Bampot

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.

Crucially, these new laws expand the rights of entry permit holders to take measurements, conduct testing, take photos and videos while at the workplace, with testing for silica exceedances in tunnelling specifically mentioned.

They also expand a union's ability to prosecute WHS breaches. Currently, unions can prosecute serious WHS offences, and the amendments will clarify the procedure of how these prosecutions will work.

Capturing particles with low, nanonewton-scale adhesion is an ongoing challenge for conventional air filters.

Inspired by the natural filtration abilities of mucus-coated nasal hairs we introduce an efficient, biomimetic filter that exploits a thin liquid coating.

Here we show that a stable thin liquid layer is formed on several filter media that generates enhanced particulate adhesion, driven by micronewton to sub-micronewton capillary forces.

Enhanced particle adhesion increases the filtration of airborne particulates while maintaining air permeability, providing longer filter lifetime and increased energy savings. Moreover, strong adhesion of the captured particles enables effective filtration under high-speed airflow as well as suppression of particle redispersion.

We anticipate that these filters with thin liquid layers afford a new way to innovate particulate matter filtering systems.

Sand and dust storms affect about 330 million people in over 150 countries and are taking an increasing toll on health, economies and the environment, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization says.

"About 2 billion tons of dust are emitted yearly, equivalent to 300 Great Pyramids of Giza" in Egypt, the organization's U.N. representative, Laura Paterson, told the General Assembly.

More than 80% of the world's dust comes from the deserts in North Africa and the Middle East, she said, but it has a global impact because the particles can travel hundreds and even thousands of kilometers (miles) across continents and oceans.

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.

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 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.

This device is the first of its kind to operate in a moist environment, better approximating the conditions inside the human mouth.

The sensor described in the paper was made of multiple layers of graphene oxide, a material well known for its tunable electrical properties and high chemical reactivity, enclosed in a nanofluidic device

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.

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."

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.