscripted.’

Explaining his forecast on the Jack Neal podcast, Xueqin said preparations may already have begun by next year. He said: ‘It is possible they’ve already passed legislation to create the national draft, or it’s possible that certain people have already been drafted.’

4. The midterm elections ‘won’t go the way people expect’

Americans will vote in the midterm elections in November, but the results could surprise a few people (Picture: Alamy Live News)

Another of Xueqin’s predictions concerns the US midterm elections in November 2026, which will decide control of Congress. He believes there will be several surprises and that the result ‘will not be the way people expect it to work out’.

He said: ‘I’m not saying they’ll be canceled, but what I’m saying is that right now, Donald Trump and the Republicans are trying to pass something called the SAVE America Act.’

The proposed law would require people to provide proof of US citizenship when registering to vote. It would also introduce stricter voter identification and citizenship checks.

Although Xueqin admitted that he was ‘not sure’ what the election result would be, he suggested it may make little difference to the direction of the country.

He said: ‘It’s almost insignificant how the midterms turn out because it’s possible the Republicans stay, they maintain the House and the Senate. In which case Donald Trump continues his war.’

Xueqin also claimed the result ‘won’t change the trajectory of the war’ because that course is ‘already set’.

5. The economy will collapse

Xueqin claims that a prolonged war could cripple the American economy (Picture: Getty Images)

His final warning for 2027 is that a prolonged conflict with Iran could very well devastate the US economy, with consequences extending far beyond America. He believes committing ground troops for several years would prove particularly damaging.

Xueqin said: ‘If America goes into Iran with ground troops, if it’s committed for four or five years, if America loses this war, it means the collapse of the American economy.’

While discussing the conditions he believes could produce widespread civil unrest, he went further by claiming that ‘the global economy should have collapsed’.

Whether Xueqin’s vision proves prophetic or joins the considerably larger pile of forecasts that never happened will become clearer over the coming year. For now, anyone planning a slightly quieter 2027 may wish to consult a different psychic.

War, Recession And Global Chaos? 'China's Nostradamus' Makes 5 Grim Predictions

NOSTRADAMUS 2027: The Dark Warning Europe Was Never Meant to See

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Het raast met 25.000 kilometer per seconde door de ruimte: Pas ontdekt object in ons eigen sterrenstelsel behoort tot het meest extreme dat wetenschappers ooit hebben gezien

Astrofysici hebben een object ontdekt dat met een recordsnelheid een extreme tocht door het centrum van de Melkweg maakt – en dat kan hun een heel nieuw inzicht geven in de mysterieuze wereld van een zwart gat.

Midden in de Melkweg is er een plek waar de sterren niet gewoon rond een zwart gat draaien – ze worden rondgeslingerd met snelheden die alle intuïtie tarten.

In het centrum staat Sagittarius A*, het superzware zwarte gat van ons sterrenstelsel. En tussen de sterren die zich in het enorme zwaartekrachtveld ervan wagen, hebben astrofysici van het Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Duitsland nu een ster ontdekt die er duidelijk uitspringt.

Hij is namelijk sneller en extremer dan alle sterren die de onderzoekers tot nu toe hebben gezien.

De ster heet S301 en doet maar 8,7 jaar over een rondje om Sagittarius A*. Als hij het dichtstbij komt, haalt hij een snelheid van meer dan 25.000 kilometer per seconde – zo’n 8,5 procent van de lichtsnelheid.

Daarmee is S301 de snelste ster die astrofysici ooit in het sterrenstelsel hebben waargenomen.

En het is niet alleen de snelheid die hem interessant maakt.

Ster gaat door de ruimtetijd

S301 komt zo’n tien keer dichter bij het zwarte gat dan de ster S2, die wetenschappers al jaren gebruiken om Sagittarius A* te bestuderen en Einsteins relativiteitstheorie te testen.

Tijdens zijn nauwe passage komt S301 in een gebied terecht waar de rotatie van het zwarte gat de ruimtetijd zelf meesleept.

Die kleine invloed kan de baan van de ster op zo’n manier veranderen dat de wetenschappers dat kunnen meten. En zo kunnen ze mogelijk bepalen hoe snel Sagittarius A* roteert.

Als de onderzoekers zowel de massa als de rotatie van het zwarte gat kunnen meten, kunnen ze de volgende stap zetten: het testen van de zogeheten no-hair-theorie, die voorspelt dat het zwaartekrachtveld van een zwart gat slechts afhangt van enkele fundamentele eigenschappen.

Maar er is ook nog een andere mogelijke verklaring voor de wilde baan van S301, denken de Duitse onderzoekers.

De ster kan vroeger een partner hebben gehad. Als een dubbelstersysteem – sterren die bij elkaar worden gehouden door hun gezamenlijke zwaartekracht – te dicht bij Sagittarius A* kwam, kan het zwarte gat het paar uit elkaar hebben gerukt door de ene ster op te slokken en de andere weg te slingeren.

Hoe loopt het af? Die vraag houdt astronomen al decennialang bezig, want zal het heelal samentrekken tot niets of oneindig uitdijen? Onderzoekers hebben dit nu berekend – en de conclusie is dat de ondergang van het heelal weleens verrassend dichtbij kan zijn:

S301 komt eind 2031 weer dicht bij het zwarte gat. Dit is dus een belangrijke kans voor astrofysici om het effect van de rotatie van het zwarte gat nog duidelijker te zien.

En misschien gaan er in het centrum van de Melkweg nog wel meer sterren als S301 schuil.

• Het onderzoek is gepubliceerd in het gerenommeerde wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Nature.

{ https://wibnet.nl/heelal }

A NASA Probe Is About To Enter A Mysterious Region Beyond The Solar System Where No Other Mission Has Explored

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is approaching a rare region near the edge of the solar system, but funding issues threaten future observations.

Written by Lydia Amazouz

© Credit: NASA

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is nearing one of the most unexplored regions of the solar system, but two of its scientific instruments could be shut down before the probe reaches the boundary where the Sun’s influence begins to fade.

The spacecraft remains healthy and is expected to continue operating for decades, potentially into the 2050s. Yet a lack of funding for scientists analyzing its data has placed two key instruments at risk, threatening observations of a region no previous spacecraft has explored with the same scientific capabilities.

The timing is especially significant because New Horizons is approaching the heliospheric termination shock, where the solar wind slows as it encounters the surrounding interstellar environment.

A Mission That Transformed Our View Of Pluto And The Outer Solar System

When New Horizons launched from Earth, its primary goal was to explore Pluto, the distant dwarf planet located more than 5 billion kilometers away. The spacecraft first traveled toward Jupiter, using the giant planet’s gravity to accelerate while collecting images and scientific data from its moons, including Io, Europa, and Ganymede.

The probe reached Pluto in 2015, providing humanity with the first detailed observations of a world that had previously remained a distant mystery. The mission revealed a surprisingly active environment, with mountains, glaciers, atmospheric haze, and evidence of geological processes still shaping the surface.

NASA described the discoveries by stating: “Data from New Horizons clearly indicated that Pluto and its satellites were far more complex than imagined, and scientists were particularly surprised by the degree of current activity on Pluto’s surface.”

The agency also explained: “The atmospheric haze and lower than predicted atmospheric escape rate forced scientists to fundamentally revise earlier models of the system.”

After completing its Pluto flyby, New Horizons continued deeper into the outer solar system. In 2019, the spacecraft reached Arrokoth, a primitive two-lobed object located in the Kuiper Belt, offering scientists a rare view of material left over from the solar system’s formation.

New Horizons delivered this composite image of Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth when it flew by in January 2019. Credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / Roman Tkachenko

New Horizons Carries Unique Instruments For Exploring Interstellar Space

The spacecraft’s extended mission is now focused on studying the heliosphere, the enormous bubble created by the Sun that surrounds the solar system. This region defines the limits of the Sun’s influence and provides a natural laboratory for understanding how our cosmic neighborhood interacts with interstellar space.

Two instruments are central to these observations: the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) detector and the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) instrument.

Although both instruments continue operating normally, the challenge comes from Earth-based funding. NASA has not provided approximately $2 million in support over the last two years for the researchers responsible for downloading, processing, and analyzing the scientific data.

Without this funding, New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern warned that shutting down the instruments may become unavoidable.

These particles appear to influence conditions throughout the outer heliosphere. According to scientists involved with the mission, New Horizons has shown that pick-up ions dominate aspects of the solar wind beyond 10 astronomical units and shape conditions near the boundary that separates the solar system from interstellar space.

A petition supported by former NASA Chief Scientist James L. Green highlights that the spacecraft is equipped to collect measurements unavailable from the Voyager missions. Those observations could improve understanding of how the heliosphere shields the inner solar system from galactic cosmic rays, high-energy particles that represent a major challenge for future human exploration.

NASA Faces A Decision Over The Future Of New Horizons

The possible shutdown of SWAP and PEPSSI has raised broader questions about how NASA manages spacecraft that continue operating long after their original missions.

Long-running missions can produce valuable scientific results, but they also require funding for researchers, operations teams, and data analysis. NASA must balance support for existing spacecraft with investments in future exploration programs.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman addressed the situation on social media, writing: “We have heard from a few members of the community on this and indicated we are looking into it. The big dollars were already invested in New Horizons, so generally supportive of generating high-quality scientific returns for low-dollar spend.”

He also noted that NASA regularly maintains missions beyond their initial design life while evaluating how resources can support future projects.

For New Horizons, the spacecraft itself remains fully operational and capable of continuing its journey into the outer solar system. The coming funding decision will determine whether scientists can keep collecting data during one of the most important phases of the mission.

The probe is moving toward a region where humanity has only limited knowledge, carrying instruments designed to reveal how the Sun’s domain ends and where interstellar space begins.

{ https://dailygalaxy.com/category/news/ }

'It's Not Necessarily Disturbing': Expert Claims Truth About UFO Files Disclosure Is 'Probably Good'

Dr Diana Pasulka suggests UFO disclosure might not traumatise the public, but instead encourage deeper existential reflection

Religious studies professor Diana Pasulka argues that a genuine UFO files disclosure would not necessarily terrify the public, but says the reaction hinges on how people already view spirituality and reality

PHOTO Wikimedia Commons/GreyMan1234

Potential disclosure of information about UFOs and alleged non-human intelligence would not necessarily traumatise the public, religious studies professor Dr Diana Pasulka said, suggesting that people's existing beliefs about reality could influence how they respond.

Pasulka, a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, made the comments on That UFO Podcast, hosted by Andy McGrillen, in an episode released on 4 September 2026. Her remarks address a recurring argument in UFO disclosure discussions that authorities might fear the public reaction to information about alleged non-human intelligence.

Speculation about a staged or gradual UFO disclosure has circulated for years, alongside congressional hearings, Pentagon briefings and the US government's release of UAP-related videos and records.

Pasulka has researched scientists, technologists and others interested in extraterrestrial intelligence for roughly six years, with that work forming part of the basis of her 2019 book American Cosmic.

Her latest book, The Others, UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny, was published by St. Martin's Essentials on 28 July 2026.

Discussing whether disclosure could be psychologically overwhelming, Pasulka questioned the assumption that such an event would necessarily be disturbing. She suggested that people who have not previously considered questions about spirituality, evil or realities beyond the physical world might find such an announcement more unsettling.

'It's not necessarily disturbing,' Pasulka said. 'It's disturbing if you've never thought about these things before, but it's not disturbing for those who give it some thought.'

Why Pasulka Says UFO Disclosure Could Do Some Good

That is not to say Pasulka treats the subject lightly. She has spoken elsewhere about being genuinely shaken by parts of her research, describing experiences that unsettled her own understanding of the world.

Christianity shaped her childhood, and she has said her UFO fieldwork led her to revisit that faith after her research led her to believe that some people were reporting experiences they interpreted as encounters with something beyond the human.

Still, Pasulka's comments framed a potential disclosure as something that could prompt people to reflect on broader questions about existence. She floated a scenario in which a sitting president confirms the existence of non-human intelligence overnight, and suggested the shockwaves would not necessarily be destructive.

'I think that this kind of a, if disclosure happened and the president, you know, talked about it tomorrow, this would actually cause a lot of people to ask that question, like what's it all about? And that's probably good,' she said.

The Bigger Questions Behind Potential Disclosure

For Pasulka, that kind of jolt could push people who otherwise coast through life to actually stop and think about why they exist and where humanity fits into the wider picture. She suggested that such an announcement could lead some people to revisit religious beliefs or traditions.

Whether any such announcement is actually imminent remains an open question. The US government has released UAP-related reports, imagery and other records, while congressional hearings and calls for greater transparency have continued. None of those developments establishes the kind of disclosure Pasulka describes.

In the discussion, she did not provide a specific disclosure date or identify evidence of an imminent announcement. Her accounts of extraordinary experiences and interpretations of her research are her own accounts and should not be presented as independently established evidence of non-human intelligence.

What she is offering, essentially, is a psychological reframe: the fear of disclosure may reflect, in part, how people with different assumptions about reality interpret the prospect of non-human intelligence.

Whether that interpretation would hold if a government actually confirmed the existence of non-human intelligence is impossible to know in advance.

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Ancient Aliens Mars Theory: Bizarre Claims Suggest Metropolis Existed Next to Long-Lost Ocean

A UFO researcher claims a Martian metropolis once existed on a vanished ocean's shore, sparking debate between enthusiasts and scientists over the Cydonia region's landforms and their origins

Television personality and UFO researcher Jason Martell claimed that an expansive extraterrestrial metropolis once flourished along the coastline of a long-lost ocean on Mars 

Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash

Recent outlandish claims from a prominent UFO researcher suggest that a sprawling extraterrestrial metropolis once stood on the shores of a long-lost ocean on the red planet.

The Ancient Aliens Mars theory, promoted by television personality Jason Martell, focuses on the Cydonia region, where advocates argue strange hills are actually the crumbling remnants of a coastal settlement.

According to enthusiasts referencing NASA orbital imagery, a distinct topographical boundary separates elevated highlands from a smooth basin that allegedly held vast volumes of water millions of years ago.

Proponents claimed that landmarks such as the famous 'Face on Mars' and the D&M Pyramid mirror the strategic planning of historic Earth waterfront hubs like Venice and ancient Memphis.

Critics noted that the grand narrative relies entirely on subjective interpretations of historical, low-resolution photography rather than empirical sediment analysis.

Mainstream geologists firmly maintained that standard natural processes, including sweeping lava flows and millions of years of severe wind erosion, shaped the controversial Martian terrain without any intelligent intervention.

The renewed fringe discourse underscores a deep divide between alternative space speculation and rigorous planetary science.

Investigating the Ancient Aliens Mars Theory

The Cydonia region has been a focal point for extraterrestrial speculation since 1976, when the Viking 1 spacecraft captured an image of a mesa resembling a giant human face.

Several of the area's most discussed landforms, including the infamous 'Face on Mars', the D&M Pyramid and a structure known as the city complex, appear to align precisely along this proposed topographical boundary.

Martell, a regular guest on the History Channel television programme Ancient Aliens, argues that the specific arrangement of these Martian landforms mirrors the layout of waterfront cities built throughout human history.

He claims the giant face might have been intentionally constructed as a monumental viewing platform, designed to overlook both the water and the sprawling alien settlement.

In a recent blog post detailing the hypothesis, the researcher compared this speculative setup to famous Earth cities built along major coastlines. He cited bustling urban centres such as Venice, Alexandria, Amsterdam, Singapore, Dubai and Manhattan as modern examples of how civilisations naturally gravitate towards water.

He also pointed to ancient settlements like Memphis on the Nile and Ur beside the Euphrates, framing them as classic examples of an ingrained instinct to settle near vital planetary resources.

He argues that just as human civilisations built along coastlines for essential access to food, trade and transport, an ancient Martian race may have established a permanent settlement along the edge of a Martian sea.

The argument relies heavily on interpretations of grainy photographs, looking for geometric patterns that suggest intelligent design rather than natural rock erosion.

Experts Dismiss the Theory as Pareidolia

Mainstream scientists firmly insist the claims are nothing more than visual tricks and wishful thinking. They maintain that the entire argument rests on subjective interpretations of older imagery rather than any physical evidence, sediment analysis or detailed geological study.

Experts point out that the supposed shoreline was simply traced onto a satellite image by hand, lacking the corroborating topographical data needed to prove a body of water ever existed at that elevation.

Meanwhile, geologists explain that the flat, smooth basin is far more likely to have been formed by standard geological processes. Sweeping lava flows, ancient dust movement or millions of years of severe wind erosion provide a much more scientifically sound explanation for the terrain than a long-lost ocean.

Furthermore, geologists question the likelihood of an advanced civilisation constructing permanent monuments from easily eroded sedimentary rock.

Scientists also state that seeing complex buildings or human faces in distant rock formations is entirely down to pareidolia. This is a common psychological phenomenon where the human brain tricks itself into seeing familiar, recognisable shapes in random patterns of light and shadow.

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Humanoid Robot Raises Alarm as 'Kung Fu Protocol' Activated After 'Gentle' Shove From Customer: 'It Broke the First Law of Robotics'

Humanoid robot's viral 'kung fu' moves raise questions about AI safety and authenticity

A viral video from a Russian electronics store has sparked jokes about a robot uprising after a humanoid machine appeared to launch kung-fu-style kicks at a customer who pushed it

PHOTO Drago Rapovac/Pexels

A humanoid robot has gone viral after appearing to launch a series of kung-fu-style movements at a customer who gently pushed it inside an electronics store in Saratov, Russia. The bizarre footage has prompted jokes about a potential robot uprising, with viewers joking that the machine had somehow activated a 'Kung Fu protocol.'

The video shows a customer in an electronics store approaching the humanoid robot before apparently pushing it. Almost immediately, the machine turns towards him and begins making sudden movements with its arms and legs.

In footage shared online, the robot appears to kick towards the customer before store employees intervene and appear to restrain or shut down the machine. The unusual sequence has rapidly circulated across social media, where users have been debating whether the robot genuinely reacted to the shove or whether the entire incident was staged.

Was the Robot Really in 'Kung Fu Mode'?

Despite the dramatic appearance of the clip, there is no reliable evidence that the robot independently decided to attack the customer or that an autonomous 'Kung Fu protocol' actually exists.

Some viewers on Reddit have questioned the authenticity of the footage, with several suggesting that the incident may have been staged or deliberately demonstrated. One commenter claimed the video appeared to show a store worker activating something on the robot before it began its movements. Those claims have not been independently verified.

That uncertainty has not stopped the clip from becoming a viral talking point, particularly because the robot's movements resemble martial arts techniques rather than a conventional malfunction.

Viewers Joke That the Robot Broke Asimov's First Law

The footage has also revived references to Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics.

The fictional First Law states that a robot must not injure a human being or allow a human to come to harm through inaction. The viral clip has therefore prompted jokes that the machine had apparently ignored one of the most famous rules in science fiction.

Of course, Asimov's laws are fictional literary concepts rather than universal safety rules programmed into modern robots. Real-world humanoid robots are instead designed around engineering safeguards, software restrictions and risk-management systems that vary between manufacturers.

Why the Video Is Raising Questions About Robot Safety

The incident nevertheless highlights a genuine concern surrounding increasingly capable humanoid robots: how should machines respond when humans interfere with them?

Robots designed to operate around people must be able to distinguish between ordinary contact, accidental collisions and potentially dangerous behaviour. They also need safeguards that prevent unexpected movements from injuring nearby people.

Shanghai's 2024 governance guidelines for humanoid robots, for example, called for manufacturers to ensure their machines do not threaten human security and recommended risk warnings, emergency-response systems and user training.

That makes viral incidents such as this particularly striking. Even if the Russian store footage ultimately proves to have been staged, it illustrates why physical AI systems require considerably more caution than software operating solely on a screen.

The Internet Is Already Calling It a Robot Uprising

For now, there is no evidence that a humanoid robot has suddenly developed an independent desire to fight humans.

But the combination of a customer pushing a human-shaped machine, the robot apparently responding with kung-fu-style movements and employees rushing to intervene has created exactly the kind of footage the internet loves.

Some viewers have called it the beginning of the robot uprising, while others have dismissed the entire incident as an obvious stunt.

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UFO Researcher Claims Seabed Data Shows a Sunken Ancient City Resembling Atlantis in the Atlantic

A UFO researcher claims Seabed 2030 data shows an ancient city near the Bermuda Triangle, but scientists disagree

Scott C Waring claims geometric lines on atlantic seabed maps point to a lost atlantis-like settlement, yet no Marine scientists have verified the find 

PHOTO AI Generated image

A UFO researcher claims that patterns in seabed mapping data could be the remains of a sunken ancient settlement near the Bermuda Triangle.

The claim is unverified, and no independent scientific or archaeological evidence has been identified to establish that the apparent formations are man-made structures.

Scott C Waring, a self-described UFO researcher, argues that the geometric patterns could represent an intelligently constructed settlement built by ancient humans or, he speculates, by another civilisation.

His interpretation has attracted attention because the alleged site is located in an Atlantic area frequently linked to Bermuda Triangle folklore, although the term itself has no official boundaries.

What Waring Says He Found

The claim followed Waring's examination of bathymetric mapping data associated with Seabed 2030, a global project intended to advance comprehensive mapping of the world's ocean floor by 2030.

Bathymetry concerns measurements of seafloor depth and terrain, meaning the material at issue is mapping data rather than underwater photographs or direct visual evidence of buildings.

Waring said he spotted faint, intersecting and roughly parallel lines in seafloor mapping data off Cuba and Haiti. He estimated that the apparent pattern extends for roughly seven or eight miles, or around 11 to 13 kilometres, in one direction and about three miles, or five kilometres, in the other.

The dimensions are Waring's estimate of what he sees in the data rather than independently surveyed measurements of an archaeological site. He argued that the lines appeared too regular and symmetrical, in his view, to be natural formations.

In a video discussing the map, Waring said the geometric patterns indicated something he believed had been intelligently made. He has suggested that the supposed layout resembles streets, foundations or other organised features, though those descriptions remain his interpretation of the mapping pattern rather than a finding endorsed by Seabed 2030, GEBCO or a marine-science institution.

Ancient Humans or Aliens?

Waring initially raised the possibility that the alleged formation might be connected to either ancient humans or extraterrestrials. He later said he favoured an ancient-human explanation, writing that the design looked more 'primitive and less futuristic' than he would expect from an advanced non-human civilisation.

He compared the alleged site with Atlantis, the legendary island described by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. However, Atlantis has not been established as a historical place, and Waring's comparison does not amount to evidence that the legend was based on a real civilisation.

Waring has also speculated about how such a settlement might have become submerged. He suggested that, if the lines do represent an ancient settlement, it may have been built on or close to a coral reef before an earthquake destabilised the area and caused it to sink.

That scenario remains hypothetical and depends on the unproven premise that the mapped pattern represents a settlement in the first place.

Limits of Seabed Mapping

Global bathymetric grids are valuable scientific resources, but they are not the same as a detailed archaeological survey of every part of the seafloor. Such datasets can incorporate direct ship-based sonar measurements alongside satellite-derived information and interpolated estimates, particularly in places where high-resolution survey coverage is limited.

As a result, the apparent resolution of a terrain model may differ from the resolution and density of the measurements underlying it. This does not mean that every geometric-looking feature is an error, but it does mean that a pattern visible in a broad mapping grid cannot, by itself, demonstrate the physical presence of roads, walls or buildings.

Available reports do not identify independent scientists, marine archaeologists, or geological institutions that have confirmed the lines near Cuba and Haiti as artificial structures. Nor is there any identified physical evidence, such as worked stone, pottery, tools, foundations, or underwater imagery, linking the location to an ancient human settlement.

Establishing whether the pattern has an archaeological explanation would require further investigation. That could potentially include targeted multibeam sonar work, higher-detail mapping, remotely operated vehicle footage, underwater photography and archaeological assessment of any material found at the site.

Bermuda Triangle Mythology

The alleged location has prompted comparisons with the long-running mythology surrounding the Bermuda Triangle. The loosely defined Atlantic area has been associated for decades with stories of missing ships and aircraft, as well as claims involving unusual compass readings.

However, the Bermuda Triangle is not an official geographic designation and does not have universally recognised boundaries. NOAA says there is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur more often there than in other large, heavily travelled areas of ocean.

Accounts of unusual compass behaviour are also often overstated in popular retellings. A magnetic compass can sometimes align with true north rather than magnetic north in particular locations, but this is a known navigational phenomenon rather than proof of a paranormal anomaly.

The western Atlantic can present genuine risks, including storms, rapidly changing weather, strong currents and heavily travelled maritime and air routes. Those realities offer more grounded context for the incidents that helped create the Bermuda Triangle legend.

For now, Waring's claim remains an unverified interpretation of patterns in publicly available seafloor mapping data. The apparent features have not been established as archaeological structures, and further scientific investigation would be needed before they could reasonably be described as the remains of a lost city.

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Chris Bledsoe Says “The Lady” Showed Him a Vision of an Israel-Iran Nuclear Crisis—Then the Sky Filled With Orbs

The vision, as he tells it, involved Israel and Iran exchanging missiles until the situation reached the nuclear point. Bledsoe says he saw Israel launch six nuclear weapons, four apparently heading toward Iran and two toward Syria. Then, at the most catastrophic moment of the vision, he says the entire sky suddenly filled with orbs.

What happened next is less clear, even to Bledsoe. He says everything went black and he could not see what followed, but he came away believing the orbs were intervening. Just as importantly, he says the Lady told him that this future was not fixed and “doesn’t have to happen.”

The Lady, Regulus and a Warning Bledsoe Says Goes Back Years

The Lady has been at the center of Bledsoe’s story for years. He describes her as a heavenly female being rather than an alien, and in different interviews has connected her with religious and mythological figures including Hathor. In his recent interview, he again described her simply as a beautiful “lady from heaven” who appeared in a way he associated with the wind.

Previously, Bledsoe claimed that the Lady told him that when Regulus appeared on the horizon before daylight in the gaze of the Sphinx, a “new knowledge” would come to humanity. Bledsoe has associated that astronomical language with 2026 and has treated it as one of the most important parts of his entire experience.

He has also claimed that the message attracted interest from scientists and people connected with the US government. In the new interview, Bledsoe says he was asked to put what he had been shown into writing and that the document was hand-delivered to two generals at the Pentagon. According to him, the material he wrote down included the Israel-Iran conflict he now discusses publicly.

Bledsoe says another major encounter took place around Easter 2019, during a particularly difficult period of his life. He describes being seriously ill at the time and says he had largely withdrawn from speaking publicly about his experiences.

According to Bledsoe, he walked outside near a pond at his home and saw the Lady appear in front of him. This time, he says, her message centered on suffering.

He remembers being told that “trouble was coming” and that human suffering would become too great. He says the beings connected with the phenomenon would eventually step in, help humanity and make their presence increasingly difficult to ignore. He also claims the Lady told him he would be allowed to share that presence publicly, including through cameras and television.

Bledsoe now interprets part of that 2019 warning as referring to the pandemic. According to him, the lady warned him to pay attention when Israel and Iran began directly firing missiles at one another. According to his account, she told him to “take heed” if events advanced far enough.

Bledsoe says he saw Israel being hit extremely hard by Iran. The situation became so severe, he says, that Israel responded by launching six nuclear weapons. He recalls seeing four heading toward Iran and another two going toward Syria.
Then something changed.

“The whole sky lit up with orbs,” Bledsoe says. Immediately afterward, everything in the vision went black. He does not claim to have watched what happened next, nor does he describe the nuclear weapons being visibly destroyed.

Instead, he says that although he does not know exactly what followed, he understood that “they were intervening.”

That wording is worth preserving because it is easy to exaggerate what Bledsoe actually says. He does not explicitly say extraterrestrials arrived and shot nuclear missiles out of the sky. He does not even identify the orbs as extraterrestrials. His interpretation of the phenomenon is almost the opposite of the standard alien narrative.

For Bledsoe, the appearance of the orbs represents intervention by the intelligence he has been interacting with for years. Bledsoe believes the beings want humanity to become aware of their presence before civilization reaches that stage. In his view, revealing themselves would change human hearts and minds because people would discover that the phenomenon is not what they have been taught to fear.

This idea runs through almost everything Bledsoe says about UFOs. To him, disclosure is not mainly about governments admitting that machines from another planet have entered our airspace. It is about humanity discovering that consciousness, spirituality and what previous cultures called the divine may be connected to the same mystery.

“I’m looking for the angels,” he tells the interviewer at one point. Bledsoe even speculates that the phenomenon may appear in forms influenced by human consciousness, which he uses to explain why reported UFO shapes have changed across different historical periods.

Bledsoe Still Calls the Beings Angelic

Bledsoe has claimed that NASA personnel became interested in his experiences after encounters involving mysterious orbs around astronauts. He has described enormous luminous beings emerging from or accompanying these objects, sometimes with wings, and has interpreted them as angelic rather than extraterrestrial. In one of his more extraordinary claims, he said some beings observed around astronauts were reported to be as large as 125 feet. (Full read)

He has also claimed that officials were interested in why the phenomenon appeared willing to interact with him while remaining difficult for institutions to control or understand.

Whether those claims can ultimately be independently established is another matter. But they are important for understanding Bledsoe’s worldview because he does not separate the NASA story, the orbs, the Lady and the spiritual message into different phenomena. He increasingly talks about them as pieces of the same mystery.

In the latest interview, Bledsoe says he has dealt with what he considers at least three different “levels” of the phenomenon. He describes some manifestations as beings with wings and claims to have filmed objects or creatures he considers angelic. One, he says, appeared larger than a Cessna 150 aircraft. He specifically connects such beings with the seraphim described in biblical tradition.

The Green Orbs Are Different, According to Bledsoe

Bledsoe says the phenomenon can appear in different colors, something he has discussed many times before. Our previous article covered his descriptions of orbs shifting between white, red, orange, yellow, blue and other shades. He has generally rejected simplistic claims that each color automatically represents a hostile or friendly category.

But in this interview, he gives green orbs a somewhat more specific role. Bledsoe says green orbs seem to arrive with a message and describes them as communicators. He refers to a NASA scientist who, according to Bledsoe, believed one particular green orb might have been assigned to watch over him or maintain some form of communication.

Bledsoe himself says he feels the green orb marks a transition toward “what’s next.” The next stage, he suggests, may involve something he has wanted for years: publicly capturing the Lady herself on camera.

“I feel like I’m going to film the Lady in her full-blown glory,” he says.

For someone who has already published years of orb footage, that would represent a very different kind of claim. A distant point of light can always be debated. A clearly recorded figure matching the being Bledsoe has described for more than a decade would be something else entirely.

According to him, the object moved through the forest, weaving around and behind trees while multiple high-definition cameras recorded it. He estimates that it came within roughly 40 or 50 feet of the witnesses. His son Ryan adds that during six days of filming, the crew recorded well over 100 orbs on professional cameras, sometimes capturing dozens in a single night. Yet only a small portion of that material appeared in the broadcast.

Bledsoe says he does not know why the most dramatic footage was omitted. He does not claim in this exchange to know that someone ordered it suppressed; he simply says he saw the footage himself and was disappointed that it never aired.

He Says a Frightening “Alien” Story Is Coming

He argues that the public is going to be presented with a terrifying interpretation of non-human intelligence. In his telling, people will be told that these beings are monsters, that there is no God and that humanity is essentially livestock for a powerful “Galactic Federation.”

At one point he refers to a story involving beings that “eat people” and raise humanity “like sheep.” Bledsoe says he has warned his own children about this type of narrative for roughly a decade and insists that it is false.

Bledsoe believes there is a struggle over how the phenomenon will ultimately be understood. One version presents non-human intelligence as an external threat. His version presents at least the intelligence he interacts with as spiritual, benevolent and deeply connected with consciousness.

Read also:

• David Grusch Just Blew It: He Says He Saw Photos and Videos of Alleged Dead Aliens, Including Living Beings Communicating Telepathically
• Pentagon UFO Program Scientist Says “Gifted” Chinese Children Teleported Objects Through Sealed Containers
• Philip K. Dick Said He Spent Six Hours in a “Third Reality” He Believed Was Humanity’s Lost Home

He admits that there may be many different things operating within the broader UFO mystery and says he would never claim to speak for every unexplained phenomenon. But when it comes to the orbs he personally associates with his experiences, Bledsoe is emphatic that fear is the wrong response. He wants people, as he puts it, to see the “beauty” rather than only the ugly interpretation.

During the interview, Ryan describes what he sees as a spiritual awakening already taking place. He argues that “disclosure” should not simply mean revealing aliens but uncovering something hidden about the nature of reality itself.

Ryan’s practical message is surprisingly ordinary compared with the visions, nuclear weapons and luminous beings surrounding it. He tells people interested in contact to begin with kindness, love and opening the heart. Those principles, he says, are at the center of what his father has taught him over the past twenty years.

Chris argues that the deeper challenge presented by the phenomenon is not merely technological. If consciousness is fundamental and the beings he encounters belong to a spiritual order, he believes humanity would have to reconsider some of its most basic assumptions about life. For Bledsoe, “consciousness” is ultimately another word for God.

Bledsoe says the Lady warned him years ago that human suffering would reach a dangerous level. He now believes COVID was part of that warning. He says he was also shown an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran and told to pay attention when the two began directly exchanging missiles.

His vision then moved toward an extreme outcome in which Israel launched nuclear weapons. At that moment, according to Bledsoe, the sky filled with orbs and the vision went dark. He believes the implication was intervention. But he also says the Lady told him that humanity does not have to reach that point.

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Ancient Alien Base In Black Sea Found! Its name is Eden! Yes you heard me right, UFO Sighting News, Sept 8, 2026

Date of discovery: Sept 8, 2026

Location of discovery: 90 miles out into the Black Sea

Map used:

• https://seabed2030.org/

I was searching areas of interest when I found this last night before I went to bed. This alien base has finger like structures that are over 10 miles long and 3 miles wide. Its in a location that is 90 miles from the closest land, but its built on the cliff edge deep under water where no humans would ever would ever go. This base I is over 500,000 years old and linked directly to the ancient alien race who genetically engineered the human species many times...and created a base which I believe is called Eden...thats an Anunnaki name. Ancient texts cite the location to Eden to be within 450 miles of this alien base. It is the highest detailed, largest alien base I have ever found on Earth maps and I found dozens. I also believe the base is long since abandoned until they return...which means alien tech of the gods could be in human hands of whom ever reaches this base first. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily 

 

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

A stunning discovery at Giza could shed new light on ancient Egypt

©Provided by The Daily Digest

An ancient Egyptian mystery
In 2023, Egyptian officials announced a remarkable archaeological discovery: a previously unknown corridor hidden inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. The find offers new clues about the monument’s design and could help researchers better understand how it was constructed and why its hidden spaces were created.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

At the north entrance of the pyramid
At a press conference in front of the Pyramid of Giza in early March of 2023, Egypt's Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Ahmed Issa, said that the tunnel was discovered on the north side of the pyramid.

©The Daily Digest

What does the tunnel look like?
Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in the statement that the mysterious tunnel was nine meters long or 30 feet long and more than two meters or six feet wide.

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Groundbreaking technology
Thanks to an endoscopic camera with a diameter of 5 mm, which penetrated between the stones without causing any damage, scientists were able to take pictures. These show a stone cavity with a gabled roof.

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An international scientific mission
This secret room was discovered as part of an international research project called ScanPyramids. Since 2015, German, French, Japanese and Canadian universities have been collaborating with Egyptian archaeologists to study the pyramids and learn more about the construction methods used to build the pyramids more than 4,500 years ago.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

Look through the stones
ScanPyramids' mission is to use non-invasive technologies to look through the stones to discover previously unknown internal structures within the pyramids.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

"We didn't want to dig indiscriminately"
Ground-penetrating radar and ultrasonic testing are the techniques used to discover this space through the stones. "We already knew in 2017 that there was a cavity behind it, we just didn't want to dig indiscriminately (...), so additional measurements were needed," explains research engineer Sébastien Procureur, who worked on the project.

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A space that remains mysterious
"Discovering an empty space in a pyramid is something special," explains German professor Christian Große, leader of the research team. "But the fact that this space is large enough to accommodate several people makes it even more important."

©Provided by The Daily Digest

What was it for?
According to Zahi Hawass, a famous Egyptian archaeologist, it is "very possible" that this room is "protecting something". It could even house a huge treasure: "In my opinion, it protects the true burial chamber of the Egyptian monarch Khufu," adds the Egyptologist.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

"There is not the direct connection that we could hope for"
Sébastien Procureur remains more skeptical: "That's a bit of the bad news: there isn't the hoped-for direct connection to the 'Big Void' (the so-called 'great void' at the heart of the pyramid where the pharaoh's body is said to be)". However, research is ongoing to clarify this question.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

The Great Pyramid of Khufu
The Pyramid of Khufu is the largest of the Pyramids of Giza. For thousands of years it was the tallest, most voluminous and most massive man-made structure in the world. It was built about 45 centuries ago (ca. 2551-2528 BC) to house the body of the pharaoh Khufu, the second ruler of the dynasty.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

A fascinating construction
An achievement that has always impressed and fascinated scientists. Its many architectural features are further mysteries that have not been solved until now. The researchers' only certainty today is the relatively short construction period: just 25 years.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

The existence of the 'Big Void' was discovered in 2017
The "Big Void" is one of the questions that are still unanswered about the Khufu pyramid. Its existence was discovered by the Scan Pyramids teams in 2017. It is a "cavity at least 35 meters long and about 3 meters high," as Sébastien Procureur explains in an interview for Sciences et Avenir magazine.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

What is in the 'Big Void'?
Archaeologists don't yet know what's in the 'Big Void'. Hypotheses vary, it could simply be a cavity formed during the construction of the pyramid or, what scientists hope, the real burial chamber of the pharaoh Khufu.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

The Mystery of Pharaoh Khufu
The tomb of Khufu could contain all the treasures of this ancient king, but also the corpse of the pharaoh, which has not yet been discovered.

©Provided by The Daily Digest

The research goes on
Only one thing is certain: the pyramid has not yet revealed all its secrets to us. The Scan Pyramids teams intend to deepen their research to gather new data and make more discoveries.

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Several decades ago, when I was a student at the Chouinard Art School, out of curiosity I dropped in at a local Scientology center. I attended a few introductory lectures there, one of which included a filmed interview of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. In these lectures Hubbard was touted as a genius, not only a nuclear physicist, but a brain surgeon as well.

In reality, the extent of Hubbard’s education was that he attended George Washington University to study engineering but dropped out. In the interview it was obvious the man knew nothing of the nature of the human brain, and he generally came off as a complete nincompoop. In any case, I didn’t buy any of the pseudoscientific nonsense the Scientologists were peddling. However, had I been leaning toward trying Scientology, Hubbard’s performance in the filmed interview would have driven me away. For years after witnessing the manifest ignorance Hubbard exhibited in the film, I couldn’t understand why the Scientologists would show it to prospective recruits. 

It was only a few years ago, when I was researching flying saucer cults for my book (co-authored with the geologist and paleontologist Donald Prothero) UFOs, Chemtrails and Aliens, that I stumbled onto the Scientologists’ strategy: The film effectively drove off anyone inclined to be skeptical of their claims. Those who saw the film and still bought into their message were likely to remain loyal believers even in the face of massive evidence that Hubbard was a fraud and that the theology behind this quasi-religion was more absurd than the stuff of low-grade pulp fiction. (This is not unlike those Nigerian spam scam emails filled with typos and all caps—purposefully included to drive away the skeptically-minded so as not to waste the time of the scammers.)

What led to my enlightenment was researching the Seekers, a Christian flying saucer cult that flourished in the early 1950s led by a Chicago housewife named Dorothy Martin who, using automatic writing, believed she was receiving telepathic messages from space aliens she called the Guardians, who purportedly lived on the planet Clarion. The Guardians, she claimed, had told her the United States would be destroyed by a massive earthquake and tidal wave on December 21, 1954 (the winter solstice, of course). However, the Seekers would be saved from this apocalyptic disaster by the Guardians, who would whisk them away in flying saucers to the planet Clarion.

Those likely to be skeptical when experiencing disconfirming evidence were screened out. Those who stayed … were stauncher in their support.

Of course, December 21 came and went without incident, and that should have been the end of the Seekers. But no! The cult continued to flourish, as chronicled by Leon Festinger and his colleagues in the 1956 book When Prophecy Fails.¹ Those members with less conviction left the group when the prophecy failed, but those with greater conviction stayed, strengthening the group’s resolve. Initially, they believed that their original estimation of the date of the apocalyptic event was slightly inaccurate but that the prophecy was true. Like the Scientology film, the failure of the prophecy served as a winnowing tool. Those likely to be skeptical when experiencing disconfirming evidence were screened out. Those who stayed in both cases were stauncher in their support and unlikely to be critical of the purveyors of either pseudoscience or failed prophecy. 

Pulp science fiction magazines from the 1950s capitalized on the growing popular fascination with flying saucers and alien conspiracy theories. Cover of Amazing Stories (October 1957) via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

Failed prophecy likewise did not affect the celebrity status of Hal Lindsey. In his first end-times best-seller, The Late Great Planet Earth (the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s), Lindsey predicted the Tribulation—the seven-year period leading up to the Battle of Armageddon—would begin within the generation that saw the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. According to Lindsey: 

A generation in the Bible is something like forty years. If this is a correct deduction, then within forty years or so of 1948, all these things will take place. Many scholars who have studied Bible prophecy all their lives believe that this is so.

The year 1988 came and went without any sign of the Tribulation, which logically should have thoroughly discredited Lindsey. However, as with the Seekers this failed prophecy didn’t dim Lindsey’s star. In fact, many in the fundamentalist community came up with rationalizations concerning the year 1988 to prop up Lindsey’s basic assertion. World Bible Society President F. Kenton “Doc” Beshore, for example, asserted that a biblical generation is 70-80 years, based on this passage in Psalm 90:10: “The days of our life are 70 years; and if by reason of strength they are 80 years.” With new calculations, published in Beshore’s books When Will the Rapture Take Place? and The Millennium, the Apocalypse and Armageddon, the Second Coming should happen between 2018 and 2028. Adjusting for the seven-year Tribulation period, Beshore predicted that the rapture would take place sometime before 2021.³

So, despite the failure of his prophecies, Hal Lindsey remained popular in fundamentalist circles and was a frequent guest on evangelical network radio talk shows. He continued to publish his online blog, Hal Lindsey Report, and had amassed considerable wealth from his supposedly non-profit ministry when he died at age 95 in 2024. Reportedly, between 2013 and 2023, Hal and his wife JoLynne Lindsey took in $18.5 million from the Hal Lindsey Website Ministries, but “spent only $1,105,360 in charitable assistance to groups and individuals.”⁴ As with the Seekers, Lindsey’s prophetic failures merely served as a winnowing process, excluding those inclined to be to any degree skeptical. 

It appears the more absurd the claim, or the more outrageous the demand, the more effective it is as a winnowing tool.

A similar winnowing process took place among the Branch Davidians when David Koresh announced that all the women in the world—and particularly all those within his compound outside Waco, Texas—belonged to him.⁵ Those men unwilling to give up their wives at Koresh’s demand, along with those women unwilling to be part of his harem, left the cult. Those who remained were intensely loyal to Koresh. 

It appears the more absurd the claim, or the more outrageous the demand, the more effective it is as a winnowing tool. One such absurd claim recently caught my eye, because it fit the narrative trope of alien abductions I had researched for UFOs, Chemtrails and Aliens: 

Katie Souza, whose show Healing Your Soul airs on Trinity Broadcasting Network and Faith Broadcasting Network, told her YouTube channel Friday she was a child victim of an extraterrestrial conspiracy to create alien-human hybrids. “I was visited when I was a young girl and aliens—alien beings—implanted an interdimensional device in me that harvested my eggs over my lifetime,” said Souza, 63. “This device obviously was harvesting them right when they would mature so that they could then … try to create a hybrid child.” Souza, who founded a popular prison ministry in 2006 after her own release from prison, said thousands of other women have had this happen to them too, though many remain unaware. She said alien implantation is a cause of infertility, as well as other mysterious illnesses and unexplainable anger.

Since claims of alien abduction often come from people with a New Age spiritual orientation, they tend to be dismissed by evangelical Christians. However, evangelicals have an explanation for alien abduction and alien implantation stories that fits their own mythology: Those posing as extraterrestrials are in fact demons, out to deceive humans and turn them away from Christianity. Souza’s view of the aliens she claims stole her eggs is one variant of this explanation: 

Souza offers a spiritual interpretation. She says extraterrestrials exist but are not physical creatures that evolved in another solar system. Instead, they are fallen angels warring against God’s plan of redemption … Souza connects her story and contemporary stories about flying saucers to the “sons of God” mentioned in Genesis 6. The Bible passage says they “went to the daughters of humans and had children by them,” called the Nephilim.

The biblical passage to which Souza alludes is Genesis 6:1-4 (New International Version): 

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim⁸ were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. 

The predominant belief among evangelical and fundamentalist religious authorities is that UFOs are demonic apparitions, rather than actual extraterrestrial aliens.

It is tempting to dismiss Souza’s claims as patently absurd and to relegate her to the lunatic fringe. However, her popularity is such that her net worth is said to be upwards of $5 million.⁹ Nor is her assertion that extraterrestrial aliens are actually fallen angels in disguise a fringe belief. In fact, the predominant belief among evangelical and fundamentalist religious authorities is that UFOs are demonic apparitions, rather than actual extraterrestrial aliens. Hal Lindsey folded this trope into his end-times scenario. Another proponent of this mythology-based theory is none other than U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance: 

Promoting his new book about his conversion to Catholicism, Vance told right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson that he came into office “obsessed” with learning the truth about UFOs. But he also said his faith led him to suspect that scientific and government observers have historically misidentified beings from other dimensions. “I don’t think they’re aliens; I think they’re demons,” Vance said.¹¹ “When I hear about, sort of, extra-natural phenomenon—that’s where I go to is the Christian understanding that, you know, there’s a lotta good out there, but there’s also some evil out there.” 

Vance returned to the idea last month in a conversation with podcaster Joe Rogan. “If we’re talking about an extraterrestrial being that is humanlike but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing human beings, you can call it an alien if you want, but I think there’s a lot of historical precedent to call that a demon,” the vice president said.

Considering that someone with the degree of credibility of the Vice President of the United States can believe that demons are trying to seduce gullible people by posing as extraterrestrial beings, perhaps Souza’s claim that aliens stole her eggs could be viewed as a mere eccentricity on the part of someone whose views are otherwise well within the spectrum of Christian belief. As such her popularity and monetary success might not require her followers to accept anything otherwise absurd. Thus, as a reformed criminal who was involved in manufacturing and trafficking methamphetamine and who now has a prison ministry, she might be reasonably worthy of a devoted following. Thus, her supporters might simply overlook her one quirk. That, however, is not the case. Her belief that aliens harvested her eggs is not an isolated oddity: 

Souza then shifted into faith healing and deliverance, speaking more and more frequently, as time went on, about spiritual warfare and generational curses. Her life story has also grown darker as time has gone on. In 2025, for example, she told Christian podcaster Dan Duval that her grandmother was sexually assaulted by a Nazi officer during World War II.¹³ She said that she had to break a family curse connected to Adolf Hitler’s attempt to harness the power of a Satanic altar. She added that another family member was a sex trafficker with the Illuminati, a group that some conspiracy theorists believe controls major world events. 

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Souza said. “You wonder why you’re fighting stuff your whole life? Because people are controlled by demons and they come in when you’re a child and submit you to that kind of behavior, that demonic behavior.” Souza has also made statements about believing in time travel, astral projection and werewolves. More recently, she has talked about a “spirit spouse”trying to take her from her husband, Robert Souza.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562). Bruegel’s depiction of cosmic “spiritual warfare,” a biblical concept modern evangelicals often use to reframe UFOs as demonic forces. (Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) 

One bridge from orthodox Christian belief into the absurdities Souza claims to espouse could be the Christian concept of spiritual warfare, the idea believers are involved in a war not just against unbelievers, but against demonic forces as well. In the New Testament this concept is most specifically spelled out in martial language in the Pauline epistle to the church in Ephesus (Ephesians 6:10-17): 

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 

The believer’s metaphysical armor would seem to derive from the Wisdom of Solomon, from the Septuagint (LXX), the Jewish scriptures translated into Greek (Wis. 5:17-19): 

The Lord will take his zeal as his whole armor and will arm all creation to repel his enemies; he will put on righteousness as a breastplate and wear impartial justice as a helmet; he will take holiness as an invincible shield. 

The Wisdom of Solomon is considered apocryphal by Protestants and Jews and is excluded from the Masoretic Text (MT), the official Jewish scriptures, as well as from the Protestant Old Testament, which is based on the MT. Likewise, the epistle to the Ephesians is seen by many scholars as deutero-Pauline, i.e. likely written in Paul’s name by someone other than Paul. However, this isn’t the only scriptural underpinning for the curious concept of spiritual warfare. The genuinely Pauline epistle, 2 Corinthians, states (2 Cor. 10:3-5): 

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. 

Such warfare terminology likely reflects the siege mentality of first century Christians, who were genuinely under threat in the hostile climate of the Roman Empire. 

The absurdity of the narrative screens out the rational and the skeptical, and tragically snares the credulous.

Many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in America today, however, also see themselves as beset by a secular system full of threats and seductions, including not only agnostics and atheists but alternate religions as well. Here is fundamentalist minister and lecturer John MacArthur on the message above from 2 Corinthians: 

Paul is describing how the church must respond to false religion, worldly philosophies, psychologies, theories, and every other ideological fortress that stands in opposition to the truth of the gospel. Spiritual warfare is a battle against all anti-God ideas. He’s calling believers to fight against the religions of demons.

The demons MacArthur is referring to in the quote above are not limited to those of us skeptical of religion, but any other religion as well: 

Such a conclusion is incompatible with the view of those who contend that somehow Hindus, Buddhists, and people of all other religions and worldviews can find their way to God through intuition, natural reason, and spiritual inclinations. If Paul is correct—and he is—those other faiths don’t present alternative avenues to heaven, nor does human reason present an alternate means of obtaining grace. The Apostle bluntly says that those pursuits can’t lead people to God because they’re actually demon worship. And while devotees of other religions wouldn’t self-identify as demon worshipers, demons are nonetheless behind all false religion and at work in all false systems. Satan is the father of lies who masquerades as an angel of light, and his ministers disguise themselves as angels of light and bearers of the truth (2 Corinthians 11:13-15)

The idea that Satan’s servants “disguise themselves as angels of light and bearers of truth” dovetails neatly with the belief on the part evangelical Christians that those who report encounters with extraterrestrials are being deceived by demons. Also, as noted by the late Carl Sagan in his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World, forced sexual unions between demons and mortal women bear a striking resemblance to alien abduction narratives: 

There are no spaceships in these stories. But most of the elements of the alien abduction account are present, including sexually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls, communicate telepathically and perform breeding experiments on the human species.

Speaking of sleep paralysis and the hypnagogic state, when the brain is awake, but signals from it to the motor nerves are blocked, Sagan noted other aspects of alien abduction narratives reminiscent of Katie Souza’s belief that aliens had stolen her eggs: “If you are a man, they may take sperm samples; if you are a woman, they may remove ova or fetuses or implant sperm.”¹⁹

Thus, via the physiological ramp of sleep paralysis and the hypnagogic state, the concept of spiritual warfare slides easily into Katie Souza’s narrative of aliens harvesting her eggs. Meanwhile the absurdity of the narrative screens out the rational and the skeptical, and tragically snares the credulous.

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{ https://www.skeptic.com/articles/ }

Mysterious seven-mile 'sunken city' spotted near the Bermuda Triangle

• READ MORE: I bled to death. As an atheist, I expected oblivion... but I entered the afterlife for six minutes and saw proof of what God is REALLY like. Everything on Earth is fake
  

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

A mysterious pattern spotted in seafloor data has sparked claims that a ‘sunken city’ may be hiding near the Bermuda Triangle.

Self-described UFO researcher Scott C Waring identified the shapes near Cuba and Haiti, arguing they could be the remains of a city constructed by ancient humans.

Waring made the purported discovery using an online map from the Seabed 2030 project, a global initiative seeking to map the entire ocean floor by the end of the decade.

The seafloor data shows a series of faint, roughly parallel and intersecting lines across the seabed west of the island.

He estimated that the apparent site stretches seven or eight miles in one direction and approximately three miles in the other.

‘This new map is extraordinary,’ Waring said in a YouTube video highlighting the area. ‘In this one location, there is an ancient sunken city.

‘There are a lot of geometric shapes, which indicate there is something down here that was intelligently made,’ he added.

However, no archaeologists or marine scientists have examined the site or confirmed that the patterns represent physical, human-made structures.

Self-described UFO researcher Scott C Waring identified the shapes near Cuba and Haiti (left of the island), arguing they could be the remains of a city constructed by ancient humans

Waring said the scale and regularity of the shapes convinced him that they were unlikely to have formed naturally.

He considered whether the supposed builders were humans or visitors from another world.

‘Now, is it ancient alien or is it ancient humans?’ Waring asked on his site, UFO Sightings Daily. ‘That’s the big question.’

He ultimately favored a lost human civilization, arguing: ‘I would probably go with ancient humans because the geometric design looks more primitive and less futuristic to me.'

Waring suggested the shapes could mark the remains of a settlement resembling Atlantis, the legendary civilization said to have disappeared beneath the sea.

‘This could be a long-lost city, long ago like Atlantis or something, built on the coral reef of an island area,’ he said.

He speculated that a powerful earthquake may have destabilized the island, causing the reef and everything constructed upon it to collapse into the ocean.

‘An earthquake just could have rattled it so much that coral could have just collapsed on itself and the whole island could have sunk,’ Waring explained.

The 'sunken city' is described as lying near the Bermuda Triangle, the loosely defined region of the Atlantic associated with decades of stories about vanishing ships, missing aircraft and unexplained compass behavior

Waring made the purported discovery using an online map from the Seabed 2030 project, a global initiative seeking to map the entire ocean floor by the end of the decade

However, he acknowledged that the scenario was only his own theory and presented no geological or archaeological evidence showing that an island once existed at the site.

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•  I was a church leader. There are secret Bible clues about alien life and I have been threatened for exposing them before... but people must be ready 

‘This is just my hypothesis, my guess,’ he said.

Waring placed the anomaly in the waters near Cuba and Haiti, close to the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas.

He also described it as lying near the Bermuda Triangle, the loosely defined region of the Atlantic associated with decades of stories about vanishing ships, missing aircraft and unexplained compass behavior.

Waring claimed alleged magnetic anomalies in the area could cause vessels to lose their bearings or even suffer engine failures.

However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says there is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur more frequently within the Bermuda Triangle than in any other heavily traveled section of ocean.

The researcher noted that the patterns were not visible in the area when using Google Earth (pictured)

The agency notes that severe storms, rapid weather changes caused by the Gulf Stream, shallow waters and human error can explain many of the incidents attributed to the supposed phenomenon. 

Waring also questioned why the same patterns were not visible on Google Earth, alleging that the platform had concealed the area beneath a layer of smoothed blue imagery.

‘Google Earth shows nothing there at all,’ he said. ‘They use a smoothing program, cover it in blue and you get to see nothing.’

There is no evidence that Google deliberately concealed anything at the location.

Maps of the ocean floor are assembled from information of varying quality and resolution, including direct sonar measurements, satellite observations and computer-generated estimates used to fill enormous gaps between surveys.

Combining those sources can produce straight lines, grids and other apparently geometric patterns that do not necessarily represent genuine objects on the seabed.

Confirming a lost settlement would require detailed sonar surveys, underwater photographs and physical evidence such as worked stone, pottery, tools or other artifacts.

Until such an investigation is conducted, the ‘city’ remains an interpretation of patterns within mapping data rather than a verified archaeological discovery.

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

Cows found mutilated and drained of every drop of blood across remote Oregon... and baffled deputy has a chilling theory

• WARNING - GRAPHIC CONTENT 

By ROB WAUGH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Cattle are being found dead across remote stretches of Oregon with their blood apparently drained and their udders, tongues or genitals removed through clean, scalpel-like cuts.

There are no signs of a struggle, no tracks surrounding the carcasses and none of the torn flesh or tooth marks normally left by predators.

More than 10,000 cattle mutilations are estimated to have been reported across the US over the past half-century, spawning theories involving cults, secret government experiments, UFOs and mythical creatures such as the chupacabra.

Now a new documentary, Not One Drop of Blood, available to stream this week on Amazon Prime Video, investigates the enduring phenomenon and a recent cluster of cases in Oregon's remote Harney County.

The mystery intensified in February 2021, when one mutilated cow was discovered on ranch land before six more were found across the county with body parts missing and reportedly no blood remaining.

One local law enforcement officer admits in the film that the baffling evidence has pushed even him toward an extraordinary explanation: 'My personal opinion, it's aliens.'

Authorities have found nothing pointing to predators, cattle thieves or poisonous plants, while local veterinarians said the wounds resembled scalpel cuts rather than animal bites.

Yet filmmakers Jackson Devereux and Lachlan Hinton say the absence of answers has exposed a deeper crisis confronting overstretched authorities and a ranching community already fighting to preserve its way of life.

Cattle are being found dead across remote stretches of Oregon with their blood apparently drained and their udders, tongues or genitals removed through clean, scalpel-like cuts

Harney County is the ninth-largest county in the US by area, according to Devereux, and its cattle outnumber its people by approximately 14 to one. 

Its immense, isolated ranches can take officers hours to reach, giving investigators little hope of preserving evidence when another carcass is reported.

Devereux, an Australian filmmaker based in New York, heard about the mutilations from friends in a touring rock band who caught an Oregon radio report about six dead cattle.

He and Hinton contacted journalist Anna King, who had reported on the cases and joined the documentary as a producer. They interviewed police, ranchers, agricultural workers, young residents and Indigenous people.

'It just felt very cinematic and larger than just the simple viral element of the mystery,' Devereux said. 'It's these sprawling landscapes that kind of have this mystery that looms over them.'

The documentary focuses on descriptions repeated across numerous cases: Animals appear to have simply collapsed, leaving no disturbed dirt or hoof marks indicating a violent struggle. Their tongues, udders or reproductive organs are missing, yet there is none of the ragged damage expected from scavengers.

Rancher Clint Weaver initially believed one dead bull had been killed while fighting another animal.

'First, we thought it was just the bulls fighting, so we kind of chalked that up to a death,' Weaver said.

'And then we found another one. And then we started looking at them a lot closer, and noticed that their testicles and their reproductive organs were gone. Then we drove up the creek and found the rest of them.'

'And it was the same: the testicles, reproductive organs, sometimes the tongues were gone. And then we knew something was going on, so then we called the law enforcement in.'

More than 10,000 cattle mutilations are estimated to have been reported across the US over the past half-century, spawning theories involving cults, secret government experiments, UFOs and mythical creatures such as the chupacabra

Now a new documentary, Not One Drop of Blood, available to stream this week on Amazon Prime Video, investigates the enduring phenomenon and a recent cluster of cases in Oregon's remote Harney County 

The apparent absence of blood from the animals is one of the most perplexing details and inspired the documentary's title.

Investigators found no tracks or evidence that the cattle had eaten a deadly plant, Devereux said. Local veterinarians also rejected predator attacks as an explanation because an animal biting and tearing at flesh would leave visibly different damage.

'This looks like a scalpel,' Devereux said of the wounds. 'It's very precise.'

He initially suspected that natural causes or insects could explain the deaths. But ranchers monitor their cattle daily and generally recognize signs that an animal is sick, he said, leaving him increasingly uncertain as each potential explanation encountered another conflicting detail.

One local law enforcement officer admits in the film that the baffling evidence has pushed even him toward an extraordinary explanation: 'My personal opinion, it's aliens' 

The film explores a spate of mutilations in Harney, Oregon

Similar mutilations have been reported across the US, Canada and Mexico since the late 1960s. Elk and deer have also reportedly been found with comparable injuries.

The phenomenon has developed what Devereux described as a cult-like following within the paranormal community. Linda Moulton Howe's 1980 documentary Strange Harvest famously explored claims that extraterrestrials were responsible.

Many Harney County residents nevertheless suspect human attackers. Their theories include people using poison darts to incapacitate cattle before draining their blood and removing organs for ritualistic or illicit purposes, although investigators have uncovered no evidence substantiating those ideas.

Devereux believes UFO and paranormal theories persist because residents and investigators have spent approximately 50 years confronting the same disturbing details without finding a conventional answer.

Harney County Sheriff's Department officer Matt Ellibee said he and the sheriff had considered explanations involving devil worshippers and the occult. But the seemingly impossible circumstances left him contemplating something even more extraordinary.

'My personal opinion, it's aliens,' Ellibee said. 'I don't know how else to explain it.

'Do I believe in aliens? I don't know. I don't believe we're the only intelligent species in our universe. But unless there's some super secret squirrel black op group out there able to do this stuff, I don't know what else it'd be.'

He questioned whether an unknown clandestine operation could possess the ability to kill and mutilate the animals without leaving evidence, adding: 'Unless there's some super secret squirrel black op group out there able to do this stuff, I don't know what else it'd be.'

Authorities have found nothing pointing to predators, cattle thieves or poisonous plants, while local veterinarians said the wounds resembled scalpel cuts rather than animal bites

The filmmakers found sheriff's office reports concerning cattle mutilations dating to the 1970s. Devereux said their descriptions were 'pretty much word for word' the same as reports being written more than 50 years later.

Part of the problem is practical. Officers may travel two hours to examine a new case only to find no tracks, physical evidence or obvious cause of death. They must then turn their attention to more immediate crimes, leaving the cattle investigation unresolved until another animal is found.

Attempts to coordinate investigations among different counties and agencies have also failed to produce a conclusive explanation.

The documentary connects the mystery with a ranching culture that Devereux believes is approaching a crossroads. Families work around the clock across enormous properties while questioning whether younger generations, now connected to life outside the county through the internet, will continue operating the ranches.

The directors approached the project skeptically, but Devereux admitted that the landscape could make even unlikely explanations feel possible.

'You stop, and you look around, and you can't see anything but cow's eyes and pitch black in the sky,' he said. 'At that point in time, you feel anything could happen out there in these landscapes.'

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

Ancient Alien City Found Under Ocean Near Cuba/Haiti. Is It Aliens Or Is It Humans? New Discovery. UFO UAP Sighting News

Date of discovery: Sept 7, 2026

Location of discovery: Off Cuba and Haiti Coast

Map used: 

• https://seabed2030.org/

Now I'm trying to record as many discoveries I make on this map before the public access is taken away. Yes, these discoveries will cause a political tidal wave and as always, the tools or often URLs will be deleted. Giving access to only businesses that pay. 

 

I found this underwater ancient city off the coast of Cuba today. The city looks ancient and made by early humans, but I can't discount the fact that it could be ancient aliens that built it. I believe the city was made along the edge of the island that collapsed during an earthquake, causing 95% of the island to become submerged. The only way to know for sure if its alien or not...is to go there and record close up video of the ancient structure, take samples and find out what its made from, doorway sizes tend to tell how tall the people were, also any ancient artifacts that might be left behind. There were many ancient alien civilizations here on Earth before humans were created...by aliens as an experiment to learn their own early history which they lost long ago. 

 

• PS, I found even larger structures in much higher detail in a new location. Video coming soon. Its the best of these last three discoveries. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily

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

War to hit US soil next year claims China's Nostradamus... here are his five terrifying 2027 predictions

• MORE: Nostradamus' chilling 2026 prophecy resurfaces as US-Iran war escalates
  

By CHRIS MELORE, US DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR

A professor dubbed 'China's Nostradamus' has made a set of chilling predictions for 2027, which end with unrest in the US boiling to the point of a civil war. 

Jiang Xueqin, a Chinese-Canadian educator and political commentator, earned the nickname after making a series of geopolitical predictions that supporters say later came true. 

Among them were accurately predicting Donald Trump's 2024 election win and that the US and Israel would become involved in a conflict with Iran during his second term in office.

Now, Jiang has revealed a disturbing series of events which he believes will start next year stemming from the war in Iran, and escalating political tensions within America.

Jiang told podcast host Jack Neel: 'All the ingredients for civil war should already be in place. Nationwide discontent and riots and protests and insurgencies. The global economy should have collapsed by 2027.'

Specifically, he warned that the situation in Iran would crumble into a full-scale war, requiring a US ground invasion that locks the nation into the Middle East conflict for possibly ten more years.

Next, Jiang said the need for ground troops in Iran would lead to the US government bringing back a national draft, requiring men as young as 18 to serve in the military.

Jiang predicted that this would lead to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) becoming more powerful in every major city, followed by an economic collapse in the US and, eventually, mass riots and protests which could devolve into civil war.

Pictured: Protesters seen during riot in Los Angeles in 2025. Jiang Xueqin has predicted that civil unrest in the US would lead to the point of civil war in 2027 (File Image)

Donald Trump has ordered a fresh wave of ballistic missile strikes against Iran after US embassies across the Middle East issued new security warnings to Americans in the region

Unlike psychics and clairvoyants, Jiang said he is able to accurately predict future events using three main tools, including treating countries and leaders like poker players.

He asks what each one thinks 'winning' looks like, then guesses their next move from that goal.

The teacher said he then compared today's events with old disasters that look similar. If a confident empire once got stuck in a long war, he uses that pattern as a warning, not as proof.

From there, Jiang said he watches what the most driven groups already believe must happen. If religious or political players believe in biblical end times prophecies, he assumes they will act as if that ending is an actual plan.

Trump, Jiang claims, believes God gave him a mission to save America. Winning a war in Iran is optional. The real goal would be to keep power and secure a third presidential term in 2028.

'I think this war between United States and Iran will only escalate. There can be no offramp. You'll see a ground invasion of Iran, which case America's going to be stuck there four years, I think, is optimistic. Possibly ten, 20 years,' Jiang said during the April 2026 podcast.

'By 2027, you should have the framework for national draft already in place. ICE will be much more powerful than people imagine. They want to deploy National Guard to all major cities in America because they're preparing for economic collapse.'

'He's got no ego in this thing. His job is to get a third term so that he can save America,' he added when explaining President Trump's alleged motivations in Iran.

Jiang claimed the war in Iran would lead to global economic collapse in 2027, triggered by the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz 

Jiang Xueqin predicted that the war in Iran would eventually led to the US bringing back the national draft and a ground war in the Middle East

Regarding Jiang's fourth prediction of an economic collapse, he explained that continuous shutdowns of the Strait of Hormuz could be the trigger that wrecks the global economy.

He noted that cheap energy and fast shipping through this key waterway hold the global financial system up.

Jiang has already seen parts of this prediction come true in 2026, with shutdowns of the Strait during the US bombing campaign causing prices on oil, gas and fertilizer to skyrocket.

The increases in gas and fertilizer prices had a devastating trickle-down effect on other goods, including food, with Jiang warning that another shutdown in 2027 could destabilize the world.

'If America loses this war, it means the collapse of the American economy,' he warned.

As for his final prediction of a second US civil war, the man called 'China's Nostradamus' explained that he did not foresee two armies fighting on US soil.

Instead, he predicted the US would see unrest everywhere, including protests, riots, low-level fighting and local insurgencies - mainly in response to a growing presence of ICE and the National Guard in all major cities.

By 2030, Jiang warned that he foresaw a larger fight between 'globalists' and 'nationalists' escalating in both the US and Europe.

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The clues in human DNA that prove life had an intelligent creator, according to a medical scientist

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

By ROB WAUGH

A medical scientist has claimed that the intricate code embedded in human DNA is compelling evidence that life had an intelligent creator.

Dr Orson Wedgwood, a New Zealand-based healthcare researcher, argues that DNA could not have emerged randomly in puddles or undersea vents on early Earth, calling its spontaneous formation so improbable that it is effectively impossible.

Wedgwood believes the genetic system contains abstract instructions that nature has no known mechanism for creating unaided.

'It's a language, and this does provide evidence for intelligence,' he told the Daily Mail in his first exclusive newspaper interview.

He also pointed to the protective barriers that hold cells together, arguing that explaining their appearance exposes a fundamental gap in accounts of how life began.

However, Wedgwood's case rests on his interpretation of DNA's complexity, rather than experimental evidence demonstrating an intelligent creator.

Although scientists have not fully explained how life began, that unresolved question does not itself prove that natural processes could not have produced it.

Researchers are investigating alternatives to the sudden appearance of complete cells, including the RNA World hypothesis, which proposes that simpler systems preceded DNA.

A medical scientist has claimed that the intricate code embedded in human DNA is compelling evidence that life had an intelligent creator

Wedgwood sets out his challenge in DNA: The Elephant in the Lab, one of his five books. He holds a PhD in Organic Medicinal Chemistry and develops drugs intended to save lives.

His doctoral work involved designing drugs that interfered with DNA replication and translation, including laboratory work on nucleosides and related compounds used in medicines. 

That experience prompted his interest in the biochemical relationship between genetic instructions and proteins.

He began studying life's origins more closely during a period when his Christian faith was challenged. After reviewing research, he concluded that scientists had identified reactions producing certain starting materials without explaining how those ingredients became a functioning living system.

'There are three types of insurmountable hurdle - chemical, statistical and conceptual,' he said. 

The statistical problem, he argued, concerns the extraordinary improbability of amino acids assembling into a functional protein without direction.

His conceptual objection goes further, as modern cells depend on DNA to provide instructions for proteins, while proteins help copy and translate those instructions. 

Wedgwood questioned how that interdependent arrangement could have arisen without intelligence.

Dr Orson Wedgwood, a New Zealand-based healthcare researcher, argues that DNA could not have emerged randomly in puddles or undersea vents on early Earth, calling its spontaneous formation so improbable that it is effectively impossible 

'You need a barrier around a cell for the contents to stay together and function as a unit,' he said. 

In his view, part of a wall would provide no useful protection, yet instructions for a complete barrier would require a substantial genetic sequence.

Researchers have proposed that oily bubbles or chambers in rocks could have contained early chemical systems. 

Wedgwood rejects these as substitutes that leave the origin of a cell's own protective barrier unexplained.

He also argued that an existing enclosure would remove the pressure for such a system to develop its own boundary. 

These are objections he raised to proposed pathways, however, rather than experimental demonstrations that every natural pathway is impossible.

The RNA World hypothesis addresses a different starting point from the complex machinery of present-day cells. 

Scientists investigating it propose that simpler RNA-based systems could have bridged the transition from non-living chemistry to early life.

Under that hypothesis, DNA and its associated machinery would not need to appear fully formed at the outset. 

Research instead explores how molecular systems could copy information and undergo evolutionary change before modern cells existed.

Dr Orson Wedgwood told the Daily Mail that his interest was piqued as he did a PhD in designing drugs that interfered with DNA replication 

A 2024 paper from Gerald Joyce's laboratory, titled RNA-Catalyzed Evolution of Catalytic RNA, showed that an RNA enzyme could copy functional RNA in a way that might enable evolution at the molecular scale.

That work did not recreate the entire origin of life, but it provided experimental results relevant to a proposed natural pathway. Wedgwood's dissatisfaction with such progress does not establish that the remaining steps require a designer.

He believes the time available presents another difficulty. Using a timeline in which Earth became suitable for life around four billion years ago and cellular life appeared shortly afterward, he argues that an organized system emerged within a narrow window.

To explain the distinction between unlikely and impossible, he imagines a cow traveling from a field near a reader's home to New Zealand, through events beginning with an open gate.

'It is ludicrous, but you can conceive how it could happen,' he said.

The deeper gaps in origin-of-life explanations are more like expecting the cow to jump over the moon, he argues. The analogy expresses his assessment of those gaps; it does not test whether proposed chemical pathways could work.

Wedgwood also points to the persistence of the relationship between DNA and proteins, describing the genetic system as a 'frozen accident.' He argues that 'it's extremely hard to change even one component within that system.'

Wedgwood sets out his challenge in DNA: The Elephant in the Lab, one of his five books

In his account, the system appeared early and retained its fundamental mechanics while additional genetic instructions allowed increasingly complex organisms to develop. 

He interprets that continuity as further reason to doubt an undirected origin.

His book was partly inspired by comments made in 2017 by former astronaut Julie Payette, then Canada's Governor General. She questioned why people were still debating divine intervention versus natural origins, in remarks Wedgwood regarded as mocking people who disagreed.

Justin Trudeau, then prime minister, praised her defense of science and truth. Wedgwood said the exchange encouraged him to investigate what he considered unresolved questions behind that confidence.

He claims some Christian scientists privately share his doubts but avoid discussing them publicly because 'their career depends on keeping quiet.' His account of those conversations does not supply scientific validation for his conclusions.

The broader mystery has prompted other ideas, including Francis Crick's suggestion that extraterrestrials might have deliberately seeded Earth with life, known as directed panspermia. That proposal concerns how life arrived and does not, by itself, explain its ultimate origin.

'Every other code is a result directly of intelligence, and that sort of speaks to the evidence of perhaps an intelligent originator,' Wedgwood said.

But comparing DNA with codes devised by people does not demonstrate that biological information must arise in the same way as human language.

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September #16 & #17 MUFON eNewsletter 👽JULY 2026 sightings report 

COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD UNITED STATES 314 CANADA 24 UNITED KINGDOM 21 FRANCE 5 ITALY 3 TURKEY 3 BRAZIL 3 THAILAND 3 AUSTRALIA 3 HUNGARY 2 MEXICO 2 INDIA 2 NEW ZEALAND 2 JAPAN 2 CROATIA 1 IRELAND 1 PORTUGAL 1 TUNISIA 1 AUSTRIA 1 LIBYAN ARAB JAMAHIRIYA 1 SPAIN 1 CHILE 1 NETHERLANDS 1 SYRIA 1 CUBA 1 PUERTO RICO 1 GERMANY 1 SRI LANKA 1 VIRGIN ISLANDS, U.S. 1 CHINA 1 CZECH REPUBLIC 1 SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO 1 GREECE 1 MOROCCO 1 SWITZERLAND 1   TOTAL: 410 SHAPE Circle 72 Sphere 58 Unknown 32 Triangle 28 Other 24 Oval 2 1 Disc 20 Square/Rectangular 17 Star-like 14 Cylinder 11 Cigar 10 Fireball 10 Diamond 9 N/A 7 Tic Tac 6 Boomerang 5 Chevron 4 Egg 3 Bullet/Missile 3 Flash 3 Teardrop 2 Blimp 2 Cone 1 STATES OF THE U.S.A. California 32 Florida 25 Texas 20 New York 16 Michigan 14 Missouri 13 Arizona 13 Pennsylvania 11 Washington 10 Indiana 9 New Jersey 8 Tennessee 8 North Carolina 8 Georgia 8 Nevada 7 Oregon 7 Illinois 7 Colorado 7 Minnesota 7 Utah 7 Oklahoma 7 Kentucky 6 Alabama 6 Ohio 6 Virginia 6 Maryland 5 Massachusetts 5 New Mexico 5 South Carolina 4 Wisconsin 3 Wyoming 3 Delaware 3 Arkansas 2 New Hampshire 2 Connecticut 2 Kansas 2 Montana 2 Nebraska 2 Idaho 1 Iowa 1 Mississippi 1 Louisiana 1 Hawaii 1 Maine 1 DISTANCE < 100 ft 64 101-500 ft 35 501 ft - 1 Mile 67 Over 1 Mile 80 Unknown 36 NO VALUE 15 ERT Most impressively there were 11 Landings, Hovering, or Takeoffs reported, and 23 Entities observed.

{ https://mufon.com/ }

ILLUSTRATIVE RECONSTRUCTION // NOT EVIDENCE

Overview

A recent discussion by astrophysicist and science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder has pushed back on claims that unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, seen by federal agents in 2023 might be evidence of warp drive technology. The debate centers on a pre-print paper by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb and co-author Shaun David Brocus Fell, which argues that a puzzling atmospheric event could be consistent with a small, spacetime-distorting object moving through Earth’s atmosphere. Hossenfelder’s response was blunt: she rated the idea “8 out of 10” on her “bullshit meter,” underscoring her skepticism while acknowledging that the underlying incident remains unexplained.

The 2023 “Orbs Launching Orbs” Case

The event at the center of the debate was reported by the Pentagon under the label “Orbs Launching Orbs.” In October 2023, six federal agents in the western United States said they observed a large orange glowing orb that appeared to release clusters of smaller red orbs before disappearing. The pattern reportedly repeated over two nights. According to the official account summarized in the discussion, the objects moved silently, changed altitude, and remained stationary for hours, prompting investigators to rule out several conventional explanations, including drones, weather-related phenomena such as ball lightning, and known military systems like infrared weapons. While the case drew attention in UFO and UAP circles, the available reporting has not provided a definitive identification.

Loeb’s Warp Drive Hypothesis

In a pre-print paper titled “Radiative Signatures from Warp Drives Traveling Through the Earth’s Atmosphere,” Loeb and Fell proposed a highly unconventional explanation: the objects might have been micrometer-scale “spacetime bubbles.” The theory draws on concepts from Einstein’s General Relativity, in which a warp drive would not necessarily move an object through space in the usual sense, but instead contract spacetime in front of it and expand it behind it. Loeb’s calculations suggest that a larger warp drive, if moving at a significant fraction of light speed, would generate an enormous shockwave, ionize the surrounding air into plasma, and emit intense X-rays and gamma rays—effects that would be difficult to miss. To match the modest glow described by the agents, Loeb argues the bubbles would have to be extraordinarily small and moving only a few times faster than the speed of sound.

Scientific Critique and Open Questions

Hossenfelder’s criticism is that the visual appearance of an object in the atmosphere depends primarily on its size, speed, and interaction with air, not on its propulsion system. In other words, a glow does not uniquely indicate a warp drive. She also points to deeper theoretical problems, including momentum conservation: even if spacetime could be manipulated, a craft would still need to account for how it accelerates without violating physical laws. Another major obstacle is the requirement for negative energy, a key ingredient in many warp drive models that remains purely theoretical and has never been observed in nature. In her view, the warp-bubble concept functions more like a “superfluous decoration” than a necessary explanation for the sightings.

Broader Context

The exchange highlights a familiar tension in UAP research: the gap between genuine anomalies and speculative physics. Hossenfelder notes that the U.S. military has shown real interest in studying hyperdrives and related concepts, but she says Loeb’s attempt to connect the 2023 sightings to warp technology is highly speculative and unsupported by direct evidence. For now, the Pentagon case remains unresolved, and the warp drive explanation remains at the margins of scientific plausibility rather than the center of the investigation.

{ https://usubjects.com/ }

'Long-Running Government Coverup': Expert Warns That 'Disclosure Day' Alien Film Highlights Truth

UFO expert Joshua Golembeske says Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day reflects a long-running government coverup backed by declassified files and sworn testimony

Disclosure Day and the documents align, says UFO expert, pointing to secret reverse engineering and hidden crash retrievals

PHOTO Jim Bowditch/Wikimedia Commons

A UFO researcher has argued that Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day echoes allegations of a long-running government UAP cover-up, pointing to declassified records and testimony before Congress.

The US government began releasing batches of previously classified UAP records in May, with further tranches released in the months that followed. The releases include historical UAP records, some dating to the 1940s, as well as more recent incident material.

The timing has fuelled online speculation about whether Hollywood and Washington are moving in step, although the article has found no evidence establishing such coordination.

How Disclosure Day Mirrors Official Claims

Joshua Golembeske, a documentary filmmaker and UFO researcher, told reporters that the movie 'doesn't seem like a coincidence' because it mirrors claims that he believes are backed by official records.

He pointed to congressional hearings in which witnesses have made allegations about UAP crash retrievals and the possible reverse engineering of unusual technology.

The most detailed public account came in July 2023, when former intelligence official David Grusch told the House Oversight Committee that the US had operated a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering programme without proper congressional oversight. His written testimony provided one of the most detailed public accounts of those allegations.

Golembeske argued that Disclosure Day echoes claims that government or defence personnel have secretly studied non-human entities.

'There were crash retrieval operations where they were attempting to reverse engineer exotic technology,' he said, referring to historical documents that he believes support those claims

READ MORE.

• Trump UFO Disclosure Update: Dr. Steven Greer Claims Major Alien Evidence Is Withheld

Project Blue Book, CIA Files and What the Documents Say

Golembeske pointed to Project Blue Book, the Air Force's programme for investigating UFO reports from 1947 to 1969, as evidence that the US government took the subject seriously. He alleged that crash-retrieval operations were conducted to study what he described as exotic technology, including purported antigravity propulsion systems.

As an example, he cited a 1971 Australian Department of Defence assessment, identified in the 2026 US release as CIA-UAP-019. He argued that the document illustrates the extent of the secrecy alleged by UAP researchers.

The released material has not, so far, provided publicly verified proof of extraterrestrial life or non-human technology. The National Archives describes Blue Book as the Air Force programme for investigating UFO reports, and states the Air Force found no evidence that unidentified sightings were extraterrestrial vehicles and no indication of a government cover-up concerning Roswell.

Why the Film Matters Now

Disclosure Day held its Paris premiere on June 2 before opening in US cinemas on June 12. The film follows cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner, played by Josh O'Connor, after he steals extraterrestrial technology and files from Wardex, a secretive government-linked organisation, in an effort to expose an alleged decades-long concealment of alien contact.

In an interview, Spielberg discussed the hypothetical reaction if a government announced it had concealed extraterrestrial knowledge since 1947, saying it 'would mess up a lot of people.'

He has also said he has no direct insider knowledge of any such government secret. The film's US release on June 12 coincided with the third tranche of records released under the government's UAP programme.

Golembeske said he found the overlap notable while acknowledging that it could be coincidental. 'The movie doesn't seem like a coincidence, but it may be,' he said, while arguing that the documents are consistent with the claims he has been making.

The claims about extraterrestrial technology, crash retrievals and a government cover-up remain unverified.

IBTimes UK has not independently established the allegations described above, and they should not be presented as confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial life or non-human technology.

RELATED

{ https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/trending }

The Abominable Snowman: The Mystery of the Yeti

by Steve Paslow

The Abominable Snowman, more properly known as the Yeti, is one of the world’s most famous legendary creatures. For centuries, stories have described a large, mysterious, humanlike animal living among the snow-covered mountains of the Himalayas, particularly in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and nearby regions of Asia.

Able to walk on two legs, although some reports suggest it can move on all fours. Extremely strong and adapted to cold, high-altitude environments. Shy and elusive, usually avoiding people. Associated with large, unusual footprints in snow or mud.

Western popular culture often imagines the Abominable Snowman as a gigantic, white-furred creature wandering permanently through deep snow. However, traditional Himalayan stories are more complicated. Local traditions describe several different mysterious wild beings, and not everyone is a giant white ape.

The creature’s original local names include variations of Yeti, although the meanings and spellings differ among Himalayan languages. The famous English name “Abominable Snowman” became popular after reports from British expeditions in the Himalayas during the 1920s.

A misunderstanding or loose translation of a local term reportedly contributed to the dramatic name. Once newspapers began using “Abominable Snowman,” the creature became an international sensation.

One of the main reasons the Yeti became famous was the discovery of large footprints in the snow. Explorers climbing in the Himalayas sometimes reported finding tracks that appeared to resemble enormous human footprints.

Some were said to be much larger than an ordinary person’s foot and to continue for long distances across isolated mountain regions. However, there is an important problem with interpreting tracks in snow.

A normal animal footprint can change dramatically after: Snow begins melting. The sun enlarges the edges of the track. Several prints overlap. Wind partially fills in or reshapes the print. Ice melts and then refreezes. A series of ordinary animal tracks can therefore sometimes look surprisingly large and humanlike.

One of the most famous pieces of Yeti evidence came from British mountaineer Eric Shipton. In 1951, while exploring the Everest region, Shipton photographed a large footprint in the snow. The photograph showed what appeared to be a single, enormous print with several toe-like projections.

The image became one of the most famous photographs in cryptozoology. Supporters argued that the track showed evidence of an unknown large creature. Skeptics suggested that the footprint might have been altered by melting snow or could have originated from a known animal.

The photograph remains intriguing, but it has never been accepted as proof that a Yeti exists. During the 1950s, the search for the Abominable Snowman became extremely popular. Mountaineers, explorers, journalists, and scientists organized expeditions into the Himalayas. Some collected: Hair samples. Footprints.

Stories from local inhabitants. Supposed Yeti bones. Skins and other physical objects. The idea that an unknown giant primate might be living in one of the most remote mountain regions on Earth fascinated the public.

At that time, much of the Himalayas remained extremely difficult to explore. Vast areas contained deep snow, dangerous cliffs, glaciers, forests, and isolated valleys. This led some people to believe that an unknown large animal could possibly remain hidden.

Several monasteries in the Himalayan region possessed objects said to be connected with Yetis. Perhaps the most famous were supposed Yeti scalps. Some Western explorers examined these objects, hoping they would provide physical proof.

Later scientific examinations indicated that at least some supposed Yeti relics were made from the skins or fur of known animals. In some cases, unusual headpieces were apparently manufactured from animal hides. Nevertheless, these relics helped increase worldwide interest in the mystery.

Another famous object was a supposed Yeti hand associated with a monastery in Nepal. The hand attracted international attention, and a complicated story developed involving explorers and the removal of one of the supposed fingers for scientific examination.

Eventually, testing indicated that the remains were human rather than belonging to an unknown ape-like creature. The incident became one of the strangest chapters in Yeti history.

Could the Yeti be an unknown animal?

Some believers have proposed that the Yeti could represent an undiscovered species of large primate. Possible theories have included:

1. A surviving giant ape. 

One of the most popular theories connected the Yeti with Gigantopithecus, an extinct giant ape known from fossil remains. Gigantopithecus was enormous compared with modern apes. Because of its size, some researchers and cryptozoologists wondered whether a surviving population could have somehow remained hidden in Asia. However, the evidence currently available indicates that Gigantopithecus became extinct long ago.

There is also no accepted fossil or genetic evidence connecting it to modern Yeti reports. Another thing, there is a belief among many zoologists that Gigantopithecus was so very heavy that the creature would basically walk on all four limbs, but at times could stand upright by supporting much of its weight against a massive strong and lofty tree. While the Abdominable Snowman is reported to be bi-pedal.

Himalayan black bear standing upright, which might have been confused as a Yetti.

2. An unknown species of bear.

This is one of the leading conventional explanations. The Himalayas contain several bears, including the Himalayan brown bear and the Asian black bear. A bear walking through snow can occasionally leave tracks that look unusual. When the snow melts, separate portions of a bear’s paw print may blend together, producing something that resembles a large human foot. A bear standing on its hind legs can also appear surprisingly humanlike from a distance. Some Yeti sightings may therefore have involved bears.

3. Misidentified known animals.

Other possible explanations include: Bears. Langur monkeys. Wolves. Other mountain animals seen under poor conditions. Shadows or rocks mistaken for living creatures. In the high mountains, visibility can be poor, distances are difficult to judge, and witnesses may see an animal only briefly.

4. Misidentified Bear Footprints

That is a real proposed explanation for at least some Yeti footprints, involving the Asiatic black bear, also called the Himalayan black bear. The basic idea is: Young bears spend considerable time climbing trees, including to get away from large predators, even big bears on the ground “ground bears”, and to avoid other dangers.

During this tree period that might last two years, climbing and gripping branches may cause the feet—particularly the inner toes and claws—to be held or worn in a somewhat unusual position. When such a bear walks through snow, its front and hind footprints can overlap. The thumb is capable of moving toward, touching, and gripping the other digits on the same hand: paw.

The resulting combined track can look surprisingly long, narrow, and vaguely human-shaped. The impression in the snow of a hind paw going over the front paw looks, giving the impression of a hallux; looking just like there is a prominent big toe especially when the bear is traveling slightly uphill especially with the hind paw print extending the overprint backward.

A line of these tracks may therefore create the impression of a large bipedal creature walking across the snow.

The most important point, however, is that the explanation is probably not simply that climbing permanently turns a claw outward and thereby makes a perfect humanlike footprint. That particular version can sometimes be overstated.

The stronger explanation involves a combination of bear anatomy, distorted snow tracks, melting, and overlapping front-and-hind paw prints. A bear walking through deep snow can place a hind foot partly on top of, or close to, the impression left by the front foot.

As the snow melts and the edges collapse, the separate toes and claws can become blurred. What began as two recognizable bear prints can turn into a single elongated impression that looks remarkably like a large humanoid foot.

This is especially interesting because some famous alleged Yeti tracks were found in remote snow-covered terrain, where melting and distortion can dramatically alter the appearance of a track. So, yes—the Asiatic black bear hypothesis is one of the serious natural explanations for some Yeti evidence.

It does not necessarily explain every reported footprint or sighting, but bears are considered a very plausible source for a significant number of Himalayan “Yeti” tracks.

DNA testing and the modern investigation

Modern science has examined a number of hair, bone, tooth, and skin samples claimed to be connected with the Yeti.

Many samples have turned out to belong to known animals, particularly bears. Some supposed Yeti remains have also been found to be from ordinary domestic animals or humans.This does not necessarily explain every historical report, but it means that, so far, no scientifically verified physical specimen has established the existence of an unknown Yeti species.

No confirmed: Body. Skeleton. DNA from an unknown large primate. Clear biological specimen. None of these has yet been produced.

Is the Yeti the same as Bigfoot?

The Yeti and Bigfoot are often compared. Both are described as: Large. Hair-covered. Humanlike. Elusive. Associated with mysterious footprints. However, they belong to different geographical and cultural traditions. Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, is primarily associated with North America, especially the forests and mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

The Yeti belongs to the Himalayan region. Some cryptozoologists believe they could represent related unknown primates. Others believe both legends are mainly based on misidentified animals, folklore, exaggerated stories, and occasional hoaxes.

There is currently no accepted scientific evidence proving the existence of either creature.

The mystery remains

The most reasonable scientific position today is that the Yeti has not been proven to exist as an unknown species. Many alleged Yeti footprints and biological samples have been explained as bears or other known animals.

Yet the legend remains one of the greatest mysteries of cryptozoology. Some reports are difficult to investigate because they occurred in remote places, involved brief sightings, or happened decades ago. Whether the Yeti is a misunderstood bear, a collection of ancient legends, an occasional misidentification—or something genuinely undiscovered—remains part of its enduring fascination.

The Abominable Snowman continues to stand alongside Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster as one of the world’s most famous legendary creatures. Unlike a creature invented entirely for modern entertainment, however, the Yeti mystery is rooted in the mountains, traditions, and stories of the Himalayan peoples, giving the legend a history that reaches back long before Western explorers began searching for footprints in the snow.

The Yeti mystery survives because the Himalayas are genuinely enormous and difficult to explore. The region contains: Some of the highest mountains on Earth. Deep forests. Remote valleys. Dangerous glaciers. Severe weather.

Areas with relatively little human activity. The idea of an undiscovered creature surviving in such a landscape remains exciting. In addition, the Yeti is not simply a modern monster story.

It is connected with older Himalayan traditions and beliefs, which makes the subject more historically interesting than many modern cryptid legends.
It is important to remember that new species are still discovered. Scientists continue to find previously unknown animals, particularly small creatures, insects, fish, reptiles, and occasionally mammals.

But discovering a completely unknown large ape-like animal would be much more difficult to explain because such an animal would likely leave substantial evidence, including: Bones. DNA. Droppings. Hair.
Clear photographs. Repeatedly documented tracks. Evidence of a breeding population. After many decades of expeditions and scientific investigation, such evidence has not yet been conclusively found.

{ https://mysticsciences.com/tales-stories/ }

Faster than Usain Bolt? Here's all the records robot 'athletes' broke at this year's World Humanoid Robot Games in China.

Humanoid robots at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing have outpaced and out-jumped human athletics benchmarks, but the event also revealed how much work remains before they can operate reliably in the real world.

 By Alan Bradley, Edited by James Price, Pandora Dewan

Usain Bolt is considered the fastest male sprinter in history.
(Image credit: ALAIN JOCARD via Getty Images)

Humanoid robots in Beijing have beaten a number of men's athletics world records at the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games, claiming high-water marks in the 100-meter sprint, the 400 m, 1,500 m and high jump. While these performances aren't official replacements for the human records, as the robots competed under robot-specific categories and conditions, they highlight the progress made since last year's inaugural robot games .

The five-day games were held between Aug. 22nd and 26 at Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval and drew 2,056 robots from 666 teams across 16 countries. The events included sports like football and martial arts, as well as practical applications like warehouse logistics, factory-style assembly and charging tasks.

Robots broke four human athletics records:

• 100 meters: Tiangong Ultra, 8.64 seconds

Human benchmark: Usain Bolt ran 9.58 seconds at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

Robot result: Tiangong Ultra is a humanoid robot developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. It won the large-size 100 m final, completing it in 8.64 seconds on Aug. 26. It set an early mark of 9.39 seconds, already enough to smash Bolt's record, then improved to 8.86 seconds in qualifying before the blistering 8.64 time in the final. That 8.64-second time is 0.94 seconds below Bolt’s mark.

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• 400 meters: Tiangong Ultra, 38.15 seconds

Human benchmark: Wayde van Niekerk's 43.03 seconds, set at the Rio Olympics on Aug. 14, 2016.

Robot result: The same robot that set the 100 m record dominated the 400 m competition as well. Tiangong Ultra won the 400 m final in 38.15 seconds, nearly 5 seconds faster than van Niekerk's world record.

• 1,500 meters: Tiangong Ultra, 2 minutes, 21.6 seconds

Human benchmark: Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco set the men’s 1,500 m world record of 3 minutes, 26 seconds in Rome on July 14, 1998.

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Robot result: Team Tianzhuo's Tiangong Ultra completed its record-smashing hat trick, winning the 1,500 m in 2 minutes, 21.6 seconds — well below El Guerrouj's time. The next two finishers, at 2 minutes, 30.00 seconds and 2 minutes, 30.22 seconds, also bettered the human benchmark.

• High jump: 2.88 m (9.45 feet) standing jump

Human benchmark: Javier Sotomayor of Cuba cleared 2.45 m (8.04 feet) in Salamanca, Spain, on July 27, 1993.

Robot result: A robot made by X-Humanoid cleared 2.88 m in a standing high jump, which smashed the previous best robot result of 0.95 m (3.12 feet) at the inaugural games in 2025. However, Sotomayor’s record came in a standard running high jump, in which athletes use a curved approach, generate speed and clear the bar using a technique called the Fosbury flop. The robot completed a standing high jump, a different event with different mechanics. The running high jump is both harder and higher than the standing jump, because athletes can convert horizontal speed into greater lift using a one-foot takeoff and the Fosbury flop, enabling higher clearances than the purely muscular, two-footed standing high jump.

What the record claims mean

These games showcase the expanding abilities of humanoid robots. Disciplines like running, particularly across longer distance events like the 1500 m, and high standing jumps require powerful actuators, fast balance corrections, foot-placement control and software that can compensate for tiny errors in real time.

"In my view, these World Records were achieved using, 'The Best Part is No Part' principle, through mostly mechanical optimization to perform a single task extremely well," said Scott Walter, the Robotics Research Diligence director at RoboStrategy, an investment fund that gives retail and institutional investors exposure to private and public companies in robotics and “embodied” or physical AI. "Locomotion is mostly solved as witnessed by these games, albeit with optimizations," he told Live Science in an email.

Walter said the key to many of the impressive advances we've seen is simplicity, shearing off unnecessary components that introduce more points of failure and can make coordination more difficult.

"Many degrees of freedom were removed in the arms (shoulders, elbow, no wrist, no hands), hips and ankles. This reduced mass, and allowed distal mass to be moved higher up in the kinematic chain, improving movement efficiency," he said.

However, although the robots were very capable in the specific events in which they competed, we shouldn't take that to mean they're top performers in other, more diverse tasks.

"The bots are barely humanoid and could only accelerate in a straight line, not stop without crashing nor run the curve to slow down," Walter said. "The winners were in no shape afterwards to stand on the podium to receive their medals. Nor could they run in the 4x100 relay as, ironically, they had no hands for the 'hand-off.'"

Some robots were seen crashing into barriers or falling, and others caught fire, highlighting that reliability is still an issue.

But other robots at the games were made for more than just going faster, higher, stronger. Alongside track-style events, robots performed practical tasks such as connecting charging cables, handling objects, using tools and working in simulated industrial or service settings.

In many cases, the greater challenge is not raw strength or speed but reliably seeing an object, judging its position, applying the right amount of force and recovering when something does not go as planned. More than 40% of the games' events required robots to operate autonomously, without direct human control.

"Manipulation is the greatest biggest challenge as that is the business end of the humanoid and a dexterous and robust hand is still elusive," Walter said. "Specialization is easy, general purpose is not."

Walter noted that the decathlon record may be the next target as it demonstrates a range of abilities.

"The human Decathlon record is the true test of speed, endurance, power, strength, robustness, coordination and dexterity. I would not be surprised to see an attempt at the record next year," he said.

{ https://www.livescience.com/technology/robotics }

Ancient Alien Pyramid Found Below The Ocean 15 Miles Across! Google Earth Blurred It Out! UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Sept 6, 2026

Location of discovery: Off California Coast

Coordinates: 32°19'22.71"N 127° 8'7.95"W

Map Used: 

• https://seabed2030.org/

I was disappointed again when looking at the ocean floor with Google Earth map, which blurred 90% of the floor. Anything and everything that looks like an alien structure will be blurred out by Google. They have been part of the cover up for decades, both with maps and with attacking UFO and alien researchers by making the algorithm decide we don't need visitors as much...mine back in 2012, Google algorithm penguins started...which lowered my site views from 250,000 per day to 25,000 over night. Im sure other UFO researchers received the same treatment. 

 

Anyways I found a new map which is not owned by Google. It reveals the ocean floor clearly and precisely detailed. I soon found a 15 by 15 mile pyramid on the ocean floor a few hundred miles off California coast. The pyramid is layered and is more that what we see, this thing goes deep below the ground. I went and checked Google Earth map to confirm, however they the four mountains were visible...except only one was blurred out using a smoothing program to hide its detail...yeah thats right, the pyramid! Yes aliens live below the ocean, yes we know more about the moon than we do the floor of the ocean. Yes, aliens are living there right now.

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily

 

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

UFO in clouds over Irvine, California Sept 3, 2026 UAP Orb Sighting News 👽

 

Date of sighting: Sept 3, 2026

Location of sighting: Irvine, California, USA

Source: NUFORC #200653

 

UFOs have several types of cloaks they use when flying through our skies to avoid detection. First is the meteorite trail cloak...forcing humans to think they were seeing a rock falling from space. Second is a cloak of invisibility that actually only bends light around it to make it appear invisible, but still its propulsion will make holes in clouds regardless. Third is the cloud cloak, which it creates a white cloud within its shields holding it around its craft, but moves oddly and can disappear if its stared at and focused on (telepathic ships cloak in seconds). 

 

In this video we see the third cloak used, a cloud that moves oddly and changes shape from oval to triangle as it moves through a thin cloud which couldn't possibly hide it. Its clearly intelligent and moving with intent. Created to gather intelligence, they eventually take back all the recorded info including telepathic contacts back to their source. I think this person is working at a very high tech location working on secret military devices...this alien craft is curious about it. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily

 

Eyewitness states: 

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

White sphere over Albuquerque, New Mexico Sept 5, 2026, UAP UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 5, 2026

Location of sighting: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Source: NUFORC #200705

 

This white orb was caught yesterday over New Mexico. The UFO was there to observe, record and measure eyewitness reactions to seeing them. Aliens want it as bad as humans do, so don't be upset at them hiding so often. They have their laws or rules that they have to follow when encountering younger civilizations. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily 

 

Eyewitness states: 

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

An artist’s rendering of the heliosphere. Credit: Conceptual Image Lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

A bubble around the system

The solar wind persistently transports charged particles in every direction. At a certain distance, they come into contact with the material of interstellar space. This process results in the formation of the heliosphere — a vast shell within which all the planets are situated.

Alongside the Sun, this bubble orbits the nucleus of the Milky Way galaxy. Over approximately four and a half billion years, it has traversed numerous regions within the galaxy. Currently, its boundary is situated at a distance approximately 120 times farther from our star than Earth’s orbit, and it was at this location that the Voyager 1 spacecraft crossed in 2012.

Three encounters with clouds

A team led by Merav Opper of Boston University reconstructed the heliosphere’s past trajectory using computer modeling. The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Based on these calculations, over the course of several million years, the Solar System has traversed extremely cold clouds of gas and dust on at least three occasions. The pressure exerted by such clouds has compressed the heliosphere beyond Earth’s orbit, resulting in a temporary loss of planetary protection from the interstellar medium, as reported by NASA.

Traces in bottom sediments

The modeling indicates three periods: approximately two to three million years ago, six to seven million years ago, and thirteen to fourteen million years ago.

These dates align with geological data. Chemical elements characteristic of interstellar dust have been identified in deep-sea sediment cores, Antarctic snow, and lunar samples of precisely this age.

In the calculations, contact with a dense, cold cloud of hydrogen increased the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere and altered processes in the upper layers of the atmosphere. The effects gradually reached the surface and, as a result, may have influenced past climate fluctuations, particularly ice ages. 

The paradox of the faint young Sun

Approximately three billion years prior, our Sun emitted merely 70 percent of its current luminosity. Under these illumination conditions, the Earth would have been entirely frozen, as reported by ScienceDaily.

A star, akin to the Sun, commences its lifecycle as a main-sequence star, subsequently progressing through the subgiant and giant phases. Following this, it expels its outer layers, resulting in the formation of a planetary nebula. Credit: ESO, S. Steinhöfel.

Geological evidence indicates otherwise. Stable liquid water existed on the planet well before that period. This discrepancy is recognized as the “weak young Sun” paradox. 

An experiment with protons

Astrophysicist Volodymyr Airapetian of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted research concerning young stars analogous to the Sun. Data obtained from the Kepler space telescope indicate that these stars produce exceptionally intense flares daily and release streams of high-energy particles.

The team replicated the environment of ancient Earth within a sealed chamber by combining molecular nitrogen, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. The mixture was subjected to proton bombardment to emulate the effects of solar flares. This process yielded nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The research was documented in the peer-reviewed journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Certain molecules were eradicated by intense ultraviolet radiation. Nevertheless, calculations indicated that even a tenth of these molecules would suffice to raise the temperature of the equatorial regions by five degrees Celsius above zero. Moderately elevated temperatures, marginally above the freezing point, were found to be even more favorable for the formation of lengthy chains of amino acids than higher temperatures.

• Posted in News, Science

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

Once every eleven years, the Sun exhibits a marked increase in activity before reverting to a more quiescent state. We will elucidate the origins of this cyclical rhythm and the reasons why predicting the behavior of our star remains challenging.

The Sun in October 2019 during a minimum in activity (left) and in April 2014 during a previous maximum (right). Images courtesy of the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Credit: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory/Joy Ng

The deceptive constancy of our star

Every morning, the Sun ascends beyond the horizon, mirroring its emergence from a millennium ago. It appears unchanging to us; however, in actuality, its activity exhibits cyclical variations approximately every eleven years. At the beginning of the cycle, solar activity gradually increases. More and more spots and active regions appear on the surface of the Sun, its magnetic field becomes more complex, the movement of hot plasma on the surface becomes more turbulent, and, as a result, flares and ejections of matter into space become more frequent. Particles and magnetic structures from some of these events reach the  Earth and interact with its magnetosphere. This can cause geomagnetic storms, create problems for satellites and radio communications, and the auroras become brighter and can be visible even at unusually low latitudes. After the maximum, activity gradually decreases. The number of sunspots, flares, and coronal ejections on average becomes smaller, and the Sun moves to solar minimum. Then the cycle begins again. And so on from cycle to cycle. 

A graph illustrating sunspot numbers, accompanied by a forecast for Cycle 24, produced in 2011. Author: David Hathaway. Source: NASA

This rhythm was noticed as early as the 19th century, although astronomers had observed sunspots themselves much earlier. One of the earliest dated records belongs to Johannes Kepler: in 1607 he observed the Sun using a pinhole camera. However, Kepler mistakenly thought that the dark spot on the Sun’s disk was Mercury passing in front of the Sun. It was not until 1843 that the German astronomer Heinrich Schwabe drew attention to the approximately 10-year periodicity of changes in the number of sunspots. Later, the period was refined to approximately 11 years. The explanation for this cycle is related to the Sun’s magnetic field, which changes along with the motion and differential rotation of the plasma inside the star. In the early 20th century, astronomers finally had the opportunity to directly study the magnetic fields of sunspots – something that astronomers of the past could not investigate without the instruments available to us today.

Sketches of sunspots published by Johannes Kepler in his book “Phaenomenon Singulare Seu Mercurius In Sole” in 1609.
Credit: Johannes Kepler

The accidental discovery of the solar cycle

In 1826, German amateur astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe initiated a search for an elusive hypothetical planet thought to orbit closer to the Sun than Mercury. To prevent missing its transit across the Sun’s disk, he meticulously documented all dark spots observed through his telescope daily. Although he did not discover the planet, he amassed seventeen years of consistent observations, employing the same method throughout, and discerned a periodic pattern within the data. The number of sunspots fluctuated in a cycle of approximately ten years. Samuel Heinrich Schwabe subsequently published his findings in the early 1840s in the esteeme  astronomical journal Astronomische Nachrichten. 

An entry dated June 28, 1829, from the observation journal of Samuel Heinrich Schwabe. Author: Samuel Heinrich Schwabe

The Swiss astronomer Rudolf Wolf undertook the subsequent step. He meticulously examined observatory archives and assembled fragmented observations dating from 1745 — systematic records before that period did not exist. Utilizing this extended series, the interval was revised to eleven years. Additionally, Wolf established the numbering system that remains in use today, commencing with the cycle initiated in 1755. The current cycle is designated as number 25.

The reasons why sunspots became the primary measure of solar activity are evident in the era’s practices. They are observable even with basic telescopes, whereas solar flares were first documented only in 1859, and material outbursts from space were not detected until the 1970s. Sunspots continue to serve as a practical indicator today, although solar radio emissions are now also employed alongside them. 

The methodology scientists use to monitor the solar cycle.

Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

What is the origin of this rhythm?

Sunspots have been observed since the time of Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, but their true nature was not understood until 1908. At that time, American astronomer George Ellery Hale studied the light emanating from sunspots and discovered characteristic changes in it that occur only in a very strong magnetic field. Since then, it has become clear that sunspots are merely a visible sign, and the cause of the cycle must be sought in the behavior of the magnetic field inside the Sun. 

ExploreParanormal Gear

This behavior is atypical. The Sun’s surface is designated as the photosphere — namely, the visible stratum from which light is emitted. The Sun, of course, does not have a regular solid surface: the photosphere consists of very hot plasma. This is a state of matter in which the gas is largely ionized: along with neutral particles, it contains charged ions and free electrons. It is this mobile electrically conductive substance that forms the complex magnetic field of the Sun. Plasma conducts electric current well, and the magnetic field moves with it, as if frozen inside. This connection is two-way: the flows of matter seem to drag the magnetic field along with them, and a sufficiently strong field, on the contrary, slows down their movement.

The plasma exhibits variable rotational velocities across different latitudes. The equatorial zone completes a complete rotation in about 25 days, while at high, near-polar latitudes the rotation takes about 35 days. This difference in speed gradually deforms the Sun’s poloidal magnetic field: its field lines stretch in the direction of rotation and increasingly wind around the Sun, forming a toroidal component of the magnetic field. This part of the solar dynamo mechanism is called the omega effect.

A schematic representation delineating the three phases of the Sun’s magnetic field evolution throughout a cycle. On the left, the magnetic field extends longitudinally from pole to pole. In the central depiction, the field exhibits twisting along the parallels due to differential rotation speeds. On the right, the magnetic field appears entangled, with loops protruding outward and dark spots forming at their bases.

The second component of the mechanism functions concurrently with the first. In the Sun’s outer layer, hot plasma ascends, cools, and descends, while rotational forces twist these flows similar to the manner in which cyclones are twisted in  Earth’s atmosphere. The reversed magnetic field generated by this twisting gradually reverts to its original configuration, with the north magnetic pole occupying the position previously held by the south pole. This process occurs approximately at the peak of solar activity. This phenomenon is known as the alpha effect and remains a subject of considerable debate among researchers. Collectively, these two components constitute the solar dynamo.

The magnetic field beneath the Sun’s surface exhibits an uneven distribution. In areas where the magnetic field is particularly strong, it affects the movement of the plasma and can make a magnetically saturated region buoyant. It rises through the Sun’s mass, carrying with it the magnetic flux. Near the surface, the magnetic field can emerge in arcs and loops, while their ends remain submerged in the plasma. A strong magnetic field suppresses the convective transfer of energy from the depths, so where such a loop emerges, the surface becomes colder than the surrounding area. This is how a sunspot appears. The more complex and tangled the field becomes, the more often loops of opposite direction come together and reconnect. During such magnetic reconnection, some of the stored magnetic energy is quickly released. This can cause powerful solar flares, and under certain conditions, coronal mass ejections, when huge amounts of plasma are ejected into interplanetary space.

A composite image of an active region on the Sun, captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Credit: NASA/SDO

The concept of such a mechanism was first proposed by the Irish physicist Joseph Larmor in 1919. However, the theory still does not elucidate why one of its cycles precisely endures eleven years. Individual cycles vary from nine to fourteen years, with an average of eleven. Currently, it remains infeasible to accurately predict either the duration or the intensity of the subsequent cycle.

Why the area is not actually dark

On the Sun itself, sunspots remain the most conspicuous manifestation of this phenomenon, and their designation leads to a common misconception. The term “spot” implies a defect or a void, although in reality it refers to the same incandescent material, but cooler than the adjacent regions. The photosphere is heated to approximately 5,500 degrees Celsius, whereas a sunspot reaches about 3,500 degrees in temperature. Consequently, the material within a sunspot emits roughly one-fifth of the light emitted by the surrounding surface, and this contrast is what renders the sunspot dark. 

A collection of images of the Sun captured during the initial year of the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope’s operation, released on May 19, 2023. Credit: NSF/AURA/NSO

The smallest sunspots measure approximately 1,600 kilometers in diameter, whereas the largest can extend up to 160,000 kilometers — approximately twelve times the diameter of  Earth. The most intense flares and eruptions originate above these substantial sunspot clusters. These phenomena reach us through multiple pathways. 

The radiation emitted by the flare arrives at Earth in approximately eight minutes. It remains imperceptible to the human eye due to its predominant emission within the X-ray and ultraviolet spectra. Nonetheless, it ionizes the upper atmospheric layers, resulting in disruptions to shortwave radio communications on the sunlit side of the Earth and impairing the accuracy of satellite navigation as signals traverse the modified ionosphere.

Emissions of this substance propagate at a considerably slower rate, taking several days to reach Earth’s vicinity. They are responsible for magnetic storms and the resulting auroras, which become visible at much lower latitudes than usual under such conditions. Due to abrupt variations in the magnetic field, supplementary currents are induced in extensive power lines, leading to transformer overloads. The upper atmosphere heats and expands as a consequence of the storm, causing satellites in low Earth orbit to encounter a denser environment and consequently lose altitude at an accelerated rate. Additionally, high-energy charged particles can impair satellite electronics, causing issues ranging from isolated memory errors to the gradual deterioration of solar panels. Such events are markedly more frequent during solar maxima than during solar minima.

An eruptive prominence observed on August 31, 2012, that initiated a coronal mass ejection. A composite image captured in two ultraviolet bands. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO

This remains, however, merely a preliminary guideline. Predicting a specific flare is unattainable, and severe storms have been documented on numerous occasions even during the declining phase, when overall activity was diminishing.

What is currently occurring with the Sun?

The present cycle has demonstrated the considerable challenges associated with making precise predictions. In 2019, a panel of experts from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in collaboration with NASA, forecasted that the peak would occur in July 2025; however, it actually materialized earlier, in the autumn of 2024. Moreover, the predicted intensity was also inaccurate. The forecasted activity index was 115, whereas the actual index surpassed 160. These figures do not directly correspond to the count of sunspots on the solar disk, as the index also considers their groupings. The peak itself is identified by the average value over the year, making its exact date indeterminate until after it has occurred.

The apex of Solar Cycle 25 commenced in 2024, during which time the most intense solar flares occurred with extraordinary regularity. Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL

Approximately concurrently, the polarity of the Sun’s poles underwent a reversal. Based on measurements from the Japanese Hinode spacecraft, this event likely occurred in October 2024 in the southern polar region, with the northern polar region experiencing the reversal approximately one month later. 

The activity is presently declining and is projected to continue decreasing until reaching a minimum around the year 2030. Subsequently, Cycle 26 will commence, and at its peak — approximately in the mid-2030s — the polarity will reverse once more, reverting the magnetic field to its pre-2024 state. It has been observed that the interval between two activity minima is approximately eleven years, as evidenced by the frequency of sunspots and solar flares. During this period, the solar poles undergo a single polarity reversal. To complete another such reversal and return to the initial configuration, an additional cycle is necessary; thus, a complete magnetic cycle is estimated to span approximately twenty-two years.

• Posted in Articles, Questions

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Now imagine another planet where intelligent life appeared one million years, 10 million years or 100 million years before us. 

Such a civilization would already have had an extraordinary amount of time to develop. Such a civilization could theoretically have developed technologies far beyond anything we currently possess. 

It could potentially have developed for example: advanced artificial intelligence; autonomous machines; genetic engineering; nanotechnology; self-replicating systems; autonomous spacecraft; planetary engineering; Interstellar space travel: advanced energy systems; telepathy, time travel; technologies capable of modifying its own biology. 

They may have started as biological organisms. But after millions of years, they could have become something else entirely. A civilization that is partly or almost completely post-biological. 

Biological evolution and technological evolution could become intertwined. The civilization might begin changing itself deliberately. Its members could alter their biology. They could replace biological organs. They could integrate artificial intelligence into themselves. Eventually, the distinction between organism and machine could begin to disappear. 

We call them “aliens” and their craft “UFOs” simply because we don’t know who they are or what they represent. But what if that is the wrong way to look at them? What if they are not something mysterious at all, but the result of their own evolutionary journey on another planet? 

Just as humanity has evolved from primitive tools to advanced technology, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and space exploration, could these beings represent what humanity might ultimately become after millions of years along its own evolutionary journey, shaped by the technologies, developments, and techniques emerging today? 

Just think about this: If humanity were to encounter a civilization 100 million years more advanced than us tomorrow, would we even recognize it as a civilization, or would we simply call it something we cannot understand?

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Pentagon UFO Program Scientist Says “Gifted” Chinese Children Teleported Objects Through Sealed Containers

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Now, a new study published in the journal Science suggests that clues to the mystery may exist beneath the ice itself, according to researchers who point to geological evidence that could help explain what led to the formation of Antarctica’s glaciers during a comparatively warm period in our planet’s history.

Clues to Why a Continent Froze

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) holds enough frozen water that it could raise sea levels around the world by more than 50 meters if a sudden, total melting event were ever to occur. Fortunately, scientists don’t anticipate that happening any time soon, although questions over what caused the formation of the largest mass of ice on our planet have remained one of the most predominant mysteries about Antarctica’s ancient history.

Based on geological evidence and paleo-climatological proxy data, the ice sheet’s formation occurred near the transition between the Eocene and Oligocene eras around 34 million years ago, marking a significant step along our planet’s path toward the cooler conditions that prevail today, even amid anthropogenic factors that contribute to ongoing climate changes.

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Years of Hubble observations from 2023 to 2025 allowed the team to trace subtle hints that they eventually resolved into the decagonal wave at Saturn’s south pole.

Observing the Solar System

“We’ve never seen anything quite like this in Saturn’s southern hemisphere,” said co-author Amy Simon, OPAL principal investigator, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The northern hexagon has been there every time we’ve looked for more than 40 years. This feature is different — it appears to be strengthening, giving us the rare opportunity to watch a giant atmospheric pattern develop.”

Since its 1990 launch into low Earth orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope has been observing our solar system, uncovering new details about our planetary neighbors. One such project is the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, which began collecting data with observations of Uranus in 2014 and now provides the crucial evidence for this discovery, with high-resolution images that resolve murky hints from ground-based observations.

As Saturn’s seasons changed, its south pole came into alignment with ground-based observatories. In images from those telescopes submitted to the Planetary Virtual Observatory Laboratory, amateur astronomers Trevor Barry and Jean-Paul Oger, along with Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Spain, noticed something interesting happening on the gas giant.

A Strange Band on Saturn

The researchers spotted an undulating band along Saturn’s south pole, which, in further 2025 ground-based telescope images, began to suggest a decagonal (ten-sided) structure. With its incredible image clarity and spatial resolution, Hubble’s imagery finally allowed researchers to resolve the decagonal shape with certainty.

“Given Saturn’s symmetry in its north-south jet stream system, we have been searching for a counterpart to Saturn’s northern hexagon on the south pole in Hubble images since 1990,” said lead author Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Spain. “Images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn between 2004 and 2017, showed no inkling of a long-lived formation, either. The Hubble data confirmed the feature’s presence back to 2023.”

The wave is an interesting three-dimensional feature that extends through multiple layers of the atmosphere within one of the planet’s jet streams. Because Hubble can image the planet in multiple wavelengths, the decagon’s location appears to shift between observations, as each wavelength penetrates the atmosphere to a different degree.

Questions About Saturn

“The most intriguing part to me is that this seems to have just formed recently,” said Simon. “The question is, why did it suddenly form now when we haven’t seen one before?”

Recognizing Saturn’s decagonal wave is only a first step. Follow-up observations to collect more data and computer models to piece together what is occurring on the planet will be required to firmly grasp the phenomenon. Questions remain about how it formed, how long it may last, and how similar it is compared to the northern hexagonal wave.

One thing the team will be sure to watch for in their continued observations is whether the shape evolves or maintains its decagonal structure. Their continued work could provide important new insights into how atmospheric dynamics operate on gas giants and what they can reveal about our own planet’s atmospheric phenomena.

• The paper, “A Decagon Wave Around Saturn’s South Pole,” appeared in Science Advances on September 2, 2026.
• 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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Another strange image has been unearthed in the NASA archives which some believe is evidence of intelligent life driving along the surface of Mars.

NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been investigating whether Mars could have supported microbial life for the last 14 years, snapped the image just over a year ago on May 19, 2025.

It shows the dusty Martian landscape with rocky hills and distant mountains around 2.40am in Coordinated Universal Time on Earth.

However, the panorama also revealed a large and easily visible pattern in the ground which looked similar to a row of tire tracks.

One person asked: 'Are those Curiosity’s tracks we’re seeing?'

However, others who viewed the NASA image shared on social media that the tracks from the human-made rover are completely different from the pattern seen last year.

Fueling speculation that NASA’s rover had captured proof of some mechanical device driving on Mars, another image taken just two minutes later caught the same pattern in the ground from a different angle - suggesting this was not a camera glitch or trick of the light.

In September 2025, NASA declared it had found the clearest signs of ancient microbial life on Mars in a sample collected by the Perseverance rover.

Images sent from the Curiosity rover on Mars in 2025 captured a strange pattern some have compared to tire tracks

A second image sent by Curiosity photographed the same track from a different angle

Despite the history-making revelation, both the space agency and White House have maintained that no signs of intelligent, extraterrestrial life have ever been found.

There were no other photos from May 19, 2025 publicly posted by NASA that revealed if more tracks were found or if Curiosity got closer to the strange formation to get a more detailed look.

NASA and military officials have frequently called strange and unexplainable objects in space photos 'artifacts,' often blaming them on unusual camera lighting or corrupted data being transmitted back to Earth.

The 2025 image was reposted on Tuesday by social media user Kari Sivertzen, a space enthusiast who regularly shares public NASA images that contain strange anomalies that cannot be easily explained. 

Sivertzen said on X: 'Sometimes I spot things that catch my eye, and I share them here. I believe there is life on other planets, and since NASA has found potential traces of life on Mars, it’s the perfect place to look.'

While viewers were immediately drawn to the strange track marks, Sivertzen said she shared the rover's photo to point out clues that a body of water may have existed on Mars in the distant past.

'What I'm actually highlighting here are the depressions in the surrounding area, which look quite distinct and could be consistent with past water activity or an impact,' Sivertzen posted.

However, the photo had some lining up Curiosity's wheel marks to the uniform pattern seen on Mars, which appeared to show a straight line down the center of the track, with evenly spaced prints closely distributed in a straight line - just like a tire in motion.

A social media user to shared the 2025 Mars image said it also revealed signs of an ancient body of water on the planet

Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 to find evidence that the planet had conditions that could support microbial life billions of years ago

One person replied to the X post: 'It's not the rover, at least what I think, since that would have left two tracks and the "pattern" doesn't match other rover tracks.'

The X user pointed out that Curiosity has no center line in its tire tracks, and the treads also feature a jagged pattern with large square blocks between them.

This was not the first strange pattern or formation astronomy enthusiasts have spotted on the Red Planet.

Last month, Sivertzen shared another shocking photo from Curiosity appearing to show a jellyfish-like being or mechanical device moving along Mars' Gale Crater.

The unearthed panorama from 2023 revealed a small figure in the left corner of the image that appeared to have a large black body perched atop two spindly legs.

Images taken of the same area less than a minute earlier showed no sign of the mysterious figure.

The object in 2023 was seen in Gale Crater and was not present in images taken seconds before 

Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater since 2012. The area is a huge impact crater roughly the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, with a towering mountain rising from its center.

Scientists believe this location will provide more evidence that life once existed on Mars thousands, and possibly millions, of years ago.

Like the Perseverance rover, it is using onboard instruments to study rock layers, clay deposits and climate history to look for microbial traces of life.

Skeptics have previously claimed that people see strange images in the Martian landscape because the human brain naturally attempts to recognize familiar shapes in ambiguous images, a phenomenon known as pareidolia.

It is the same psychological effect that can cause people to see faces in clouds, animals in rock formations or human-made structures across the barren Martian landscape.

Mars has produced several famous examples, most notably the so-called ‘Face on Mars,’ which was photographed by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter in 1976.

Higher-resolution images later revealed that the apparent face was an ordinary eroded hill whose human-like appearance resulted from shadows and the relatively poor quality of the original photograph.

NASA and the Trump Administration are now planning for the first manned mission to Mars by the end of the decade.

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EXCLUSIVE - DR PHIL: There are crystal clear secret UFO videos the government's hidden in plain sight. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. What I've heard... and the terrifying reason for the cover-up may be more damaging than a PANDEMIC

By MATT LONDON, US EXECUTIVE EDITOR, OPINION

Dr Phil McGraw is beginning to lose patience with the Trump administration's efforts to disclose decades of government-held secrets about unidentified flying objects, though he doesn't believe the President is to blame.

'I think the President is fully committed to wanting transparency, but I think his intention and what's getting bureaucratically executed are two very different things,' Dr Phil told the Daily Mail after the Pentagon released a new batch of documents and images related to UFOs, also known as unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAP.

Included in the latest dump were six videos of UAP encounters by Special Operations forces on an AC-130J gunship over the Gulf of Oman in September 2021. The footage, which appears to have been taken by a cellphone of screens, shows objects picked up by infrared cameras and other sensors.

An accompanying report indicated the Special Ops forces on the ship 'observed approximately 25 instances of UAPs while conducting a live fire exercise in the Gulf of Oman.' 

Beyond that, little additional information was provided.

For Dr Phil that's a problem. 

'This is the fifth tranche of information they've put out,' he said of the new material. 'There's not any context to this. There's very seldom any follow-up information.'

The renowned talk show host and former practicing clinical psychologist is a member of President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission and is in close contact with members of Congress about this disclosure process.

'This is the fifth tranche of information they've put out,' he said of the new material. 'There's not any context to this. There's very seldom any follow-up information'

'My point is: Are we really getting disclosure here?' he continued. 'Or are we getting information without context, so you don't really know the meaning of what they're reporting? Is that an accident? The pattern suggests that it's not really an accident.'

Dr Phil stresses that he is not one to engage in reckless speculation. In fact, House and Senate members have apparently sought him out to share their concerns over the potential of a mental health crisis, if non-human life and technology is revealed to the public.

'[Members of Congress] speak as candidly with me about it as anybody and maybe more so,' he told the Daily Mail. And these top government officials, he said, are as worried as he is that they're not getting the full story.

'The information about this, I've come to find, is very fractionalized,' Dr Phil explained. 'There's not one place or one person or group of people that has all the information. So, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand knows.'

That observation, he said, has given rise to suspicion, shared among members of Congress, that additional information may be held outside of federal government control.

'I think there is a fairly strong belief that a lot of this information has been housed, moved, managed, however you want to say it, to the private aerospace industry. Maybe to escape Freedom of Information Act requests,' Dr Phil shared.

The Freedom of Information Act or FOIA is a federal law that gives citizens the right to ask for and view records held by federal agencies. 

But if the information is not in government hands, the system can be thwarted.

'There are a lot of people who believe that [addition information is] in the possession of private aerospace companies, not the government, in terms of physically holding it and housing it. And I think there are senators and representatives that want to know… There are people on the Hill who believe that that's been done,' he said.

'Let's say something has been recovered,' Dr Phil continued in reference to potential non-human technology. 'The propulsion systems that have been described in some of these aircraft are pretty amazing. Some of them have no heat signature, some of them are astoundingly fast.

'They move in ways that we don't have the technology to navigate and move. If you were able to reverse engineer that and there was some kind of new energy source that would be a quantum leap forward, right? What would that be worth?'

It would be naive, he argued, to dismiss the possibility that groups would not be motivated to keep advanced technology hidden in defiance of administration demands.

A screenshot of a video released showing an unresolved UFO report from last year. The footage shows a small orb-like object traveling across the screen

Dr Phil observed, for instance, why aren't high-definition images and videos of these UFO encounters also being released?

'I've seen gun cameras, they're not grainy. You can see with great clarity, but we're not getting those and at least in some cases, they exist. We're not getting the best evidence that I believe exists.'

'I've seen radar readouts that are crystal clear. So why are we looking at stepped-down, degraded videos?'

There is also another possible explanation, he said, for the steady flow of UFO disclosures that offer clarity: a distraction campaign.

'Culturally, we kind of have attention deficit disorder,' said Dr Phil. 'We read headlines and if nothing big comes out and pays off, we kind of get inoculated to it... We adapt and don't have the same reactivity. That could be intentional. "Let's wear them out. Maybe this will blow over and they'll move on to the next big thing."'

Overall, Dr Phil's involvement in the UFO disclosure process has more to do with safeguarding public health than anything else – and he paints a concerning picture when it comes to the consequences of a potential revelation that humans are not alone in the universe.

'When we have the highest levels of anxiety and depression, and loneliness among our young people that we've ever had since we started keeping records, our mental health system is fully deployed,' he said.

'If all of a sudden, 10 percent of the population really had a problem with [disclosure of non-human life] and really needed help with it that could be 20 or 30 million people. It could be like a pandemic. I think it's important that we think about that ahead of time and be prepared.'

The UFO Phenomenon | Full Documentary 2021 | 7NEWS Spotlight

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Dr Phil McGraw has exposed the staggering number of UFO sightings which the Pentagon has never investigated despite overseeing the White House's massive disclosure campaign.

In a video released on Wednesday, Dr Phil claimed he was 'absolutely certain' the US government has been deceiving the American people for the last 80 years, covering up evidence of unexplainable encounters with UFOs and potential contact with alien life.

Although he did not claim to have proof that UFOs exist, the famed TV personality and author revealed how more than 1,800 legitimate reports of UFOs made by the public have been ignored by the Pentagon.

He added: 'Can some of those be explained away? I'm sure they can, maybe all of them, I don't know. The point is nobody in the government is even looking at these things.'

McGraw, who has previously criticized the ongoing rollout of documents, photos and videos allegedly tied to the government's UFO files, claimed the entire campaign was a giant lie that was continuing to keep the truth about extraterrestrials from the public.

'Most of you are as angry as I am that the government has lied straight to our face. This is what really p***** me off, there is not one government agency that lets everyday Americans report UAPs [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena].'

In February, President Trump ordered the US Department of War to oversee the declassification and release of all documents related to UFOs and alien life.

To this point, there have been five batches of files released, mainly coming from the FBI, CIA, NASA and the Pentagon, but the vast majority have contained vague reports, unrelated information or images which were too obscure to be considered real proof.

Dr Phil McGraw slammed the US government's alleged coverup of UFO sightings amid the highly criticized disclosure campaign led by the Pentagon

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

In his new video posted on X, McGraw took aim directly at the federal government, alleging that nearly every private citizen in the US was being shut out of the conversation surrounding UAPs - the updated term for UFOs.

He claimed that 93 percent of Americans have no official way of reporting UFO sightings to the government or military. That is more than 310 million people.

Officially, the only people who have the ability to file a report directly with the federal government about alleged sightings of strange flying objects or other phenomena are current and former federal employees, military service members, government contractors and pilots.

'It's turned a blind eye from most Americans. So, if the government doesn't want to see it, who does, where is all that information going?' he asked.

'If 99 percent of it proves to be nothing to see here, fine. What about the one percent?' 

The only avenue Dr Phil said was available to the general public were two private, non-government databases which allow anyone to submit reports about UFOs and other unexplainable encounters.

These are NUFORC, the National UFO Reporting Center, and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).

McGraw noted that NUFORC currently had 1,855 UFO reports that they classified as 'Tier 1,' meaning that someone provided one of the hardest-to-explain sightings of a UFO which could not be dismissed as a bird, balloon, camera glitch or human-built aircraft.

Dr Phil claimed that the American people were being lied to by the US government, who he said had been concealing the truth about UFOs for 80 years

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El Niño is being supersized before our eyes: Scientists warn the devastating climate event is 'firmly established' – and is on track to wreak havoc until at least February

• READ MORE: Ocean temperatures hit a record high – and worst is yet to come 
  

ByXANTHA LEATHAM, EXECUTIVE SCIENCE EDITOR

The El Niño weather phenomenon is 'supersizing before our eyes' as it threatens to wreak havoc on the UK in autumn and early winter, experts have warned.

Scientists from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the climate pattern – where Pacific sea surface temperatures become significantly warmer than average – is now 'firmly established' and is set to have huge impacts on rainfall and temperatures globally, triggering floods, drought and extreme heat.

Forecasts indicate an 'exceptionally huge likelihood of nearly 100 per cent' that El Niño will cause problems until February – the first time such an unequivocal update has been issued.

In the UK, El Niño is likely to make autumn and early winter colder, wetter and stormier, according to the Met Office. 

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: 'El Niño is being supersized before our eyes. The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters – and those waters are heating up.

'Sea surface temperatures are rising, temperatures keep climbing and the world is in the danger zone of extreme weather.

'The race now is between rising risks and our commitment to take climate action and protect people. We must win that race.'

Scientists warned El Niño is 'firmly established' and 'being supersized before our eyes' as temperatures continue to rise

Experts said the phenomenon will have huge impacts on rainfall (pictured) and temperatures across the globe

The El Niño Southern Oscillation is a naturally occurring climate cycle that shifts between hot El Niño years and cool La Niña years once every two to seven years.

As we enter an El Niño phase, the powerful trade winds that normally blow hot water across the Pacific towards Australia weaken, or even reverse.

That prevents cool waters welling up from the deep ocean below and causes hot water to collect near the surface off the west coast of South America.

Eventually, that warm water starts to spread out, raising the average global temperature and causing major disruptions to weather patterns around the globe.

The WMO said sea surface temperatures in the region at the heart of El Niño are already well above average and are continuing to rise.

The developing El Niño has gathered pace dramatically in recent months, with Pacific Ocean temperatures now more than 2C above average in some regions.

Scientists say the warmth lurking beneath the surface is even more remarkable, with some underwater areas reaching a staggering 8C above normal.

For September to November this year, the WMO's forecasts indicate there will be above-normal temperatures across almost all land areas around the world.

Forecasts indicate an 'exceptionally huge likelihood of nearly 100 per cent' that El Niño will wreak havoc until February

El Niño generally begins developing between March and June and reaches its peak intensity between November and February.

Its impact on global temperatures can extend beyond the period of peak ocean warming and be most pronounced in the year after development.

'El Niño has the potential to deliver a massive blow to communities and economies across the world,' WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said.

'We are already seeing disruption and devastation from droughts and floods and we expect these impacts to increase as El Niño intensifies.'

Britons have been told to brace for a cold and stormy winter as warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific send 'waves' rippling through the atmosphere.

These waves push the world's most powerful weather systems – including the jet stream – off their usual course, wreaking havoc on Britain's winter weather.

This winter, experts predict the jet stream will send storms towards the UK along powerful currents of fast-moving winds.

While it is still too early to say when these storms will occur, the latest weather predictions agree that bad weather is increasingly likely.

The developing El Niño has gathered pace dramatically in recent months, with Pacific Ocean temperatures now more than 2°C above average in some regions

Will Lang, chief meteorologist at the Met Office, told the Daily Mail: 'El Niño conditions increase the chance of storms in late autumn and early winter.'

Professor Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical Hazards, said: 'Powerful El Niños typically bring mild, stormy Autumns and early Winters to the UK, followed by bitter cold, although this isn't set in stone.'

A separate study, published last week, found the El Niño events have been ramping up for decades.

Read More

• When will the Super El Niño storms hit the UK? Scientists tell Brits to prepare for heavy rain and flooding from October - followed by a 'bitterly cold' winter 

Scientists from the University of Michigan examined corals in the Galapagos Islands to estimate the strength of previous events.

Their analysis revealed that El Niños have become nearly 40 per cent stronger in the last 40 years than the previous 1,000.

'We don't see a time in the past where El Niños have been as strong as today,' said lead author Professor Julia Cole.

'We show that the strength of El Niño changes in parallel with the warming of global temperature.

'Our findings tell us that the big El Niño events of the last 40 years are not normal in the context of the last thousand years.'

WHAT IS THE EL NINO PHENOMENON IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN?

El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases (respectively) of a recurring climate phenomenon across the tropical Pacific - the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short.

The pattern can shift back and forth irregularly every two to seven years, and each phase triggers predictable disruptions of temperature, winds and precipitation. 

These changes disrupt air movement and affect global climate. 

ENSO has three phases: 

* El Niño: A warming of the ocean surface, or above-average sea surface temperatures (SST), in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Over Indonesia, rainfall becomes reduced, while rainfall increases over the tropical Pacific Ocean. The low-level surface winds, which normally blow from east to west along the Equator, instead weaken or, in some cases, start blowing the other direction from west to east. 

* La Niña: A cooling of the ocean surface, or below-average SST, in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Over Indonesia, rainfall tends to increase, while rainfall decreases over the central tropical Pacific Ocean. The normal easterly winds along the Equator become even stronger.

* Neutral: Neither El Niño or La Niña. Often tropical Pacific SSTs are generally close to average.

Source: Climate.gov

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

UFO Nuclear Test Link Reportedly Debunked by Experts Warning Believers Not To Act Like 'Religion'

Astronomers have torn apart UFO claims linking 1950s 'orbiting objects' to nuclear tests, warning that believers must accept scientific scrutiny or risk turning the subject into a kind of religion

Astronomers in Australia and the US have now gone public with a challenge to the UFO claims first put forward in 2025 

PHOTO Sparker/Pinterest

International astronomers have published a devastating critique dismantling high-profile 2025 UFO claims that mysterious objects orbited Earth decades before the launch of Sputnik.

Led by researchers from Wellesley College and the University at Albany, the peer-reviewed study, accepted for publication in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, argues that previous assertions linking photographic 'transients' to US nuclear weapons tests relied on faulty mathematics and severely compromised archival data.

The original research, conducted under the Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations project, suggested that anomalous light flashes captured by California's Palomar Observatory represented non-human technology drawn to atomic detonations.

However, the latest scientific evaluation exposes deep methodological flaws, proving that glass plate defects, dust scratches, and incorrect observational timescales generated an illusory statistical signal.

As academic backlash mounts against unrefereed counterclaims, the rigorous study revives fierce debates over whether fringe UFO proponents truly welcome scientific stress-testing or prefer shielding speculative hypotheses from empirical reality.

Anatomy of the Original VASCO UFO Claims

The new critique focuses on alleged 'technosignatures' seen on photographic plates decades before the space age. The controversy began when astronomer Dr Beatriz Villarroel and collaborators reported evidence of objects apparently orbiting Earth years before any human‑made satellite was launched.

Working under the VASCO project, they said old photographic surveys from the Palomar Observatory in California showed fleeting 'transients' that could be sunlight glinting off non‑human technology.

A companion paper, co‑authored with Vanderbilt University anaesthesiologist Stephen Bruehl, went further, claiming a statistical correlation between the dates of those transients and US nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s.

If that had stood up, it would have been dynamite. Mysterious objects in pre‑Sputnik orbit, apparently clustering around nuclear detonations, look like the script treatment for Oppenheimer 2.

It also offered believers what they have long craved, a peer‑reviewed breadcrumb trail pointing towards UFOs as alien surveillance craft drawn to humanity's most dangerous toys.

How the Vasco UFO Claims Took Off

The VASCO project, short for Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations, is built on a smart, almost old‑school idea. Villarroel's team uses archival photographic plates, taken long before the sky was crowded with satellites and space junk, to hunt for technosignatures, signs of advanced technology that might briefly flare and then vanish.

The studies at the heart of the current argument used early 1950s images from the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, known as POSS‑I. Each region of sky was photographed twice in quick succession, once with a red‑sensitive plate and once with a blue‑sensitive one.

VASCO's software scanned the digitised plates looking for things that appeared in one exposure but not the other. Those were labelled transients and, in the more speculative framing, possible UFO‑like artefacts in orbit.

The most attention‑grabbing claim was statistical. Villarroel's team said there were far fewer transients recorded on plates taken during Earth's shadow, when sunlight could not reflect off orbiting objects.

They calculated that deficit as a '22 sigma' result. In particle physics, 5 sigma is the gold standard for a discovery. Twenty‑two is almost absurdly strong, the sort of number that suggests either profound new physics or that something, somewhere, has gone mad in the spreadsheets.

In a second paper, Bruehl and Villarroel said that the dates of these transients significantly overlapped with the timing of nuclear tests. The implication, not exactly buried in the framing, was that whoever might be flying those hypothetical craft was paying close attention to mushroom clouds.

Rigorous Scientific Pushback Led by Wesley Watters

The pushback has now arrived in the form of a detailed critique led by Wesley Watters of Wellesley College. His paper, titled 'Critical Evaluation of Studies Alleging Evidence for Technosignatures in the POSS1 – E Photographic Plates,' was accepted by the Australian astronomy journal after peer review and posted online ahead of print.

What makes this more awkward for UFO enthusiasts is who is doing the debunking. Watters has previously argued that unidentified aerial phenomena deserve serious, agnostic study.

Co‑author Kevin Knuth, a physicist at the University at Albany, SUNY, has published work examining US Navy pilot UAP encounters. Both have been affiliated with Avi Loeb's Galileo Project, which is explicitly set up to examine UAPs scientifically, not to scoff at them.

In other words, this is not a hit job from dyed‑in‑the‑wool sceptics. It is criticism from scientists who, if anything, have stuck their necks out to say UFO reports should not be laughed out of the room.

Watters and his colleagues start with a mundane but brutal problem, the plates themselves. Old photographic glass is riddled with defects, from dust and scratches to emulsion flaws and copying artefacts.

Astronomers spent years trying to use similar plates to catch fleeting optical signals from gamma‑ray bursts, only to conclude the medium just was not up to that kind of work at scale.

Because of that, Watters refuses to call the POSS‑I blips 'transients' at all. His team rebrands them 'Selected POSS 1‑E Features,' or SPFs, until someone can prove they are real astronomical objects.

Then they try to reconstruct, plate by plate, what subset of the survey VASCO actually used, a task made harder because Villarroel's team did not publish their full working dataset.

Once they do that, a pattern emerges, and not a good one. SPFs cluster at plate edges, disappear in wide stripes, and bunch oddly in certain regions. The sky map is a mess. For a robust statistical analysis, you need an underlying distribution that is roughly uniform and random, something that can be modelled as a Poisson process.

Watters argues that the VASCO features fail that basic test, which means the more sophisticated maths layered on top is on wobbly ground from the start.

Collapsing the Statistical Mirage and Timescale Errors

When the Australian‑led group re‑ran the crucial Earth‑shadow calculation with their reconstructed dataset, the jaw‑dropping 22 sigma result vanished. They found no statistically significant deficit of features in Earth's shadow.

On closer inspection, only 11 of the 645 plates VASCO used were even in shadow, and just five were fully so. Most of the supposed signal came from a single problematic plate that sat in one of the odd 'bands' where defects were already clustering.

Watters' team points out that VASCO's correlation used the wrong observing timescale, treating the survey as if it spanned 2,718 observing days instead of the actual 312 days from which their plates were drawn. Correct that, and the apparent UFO‑nuclear overlap collapses into something more prosaic.

A loose relationship between the periods when the Palomar telescope was operating and when nuclear tests were conducted, perhaps because both favoured clear weather over the western US. As for aliens timing their fly‑bys to our detonations, that statistical mirage evaporates.

Philosophical Friction Between UFO Belief and Scientific Process

The final part of Watters' critique is almost philosophical. He accuses the VASCO papers of circular reasoning, treating the features as genuine transients from the outset and then using that assumption to argue they must be real technosignatures. Without independent confirmation that most of these specks are not just plate defects, the logic folds in on itself.

None of this means the VASCO concept is useless. On the contrary, trawling clean, digitised archives for technosignatures is a sharp, modern twist on classic astronomy. The problem, according to Watters, is that this particular dataset is simply too dirty and too sparse in the critical regions to bear the UFO‑flavoured weight put on it.

Predictably, the backlash has not been limited to journal pages. Unrefereed online documents have popped up purporting to rebut the Australian‑led critique, bypassing peer review entirely and demanding to be treated as equal parts of the scientific conversation.

Researchers who are unconvinced by the UFO‑friendly statistics are branded 'part of the problem' or worse. At which point many working scientists quietly ask themselves why they should spend time on this stuff when they could be doing almost anything else.

And that is the uncomfortable question hanging over this latest UFO skirmish. Does the UAP community actually want their favourite claims tested, stress‑tested even, inside the sometimes painful machinery of science, or do they want those claims protected from serious challenge? If you are unwilling to let your beliefs be broken by better data and better maths, you are not really doing science any more. You are doing something else entirely.

{ https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/trending }

No confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial life after nearly 70 years of searching

After nearly 70 years of searching, humanity has found no confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial life—only potential biosignatures in a Martian rock, disputed chemistry 124 light-years away, and thousands of UAP reports that may have nothing to do with aliens at all. The answer, whatever it is, still arrives only in fragments.

By Life Signs · Edited by Lachlan Brown

Pale, millimetre-scale leopard spots with dark rims cover part of the Cheyava Falls rock in this Perseverance WATSON image.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. 

Source. The features are potential biosignatures, not photographed fossils or organisms.

Mars, K2-18 b and decades of UAP reports offer intriguing fragments, but each remains separated from confirmed extraterrestrial life by a different evidentiary gap.

An early alert was probably aircraft radar. Otherwise, the loudspeaker produced static and the chart recorder drew no meaningful feature. It was a tiny search by current standards, but it established the basic discipline: choose a plausible signal, observe, test interference and report the null result.

Later surveys covered far more sky, bandwidth and signal types. The scale can sound exhaustive when described by raw numbers. As SpaceDaily’s account of SETI@home explained, volunteer computers processed about 12 billion threshold events before a decade of filtering reduced the data to roughly 100 sky positions worth another look. Those billions were not billions of possible alien messages. Most were radio interference, statistical fluctuations or other products of an instrument listening from a noisy technological planet.

Even the largest search samples only a sliver of the possible combinations of sky position, frequency, time, signal shape and transmitter power. A civilisation could be quiet, use a method not being monitored, transmit in another direction or exist millions of years out of step with the brief era in which Earth can listen.

A detection is not yet a confirmation

The word “evidence” covers several levels that are easily collapsed in public discussion. A detector may register a feature. Researchers may show that the feature resembles a molecule or process associated with life. They must then ask whether the feature is real, whether the identification is unique and whether geology, chemistry, contamination or technology can explain it.

A biosignature is therefore not a synonym for an organism. NASA defines a potential biosignature as a substance or structure that might have a biological origin but requires more evidence before a conclusion can be reached. A technosignature has the same logic: it is an observable sign that could reveal technology, not any unexplained event by default.

Confirmation would demand convergence. Independent instruments should recover compatible results. Alternative explanations should be actively tested rather than merely overlooked. The evidence must fit its environment, because a molecule produced by life in Earth’s oceans may have a different source in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, and a light moving strangely in a compressed video may move normally once range and camera motion are known.

The Martian rock is a serious candidate, not a biological sample

The most tangible of the current fragments sits inside a sealed tube on Mars. Perseverance drilled the Sapphire Canyon core from a rock called Cheyava Falls in Jezero Crater in July 2024. The rock formed in an ancient river-valley setting and contains fine clay and silt, organic carbon, sulphur, oxidised iron and phosphorus.

In a 2025 peer-reviewed analysis in Nature, the rover team described millimetre-scale reaction fronts nicknamed leopard spots. Instrument data were consistent with two iron-rich minerals, vivianite and greigite, arranged where electron-transfer reactions had occurred between sediment and organic matter.

That combination matters because related reactions on Earth can support microbial metabolisms, and microbes can participate in the formation of these minerals. The wet sedimentary setting could also preserve traces of ancient life. NASA consequently described Sapphire Canyon as Perseverance’s best candidate for signs of ancient microbial processes.

• Editors’ Recommendations

  

  Perseverance reached Mars for about $2.7 billion, while a crewed expedition could cost hundreds of billions because humans require years of life support, protection, supplies and a way home—although the frequently quoted $500 billion figure is only a rough historical estimate, not a settled NASA price tag.

  
  One cotton T-shirt takes about 2,700 litres of water to make — roughly what one person drinks in two and a half years.

  The Artful Age

  

  What winter means on Mars: temperatures can plunge to −130°C, carbon dioxide falls as snow or freezes directly onto the ground, as much as 16% of the atmosphere becomes part of the winter polar cap, and air pressure planet-wide swings by roughly 25% over the seasonal cycle.

But the minerals can form without biology. Heat, acidic conditions and reactions involving organic compounds offer abiotic routes, and the rover cannot reproduce the range of microscopy, isotope measurements and controlled experiments available in an Earth laboratory. SpaceDaily’s earlier examination of Cheyava Falls reached the necessary boundary: this is a compelling pattern in a habitable context, not a fossil, cell or confirmed product of metabolism.

At 124 light-years, chemistry is reconstructed from starlight

K2-18 b is more remote in every sense. The planet is about 124 light-years away, roughly 2.6 times Earth’s radius and 8.6 times its mass. It orbits in the conventional habitable zone of a cool red dwarf, but that does not establish an ocean or a surface where familiar life could live.

The disputed chemistry is therefore a fragment twice removed. The first question is whether the sulphur-bearing gases are present. Only after that would researchers ask how they formed. Even a secure detection of DMS would not by itself demonstrate an ocean, a habitable climate or biology.

Thousands of UAP reports ask a different question

UAP reports belong to another evidence category altogether. They concern events observed in Earth’s atmosphere, oceans or nearby space, often through human testimony or sensors designed for defence rather than scientific measurement. “Unidentified” describes the status of an observation. It does not describe the origin of an object.

The historical volume is undeniably measured in thousands. According to the US National Archives, Project Blue Book collected 12,618 sightings between 1947 and 1969, leaving 701 categorised as unidentified. More recently, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, held 1,870 reports as of 30 May 2025. Those counts come from different programmes and should not be added into one clean statistical series, but they show how many reports can accumulate without producing an extraterrestrial conclusion.

AARO’s latest annual report received 319 cases and resolved 114 of them, while also closing 256 older cases. All 370 resolutions involved ordinary objects or events, including balloons, satellites, birds, aircraft, drones, one rocket launch and one manned jet pack. The office moved 191 new reports into an active archive because the available data were insufficient and sent nine for deeper intelligence, scientific or technical analysis.

Insufficient data can preserve an unknown indefinitely. A sincere witness may not know distance or speed. A short infrared clip may lack original metadata. A bright satellite flare can appear to move or hover in surprising ways. AARO resolved 238 older reports as satellite flaring after adding three-dimensional modelling, an unusually clear example of better analysis converting mystery into identification.

This does not make UAP investigation pointless. An unidentified event near an aircraft can represent a flight hazard, a drone, foreign surveillance or a sensor problem even if it has nothing to do with extraterrestrial life. It does mean that volume is not proof, a distinction also central to SpaceDaily’s coverage of recent Pentagon UAP releases.