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

{ https://usubjects.com/  }

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

Astronomical events of the year

The most important scientific discoveries

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

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

1. Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

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

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

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

2. Dark energy can evolve over time

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

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

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

3. The most energetic neutrino in history

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

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

4. A satellite has been discovered in Betelgeuse…

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

Betelgeuse and its companion. Source: phys.org

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

5. …and Saturn has as many as 128

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

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

6. Possible traces of life on Mars

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

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

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

7. Space Quipu

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

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

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

8. Waves run across the Milky Way disc

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

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

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

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

9. Signs of life on exoplanet K2-18b

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

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

10. Formation of an exomoon

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

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

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

• Posted in News, Science

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

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

Excavations Underway

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

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

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

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

An Ancient Site Emerges

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

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

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

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

A Remarkably Well-Preserved Site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By XANTHA LEATHAM, EXECUTIVE SCIENCE EDITOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More 

• Unravelling the mystery of the earliest life on Earth: Scientists uncover fresh chemical evidence of microbes in rocks more than 3.3 BILLION years old 

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

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

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

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

KEY DISCOVERIES IN HUMANITY'S SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE

Discovery of pulsars

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

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

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

'Wow!' radio signal

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

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

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

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

Fossilised Martian microbes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behaviour of Tabby's Star in 2005 

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

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

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

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

Exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone in 2017 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

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

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

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

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

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

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

'But the Eschatian hypothesis is neither.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More

• As the Disclosure Day trailer drops, scientists reveal what aliens could really sound like 

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

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

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

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

WHAT IS THE FERMI PARADOX?

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

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

He first posed the question back in 1950.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Kit Yates  

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

(Image credit: Adrián A. Astorgano for Future)

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

In this case, the solvers weren't human.

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

Scientists asked ChatGPT to solve a math problem from more than 2,000 years ago — how it answered it surprised them

Researchers uncover hidden ingredients behind AI creativity

Why OpenAI’s solution to AI hallucinations would kill ChatGPT tomorrow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Researchers uncover hidden ingredients behind AI creativity

Why OpenAI’s solution to AI hallucinations would kill ChatGPT tomorrow

Scientists say they've eliminated a major AI bottleneck — now they can process calculations 'at the speed of light'

From games to abstract reasoning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mathematical genius?

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

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

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

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

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

Research-level problems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can we trust AI at the frontier of math?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The future of mathematics?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walter Cruttenden

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

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

Stonehenge.

(LuckyStep/Fotolia)

A Belief that ‘Prior’ Meant ‘Primitive’

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

• The Hidden Message in Khafre’s Pyramid: What Were the Builders Trying to Tell Us?
• Looking to the Stars of Australian Aboriginal Astronomy
• A Circular Egyptian Mythology: Does the Dendera Zodiac Represent the Most Ancient Astronomy?

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

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

British Astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer.

(Public Domain)

Astronomical Alignment and Mathematical Feats at the Great Pyramid

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

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

The Great Pyramid of Egypt.

Credit: BigStockPhoto

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

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

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

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

(Davkal/CC BY SA 3.0)

The Mark of Early Advanced Civilizations?

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

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

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

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

‘The Deluge’ by Francis Danby, 1840.

( Public Domain )

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

By Walter Cruttenden

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

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

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

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

Overview

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

Insider Profile: From Shadows to Spotlight

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

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

Claims of Hidden Technologies and Secret Bases

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

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

Risks and Reluctance in Disclosure

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

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

The Path Forward

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

{ https://usubjects.com/ }