Tag: unexplained phenomena

“Nobody Knows How They Can Do This.” New Evidence of Cells “Learning” Upends Past Thinking on Cellular Function

According to groundbreaking new findings, single cells may be capable of learning without the need for complex brains and nervous systems.

Researchers from the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona and Harvard Medical School in Boston recently published their work in Current Biology. Their work presents insights that may affect the future of medicine, providing a deeper understanding of how specific ailments can avoid treatment. 

CElls Learning from Their Environment

“Rather than following pre-programmed genetic instructions, cells are elevated to entities equipped with a very basic form of decision-making based on learning from their environments,” explained co-author Jeremy Gunawardena, Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

The biologists’ observations involved habituation, one of the simplest forms of learning, where an organism acclimates to a repeated stimulus and begins to ignore it. Examples include ticking clocks or flashing lights, stimuli that eventually fade into the background for humans as our perceptions start ignoring them after some time.

Since the early 20th century, biologists have debated studies indicating learning-like behaviors in single-celled ciliates. The search picked up steam in the 1970s and 1980s, and current research provides additional mounting evidence for cell learning capabilities.

Examining Cell Learning

“These creatures are so different from animals with brains,” says co-author Rosa Martinez of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona. “To learn would mean they use internal molecular networks that somehow perform functions similar to those carried out by networks of neurons in brains.”

“Nobody knows how they can do this, so we thought it is a question that needed to be explored,” Martinez said.

Cells process information through biochemical reactions, such as adding or removing a phosphate tag to a protein to switch it on and off like a binary code. The team modeled those chemical interactions in a computer simulation. The biologists chose this method because it allowed them to test many scenarios more rapidly than setting up many observations. Analyzing the math permitted the researchers to decode the cell’s chemical language as responses to repeated stimuli changed over time.

The biologists focused on negative feedback loops and incoherent feedforward loops to help better understand how the cells processed information and reacted. Negative feedback loops describe information that signals a process should end, like a thermostat registering the desired temperature and turning off the heat. In an incoherent feedforward loop, a signal turns a process both on and off, such as when a motion-activated light turns on after registering movement but turns off again after a set amount of time elapses.

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Congressional UAP Inquiries and Malone’s Push for UFO/JFK Disclosure

This week, the US congress unveiled its second official ‘inquiry into ET collusion with government elites with the a House Oversight Committee event called ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenoa: Exposing the Truth’.

The two congressmen tasked to lead this pioneering foray into truth are Nancy Mace and Glenn Grothmann who delivered a courageous official statement reading:

Americans deserve to understand what the government has learned about UAP sightings and the nature of any potential threats these phenomena pose.

As we saw during last year’s Congressional inquiry and the associated Mexican Congressional inquiry held on Sept. 13, 2023, a slew of deep state intelligence spooks are scheduled to speak and I’m sure more fuzzy videos, anecdotal stories of crashed UFOs and photographs that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Photoshop or CGI will be presented.

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“Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth” Hearing – November 13, 2024

The Black Vault has launched a dedicated page to document all materials related to the upcoming congressional hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs). Scheduled for November 13, 2024, the joint hearing, titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” will be led by Chairwomen Nancy Mace and Glenn Grothman from the Subcommittees on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, Government Innovation, and National Security, respectively.

This session marks the second UAP-focused hearing by Congress, aiming to bring greater transparency to government research on UAPs and address the Department of Defense’s (DoD) reluctance to declassify information. The hearing will include testimony from witnesses Navy Rear Admiral Dr. Tim Gallaudet, former DoD official Luis Elizondo, former NASA Associate Administrator Michael Gold, and journalist Michael Shellenberger.

This page will archive these proceedings, related documents, and transcripts, providing a comprehensive resource on government transparency efforts around UAPs.

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Scientists Unveil Haunting Soundscape of Mysterious 41,000-Year-Old Magnetic Field Reversal Event

Close to 41,000 years ago, Earth underwent a magnetic field reversal where, for a short period, the planet’s natural magnetic protective shield diminished to just 5% of its current strength.

During this sudden and extreme magnetic field reversal event, the temporary weakness of Earth’s magnetic barrier allowed a significant influx of cosmic rays to penetrate Earth’s atmosphere. Now, for the first time, a team of scientists have produced a sound visualization of this mysterious ancient occurrence.

The Laschamp Event

Between 42,200 and 41,500 years ago, Earth’s magnetic field underwent a sudden and dramatic decrease in the intensity, along with a shift in pole orientation by about 45 degrees.

Known as the Laschamp event, this was a type of geomagnetic excursion—an anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field and the first of its kind to be identified. During geomagnetic excursions, the weakened magnetic field provides less protection from cosmic radiation, which researchers believe may have caused significant effects on Earth including extreme changes to Earth’s biosphere.

Scientists are able to identify periods of heightened cosmic ray bombardment by examining radionuclides found in places that include marine sediment cores and ancient ice deposits. The isotopes produced by the interaction between Earth’s atmosphere and cosmic radiation serve as markers for times when cosmic rays were able to penetrate more easily and reach the planet.

Now, scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Centre for Geosciences have used Laschamp event data, including new information obtained by the ESA’s Swarm mission, to create the first visualization of the mysterious event with sound.

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How This Remote Utah Ranch Became a Paranormal Activity Hotspot

Ihave been warned. This much is clear within minutes of ducking out of a helicopter onto the high-desert oasis of Skinwalker Ranch in northeastern Utah one searingly bright October afternoon. As a visitor approaching the dark and inscrutable paranormal forces patrolling this property, I could be targeted.

The admonition has come in several forms. There was the prayer for safe deliverance given by chopper pilot Cameron Fugal, brother of property owner Brandon Fugal, as we approached the ranch. This didn’t necessarily rattle me, as I’d recently watched Cameron deliver a similar invocation on season one of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, the hit History channel show that has generated mainstream attention for the property.

There was the surreal experience of being greeted on the helipad by about half the show’s cast, whom I felt I’d come to know during my hours of binge watching—standing stone-faced and shoulder to shoulder like some official tribunal ready to deliver grim news. Long-suffering ranch superintendent Thomas Winterton, looking typically Marlboro Man, shook my hand first, followed by glowering security chief Bryant “Dragon” Arnold. Erik Bard, the spritely scientist, and red-bearded security man Kaleb Bench chatted nearby. It was as if my arrival was the only thing holding up the start of the season five shoot. When we go inside, Winterton presents me with a liability waiver, which strikes me as highly unusual—there’s nothing on the day’s agenda beyond an in-depth conversation.

But what truly tweaked my antennae was a conversation I’d had an hour earlier, at the Fugals’ hangar in Provo. Brandon was on the phone, tending to his day job as a commercial real-estate titan, and Cameron and I were chatting amiably when he suddenly pivoted from a story about becoming a grandfather. “Every time we bring somebody new, the ranch interacts a little different,” he said. “Usually it’s been mostly mild. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” This struck me as a roundabout way of saying I should at least be a little worried.

“We’ve had some guys that are like, ‘This is so stupid—we’re gonna show those aliens who’s boss…’” he continued. “And it’s messed with them.”

“What happened to those guys?” I asked. “Something physical, or their cell phones wigged out, or—?”

It was indeed bodily harm, Cameron said. The previous owner, Robert Bigelow, was haunted by the place, both during his time there and after, when “all the negativity followed him home,” Cameron explained. This sounded a little like the aftermath of a bad Red Lobster meal, but I’d seen the entire series at that point, and I knew what he meant. I’d just never thought of it happening to me.

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Romania’s Bermuda Triangle: The Creepy Hoia Forest

Outside of Romania, especially in the English-speaking world, Transylvania is a land associated with vampires, specifically Dracula. Inside Romania, where Vlad the Impaler is a national hero, his associations with the famed vampire are not as popular, though Transylvania is arguably still known for being home to one of the creepiest sites in the world. The Hoia Baciu forest, whether it is deserved or not, has earned the reputation of being the Bermuda Triangle of Romania.

Over time, the forest has gained a reputation for being haunted by unfriendly spirits, a site of UFO activity, and a place where cultists open portals to other dimensions.

The forest is said to have been named Hoia Baciu after a shepherd by the same name went missing there with 200 of his sheep. In the late 1960s, a biologist by the name of Alexandru Sift is said to have taken pictures of a disc or flying saucer hovering over the forest. In 1968, a military technician by the name of Emil Barnea is said to have taken a picture of a UFO. It is claimed that he had no reason to make the story up since he had nothing to gain because the communist government at the time considered belief in the paranormal to be a sign of insanity and a threat to the state.

Other strange stories have also been told about the forest. In one, a young girl disappeared for five years, only to re-appear again with no memory of where she had been. In another tale, over 60 visitors were seen trying to open a portal to another dimension. People also report seeing strange lights in the forest, hearing footsteps from unseen figures, capturing otherwise non-existent faces in photographs, and hearing unexplained laughter or female voices.

It is stories like these which have given it the distinction of being the “creepiest forest in the world.” Furthermore, people who have gone into the forest report being overcome by nausea, strange rashes, unexplained fatigue, and the feeling that they are being watched. Some people have also reported experiencing time lapses, with no recollection of what they did during the missing time.

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Mysterious black ring appears in the sky over Virginia

 A mysterious black ring appeared in the sky over southeastern Virginia on Tuesday.

Nexstar’s WAVY started receiving messages shortly after 11 a.m. as viewers of reached out with images and video of the ominous looking ring floating in the sky.

Ron Stepp, who sent in video, said he was working in the vicinity of Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg when it appeared overhead. He described it a huge smoke ring and said it disappeared after about 10 minutes.

Another person in the area of Old Mooretown Road stopped to snap some photos of it.

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47-Year-Old ‘Wow! Signal’ Mystery Solved? Arecibo Observatory Scientists Think They Have an Answer

A team of scientists from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo believe they may have finally solved the 47-year-old mystery of the infamous “Wow! Signal.”

Detected by the Ohio State University Big Ear Telescope on August 15th, 1977, the Wow! Signal got its name because astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was so impressed he wrote “WOW” in the signal printout’s margins. Since then, the signal has continued to fascinate the scientific community, including the possibility that it may have been sent by an extraterrestrial civilization light years from Earth due to its high power, strong signal-to-noise ratio, and narrow bandwidth.

Unfortunately, various efforts to detect a repeat of the signal, which had a frequency and duration that didn’t match any known natural phenomenon, have come up empty, leaving the exact nature and origin of the potentially artificial signal unsolved. Several efforts in the ensuing decades have tried to offer potentially natural explanations for the signal. However, those attempts have also come up short of providing a definitive solution, leaving scientists to wonder if the Wow! Signal was indeed of extraterrestrial origin.

Now, the PHL’s lead researcher, Professor Abel Méndez, and his colleagues say that the vast amount of data they collected with the Arecibo’s iconic 305-meter telescope before it collapsed in 2020, as well as additional data collected by the facility’s 12-meter telescope since 2023, has led them to a potentially ‘astronomical’ solution to this enduring mystery.

“The Wow! Signal may have been caused by a unique astrophysical event: the sudden brightening of a cold hydrogen cloud due to stimulated emission from a transient strong radiation source, such as a magnetar flare or a soft gamma repeater (SGR),” Méndez told The Debrief. “These rare events might cause hydrogen clouds to momentarily shine much brighter, potentially explaining the fleeting nature of the Wow! Signal.”

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NASA spots unexpected X-shaped structures in Earth’s upper atmosphere — and scientists are struggling to explain them

A NASA satellite has spotted unexpected X- and C-shaped structures in Earth’s ionosphere, the layer of electrified gas in the planet’s atmosphere that allows radio signals to travel over long distances.

The ionosphere is an electrified region of Earth’s atmosphere that exists because radiation from the sun strikes the atmosphere. Its density increases during the day as its molecules become electrically charged. That’s because sunlight causes electrons to break off of atoms and molecules, creating plasma that enables radio signals to travel over long distances. The ionosphere’s density then falls at night — and that’s where GOLD comes in.

NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission is a geostationary satellite that has been measuring densities and temperatures in Earth’s ionosphere since its launch in October 2018. From its geostationary orbit above the western hemisphere, GOLD was recently studying two dense crests of particles in the ionosphere, located north and south of the equator. As night falls, low-density bubbles appear within these crests that can interfere with radio and GPS signals. However, it’s not just the wax and wane of sunshine that affects the ionosphere — the atmospheric layer is also sensitive to solar storms and huge volcanic eruptions, after which the crests can merge to form an X shape.

In its new observations, GOLD found some of these familiar X shapes in the ionosphere — even though there weren’t any kinds of solar or volcanic disturbances to create them.

Related: Oops! US Space Force may have accidentally punched a hole in the upper atmosphere

“Earlier reports of merging were only during geomagnetically disturbed conditions,” Fazlul Laskar, a research scientist at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), said in a statement. Laskar is the lead author of a paper published in April in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics that described these unexpected observations. 

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MIT ASTRONOMERS SAY THEY HAVE DISCOVERED A PLANET CURRENT THEORIES CAN’T EXPLAIN

A team of astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they have discovered a distant planet that they can’t explain with current planet evolutionary theories.

The newly discovered WASP-193b is a gas giant 50 percent larger than Jupiter, the largest gas giant in our solar system. However, it is only one-tenth as dense, making it the second-most dense exoplanet ever found.

The researchers behind the seemingly impossible find, which also includes experts from Belgium and Spain, say these types of “puffy Jupiters” have left astronomers baffled for over 15 years since they cannot explain how they formed using the best modern-day planet forecasting tools

“We don’t know where to put this planet in all the formation theories we have right now because it’s an outlier of all of them,” explained study co-lead author Francisco Pozuelos, a senior researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia, in Spain. “We cannot explain how this planet was formed based on classical evolution models.”

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