Weird news stories

Bizarre Venus surface formations (or coronae) are likely key to understanding our twin planet’s heretofore inscrutable interior. Using NASAMagellan spacecraft data from decades past, Anna Gulcher, an earth and planetary scientist at Germany’s University of Freiburg, have created innovative new 3D models of the largest coronae to better understand Venus’ puzzling geodynamics

The Pentagon on Friday released an initial group of previously secret files documenting reports of UFOs – a move sought for decades by some…Among the highlights is Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, telling a 1969 debrief of seeing a “sizeable” object close to the lunar surface, and a “fairly bright light source” the crew felt could be a laser.

A half century after NASA’s Apollo 17 lunar module lifted off the Moon’s northeastern near side quadrant, planetary scientists still don’t completely understand when or how our Moon first formed.

There’s been a lot of buzz in recent years about bee cognition, but not all scientists are convinced. Now, new research has added a fresh ingredient to the mix: Accounting for how bees actually see the world, rather than relying on human assumptions…And guess what? The bees still seem to be able to count.The research has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The staccato clicks of sperm whales may sound like meaningless background noise to human ears, but a new analysis suggests they may be part of a communication system with a level of complexity approaching that of our own. The research has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

It sounds like the opening of a sci-fi film, but US scientists recently uploaded a copy of the brain of a living fly into a simulation. In San Francisco, biotechnology company Eon Systems created a virtual insect that knew how to walk, fly, groom and feed in its virtual environment. Researchers in Australia, meanwhile, have taught a petri dish containing 200,000 human brain cells to play the iconic 90s shooter Doom. One experiment has pushed a brain into a computer; the other has plugged a computer into brain cells.

Astronomers have identified a planet composed of molten lava, suggesting the existence of an entirely new category of liquid planet. The distant world, known as L98-59d, is about 1.6 times the size of Earth and orbits a small red star 35 light years away.

Comet 3I/ATLAS continues to make astonishing headlines, thanks to new findings from astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). This new research reveals that 3I/ATLAS is packed with an unusually large amount of the organic molecule methanol—more than almost all known comets in our own solar system. The findings are posted on the arXiv preprint server.

Astronomers have gotten a rare glimpse at four baby planets as they’re growing up, and it reveals something surprising: These toddler worlds are getting lighter as they age…The study, published Jan. 7 in the journal Nature, enables astronomers to trace the chaotic processes that sculpt planetary systems over billions of years.

Picture this: You’re enjoying a delicious bowl of mushroom soup, when suddenly you notice hundreds of tiny people dressed in cartoonish clothing marching across your tablecloth, jumping into your bowl, swimming around, and clinging to your spoon as you lift it for another taste. You’re not dreaming — you’ve just experienced the effects of a mushroom known scientifically as Lanmaoa asiatica. It belongs to an entirely different class of Fungi than the more commonly known “magic mushrooms” and remains far more mysterious.

Image from Villa Grisebach Auktionen (Wiki Commons)

Bleached clay rocks found on the Martian surface suggest that the Red Planet was once home to heavy rainfall and tropical conditions, new Perseverance observations hint. The study was published Dec. 1 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Is time real, or an illusion? The best answer may be neither: Both physics and philosophy suggest that time is a projection of the mind onto a timeless reality.

The beads appear above a swirling hexagonal jet stream at the gas giant’s north pole, and could emerge from interactions between its magnetosphere and atmosphere.

Orbiting spacecraft have peered inside the swirling vortex which encircles Mars’ north pole during winter and found an unexpected surge in ozone, raising questions as to whether the Red Planet once had a protective layer like Earth. Olsen presented the analysis last week at the Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the Division of Planetary Sciences (EPSC-DPS) in Helsinki, Finland.

Fomalhaut is one of the brightest stars in the night sky and is about 25 light-years away, making it a galaxy amenable to detailed observations. It’s also a young star, only about 440 million years old.

Archaeologists in Iran have unearthed the unusual skull of a young woman who died in a traumatic incident over 6,000 years ago. The study was published May 22 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.