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Researchers have unveiled two "hyperrealistic" reconstructions of adult sisters who lived and worked in a brutal mining community in what is now the Czech Republic more than 6,000 years ago.

The stunning, 3D reconstructions are based on a new analysis of the sisters' remains, which were unearthed more than 15 years ago from a prehistoric chert mine in the South Moravian region. New evidence suggests the sisters worked in the mine, extracting heavy rocks for tools and weapons.

The burials still have a number of mysterious details that continue to puzzle scientists. For example, the sisters were buried with the remains of a small dog, whose skull archaeologists found near the top skeleton but whose other bones were unearthed near the bottom skeleton, according to the study. More perplexing still was the discovery of a newborn baby whose remains lay on the older sister's chest but had no genetic relationship to either woman.

Too much cosmic radiation can sterilize a planet – but a surprising new study has found that under the right circumstances, it could actually make uninhabitable worlds habitable.

Here on Earth, we're protected from the worst of it all by our planet's magnetic field and atmosphere. It's usually assumed that without these kinds of defenses, life wouldn't stand a chance.

But the new study suggests that life could not only survive ionizing radiation, but depend on it. The idea is that high-energy particles from space could knock electrons out of molecules in underground water or ice, in a process called radiolysis. Hypothetically, this could produce enough energy to feed microbes even in cold, dark environments.

When the universe began, it was condensed into a hot mash of particles (protons, neutrons and electrons). As the universe expanded and cooled, the first stars and galaxies began to coalesce. The earliest of these we can see are around 13.7 billion years old, which is just a little over a hundred million years after the Big Bang.

The universe, vast and enigmatic, continues to provoke profound questions. Among them, a single query stands out for its sheer scale and implications: What lies beyond the universe? Although modern cosmology has greatly expanded understanding of space, time, and the nature of the universe itself, the boundary question—if such a boundary exists—remains one of the most debated and mysterious subjects in science.

Hyperspace and Higher Dimensions

Some models in contemporary theoretical physics propose the existence of dimensions beyond the familiar three spatial and one temporal. These ideas are especially prominent in string theory and its successors, such as M-theory, which suggest that reality might consist of up to 11 dimensions. Our universe could be a three-dimensional brane—short for membrane—existing within a higher-dimensional hyperspace.

In this framework, what lies beyond the universe could be more branes, each with their own physical characteristics. Universes might collide or interact within this higher-dimensional setting, potentially even leading to conditions similar to those present during our own Big Bang. While intriguing, these hypotheses have yet to be confirmed through observation or experimentation, largely because the proposed dimensions are compactified or otherwise inaccessible with current technology.

Our knowledge of ancient literature comes to us through the hands of scribes. The works of Aristotle, Galen and Ptolemy survived only because generations of copyists reproduced them by hand.

But copying was not a straightforward process.

Scribes sometimes edited as they copied—smoothing out contradictions, inserting interpretations, merging readings from different sources and, sometimes, just making mistakes.

Over time, these small changes accumulate.

A lunar crater immortalized in one of the most famous photographs ever taken has just played a key role in the hunt for alien life in our solar system.

Stretching nearly 25 miles (40 kilometers) across the far side of the moon, the lunar impact crater formerly known as "Pasteur T" may be the most-viewed lunar crater in history. Countless Earthlings have seen it spreading prominently through the foreground of the iconic "Earthrise" photo snapped by American astronaut William Anders on Dec. 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. The majestic photo, which shows a half-lit Earth rising majestically above the lunar horizon, became so famous that the crater was renamed "Anders' Earthrise" in 2018.

Now, nearly 60 years after Anders' flyby put his eponymous crater on the map, another spacecraft has glimpsed it from orbit — this time, with extraterrestrial science in mind.

High-resolution imaging of tattoos found on a 2,500 year old Siberian "ice mummy" have revealed decorations that a modern tattooist would find challenging to produce, according to researchers.

The intricate tattoos of leopards, a stag, a rooster, and a mythical half-lion and half-eagle creature on the woman's body shed light on an ancient warrior culture.

Archaeologists worked with a tattooist, who reproduces ancient skin decorations on his own body, to understand how exactly they were made.

The tattooed woman, aged about 50, was from the nomadic horse-riding Pazyryk people who lived on the vast steppe between China and Europe.

The researchers discovered hibernator-specific DNA regions that regulate the FTO locus, tuning nearby genes up or down, likely to support rapid weight gain before hibernation, followed by long periods of fasting.

To test their theory, they edited these hibernator-specific DNA regions in mice (which don’t naturally hibernate). The result: changes in metabolism and behavior resembling that of hibernators, including altered weight regulation, body temperature control, and foraging instincts.

“When you knock out one of these elements — this one tiny, seemingly insignificant DNA region — the activity of hundreds of genes changes,” said co-author Susan Steinwand in the press statement. “It’s pretty amazing"

Whales of all shapes and sizes play a significant role in the health of marine ecosystems. About 50% of the air humans breathe is produced by the ocean, thanks to phytoplankton and whale waste. The Whale Poop Loop is the foundation of the marine food web and the planet's lungs.

Packed with nutrients, whale waste is a super fertilizer that supports phytoplankton, which produces oxygen and is food for zooplankton, fish, and other marine species. The marine creatures phytoplankton support then provide food for shorebirds and humans.

These marine leviathans also help mitigate the human-made climate crisis. One whale can capture an average of 33 tons of carbon dioxide over its lifespan. A live oak tree, one of the most efficient carbon-capturing tree species, captures about 12 tons of carbon dioxide over a up to 500-year lifespan.

Astronomers have detected signs of complex organic molecules, the precursors to the building blocks of life as we know it, in a planet-forming disk around a distant star. The findings imply that the chemical seeds of life are constructed in space and are then spread to young or newly forming planets.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA), a system of radio telescopes in Chile, the team detected traces of 17 complex organic molecules in the protoplanetary disc of V883 Orionis, a young star located around 1,305 light-years away in the constellation of Orion.

V883 Orionis is an infant star, or protostar, that is estimated to be just 500,000 years old, and it's in the active phase of gathering mass and forming planets. If 0.5 million years old seems ancient, consider that our middle-aged sun is about 4.6 billion years old.

Summary

The trajectory of UAP investigation by the U.S. government reflects a broader evolution in threat assessment, scientific curiosity, and public accountability. From the early days of Project Sign and Project Blue Book, through decades of bureaucratic dormancy, to the rise of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the study of UAPs has transitioned from the fringes of pseudoscience to a matter of national significance.

AARO now stands at the intersection of science, defense, intelligence, and public policy. Whether future findings confirm unknown technologies, foreign adversarial systems, or as-yet unexplained natural phenomena, the evolution of these investigations signals that the U.S. government no longer treats UAPs as a taboo topic—but rather as an unresolved and legitimate area of inquiry.

The saga surrounding Neptune-size "super-Earth" exoplanet K2-18 b just got a whole lot more interesting. For a quick recap, this is the world a team of scientists recently suggested could host life — to the dismay of other scientists in the community, who felt the announcement failed to include necessary caution.

While signs of life on the world have failed to conclusively present themselves to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the powerful space telescope has discovered that this planet is so rich in liquid water that it could be an ocean, or "Hycean" world.

"This has certainly increased the chances of habitability on K2-18 b" Nikku Madhusudhan, the University of Cambridge scientist behind the original K2-18b discovery as well as the new study, told Space.com. "This is a very important development and further increases the chance of a Hycean environment in K2-18 b. It confirms K2-18 b to be our best chance to study a potential habitable environment beyond the solar system at the present time."

Martian glaciers are mostly pure ice across the Red Planet, suggesting they might potentially be useful resources for any explorers that might land there one day, a new study finds.

For decades, scientists have often seen glaciers coated in dust on the slopes of the mountains of Mars. Previous research suggested these were either glaciers that were comprised mostly of rock and as little as 30% ice, or debris-covered glaciers that were more than 80% ice.

The most compelling difference, however, was in the way these features were represented. For example, while people with NDEs frequently reported meeting dead loved ones, DMT users universally described encounters with otherworldly or alien beings.

Suddenly finding yourself transformed into a spirit witnessing your body from above, before being greeted by a guide seemed to be characteristic of NDEs. DMT would simply dissolve people’s bodily awareness, as they rapidly shot into a transcendent world inhabited by mechanical clowns or serpentine scientists.

This letter was sent out from Air Material Commands (AMC) in response to a request from Brig General Schulgen.

ATTENTION: Brig. General George Schulgen

AC/AS-2

1. As requested by AC/AS-2 there is presented below the considered opinion of this command concerning the so-called "Flying Discs." This opinion is based on interrogation report data furnished by AC/AS-2 and preliminary studies by personnel of T-2 and Aircraft Laboratory, Engineering Division T-3. This opinion was arrived at in a conference between personnel from the Air Institute of Technology, Intelligence T-2, Office, Chief of Engineering Division, and the Aircraft, Power Plant and Propeller Laboratories of Engineering Division T-3.

2. It is the opinion that:

a. The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious.

b. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft.

c. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors.

d. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely.......

Internet Archive: The Twinning Memo

https://archive.org/details/twinning-memo

A new sociological study offers a surprising take on the state of American news: Right-wing news media doesn't just sit on the opposite end of the political spectrum from mainstream outlets—it operates more like a religion than a traditional news source.

According to the researchers, these outlets:

• Promote a fixed worldview, treating sacred truths as more important than "mere facts"

• Build a strong sense of community around shared values rather than encouraging independent thinking among individuals

• Grow and change in ways that look more like religious movements than businesses

This shift in perspective helps explain why these platforms are influential and why many Americans are drawn to them. As the authors argue, "Right-wing news audiences are seeking (and getting) a lot more than fact or fiction when they tune into Fox News, NewsMax or the Daily Caller. Like church or temple, many Americans are now getting their beliefs, identity and sense of belonging from this media system."

As he went from country to country, Crowley never met an ancient religion he couldn’t adapt to his own ends. But no gods made as much of an impact on him as those of ancient Egypt, specifically Hoor-paar-kraat, or Harpocrates in the Greek; Crowley claimed to have been contacted by the voice of Hoor-paar-kraat’s messenger Aiwass, from whom he took the dictation that became Liber AL vel Legis. Styling himself as an Egyptian prophet, he preached one way for humanity to push through to a post-Christian age: “Whatever you feel like doing, go and do it, regardless of popular opinion or conventional morality.” After all, it seemed to work for Crowley himself, though the work of a notorious occultist certainly isn’t for everybody.

Nor could even the world’s wickedest man keep it up forever: “Eventually all the traveling, drug-taking, and libertinism had caught up with Crowley.” His inheritance dried up, and his addictions worsened.

During their breeding season, male leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) spend hours perfecting their solo performance: singing unique sequences of stereotyped calls underwater to create their ‘song’.

The estimated information entropy of the leopard seal songs is comparable to nursery rhymes but unsurprisingly, lower than contemporary, classical and baroque music.

Beloved by horror films and teen sleepovers, the Ouija board has roots in the spiritualist movement and opportunistic toy manufacturers

We’re all familiar with the question posed by so-called spiritualists and psychics as they attempt to contact those who have passed into the other world. But the big problem is: how do you convince your marks… sorry, clients… that you really do have some amazing power? After all, not everyone falls for cold-reading, and not every psychic can do it well enough, so your target audience will naturally be limited.

What if there were some technique that seemed so remarkable, so unbelievable, that it must be supernatural? If you had that, even hardened skeptics might be convinced. In trying to find this concrete proof, the early spiritualists created an arms-race in different practices, until the eventual rise of the Ouija board in the late 19th Century.

Highlights

• The potato lineage is of ancient homoploid hybrid origin

• Alternate inheritance of highly divergent parental genes contributed to tuberization

• Hybridization and tuberization triggered species radiation and niche expansion

Interspecific hybridization may trigger species radiation by creating allele combinations and traits. Cultivated potato and its 107 wild relatives from the Petota lineage all share the distinctive trait of underground tubers, but the underlying mechanisms for tuberization and its relationship to extensive species diversification remain unclear.

Through analyses of 128 genomes, including 88 haplotype-resolved genomes, we revealed that Petota is of ancient hybrid origin, with all members exhibiting stable mixed genomic ancestry, derived from the Etuberosum and Tomato lineages ca. 8–9 million years ago.

Summary

The 1967 Shag Harbour Incident involved a strange object that descended into the ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia, witnessed by multiple residents and investigated by law enforcement, military divers, and federal authorities. Despite an extensive search and formal inquiry, no explanation was ever confirmed. The incident is notable for the official recognition of the object as “unidentified” and for the government’s rapid involvement. It remains one of the most well-documented and intriguing UFO cases in Canadian history.

As of July 25 2025, people in the UK accessing web services with pornographic content will have to prove they are over 18 years of age. This development has been in the works for a while. It was proposed in 2014 by the video-on-demand regulator, and legislated for introduction in 2019 through the British Board of Film Classification.

It is of course important to stop children from accessing inappropriate material online. But, as often with technological solutions to societal problems, all available methods of age checking come with significant downsides in terms of privacy, security and human rights.

This study re-examines a 2500-year-old residue found in bronze jars at an underground shrine in Paestum (Italy), previously identified as a wax/fat/resin mixture excluding honey from its composition.

Our multianalytical approach detected lipids, saccharide decomposition products, hexose sugars, and major royal jelly proteins supporting the hypothesis that the jars once also contained honey/honeycombs.

The research highlights the value of reinvestigating archeological residues in museums with advanced biomolecular techniques and offers a more specific method for detecting bee products in ancient contexts.

While many sharks hunt for small, abundant prey when looking for a meal, great hammerheads have a supersized strategy with some big payoffs—eat other sharks.

For a long time, scientists have observed great hammerheads hunting other sharks, including blacktips during their seasonal migrations off Florida. But the energetic benefits of this high-risk, high-reward strategy were unclear until now.

The models predicted that a 250-pound great hammerhead would only need to consume one 55-pound blacktip shark roughly every three weeks to meet its energy demands. This single large meal could sustain the hammerhead for up to two months during periods when blacktip shark populations are scarce. In stark contrast, if the hammerhead were to rely on smaller reef-associated fish, it would need to catch one or two 2.2-pound fish every single day to sustain itself.