Mystery of the Bible's Garden of Eden river finally solved in major geological discovery See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred Source By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR
A geological discovery has uncovered what researchers describe as a previously unknown chapter in the history of a river linked to one of the Bible's most enduring stories.
The Euphrates River is named in Genesis as one of four waterways flowing from the Garden of Eden, the paradise where Adam and Eve are said to have lived.
Despite its central role in biblical tradition and the rise of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, scientists have long been unable to determine exactly how the river first formed.
For decades, evidence of its origins remained hidden beneath layers of sediment and obscured by millions of years of tectonic upheaval.
Now, researchers said they have solved the mystery, reconstructing the ancient history of the waterway for the first time.
The team pieced together the river's past using seismic imaging, satellite observations, geological mapping and sediment deposits buried beneath the Mediterranean Sea.
Their analysis revealed that two enormous rivers, known as the Paleo-Karasu and Paleo-Murat, once flowed separately across what is now Turkey and Syria before powerful geological forces altered their course.
By around 1.6 million years ago, the waterways had merged and begun flowing toward the Persian Gulf, creating the modern Euphrates.
For decades, evidence of the river's origins remained hidden beneath layers of sediment and obscured by millions of years of tectonic upheaval
The Euphrates River, the longest waterway in Western Asia, flows through the Fertile Crescent, a region often called the cradle of civilization because it was home to some of humanity's earliest societies.
Its eastern branch, known as Mesopotamia, contains the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
These two rivers created an oasis of fertile soil in an otherwise arid region, which helped ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians and Assyrians flourish some 6,000 years ago.
Despite the Euphrates playing a central role in the success of these early civilizations, the origins of the 1,900-mile-long river have until now remained enigmatic.
Some researchers previously proposed that the Euphrates evolved from a single river that flowed into the Mediterranean Sea or into ancient lakes in what is now Turkey, while others suggested it evolved from a river ending somewhere on the Arabian Peninsula.
The new study, published June 1 in Nature Geoscience, allowed researchers to reconstruct the river's evolution over millions of years.
The analysis suggested the Paleo-Murat River first appeared more than 16.5 million years ago, while the Paleo-Karasu developed between about 8.6 million and 5.9 million years ago.
During this period, both rivers flowed into a series of poorly connected lakes south of the North Anatolian Fault rather than forming part of the modern Euphrates system.
Their analysis revealed that two enormous rivers, known as the Paleo-Karasu and Paleo-Murat, once flowed separately across what is now Turkey and Syria before powerful geological forces altered their course
The Garden of Eden (Pictured) was described in the Book of Genesis as a paradise where the first humans, Adam and Eve, once walked before committing the first sin
Around 5.3 million years ago, a major geological event transformed the Mediterranean region.
The connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean became restricted near what is now the Strait of Gibraltar, causing much of the Mediterranean Sea to dry up.
As water levels dropped dramatically, the eastern Mediterranean fell by as much as one to 1.3 miles. However, the researchers estimated that a drop of at least 2,600 feet would have been enough to produce the changes seen in their model.
The sudden lowering of sea level caused rivers across the region to cut deeper into the landscape as they adjusted to the new conditions.
At the same time, tectonic forces tilted parts of Anatolia and reactivated ancient faults, accelerating erosion and increasing the amount of sediment carried toward the Mediterranean.
Many have dismissed the Garden of Eden as a myth, but now, resurfaced satellite images have suggested that the story may have a very real geographical basis
The researchers believe these changes may have caused large lakes in the Anatolian highlands to suddenly burst through their natural barriers, unleashing catastrophic floods.
They suggested two major geological formations, known as the Handere and Nahr Menashe deposits, may have been created by these enormous flood events.
Similar processes may have occurred elsewhere around the Mediterranean.
The team pointed to a giant ancient river deposit off the coast of Libya, known as the Eosahabi fan, which may also have been formed when rivers rapidly eroded the landscape in response to falling sea levels.
Over millions of years, continued tectonic activity altered the courses of the Paleo-Murat and Paleo-Karasu rivers until they eventually merged around 1.6 million years ago, forming the modern Euphrates River.
Ex-CIA 'psychic spy' unmasks secret alien bases inside mountains with UFO repair shops
BY Liam Randall - News Reporter
Ex-CIA 'psychic spy' Lyn Buchanan claims to have unmasked several secret alien bases
(Image: American Alchemy)
An ex-CIA "psychic spy" claims he has identified the exact coordinates of several top-secret alien installations lurking right under our noses on Earth. Lyn Buchanan, a decorated army intelligence veteran, dropped the bombshell revelations on the American Alchemy podcast.
He claimed that the extraterrestrial outposts are burrowed deep inside remote mountains, serving as interplanetary spy hubs, UFO repair garages and cosmic transit lounges. During the height of the Cold War, Buchanan was part of a highly classified military research unit exploring whether human consciousness could be weaponised for long-distance espionage.
According to the veteran, the locations were originally sniffed out back in 1973 by a former cop turned pioneering remote viewer named Pat Price.
Mount Hayes in Alaska is said to be home to a top-secret alien base
(Image: Getty Images/Design Pics RF)
The US Government later launched "Project 8200" to see if independent psychics could back up Price's wild claims.
Buchanan was ordered to track four primary targets at Mount Hayes in Alaska, Mount Zeil in Australia, Mount Nyangani in Zimbabwe and a site in the Pyrenees Mountains spanning the Spanish and French border.
According to Buchanan, each base serves a distinct purpose. The first location, hidden inside Alaska's Mount Hayes, acts as a massive global surveillance hub.
Lyn Buchanan says each base serves a distinct purpose
(Image: New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove/YouTube)
When quizzed on its function, Buchanan explained it was for: "Keeping intelligence on the Earth... just collecting data and signals and all that."
While earlier psychics claimed to have seen humans and aliens working together, Buchanan noted the staff had cleared out when he took a look.
He said: "I did Mount Hayes and found out that the equipment was now automated and still running, but there was no need for personnel there."
Meanwhile, the base at Australia's Mount Zeil handles cosmic traffic. Buchanan described it as a bustling extraterrestrial airport.
He said: "Mount Zeil is sort of a port of entry to the Earth that friendly ones go there and then from there spread out around the world."
The facility is said to feature multiple subterranean levels, including a spaceship docking bay and a mechanics' workshop below.
During one bizarre psychic session, Buchanan claimed the alien residents realised they were being watched. He said: "In the area where the travellers go in and out, I saw a grey female with a baby grey."
The third site, located within Zimbabwe's Mount Nyangani, was identified as a dedicated maintenance garage. When asked exactly what was being fixed deep inside the peak, Buchanan said: "For ETs. For UFOs."
But don't go hunting for it as the psychic spy warned the site is heavily protected, suggesting a dark explanation for local disappearances. He said: "You see too much. You disappear."
Buchanan admitted he never personally saw the final site in the Pyrenees. He said: "I never did the one that was in the Pyrenees, so I'm not sure about it."
The extraordinary claims were part of the CIA's infamous "STARGATE" project, which was ultimately shut down in 1995 after being deemed operationally useless. Sceptics point out there is zero public evidence proving the bases exist.
However, Buchanan remains adamant that multiple psychics drew identical sketches of the facilities without knowing the targets beforehand. He added: "See, I did all these blind."
CIA 'psychic spy' claims four alien bases are hidden on Earth
A former CIA 'psychic spy' has exposed the location of several alien bases he claimed are hidden on Earth.
Lyn Buchanan, a retired Army intelligence veteran, told the American Alchemy podcast that the installations were hidden inside remote mountains and functioned as intelligence-gathering hubs, UFO repair facilities and extraterrestrial entry points.
He was among the participants in a classified Cold War-era psychic research effort that explored whether human consciousness could be used to gather intelligence from afar and was tasked with keeping track of the facilities.
The bases were reportedly first identified by remote viewer Pat Price in 1973, a former police officer who became one of the earliest participants in the government's psychic research programs.
The locations were later revisited under the CIA's Project 8200, an effort designed to determine whether independent remote viewers could corroborate Price's extraordinary claims.
Buchanan said he was tasked with monitoring sites allegedly located in Alaska's Mount Hayes, Australia's Mount Zeil, Zimbabwe's Mount Nyangani and the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France.
He claimed the sites served different functions, saying the Alaska base gathered intelligence, the Australian installation operated as a UFO 'port of entry' and the Zimbabwe facility functioned as a repair center for extraterrestrial craft.
Buchanan further said that during one remote-viewing session, the occupants of the Australian facility appeared to become aware they were being observed, telling host Jesse Michels: 'The first thing that happened was they let me know that they knew I was there and that it was okay.'
There is no publicly available evidence that any of the alleged bases exist, and Buchanan's claims have not been independently verified.
The remote viewing sessions were part of the CIA's top-secret STARGATE program, which recruited individuals believed to have psychic abilities for military and intelligence purposes during the Cold War.
The program began in the early 1970s and officially shut down in 1995 after being deemed scientifically unreliable and operationally ineffective for intelligence gathering.
The first site mentioned by Buchanan, located inside Alaska's Mount Hayes, was described as a surveillance facility focused on monitoring activity across Earth.
When asked what the installation was used for, Buchanan replied: 'Keeping intelligence on the Earth... just collecting data and signals and all that.'
He claimed earlier remote viewers had reported finding both humans and extraterrestrials operating within the mountain.
'Price and Joe McMoneagle had found aliens and humans working side by side as sort of an intelligence gathering place,' Buchanan said.
However, when he later viewed the site himself, Buchanan claimed the operation had changed.
'I did Mount Hayes and found out that the equipment was now automated and still running, but there was no need for personnel there,' he said.
Buchanan said the facility was hidden deep inside the mountain and would be nearly impossible for ordinary people to locate.
Mount Hayes has long been the subject of UFO sightings and theories about a hidden underground alien base. Numerous witnesses have reported seeing flying saucers, strange lights, and other unexplained phenomena in the area.
The second site, located at Mount Zeil in Australia's Northern Territory, was described as something entirely different.
Rather than functioning as an intelligence center, Buchanan claimed it served as a transportation hub for extraterrestrial visitors.
'Mount Zeil is sort of a port of entry to the Earth that friendly ones go there and then from there spread out around the world,' he said.
He compared the facility to an airport where craft arrived, passengers disembarked and maintenance crews serviced the vehicles. According to his account, the installation consisted of multiple levels.
One level allegedly served as a docking area where UFOs arrived and departed, while a lower level was dedicated to maintenance and support operations.
He added that the lower level handled maintenance duties for the craft. One of the most unusual claims involved what Buchanan said happened while remotely observing the site.
He said the occupants appeared to become aware they were being watched. 'In the area where the travelers go in and out, I saw a gray female with a baby gray,' he said.
The third location was said to be inside Mount Nyangani in Zimbabwe.
Unlike the Alaska and Australian sites, Buchanan described this facility as a repair center. When asked what was being repaired there, he answered: 'For ETs. For UFOs.'
Buchanan also stated the site was heavily guarded.
Discussing reports of disappearances in the area, he speculated that people who stumbled across sensitive information could face severe consequences.
'You see too much. You disappear,' he said.
A fourth site was reportedly located in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France.
However, Buchanan admitted he had not personally investigated that location.
'I never did the one that was in the Pyrenees, so I'm not sure about it,' he said.
Despite the extraordinary nature of the claims, Buchanan maintained that multiple remote viewers independently arrived at similar descriptions of the locations.
'See, I did all these blind,' he said, explaining that he was not told what the targets were beforehand.
He added that the sketches he produced during his sessions closely matched those created years earlier by Price, which he viewed as confirmation that the alleged installations were real.
NASA Officials Confirm Rare Event Captured in Satellite Images That Caused Loud Booms Heard Throughout New England
Residents of New England were startled over the weekend as a loud quaking boom shook the northeast, while many observers spotted a bright fireball streaking through the skies over the U.S. and Canada.
Now, NASA has confirmed that the energy released as a meteor exploded in the northeastern skies on May 30, 2026, was roughly equivalent to 230 tons of TNT. The resulting blast was also so bright that it registered in satellite imagery normally used to detect powerful lightning bolts.
Shortly after the incident, NASA took to social media, reporting that the GOES-19 satellite had detected a bright fireball at 2:06 p.m. EDT that coincided with reports of loud booms.
“The meteor appears to have fragmented at an altitude of 40 miles over northeast MA and southeast NH,” the NASA statement read, adding that at the time, the energy released as the object tore apart while streaking through the atmosphere was approximately the “equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, which accounts for the loud noise.”
In the video above, provided by NOAA, imagery from the GOES East (GOES-19) satellite revealed the meteor, which the satellite’s sensors registered as a lightning bolt. The meteor appears approximately one second into the looped imagery above, seen as a bluish-white flash to the right of the center of the frame.
In a subsequent update issued on Monday, NASA officials have now revealed new details about the incident, confirming the object’s size, mass, and the approximate speed as it passed above the Earth.
“The meteor was about 5 feet (1.6 meters) in diameter with a mass of 5.6 metric tons and entered Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 42,000 mph,” NASA officials wrote in Monday’s statement. “The meteor traveled through the atmosphere from northwest to southeast for 26 miles before breaking up at an altitude of 31 miles and producing a meteorite fall into Cape Cod Bay.”
The NASA update also slightly downgraded the power of the blast that the exploding object produced.
“Based on the latest data, the energy released at breakup is estimated to be equivalent to about 230 tons of TNT,” NASA’s statement on Monday noted.
Fortunately, there were no injuries or damage to property or infrastructure resulting from the May 30 incident. However, some area residents who were present at the time of the explosion reported feeling buildings shaking on Saturday afternoon.
NBC Boston chief meteorologist Pete Bouchard also weighed in, saying the boom was, indeed, a meteor.
In a statement provided by the agency from its NASA Space Alerts account on X, which periodically issues notifications on “cosmic activity in near-Earth space including solar events, asteroids, comets, and meteors,” the agency noted that objects like the one observed over the northeast, while capable of producing loud noise, are generally not viewed as being potentially dangerous.
“NASA’s planetary defense network watches the skies for objects of all sizes – and specifically is tasked with finding objects 140 meters and larger which can cause widespread damage,” the notification read.
“Meteoroids, like this one over New England, are much much smaller,” the statement added, calling them “almost impossible to track in space” and adding that “they do not survive passage through our atmosphere intact and do not pose a hazard.”
Fortunately, larger and potentially more dangerous space objects aren’t as “impossible” for NASA to track. Presently, the American space agency and its international partners are tracking more than 40,000 larger near-Earth objects (NEOs) and are frequently discovering new ones as part of their broader planetary defense objectives.
The explosion heard over the northeast on Saturday marked only the latest in a series of similar incidents that have occurred in the early part of 2026.
On March 21, a meteor crashed through the roof of a Texas home, causing minor damage, although no injuries were reported. Also in March, a meteor that exploded above Ohio on Saint Patrick’s Day similarly alarmed residents, one of whom described the sound to The Debrief as having resembled “a nuclear explosion” due to its volume and duration.
NASA provides additional information about meteor reentries and their effects at its Fireballs FAQ page, which can be found here.
Lost Civilizations and Dinosaurs of the Ancient Sahara Desert
Today the Sahara Desert is known as a vast ocean of sand — a harsh and nearly endless wilderness stretching across North Africa. The Sahara Desert is the largest hot desert in the world, covering an incredible 9.2 million km2, which is almost the same size as China, and has only from two million and one half million to three million people living there. The average annual temperature is 30 degrees Celsius while the hottest temperature ever recorded was 58 degrees Celsius. The area receives little rainfall; half of the Sahara Desert receives less than one inch of rain every year. Towering dunes, burning heat, and empty horizons dominate the modern imagination. Yet thousands of years ago, the Sahara was something entirely different. Beneath its sands lie the buried traces of lost rivers, vanished kingdoms, mysterious stone cities, and forgotten peoples whose stories have nearly disappeared from history. Archaeologists and explorers increasingly believe the ancient Sahara may once have been one of the great cradles of civilization.
Between roughly 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, that territory was not a desert at all. Scientists call this period the “Green Sahara” or the “African Humid Period.” Rainfall transformed the region into a fertile landscape filled with lakes, grasslands, forests, and enormous wildlife populations. Hippos swam in giant lakes. Crocodiles inhabited rivers that no longer exist. Herds of elephants, giraffes, and antelope roamed across plains now buried beneath sand dunes hundreds of feet high. Humans flourished there. Rock paintings discovered in places like Tassili n’Ajjer reveal scenes of cattle herding, dancing ceremonies, hunting expeditions, and mysterious spiritual rituals. Some paintings are over 8,000 years old and provide astonishing evidence of sophisticated societies living in regions now considered uninhabitable.
The ancient desert as it appeared many thousands of years ago, lush and green on the left and as it appears dry and barren wasteland today on the right.
Deep within the remote Ténéré region of the Sahara, archaeologists uncovered graveyards andsettlements belonging to ancient peoples who lived around long-vanished lakes. One of the most famous discoveries came from Gobero in modern-day Niger. There, scientists found human skeletons buried with jewelry, pottery, and ceremonial objects dating back nearly 10,000 years. Some graves showed adults carefully buried holding children, suggesting emotional and spiritual traditions far more advanced than many expected from such ancient cultures.
Who were these people? What language did they speak? What beliefs guided them? Much remains unknown. As the climate gradually dried, entire populations vanished or migrated toward the Nile River and sub-Saharan regions. Some historians believe these migrations may have helped shape later civilizations, including ancient Egypt.
One of the Sahara’s most astonishing forgotten civilizations was the Garamantes, who thrived in what is now Libya between roughly 500 BCE and 700 CE. Ancient Roman writers described them as mysterious desert people who commanded powerful chariots and controlled hidden oasis cities far beyond the edge of the Roman world. For centuries, many historians dismissed the Garamantes as little more than desert raiders. But modern archaeology revealed something extraordinary. The Garamantes built sophisticated underground irrigation systems called foggaras — miles of tunnels dug beneath the desert to tap hidden fossil water. They constructed cities, maintained trade routes across the Sahara, and connected the Mediterranean world with central Africa.
Their capital city, Garama, once supported thousands of people in the middle of one of the harshest environments on Earth. Then they faded into obscurity. Today their ruins sit isolated beneath the desert sun, silent reminders that advanced civilizations once flourished where few could survive now.
Satellite technology has revealed strange geometric formations hidden beneath Saharan sands — ancient riverbeds, buried walls, circles of stone, and unexplained ruins. In Mauritania lies the famous Richat Structure, often called the “Eye of the Sahara.” While scientists classify it as a natural geological formation, its enormous circular appearance has inspired theories connecting it to the legendary lost city of Atlantis. Elsewhere, researchers using radar imaging have discovered evidence of ancient waterways crossing regions now completely barren. Some experts believe entire networks of settlements remain buried and untouched beneath dunes that constantly shift with the wind. The Sahara may still conceal cities no modern person has ever seen.
Perhaps the greatest secret of the ancient Sahara is its lost water system. Modern satellite scans show that massive rivers once crossed the desert. One ancient river system may have rivaled the size of the modern Amazon River. These waterways supported fishing villages, farming communities, and trade routes over immense distances. As climate patterns changed, the rains slowly disappeared. Lakes shrank. Grasslands died. Entire populations were forced to abandon their homes.
Location of Ancient Lakes of the Sahara Destert
Traces of an ancient civilization may be found here in no man’s land.
What remains today are fragments — pottery buried under dunes, carvings etched into stone cliffs, abandoned tombs, and legends carried through oral tradition. For centuries, caravans crossing the Sahara told stories of forbidden places hidden deep within the sands: ruined temples swallowed by dunes, abandoned cities guarded by spirits, and treasure-filled caverns left behind by forgotten kings. Some explorers searched obsessively for these places. The legendary oasis city of Zerzura — sometimes called “the White City” — appeared in Arabic manuscripts for centuries. Descriptions spoke of a mysterious city hidden somewhere west of the Nile River filled with white stone buildings and guarded entrances carved with strange symbols. No one has conclusively found it. Whether Zerzura was real, exaggerated, or symbolic remains unknown.
The Sahara is so vast that even today large regions remain poorly explored. Sandstorms bury entire landscapes. Ancient sites disappear for centuries before being uncovered again. Every few years, new discoveries reshape what historians thought they knew about ancient Africa. The desert that now appears empty may once have supported thriving civilizations equal in complexity to many better-known ancient cultures. The sands of the Sahara are not merely barren — they are a gigantic archive of forgotten human history waiting to be uncovered. And somewhere beneath those dunes, countless secrets may still sleep undisturbed.
Today the Sahara is famous for its endless dunes, scorching temperatures, and dry winds, but during the age of dinosaurs it was almost unrecognizable. Around 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, much of the Sahara was covered by enormous river systems, swamps, lakes, and dense vegetation. Giant ferns and conifer trees lined waterways where prehistoric animals gathered to drink and hunt. Paleontologists believe this ancient region was one of the richest dinosaur ecosystems on Earth. Fossils discovered in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Niger reveal a world dominated by gigantic predators and strange creatures unlike anything alive today.
Among the most famous Sahara dinosaurs was Spinosaurus. This enormous predator may have reached lengths of over 50 feet, making it one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs ever discovered. Unlike most giant carnivorous dinosaurs, Spinosaurus appears to have been semi-aquatic. Scientists found evidence suggesting it could swim through rivers using its powerful tail while hunting giant fish. Its long jaws resembled those of a crocodile and were filled with cone-shaped teeth designed for gripping slippery prey. Rising from its back was a huge sail made of elongated spines, possibly used for display, temperature control, or helping it move in water.
Another terrifying carnivore was Carcharodontosaurus, whose name means “shark-toothed lizard.” This massive hunter possessed serrated teeth nearly eight inches long. It likely preyed on giant plant-eating dinosaurs roaming the floodplains. Some scientists compare it to an African counterpart of Tyrannosaurus rex. The ancient Sahara was also home to bizarre reptiles and enormous flying animals. Giant crocodile relatives such as Sarcosuchus, often nicknamed “SuperCroc,” may have grown over 30 feet long and lurked in rivers waiting for prey. Huge flying reptiles called pterosaurs soared overhead searching for fish along shorelines. Plant-eating dinosaurs also thrived there. Fossils show that long-necked sauropods wandered through forests and marshes feeding on vegetation. These massive herbivores supported entire ecosystems of predators and scavengers.
Over millions of years, Earth’s climate slowly changed. Rivers dried up, forests vanished, and the region transformed into the vast desert seen today. Wind and shifting sand buried countless skeletons beneath layers of rock. Modern fossil hunters continue uncovering remarkable discoveries in the Sahara. In some places, entire prehistoric riverbeds filled with fish bones, dinosaur teeth, and ancient footprints have been found. Each discovery helps scientists reconstruct the lost world that existed long before humans appeared. The Sahara Desert may seem lifeless today, but beneath its sands lies the remains of one of the most extraordinary dinosaur worlds in Earth’s history.
Carchardontosaurus
Sarcosuchus
Unexplained aerial encounter left U.S. intelligence officer ‘virtually speechless’
WASHINGTON — Late last year, a senior U.S. intelligence officer on a helicopter mission to investigate “thuds” near a mountain range encountered a mysterious orange orb — an object that split in two and changed direction.
“The ground team suddenly radioed that the object had risen from the ground, approached within ten feet of the helicopter, dropped below us and sped away,” the officer detailed in a memo from the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence after the strange encounter.
The document was included in a second batch of declassified documents released Friday on unidentified anomalous phenomena — previously and more infamously known unidentified flying objects, or UFOs — released this year by the Trump administration. The U.S. government has been holding onto the files for decades.
A user uploaded this video to a classified network in June 2024.
Dept. of Defense
Questions about whether humans are alone in the universe and whether alien life has ever visited Earth have captivated Americans since at least the late 1800s, buoyed by science fiction and urban myths of strange sightings and even purported alien abductions.
Those ideas, once given little widespread credibility, have in more recent years taken on more serious scrutiny as video footage — some of it legitimately difficult to explain — has emerged from trusted sources including the U.S. military.
Yet once again, the government on Friday didn’t draw any conclusions about the origins of the UFOs or offer any evidence of government communication with extra terrestrials. The documents do include a disclaimer that readers should not interpret anything “as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination regarding the described event’s validity, nature, or significance.”
This video, whose uploader-defined title is “Syrian UAP instant acceleration,” is likely derived from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform in 2021.
Dept. of Defense
The release comes during a week in which President Donald Trump has said he would delay another strike on Iran and the continued conflict has driven gas prices to nearly four-year highs ahead of the holiday weekend.
The U.S. this week also announced the indictment of the brother of Fidel Castro, 94-year-old Raul Castro, in a 1996 downing of two planes that were on a humanitarian mission to Cuba. Additionally, Trump faced rare criticism from Republicans over the announcement of a $1.8 billion fund for those who claim they were the victims of government overreach, including possibly the defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
The latest batch of UFO-related documents comes mostly from the Defense Department, and is largely made up of footage from military aircraft as well as audio and notes. There are also seven files from NASA and one from the CIA. The government said the files are redacted to protect witnesses, locations and sensitive information. They date from the 1940s through six months ago.
In the helicopter account by the intelligence officer, fighter jets were called in and, according to the officer’s notes, the orbs were able to match “the jets speed and flight path” and appeared to “chase” the fighter jets.
“We were virtually speechless after these observations,” according to the officer.
There are no conclusions in the memo about what the orbs were or any follow-up described. The senior official who witnessed it wrote at the end of the memo that after the incident he filed a debrief that night before driving home.
Other files detail similarly strange encounters. In 1970, in a handwritten letter, a Los Alamos scientist describes regularly seeing green lights between the hours of 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. between 1948 and 1951 in the mountains, one time moving in some kind of formation.
Chart showing observations of these “green fireballs,” as well as meteors, meteorites and disks.U.S.
Defense Department
In 1972, a CIA officer in the United Soviet Socialist Republics stepped outside after watching a sports competition between Canada and the USSR and saw a green circle that widened and concentric circles appeared.
A series of videos released Friday include sightings of spherical, oblong and cigar-shaped objects that pass through frames over land, lake and sea. The grainy footage tracks the objects as they zip through skies around the world. In a November 2020 video, a circular-shaped object glides in and out of clouds over the central part of the U.S. Roughly five months later, another video shows circular shaped object barrels across the skies above the U.S.
Objects were also recorded in Kabul, Syria, Kazakhstan and Europe. In one clip near Kazakhstan’s Karaganda International Airport, the night sky is broken with a burst of oval-shaped white light. One object captured in Europe appears to stop and start, like it’s being operated by an unseen video game controller.
Unidentified objects are also seen over water, floating near a surfaced submarine. Another object begins to seemingly pulse with sunburst-looking rays, and one fast-moving object was downed over Lake Huron in 2023. It’s not clear from the footage whether the object was recovered.
Audio files capture NASA pilots from the 1960s and 1970s, including the Apollo 12 crew from 1969, describing odd things they saw aboard spacecraft.
In 1962, as NASA pilot Scott Carpenter manned a spacecraft through three revolutions of the Earth during Project Mercury, he describes as the audio crackles what he says are particles that move in and out of his view.
“Their motion is random. They look exactly like snowflakes to me,” he says.
“Roger, have you tried to return?” ground control asks.
“Negative,” Carpenter responds calmly as he says he has to adjust and sees particles again.
“They definitely look like snowflakes,” he says.
Synthetic embryos will help colonize the Moon and Mars
Humanity has long harbored dreams of colonizing neighboring star systems—or, at the very least, establishing permanent bases on the Moon and Mars. However, before designing giant generation spacecraft, scientists must answer a fundamental question: Is our vulnerable species capable of reproducing safely beyond our home planet? Without the ability to reproduce, any extraterrestrial outpost is doomed to rapid decline.
Synthetic embryo.
Stock photo: Unsplash
Chinese researchers are attempting to find the answer to this landmark question. A unique experiment began this month: a batch of synthetic human embryos was sent to the Tiangong space station. The main goal is to determine how microgravity affects the critical early stages of human development.
These samples were created from human stem cells. They closely resemble real embryos, but lack the biological capacity to develop into a fully formed fetus. According to Leqian Yu, a leading researcher at the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, these synthetic models are a safe and ethical tool for studying the early stages of human development.
Space is an extremely hostile environment. Even under the reliable protection of a spacecraft’s hull, the human body is exposed to weightlessness, radiation, and high-energy cosmic rays—phenomena from which Earth’s dense atmosphere shields us.
In any case, previous animal experiments give cause for optimism. In 2016, scientists from China successfully grew mouse embryos in space to the blastocyst stage—the point at which the embryo is ready to implant in the uterine wall. In 2023, Japanese scientists replicated this success, finding that under microgravity conditions, embryos reached the blastocyst stage with a probability of about 24%. This is roughly half the rate observed on Earth, but development did occur nonetheless. However, mice are not humans, so the current experiment using synthetic human models demonstrates significant scientific progress.
China’s Tiangong Space Station
The synthetic embryos arrived in orbit on May 11 aboard the Tianzhou-10 cargo spacecraft and were immediately placed in the station’s experimental module. The samples were divided into two groups, each simulating different stages of development.
The process is fully automated: an intelligent system automatically refreshes the culture medium for the samples every day, ensuring that the experiment proceeds as planned.
The actual results will not be known until they return to Earth, where scientists will conduct a detailed comparison of the space embryos with the control group, which remained on Earth throughout the experiment.
Even if the samples fail this test, it doesn’t spell the end of the idea of reproduction in space. Previous Japanese studies have shown that the use of artificial gravity increases the chances of successful blastocyst development by 5% compared to complete weightlessness. Thus, science has the technological tools to mitigate negative impacts.
This experiment is just the first ambitious attempt to find out whether we can survive and continue our lineage among the stars. And scientists sincerely hope that the answer will be yes.
We previously reported on why NASA strictly prohibits female astronauts from becoming pregnant in space.
Explosion of a fireball in the sky caused houses to shake
Explosion of a fireball in the sky caused houses to shake
On May 30, residents of New England were scared by a loud double explosion so powerful that it shook buildings in the U.S. states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This unexpected event prompted local police and other emergency services to urgently investigate the cause of the incident.
A meteor in the sky.
File photo: CNN
The American Meteorological Society quickly reassured the public: the explosions heard around 2:30 p.m. local time were of extraterrestrial origin. They were caused by a meteor about a meter wide that entered the atmosphere at a speed of 120,000 km/h north of Boston, near the border between New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Robert Lunsford, the fire safety program coordinator, reported that the organization had received dozens of reports from a vast area stretching from Delaware to Montreal. Eyewitnesses reported the following:
Experts still need more information about its trajectory, but it is noted that most such objects burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the surface. If the space rock survived, it most likely fell into the ocean.
Residents across several states shared their experiences en masse on social media, describing how buildings were shaking. Several videos appeared on X clearly capturing the sound of two rapid explosions with no signs of smoke or fire.
The physical impact of the wave prompted many people to report their experiences to the U.S. Geological Survey. Agency spokesperson Steve Sobey confirmed that these reports had been logged at the National Earthquake Information Center and that a special “Did You Feel It?” page had been created on their website. However, he emphasized that seismographs did not detect any seismic activity. This officially confirms that the noticeable tremor was not caused by an earthquake.
We previously explained the difference between a meteor, a meteoroid, a meteorite, and an asteroid.
Dangerous Speech in Disguise: The White House’s New “Aliens” Website Is Not a Joke
By Susan Benesch and Rebecca Hamilton
The official White House website has launched a new page titled, “Aliens,” that looks like a video game, with stars twinkling in a dark sky behind spooky neon green text that reads, “THEY WALK AMONG US.” The design of the website is made to draw attention, and it will: nothing generates interest like space invaders, and fear has unique power to drive human behavior.
“We’re releasing a lot of information having to do with extraterrestrial things,” President Donald Trump said in a Cabinet meeting on May 28, the day the new site went live. “And people are totally fascinated by it … it’s literally trending number one.” Earlier in the month, the Pentagon began releasing files on U.F.O.s at the site, war.gov/UFO. But the aliens on the new official White House website aren’t extraterrestrial, despite the space theme. They are people: foreign nationals or those mistakenly assumed to be. And the timing of the president’s comments and the new site appear to be a bait and switch, luring in the public with the promise of extraterrestrials only to deliver law enforcement propaganda. Regardless of the kitschy premise, the site is neither a game nor a joke.
Echoing white supremacist rhetoric and the great replacement theory, which claims nonwhite foreigners are displacing and destroying white majorities, the site refers to dangerous invaders who arrived in the United States “under the cover of darkness” and infiltrated American society thanks to a conspiracy by “presidents, congressmen, and senior officials.” In 1950s typeface, and under a fake “declassification” label, the site says these “aliens” have “embedded themselves directly into our society.” Only one man, it declares, had the courage to reveal the secret, and now only he has the solution.
“President Trump told the truth. The cover-up is over. Secure the border. Deport them all.”
Contrary to the White House’s claim, it’s no secret that millions of undocumented people—“aliens” in the old English lexicon of U.S. legalese— live in the United States. It’s equally obvious that the White House aims to round up millions and expel them, since Trump and his advisers have long proclaimed that as a top priority. During his 2024 campaign, Trump promised “the largest deportation program in American history.” The people he is targeting, he relentlessly and falsely demonizes, calling them “vicious, violent criminals” and “stone-cold killers” who will “walk into your kitchen and cut your throat” and “not even think about it the next morning.”
Mass expulsion would transform the United States as profoundly as anything else Trump is attempting in his second term, and he can’t do it at the scale he wants without the public backing he famously craves. The new website is brazen propaganda to get Americans to hate their neighbors and to support purging millions of people from the country. Under the cover of amusement, the site systematically works to construct migrants as an existential threat, to dehumanize them, to stifle empathy for them, and finally, it asks people to report “suspicious aliens,” thus becoming complicit in the government’s effort to dispense with them.
Whitehouse.gov/aliens pushes inflammatory buttons familiar to experts on rhetoric that increases the risk of intergroup atrocities by instilling deep fear of members of another group. Such rhetoric, that one of us has named “dangerous speech” for its capacity to inspire violence, can demonize any human group. Dangerous speech is similar across languages, cultures, and history. Since no human has been born hating another group of people, dangerous speech is a vital tool for cultivating the collective fear necessary for people to support attacking or removing another group— in this case with arrests, imprisonment, and expulsion.
via Aliens.gov
“ALIENS” (capitalized in Trumpian style) pose a “real danger,” the site claims, to “every American family, every community, and the future of our nation.” Against the starry black sky of the new site, foreign nationals are depicted as dangerous not only with words but also with a heat map of immigration arrests that have taken place all over the country, from Blacklick, Ohio to Henderson, Nevada, along with long text blocks of crimes, many of them violent. The impression this creates is false, which is typical when tyrants use dangerous speech to accrue power. In fact, noncitizens commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens, and most of the people Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested have never been convicted of any U.S. crime, as the Cato Institute reported last year. Since then, the share of noncriminals in ICE detention has only risen, to more than 70 percent as of April, and only a tiny proportion of those detained are the violent criminals ICE claims it is chasing.
Moreover, quite a few of the invading “Aliens” seem to be U.S. citizens, including some people born on U.S. soil, according to the White House site. The United States is even on the site’s list of native countries of people arrested by ICE. And WIRED reported that according to the site’s heat map of arrests, ICE has grabbed at least one U.S.-born person in 715 of the listed American cities and towns. In 83 of the locations identified, every single person ICE arrested was a U.S. citizen.
The Aliens website makes two other moves familiar to scholars of mass atrocities: dehumanizing members of a group (here, conflating them with extraterrestrials and referring to them as “it”) and quashing public compassion for them.
”If you’ve witnessed an Alien abduction, do not be alarmed,” the site exhorts in glowing green. “The Alien is in good hands. We will take care of it … and return it safely to its place of origin.”
In reality, ICE officers have broken down doors to drag people into subfreezing streets in their underwear, and deported them to foreign sites of torture. More than 60,000 people who are now in ICE detention on any given day often lack adequate medical care, and many of them do not get returned safely to their countries of origin. Protests against these actions, especially in Minneapolis where ICE officers shot U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Rene Good to death (leading to more protests), have irked the White House.
Compassion has been a nuisance in other State campaigns to purge large groups of people. In 1941, for example, Nazi Governor-General Hans Frank, outlining a program to annihilate Jews, complained of public sympathy for them:
I know that there is criticism of many of the measures now applied to the Jews in the Reich. There are always deliberate attempts to speak again and again of cruelty, harshness … [A]gree with me on a formula: we will have pity, on principle, only for the German people, and for nobody else in the world.
Eliminating a large group within a society requires the complicity of a critical mass of the public. During Stalin’s Purge beginning in 1937, millions of people were denounced by others as “enemies of the people” and then arrested, often tortured, and killed. In East Germany, the Stasi secret police recruited nearly 200,000 Inoffizielle Mitarbeiteror (“informal collaborators”) or IMs who informed on their friends, neighbors, and families. In Nazi Germany, the Gestapo relied heavily on informers to help root out Jews and people who tried to protect them or merely opposed the Nazi regime. In the 1994 Rwanda genocide, political leaders instigated a mass mobilization of Hutus against their Tutsi neighbors. The same pattern can be found in the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar, and beyond.
A big red button on the White House’s “Aliens” website invites the public to take part in Trump’s mass deportation plan by becoming an informer. Clicking on “REPORT SUSPICIOUS ALIENS” leads to an ICE tip line, providing a pathway to action for potentially millions of people who might not have been looking for a way to engage with ICE.
The website also strives to convince viewers that deliverance from the purported existential threat of an “Alien invasion” runs through one, and only one man: “President Trump was the first to call out the real danger Aliens pose.” He is “Bold. Unapologetic. Unafraid.”
Trump has repeatedly pressed the idea of an alien (migrant) invasion—so much that on the first day of his second term he signed an Executive Order titled, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” and offered himself as the only protection, the only person who could repel it. It is typical of authoritarians to introduce a terrifying threat, and then offer themselves as the only savior.
Actually delivering on mass deportation, however, is an immense political, financial, and logistical challenge. Legislation that Trump called his “Bill Beautiful Bill” provided $170 billion over a four-year period for immigration enforcement, enabling a mass recruitment campaign of new ICE officers to conduct immigration arrests, alongside a 400 percent increase in the organization’s detention budget. This infrastructure of mass deportation is essential context for understanding why whitehouse.gov/aliens is not “cheeky” or “tongue-in-cheek” as some media outlets have described it. With its conspiratorial flavor and meme-ification style, it is a cleverly crafted piece of propaganda to instill and increase American fear so that the Trump administration can catapult the country back to an imagined, demographically homogenous past.
Mystery deepens over King Tutankhamun's 'alien glass' after stunning discovery
Scientists investigating the mysterious 'alien glass' in northern Africa have uncovered new clues about the violent event that created it.
The strange yellow material, known as Libyan Desert Glass, is scattered across parts of Egypt and Libya and is believed to have formed during an extreme cosmic event around 29 million years ago.
Now, researchers have discovered a rare zircon structure hidden inside the glass that appears to have formed after the mineral completely melted and rapidly crystallized again.
The finding suggests the glass was exposed to temperatures exceeding 4,082°F, hot enough to liquefy one of Earth's most durable minerals.
Researchers believe the crystal preserved a microscopic record of that event, capturing evidence of the extreme heat and rapid cooling that created the glass.
But scientists still cannot agree on exactly what happened. Some believe an asteroid slammed into Earth, while others argue a space rock exploded in the atmosphere with enough force to melt the desert below.
The newly discovered crystal does not settle the debate, but it provides some of the strongest evidence yet that the event involved extraordinary temperatures and formed under highly chaotic conditions.
That finding is shedding new light on the origin of the mysterious glass that ancient Egyptians later prized enough to place in King Tutankhamun's tomb.
Scientists investigating the mysterious 'alien glass' in northern Africa have uncovered new clues about the violent event that created it
That finding is shedding new light on the origin of the mysterious glass that ancient Egyptians later prized enough to place in King Tutankhamun's tomb
Among the many treasures found in King Tut's tomb were elaborate pieces of gold jewelry fashioned with pieces of the yellow glass.
Despite decades of study, researchers have never been able to fully explain how the glass was created.
However, the leading theories involve a catastrophic cosmic event.
One possibility is that an asteroid or comet struck Earth, generating enormous temperatures and pressures that melted silica-rich rocks into glass.
Another theory suggests that an incoming space object exploded in the atmosphere before impact, releasing enough energy to superheat the desert below without leaving behind a crater.
The biggest problem for researchers is that no definitive impact crater has ever been linked to the glass field.
Several candidate craters have been proposed over the years, but none have survived scientific scrutiny. That absence has fueled the ongoing debate and turned Libyan Desert Glass into one of planetary science's most enduring mysteries.
In the latest study, researchers from the University of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy examined a tiny zircon inclusion hidden within a sample of the glass.
The glass has been found in ancient jewellery, including a scarab carved from the material, which features in pectoral jewellery buried beside Tutankhamun
Zircon is an exceptionally durable mineral often used by geologists to reconstruct ancient events because it can survive conditions that destroy many other minerals.
What they found was unlike anything previously reported in Libyan Desert Glass.
The microscopic zircon measured only about 20 micrometers across, smaller than the width of a human hair, but it displayed an unusual branching, tree-like structure known as a dendritic texture.
Scientists believe the formation grew extremely rapidly from molten material as the glass cooled.
To investigate, the team used advanced imaging techniques capable of examining structures at the nanoscale.
These included electron microscopy and three-dimensional diffraction methods that allowed them to study the crystal's internal structure in remarkable detail.
Chemical tests revealed that the trapped glass between the zircon branches was slightly different from the surrounding Libyan Desert Glass.
It contained higher levels of aluminum and zirconium, indicating it likely came from a separate molten droplet that cooled and solidified independently from the rest of the glass.
The researchers also found something unexpected: there was no evidence of minerals that normally appear when zircon melts and cools. Instead, every crystal they examined remained zircon.
That finding is shedding new light on the origin of the mysterious glass that ancient Egyptians later prized enough to place in King Tutankhamun's tomb
This suggested the original zircon grain was heated so intensely that it melted completely before rapidly crystallizing again, skipping several intermediate stages that scientists would normally expect to see.
Further analysis showed subtle differences in the atomic structure of the trapped glass compared with the surrounding material.
The bonds between atoms inside the trapped glass were slightly longer, indicating it experienced a different thermal history during cooling.
According to the researchers, this supported the idea that the zircon formed from a tiny droplet of molten material that became isolated within the larger mass of molten glass.
The findings suggested the zircon crystal is a microscopic record of an extremely violent event.
Scientists believe it was created when intense heat melted both zircon and the surrounding silica-rich material, forming a droplet of liquid that cooled so quickly it froze evidence of the process in place.
However, the team noted that the finding carries an important implication.
Based on the chemistry of the zircon and surrounding glass, the team calculated that temperatures likely exceeded roughly 4,082 degrees Fahrenheit.
For comparison, lava from most volcanic eruptions reaches temperatures of about 1,292°F to 2,192°F, meaning the event that created the glass was significantly hotter than many volcanic processes.
The researchers described the conditions as being far from equilibrium, meaning the material was heated and cooled so rapidly that normal geological processes could not keep up.
They noted that the crystal's unusual structure suggested it formed during a chaotic sequence of melting and rapid solidification, preserving evidence of the extreme conditions that created the glass.
The study also uncovered subtle differences between the glass trapped inside the zircon structure and the surrounding Libyan Desert Glass.
These differences indicate the material may have existed as a separate molten droplet before becoming trapped and preserved during cooling.
Although the discovery provides some of the strongest evidence yet for extreme heating, it does not settle the long-running debate over the glass's origin.
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