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Understanding the nature of consciousness is one of the hardest problems in science. Some scientists have suggested that quantum mechanics, and in particular quantum entanglement, is the key to unraveling the phenomenon.

The brain communicates within itself by firing electrical signals called synapses between neurons, which are the main components of nervous tissue. It is the synchronized activity of millions of neurons that consciousness (among other brain business) relies on. But the way this precise synchronization takes place is unknown.

Entanglement means the two-photon state is not a classical combination of two photon states. Instead, measuring or interacting with one of the photons instantly affects the same property of the second photon, no matter how far away it is.

Entanglement has been demonstrated for a system whose members are over 1,000 km apart. Nothing like it exists in classical physics; it is purely a quantum phenomenon. Here entanglement would raise the possibility of much faster signaling along the sections of myelin that encase segments of the axon's length.

One possibility, the authors write, is that the entanglement of photons could transform into entanglement along potassium ion channels in the neuron. If so, the opening and closing of one channel may affect the performance of another somewhere else.

Mars is cold and dry today, but scientists think it had large amounts of water billions of years ago. New images from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft show the outline of an enormous ancient lake on the surface of the Red Planet. It's so big, 11 million square kilometers, it could cover the Caspian Sea three times. The key evidence comes from salts and deposits in the region left behind after the water evaporated when the Martian climate changed.

He's the only living witness to what he calls a one-of-a-kind UFO encounter.

Jose Padilla was 9 years old in 1945 when he says he and his friend witnessed something they'd never forget. But it's not just the details of his story that set his close encounter apart. He says he has a piece of the ship—and you'll see it only on KCAL News, Tuesday at 11 p.m.

An intense debate surrounding the cosmic rock that killed the dinosaurs has stirred scientists for decades, but a new study has revealed some important—and far-out—data about the impactor's origin story.

Researchers measured the isotopes of the element ruthenium, not uncommon on asteroids but extremely rare on Earth. So by inspecting the deposits in multiple geological layers that mark the debris from the impact at Chicxulub, they could be sure that the ruthenium studied came "100 percent from this asteroid."

Scientists believe water may have been brought to Earth by asteroids, likely of the C-type like the one that struck 66 million years ago, even though they are less frequent.

Filmmakers Richard Rossi and Kelly Tabor may have unintentionally captured drone footage of 'Champ,' the lake monster said to inhabit Lake Champlain, while shooting their film, 'Lucy and the Lake Monster'.

The press release stated that longtime friends Rossi and Tabor were reviewing footage when they noticed a “large, unknown creature gliding beneath the water's surface” near a boat used in the film.

A ten-second clip featuring the mysterious object was published to Rossi’s YouTube channel over a week prior to the press release.

In that footage, the object can be seen below the water’s surface in the lower righthand corner of the frame.

According to a second press release from August 14th:

The present document delineates the preliminary scientific evaluation of the Tabor-Rossi Champ footage, juxtaposing it with the renowned 1977 Mansi photograph. A comprehensive and exhaustive analysis is scheduled for dissemination in the following year.

The Tabor-Rossi footage constitutes the most compelling extant evidence to date supporting the potential survival of a plesiosaur-like species. It incorporates numerous elements that the 1977 Mansi photograph of "Champ" does not possess:

1. The inclusion of a boat in the footage, occupied by two individuals, provides a critical reference for scale, thereby facilitating an assessment of the dimensions of the observed organism. The boat's measurements are documented at 11.8333 feet in length and 4.28333 feet in width, with the subject appearing to exceed the size of the vessel. Notably, large sturgeon are documented to reach lengths of up to 7 feet, with the recorded maximum being 8 feet. Conversely, the Mansi photograph lacks any objects for scale reference.

2. The original Mansi Polaroid depicts the Champ entity in relatively shallow waters, not exceeding depths of 14 feet, in proximity to the shoreline. In contrast, the Tabor-Rossi footage was captured via drone technology in the deepest section of Bulwagga Bay within Lake Champlain, effectively eliminating the likelihood of misidentification as a rock formation or sand mounds, which are prevalent in shallower aquatic regions.

3. An additional caveat regarding the Mansi photograph pertains to the inability of Sandra Mansi to determine the precise location where the image was acquired. In contrast, the Tabor-Rossi footage benefits from the corroborative accounts of multiple eyewitnesses, including cast and crew members, who have unequivocally identified the exact geographic coordinates of their filming location.

4. Importantly, Sandra Mansi did not retain the original negative of her photograph. The Tabor-Rossi footage is distinguished by its production in high resolution using a quality drone camera. The five seconds of footage available on YouTube represent only a diminutive sample of the entirety encompassing a broader five-minute segment that includes the subject in question. This raw footage was retained, allowing for enhanced scientific scrutiny through subsequent review. Initial morphological assessments, conducted through pixel and color threshold adjustments, as well as zoom enhancements, reveal concordance with established plesiosaur anatomical features, while presenting proportions inconsistent with sturgeon or alternative explanations. Noteworthy characteristics include, but are not limited to:

a. A flattened plesiosaur head

b. Locomotion via reptilian-like fins

c. A slender, serpentine neck in conjunction with a more robust body structure

A series of rigorous tests is slated for execution and will be submitted for scientific peer review as part of a scholarly article in the upcoming year, thereby inviting formal academic scrutiny of these findings.

In the last few decades, it has become clear that almost every single star has at least one planet orbiting it.

There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone. Perhaps it will never happen. Perhaps the unfathomable distances between worlds means that we will always think that we’re alone, at least in our corner of the cosmos. But it’s possible that, one day, a radio observatory pointed toward a constellation of diamantine specks glinting in that deep, dark ocean above will pick up something that will change everything.

Maybe it’s a radio signal, one not coming from the death of a star, or a distant planet’s aurora. It sounds technological. It’s not an accidental interception of one of Earth’s myriad broadcasts. And it has a purposeful structure to it. Astrophysicists cannot identify the meaning of the signal. But at that stage, the cryptic content doesn’t matter as much as the source: it came from a planet 40 light-years away, which meant that, 40 years ago, someone on a technologically advanced world decided to send Earth a message.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, has succeeded. We are not alone; someone, whoever they are, is reaching out. What happens next? And how might we decide to respond to our enigmatic galactic neighbors?

This study used the bundle adjustment technology to optimize the original orbit measurement data by treating Mars as a unified adjustment network, reducing the position deviation between individual MoRIC images to under 1 pixel, and achieving pixel-level "seamless" global image mosaicking.

Brightness and color consistency of the global images was ensured through color correction and global color uniformity. The true colors of the Martian surface were measured using the MMS onboard the Tianwen-1 orbiter, and a true-color reference for the Martian surface was established for true color restoration.

Through this study, a global color image dataset and map of Mars (Tianwen-1 Mars Global Color Orthomosaic 76 m v1), with a resolution of 76 m and a horizontal accuracy of 68 m was produced and released.

252 million years ago, tardigrades may have escaped extinction using this one weird trick

Microscopic tardigrades—plump, eight-legged arthropod relatives—are nearly indestructible, and that superpower may have helped them weather the deadliest mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a new analysis of tardigrade fossils in amber. The study is the first to estimate when this ability evolved.

Tardigrades, also called water bears, can withstand extreme heat, cold, pressure and radiation. They survive hostile environments through a process called cryptobiosis, in which they expel most of the water in their body and enter a suspended metabolic state. Two major tardigrade lines possess this ability.

There are only four known tardigrade fossils. All are preserved in amber, including two inside an amber pebble that was found in Canada in the 1940s and dates from 84 million to 71 million years ago. One of the pebble’s tardigrades, representing a species named Beorn leggi, was described in 1963. The other was too small to be identified at the time

With a new research breakthrough, researchers from DTU have succeeded in tackling all these problems in their search for the food of the future. Using the yeast cell Debaryomyces hansenii (D. hansenii), the researchers have shown that it is possible to exploit some of the industry's problematic waste streams to produce proteins at very low cost and very low energy consumption.

This could move food production away from the fields and into steel tanks, the environment is spared from the wastewater, and the climate is far less impacted by CO2.

We simply mixed the two saline waste streams—the one with a high lactose content and the one with a high nitrogen content. We used them as they were. We didn't need to add fresh water, nor did we need to sterilize the fermentation tank, because the salt prevented the growth of other microorganisms. It was plug and play.

D. hansenii thrived in this salty mixture. But if it was to be of more than research interest, then the yeast would also have to produce a commercially interesting product, and with the help of the gene technology CRISPR, Martinez's research team modified D. hansenii to form a protein as it grew.

Whatever it is, it’s moving fast, with what the researchers called “a unique trajectory and speed.” So fast, it appears it will eventually break free of the gravitational pull of the Milky Way and shoot off into intergalactic space

It’s not just the speed that’s unusual. The data indicates CWISE J1249 contains less iron and other metals than other observed stars and brown dwarfs, which could mean it’s a very old object, dating back to the early days of the Milky Way.

Understanding how life began and evolved on Earth is a question that has fascinated humans for a long time, and modern scientists have made great advances when it comes to finding some answers. Now, our recent study hopes to offer new insights into the origin of life on Earth.

Around 375 million years ago, our fish-like ancestors breathed through gills. Over 600 million years ago, the common ancestor of all animals emerged – the microscopic urmetazoan. Billions of years before all of that happened, however, the common ancestor of all living organisms, the last universal common ancestor (Luca), must have existed.

In all the Universe, only a few particles are eternally stable. The photon, the quantum of light, has an infinite lifetime. Or does it?

All of the electromagnetic radiation that exists in the Universe is made up of photons, and photons, as far as we can tell, have an infinite lifetime.

Given that there are so many ways to create photons, you’re probably salivating for ways to destroy them.

The possibility of liquid water beneath the surface of Saturn’s moon Mimas may offer clues to how such seas form, and another spot to search for life

The outer solar system is awash with liquid water. A briny ocean is concealed beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, Europa — with more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. A subsurface sea on Saturn’s moon Enceladus spews plumes of water vapor into space. And there are tantalizing hints that oceans could exist on Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and other distant moons, too.

Now another moon appears to be secretly flooded. Saturn’s moon Mimas, known for its uncanny resemblance to the Star Wars Death Star, might harbor liquid water beneath its icy shell. If true, similar seas could be hiding in plain sight, and the outer solar system may be far more habitable than previously thought.

Lacking key genes that control selfish bits of DNA, the South American lungfish’s genome just grew and grew

A species of lungfish found in South America has claimed the title of the animal with the biggest genome sequenced so far. The DNA of Lepidosiren paradoxa comprises a staggering 91 billion chemical letters or “bases,” 30 times as many as the human genome, researchers report today in Nature. However, those 91 billion bases of DNA only contain about the same number of genes that humans have—roughly 20,000—with the rest consisting of noncoding, perhaps even “junk” DNA.

By comparing this genome with those of other lungfishes, the researchers determined that L. paradoxa adds the equivalent of a human genome to its DNA every 10 million years.

This is the largest genome size reported so far in animals.

Throughout the animal kingdom, several species have the ability to regenerate body parts after cuts or damage. Lizards can regrow their tails, salamanders can regrow arms and legs, certain flatworms can even regrow their entire heads. But humans do not have the ability to regenerate damaged body parts. Why?

To answer this question, researchers first need to know about the evolutionary history of regeneration. Is regeneration an ancient trait that our animal ancestors shared and many species simply lost the ability over time? Or, did regeneration evolve in different species independently, similarly to how insects and birds independently evolved the ability to fly?

A new study examines the genomes of five different animal species—axolotl, zebrafish, sea anemones, sea sponges, and sea cucumbers—that all have the ability to regenerate, but are evolutionarily distinct (counterintuitively, the sea creatures are not very closely related). Using a common technique called RNA-seq, the researchers used publicly available datasets that captured snapshots of gene activity, also known as expression, in samples of regenerating tissue.

However, they found that these snapshots were insufficient to determine if there were shared genes for regeneration. While there were genes that were shared, they were for basic cellular processes, like cell division.

Are the reports really about aliens or could a national security threat be at play?

Japan is no stranger to reports of unidentified flying objects. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the country’s most famous UFO sighting out of Kofu, the capital city of Yamanashi Prefecture, in which two boys claimed to have met a grounded alien following reports of flying saucers. A mini UFO that was supposedly captured in Kochi Prefecture in 1972 and multiple 1974 sightings in Hokkaido Prefecture round out what enthusiasts see as Japan’s classic “big three” incidents.

Throughout the 1970s, residents in and around the town of Iino, near Senganmori Mountain, began reporting frequent sightings that they credit to the region’s spiritual and magnetic forces. The town’s location in Fukushima Prefecture has continued to draw more UFO attention, especially over the last decade. In fact, a rash of recent UFO sightings in Japan have occurred around nuclear facilities. Online forums and YouTube accounts are stacked with descriptions and videos of moving lights and clustered Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (the modern-day term for a UFO) in the skies over Fukushima following the nuclear disaster there in 2011.

When strange UAP reports begin to pour in from a country’s nuclear or defense facilities, it seems governments start to take the threat more seriously.

Japanese officials met on May 28, 2024 to announce the formation of an 80-plus-member, bipartisan look into increased UAP sightings within the country, especially in the Fukushima region.

If you were to slice through it, you would see the Earth is divided into distinct layers. On top is the relatively thin crust where we live. Beneath that is the 2,900 km thick mantle layer. Then, enclosed within the mantle is the innermost metallic core of our planet.

The mantle is Earth’s largest layer of rocks. However, because it is covered by at least six kilometres of crust, drilling into it has not generally been possible. The only exception has been where the mantle is exposed by faulting, where a crack forms in the Earth’s crust.

Sea scorpions, ancient predators that patrolled Earth's marine and freshwater habitats hundreds of millions of years ago, are the focus of a sizable scientific mystery.

Also known as eurypterids, these long-extinct relatives of modern-day horseshoe crabs, spiders, and scorpions sometimes grew to be more than two meters long and were, at their zenith about 430 million years ago, among the planet's top predators. But paleontologists have debated over the cause of eurypterids' gigantism—speculating that it had to do with everything from water temperature to changes in habitat.....

They found that the evolution of giant size in eurypterids was rapid, and in some instances giant species evolved among much smaller relatives. They also found that eurypterids evolved giant size at least nine times independently in different groups.

The eurypterids' gigantism was not necessarily a response to environmental factors, the researchers said, noting that features of eurypterids themselves—such as their reproductive strategy or the size of their genome—may have allowed them to evolve giant size rapidly.

The government of the United States has long been under the radar for allegedly hiding something unknown related to the UFOs and aliens.

Now, the 1947 UFO crash, which took place in New Mexico and left the world shocked, has again resurfaced after recently leaked government texts revealed that there was more to it than what was known to the people.

The partially redacted communication was posted on social media and a top-ranking intelligence official was noted as saying that people would be “slack-jawed” to know the complete truth.

Bassett claims that the church has "always known, has been aware of this subject going back perhaps hundreds and hundreds of years".

He added that the Vatican Library and archives hold "extraordinary" information about aliens and UFOs gathered through centuries. Bassett says that the church believes that aliens exist and cites religious paintings as proof of their belief.

Using seismic activity to probe the interior of Mars, geophysicists have found evidence for a large underground reservoir of liquid water—enough to fill oceans on the planet's surface.

The data from NASA's Insight lander allowed the scientists to estimate that the amount of groundwater could cover the entire planet to a depth of between 1 and 2 kilometers, or about a mile.

It's located in tiny cracks and pores in rock in the middle of the Martian crust, between 11.5 and 20 kilometers below the surface. Even on Earth, drilling a hole a kilometer deep is a challenge.

The finding does pinpoint another promising place to look for life on Mars, however, if the reservoir can be accessed. For the moment, it helps answer questions about the geological history of the planet.

Human beings have been speaking languages for hundreds of thousands of years, but it is only recently that written language systems have been used.

The human species has existed for hundreds of thousands of years and for the overwhelmingly vast majority of that time, humans existed as hunter-gatherers. Life was nomadic. Time was likely seen as something that was cyclic, as opposed to being something with a beginning and an end.

This state of affairs changed around 15 000 years ago. Why this happened is a subject of great debate. For decades, the accepted theory was that it was done out of a need to look after crops as it was a more productive source of food. More recent discoveries, such as those at Göbekli Tepe, suggest that the move from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural society was done out of the desire to remain close to religious sites. And thus the sedentary living required the invention of agriculture.

Gold miners accidentally discover an ancient woolly rhino mummy with well-preserved horn and tissues.

An impressive discovery was made in the Republic of Sakha, Russia, when miners found a mummified carcass of a woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis). The find occurred while they were excavating a quarry for gold mining. The carcass was found in a remarkably preserved state, with its horns and soft tissues still intact, due to the extreme permafrost conditions in the region.

Evidence continues to mount against the interpretation of a cave filled with ancient hominid bones as a sacred burial ground, one used long before modern humans were burying their own dead.

The Rising Star Cave system in South Africa contains the remains of an unusually high number of individuals of the hominid species Homo naledi that lived around 300,000 years ago, and their peculiar deposition has continued to puzzle scientists.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/13280958

The skipper of a Coastguard boat who rescued two divers after they became separated from their boat in waters near Kāpiti, north of Wellington, says the scenario is the stuff of nautical nightmares.

The divers were dragged south in swift currents, but managed to swim to a nearby island and even had provisions to light a fire, alerting the Westpac Rescue Helicopter to their location.

Coastguard skipper Mark Davidson told Checkpoint police were alerted by the diver's partners - who were waiting on the diver's boat - that they had lost contact with the men about 5pm on Sunday.