If you want to destroy Earth, you have many options—at least when it comes to the extinction of humanity. Nuclear war, climate crisis or species extinction: over the course of human history, we have unfortunately found plenty of ways to destroy ourselves. But the planet doesn’t really care.

To actually destroy the planet, you would have to work a little harder. A collision with a large asteroid, for example, could make it uninhabitable and melt Earth’s crust, but even that wouldn’t destroy the Earth. If you wanted to pulverize it completely so that nothing remained, you would have to use the following formula:

EG = 3GM2⁄5R

This equation describes gravitational binding energy. It corresponds to the energy required if the components of a body held together by gravitational force are to be moved infinitely far apart.

Two main findings from the paper will probably turn the most heads. The scientists found that there are close to 2 billion secondary impact craters larger than 10 meters caused by the ejecta from Corinto. And those secondary craters appear up to 1850 km away. That would make it, by far, the most impactful (pun intended) of the recent Martian craters in terms of the sheer number and distance of its ejecta.

The Devil’s Footprints were mysterious cloven hoofmarks imprinted in the Devon snow over the night of 8th-9th February 1855.

Sweeping an unyielding trail of up to 100 miles, they were found in fields and lanes, they scaled rooftops and jumped up drainpipes. They were undeterred by solid objects such as haystacks or walls and were undaunted by rivers.

Theories abound as to what might have created this extraordinary phenomenon. With many believing it was Satan himself.

While flying saucers and other unexplained phenomena were most likely to be spotted in the North West or the South East, the data shows that the best time to see a UFO last year was on a Monday evening between 9pm and 10pm.

Note : If you do not think this is big news then obviously you are not involved in UK journalism . Today at least 10 of the UK's so called leading independent news titles ,carried this very same story, copied and pasted word for word !

Scientists witnessed the clever defense strategy unfold Tuesday (March 19) during a tourist excursion in Bremer Canyon, a whale-watching hotspot off the coast between Albany and Hopetoun. They described seeing a "cloud of diarrhea" permeate the water, and this rarely seen defense mechanism seemed to help the sperm whale pod escape what could have been a fatal attack by at least 30 killer whales.

Because [a] sperm whale's diet consists mostly of squid, they actually have this really reddish colored poo

In this demonstration of defense defecation, the pod formed a circle with their heads together, and the whales fanned their tails in unison — forcing their excrement toward the unsuspecting orcas.

Understanding the names of individual entities nonetheless assumes that dogs have to evoke the mental representation of the object upon hearing its name and thus link the two in a referential manner.

This study identifies a dog ERP component that reflects semantic expectations, thus providing the first neural evidence for object word understanding in a non-human species. The discovery of this capacity in dogs informs theoretical work on language evolution and semantics by revealing that the appreciation of referentiality during lexical processing is not a distinctive feature of human language use.

For the first time we have shown that even a tiny fraction of cellular material could be identified by a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft ,our results give us more confidence that using upcoming instruments, we will be able to detect lifeforms similar to those on Earth, which we increasingly believe could be present on ocean-bearing moons.

Earth may have another five billion years to go, but we will not be here to witness its extinction. As the Sun burns through its hydrogen stores, it steadily grows brighter: every billion years, its luminosity increases by about 10%.

A billion years from now, the Sun will be bright enough to boil away Earth’s oceans.

So, the next time you bask in the warm rays of the Sun, remember: it’s got it in for us.

Regardless of what people are seeing, and whether they are military pilots, civilian pilots, or general bystanders, there is a potential threat. That threat grows as our uncertainties grow. Although based on a noisy, crowd sourced dataset, our results can provide a context for how sighting reports of unidentified objects vary in space, the factors linked to these, and may offer a step towards understanding these threats.

This problem is relevant on many fronts, including anthropological and sociological (i.e., understanding the human/social experience). The stigma given to this area of research, if it is explored scientifically, should be over. We make no hypotheses about what people are seeing, only that they will see more when and where they have opportunity to. The question remains, however, as to what these sighting reports are of. Further examination of regions where the model performs poorly, temporal trends, and reported details of each reported sighting may help further elucidate this.

Florida Museum Scientists CT scanned thousands of natural history specimens, which you can access for free

oVert CT Scans of Digitized Museum Specimens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JALuBzGvV3g

Early hunter-gatherers from the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa were selecting the most suitable material available for stone tools and spearheads more than 60,000 years ago, according to a study by Dr. Patrick Schmidt from the University of Tübingen’s Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology section. Researchers on the study used a specially developed model to test the force needed to flake off pieces from various rocks which were used to make sharp-edged tools at the Diepkloof Rock Shelter, a site about 150 kilometers north of Cape Town.

For the longest period of human history, stone was the most important raw material for toolmaking. “Stones were ’napped’ or flaked to make tools such as knives and scrapers," says Patrick Schmidt. The Stone Age began around 2.6 million years ago and only ended around 2000 BC, depending on the region. The first step in tool production was the collection of specific stones.

To "breathe" in an environment without oxygen, bacteria in the ground beneath our feet depend upon a single family of proteins to transfer excess electrons (produced during the "burning" of nutrients) to electric hairs called nanowires projecting from their surface.

This family of proteins, in essence, acts as plugs that power these nanowires to create a natural electrical grid deep inside the Earth, which enables many types of microbes to survive and support life.

The seaworthiness of the canoes has been demonstrated by experimental archaeology.

If it can be supposed that Neolithic crewmen must have been more experienced sailors, they would surely have covered long distances in a short time, especially in the most suitable months. In any case, experimental archaeology is providing a clear picture of the extraordinary nautical skills possessed by members of the Neolithic community at La Marmotta.

Thus, there must have been people who knew how to choose the best trees, how to cut the trunk and hollow it by burning out its middle, and how to stabilise the dugout with transversal reinforcements on its base, or perhaps by the use of side poles or even parallel canoes in the form of a catamaran. To achieve this they made a series of amazingly modern artefacts, such as the T-shaped objects with two, three or four holes. These canoes and nautical technology are undoubtedly reminiscent of much more recent navigation systems. This shows that many of the major advances in sailing must have been made in the early Neolithic.

Spring Heeled Jack terrorised Victorian society, but who was this 19th century Batman?

Out of the night he came, a leaping, bounding superman who terrified the English nation for more than 60 years.

Jane Alsop described her inhuman attacker to London magistrates…”He was wearing a kind of helmet and a tight fitting white costume like an oilskin and he vomited blue and white flames!”

The police did not dismiss these stories and even the Duke of Wellington, although aged nearly 70 went out armed on horseback to hunt and kill the monster!

Who was this mysterious fiend who roamed London attacking women?

The Army in 1870 set traps to catch him after scared sentries reported being terrified by a man who sprang on to the roof of their sentry box.

Spring-heeled Jack was last seen in 1904 at Everton in Liverpool, bounding up and down the streets, leaping from cobbles to rooftops and back!

He vanished into the darkness when some brave souls tried to corner him and he has not been seen since that day to this!

Aetosaurs are a species likened to modern crocodiles that lived during the Triassic Period, 229 million to 200 million years ago, which pre-dates the Jurassic Period, according to researchers, who further note aetosaur fossils have been discovered on every continent except Antarctica and Australia.

After NASA's historic Double Asteroid Redirection Test, a JPL-led study has shown that the shape of asteroid Dimorphos has changed and its orbit has shrunk.

Now, a new study published in the Planetary Science Journal shows the impact changed not only the motion of the asteroid but also its shape.

Over the past few years, Perseverance has been exploring an ancient river delta in Mars’s Jezero Crater, with the aim of finding signs of past life. The rover’s belly is now stuffed with 17 tubes of Martian rock, dirt and air that scientists say represent an astounding geological collection.

However, bringing Perseverance’s samples back could cost as much as US$11 billion, an independent panel concluded in a scathing engineering analysis last year. That’s more than NASA can afford. By the end of this month, it and ESA are supposed to find a cheaper way to achieve Mars sample return — or risk leaving the carefully collected rocks where they are.

The Pentagon's UFO office is developing sensor kits to help it collect data in real time on unidentified objects in the sky or in space.

AARO plans to present the Gremlin System to Pentagon leaders so that the sensor kits could be deployed in the event of "UAP encounters at militarily significant locations or near U.S. critical infrastructure," DefenseScoop reported.

A middle-aged man from Florida with a history of migraines went to the doctor as his headaches were becoming worse and weren’t responding to his usual drugs. The 52-year-old was sent for a CT scan, which revealed something alarming: his brain was infested with tapeworm cysts.

Astroarcheology — also called archeoastronomy — uses astronomical records to help date key moments or events in history. Of all astronomical phenomena, total solar eclipses are among the best measuring sticks because they are only visible at a certain time and place.

Total solar eclipses are rare enough that a given spot on Earth is only likely to see one every 375 years (on average). And when an eclipse does happen, it only appears as total to those who are along a narrow path on Earth.

It had all the hallmarks of a classic locked room mystery. The body of a British spy found dead inside a sports bag, its zipper padlocked shut from the outside.

Incredibly London’s metropolitan police concluded the death was “probably an accident”. Their conclusion overturned an official inquest’s findings that the death was “unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated”.

Unusual features of the crime scene made the police’s job virtually impossible from the start. Even though it was the middle of summer, the heating in the flat had been left on at the highest setting, hastening the decomposition of Williams body and making it impossible for the pathologist to ascertain the cause of death.

Odder still was the lack of DNA or fingerprints in the bathroom and on the bag. Even if William’s could have somehow locked himself in the holdall, how could he have done so without leaving any forensic traces behind?

Whipping Tom of 1681

The Whipping Tom of 1681 was active in the warren of small courtyards between Fleet Street, Strand and Holborn.He would wait in the narrow and dimly lit alleys and courtyards. After approaching an unaccompanied woman, he would grab her strongly, lift her dress, and slap her buttocks repeatedly with his hand before fleeing.

He would sometimes accompany his attacks by shouting "Spanko!"

He attacked a large number of women, and while he would often use his bare hand, he would occasionally use a rod.  Some of his victims were left badly injured by the attacks.  He would appear, carry out his attacks and vanish with such speed that some people attributed him with supernatural powers.

A woman who 'married, divorced and was then stalked by a ghost' has become a paranormal investigator - and says she has his blessing.

Brocarde claimed she was tired of the "free spirit's" inconsistency and became irritated by the ghost's alleged "unsettling fascination" with Marilyn Monroe. She said: "Our relationship had always been turbulent from the beginning, with the stark contrast of him being threatening and possessive and then warm and intense but I slowly began to tire of being married to a free spirit, he was inconsistent, barely present.

Strange lights, mysterious disappearances and even alien abductions - there have been some odd and potentially otherworldly stories reported over the years.

For decades, the Grimsby Telegraph has been contacted by people about the unusual close encounters they've had. Many appear to have rational explanations, but there are some that have left residents scratching their heads.

After years of speculation over the possible involvement of Russian or Chinese agents using a sonic or microwave weapon, in March 2023 the U.S. director of national intelligence reported that most U.S. intelligence agencies regarded that scenario as “very unlikely.” Instead, the intelligence community reached a consensus that the “syndrome” was “probably the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary, such as preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors.”

Put aside your chicken cutlets and meatloaf and say hello to python curries and satay skewers. Some snake scientists think eating these reptiles—already customary or at least acceptable in parts of the world—might help lessen the damage our food choices have on the environment.

As robots are becoming more sophisticated, they are performing a wider range of tasks with less human involvement. Some tasks, such as autonomous driving or military uses of robots, pose a risk to peoples' safety, which raises questions about how—and where—responsibility will be assigned when people are harmed by autonomous robots.

The UFO reportedly crashed in 1947 in a lake near the town of Røros in Norway and was witnessed by the town's mayor, who lived close to the crash site.

"It looked like a rocket, and it made a lot of noise. It turned 180 degrees and landed in the lake behind us," photographer Rue Røstad said of the object.

A popular and enduring mystery, the story has been passed down since then, and now, investigators have set out to determine the truth once and for all.

Røstad is helping to organize efforts to search for the UFO, and preliminary results have been promising.

What appears to be an unusual object submerged in the lake was found through the use of sonar.

Here, scientists think the crystal in the core changes, perhaps due to a slightly different elemental mix, or because it has grown at a different angle, horizontally instead of vertically. That shift in crystallisation could speak to a past calamity. The Earth may have melted and remelted more than once in its early history as all these collisions were happening. And this is the oldest part of the inner core. It’s like a time capsule.

The mad stone, in other words, is a variation on the bezoar: a real phenomenon that occurs in ruminants whereby a mass of swallowed matter is compacted into a small, hard orb that is passed through the animal’s digestive tract. The word “bezoar” comes from the Persian for “antidote,” and such objects were long believed to have medicinal properties. In fact, modern chemical analyses have shown that certain bezoars, when immersed in a solution that includes arsenic, can indeed extract the poison from the liquid.

“It didn’t seem like it was chucked in there, instead it has been accurately put in the ground,” he told PA Media. “However, there were no obvious tracks around it and one would think that there would be a lot of mess around it, but there wasn’t.”

No one has yet come forward to claim responsibility for the Welsh monolith.

A deeply eroded giant volcano, active from ancient through recent times and with possible remnants of glacier ice near its base, had been hiding near Mars’ equator in plain sight.

Its discovery points to an exciting new place to search for life, and a potential destination for future robotic and human exploration.

New in situ finds from the areas around the ears and mouth in burials at Boncuklu Tarla, a Neolithic settlement in Türkiye, add a novel dimension to the interpretation of stone ‘tokens’ or ‘plugs’. This article presents a new typology for these artefacts and argues for their use as ear ornaments or labrets in a practice involving significant and lasting corporal alteration.

Indo-European languages: The debate over their origin and spread

Almost half of all people in the world today speak an Indo-European language, one whose origins go back thousands of years to a single mother tongue. Languages as different as English, Russian, Hindustani, Latin and Sanskrit can all be traced back to this ancestral language.

Over the last couple of hundred years, linguists have figured out a lot about that first Indo-European language, including many of the words it used and some of the grammatical rules that governed it. Along the way, they’ve come up with theories about who its original speakers were, where and how they lived, and how their language spread so widely.

During his presentation, Fu described tiny metallic blobs that Loeb’s expedition dredged from the sea floor near Papua New Guinea last year, and said that the spherules have a chemical composition of unknown origin.

Loeb made headlines when he speculated that the object, a comet-like body named ‘Oumuamua, was an artefact sent by an extraterrestrial civilization.

‘Oumuamua passed through the Solar System far from Earth, but Loeb hoped to find another interstellar object that had hit the planet. He later proposed that a bright meteor that appeared in the sky north of Papua New Guinea in January 2014 had an interstellar trajectory and could have scattered debris in the ocean.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft discovered plumes of water ice blasting out of the south pole at Saturn's moon Enceladus. More research showed that these plumes contain water, hydrogen gas, and organic molecules that could help sustain life.

In a new paper, researchers investigate what we could learn from a spacecraft flying through the plumes, "tasting" the material that's hurled into space. Could we detect evidence of life on Enceladus this way ?

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies scientists worked from the theory that before there was DNA or proteins, RNA existed as the initial ingredient in the so-called "primordial soup."

As part of their research, WaPo reports, they created a lab-made RNA molecule that accurately copied others and resulted in a functioning enzyme. Now that the institute has done that, it's poised to study the earliest evolutionary stages of life in unprecedented ways.

If RNA is created that is able to replicate itself, the Salk president said, "then it would be alive."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321592121

Most mediums have a “cabinet attendant” who is, in reality, the medium’s bodyguard and a person who can pass the necessary material to the medium when needed.

The cabinet attendant is explained as being necessary to protect the medium from malicious individuals who would grab ectoplasm, thereby endangering the life of the medium. Sitters are constantly told horror stories of mediums whose spirit manifestations or ectoplasm was grabbed and of the resulting injury and/or death to the medium. Of course, these are merely convenient stories to prevent people from grabbing the ectoplasm and getting a handful of luminous chiffon or worse, a handful of medium.

Unveiled on Friday, the new patches feature the official city logo of a flying saucer with a classic beam radiating downward to form the letter “R.” The words “Protect and Serve Those That Land Here” form a circle and are separated by two tiny alien faces with large eyes.

Birds are actually a type of dinosaur. They are closely related to smaller, agile meat-eating dinosaurs such as the Velociraptor. Ancient birds came in a variety of forms, from ones with teeth and claws to species barely distinguishable from farmyard chickens.

So, if you were to point your binoculars over the heads of Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex, what could you spot? Here is a quick introduction to six of the most interesting ancient bird species.