Ready to Move to Mars? This Martian Soil Map Ranks the Best Spots for Future Greenhouses
A University of Sydney researcher has used Mars orbital and model data to create the world’s first map of Martian soil covering roughly 92% of the red planet’s surface.
The PhD student behind the first-of-its-kind Mars soil map said the work, which includes a soil-growing viability scoring system, could give future Martian colonists and research bases a list of the best locations for establishing greenhouses that take advantage of local resources.
“This is the first time a classification system of this scale has been developed for Martian soils,” explained Daniel Irving from the Sydney Institute of Agriculture and the Faculty of Science.
To build his Martian soil map and grading system, Irving drew on a wide array of existing resources. This included orbital observations from Martian satellites and planetary models based on data gathered from rovers and other scientific studies of the red planet.
After combining the data, Irving classified 800 million individual locations across the Martian surface. This included separating the locations into 2,000 soil “classes” and marking where these soils are expected to be found.
According to a release announcing the work, the Sydney researcher and his supervisor proposed the term “areths,” which they derived from Ares, the Greek name for Mars, for these new Martian soil classes.
After classifying the 2,000 soil types on the PCCS, the Sydney team assessed each one for characteristics that are known to support plant production on Earth. These included the soil’s capacity for holding water and how much clay and gravel it contained.
“A future greenhouse on Mars would need more than air, water, and light. Its builders would also need to know what lies beneath to understand better starting points for growing plants,” Professor McBratney explained.
After examining the results, Irving and colleagues found one class, which they named Nohibareth, offered the best collection of plant growth-supporting properties. As a result, Nohibareth received a PCCS score of 0.93, ranking it at the top of the list.
“Nohibareth’s modeled average profile includes a pH of 6.8, 72 percent clay, minimal sand or gravel, and an estimated water-holding capacity of 202 millimeters per meter,” a statement announcing the research explained.
The Martian Soil map indicates that this preferred class is found around the planet’s middle latitudes, including around Tharsis, central Arabia Terra, and Elysium Planitia. However, this soil type is only found on 0.14 percent of the planet’s surface.
Although other soils showed some promise, the researchers found that 73 percent of the forms they evaluated had poor water retention properties, making them unlikely soil bases for plant growth. For example, the researchers noted that classes in the Fareth to Mareth realms all scored below 0.3 on the PCSS, “reflecting less favorable combinations of the properties considered.”
When discussing the study’s results, Irving and colleagues cautioned that the highlighted Nohibareth sites are not already selected for future greenhouses. Instead, they said the areas on their map suggesting the best plant-growing Martian regolith represent “candidates for closer investigation.”
The Sydney team also warned that Martian soil contains no organic compounds and that their findings do not suggest crops can be grown even in the highest-scoring material. They also note that the map does not include factors that can affect plant growth, such as perchlorate toxicity, nitrogen availability, or depth profiles.
However, Irving and colleagues said the map and scoring system suggest that colonists could supplement the highest-scoring Martian soils and use them in controlled environments to potentially create self-sustaining greenhouses that don’t require regular supplies from Earth. Irving said their findings could also offer a new way to interpret the data scientists regularly receive from ongoing Mars missions.
“Every rover mission collects valuable information about Mars, but scientists need consistent ways to organize and compare that knowledge,” he explained. “This gives us a framework that can grow and evolve as new data becomes available.”
The study was published in the soil science journal Catena.
Famous American Writer Believed Gray Aliens Were Secretly Harvesting Human Biological Material, Yet He Tried to Lure Them to His Home
American writer William S. Burroughs believed that the mysterious Gray aliens might be members of a dying civilization that had lost its ability to create and were secretly collecting blood and reproductive material from human beings. He called them “Control Aliens” and suspected they wanted to make humanity less intelligent.
Yet he personally wanted to encounter these same beings. He even visited a famous alleged alien abduction site and reportedly arranged an unusual display outside his Kansas home, hoping it might attract their attention.
Burroughs he became one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, particularly through his controversial 1959 novel Naked Lunch. His writing frequently explored the possibility that human beings were being manipulated by forces they did not fully understand, whether through language, social institutions, addiction, or something beyond ordinary reality.
For much of his life, Burroughs had been interested in magic, dreams, altered consciousness, and the hidden mechanisms of human perception. He experimented with unconventional literary techniques and entertained ideas that many people would have considered science fiction.
William S. Burroughs, 1983. Photo: Chuck Patch / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
His fascination with extraterrestrial intelligence was therefore not something that suddenly appeared during his final years. An archived lecture from August 11, 1980, recorded at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics with an introduction by Allen Ginsberg, lists aliens, dreams, reincarnation, space travel, and nuclear weapons among its subjects.
That recording is significant because it places his interest in such questions years before the alien abduction phenomenon became widely associated with writer Whitley Strieber. Burroughs was already examining whether consciousness might extend beyond the physical world and whether human understanding of reality was fundamentally incomplete..
Burroughs became particularly fascinated with the alien abduction phenomenon after reading Communion, the 1987 book in which Whitley Strieber described his alleged encounters with mysterious non-human beings. Strieber was already a successful horror novelist known for books such as The Wolfen and The Hunger, but Communion was presented as an account of experiences he believed had actually happened. The story centered on disturbing events at his family’s secluded cabin in upstate New York, including an alleged encounter on December 26, 1985, that left him struggling to understand what had taken place.
Strieber described small, unusual beings and experiences that seemed to involve a loss of control over his body and surroundings. Although his story became famous as an alien abduction account, he was cautious about declaring that the entities were necessarily extraterrestrials arriving from another planet. He preferred calling them the visitors because he believed their identity and origin remained unknown. The possibility that these encounters might involve consciousness, an unfamiliar dimension, or something connected to the human mind made his account particularly interesting to Burroughs.
After reading Communion and its 1988 sequel Transformation, Burroughs became determined to investigate the experiences personally. According to an account by Matthew Levi Stevens, published in New Dawn magazine, Burroughs wrote to Strieber in 1989, explaining that he wanted to make contact with the mysterious beings. Strieber and his wife, Anne, had received numerous unusual letters following the publication of Communion, and Anne initially wanted to confirm that the person writing to them was genuinely the famous author.
Burroughs eventually assured them, “I am indeed really me,” and the couple invited him to their cabin. What followed was an unusual meeting between two established American writers who were interested in the same mystery for very different reasons. Strieber claimed he had already experienced frightening encounters with unknown entities, while Burroughs wanted to know whether he could experience something similar. He traveled to the place where Strieber said the encounters had occurred, hoping that being there might somehow increase his chances of meeting the visitors.
During his stay, Burroughs questioned Strieber about the experiences and listened closely to his descriptions. Strieber later remembered him as exceptionally polite and deeply interested in the details. Burroughs came away believing that Strieber was sincere and that his experiences had felt completely real to him.
However, despite visiting the cabin and spending time with Strieber, Burroughs did not report encountering the visitors himself. He could not explain why the alleged beings had appeared to Strieber but failed to make contact with him. Rather than abandoning the possibility of an encounter, he began considering different explanations, including whether the entities might choose whom they contacted and whether their reasons for approaching particular individuals were less friendly than people assumed.
Burroughs wondered whether the visitors might regard him as a potential enemy. He suspected that if they were intelligent beings with their own objectives, they might recognize people capable of interfering with those objectives. This was an important development in his thinking because he increasingly approached the phenomenon as a possible struggle over consciousness and control, rather than simply a question of whether unidentified spacecraft were visiting Earth.
His interest in the cabin visits was later revisited in a September 2019 Radio Misterioso interview, hosted by Greg Bishop and published the following month. The interview’s description specifically mentions the occasions when Burroughs visited Strieber’s famous cabin hoping to contact the visitors.
In that conversation, Strieber described his belief that the phenomenon might involve another level of human beings exercising some form of control over souls. This interpretation differed from the ordinary image of extraterrestrial explorers traveling between planets. It also showed how far Strieber’s thinking had moved beyond the idea of biological creatures conducting experiments on human subjects.
Burroughs continued discussing extraterrestrials in public during the early 1990s. In an interview conducted at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, on June 10, 1991, Nicholas Zurbrugge asked about his interests, and Burroughs spoke about both Native American shamanism and reports of flying saucers. He explained that he wanted to see the alleged beings personally and mentioned reports of UFO sightings in Kansas, including around the lake where he owned a house. Despite his interest and his attempts to make contact, he said he had not been fortunate enough to experience a sighting himself.
His curiosity also extended to the famous Roswell UFO story. During an interview with his friend David Ohle, Burroughs discussed Strieber’s 1989 novel Majestic, which imagined a government cover-up involving an alleged extraterrestrial spacecraft crash in New Mexico. He described fictional details about recovered alien bodies, including creatures without stomachs that might survive through an unusual form of photosynthesis. He also repeated the novel’s imagery of aliens gathering together in spacecraft resembling hives, suggesting a society organized very differently from humanity.
He was equally interested in the possibility that extraterrestrial beings might experience time differently. In the same interview, Burroughs referred to the famous alleged abduction of Betty and Barney Hill and discussed an anecdote in which the visitors supposedly struggled to understand human aging. For him, this raised the possibility that time might not be experienced in the same way by every form of intelligence. His speculation reflected a recurring theme in his work: that ordinary human concepts might be inadequate for understanding realities outside familiar experience.
Burroughs also believed that dreams and altered states could offer access to something beyond the limits of ordinary perception. In his 1986 essay collection The Adding Machine, he described artistic creativity as a means of exploring new worlds and forms of consciousness. He questioned whether physical space travel was the only way humans could reach unfamiliar realities, suggesting that writers, artists, and people experimenting with consciousness might explore territories that conventional technology could not easily reach.
His interest in such ideas continued through the 1990s. Burroughs explored shamanism, ritual magic, dream control, and practices associated with attempting to change or extend conscious awareness. He had long been concerned with the relationship between language and mental freedom, famously expressing the idea that language itself could operate like an external influence on human thought. His involvement with experimental writing and the cut-up technique also reflected an attempt to break familiar patterns of association and discover unexpected connections between words and ideas.
In his 1995 book My Education: A Book of Dreams, Burroughs discussed his conviction that something genuine might exist behind at least some of the reports, although he did not know what the entities actually were. He considered the possibility that the sexual elements of the encounters were not incidental but central to the phenomenon itself. His attention was especially drawn to Strieber’s descriptions of intimate interactions with the visitors, which Burroughs interpreted as possible evidence that the beings were seeking some form of biological or sexual exchange.
According to Matthew Levi Stevens, Burroughs decided to create a conspicuous symbol outside his home in Lawrence, Kansas, apparently hoping that it would attract the attention of the alleged visitors. He reportedly allowed the grass on his lawn to grow long before arranging for somebody to cut a large patch into the phallic symbol, resembling the way a crop circle might be formed in a field.
The reported idea was connected to his suspicion that the visitors were especially interested in human sexuality. If the beings were approaching humans for reproductive or sexual reasons, Burroughs apparently thought that a large sexual symbol might encourage them to investigate his property. The episode is described in Stevens’ account of Burroughs’ interests and occult practices, although independent documentation of the lawn display has not been established. It nevertheless illustrates how seriously, and sometimes unusually, Burroughs pursued the possibility of making contact
Burroughs did not appear to regard the visitors as necessarily benevolent. His writings suggest that he was fascinated by them but also suspicious of their possible intentions. He wanted firsthand knowledge of a phenomenon he thought might exist, even while entertaining the possibility that the beings behind it were manipulating human beings for purposes that had nothing to do with friendship or scientific exploration.
His most disturbing interpretation appeared in a diary entry dated February 3, 1997, only months before his death. The entry was later published in Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs. By this time, Burroughs had developed a particularly hostile picture of the Gray aliens, whom he described as “Control Aliens.” He speculated that they belonged to a dying race that had somehow lost its creative abilities and depended on human blood and semen for survival.
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According to this theory, the Grays were not advanced visitors generously sharing knowledge with a less developed civilization. They were beings suffering from a fundamental deficiency and attempting to compensate for it by exploiting another species. Burroughs also suspected that they wanted to make people less intelligent, possibly because independent human thought posed a danger to their objectives. He believed that individuals with developed perception or spiritual awareness might recognize what these entities were doing and become difficult to manipulate.
The most revealing part of his final journal entry was his frustration over the apparent absence of contact. After considering why the Grays seemed to approach certain people but avoided others, he asked, “Why don’t they come and see ME?” He answered his own question by suggesting that the visitors might be afraid of people with advanced spiritual awareness. This was his personal explanation, rather than evidence of how any unknown intelligence selected people for contact.
His interest in extraterrestrials also entered his artistic projects. During the early 1990s, following his work on The Black Rider with theater director Robert Wilson and musician Tom Waits, Burroughs developed ideas for another theatrical project inspired partly by Paradise Lost. The proposed work mixed religious imagery, atomic destruction, UFOs, alien abductions, and the Roswell story. Although the original project was not completed during his lifetime, elements of the material later contributed to musician Grant Hart’s 2013 album The Argument.
In his later speculation, the Grays became another possible representation of such forces, beings that supposedly understood how to manipulate human consciousness while depending on humanity for something they could no longer produce themselves.
Burroughs died on August 2, 1997, at the age of 83, without reporting the kind of direct encounter he had hoped to experience. His fascination with Strieber’s visitors remained unresolved.
Artemis II astronaut reveals the terrifying moment he feared his crew would be lost in space 'after straying too far from Earth'
The Commander of the Artemis II mission has revealed he feared he and his crew would be lost in space after their shuttle strayed too far from Earth.
Reid Wiseman, 50, and his three fellow astronauts reached their maximum distance from Earth of 219,669 nautical miles – 252,756 standard miles – and were set to begin their return, only for the odemeter to continue ticking upwards.
The crew had been charged with performing a lunar flyby before being slingshotted back to our planet – setting a new record for the furthest distance ever travelled by humans, smashing the one previously set by Apollo 13 in 1970, while flying over the dark side of the Moon.
Speaking at the Starmus Festival in Tenerife on Saturday, Wiseman said: 'Mission control in Houston had told us our maximum distance, the furthest we were supposed to be from Earth, was 219,667 [nautical miles].
'I was watching this number, and I saw it hit 219,667, and I thought, "Great, this is the farthest we will be from Earth, and the next number I will see will be 219,666, we'll be going home", but about three minutes later, I saw 219,668. It went up. I was like, "Huh, that's weird".
'And then about three minutes later, it goes to 219,669, and that was the moment that I felt real fear because I thought we had just gone too far. We're never going to come home, and so I was very scared.'
After a tense three-minute wait, with the astronauts' eyes glued to the odometer, the number finally started to go down - meaning they were on their way back to Earth.
Artemis II astronauts (l-r) mission specialist Christina Koch, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, pilot Victor Glover and commander Reid Wiseman
The Artemis II crewed lunar mission lifts off from Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 1, 2026
The crew cheered. Mr Wiseman said: 'I knew there was a good chance we might make it.'
But the possibility of not making it home was a scenario the Artemis II crew had given their full attention to.
Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen admitted the astronauts had talked two days before takeoff about what they would do in the event of a catastrophic error - and said the group was 'at peace' with the risk involved in their journey.
'Like, if Reid's number had just kept growing and we knew we weren't coming home, but we were going to be alive for a while, how do you sit comfortably, not knowing what the future is going to be?' he said.
'And by launch the crew was at peace, not because we're brave, it's not bravado, it's because we had an acceptance of whatever came, we would do the best, or our time would end.'
Commander Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 1, 2026.
In all, the astronauts travelled 700,237 miles before splashing down in the Pacific off San Diego exactly as scheduled at 5.07pm local time on April 10.
All four were presented with Stephen Hawking medals for science communication at the Starmus Festival, founded by Queen guitarist Sir Brian May - who has a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College London.
In the crew's first press conference after splashing down, Wiseman spoke about the spiritual impact of his time spent in space following a question from Kristin Fisher, host of the space-related YouTube channel The Endless Void.
'I'm not really a religious person but there was really no other avenue for me to explain anything or experience anything, so I asked for the [ship's] chaplain to just come visit us for a minute,' he said.
'I'd never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his collar and I just broke down in tears.
'It's very hard to fully grasp what we just went through….when the sun eclipsed behind the moon, I think all four of us…I turned to Victor [Glover, the Artemis pilot] and I said, "I don't think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we are looking at right now," because it was otherworldly and it was amazing.'
The Artemis II crew module separates from its service module on April 10 as it prepares for re-entry to Earth following a flyby of the Moon
Victor Glover (left) and Christina Koch (right) - the first black person and the first woman to travel to the Moon - are photographed on the flight deck of USS John P. Murtha after splashdown
Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman (left) and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen - the first non‑American to travel beyond low Earth orbit - are also pictured on the flight deck
Wiseman told The Telegraph that he experienced 'Earthsickness' during the voyage, which was the first manned mission to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
'You're looking at an Earth that is so tiny it can fit underneath your thumb, and around it is total blackness, it's just complete, infinite black space, and that little tiny dot down there is our home.
'And the feeling I mostly had was, I want to see my kids again, I want to be reunited with my friends, I want to sit on green grass and eat fresh salad, and just experience life on that planet again. It was overwhelming. Instead of homesickness, it was Earthsickness.'
The Artemis II astronauts experienced deceleration forces four times stronger than gravity as they re-entered Earth's atmosphere during their final 13-minute descent into the Pacific.
The Orion crew capsule containing the astronauts separated from Artemis II's cylindrical service module 34 minutes before splashdown.
At 22,000ft, Orion's small parachutes known as drogues deployed before the main parachutes opened a minute later allowing it to touchdown in the Pacific at 20 miles per hour.
After more than an hour's delay because of strong ocean currents, the four astronauts clambered into a dinghy and were hoisted into helicopters which flew them to the USS John P. Murtha.
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The Perseverance Rover Reaches Another Milestone
This screenshot shows Perseverance's path on Mars. It landed in Jezero Crater on the right, and travelled 45.22 km (28.10 miles) in total, reaching the point marked by the rover drawing. The rover has set a new record for distance travelled on another worldComparing the plutonium-powered Perseverance to the solar-powered Opportunity is unfair. But in any case, Perseverance deserves recognition for this milestone.
“The original mission called for no more than 12.4 miles of driving. We’ve blown well past that..."
Steven Lee, Perseverance and Curiosity project manager, JPL/NASA.
Perseverance is currently in a region named “Lac de Charmes,” which is off the western end of Jezero Crater. It reached its new milestone while heading toward a feature named "Idubi," a scientific target notable for its ancient rocks. On Earth, there are no rocks as old as these because they've all been destroyed by plate tectonics.
Perseverance has found igneous rocks, a surprising result considering that scientists expected to find mostly sedimentary rocks. In fact, a primary reason Jezero Crater was chosen as the mission's landing site is because sedimentary rocks are good at preserving evidence of ancient life. While the rover found plenty of sedimentary rocks, it found igneous rocks, along with fluorite, which forms when rock interacts with heated water. This is evidence of hydrothermal activity, and scientists are hoping Perseverance will find more traces of ancient hydrothermal systems at Idubi.
Perseverance captured this backward-looking image on the day it set its new distance-travelled record. The date was Oct. 11th 2026, or on the 2006th Martian sol of its mission.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Perseverance's skill at travelling long distances rests on more than just its power source. It also has an autonomous navigation system called AutoNav. AutoNav continuously takes images of the terrain and creates a 3D map of hazards. It uses this information to plot its own course. It can do this while travelling close to its top speed, and as a result, it can travel up to 412 meters (1,351 feet) in one Martian day.
Spirit and Opportunity were the first rovers to use AutoNav, though theirs wasn't as sophisticated. Those twin rovers used their first-generation AutoNav to travel about 5% of their total distance, while Perseverance has relied on it for about 90% of its travelled distance. (Sojourner used a limited form of hazard detection, but nothing as sophisticated as AutoNav.)
Steven Lee is the project manager for Curiosity and Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It is an honor to be working on Perseverance at a moment when the technology has evolved to the point that drives like these are routine,” Lee said in a press release. “The original mission called for no more than 12.4 miles of driving. We’ve blown well past that, and with all mobility systems fully operational and favorable extended-ground-life test results, we expect Perseverance to keep adding to this record for many years to come.”
Perseverance is on its extended mission now, which began this month. The mission will have the rover exploring the rim of Jezero Crater until about the end of 2028. Throughout its primary mission, software updates have given its AutoNav increasing sophistication, and that should continue through its extended mission.
“The rover that broke this record did so by making its own decisions about the path," said Mark Maimone, the deputy team chief of Perseverance's robotic operation. "Given the autonomy to just go, Perseverance is a better driver than the one that landed, and we’re not done. Our newest software teaches Perseverance to steer less and roll more, and to check its own position against orbital maps mid-drive."
The glare from the Sun is the next obstacle to be overcome with the rover's AutoNav system. The Sun's glare places limits on the rover's operations, and by overcoming that, the rover's daily maximum distance travelled will grow.
"The next frontier is sunlight itself," Maimone said. "Glare in the navigation cameras is why we park by mid-afternoon if we’re driving toward the Sun, and if we can teach the rover to see past those artifacts, every rover that follows gets a longer working day.”
The distance records themselves are remarkable, and they illustrate NASA's growing prowess in robotic exploration. But the real payoff is the increased science operations. The further it can travel in less time, the more geologic targets Perseverance can explore. And after all, Perseverance studies Martian geology in order to meet the objectives of its astrobiological mission.
This infographic shows how far various rovers have travelled on the surface of Earth’s Moon and Mars. Only Perseverance and Curiosity are still operational and moving across the surface; the figures shown for those two are distances driven as of Oct. 11, 2026.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Among the mission's highlights, which are partly attributed to its AutoNav capabilities, Perseverance has discovered potential biosignatures, and may yet discover ancient hydrothermal systems. Hydrothermal systems are like a 'Holy Grail' in astrobiology because they provide water, heat, and chemistry important for life. Hydrothermal systems may also contain fossilized evidence of ancient, simple life, in the form of microscopic structures, organic molecules, and even microbial mats.
The only sad part of Perseverance's mission concerns the samples it's gathered. Perseverance has cached 29 samples of Martian rock and regolith as part of a future Mars Sample Return mission. That mission was to be a cooperative endeavour between NASA and the ESA, but as of now, there's no firm commitment to the mission. It's currently deemed to expensive, and there are many unanswered questions about its potential success.
While Perserverance's AutoNav represents an impressive feat beyond the capabilities of previous rovers, the system also inspires an even more capable future. It's easy to imagine a future mission using AutoNav and AI to coordinate multiple rovers and even UAVs to coordinate the study of specific, hard-to-reach yet scientifically important targets on Mars and elsewhere. Think caves, elevated outcrops, and other challenging terrain.
But for now, we can enjoy Perseverance's accomplishments, which bring us closer to potentially, hopefully, finding conclusive evidence of ancient life on Mars.
Rover Surpasses Historic Apollo 17 And Lunokhod 2 Distances | WION News
“Something Out of Science Fiction”: A Ghostly Green Star Has Been Revealed for the First Time
White dwarfs can glow in a surprising range of colors, including one documented for the first time in new research demonstrating how these dead stars can defy their namesake
A recent paper published in RAS Techniques and Instruments describes the first known white dwarf that would appear green to the human eye, along with an assortment of similar stars in other colors.
Generally, cooler stars appear reddish or orange, transitioning toward white and eventually blue as their temperatures increase. However, the new research reveals a much broader range of colors that can occur among these small, dense stellar remnants.
These dense objects are the remnants of once Sun-like stars that burned out long ago. Despite being relatively small and technically “dead,” they can remain extremely hot. As a result, many glow in the white-to-blue portion of the visible spectrum, hence their name.
The new research, however, reveals that their colors can also include green, pink, cyan, yellow, and purple, offering a surprising variety of hues that would become apparent if we could observe these distant objects more closely.
“Most stars, including most white dwarfs, behave like ‘perfect radiators,’ so their colour is set almost entirely by temperature. But nobody had really looked into what else might be possible for white dwarfs,” said Dr Mark Hollands, Warwick Prize Fellow in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, University of Warwick, who led the work. “It turns out these incredibly dense stars can produce colours nobody expected, and some of them genuinely surprised me.”
The unusually dense atmospheres of white dwarfs play an important role in determining their colors. Under these extreme conditions, elements such as carbon, calcium, and sodium can interact with helium-rich plasma, absorbing specific wavelengths of light in ways that would not occur in the less dense atmospheres of Sun-like stars. As certain wavelengths are absorbed, the star’s apparent color shifts, much as though a filter had been placed over its light.
Pink or purple hues can result from carbon-rich atmospheres, while yellow colors may arise from elements deposited by asteroids and comets. In relatively cool white dwarfs, interactions involving hydrogen and helium can also produce a cyan appearance.
The first identified green white dwarf, WD J1330+6435, has an atmospheric temperature of approximately 4,000°C. Its unusual coloration results from a combination of calcium, lithium, and sodium, likely originating from rocky material drawn in from its planetary system.
“The traces of sodium in the atmosphere of this white dwarf absorb the orange part of the spectrum, leaving behind a ghostly green glow,” Dr. Hollands said. “Imagine standing on a planet and looking up at a green star. It feels like something out of science fiction.”
This remarkable assortment of colors isn’t commonly visible in our night sky, since most white dwarfs are too distant and faint for their colors to be readily distinguished by the human eye.
Instead, astronomers use spectroscopy to separate starlight into its component wavelengths, revealing information about a star’s temperature, composition, and other physical properties. For the new research, the team processed these measurements using a model that simulates human color vision, allowing them to determine how the stars would actually appear to an observer.
Despite the intriguing findings, the familiar white coloration remains far more common. Of the 151 white dwarfs examined within approximately 65 light-years of Earth, only five displayed unusual colors.
“One in thirty might not sound like a huge fraction, but across the entire population of white dwarfs in the Universe, that is still a lot of oddly coloured stars out there,” Professor Boris Gänsicke, Department of Physics, University of Warwick, concluded. “Yet if we take the median across a representative population of white dwarfs, we found that the average white dwarf really is white.”
The paper, “Any Colour You Like: The Diverse Chromaticities of White Dwarfs,” appeared in RAS Techniques and Instruments on October 14, 2026.
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Do Animals Sense UFOs Before Humans? Strange Encounters Suggest They Might
Dogs suddenly panic. Horses rear in terror. Cattle scatter without warning. Then, moments later, a mysterious object appears in the sky.
Throughout the history of UFO research, witnesses have reported unusual animal behavior occurring before or during encounters with unidentified flying objects. While most investigations focus on the appearance, movement, and technology of these mysterious craft, another potentially important clue is often overlooked: the reactions of animals.
In a recent discussion, UFO researcher Richard Dolan explored several historical cases involving dogs, horses, cattle, and other animals that reportedly reacted to UFOs before their human companions even noticed anything unusual.
Could animals be detecting sounds beyond human hearing? Are they sensitive to electromagnetic disturbances? Or might something even stranger be involved?
Let’s examine the reported encounters and the possible explanations.
On May 20, 1965, six members of the McDonald family reportedly witnessed a strange object hovering over their property in Leroy Township, Ohio.
According to the account, a silvery-white disc approximately the size of a car passed close to their rooftop. The object featured circular openings along its body and produced a low buzzing or purring sound.
But the family’s animals reacted dramatically.
Their dog fled into a nearby field, while their horse reared and ran around its tether in apparent panic. One witness described the horse’s ears as pinned backward and its eyes as wild.
What made the incident particularly unusual was that both animals were accustomed to aircraft. The family lived beneath flight paths serving nearby airports.
Neighbors also reportedly experienced television and radio interference around the time of the sighting.
The incident was documented by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), an organization that investigated UFO reports during the twentieth century.
The combination of animal distress, unusual aerial activity, and reported electronic interference raises an interesting question: were the animals reacting to something humans could not fully perceive?
One of the most intriguing historical reports occurred on October 30, 1969, at the Waipukurau Aerodrome in New Zealand.
Security officer John Cudby was patrolling the airfield with his German Shepherd at approximately 3:10 a.m. when he noticed strange lights reflected in a glass door.
Turning around, he reportedly observed a metallic, saucer-shaped object hovering near a hangar.
The object was described as approximately 60 feet wide and 12 feet high, with red and green lights and a turret-like structure on top.
It also produced a low mechanical sound.
Cudby’s normally obedient dog became extremely agitated, barking, growling, circling, and ignoring commands.
As the object’s sound increased in intensity, the dog’s behavior reportedly became even more erratic.
When Cudby directed his searchlight toward the object, its underside appeared to brighten. The craft then tilted and accelerated away.
The dog’s agitation was so severe that Cudby reportedly had to lift it into his vehicle afterward.
Cudby suggested that the object might have emitted a high-frequency sound beyond human hearing.
If accurate, this encounter could support the possibility that animals perceive acoustic signals associated with unusual aerial phenomena that humans cannot hear.
On September 30, 1980, farm caretaker George Blackwell reported an extraordinary encounter near Rosedale, Victoria, Australia.
At approximately 1:00 a.m., Blackwell awoke to a strange mechanical whistling sound.
Outside, cattle were bellowing and a horse was reportedly running in panic.
Blackwell went to investigate and observed a domed object hovering near an open water tank.
The object reportedly measured approximately 25 to 28 feet across and displayed white, orange, and blue illumination.
According to his account, it eventually landed nearby.
During the encounter, the sound intensified into what Blackwell described as a mechanical scream. A dark, tube-like structure appeared around the object’s lower section.
A loud bang followed, and the object lifted off, producing a blast of hot air.
Afterward, Blackwell discovered that the water tank was empty, with mud forming a cone-shaped deposit at its center.
Investigators later examined reported physical traces associated with the incident.
Although the account does not establish what the object was, the reported animal behavior is notable because the livestock appeared disturbed before Blackwell went outside to investigate.
On September 29, 1995, a Danish motorist named Klaus Lund reportedly experienced an unusual event while driving with his black Labrador.
At approximately 9:30 p.m., the dog suddenly became agitated.
It began barking and clawing at the vehicle’s door.
Shortly afterward, the car reportedly experienced a series of electrical malfunctions.
The windshield wipers activated unexpectedly, dashboard instruments behaved erratically, the headlights failed, and the engine stopped.
A powerful blue-white light then appeared above the vehicle.
The incident was reportedly investigated by the Danish UFO organization SUFOI.
What makes this case especially interesting is the apparent sequence of events.
The dog reacted before the driver noticed the unusual light or the vehicle’s reported electrical problems.
Could the animal have detected an electromagnetic disturbance? Was an ultrasonic sound involved?
The available testimony cannot establish a cause, but the reported timing makes the case relevant to research into animal reactions during UFO sightings.
Another unusual encounter was reported in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, on July 28, 2014.
At approximately 1:00 a.m., a woman stepped outside with her dog.
Her dog suddenly ran away, while a neighbor’s dog began whimpering inside its enclosure.
Looking upward, the woman reportedly noticed a silvery-blue disc hovering just above a nearby rooftop.
She estimated that the object measured approximately 20 to 25 feet across.
Unlike conventional metallic UFO descriptions, she characterized its appearance as something resembling energy.
Within seconds, the object disappeared.
The witness also reported experiencing a brief sensation of warmth passing through her body.
Moments later, she reportedly observed the object again, this time farther away and at a higher altitude.
The account was published as MUFON case 58468.
The dogs’ behavior is particularly interesting because both animals reportedly reacted before the witness became aware of the object.
However, the report alone cannot determine whether the object caused their reactions.
On September 18, 2018, a woman in Romulus, Michigan, was reportedly awakened around 1:00 a.m. by her crying dog.
Believing the animal needed to go outside, she took it outdoors.
There, she heard a strange metallic clanging sound resembling heavy chains striking one another.
She then noticed an unusual triangular object moving slowly above her home.
The object reportedly featured two sharply defined rectangular lights and two red lights.
Meanwhile, her dog backed against the garage, whining and barking in apparent fear.
The witness described the object as moving only slightly faster than walking speed.
The case raises a question that appears repeatedly in UFO reports: how many unusual aerial events might go unnoticed if animals did not alert their owners?
One of the most plausible explanations for these reports involves differences between human and animal hearing.
Dogs can detect higher-frequency sounds than humans, while cats can hear frequencies higher still.
Horses and cattle also have hearing abilities that differ from our own.
This means an object that appears silent to a human observer could theoretically produce sounds detectable by nearby animals.
A high-frequency mechanical whine, for example, might cause a dog to become distressed even if its owner hears nothing.
UFO researcher James McCampbell explored this possibility in his 1973 book Ufology.
He examined approximately 200 reports involving animals and proposed several potential explanations for their reactions, including unusual sounds and electromagnetic emissions.
In 1976, researcher Harold Heaton also examined a catalog of 232 UFO reports involving animal behavior.
His analysis suggested that dogs, horses, and cattle dominated the reported encounters.
Later, researcher Joan Woodward examined 104 selected UFO sightings involving animal responses in a study discussed in the MUFON UFO Journal beginning in October 2005.
She found possible associations between reported sounds and particular animal reactions.
These historical studies provide interesting starting points, but they do not demonstrate that unidentified craft emit ultrasonic frequencies.
Another hypothesis involves electromagnetic disturbances.
Some UFO reports include claims of malfunctioning radios, disrupted television reception, stalled engines, or unusual electrical behavior.
Researchers have questioned whether electromagnetic emissions might also influence animals.
McCampbell proposed that microwave emissions could potentially affect the nervous system, producing sensations of fear or interfering with movement.
One relevant scientific phenomenon is the microwave auditory effect, in which certain pulsed microwave exposures can produce perceived sounds through physical interactions with tissue.
However, the existence of this effect does not establish that it explains any UFO encounter.
No verified measurements from the incidents discussed here demonstrate that such emissions were present.
Nevertheless, electromagnetic monitoring could be valuable in future investigations involving unusual animal behavior and unidentified aerial objects.
Richard Dolan also explored a more speculative possibility: animal consciousness.
Animals sometimes appear to anticipate events before humans notice obvious signals.
Dogs may become excited before their owners return home, while cats sometimes hide before a trip to the veterinarian.
Researcher Rupert Sheldrake investigated claims that certain dogs could anticipate their owners’ return even when arrival times were unpredictable.
One of his best-known studies involved a dog named Jaytee, whose waiting behavior was filmed while its owner was away.
Sheldrake interpreted the results as possible evidence of an unusual connection between animals and humans.
However, the interpretation remains scientifically controversial, and telepathy has not been established as an explanation for such behavior.
Dolan raises an intriguing question: if animals can detect subtle signals associated with familiar humans, might they also respond to unfamiliar presences?
There is currently no reliable scientific evidence that animals telepathically detect UFOs or extraterrestrial intelligence.
Still, the question illustrates how UFO research sometimes intersects with broader debates about animal perception and consciousness.
Most reported UFO-related animal reactions involve terrestrial species.
However, Dolan also mentioned an unusual account involving dolphins.
Researcher and dolphin enthusiast Joan Ocean described an experience in Hawaii in which dolphins allegedly guided her toward enormous glowing spheres underwater.
She claimed that dolphin sounds were audible inside the spheres but not outside them.
The account is unusual, but the nature of the glowing objects remains unknown.
There is no verified evidence that they were extraterrestrial craft or even related to the UFO phenomenon.
Nevertheless, reports involving marine animals raise interesting questions about whether unusual underwater phenomena could influence animal behavior.
Animal reactions can provide useful contextual information during investigations, especially when they occur before human witnesses notice something unusual.
However, several important limitations must be considered.
Animals can react to many ordinary stimuli, including:
Additionally, most historical UFO cases rely on witness testimony rather than controlled measurements.
An animal becoming frightened during a reported UFO sighting does not independently establish that an extraordinary craft was present.
To investigate these reports scientifically, researchers would benefit from synchronized video recordings, environmental sound measurements, electromagnetic monitoring, veterinary observations, and comparisons with periods when no unusual objects are reported.
Such evidence could help distinguish ordinary environmental triggers from genuinely unexplained events.
The history of UFO sightings contains numerous accounts of animals reacting strangely before or during encounters with unidentified objects.
From frightened horses in Ohio to agitated dogs in New Zealand, Denmark, and Michigan, these reports suggest a recurring theme worth examining.
The most straightforward possibilities involve sensory abilities that differ from those of humans, particularly hearing and sensitivity to subtle environmental changes.
More speculative ideas involving electromagnetic effects or unusual forms of awareness remain unproven.
The central mystery is not whether animals possess senses different from ours—they clearly do. The unanswered question is whether those abilities have ever allowed them to detect a genuinely unexplained aerial phenomenon before humans noticed it.
For now, the historical accounts offer intriguing testimony rather than conclusive scientific evidence.
But if future UFO investigations systematically document animal behavior alongside physical measurements, our four-legged companions might help researchers understand what witnesses are actually experiencing.
Giant Red Sprite illuminates the night sky above Montemaggiore
Meet Britain's 'Space Binman'! Giant robotic claw will hunt down defunct spacecraft and drag them to a fiery death in Earth's atmosphereSay cheese! NASA reveals stunning image of giant ‘cosmic smile’ created by warped spacetime
NASA has revealed a stunning image of a giant 'cosmic smile' created by the warping of spacetime.
This bizarre portrait was captured by NASA and the European Space Agency using the Hubble Space Telescope.
It shows the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849, located 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.
Strangely, you can clearly make out two glowing orange eyes, a white button nose, and a broad sparkling smile stretching across a vast expanse of space.
NASA explains: 'In the case of this "happy face", the two eyes are very bright galaxies, and the misleading smile lines are actually arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing.'
Galaxy clusters are some of the most massive objects in the universe, containing hundreds of individual galaxies, and exert such a powerful gravitational pull that it warps spacetime around them.
This effect, originally predicted by Albert Einstein, means that light from distant objects bends as it passes through an optical lens.
In some rare cases, that creates a brilliant circle known as an Einstein Ring that can look just like a glowing celestial grin.
NASA has revealed a stunning image of a giant 'cosmic smile' created by the warping of spacetime
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, objects with enough mass can warp and stretch the fabric of spacetime around them – like a bowling ball on a trampoline.
When light enters these warped regions, it follows the curve of spacetime so that it appears to bend.
While this happens on a small scale around smaller objects like planets and suns, the more massive the object, the more dramatically light is bent.
Around some of the most massive objects in the universe, that effect is so strong it can be seen through our telescopes as gravitational lensing.
Einstein rings, like the one that makes this cosmic smile, are a special case of gravitational lensing produced when a distant light source is perfectly aligned with a powerful gravitational lens and the observer.
This precise alignment allows the light to bend symmetrically around the massive source of gravity to appear as a ring-like structure.
Gravitational lensing doesn't always produce such perfect illusions, and the results vary depending on how the object, lens, and observer line up.
Just like glasses lenses, strong gravitational fields can warp or magnify passing light, even producing multiple images of a single object.
The gravitational pull of extremely massive objects, such as galaxy clusters like MACS0416 (pictured), warps and stretches spacetime around them
Bent spacetime causes light to curve around massive objects, sometimes producing multiple distorted images of a distant object. In this image, the light of a distant supernova has been split into four images, in an effect known as an Einstein Cross
In 2014, for example, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.6+2223, located about five billion light-years from Earth.
With the additional mass of a huge galaxy embedded in the cluster, light coming from an exploding star known as Supernova Refsdal, about 9.3 billion light-years away, was warped and stretched.
Gravitational lensing created four identical copies of the supernova arranged around the galaxy, creating a structure known as an Einstein Cross.
Rings and lensing effects like these were critical in proving that Einstein's theories about spacetime were actually correct.
However, they are now helping astronomers to probe the most distant reaches of the universe.
One possibility astronomers are now exploring is using gravitational lensing to measure the mass of stars.
If they know where a distant bright object should appear, astronomers can look past the edge of a star and measure how much the light is being bent.
Scientists use gravitational lensing to look at light from extremely distant objects, such as Earendel (pictured), the most distant star ever observed at 12.9 billion light-years from Earth
This method was first used in 2023 to measure the mass of a single, isolated white dwarf, revealing that it was 56 per cent as large as our sun.
Because gravitational lensing can amplify light from distant objects, it also allows space telescopes to see much further than they normally would be capable of.
In 2022, scientists used Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope to peer through a gravitational lens at a single star located 12.9 billion light-years away.
Known as Earendel, this is the most distant single star ever observed, and its light started travelling towards Earth when the universe was less than one billion years old.
Albert Einstein
In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers - known as the theory of special relativity.
This groundbreaking work introduced a new framework for all of physics, and proposed new concepts of space and time.
He then spent 10 years trying to include acceleration in the theory, finally publishing his theory of general relativity in 1915.
This determined that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, which is felt as gravity.
At its simplest, it can be thought of as a giant rubber sheet with a bowling ball in the centre.
Pictured is the original historical documents related to Einstein's prediction of the existence of gravitational waves, shown at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem
As the ball warps the sheet, a planet bends the fabric of space-time, creating the force that we feel as gravity.
Any object that comes near to the body falls towards it because of the effect.
Einstein predicted that if two massive bodies came together it would create such a huge ripple in space time that it should be detectable on Earth.
It was most recently demonstrated in the hit film film Interstellar.
In a segment that saw the crew visit a planet which fell within the gravitational grasp of a huge black hole, the event caused time to slow down massively.
Crew members on the planet barely aged while those on the ship were decades older on their return.