Jingszo !

In a dramatic new discovery, scientists have identified over 15,000 kilometers of ancient riverbeds on Mars, revealing that vast regions of the planet were once crisscrossed by flowing water.

These winding ridges, preserved in the Martian highlands, suggest that rainfall—not just glacial melt—once played a major role in shaping the Red Planet’s surface. The findings, mapped using high-resolution orbital data, challenge long-held views of Mars as cold and dry, pointing instead to a time when it may have been warm, wet, and far more Earth-like than we imagined.

A more than 2,000-year-old habit

In his oration To the People of Alexandria, the Greek writer Dio Chrysostom (40-110 CE) complained about a phenomenon he saw all the time.

Dio wrote people loved to listen to music in their daily activities. According to him, music could be found in the courtroom, in the lecture theatre, in the doctor’s room, and even in the gym.

“Everything is done to music […] people will presently go so far as to use song to accompany their exercise in the gymnasium,” Dio wrote.

But exercising to music wasn’t a new thing in his day. This practice has been recorded across the ancient Greek and Roman worlds from the earliest times, and as far back as the poems of Homer (circa 800 BCE).

Researchers in Japan say they have set a new world record for the fastest internet speed, transmitting over 125,000 gigabytes of data per second over 1,120 miles (1,802 kilometers).

That's about 4 million times the average internet speed in the U.S. and would allow you to download the entire Internet Archive in less than four minutes, according to some rough estimates. This is also more than twice the previous world record of 50,250 Gbps, previously set by a different team of scientists in 2024.

To achieve this new speed — which has not been independently verified — the team developed a new form of optical fiber to send information at groundbreaking speeds over roughly the distance between New York and Florida.

Archaeologists have recovered dodecahedrons from the graves of men and women, in coin hoards and even in refuse heaps, so a blanket explanation for their use has not been found. But many researchers have attempted to solve the puzzle, suggesting that dodecahedrons may have been used as weapons, decorations, candlestick holders, range finders, measurement devices, children's toys, dice, craftsman's samples or spools for knitting gloves.

Picture a stereotypical scene in a medieval village. What do you imagine? Children playing in the dirty unpaved street perhaps, maybe two men on top of a cottage fixing the thatch, perhaps a young woman sweeping the front step, worrying about her elderly 35-year-old mother who is dying in the back room… of old age.

What’s wrong with this picture?

According to many articles discussing popular misconceptions about history, there’s a pervasive myth that people died of old age in their mid 30s, and that ancient Greeks or Romans “would have been flabbergasted to see anyone above the age of 50 or 60.”

The archaeological site, known as Penico, was a meeting point for trade between the first human communities on the Pacific coast and those from the Andes and Amazon regions, researchers have said.

Located in the Supe valley, some 110 miles (180 kilometers) north of the Peruvian capital Lima and around 12 miles from the Pacific Ocean, Penico was a hilly landscape before exploration work began in 2017.

Archaeologists believe it could hold insights into why the Caral civilization—which flourished between 3,000 and 1,800 BC—faded.

According to the auction house, the meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike before traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, where it crashed into the Sahara. A meteorite hunter found it in Niger in November 2023, Sotheby's says.

CERN, Portals & Extra Dimensions:  Dr. Astrid Stuckelberger Speaks Out | UAP Files Podcast S3E35

Within that ancient tradition, the image of the elk (Cervus elaphus sibiricus) had the longest duration of any animal imagery; but over the millennia it underwent radical change. Beginning as an image reflecting a primitive, monumental realism, it was transformed into an expression of vital naturalism in the Bronze Age. By the end of the Bronze Age, the image began to shift into a highly stylized emblem of status, clan identity, or perhaps gender, finally degenerating into a wolf-like beast.

Here, the authors review the contribution of horse to food refuse at 198 settlements across medieval Hungary, highlighting variability in food practices through time and space. Examination of these zooarchaeological assemblages indicates that hippophagy continued after the general conversion to Christianity in the eleventh century but substantially declined following the Mongol invasion (AD 1241–1242) and disappeared by the mid-sixteenth-century Ottoman occupation. Diachronic and geographic trends in this practice reveal ambiguity in food customs, reflecting complex (social, religious and ethnic) local identities.

The concerning collision comes as the Department of Defense reported 757 incidents involving UAPs from May 1, 2023, to June 1, 2024, according to an unclassified document released by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

Of those encounters, 708 occurred in the air, with only 49 instances marked as "case closed" by officials. Additionally, the department received 18 reports regarding UAP incidents near nuclear infrastructure, launch sites and weapons, according to the report.

"None of these resolved cases substantiated advanced foreign adversarial capabilities or breakthrough aerospace technologies," the report states.

The truth is in Ottawa. Maybe.

Fans of the television show X-Files — where the expression ‘the truth is out there” first entered popular culture and lexicon — may be surprised to learn that the world’s first UFO research facility was not in the United States, nor anywhere near Area 51.

The facility opened in 1952, a joint research project of the National Research Council (NRC), the Defence Research Board (DRB), and the Department of Transportation (DOT). The scientist leading the project worked for DOT: Wilbert Smith, senior radio engineer for the department’s Broadcast and Measurements Section.

Smith had begun researching UFOs two years earlier, as the lead scientist on Project Magnet, a DOT research study trying to determine not only if alien spaceships existed, but if so, what powered them? One theory was that UFOs used the Earth’s magnetic field as a source of propulsion.

Smith’s geo-magnetic studies seemed promising and in 1952 Project Magnet moved to Shirleys Bay, approximately 15 km west of Ottawa, on what was then a seldom used stretch of Carling Avenue.

For nearly a century, scientists have been puzzling over fossils from a strange and robust-looking distant relative of early humans: Paranthropus robustus. It walked upright, and was built for heavy chewing with relatively massive jaws, and huge teeth with thick dental enamel. It’s thought to have lived between 2.25 million and 1.7 million years ago.

Humans today have a diverse array of hominin distant relatives and ancestors from millions of years ago. The South African fossil record ranges from early hominins such as Australopithecus prometheus, A. africanus (Taung child), A. sediba and P. robustus, to early members of the genus Homo (H. erectus/ergaster, H. habilis), to later hominins such as H. naledi and Homo sapiens (humans).

Fossils show how these early relatives evolved from as far back as A. africanus, 3.67 million years ago. They also document milestones in evolution, including the transition to walking on two legs, tool making and increased brain development. Ultimately, our species – Homo sapiens – appeared in South Africa 153,000 years ago.

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."

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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."