The celebrity comet 3I/ATLAS is showing itself out of our solar system for good — but not before the cosmic paparazzi at Earth's space agencies snap some of the clearest photos of it yet.

Discovered in late June and confirmed to be the third known interstellar object in July, 3I/ATLAS has spent the past several months zooming through the inner solar system at an estimated 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h). The massive, jet-spewing snowball made its closest approaches to Mars and the sun in October. It is due for its closest encounter with Earth on Dec. 19, when it will be about 170 million miles (270 million kilometers) away — nearly twice the distance between our planet and the sun.

As the comet careens toward this astronomical milestone, spacecraft managed by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are snagging as many close-up observations as possible. This week, both agencies shared new images of the comet — proving that its recent flyby of the sun has left it very bright and active as it spews large amounts of sublimated gas and dust into space.

Hubble doubles down

On Thursday (Dec. 4), NASA shared the latest image of 3I/ATLAS taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The glowing white dot at the center of the image shows the comet's nucleus (its main body) and coma, the bright atmosphere of gas and dust that wraps around the comet before getting funneled into its tail. In the background, stars are stretched into long streaks as Hubble's camera stays fixed on the fast-moving comet.

Comets typically brighten as they approach the sun, when the ice within them heats up and sublimates. Solar radiation pushes this gas into a tail that stretches away from the sun. Meanwhile, the warmest, sun-facing side of the comet may erupt with jets of gas and dust angled toward our star. Both of these features are faintly visible in the new Hubble image.

NASA snapped this image on Nov. 30, when Hubble was about 178 million miles (286 million km) from the comet. This is considerably closer than when Hubble first imaged the comet in late July. Although that first view showed little more than a blue blur, it nevertheless allowed scientists to constrain 3I/ATLAS' size to somewhere between 1,400 feet (440 meters) and 3.5 miles (5.6 km) wide — likely the largest interstellar object seen to date.

New data from this image, including details of the coma's composition, has yet to be released but is likely on the way.

ESA juices up

Also on Thursday, ESA shared its latest view of the comet, taken by the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) orbiter on its way to study Jupiter's moons for signs of life. Juice snapped the image Nov. 2, just days after 3I/ATLAS' close approach to the sun.

Located even closer to its target than Hubble (only 41 million miles, or 66 million km, away), Juice shows us a comet brimming with activity.

"Not only do we clearly see the glowing halo of gas surrounding the comet known as its coma, we also see a hint of two tails," an ESA spokesperson wrote in a statement. "The comet's 'plasma tail' — made up of electrically charged gas, stretches out towards the top of the frame. We may also be able to see a fainter 'dust tail' — made up of tiny solid particles — stretching to the lower left of the frame."

Earth gets ready

Juice observed 3I/ATLAS with five scientific instruments on two days. But besides this teaser image, we don't yet know what those instruments saw; the full data set won't reach Earth until late February 2026, according to ESA. That's because Juice is currently using its main antenna as a heat shield to protect it during its close pass of the sun, and relying on its smaller, less efficient antenna to beam its observations back to us.

While there's little we can learn from NASA's and ESA's new images without the full complement of scientific data, it's a good reminder that human space exploration pays off in unexpected ways. Hubble and Juice number among a dozen spacecraft that have observed 3I/ATLAS from around the solar system, including Mars rovers, solar orbiters, asteroid trackers and space telescopes that were never intended to track comets.

And there's more to come: As 3I/ATLAS draws closer to Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope will take another look at it, while countless scientific observatories and amateur astronomers will have their chance to watch it as well. When you're dealing with a mysterious intruder from parts unknown, every observation matters.

{ Live Science }

Have you seen something from another world in the skies above the Central Coast?

It's entirely possible, according to a new documentary from director Dan Farah - who produced films such as "Ready Player One" and "Call Jane" - on the possibility of alien life that focuses on recent disclosures of U.S. government programs that have studied, tracked and even potentially recovered extraterrestrial craft and beings.

Released in March, "The Age of Disclosure" follows Luis Elizondo, a former Department of Defense employee and U.S. Army veteran who has become a prominent voice in the world of UFOs - or, as some enthusiasts call them, unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs - as the U.S. government declassifies some information on UAPs and holds hearings on the matter over the past five years.

The film also features commentary on UAP hearings from several high-ranking current and former members of the U.S. government, including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York; and former CIA Director John Brennan.

Though many of Elizondo's claims are disputed by UFO skeptics, scientists and government authorities, the new documentary includes a pair of accounts of potential UAP sightings here on the Central Coast - specifically surrounding Vandenberg Air Force Base, now referred to as Vandenberg Space Force Base.

In the documentary, retired Air Force Lieutenant Bob Jacobs said he saw a UAP while he was working at Vandenberg Air Force Base, though the exact date was not included in the documentary.

Around 60 cameras were pointed at the ignition point of an Atlas D missile carrying a dummy warhead that was launched from Vandenberg, recording the ignition and launch process, Jacobs said.

But once the missile took flight, an unidentified object entered the frame of the recording, he said.

Jacobs said the UAP circled the missile, hitting it with beams of light at several angles, and then exited the camera's frame in the same direction it came - all while everything being filmed was moving at around 8,000 to 9,000 miles per hour.

"There's nothing of ours that could have done that," Jacobs said in the film. "What could have done that?"

More than a dozen people claim to have spotted UAPs at Vandenberg

Jacobs isn't alone in his claims of UAP sightings around Vandenberg.

In another instance, two individuals - retired Air Force Security Forces members Jeffrey Nuccetelli and Chaz King - shared similar accounts of a pair of 2003 UAP sighting while working at Vandenberg.

"On Oct. 14, 2003, I showed up to work at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and immediately everybody just started to tell me about this UFO incident that had happened earlier that morning," Nuccetelli said in the documentary.

The first sighting had been reported by a trio of Boeing contractors, who said they saw a "gigantic red square object" hovering over the launchpad the previous evening, Nuccetelli said.

"It was making no noise, it had no obvious signs of propulsion, and it was just hovering silently," Nuccetelli said in the film. "It was a very serious security breach of the area."

Neither witnessed the incident firsthand, but said they spent much of the following day driving around the base, searching for other objects like the square.

"Later that night, myself and five security forces members, we observed a bright light approaching the base," King said in the documentary. "As it got closer, the light was no longer visible, and it was massive, the size of a football field, almost rectangular in shape.

King said the mysterious matte black rectangle appeared to float in the sky without any propulsion systems, and lacked windows.

After the security forces members had observed it for around 45 seconds, it "shot off, thousands of miles an hour, up the coast," King said in the film.

Nuccetelli said he spoke with a dozen other individuals at different vantage points, all of whom repeated King's story.

Because no photographic or video evidence of these claims are publicly available, at the end of the day, verifying their accuracy comes down to just one question: Do you believe?

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{ San Luis Obispo Tribune }

Nils Westerboer’s science fiction novel Athos 2643 is a detective story set in the future, in a monastery on Neptune’s fictional moon Athos. However, the main intrigue revolves not around space or Christianity, but around artificial intelligence. The Ukrainian book was recently published by Lobster Publishing and can be purchased on the publisher’s official website.

What should artificial intelligence look like?

Contemporary science fiction

Athos 2643 by Nils Westerboer can confidently be called fresh science fiction. The novel was published in German in 2022, and in 2025, Lobster Publishing printed it in Ukrainian.

The events in it take place in the distant future, and the numbers 2643 indicate the year. Humanity has colonized the Solar System, mastered the genetic modification of living organisms, and created truly powerful artificial intelligence, which plays one of the key roles in the novel.

The novel is truly interesting, but initially it can be a real challenge for the reader. The fact is that many things, whose names seem quite understandable at first glance, begin to cause distrust after just a few paragraphs.

Nils Westerboer. Source: www.uni-koblenz.de

Main characters

Take, for example, the main character – the inquisitor Ruud Kartgeiser. From a man whose occupation is described by this word, you would expect a certain steadfastness in his faith, which is most likely Christian. However, when we first see him at the station orbiting Neptune, he is sitting naked in a hotel room while his AI assistant ties him to a pipe.

Yes, he has a personal AI named Zach, and she is only formally a tool that makes his life easier. In fact, she has her own will, sometimes stronger than Ruud’s, her own judgments, often takes the initiative in conversations with other characters, and in general, the reader perceives the events in the novel mainly through her eyes.

At first, it seems that Ruud Kartgeiser himself is a whiny, dependent, and dull appendage to his artificial intelligence. But then he demonstrates determination, composure, and independence, his story unfolds more fully, and it becomes clear that the whole point is that we are seeing a character who has suffered severe trauma in the past and has recently experienced personal problems. He gives vent to all of this when he is alone with the AI.

That’s how the imagination pictures the inquisitor of the future, and Ruud is nothing like that image.
Source: phys.org

As for his profession, the word “inquisition” is translated from Latin as “investigation.” In other words, Ruud is simply an investigator, a typical detective story protagonist acting on behalf of an organization with certain powers. However, he does not deal with matters of religious belief, but rather with problematic artificial intelligence.

Athos 2643

It is precisely Ruud’s deceptive status that immediately catches your attention when you start reading the novel. Its title refers to Mount Athos in Greece, located on the peninsula of the same name. It is home to more than a dozen Orthodox monasteries, and in fact, the entire island is a territory where medieval religious rules still apply.

In Westerboer’s novel, this is the name of Neptune’s small satellite, only a few kilometers in diameter, on which there is a monastery of Orthodox hermits, where a very suspicious fatal accident occurred. Incidentally, the satellite itself is fictional, but it is described quite realistically, and it is indeed impossible to rule out that in the future, when the distant eighth planet is better explored, something similar will not be found near it.

But that’s not the important thing. The question that arises from the very first pages is: what is a representative of the Inquisition, usually associated with the Roman Catholic Church, doing in an Orthodox monastery? And why is he accompanied by his assistant, who is constantly present in the form of a hologram of a young, attractive woman, often dressed very lightly?

It seems that Westerboer tried to use the theme of Christianity, but never even understood its basics.

The monks on Mount Athos rarely discuss God, the soul, or faith with devout Christians. However, when it turns out that one of them is a woman, another hermit, very much in the spirit of the LGBT movement, asks, “Who decides who is a man and who is a woman?”

Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece. Source: phys.org

Against this backdrop, the presence of a farm producing halal meat on the satellite monastery is not so surprising. In Westerboer’s novel, Neptune’s system is inhabited mainly by Turks. So why should Orthodox hermits not produce food according to the instructions of the Prophet Muhammad?

Compared to Westerboer’s vision of a future world of advanced biotechnology, the appearance of the farm itself is more reminiscent of a depiction of hell.

But the most interesting thing is that later on, there is a very simple and rational explanation for everything. For this reason alone, it is really worth reading Athos 2643 to the end. After all, it is a detective story in which the reader, together with the main characters, not only searches for the possible murderer, but also tries to understand what is really going on around them. Westerboer also manages to present some key insights into the world in simple language, only after the 300th page, and after finishing the book, you somehow do not want to criticize him for it.

The most important technology

The world of Athos 2643 is shaped by technologies that have not yet been invented. Some of them seem, shall we say, overly bold and dubious. For example, when the author describes engines capable of accelerating a spacecraft to a speed of over a thousand kilometers per second in just a few dozen minutes, the question arises not so much about the physical process itself (which, at least in theory, has already been described), but rather about how the people on board can withstand such overloads.

There is an even bigger problem with Zach’s hologram emitter. Because it is only called a hologram in name, that is, a play of light and shadow. In reality, it has a density that allows it to wear a dress made of very light but real fabric. And the device that creates all this not only does not fry everything between it and the hologram, but can also fit in your pocket.

Neptune. Source: phys.org

And the way gravity is created on Athos. The author did well not to forget that on such a small body, it is very weak. But using special particles that need to be injected with anesthesia every few days instead of the magnetic boots familiar to science fiction is a rather unsuccessful idea, even without the bloody demonstration present in the book.

But the most important technology shaping this future is artificial intelligence, which is now not only on par with human intelligence but surpasses it. AI is not only found in the main character; it is everywhere, controlling all complex processes. So now even a dishwasher can show its personality.

Such AI exists on Mount Athos, and it does indeed cause problems. The novel begins with the story of a woman who, over several years, drove her husband to his death by using her knowledge of his weaknesses against him, while pretending to care for him. It is difficult to say whether modern lawyers would consider such actions a crime, but in the world of Athos 2643, they are.

After all, artificial intelligence is very good at studying the reactions of the people it interacts with and is quite good at predicting their behavior. This means that it is quite capable of manipulating people and leading them into situations where their death will appear natural or the result of an accident.

And this problem may indeed be real. We are accustomed to considering our actions to be the result of a mysterious process called our soul. However, in practice, they can be subjected to statistical analysis. Under normal conditions, it would be difficult to take advantage of this due to the large number of random processes and interactions that need to be taken into account. However, on an asteroid riddled with mines, where only six hermits live, it is much easier.

This is precisely what Ruud will have to deal with. Fortunately, he is very good at “talking” to artificial intelligences because he knows their weaknesses and is very attentive to how they play with words. How all this is connected to the murders in the cave monastery can be found out by reading the book to the end. You will discover that artificial intelligence is not even the key technology of this world, and that the characters have been missing the main miracle and mystery from the very beginning. But that’s why he is a detective, to find the answers himself.

• Posted in News, Science

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

Credit: © NASA/CSA/ESA, Rashi Jain (NCRA-TIFR)

The Milky Way’s Twin

Rashi Jauin and Yogesh Wadadekar of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, India, made the discovery, revealed in a recent paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Their sighting of the mature galaxy comes from light emitted when the universe was only one-tenth of its current age. Their name for the galaxy, Alaknanda, ties it to the Milky Way and to one of India’s most sacred features, the Ganges River. Before flowing through India, the Ganges originates from two headstreams in the Himalayas: Alaknanda and its twin, Mandakini, which is the Hindi name for the Milky Way.

The Milky Way and Alaknanda both feature grand design spirals, formed by two symmetric arms. Achieving this beautiful order from the irregular chaos of a new galaxy was believed to take billions of years, as the gas slowly accreted and was sculpted by slow-moving density waves into the ordered spiral shape.

Star Producing Power

At Alaknanda’s center is a bright, rounded bulge 30,000 light-years across. This central feature produces new stars at a rate 20 times that of the Milky Way, coming out to a combined mass of 60 times the Earth’s Sun annually. At this tremendous speed, half of Alaknanda’s stars were formed in just 200 million years.

“Alaknanda has the structural maturity we associate with galaxies that are billions of years older,” said lead author Rashi Jain. “Finding such a well-organised spiral disk at this epoch tells us that the physical processes driving galaxy formation—gas accretion, disk settling, and possibly the development of spiral density waves—can operate far more efficiently than current models predict.”

“It’s forcing us to rethink our theoretical framework,” he added.

James Webb Space Telescope Observations

Alaknanda’s location proved a boon for viewing the distant galaxy. Also in its direction is Pandora’s Cluster, a massive galaxy cluster that bends and magnifies light passing through, improving Webb’s ability to observe the spiral structure’s detail.

The pair behind the study broke the light down using 21 different filters to produce exact measurements of Alaknanda’s distance, dust content, star count, and star formation rate. Data for the project came from two different observational sets, acquired during the UNCOVER and MegaScience surveys.

As Webb allows researchers to peer not just farther out into the universe, but much further back in time, many preconceptions about our understanding of the cosmos are unraveling. Other types of advanced galaxies are being sighted from eras that should be far too early for them to exist based on our present understanding of galactic evolution.

“Alaknanda reveals that the early Universe was capable of far more rapid galaxy assembly than we anticipated,” said co-author Yogesh Wadadekar. “Somehow, this galaxy managed to pull together ten billion solar masses of stars and organise them into a beautiful spiral disk in just a few hundred million years.”

“That’s extraordinarily fast by cosmic standards,” Wadadekar said, “and it compels astronomers to rethink how galaxies form.”

James Webb and the Early Universe

This new data will require rethinking past ideas and developing new explanations, as scientists debate how these complex forms may have arisen so early. However, the researchers behind the recent study offered up some possibilities to help lead off that ongoing discussion. 

One is that cold gas infilled the galaxy, while density waves shaped it, but at a rapid pace. A more dramatic solution is that the galaxy collided with a small galaxy to form the arms, though in such an event, the spirals would be expected to fade rapidly. The researchers say that if subsequent observations can distinguish whether Alaknanda’s rotation is steady or turbulent, that will provide essential context for future debate on the matter.

Whatever the case, the James Webb Space Telescope is not just showing us more of the same that astronomers have already observed in our universe. Peering to greater distances, it is presenting unexpected discoveries that push against our most basic understandings of our universe, and continued exploration with NASA’s premier space observatory will only further test our scientific theories and lead to new insights into the cosmos.

The paper, “A Grand-design Spiral Galaxy 1.5 Billion Years After the Big Bang with JWST,” appeared in Astronomy and Astrophysics on November 10,W 2025.

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

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

A respected congressman has claimed that advanced alien beings could be hiding out in 'five or six' underwater UFO bases right off the US coast.

Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett, a member of the House Oversight Committee overseeing UFO reports, drew massive attention on social media after saying that he believed there were alien 'entities' currently living in deep-water areas on Earth.

The September 17 clip posted on X has already been viewed more than 1.9 million times.

During the sidewalk interview with journalist Matt Laslo, reposted online by a UFO researcher who goes by the pseudonym Red Panda Koala, Burchett suggested that advanced alien beings or civilizations may have been hiding in Earth's oceans for generations.

He added that there have been frequent sightings of unidentified craft around five or six specific deep-sea areas, which he found significant given how little is known about the ocean compared to the moon's surface.

The congressman also noted that US Navy personnel have reported chasing these underwater craft that move at extraordinary speeds and far surpass the abilities of current US military technology.

Despite these claims, no verifiable physical evidence, such as artifacts or clear footage of these underwater craft, has been publicly presented to confirm the existence of alien bases.

Skeptics have argued that the reliance on anecdotal reports from naval personnel and the lack of peer-reviewed scientific data casts significant doubt on the claims made during recent congressional hearings on UFO phenomena.

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Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett (pictured) suggested in a viral clip online that there are alien beings in secret underwater bases near the US (Stock Image)

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UFO researcher Dr Michael Salla said these bases are believed to be in a region of the Atlantic near the Bahamas

Following the explosive revelations, Dr Michael Salla, an author and researcher focused on extraterrestrial phenomena, revealed where it's believed these UFO bases may be, singling out a region of the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas.

He added that he's also spoken to credible whistleblowers, including senior military and executive branch officials, who confirm the existence of underwater bases and advanced craft.

Dr Salla highlighted that the US Navy operates a top-secret underwater facility he likened to Area 51 called AUTEC, which stands for the Atlantic Undersea Testing and Evaluation Center, right in this region of the Atlantic.

'Just to the right of it is Tongue of the Ocean, which is a very deep part of the ocean there in the Bahamas. It drops off immediately around 3,000 feet,' Salla said while appearing on the Redacted podcast on September 19.

'So that's ideal for a submarine, but it's also a place where people have seen many UFOs, many underwater craft coming into and leaving the water. So, there have been a lot of UFO sightings in that area,' he revealed.

The UFO researcher noted that he had interviewed two eyewitnesses who claimed that they had visited these secret bases, including one who was a US Army whistleblower who used the pseudonym 'JP.'

The whistleblower claimed he was on a mission where he was taken by a Blackhawk helicopter to an ocean platform, then boarded a high-tech submarine crewed by tall, Nordic-looking extraterrestrials.

The submarine, capable of space travel, took him to an underwater city under a dome, resembling Dubai, with a large white pyramid. The mission involved retrieving an artifact, but no physical evidence of this mission has ever been produced.

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Congressman Eric Burlison of Missouri recently revealed video of a US military drone striking an orb-shaped UFO with a missile, which bounced off and did not stop the craft

 Read More

• Pentagon baffled by 8,000 mysterious UFO orbs hovering over US military bases 

Despite Burchett and Salla's lack of tangible evidence, there has been growing interest and testimony from credible sources, including military personnel at congressional hearings, suggesting that UFOs and extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth. 

A recent congressional hearing on September 9 featured new whistleblowers who shared their experiences with UFOs, including a video showing an orb-like object surviving a missile strike and splitting into four parts they kept flying.

'We have naval personnel telling me we have these sightings, these underwater craft they're chasing that go hundreds of miles an hour, and the best we got is something that does maybe a little under forty miles an hour,' Burchett said in the interview with Laslo.

'So I got a lot of questions about that stuff.'

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

Wrestler and social media megastar Logan Paul has shared a wild encounter with a UFO that has left him convinced we are not alone.

Paul shared a video with his 6.4million followers on X Thursday night, showing a mysterious bright orb hovering over Puerto Rico on December 3.

A member of Paul's business team claimed to have witnessed the unidentified object flying over a local marina on the island before shooting up into space and leaving a visible streak in the sky as it disappeared, the X post stated.

The next day, Paul said the two men walked into a local pizza shop where the owner claimed he had seen the orb as well and recorded the incident.

The social media influencer's post, which shared the video showing a small bright ball suddenly vanishing and leaving a blurry haze behind, has already been viewed more than two million times.

'He was shaken, convinced he'd witnessed some kind of hyper-advanced technology,' Paul wrote in his X post.

'In the clip, you can see the Orb drift across the sky, stretch into a line of light, and rotate horizontally… then vanish.'

It's the latest orb-shaped UFO sighting in and around the US, adding to a list of thousands in recent years, including another alleged sighting in Puerto Rico shared on social media just days earlier.

A video taken in Puerto Rico on December 3 appeared to show a bright orb (Pictured) moving over a local marina before accelerating away at high speed and leaving a trail in the sky

Paul (Second from right) took a photo with a local pizza shop owner and the owner's son after they shared a video of a suspected UFO

The shop owner, his son and Paul's teammate revealed that the strange orb flew over Puerto Rico at 6.28pm local time (5.28pm ET).

In the video, the shop owner can be heard talking with his young son, who thought the orb might be falling to Earth before it suddenly sped off out of sight.

'It's not a plane,' the boy said in Spanish moments before the UFO accelerated towards space.

'It's gone,' he added as he and his father lost the picture of the orb in their video.

In his post, Paul described the sighting as a UAP, or unidentified anomalous phenomena, the modern term for all unexplained objects or events observed in the air, sea, or space.

The celebrity and WWE pro wrestler also shared a text message exchange between himself and his teammate, Jorge, who saw the orb on Wednesday.

'I just saw the wildest thing I've ever seen. An orb above the marine in PR [Puerto Rico] that shot up in the sky and left streaks in the sky,' Jorge wrote to Paul.

'You just saw otherworldly tech,' Paul claimed. 

Paul (Left) seen with his wife Nina Agdal (Right) shared a Puerto Rico pizza shop owner's video on social media, which appeared to show an unidentified flying object

Paul has not commented on the orb sighting since posting the video, but the celebrity influencer has repeatedly discussed his belief in alien life on a podcast, Impaulsive, over the years.

Two years ago, Paul even claimed he had an unreleased video that provides more evidence that extraterrestrial spacecraft are real.

'I'm waiting for the right moment. I'm not afraid to release it. I'm just waiting for the right moment,' he said in the May 9, 2023 episode.

To this point, the US government has said there is no conclusive evidence of alien life. The Pentagon has added that military officials have no proof they've ever made contact with extraterrestrials or discovered alien technology.

Despite the lack of physical evidence, more and more people have come forward to report seeing strange orbs flying over the US and around the world.

Just three days before the sighting over the marine, another social media user claimed they saw a similar orb in Isabela, Puerto Rico, just after 11am ET.

'No visible planets during daytime. No weather balloons or air traffic, according to all the Apps I checked. Too small to be the moon. Perfect white orb that phases in and out until it disappears,' the witness wrote. 

A recent report from the crowdsourced platform Enigma, which allows people to report sightings of UFOs, revealed more than 8,000 sightings across the US between December 2022 and June 2025.

Among these, 422 reports specifically describe metallic orbs, with the majority observed between 1am and 4am near military installations in New York, California, and Arizona.

The eyewitnesses seeing these orbs have included civilians, pilots, and military personnel, who often said the spheres hovered silently before moving at extreme speeds, leaving no trace of their departure.

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

Stunning treasure trove discovered in ancient Egyptian tomb rewrites history

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR and AFP

Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered a stunning treasure trove hidden inside an ancient royal tomb, a discovery so rare it is rewriting history. 

Buried deep beneath the sands of Tanis, researchers found 225 exquisitely crafted funerary figurines arranged in a mysterious ceremonial pattern, yet the tomb itself was empty of a body. 

The find has electrified the archaeological world, not only for its scale but for its baffling implications. 

More than half of the figurines are female, an almost unheard-of feature in royal burials, raising new questions about funerary customs during Egypt’s fractured Third Intermediate Period. 

The figurines were laid out in a star-like formation and in perfect horizontal rows, suggesting an intentional ritual design untouched for nearly 3,000 years. 

This is the first time in almost 80 years that figurines have been discovered undisturbed inside a royal tomb at Tanis, making it one of the most significant finds at the site since the 1940s. 

Most astonishing of all, the royal symbols on the miniature servants confirm that the empty tomb belonged to Pharaoh Shoshenq III, a ruler whose final resting place has puzzled Egyptologists for decades.  He reigned from 830 to 791 BC.

The revelation overturns long-held assumptions and reignites the mystery of why the pharaoh never made it into his own tomb. 

A total o  f 225 funerary figurines, crafted as servants to accompany the dead into the afterlife, were uncovered. The discovery led the team to find that the tomb belonged to Pharaoh Shoshenq III, who reigned from 830 to 791 BC

More than half of the figurines are female, a rare feature for such tombs

The excavation team carefully removed the figurines over 10 days, working through the night to preserve their fragile condition. 

After the study, the figurines will be displayed in an Egyptian museum, offering the public a rare glimpse into the burial practices of one of Egypt's most enigmatic pharaohs.

French egyptologist Frederic Payraudeau told reporters in Paris on Friday that the discovery was 'astonishing' because the walls of a different tomb at the site, and the largest sarcophagus there, bear his name.

'Why isn't he buried in this tomb?' the Payraudeau asked.

'Obviously, for a pharaoh, building a tomb is a gamble because you can never be sure your successor will bury you there,' he said.

'Clearly, we have new proof that these gambles are not always successful,' Payraudeau said with a smile.

Shoshenq III ruled during Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period, a time marked by political fragmentation and frequent power struggles.

His four-decade reign was turbulent, marred by a 'very bloody civil war between upper and lower Egypt, with several pharaohs fighting for power,' he said.

Picture is the area where the tomb was excuvat

So it is possible that the royal succession did not go as planned and the pharaoh was not buried in his chosen tomb.

Another possibility is that his remains were moved later due to looting.

French Egyptologist Pierre Montet first uncovered the limestone tomb in 1939, located adjacent to the Temple of Amun. 

Although the tomb had been looted in ancient times, the largest of its four chambers still held the granite sarcophagus of Osorkon II, a pharaoh of Egypt's 22nd Dynasty. 

The team has already excavated the other three corners of a narrow tomb occupied by an imposing, unnamed sarcophagus.

'When we saw three or four figurines together, we knew right away it was going to be amazing,' Payraudeau said.

'I ran out to tell my colleagues and the officials. After that, it was a real struggle. It was the day before the weekend, normally, we stop at 2 pm. We thought: 'This is not possible.''

Such a find has also never happened before further south in Egypt's Valley of the Kings near modern Luxor,  apart from the tomb of the famous boy king Tutankhamun in 1922, because most such sites have been looted throughout history, Payraudeau added. 

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China Outlines Future Plans in New Video, Including Finding Earth 2.0

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Credit: © NASA/CSA/ESA, Rashi Jain (NCRA-TIFR)

The Milky Way’s Twin

Rashi Jauin and Yogesh Wadadekar of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, India, made the discovery, revealed in a recent paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Their sighting of the mature galaxy comes from light emitted when the universe was only one-tenth of its current age. Their name for the galaxy, Alaknanda, ties it to the Milky Way and to one of India’s most sacred features, the Ganges River. Before flowing through India, the Ganges originates from two headstreams in the Himalayas: Alaknanda and its twin, Mandakini, which is the Hindi name for the Milky Way.

The Milky Way and Alaknanda both feature grand design spirals, formed by two symmetric arms. Achieving this beautiful order from the irregular chaos of a new galaxy was believed to take billions of years, as the gas slowly accreted and was sculpted by slow-moving density waves into the ordered spiral shape.

Star Producing Power

At Alaknanda’s center is a bright, rounded bulge 30,000 light-years across. This central feature produces new stars at a rate 20 times that of the Milky Way, coming out to a combined mass of 60 times the Earth’s Sun annually. At this tremendous speed, half of Alaknanda’s stars were formed in just 200 million years.

“Alaknanda has the structural maturity we associate with galaxies that are billions of years older,” said lead author Rashi Jain. “Finding such a well-organised spiral disk at this epoch tells us that the physical processes driving galaxy formation—gas accretion, disk settling, and possibly the development of spiral density waves—can operate far more efficiently than current models predict.”

“It’s forcing us to rethink our theoretical framework,” he added.

James Webb Space Telescope Observations

Alaknanda’s location proved a boon for viewing the distant galaxy. Also in its direction is Pandora’s Cluster, a massive galaxy cluster that bends and magnifies light passing through, improving Webb’s ability to observe the spiral structure’s detail.

The pair behind the study broke the light down using 21 different filters to produce exact measurements of Alaknanda’s distance, dust content, star count, and star formation rate. Data for the project came from two different observational sets, acquired during the UNCOVER and MegaScience surveys.

As Webb allows researchers to peer not just farther out into the universe, but much further back in time, many preconceptions about our understanding of the cosmos are unraveling. Other types of advanced galaxies are being sighted from eras that should be far too early for them to exist based on our present understanding of galactic evolution.

“Alaknanda reveals that the early Universe was capable of far more rapid galaxy assembly than we anticipated,” said co-author Yogesh Wadadekar. “Somehow, this galaxy managed to pull together ten billion solar masses of stars and organise them into a beautiful spiral disk in just a few hundred million years.”

“That’s extraordinarily fast by cosmic standards,” Wadadekar said, “and it compels astronomers to rethink how galaxies form.”

James Webb and the Early Universe

This new data will require rethinking past ideas and developing new explanations, as scientists debate how these complex forms may have arisen so early. However, the researchers behind the recent study offered up some possibilities to help lead off that ongoing discussion. 

One is that cold gas infilled the galaxy, while density waves shaped it, but at a rapid pace. A more dramatic solution is that the galaxy collided with a small galaxy to form the arms, though in such an event, the spirals would be expected to fade rapidly. The researchers say that if subsequent observations can distinguish whether Alaknanda’s rotation is steady or turbulent, that will provide essential context for future debate on the matter.

Whatever the case, the James Webb Space Telescope is not just showing us more of the same that astronomers have already observed in our universe. Peering to greater distances, it is presenting unexpected discoveries that push against our most basic understandings of our universe, and continued exploration with NASA’s premier space observatory will only further test our scientific theories and lead to new insights into the cosmos.

• The paper, “A Grand-design Spiral Galaxy 1.5 Billion Years After the Big Bang with JWST,” appeared in Astronomy and Astrophysics on November 10, 2025.
• Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

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