Forteana

All eyes are on the Red Planet once again after a bizarre ‘square structure’ on the Martian surface caused a cosmic commotion online.

SpaceX mogul Elon Musk fuelled the frenzy by posting on X (formerly Twitter), “We should send astronauts to Mars to investigate,” while infamous podcaster Joe Rogan also joined in the speculation. Is this finally the evidence we’ve all been waiting for…?

A newly resurfaced NASA Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera snap shows a rugged region around 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) wide. In the image, there’s a suggestively square(ish) feature that’s sparked heated chatter on social media and Reddit. Some swear it’s the remnants of an ancient Martian civilisation, claiming that ‘nature never makes neat squares’. But hold on to your space helmets – experts say the image has been edited to emphasise the shape, and even in the raw photo you’d have to squint to see anything distinctly rectangular.

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So why do we see squares, faces, or even Elvis in our toast? Blame pareidolia – our evolved tendency to spot meaningful patterns (like a lurking lion!) in random visuals. Carl Sagan famously noted that our ancestors who ran from anything resembling a predator were more likely to survive. So if you’re primed to pick out potential perils, it’s natural you might see squares on Mars – or canals, or pyramids, or the occasional ‘avocado rock’.

A team of deep sea explorers visiting an extinct volcano found something resembling a golden egg 250 miles off the coast of southern Alaska.

The discovery was made Wednesday, Aug. 30, as a NOAA Ocean Exploration team recorded video in “the deep abyssal depths of the Gulf of Alaska.”

There, at a depth of about 2 miles, sat a shiny golden orb — with a perplexing hole in it.

“Something tried to get in ... or to get out,” one researcher observed in a live feed.

In the debate that followed, the team made funny references to everything from the X-Files to classic monster movies. It was ultimately decided a sample of the orb was needed to examine its DNA.

However, caution was advised.

“I just hope when we poke it, something doesn’t decide to come out,” one scientist said. “It’s like the beginning of a horror movie.”

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“When our collective knowledge can’t identify it, it’s something weird,” one team member concluded. “What kind of an animal would make an egg casing like that?”

The walker, in his 30s, is sure he caught a snap of the wild beast during a recent trip to Dartmoor.

Jon, who didn’t want to give his full name over online trolling fears, says he and his family were so unnerved by the sighting they quickly left the scene.

And on the way back to their car they stumbled upon a half-eaten deer carcass, he claims - adding to their fears.

As mentioned elsewhere, I made a "Shittiest Years" as I couldn't believe my top 5 worst years (apart from 1997) have been since 2017 but they are and the Weaselverse seems the best explanation. As well as all my personal woes, we've had Brexit, Trump and Covid.

That reliable relater of reality, The Oo-Ah Daily Star, has more:

a bizarre conspiracy theory argues that the course of history has already been fundamentally changed—after a weasel got stuck in the Hadron Collider in 2016.

In April 2016, the £4bn Hadron Collider was forced to shut down for a number of days after a weasel got inside a high-voltage transformer and was 'fried to death'.

Although a spokesperson for CERN says that the weasel did not get inside the LHC's tunnels, and despite the fact scientists were able to get things up and running again within a few days, the weasel's death sparked wild speculation about the fate of the universe.

Conspiracy theorists on the Internet believe that the weasel's intrusion set off a chain of events which have doomed civilisation as we know it, starting with the death of Harambe gorilla less than two weeks later and culminating in the election of President Donald Trump.

Comedian and writer Rob Sheridan has repeatedly taken to Twitter to share his theories about 'the Weaselverse', claiming that the weasel "shifted us into the wrong timeline" and saying "it explains EVERYTHING".

Others have gone much deeper with the baseless 'theory'. One Reddit user wrote in a thread that the weasel's entry into the Hadron Collider "could've sent us into another dimension without anyone being aware of it directly."

They said: "Things like the Mandela Effect can be attributed to people from these two different dimensions remembering events very differently as they would've happened differently between timelines."

The conspiracy theorist added: "The fact that the team who was using the collider at the time was literally attempting to open dimensional gateways is really bizarre. Who knows what they did to the fabric of our reality? How could any of us know?! We wouldn't but world events have definitely gone off the rails since then."

One commenter simply said: "That little weasel screwed us."

An idea started by a comedian, expanded on by a Redditor in r/ShowerThoughts and compiled by The Daily Star has to be horseshit. And yet... And yet...

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/93525

[ comments | sourced from HackerNews ]

Scientists have found material from outside of our solar system for the first ever time, according to a controversial Harvard Professor.

The “spheres” were found in the Pacific Ocean in June. But early analysis has now indicated that the material came from outside of our solar system, carried by an interstellar object that crashed into the Earth in 2014, according to Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard University.

The material could even be of “extraterrestrial technological origin” because of some unusual characteristics of the material, he said. Professor Loeb has previously claimed that the asteroid may have been artificial, such as an alien spacecraft.

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Professor Loeb has made a number of claims about potential extraterrestrial life and visitors from other solar systems. While has made a number of contributions to astrophysics, he is perhaps best known for his suggestions that Oumuamua, the first interstellar object to visit our solar system, could have been an “alien probe”.

His regular and often unusual claims have led to some censure from fellow scientists, who say that he is given to sensationalism and is damaging the usual process of discovery. His pronouncements can be attention-grabbing and undermine the usual work of science to check extraordinary claims with extraordinary evidence, they have said.

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He has claimed that details about the fireball indicate that it had come from outside of our solar system. Those claims have proven controversial – though they have been accepted for publication in the prestigious Astrophysical Journal, after initially being rejected – because scientists have argued there is not significant enough proof to indicate it really was an interstellar visitor.

Now Professor Loeb says that analysis shows that the materials are “from a meter-size object that originated from outside the solar system”. A number of details about the material indicated that it was of interstellar origin, he said.

He pointed particularly to the amount of beryllium, lanthanum and uranium (or BeLaU) in the objects. That set them apart from other samples not found in the path of the object – and also from objects that would normally be expected to have been formed on the Earth, the Moon or Mars, he said.

Professor Loeb said he he was confident that more objects would be found like “IM1”, the name he has given to that object he claimed to be an interstellar visitor. He suggested that there could be “a few million such objects reside within the orbit of the Earth around the Sun at any given time” and that “some of them may represent technological space trash from other civilizations”.

He also criticised those many scientists who have expressed scepticism about his claims, joking that he was “running away from colleagues who have strong opinions without seeking evidence, and I am running towards a higher intelligence in interstellar space” and saying that he wishes his critics “happiness and prosperity”.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3980883

Alan McKenna, from volunteer research group Loch Ness Exploration, was on a boat using a hydrophone system to capture the underwater sounds of the Highlands loch.

He said when they were testing the system on Friday, they heard four distinctive "gloops".

"We all got a bit excited, ran to go make sure the recorder was on and it wasn't plugged in," he sheepishly admitted.

It was in 1978 when the “Beast of Bodmin” hit the headlines, sparking a wave of similar sightings of big cats around Britain. The fascination has only grown. As recently as January 2023, a black panther was allegedly spotted in Wendover Woods, Buckinghamshire. Last autumn, a video purported to show a large black cat devouring a sheep in a Derbyshire field, shortly after a camper said he recorded a leopard outside his tent in the Peak District. Even the BBC presenter Clare Balding once claimed to have seen an “enormous” predator while recording her BBC Radio 4 programme Ramblings near Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire.

“There’s a fascination with monsters,” says tracker and naturalist Rhoda Watkins, another of the documentary’s contributors. “We evolved in response to having large predators and in places where that threat isn’t so real, I think we need to feed that gap.

“But while I do think we’re primed to be fascinated by monsters, having spent time tracking and having spoken to credible witnesses, I have no doubts that there are big cats in Britain.”

The British Big Cats Society receives between 300 and 500 sightings per year. “About 75 per cent of big cat sightings are of melanistic leopards [black panthers], 20 per cent are of pumas and probably five per cent are of lynx,” says environmental consultant, Rick Minter.

A self-described “knower, not a believer”, Minter is the authority on British big cats; author of Big Cats: Facing Britain’s Wild Predators, and host of the Big Cat Conversations podcast.

Minter hadn’t given the idea any thought until, gazing out of the window at a Cumbrian hotel 20 years ago, he saw a black creature walk across the field, around 100 metres away. “I assumed it was a dog, then I realised its elongated body and long tail were cat-like. I found myself rapidly thinking of alternatives to it being a black panther, but drew a blank.”

Though his family offered “heartfelt” resistance and advised him to keep an “orthodox” professional life in countryside management policy, Minter dived into the rabbit hole.

Monster-hunters are converging on Scotland as the biggest search in decades for the elusive Loch Ness Monster gets underway.

This weekend, The Loch Ness Centre and a volunteer research team called Loch Ness Exploration hope a new generation will get involved in the hunt for Nessie.

It's expected to be the biggest search since the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau studied the Loch in 1972. New technology will be at the forefront of the search. Thermal drones will produce images of the water from the air using infrared cameras and a hydrophone will be used to detect any "Nessie-like calls".

Volunteers will take part in a watch of the Loch, keeping an eye out for breaks in the water and unexpected movements.

So... will they find anything? Do you believe in Nessie?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/1486266

The makers of Panthera Britannia Declassified, a new documentary on Amazon Prime, claim to have discovered the clearest ever photograph of a big cat in the British countryside: a panther-like creature lying in the long grass in Smallthorne, Staffordshire. It’s probably the best photo of a British big cat that exists.

According to the documentary-makers who discovered the photo in the files of a zoology organisation, the photo is dated 17 March. But it doesn’t say what year.

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the Amazon documentary also presents DNA evidence proving the presence of at least one wild big cat near a sheep-kill in Gloucestershire in July 2022.