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© Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizon ================================================================= A blue dune captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has raised new questions about wind, sediment, and geological diversity on the Red Planet. Though the coloring is artificially enhanced, the unique features of this formation, located in two distinct craters, are anything but ordinary. NASA scientists recently released two detailed images taken by the MRO’s HiRISE camera, showing separate dune fields inside Lyot Crater and Gamboa Crater. These images don’t just offer stunning visuals; they open a rare window into the complex interactions between Martian winds and surface materials. The unusually shaped and...

Shield AI's X-BAT designed to counter China's strategy of destroying American aircraft before they leave the ground Analysts say China has developed a chilling strategy for fighting a war with the United States: destroy America’s fighter jets before they ever leave the ground. In nearly every modern conflict, disabling enemy aircraft on the ground has been the first move. When Israel struck Iranian nuclear sites earlier this year, it began by destroying Iranian runways — grounding Tehran’s air force before it could take off. Russia and Ukraine have done the same throughout their ongoing war, targeting airfields to cripple enemy...

Late in World War 2, in the European theater, the Germans hit the Allied air forces with something new: Jet fighters. Chief among them was the Messerschmitt Me-262, a big, brutal twin-engine beast packing four 30-mm cannons. It was considerably faster than the American P-51 Mustang, generally considered the best piston-engine fighter in the air at the time. It was near-impossible to defeat in the air, but it was slow and cumbersome on taxi, vulnerable during takeoff and landing, and required a long runway. So we went after them when they were on the ground, destroying aircraft and bases alike....

Jinlin Crater A team of scientists has uncovered evidence that a massive asteroid strike created a prominent crater in southern China’s Guangdong province roughly 10,000 years ago, during a period of rapid human development. The Jinlin crater, situated near Zhaoqing city, marks only the fifth confirmed impact site in China and the very first identified in the country’s southern region. Measuring approximately 2,950 feet across, the tilted, bowl-shaped formation suggests it was formed by an extraterrestrial object roughly 100 feet in diameter, unleashing an explosion comparable to dozens of atomic bombs. Researchers believe the impact would have had a profound...

General Atomics is exploring laser armament options for drones across its portfolio, including its new Gambit family of autonomous combat aircraft. General Atomics via Carter Johnston =============================================================== General Atomics recently showed what it says is a rendering of an MQ-20 Avenger drone armed with a laser directed energy weapon. The laser beam is depicted projecting through a fully rotating nose cone turret fitted in place of its normal nose section. The company says this is a purely conceptual design, but it reflects a broader exploration of potential laser armament for uncrewed aircraft across its portfolio, including members of the highly...

We often imagine our galaxy as a serene, spinning disk of stars, a celestial carousel of light against the black velvet of space. This comforting image, however, is an illusion. From our tiny vantage point, embedded within one of its spiral arms, we are only now learning that the Milky Way is a place of profound and dynamic movement, a living entity that breathes and shudders on a scale almost impossible to comprehend. The latest revelation, born from the unparalleled data of the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, is not just a wobble or a tilt, but a colossal,...

Chinese researchers claim they have developed a heat-resistant coating for fighter jets to absorb radar waves, and to help the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) catch up with the United States in stealth technology. According to a paper published October 14 in Advanced Materials, Peking University and Harbin Engineering University scientists have created a lightweight, ultra-thin “metasurface” that combines flexibility, strength, and electromagnetic absorption. The coating, only 0.1 millimeter thick, can reportedly endure temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit) and maintain performance under high-speed airflow, conditions typical of supersonic flight, according to the South China Morning Post....

Comet 3I/ATLAS is heading toward a rare encounter with NASA’s Europa Clipper, offering a unique opportunity to uncover secrets of the cosmos. © Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, currently on its way to Jupiter, may soon encounter a unique scientific opportunity. The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is about to cross the path of the spacecraft’s trajectory, potentially showering it with charged particles from its ion tail. This rare alignment could provide the closest look yet at material from beyond our solar system, offering a glimpse into the distant star systems where such comets originated. A...

A United Airlines airplane traveling from Denver to Los Angeles that made an emergency landing after its windshield cracked may have struck a weather balloon while at a cruising altitude of 36,000 feet over Utah. The flight safely made an emergency landing in Salt Lake City. A pilot reportedly sustained injuries from the incident. A Silicon Valley company called Windborne Systems, which operates long-duration weather balloons, said one of its devices may have struck the aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the incident. "The NTSB is investigating a cracked windscreen on a...

Everybody knows (or is) the one person in the friend group who could generously be described as an unreliable narrator. You know the type; tall tales, stories that never quite match up, and a weird fixation on arbitrary details are all telltale signs of such a friend. For one Texas woman, she’s going to have to work overtime to convince her friends that she does not fit that archetype after she tells them about what landed in her yard a couple of weeks ago. According to KHOU-TV, Ann Vincent Walter was at her Hale County farm north of Lubbock when...

Skynet-1A was launched in 1969. Image Credit: NASA, Image ID: KSC-69P-0941 via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain, Modified by IFLScience A military spacecraft launched 56 years ago was moved from its orbit – and nobody is quite sure who did it, or why. In 1969 the UK launched Skynet-1A, a military communications satellite placed in orbit above the east coast of Africa in order to relay information to British armed forces. It stopped working due to hardware issues around 18 months after it started operating, and the spacecraft was left to the laws of physics to orbit the Earth – it...

UCSD and UMD researchers found that many satellites are transmitting sensitive data, without encryption, to anyone with an antenna. Anew study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and the University of Maryland (UMD) has revealed that a vast portion of global satellite communications, including personal, corporate, and even military data, is being broadcast unencrypted and can be intercepted using less than $800 in off-the-shelf equipment. The team’s three-year investigation found that roughly half of all geostationary satellite signals are left vulnerable to eavesdropping. Using a small satellite receiver system set up on the roof of a...

VIDEO AT LINK.............. An unusual double-ring structure spotted in space with the help of citizen scientists has turned out to be a cosmic rarity. The celestial anomaly, captured by a radio telescope, is an odd radio circle, one of the scarcest and most mysterious objects in the universe, said Dr. Ananda Hota, lead author of a study published on October 2 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Odd radio circles, also known as ORCs, likely consist of magnetized plasma — charged gas that is strongly influenced by magnetic fields — and are so massive that entire galaxies...

A photograph of a black graphite disk floating above a stack of three, round magnets. (Credit: Adrian Skov (OIST)) Study shows how perfect magnetic symmetry can cancel energy loss. In A Nutshell Researchers at OIST built a 10-millimeter graphite disk that levitates and spins above a magnetic array inside a vacuum chamber. By arranging magnets in perfect circular symmetry, the setup cancels the eddy currents that normally slow conductors moving through magnetic fields. Even at one-billionth of Earth’s air pressure, the disk kept spinning with almost no slowdown; only tiny tilts or material imperfections created measurable friction. This ultra-stable, contact-free...

Chatter Points * A new model suggests dark matter and dark energy may not be real entities, but effects of changing physical constants. * Galaxy rotation curves from seven galaxies fit the model using one key parameter: a “turn-off density.” * The approach also explains supernovae, galaxy clusters, and the cosmic microwave background without exotic matter. * Challenges remain: galaxies are complex, and no direct evidence yet shows that fundamental constants truly vary. ========================================================================== A physicist at the University of Ottawa has published research suggesting the universe’s most perplexing mysteries — dark matter and dark energy, which together supposedly account...

Recent images purportedly depicting the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS during its closest approach to Mars last week have erupted in controversy online, as many took to social media with theories about what the object’s unusual shape could mean about its nature and origins. The new images obtained last week by NASA’s Perseverance rover appear to show 3I/ATLAS streaking through the Martian night sky as it passed through the field of view of the robotic explorer’s Right Navigation Camera (Navcam) from its position in Jezero Crater. The recent imagery was originally uploaded to NASA’s multimedia page in raw format. Since that time,...

Scientists claim to have found evidence of alien genetic manipulation in human DNA, with large sections of genes seemingly 'inserted' into people, potentially affecting millions of humans. If confirmed, the discovery could fundamentally alter our understanding of human evolution and the future of the human race, said lead researcher Dr Max Rempel, the founder and chief executive of the DNA Resonance Research Foundation. The study, which has not yet undergone peer review, analyzed DNA from both ordinary people and self-reported alien abductees. In an examination of 581 complete families from the 1,000 Genomes Project, Rempel found 'large sequences' of DNA...

According to the team the polarimetric behavior is "significantly different from all known comets (either interstellar or bound to our Solar System)". 3I/ATLAS imaged by NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx). Image credit: NASA/SPHEREx. ================================================================= Ateam of astronomers have presented the first polarimetric observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, finding that it has extreme negative polarization. On July 1, 2025, astronomers spotted an object moving through the Solar System at nearly twice the velocity of previous interstellar visitors ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The object was confirmed to be an interstellar comet with...

The mysterious comet 3I/ATLAS appears to be extremely large, making it orders of magnitude more massive than two other confirmed interstellar objects observed in our solar system in years past, a new study suggests. Based on a new analysis of the most precise tracking data collected on the object since its discovery in July, the interstellar comet appears to be “anomalously massive,” a finding that raises new questions regarding our expectations about interstellar objects that occasionally traverse our solar system. The research was detailed in a new paper by Richard Cloete, Peter Vere, and Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, which places...