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Is Dawes satisfied with the solution to the mystery? “I would say,” he told me, “I’m not losing sleep over the Sound because I’ve got this analysis that matches up pretty well.” But because they never found the actual HVAC unit, never traced the sound to a definitive culprit, Dawes is reluctant to fully commit to their theory. “You never get 100 percent confirmation, probably for anything,” he told me. “It’s always this gray, ‘Maybe, seems like a likely answer.’ But who knows, it could be something else.”

A mystery interstellar object discovered last week is likely to be the oldest comet ever seen—possibly predating our solar system by more than 3 billion years, researchers say.

The "water ice-rich" visitor, named 3I/ATLAS, is only the third known object from beyond our solar system ever spotted in our cosmic neighborhood and the first to reach us from a completely different region of our Milky Way galaxy.

It could be more than 7 billion years old.

Unlike the previous two objects to enter our solar system from elsewhere in the cosmos, 3I/ATLAS appears to be traveling on a steep path through the galaxy, with a trajectory that suggests it originated from the Milky Way's "thick disk"—a population of ancient stars orbiting above and below the thin plane where the sun and most stars reside.

Interestingly, the study indicates the possibility that the Inuit arrived in Greenland before the Norse people—although they may not have interacted much. The study authors write, "After 985 CE, it is known that Norse settlements were established in southwestern Greenland, but the degree of interaction between the Norse and their Inuit contemporaries remains unclear."

Tungsten deposits are typically associated with crust-derived evolved granitoids. Whether the mantle has contributed to tungsten mineralization, however, is unknown.

Here, we provide new and compiled helium‒argon‒mercury‒strontium‒neodymium isotope data in South China and tungsten provinces elsewhere to evaluate this contribution.

Our analysis shows that oceanic-subduction-related extension is more likely to facilitate intense tungsten mineralization than other geodynamic processes, e.g., continental collision, post-collisional extension, and intracontinental rifting.

During this process, the mantle provides heat for inducing slab devolatilization, whereby abundant helium‒argon‒mercury‒(fluorine) are mobilized into the crust. The 1.8‒1.2 Ga neodymium model ages of the source rocks coincide with the Nuna supercontinent cycle, together with deep-time zircon data, suggesting that the considerable tungsten enrichment of the crust over geological time resulted from mantle-plume-related activities.

The above hypothesis is confirmed by the proportion of tungsten-rich basement rocks in major tungsten provinces, highlighting the essential role of the mantle in tungsten recycling and mineralization.

The feasters left behind the skulls of 19 wild boars, which they packed neatly together and sealed inside a pit within a round building. Butchery marks on the boar skulls show the animals were used for feasting, but until now we did not know where the animals came from.

By examining the microscopic growth patterns and chemical signatures inside the tooth enamel of five of these boars, we found at least some of them had been brought to the site from a substantial distance away, transported over difficult mountainous terrain. Bringing these boars to the feast – when other boars were available locally – would have taken an enormous amount of effort.

• The National UFO Reporting Center collects reports from the public

• Interest in UFOs has been increasing after whistleblower testimony

• A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for more transparency

The nonprofit organization collects reports of UFOs and investigates cases of unexplained sightings. The 2,174 sightings are an increase from previous years. In 2024, the agency logged 1,492 sightings between the beginning of January and the end of June, and in 2023, 2,077 were recorded in the same time frame.

UFO sightings in 2025

NUFORC collected more than 3,000 reports during the first six months of 2025, but because of the stigma around UFOs, the group notes that many of them happened years or even decades before they were reported.

Those numbers likely only represent a small number of actual sightings, said Christian Stepien, the group’s chief technology officer. Based on anecdotal evidence, he believes roughly 5 percent of sightings get reported.

The group takes reports from everyday citizens as well as air traffic controllers, police and members of the military.

The Milky Way could have many more satellite galaxies than scientists have previously been able to predict or observe, according to new research. Cosmologists at Durham University used a new technique combining the highest-resolution supercomputer simulations that exist, alongside novel mathematical modeling, to predict the existence of missing "orphan" galaxies.

Their findings suggest that there should be 80 or perhaps up to 100 more satellite galaxies surrounding our home galaxy, orbiting at close distances.

If these galaxies are seen by telescopes, then it could provide strong support for the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) theory, which explains the large-scale structure of the universe and how galaxies form.

The Cambrian Explosion is a landmark moment in the history of life on Earth when many of the major groups of animals first appear in the fossil record.

New research, however, suggests that many of their key characteristics were already in place millions of years earlier during the Late Ediacaran Period.

The Cambrian Explosion may have been less of a burst of evolution, and more of a final flourish.

Colossal volcanic eruptions like the kind that may have obliterated the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago are caused by mantle plumes that rise from shifting underground mountains deep within the Earth's mantle, new research led by University of Wollongong (UOW) geophysicists and statistical scientists has revealed.

The study has revealed that giant volcanic eruptions are connected to moving BLOBS. Reconstructing mantle convection from 1 billion years ago, the authors discovered that eruptions usually occur directly above or close to BLOBS, with the mantle plume gently tilting as it rises. Computer models show that volcanic hotspots like Hawaii tend to sit above areas where BLOBS have been located as they slowly move over millions of years.

Link to paper:

Large volcanic eruptions are mostly sourced above mobile basal mantle structures

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02482-z

For years, the identity of one of the carpal bones in the wrist of birds was a scientific mystery, until researchers proved it was the pisiform. This bone was originally a sesamoid bone like a kneecap, and had moved from its original position in the wrist to replace the ulnare, another carpal bone. Its position in modern birds appears to establish linkages that allow birds to fold their wings automatically when the elbow flexes.

The bone's shape—with a large V-shaped notch—also allows the pisiform of birds to clasp their hand bones to stop them from dislocating during flight. Therefore, this bone is an important part of a bird's forelimb and critical to flight.

Rather than searching for life in laboratories or on Mars, researchers led by Sukrit Ranjan from the University of Arizona propose using the HWO to examine patterns of life across multiple exoplanets. Their approach is really quite simple: different theories about how life begins make different predictions about where and how often life should appear. They propose that by observing enough planets, the theories can be tested against real data.

The four-year collaborative effort involves three Italian universities, each contributing specialised expertise to create an entirely new type of crop. Their biggest obstacle though is size. Even dwarf varieties of rice grown on Earth are too large for space habitats where every cubic centimetre matters. Traditional dwarf crops achieve their compact size by manipulating gibberellin, a plant hormone that reduces height but creates problems with seed germination and productivity.

The University of Milan is tackling this challenge by isolating mutant rice varieties that grow to just 10 centimetres high, roughly the height of a typical smartphone. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Rome are identifying genes that alter plant architecture to maximise production efficiency in minimal space. The University of Naples contributes expertise in space crop production, building on decades of research into growing plants in controlled environments.

Summary

•This study introduces a noninvasive video-based system to monitor cardiac activity in insects by analyzing subtle body movements.

•The method accurately captures heart signals without restraining the subjects, aligning closely with traditional invasive techniques.

•This approach offers a cost-effective and ethical tool for long-term ecological and physiological research.

Arthropods are vital to ecosystems and are among the most diverse and abundant living creatures on Earth. Understanding their physiological processes, such as cardiac activity, is essential for studying their health, behavior, and responses to environmental changes.

Traditional methods of monitoring cardiac signals often rely on invasive or contact techniques that require immobilization, which limits applicability of the methods in long-term studies and disrupts the insect's natural behavior.

This study proposes a noninvasive, video system to extract cardiac signals from insects by analyzing subtle body movements.

The results closely align with reference data obtained from established methods, validating the system's accuracy and feasibility.

The study provides a foundation for developing cost-effective, noninvasive tools that preserve insects’ natural behavior welfare while offering new opportunities for ecological and physiological research.

Media coverage surrounding unidentified flying objects, or what the government refers to as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAPs, has become increasingly bisected in recent months. The division centers on those who find a historic and continuing U.S. government cover-up of alien vehicles behind every door and those who suggest all UFOs can be categorized with conventional explanations.

On one side are the proliferators of clickbait-laden claims, which rely on sources and methods of an often weak nature. And while those pursuing this approach do sometimes, sometimes even often, provide original reporting on new UFO concerns, sensationalism is bleeding into too much media reporting. This impulse to sensationalism is easy to understand, of course. After all, it generates attention and web traffic but also opens up pathways to very lucrative opportunities. Opportunities such as getting a Netflix show or starring on programs such as the History Channel’s long-running The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.

The second side comes from reporting such as that of the two Wall Street Journal reports in June, which portrayed even the very strangest of UFO cases either as products of government disinformation efforts designed to hide highly classified military programs or as products of confused or disingenuous officials. We must accept that there is credibility to this reporting.....

It’s also true, as first reported by the Washington Examiner in 2023, that Department of Defense analysis of UFOs has sometimes skewed toward the extraordinary at the neglect of less extraordinary explanations, such as Chinese military intelligence drones. Still, secret U.S. or foreign aircraft cannot explain the full gamut of UFO reports defined by literally thousands of credible witnesses and sensor systems since the late 1940s. It should also be recognized that the aforementioned classified platforms rely upon engineering that, even if highly advanced, still conforms to at least open-source conceptual theories of engineering (pulse detonation engines, for example).

In the story, an unnamed Roman senator of praetorian rank who is suffering from an unspecified ailment takes a leave of absence to the Greek spa town of Antikyra in hopes that his health will benefit from treatments made from hellebore—a flowering plant purported to have medicinal properties. The senator, perhaps pressing his luck, asks Caligula to extend his leave. In response, the emperor has the hapless senator executed, quipping that "a bloodletting was necessary for one whom hellebore had not benefited in all that time."

Yale scholars, combining ethnobotanical field data and a close reading of ancient texts, offer a new understanding of the passage, providing context about Antikyra's place in the Roman Empire and Caligula's familiarity with pharmacology.

"Our work suggests that Antikyra functioned as a kind of Mayo Clinic of the Roman world—a place where affluent and influential Romans visited for medical treatments not widely available elsewhere."

The Fluvial History of Noachis Terra, Mars

The nature of the Martian climate during the Noachian-Hesperian transition (~3.7 Ga), and how surface features such as Valley Networks (VNs) and lakes associated with liquid water formed, is debated.

There are two end-member theories.

The first is that warm and wet conditions persisted on early Mars long enough that liquid water was stable on the surface for extended periods.

The second is that Mars was generally cold and dry, and that geological features indicative of flowing water (e.g. VNs) were formed only very sporadically by meltwater from ice sheets during short climate excursions.

Noachis Terra, in Mars’ southern highlands, is a region where ‘warm, wet’ climate models predict high rates of precipitation, but is poorly incised by VNs.

We searched instead for Fluvial Sinuous Ridges (FSRs, aka inverted channels) here as they provide alternate evidence to VNs for stable surface water.

We used CTX, MOLA, and HiRISE data and recorded location, length and morphological characteristics. We find FSRs to be common across Noachis Terra, with a cumulative length of more than 15,000 km. These are often isolated segments, but some systems are hundreds of km in length.

The broad distribution of FSRs suggests a broadly distributed source of water.

The most likely candidate is precipitation, suggesting a benign surface environment.

For FSRs to have formed mature, interconnected systems, up to tens of metres high, these conditions must also have been relatively long-lived.

This suggests that ~3.7 Ga, Noachis Terra experienced warm and wet conditions for a geologically relevant period.

“I don’t know.”

“I want that one—no, that one, over there.”

“Did she really just say what I think she said?”

These phrases can be said with words, but they’re just as easily communicated via gestures such as shrugging, pointing, and raising your eyebrows.

But we humans aren’t the only ones who move our bodies to convey meaning; several other primates do it, too.

When presented with a tray of apples placed just out of reach, semicaptive elephants used a variety of gestures to communicate with experimenters until they received their treats.

"Our latest data has found more evidence of ammonia on Venus, with the potential for it to exist in the habitable parts of the planet's clouds," Professor Greaves said.

"There are no known chemical processes for the production of either ammonia or phosphine, so the only way to know for sure what is responsible for them is to go there.

"The hope is that we can establish whether the gases are abundant or in trace amounts, and whether their source is on the planetary surface, for example in the form of volcanic ejecta.

"Or whether there is something in the atmosphere, potentially microbes that are producing ammonia to neutralize the acid in the Venusian clouds."

Relationships between pre-humans and large predators, rooted in the Middle Pleistocene, suggest a strategic exploitation of carnivore remains. However, opportunistic procurement cannot be entirely ruled out as a potential factor influencing animal choice in tool production. The intentional transformation of lion bones into functional tools highlights Neanderthals’ cognitive skills, adaptability, and capacity for resource utilization beyond their immediate survival needs.

Radar systems used by civilian airports and military operations are inadvertently revealing our existence to potential advanced alien civilizations, new research shows.

The study explored how hidden electromagnetic leakage might look to extraterrestrials up to 200 light-years from Earth, if they had state-of-the-art radio telescopes like our own. Theoretically, it also suggests this is how far we would be able to look to spot aliens who have evolved to use a similar level of technology.

Robert Taylor talks he was attacked by a UFO in Dechmont Woods, Livingston, Scotland, 1979

Earth and our entire Milky Way galaxy may sit inside a mysterious giant hole which makes the cosmos expand faster here than in neighboring regions of the universe, astronomers say.

Their theory is a potential solution to the "Hubble tension" and could help confirm the true age of our universe, which is estimated to be around 13.8 billion years old.

Sustaining life beyond Earth requires the creation of habitats, which is typically assumed to require costly transport of high-mass components from Earth.

Here, we investigate an alternative approach based on in situ fabrication using biologically generated materials.

We show that several common biomaterials are capable of blocking UV radiation, transmitting visible light, and maintaining pressure differences sufficient to permanently stabilize liquid H2O in a vacuum or low-pressure environment.

As a proof of concept, we then demonstrate growth of eukaryotic green alga in a 3D printed PLA bioplastic habitat under Mars-relevant conditions of a 600 Pa CO2 background atmosphere.

Our results demonstrate that products of biology itself can be used to create habitats in extraterrestrial environments. This approach is scalable, sustainable, and plausibly could be extended to construction of human habitats in the future.

As the First World War raged on, German submarines were deployed in the Atlantic to attack Allied ships. While many of these U-boats were sunk during the war, one particular submarine, SM UB-85, gained notoriety for an unusual reason.

Put bluntly, its crew reported being attacked by a sea monster. The incident became widely reported in the media, with some newspapers claiming that the U-boat had been attacked by a giant octopus or sea serpent.

How did hardened sailors and military men become convinced that they had been attacked by a sea monster? What exactly did they see out there?

Sulfates are salts that form when sulfur, usually in compound form, mixes with other minerals in water.

When the water evaporates, the minerals mix and dry out, leaving the sulfates behind.

These sulfate minerals can tell us a lot about Mars, such as its water history, and how it has weathered over time.

Pure sulfur, on the other hand, only forms under a very narrow set of conditions, which are not known to have occurred in the region of Mars where Curiosity made its discovery.

There are, to be fair, a lot of things we don't know about the geological history of Mars, but the discovery of scads of pure sulfur just hanging about on the Martian surface suggests that there's something pretty big that we're not aware of.