'EXTINCT' Pig Spotted on Camera

While a lot of people wouldn't think of pigs as being 'good looking', there is an uncontested winner for the title of 'world's ugliest pig'. This porker was feared extinct but has recently been spotted on a trail camera.

The Javan Warty Pig won't be winning any beauty pageants, but scientists have snapped a picture showing that the species does have a chance at continued existence.

The warty pig has been on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) endangered species list since 1996.

Their numbers had dwindled to the point they were feared extinct due to a combination of excessive hunting and continued loss of suitable habitat. Dr Johanna Rode-Margono from Chester Zoo lead the survey, she told BBC News, “We were worried that all or most would have disappeared.”

"There is still hope," Dr Rode-Margono said, "If we can manage to design some effective conservation projects, maybe we can keep them.” A captive breeding program has been established to ensure these less than beautiful beasts survive.

"For me, they are not ugly they are beautiful. And everything in our ecosystem is connected, every tree, every plant, every animal. They depend on each other. If something breaks away, something else [could] breakaway, and that's a chain reaction where we can't foresee what will happen."

These unsightly swine play an important ecological role to the tropical forests they are native too. Not only do they till the soil by rooting for insects, but they spread seeds and clear brush to allow young saplings to take root.

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/21174/0

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42433938

CREEPY SKULL Shaped Asteroid Set to Return in 2018

Hollywood has done a good job of filling our minds with the destruction that would be and has been unleashed upon the Earth through a collision with anyone of the millions of stellar bodies that share the solar system with us.

Many of us can vividly recall a multimillion-dollar CGI scene depicting a city being leveled by a direct impact, or the resulting thousand-foot- high tsunami wiping any and all traces of human civilization from its path.

If that wasn't bad enough, astronomers have discovered that one of these potential doomsday harbingers looks eerily like a skull. This isn't our first encounter with the 2,000 foot across TB145, it passed by us on Halloween 2015 at a distance of about 300,000 miles. 300,000 miles may sound like not that close, but that's about the average distance the moon orbits the Earth.

Its closest encounters with us are at 3-year intervals, according to space.com. Astronomers believe this creepy cosmic companion maybe a dead comet, meaning that it has exhausted all of the volatile chemicals that are blown away from the core by solar winds.

"We found that the object reflects about six percent of the light it receives from the sun,"; said Vishnu Reddy, a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona. That is similar to fresh asphalt, and while here on Earth we think that is pretty dark, it is brighter than a typical comet which reflects only 3 to 5 percent of the light.

"That suggests it could be cometary in origin –- but as there is no coma evident, the conclusion is it is a dead comet.” said Reddy. But rest easy as TB145 will stay a safe 24 million miles away this coming fall, which is about one quarter the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Sources:
https://www.space.com/39173-halloween- asteroid-2015- tb145-returns- 2018.html
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/halloween-skies- to-include- dead-comet- flyby
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/animation_2015_tb145-1041x1041.gif

The ANCIENT Underground Oceans on MARS

Our neighbor in space, the planet Mars, has been the subject of humanity’s fascination over many years. In our solar system, this red planet is the fourth one nearest to the sun and our planet’s second closest neighbor after the terrestrial planet Venus. But aside from its proximity to our own planet and its beautiful reddish appearance, our interest in unraveling the mysteries of Mars really stems from the similarities it shares with our own planet and the potential for its habitability. It is believed by many scientists that this terrestrial planet was once more habitable than it is today. Some have speculated that there may have been life on Mars billions of years ago while others are not ruling out the likelihood that life may still exist there right now.

In recent years, experts in astrobiology, equipped with their ever-increasing knowledge about the planet and the advanced technology to study it, have become more determined than ever to find proof of life on Mars or, at the very least, some form of verification that it was once habitable. Today, there are various environmental factors being considered to predict the habitability of our neighbor planet but scientists have placed a particularly heavy emphasis in finding evidence on one of them – that is, the presence of liquid water.  

THEORIZED PRESENCE OF UNDERGROUND WATER ON MARS

The surface of Mars currently has an extremely cold climate and is deemed to be too dry for any presence of life to be possible. However, experts believe that there is enough evidence to suggest that the Red Planet was once home to several bodies of water like oceans and lakes. As for how Mars virtually lost its liquid water billions of years ago, the exact answer remains a mystery but it is speculated by some that a cataclysmic event may have been the root cause of it all. The planet is assumed to have lost its magnetic field around 3.8 billion years ago and extreme solar radiation resulted to the evaporation of liquid water in the Marian atmosphere and the escape of water’s hydrogen molecules into space.

The theory that Mars may have been very similar to Earth due to the supposed presence of liquid water on the planet in its distant past gave rise to speculations that life might have also evolved on our neighbor planet during this ancient period. And though its surface may be completely devoid of liquid water today, this doesn’t mean that Mars doesn’t have any water at all. Aside from the abundant volume of water ice found in its two polar ice caps, scientists also believe that liquid water is still present on Mars albeit buried in subterranean aquifers. Aquifers are permeable rocks found underground that bear groundwater. On Earth, water stored underground manages to find its way to the surface through natural springs or by pumping. And so, in the case of Mars, scientists believe that should life still exist there today, the chance to unravel this mystery lies in finding where these hidden reservoirs are located now.

All this talk of searching for life and water on planet Mars has gone one for many, many years, but how are we actually faring in finding evidence that supports such theories? Have our unmanned space expeditions to the Red Planet yielded any promising results?  Have we detected compelling data to say that there was indeed an ancient ocean on Mars? Are we any closer to finding the underground water supply of Mars now more than we were a decade ago?

To answer these questions, let’s talk about some of the Mars-related studies published in recent years.

2012 FINDINGS OF EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY’S MARS EXPRESS

In 2012, the European Space Agency revealed that their spacecraft which orbited Mars called Mars Express detected sedimentary deposits on the planets northern plains. To the European researchers, the fact that the Mars Express’s radar detected low-density materials and ice in this region is indicative that this area may have once been an ocean. The agency’s findings using subsurface radar are not surprising but they have added to the existing data gathered from images, atmospheric measurements and mineralogical study of the planet which already previously pinpointed the northern plains to be the site of ancient Martian shorelines.

2012 STUDY ON MARTIAN METEORITES BY MCCUBBIN ET AL.

Within that same year, planetary scientist Francis McCubbin of the University Of New Mexico in Albuquerque and his colleagues published a study on Martian meteorites containing hydrated minerals which allowed them to estimate how much water exists today in the Martian mantle. The authors of the study determined that Mars has enough water in its mantle to submerge the planet for as deep as 200 to 1000 meters. This means the planet is currently shrouding around 70 to 300 parts per million of liquid water somewhere beneath its surface.

2014 ICARUS STUDY ON ARAM CHAOS

Then there’s also the study published by the international journal Icarus in 2014 which revealed that a team of geologists found evidence of a vast ancient underground ocean located beneath the surface of Aram Chaos, one of the impact craters on Mars. Around 2.5 billion years ago, about 93,000 cubic kilometers of water supposedly broke through and flooded the surface after the lake ice – which was concealed underground – melted and its ceiling suddenly collapsed.

Here’s an idea how much water reached the Martian surface at the time: they say it is equivalent to around 80% of the free-flowing fresh water that exists on our own planet today.

2015 ATMOSPHERIC MAPS OF MARS BY NASA

In 2015, researchers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, led by planetary scientist Geronimo Villanueva, developed infrared maps of water isotopes on Mars which showed the distribution of atmospheric water on the planet - H2O and its deuterated form, HDO. In doing so, they were able to estimate how much liquid water Mars used to have. According to their findings, Mars may have once had enough water to cover up to 20 percent or about a fifth of the planet more than 4 billion years ago. They also suggested that the planet could still contain some subterranean water reservoirs and that the key to finding them lies in refining the infrared maps they had developed.

2015 DISCOVERY OF LIQUID BRINE ON MARS

That same year, another study revealed that NASA’s Curiosity rover – which landed on Mars’s Gale Crater back in 2012 – managed to measure estimates of the concentration of subterranean water on the planet. The new measurements suggested that the soil in Mars is moist with liquid brine. The presence of this liquid brine is supposedly caused by the perchlorate salts found in the soil as it is known to reduce the freezing point of water. The salt is the one responsible for absorbing the water vapor from the atmosphere which then precipitated under the surface. The researchers considered this find as an indirect evidence of transient liquid water on the planet though they insist that the presence of liquid brine is not enough to deem Mars equipped to support terrestrial organisms.

A similar finding was reached that same year by examining the data and images gathered from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or MRO. At the time, the researchers believed that the dark streaks found on Martian craters is actually Martian soil being dampened by briny water, which may have been enough to allow microbial life to thrive on the planet. However, authors of a later study argued against the hypothesis that there is liquid water on the Martina surface, suggesting instead that the dark streaks captured by the MRO’s powerful camera were just grains of sand and dust that occasionally slipped downhill.

2016 DISCOVERY OF MASSIVE UNDERGROUND ICE DEPOSIT ON MARS

An underground layer of water ice was also detected within the planet’s Utopia Planitia region. Researchers used the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter again, particularly its ground-penetrating Shallow Radar instrument, which is also referred to as SHARAD. After they analyzed the data provided by the high-powered radar, they discovered a massive deposit of water ice in the area that is much bigger than the State of Mexico. This subterranean ice deposit runs deep – between an estimated thickness of 260 feet to around 560 feet. Fifty to eight-five percent of the deposit is made of ice while the rest is made up of dust and rock particles.

The water ice deposit in Utopia Planitia managed to elude the danger of being vaporized by the planet’s hostile atmosphere because of the thick soil that successfully separated the two. Estimates of the soil’s thickness in this region range between 3 to 33 feet.  

2017 DISCOVERY OF WATER ICE NEAR MARTIAN EQUATOR

Another compelling evidence that supports the theory that an ancient underground ocean is hidden beneath the Red Planet’s surface comes from the reanalyzed data from NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft which has been orbiting the planet since 2001. Researchers found patches of water ice in regions at surprisingly lower latitudes. Should this equatorial ice eventually melt and reach the surface, it is presumed that it would very likely result to the formation of a more accommodating environment that could be perfect for the survival and growth of microbial life.

Despite the vast amount of research that has gone into finding water and life on Mars, many of the missing pieces needed to complete the entire picture of what happened to this unique Red Planet and what remains there now have yet to be found. However, it is safe to say that we know more about our neighbor planet now more than we did before, and most of the information we have learned about Mars has only strengthened our scientific community’s conviction that liquid water once filled a sizeable portion of the planet’s surface and may still be lurking beneath its porous subterranean rocks.

SOURCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Habitability_and_search_for_life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars

https://www.space.com/14483-mars-ancient-ocean-evidence-european-probe.html

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120626-mars-water-mantle-oceans-meteorites-space-science/

https://www.space.com/16335-mars-underground-water-impact-craters.html

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/04/the-ancient-underground-oceans-of-mars/

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103514001493

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/early-mars-lost-an-ocean-s-worth-of-water/

https://www.space.com/28742-ancient-mars-ocean-water-lost.html

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6231/218

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/13/nasas-curiosity-rover-finds-water-below-surface-of-mars

https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2412

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/watch-incredible-nasa-mars-announcement-6530649

https://news.stanford.edu/2015/09/29/mars-water-hubbard-092915/

https://www.space.com/34811-mars-ice-more-water-than-lake-superior.html

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6680

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/water-ice-found-near-mars-s-equator-could-entice-colonists-and-life-seekers

MYSTERIOUS Flashes are Coming From The MOON & We Don't Know What They Are

Since the first Apollo mission in 1969, astronauts have since reported strange flashes of light on the surface of the moon that seems to come out of nowhere.

Many scientists have made speculations about the cause and possible origins of the flashing lights but none of them have ever come close to being a definitive explanation.

However, there are some theories that may hold a little weight in explaining the occurrence of these strange flashes. So, in today’s video we are exploring some of the theories as we try to figure out these mysterious flashes of light on the surface of the moon.

THE COSMIC RAY CONUNDRUM

As mentioned earlier, astronauts since the first moon landing by Apollo 11 have reported sighting s of flashing lights on the moon’s surface. What’s strange about it is that they have reported these flashes even when their eyes are closed.

In one documentary, the lights were allegedly seen by several of the Apollo astronauts as they approached the moon.

An astronaut named Charles Duke shares his experience and narrates, “I’m having these light flashes. I’m seeing this, like, light flashing in my eyeballs.”

Astronauts who have encountered the lights would describe it as white flashes but there are others that have reported back after encountering lights in different colours such as blue and yellow; and in almost all instances, after they have come back home to earth, astronauts who have come across these lights would still see these flashes under various lighting conditions.

A theory explains why these astronauts are seeing what they were seeing and it all points towards cosmic rays.

Defined as a “highly energetic atomic nucleus or particle that travels through space at a speed close to that of light”, these rays – and how they interacted with the human optic nerve – are responsible for the eyes seeing strange lights in varying degrees of colours depending on how much radiation from cosmic rays the optic nerve has absorbed.

To test this theory, engineers put together an experiment involving a black box that can be worn as a helmet. The box would then have sensors that would detect the presence of cosmic rays.

Astronaut Charles Duke wore the helmet on his next mission and reported back seeing clusters of lights and white streaks the same time the box detected the presence of cosmic rays in his immediate environment.

THE LUNAR FROST FACTOR

Another theory explaining the flashes of lights is the existence of cold spots on the moon’s surface. These cold spots have been discovered to have layers of thin ice and frost that, when lights from the sun reflects on it, creates flashing or blinking that may trick the eye into believing that the lights are coming from the moon itself.

Revealed from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or LRO, the data brought back helped researches identify certain areas on the moon’s south pole that are cold enough to have frost formations. These formations are suspected to be located in craters where temperatures can drop to negative 163 degrees Celsius.

According to Elizabeth Fisher, the lead author of the research, “We found that the coldest place near the moon’s south pole are also the brightest places – brighter than we would expect from soil alone – and that might indicate the presence of surface frost.”

Furthermore, the research suggests that the icy deposits on the moon appear to be thin and in patches and may be mixed in with the moon’s soil and dust. Also, the evidence of frost suggests that the moon may either have water deposits for millions of years or may have been brought by colliding asteroids which may also explain how water was delivered on the surface of the earth.

Although, another hypothesis points out that hydrogen may have been present in a different form on the surface of the moon – but the idea that the moon could store water ice is still difficult to confirm and is being looked into for over 50 years now and since 2009 understanding the main composition of these icy deposits are still being studied and remains one of the main goals of the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter.

THE TRANSIENT LUNAR PHENOMENON

This is a controversial area of study that mainly involves looking into bright sparks on the moon’s surface, discolourations, or misty patches of lunar fog.

Transient Lunar Phenomenon was a term created by Sir Patrick Moore in 1968 in order to give the sightings credence in the scientific community. However, these sightings have existed for more than a millennium according to studies on the subject.

One of the early records of this phenomenon was traced back to a mistake made in the 16th Century when early astronomers spotted a “daytime star” near the moon but was later on discovered to be the planet Venus.

Fast forward to 1969 to a time when astronomy has made larger strides since the 16th Century; during the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong remarked that there was “an area that is considerably more illuminated than the surrounding area” of the moon.

After several studies conducted by NASA after the Apollo 11 mission, various photographs and images have been taken and produced in order to find the root cause of the strange lights.

Unfortunately, unlike the sudden flashes caused by asteroids on impact, the illumination on the surface of the moon appears to be much more subtle and harder to trace.

In a study conducted by the British Astronomical Association led by Jill Scrambler, the amount of data used between 1700 and 2010 were impressive and the studies conducted on each of them were extremely thorough as each data from different observers – from amateur to seasoned astronomers – were weighed for reliability.

The result was that at least 2% of the TLP sightings were considered “definitive” and unambiguous”. To put it simply: there really is something happening on the surface of the moon, we just aren’t sure what it is. To this very day, researchers are not clear as to what the real cause of TLPs is.

And, according to Jill Scrambler, when asked about the influence of solar cycles possibly influencing the illumination on the moon, “Although there are theories that might infer that TLP would be more frequent during high solar activity, from the sunspot cycle perspective there is no evidence to support this.”

Fortunately for scientists and astronomers continuing to conduct their research on the phenomenon, a new spacecraft called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer was launched in the summer of 2013 to better explore the surface of the moon and provide clearer explanations about these mysterious illuminations and flashing lights.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/15/transient-lunar-phenomena_n_3083359.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4564076/The-mystery-blinking-spots-moon.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/science/every-astronaut-1969-landings-seen-9308958

NASA ANNOUNCEMENT: First Solar System Like Ours With EIGHT PLANETS Discovered

NASA’s huge announcement has been made and no, we did not pick up a call from ET nor did we find any clear signs of advanced alien life. We did, however, find a solar system that has as many planets our own,  which means the potential existence of extraterrestrial life forms like us.

But the big news isn’t just about the discovery itself, it’s about how it was discovered...

You see, we already knew about the Kepler-90 star which is located about 2,500 light years away and has a planetary system similar to ours. We know that it has at least seven planets orbiting it, and now with the help of Google’s artificial intelligence technology, a new planet, Kepler-90 i has been discovered. This means that the Kepler-90 system has just as many planets as our own solar system. And it marks the first time a star system with as many planets as our own has been found way out in deep space.

Now the thing is, we already knew about the new planet because it was detected by the Kepler space telescope - but it was buried within a huge amount of data. So, a computer was instructed to comb through data from Kepler and look for possible planets. This is where Google comes in because these are the same tools used by Google to do things like identify cats or dogs. The computer found something that was interesting, and it turned out to be the new planet.

According to Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division in Washington.

“Just as we expected, there are exciting discoveries lurking in our archived Kepler data, waiting for the right tool or technology to unearth them,”

“This finding shows that our data will be a treasure trove available to innovative researchers for years to come.”

Basically, because Kepler has four-years worth of data consisting of 35,000 possible planetary signals. It’s just impossible for people to look through. Especially when many of the signals are fairly weak. But that’s where Google’s technology comes in.

According to NASA, first they trained the neural network to identify transiting exoplanets using a set of 15,000 previously-vetted signals from the Kepler exoplanet catalog. In the test set, the neural network correctly identified true planets and false positives 96 percent of the time. Then, with the neural network having "learned" to detect the pattern of a transiting exoplanet, the researchers directed their model to search for weaker signals in 670 star systems that already had multiple known planets.

Their assumption was that multiple-planet systems would be the best places to look for more exoplanets.

According to Andrew Vanderburg who was part of the team that trained the computer,

“We got lots of false positives of planets, but also potentially more real planets,”

“It’s like sifting through rocks to find jewels. If you have a finer sieve then you will catch more rocks but you might catch more jewels, as well.”

There is still a lot of data to be processed which means that new worlds and new solar systems could be hiding inside the data that we have already collected. Who knows what we will find?

Kepler has produced an unprecedented data set for exoplanet hunting. After gazing at one patch of space for four years, the spacecraft is now operating on an extended mission and switches its field of view every 80 days.

“These results demonstrate the enduring value of Kepler’s mission,” said Jessie Dotson, Kepler’s project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “New ways of looking at the data – such as this early-stage research to apply machine learning algorithms – promises to continue to yield significant advances in our understanding of planetary systems around other stars. I’m sure there are more firsts in the data waiting for people to find them.”

NASA Will Make MAJOR Alien-hunting Announcement WITH Google in The Search for Habitable Planets

Whenever NASA makes a huge announcement, it’s something worth paying attention to and this time NASA is making a major announcement WITH Google surrounding something they discovered from their Kepler telescope which is used to locate exoplanets. The reason Google is involved is because the discovery also utilized Google’s machine learning software.

So...not saying this announcement is about aliens, but, this announcement will be about aliens.

The mystery will be unveiled at 1 p.m. EST on Dec. 14, where it will be streamed live on NASA’s website.

According to NASA’s press release:

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 14, to announce the latest discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence and demonstrates new ways of analyzing Kepler data.

Experts who are part of the press briefing include:

• Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington

• Christopher Shallue, senior software engineer at Google AI in Mountain View, California

• Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas, Austin

• Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley

Kepler was launched in 2009 and since then has spotted thousands of exoplanets. The briefing will likely talk about the work NASA and Google have done together to build an algorithm used to find more exoplanets inside Kepler’s data.

Thursday will most likely be the initial report from this joint effort and it could include announcing a major exoplanet discovery and a possible breakthrough in the search for alien life.

Billionaire Alien Hunter Will Scan the Cigar-Shaped 'Oumuamua Comet' for Alien Life

Is that an alien probe spying on us or just some random space rock?

That bizarre cigar-shaped asteroid named Oumuamua (Comet C/2017 U1) that flew through our solar system in November is so strange that many people think it may even be an alien spaceship if not an artifact from an alien civilization.

So, astronomers are preparing to scan it before it's beyond our reach. Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is leading a team of scientists to check it for radio signals and transmissions of any kind to see if there's anything of intelligence on board. 

This is a unique opportunity that we mustn't let slip through our fingers because this is the only interstellar object floating through our solar system that we have ever seen. That in itself is intriguing and has a higher probability of containing some evidence of other intelligent life. Of course, we can speculate all day but taking action to analyze it is a quite reasonable thing to do and a no-brainer. 

It can be seen both disappointing and inspiring, however, that it takes a private billionaire to check this for us rather than a governmental space agency like NASA. Are they trying to hide something? Let's find out. 

Despite its irregular elongated shape, the comet's pinkish color and brightness is similar to other objects native to our solar system. Time is ticking and the Oumuamua comet isn't waiting around to pose for selfies as it's flying past us at 1,620 miles per hour. 

Alien-Hunters Unite

Yuri Milner's company called Breakthrough Listen is a $100-million alien-hunting business that will use the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to scan the Oumuamua comet this week. Even though it's getting further away, the Green Bank Telescope can still capture the slightest signal from it, for the time being. 

'The more I study this object, the more unusual it appears, making me wonder whether it might be an artificially made probe which was sent by an alien civilization,' Professor Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard's astronomy department and one of Milner's advisers on Breakthrough Listen, wrote in the email.

'Researchers working on long-distance space transportation have previously suggested that a cigar or needle shape is the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft since this would minimise friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust,' the research firm said in a statement.

Alien Oumuamua Origins? 

This comet is unlike most comets because it's not orbiting our sun and is flying around at an angle instead of an ellipse. Based on its trajectory path, it appears to be coming from the Lyra constellation, will curve around our sun, and then shoot off never to return. 

Its orbital path suggests it entered our solar system from the direction of the constellation Lyra, looped around the sun, and will never return.

However, some astronomers believe this comet is native to our solar system but its orbit changed when another planet got too close to it.

NASA has suggested before that the Oumuamua comet has just been floating around the Milky Way haphazardly for hundreds of millions of years until is accidentally entered our solar system... Thank goodness for billionaire Milner and those like him who are willing to put their own money on the line to take an honest look at what's happening out there in space. 

What do you think we'll find? 

---

Sources:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5167821/Astronomers-scan-alien-comet-Oumuamua-ET-signals.html#ixzz50zHN69TP

New Species Discovered: 6 Tiny Tree-Climbing Anteaters

The never-ending tale of the hunt for the tricky tree-climbing mini anteaters of Brazil.

For years, researchers thought there was just one anteater species, that is until one relentless lady found 6 more in hiding.

A biologist named Flavia Miranda was studying anteaters in Brazil and noticed something strange in some of their fur. She "began to see differences between the colors of the population of the Amazon and the Atlantic forest."

Well, after over 10 years and 10 expeditions of Miranda and her team searching jungles and museums in South America, they collected DNA samples from 313 anteaters; 280 from museums and 33 from wild ones. 

They passed out flyers to the local native peoples asking for their help finding these tricky tree-climbers and their hard work paid off... eventually.

"It took us two years to capture the first animal," Miranda says.

Since these lived high up in the trees, only came out at night, and are pretty small you can imagine the difficulties of trying to find and capture some specimens for live study. The average person might have given up the hunt but Miranda was inspired and on a mission. 

These furry little animals seem to have followed ants up the trees, finding enough food to happily stay up there while avoiding larger predators down below. They're only 20" long and super cute. 

Basically, they found smaller tree-climbing species with different silky fur.

"This is a good example of the startling results that can emerge when a widespread animal that has hardly ever been studied in any detail is examined with modern techniques for the first time," says Kristofer Helgen, a mammalogist at the University of Adelaide in Australia. "I won't be surprised if future research on these beautiful animals shows even more overlooked species," he says.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm more curious as to how these researchers were able to spend 10 years roaming the Brazillian forests looking for some little anteaters. This seems like quite an expense over that long period of time and for an, arguably, insignificant discovery of more kinds of anteaters. Anyway, I'm sure Miranda wasn't the only one relieved when she finally found them. 

Miranda's team measured the anteaters' skulls and recorded the various colorings of their silky fur to divide the groups they found. So, in total, the team discovered 6 new species that were previously overlooked.

Not surprisingly, the International Union for Conservation of Nature classified C. didactylus as a species of least concern, because they're found all over the place. However, now that this main anteater family tree is divided into more branches, each one may be in a uniquely dangerous situation. 

But not to worry, Miranda is excited to continue her grand adventure to protect these newfound animals from deforestation and pollution.

"The work is just beginning," she says.

Have Scientists Found the Real Santa Claus' Sacred Remains?

The Santa Claus character is based on a real person named Saint Nicholas who lived in the ancient city of Myra, which is now the town of Demre in Turkey. 

According to records, he was born in the Mediterranean Sea port-city Patara, Turkey on March 15, 270 and died December 6, 343. While a young man, Saint Nicholas made a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine to strengthen his faith, becoming Bishop of Myra shortly after returning home. During the Diocletian persecution, he was thrown into prison until being released after the accession of Constantine. 

File photo shows the interior of St Nicholas Church in Demre, Turkey. Experts believe that the grave of St. Nicholas, the historical inspiration for Santa Claus, may be beneath the church.  (Kenan Olgun/iStock)

Saint Nicholas became known as "Nikolaos the Wonderworker" for performing miracles and is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, and students in various cities and countries around Europe. Today, he is most famous for starting the tradition of secret gift-giving that is now embodied by the Santa Claus character.

Because of his sainthood, Saint Nicholas' bodily remains were regarded as sacred and somehow or another split up and spread to different churches around the world. 

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A new study by Oxford University reveals the bones claimed to belong to Good Old Saint Nick do correctly match the date. Professor Tom Higham and Dr. Georges Kazan, the Directors of the Oxford Relics Cluster at Keble College's Advanced Studies Center, tested one of these alleged Saint Nicholas bones for the first time ever. They took a very tiny bone fragment, radiocarbon-dated it, and found it to belong to the 4th century AD, which correlates to the saint's recorded death in 343 AD.

Professor Higham said: ‘Many relics that we study turn out to date to a period somewhat later than the historic attestation would suggest. This bone fragment, in contrast, suggests that we could possibly be looking at remains from St Nicholas himself.’

The bone they studied is one of several belonging to Father Dennis O'Neill, of St. Martha of Bethany Church, Shrine of All Saints, in Morton Grove Illinois, USA. He collected the bones from various churches and private owners across Europe and one is just half a pelvis bone. The interesting thing is, that another collector has the other half of this pelvis, which sparked the Oxford professor's curiosity to validate their authenticity. This was the oldest artifact Oxford University has ever studied dating back some 1,700 years.

Dr. Kazan said: ‘These results encourage us to now turn to the Bari and Venice relics to attempt to show that the bone remains are from the same individual. We can do this using ancient palaeogenomics, or DNA testing. It is exciting to think that these relics, which date from such an ancient time, could, in fact, be genuine.'

Despite advanced breakthroughs in scientific analysis, without knowing which bones actually belonged to the real Saint Nicholas, there can be no strong confirmation that any of the 500 bone fragments are his either. Researchers can only narrow down the possibilities to increase the probability. 

Basically, the study can only say some of these remains belong to the same man that died approximately the same time as Saint Nicholas. So, it seems somethings will just have to be left to faith, and faith is what the holy days are all about anyway. 

Hidden DNA Reveals Extinct Rare Horses Once Wild in North America

This illustration depicts a family of stilt-legged horses (Haringtonhippus francisci) in Yukon, Canada, during the last ice age. Credit: Jorge Blanco

A team of researchers from around the world have been studying the DNA from ancient horse fossils of the mysterious "New World stilt-legged horse." The fossils have been found across North America in the Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming, Gypsum Cave in Nevada, and the Klondike Goldfields of Canada. Dating back to the last Ice Age some 15,000 years ago, scientists have only just begun to crake the code of their ancient DNA lineage. 

 

New "Haringtonhippus Francisci" Horses

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Before, researchers thought this stilt-legged horse was related to some modern horses, donkeys, or zebras, but it actually genetically split from modern horses 4-6 million years ago.

"The evolutionary distance between the extinct stilt-legged horses and all living horses took us by surprise, but it presented us with an exciting opportunity to name a new genus of horse," said senior author Beth Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz.

The team decided to name this new horse after a man who spent his career studying ice age fossils in Northern Canada and researched stilt-legged horses since the 1970's. Richard Harington is also emeritus curator of Quaternary Paleontology at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

"I had been curious for many years concerning the identity of two horse metatarsal bones I collected, one from Klondike, Yukon, and the other from Lost Chicken Creek, Alaska. They looked like those of modern Asiatic kiangs, but thanks to the research of my esteemed colleagues they are now known to belong to a new genus," said Harington. "I am delighted to have this new genus named after me. "

Two skulls of the new genus Haringtonhippus from Nevada (upper) and Texas (lower). Credit: Eric Scott

"The horse family, thanks to its rich and deep fossil record, has been a model system for understanding and teaching evolution. Now ancient DNA has rewritten the evolutionary history of this iconic group," said first author Peter Heintzman, who led the study as a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz.

Their studies also reveal the Haringtonhippus francisci did not interbreed with other horse species despite being neighbors. Finding this hidden DNA in younger fossils shows that they also lived 19,000 years longer than previously known. These horses, along with other ancient mammals in North America, were wiped out by the end of the last Ice Age. Fortunately, some horse species in Eurasia survived the freeze, so we can still marvel at their majestic beauty. 

"We are very pleased to name this new horse genus after our friend and colleague Dick Harington. There is no other scientist who has had greater impact in the field of ice age paleontology in Canada than Dick," said coauthor Grant Zazula, a Government of Yukon paleontologist. "Our research on fossils such as these horses would not be possible without Dick's life-long dedication to working closely with the Klondike gold miners and local First Nations communities in Canada's North".

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Sources: 

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-analysis-ancient-dna-reveals-previously.html#jCp

University of California - Santa Cruz

eLife