Tag: unexplained phenomena

Interstellar Object Is Spraying Something Weird, Scientists Find

A new analysis of our solar system’s interstellar interloper, 3I/ATLAS, reveals that it’s spewing huge amounts of water — and astronomers can’t immediately explain why.

The object, which is widely believed to be comet, showed strong ultraviolet emissions that are unmistakable telltales of hydroxyl gas (OH), a byproduct of water, when astronomers imaged it with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift space telescope before it disappeared behind the Sun. The emissions could only be spotted from space because the ultraviolet light would get absorbed in the atmosphere.

Their findings, detailed in a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, argue that the presence of all this OH indicates the comet is ejecting water vapor at a torrential rate of about 88 pounds per second — around the same rate as a fire hose running at full blast, according to a press release about the findings.

The most extraordinary thing is that this was spotted happening pretty far from the Sun, at a heliocentric distance of about three astronomical units (AU) away, or three times the distance between the Earth and our star. Typically, comets stray much closer to the Sun before the water ice in their core, called a nucleus, begins to sublimate, or instantly transform from a solid to a gas. Something else must be driving all the water dumping from 3I/ATLAS — which also implies, tantalizingly, that the comet must harbor considerable stores of water for this process to keep going.

“When we detect water — or even its faint ultraviolet echo, OH, — from an interstellar comet, we’re reading a note from another planetary system,” coauthor Dennis Bodewits, a professor of physics at Auburn University, said in the release. “It tells us that the ingredients for life’s chemistry are not unique to our own.”

It’s another example of the fascinating strangeness of interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS. Think of it as a sample of somewhere very far away, perhaps tens of millions of light years, careening straight past our doorstep. That it’s in many ways bizarre compared to local comets hints at just how unique these unimaginable alien realms must be, and how we have so much more to understand of how star systems form and how their structures may evolve.

Typically, a comet’s coma, a huge halo of gas and dust that give comets their glowing appearance, begin to form as the object nears the Sun — or another star, presumably — and heats up. The heat either sublimates or vaporizes the material in its nucleus, which is many times smaller than the tail that catches our eyes from the ground, stretching behind the comet.

3I/ATLAS’s coma has already surprised us in many ways. Its chemistry is strange compared to our own comets, and it appears to have an astonishingly high ratio of carbon dioxide to water.

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Galactic alert: NASA confirms mysterious object entering solar system is ‘interstellar’ visitor

A mysterious object hurtling through space has been identified as a rare “interstellar object,” only the third of its kind ever seen.

In July, NASA reported its ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Chile identified a comet that originated from interstellar space. Arriving in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, the comet was dubbed 3I/Atlas.

The comet poses no threat to Earth – it will remain at a distance of about 150 million miles away – but is unique. According to Livescience, the object is traveling towards the sun extremely fast, around 152,000 mph and is on an flat and straight trajectory that’s unlike anything else in the solar system.

NASA has confirmed 3I/Atlas is an interstellar object, meaning it originated outside our solar system and is briefly traveling through it. It’s only the third such object to have ever been spotted after Comet 2I/Borisov passed through in 2019 and ‘Oumuamua, a cigar-shaped object that appeared in 2017 and sparked a social media fury after it was suggested it was an alien probe.

Scientists are studying the size and makeup of 3I/Atlas but NASA said it should be visible to ground-based telescopes through September, though after that it will pass too close to the sun to be seen. It will reappear on the other side of the sun by Sunday and remain visible through early December.

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Alien secrets: 11 mysterious UFO encounters that refuse to fade from history 

nexplained aerial phenomena, commonly branded as UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) and more recently as UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), remain one of history’s most enduring enigmas.

While most sightings are dismissed as misidentifications or atmospheric oddities, a select few stand apart – defying scientific and governmental scrutiny and leaving behind more questions than answers. These are cases with solid physical evidence, radar confirmation, or witnessed by military and aviation professionals.

Let’s delve into the 11 most compelling UFO sightings across the globe – incidents with documentation, official investigation, and mysteries that have persisted for decades despite analysis.

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The “Wow!” Signal Was Likely From An Extraterrestrial Source, And More Powerful Than We Thought

Anew study has re-examined the famous “Wow!” signal, finding that it likely has an extraterrestrial origin after all, and may have been even more intense than previously believed.

On August 15, 1977, at the Big Ear radio telescope observatory at Ohio State University, a narrowband radio signal was received. A few days later, astronomer Jerry Ehman reviewed the data and noticed the signal sequence, which lasted for a full 72 seconds. In the margin next to the printout, he simply wrote “Wow!”, and thus the puzzling signal had a name that would stick for the next 43 years at least.

The signal has, so far, defied explanation, and that’s not for a lack of trying. Researchers argued the case for it being a comet passing through the area Big Ear was listening to, only for that to be completely refuted about two days later by the team that detected the Wow! signal in the first place, as a comet would have produced a diffuse signal given the large area they cover, rather than the abruptly cut-off signal that was received.

The signal has been a source of speculation in the “aliens are out there” community, and not without reason. No other signal like it has been detected before or since. It was in a range of frequencies close to the hydrogen line, which is relatively free from background noise, making it a good range to pick were we to try and communicate with other civilizations ourselves. On top of that, the team themselves believed it to be a good candidate for extraterrestrial life.

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NASA Satellite Images Reveal Mysterious Blast Site of 1908 Tunguska Event that Scorched Remote Siberia

A fiery explosion tore through the skies over Eastern Siberia on the morning of June 30, 1908, decimating more than 830 square miles of frozen taiga in what remains the largest asteroid-related blast in recorded history. Known as the Tunguska event, today it serves as a stark reminder of potential dangers presented by space objects that cross paths with our planet.

In commemoration of the 1908 incident, June 30 is recognized worldwide as International Asteroid Day, as part of an effort to raise awareness about asteroid hazards and to promote international cooperation in addressing their statistically rare, but still ever-present and potentially deadly reality.

Now, revealed in satellite imagery obtained last summer by NASA’s Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, the blast site as it appears today can be seen to show no direct signs of an impact, or even any damage from the blast which more than a century ago that had been large enough to level a modern city.

Eyewitness descriptions preserved from the time of the Tunguska event are still haunting today, with many reporting observations of the blazing fireball streaking across the sky at an estimated 60,000 miles per hour.

In Kirensk, observers saw a ball of fire descend toward the horizon, followed by deafening crashes and thunderous bangs. One witnessed described seeing the blazing object descending, and after several minutes, hearing “separate deafening crash[es] like peals of thunder” followed by “eight loud bangs like gunshots.”

“As it approached the ground, it took on a flattened shape,” one eyewitness reported, while another described the object as resembling “a flying star with a fiery tail” that “disappeared into the air.”

“I saw the sky in the north open to the ground and fire poured out,” another witness description reads. “The fire was brighter than the sun. We were terrified, but the sky closed again and immediately afterward, bangs like gunshots were heard. We thought stones were falling… I ran with my head down and covered, because I was afraid stones my fall on it.”

Another striking eyewitness report detailed how heat from the blast wave struck him, carrying him off the porch of the local trading station.

“Suddenly in the north … the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire,” the witness report reads. “I felt a great heat, as if my shirt had caught fire… At that moment there was a bang in the sky, and a mighty crash… I was thrown twenty feet from the porch and lost consciousness for a moment…. The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or guns firing. The earth trembled…. At the moment when the sky opened, a hot wind, as if from a cannon, blew past the huts from the north.”

Damaging vegetation in the community, the witness also said that “many panes in the windows had been blown out and the iron hasp in the barn door had been broken” following the incident.

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X-Ray Telescopes Reveal 23-Million-Light-Year Filament That May Help Solve “Missing Matter” Mystery

A potential solution to the decades-long “missing matter” problem has been uncovered as astronomers’ recent analysis of X-ray data identifies a filament of hot gas, 10 times the size of the Milky Way, filling the space between four galaxy clusters.

While the discovery does not completely answer the question of where all of the currently unaccounted for matter resides, the filament does appear to represent a significant chunk of it. Astronomers sourced the data used in the new research from the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton and JAXA’s Suzaku X-ray space telescopes.

Missing Matter

Current models of the universe have a major shortcoming: they can’t fully account for all the matter that should exist. While dark matter and dark energy—detectable only by their effects—compose most of the cosmos, visible matter accounts for just about 5%. Yet even among that 5%, nearly half of the expected matter remains missing.

One possible explanation is the existence of long, tenuous strings of gas called “filaments.” However, detecting these structures is notoriously difficult, as they are extremely faint and often obscured by brighter cosmic phenomena like galaxies and black holes. The breakthrough in the new research lies in the team’s successful identification and characterization of a hot gas filament connecting four galaxy clusters.

“For the first time, our results closely match what we see in our leading model of the cosmos – something that’s not happened before,” says lead researcher Konstantinos Migkas of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. “It seems that the simulations were right all along.”

Identifying the Missing Matter

The four galaxy clusters and the filament linking them are part of the Shapley Supercluster, one of the largest known structures in the universe, containing around 8,000 galaxies. Two clusters sit on each side of the filament, which stretches 23 million light-years diagonally away from Earth.

XMM-Newton and Suzaku’s X-ray data were crucial to mapping the filament’s properties, supported by optical data from multiple sources. Each telescope contributed a unique perspective: Suzaku scanned a broad area of space, while XMM-Newton focused on identifying supermassive black holes within the filament and removing their interference from the data.

“Thanks to XMM-Newton we could identify and remove these cosmic contaminants, so we knew we were looking at the gas in the filament and nothing else,” adds co-author Florian Pacaud of the University of Bonn, Germany. “Our approach was really successful, and reveals that the filament is exactly as we’d expect from our best large-scale simulations of the Universe.”

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“We Have Finally Found the Last Piece of the Puzzle”: Scientists Solve a Long-Standing Seismic Mystery

A seismic mystery has been solved as earthquake waves, traveling almost 3,000 kilometers below ground and demonstrating anomalous behavior in their rush toward the planet’s center, have now been explained with the help of observational data.

ETH Zurich Professor of Experimental Mineral Physics Motohiko Murakami led the new study, attempting to recreate the extreme conditions of the inner Earth. Their laboratory work demonstrated a unique rock flow, distinct from that of liquid lava or brittle solid rock.

The D” Layer Anomaly

The lowest part of Earth’s mantle, the D” layer, sits 2700 kilometers deep, just above the boundary with the planet’s core. Strangely, earthquake waves suddenly alter their behavior at this depth, increasing in speed. This acceleration would typically indicate that the waves had passed into an entirely different type of material, a long-standing seismic mystery that has baffled seismologists.

Murakami made an important discovery over two decades ago, when in 2004 he found that around the D” layer barrier, the primary mineral changes from the perovskite that makes up the rest of the lower mantle. This new “post-perovskite” mineral endures extreme temperatures and pressure at that depth.

For a few years, Murakami and his team believed that the change over to this post-perovskite mineral provided an explanation for the seismic acceleration. Yet, in 2007, Murakami uncovered further evidence that the mineral change was insufficient to account for the shift in earthquake waves.

It was a complex computer model that provided the researchers with the missing piece of the puzzle: post-perovskite hardness changes based on the direction that its crystals point. The cause of the acceleration appears to result from when all the minerals’ crystals become aligned in the same direction, a phenomenon that occurs at depths of around 2700 kilometers.  

“We have finally found the last piece of the puzzle,” Murakami recently said in a statement.

Laboratory Pressure

As their medium to simulate post-perovskite, the team synthesized pure MgGeO3 orthopyroxene by using an electric furnace to heat a mixture of fine-grain germanium oxide and magnesium oxide at 1000 °C for 104 hours. The resulting substance was placed under extreme pressure measured with diamond anvils and heated with a CO2 laser to recreate the intense conditions found in the D” layer. The researchers took high-pressure acoustic velocity and X-ray diffraction measurements, which were analyzed with multiple spectroscopic techniques.

The team’s laboratory work successfully recreated the formation needed for the acceleration observed at the edge of the D” layer, demonstrating that heat and pressure can align the crystals in one direction, where seismic waves speed up. This suggests that instead of a change in material causing the anomaly, a change in deformation is responsible for the effect.

Solving the Seismic Mystery

Exactly how these crystals manage to align in parallel relies on a type of movement long suspected by geoscientists, yet one that has been lacking direct evidence until now. The hypothesis is that a form of convection similar to the boiling of water allows the solid rock in the lower mantle to flow horizontally. Murakami’s team’s experiments have finally demonstrated this long-suggested convection action. 

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Strange radio pulses detected coming from ice in Antarctica

A cosmic particle detector in Antarctica has emitted a series of bizarre signals that defy the current understanding of particle physics, according to an international research group that includes scientists from Penn State. The unusual radio pulses were detected by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, a range of instruments flown on balloons high above Antarctica that are designed to detect radio waves from cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere.

The goal of the experiment is to gain insight into distant cosmic events by analyzing signals that reach the Earth. Rather than reflecting off the ice, the signals—a form of radio waves—appeared to be coming from below the horizon, an orientation that cannot be explained by the current understanding of particle physics and may hint at new types of particles or interactions previously unknown to science, the team said.

The researchers published their results in the journal Physical Review Letters.

“The radio waves that we detected were at really steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice,” said Stephanie Wissel, associate professor of physics, astronomy and astrophysics who worked on the ANITA team searching for signals from elusive particles called neutrinos.

She explained that by their calculations, the anomalous signal had to pass through and interact with thousands of kilometers of rock before reaching the detector, which should have left the radio signal undetectable because it would have been absorbed into the rock.

“It’s an interesting problem because we still don’t actually have an explanation for what those anomalies are, but what we do know is that they’re most likely not representing neutrinos,” Wissel said.

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British Cops Raise Concerns About Crop Circles

A British police department in the heart of crop circle country has raised concerns about the mysterious formations that appear in the area every summer. Wiltshire Police reportedly issued a statement addressing the phenomenon that has become somewhat synonymous with the county. “While they might look impressive, creating a crop circle without the landowner’s permission is criminal damage,” they noted, stressing that “these acts can cause serious short and long-term damage to crops and fields and may also attract further illegal activity.” To that end, the department noted that the appearance of a crop formation is often followed by trespassers, prohibited deployment of drones, and even theft by ne’er-do-wells drawn to the area.

Farmers who discover a formation on their land and wish to avoid falling victim to such shenanigans, the department said, should post clear markers indicating that public visitations are not welcome. They also noted that property owners who opt to allow people to come and see any curious crop creations on their land bear responsibility for such individuals and, as such, should consult their insurance company before putting up a proverbial welcome sign. Additionally, Wiltshire Police called upon the public to report any formations they might find. Considering the crop circle community’s dedication to tracking down the latest designs as they appear, one imagines that few will go unnoticed.

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Astronomers baffled by mystery object flashing signals at Earth every 44 minutes: ‘Like nothing we’ve ever seen’

The truth is out there.

Astronomers say they’re stunned by an unidentified object flashing strange signals from deep space.

The object, named ASKAP J1832-0911, was detected by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and NASA’S Chandra X-ray observatory — the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope.

“It is unlike anything we have seen before,” Andy Wang, an astronomer at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, declared in a statement published this week.

ASKAP J1832-0911 emits pulses of radio waves and X-rays for two minutes every 44 minutes, according to the experts, who documented their findings in Nature journal.

ASKAP J1832-0911 has been classified as a “long-period transient” or “LPT” — a cosmic body that emits radio pulses separated by a few minutes or a few hours.

Wang and his team theorize that the object could be a dead star, but they don’t know why it “switches on” and “switches off” at “long, regular and unusual intervals,” Space.com reports.

“ASKAP J1831-0911 could be a magnetar (the core of a dead star with powerful magnetic fields), or it could be a pair of stars in a binary system where one of the two is a highly magnetised white dwarf (a low-mass star at the end of its evolution),” Wang wrote.

“However, even those theories do not fully explain what we are observing,” he added. “This discovery could indicate a new type of physics or new models of stellar evolution.”

Wang and his team hope to detect similar another using radio waves and the Chandra X-ray observatory, saying a subsequent discovery will help them learn more about the nature of such LPTs

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