A combination of amazement and horror: Hitchhiker fish hide in manta ray buttholes

 

Image courtesy of Bryant Turffs, Marine Megafauna Foundation

Joel Kontinen

Hitchhiking fish that are famous for suctioning themselves to other marine animals have a very unexpected hiding place: the rear ends of manta rays, a new study finds.

These fish, known as remoras (family Echeneidae), frequently get free rides when they use their suction discs ‪— modified backs, or dorsal fins ‪— to latch onto marine animals like sharks, whales and sea turtles. It has generally been thought that remoras provide a cleaning service to the animal they are traveling with, picking parasites off their skin.

It is an  intelligent design element that keeps these marine animals clean.

But this new discovery shows that this relationship might not always be beneficial to the manta rays.

The suckerfish's behaviour is "pretty weird," study first author Emily Yeager, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Marine Biology and Ecology at the University of Miami, said.

Source:

 Bethany Augliere 2026 'A combination of amazement and horror': Hitchhiker fish hide in manta ray buttholes | Live Science 12 May

 

Are UFOs the people mentioned in Genesis?

 

Image courtesy of Phylyp, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Joel Kontinen

What are the UFOs? Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert has said  that newly declassified government UFO files may point to something far older than outer space, biblical demons known as the Nephilim. The Republican lawmaker made the remarks on 8 May 2026, hours after the Trump administration released its first tranche of declassified Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) files.

Speaking in a video published by Right Wing Watch, Boebert aid that what the files document are not extraterrestrial beings, but fallen angels described in the Old Testament. Her comments arrived as debate over the newly released materials had barely begun.

The more I see the Old Testament and what was told to us there, of fallen angels, and Nephilim. I mean, this is in the Bible, Boebert said. "There's nothing that says that fallen angels, that Nephilim, just disappeared. And so I believed that this could be an aspect of it."

The Nephilim appear in Genesis 6 of the Old Testament, described as powerful figures born of unions between divine beings and human women. Their corruption is traditionally interpreted as one of the catalysts for the Great Flood of Noah's time.  

Yes, it appears that UFOs are really Nephilim, which would demonstrate their power to cut coners and fly at amazing speeds.

Source:

Lauren Boebert 2026 Rep. Lauren Boebert Claims Secret Government UFO Files Reveal Demonic Entities Known as 'Nephilim From the Old Testament' | IBTimes UK 9 May

What is happening in Israel

 

What is happening in Israel? In the USA president Trump has said that the USA will be celebrate Sabbath once and Uganda is sending troops to combat the troops of Iran.  

300-year-old experiment could become world's best dark matter detector

 

Image courtesy of ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by M. Schirmer (MPIA, Heidelberg)

Joel Kontinen

 Is dark matter real? Some scientist are saying that it is not and others are no so sure of it.  Many scientists believe that the universe was created by Big Bang.

In 1773, British scientist Henry Cavendish set up a simple experiment aimed at uncovering the nature of electromagnetism. It involved measuring the electric potential at the surface of two nested metal shells to discern how charged particles affect each other within them.

Now, Peter Graham at Stanford University in California and his colleagues say that reviving Cavendish’s experiment could help reveal an even more mysterious feature of our cosmos – the particles that make up dark matter. Dark matter makes up more of our universe than ordinary matter.

A centuries-old experiment could help accelerate the search for new and exotic particles, including those that make up dark matter.

Source:

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan 2026 300-year-old experiment could become world's best dark matter detector | New Scientist 4 May 

 

Scientists identify 10,000 'impossible' exoplanet candidates, potentially tripling the number of known alien worlds

 

Image courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Joel Kontinen

How many exoplanets are there? A new survey put the number at over 10,000.  But how many of them harbour life is difficult question, as only the creator can create life-giving minerals and other elements to a planet.

Since the first alien planet was spotted in 1995, the number of exoplanet discoveries has slowly risen in line with new technologies, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, which are better equipped to spot these weird alien worlds. In September 2025, astronomers revealed that the number of confirmed exoplanets had surpassed 6,000, and nearly 300 have been added to the list since then, according to NASA.

But in a new study uploaded April 20 to the preprint server arXiv, researchers report that they've uncovered an astonishing 11,554 exoplanet candidates at once. If all of them can be confirmed, it would bring the total number of exoplanets to nearly 18,000, which is almost triple the current total.

Using a machine learning algorithm, the team analyzed the light curves of precisely 83,717,159 stars captured by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a car-sized space telescope that has been circling Earth since 2018. By looking for subtle dips in the stars' brightness, astronomers can tell when a planet has likely passed in front of, or transited, its home star.

This revealed more than 11,000 exoplanet candidates, of which 10,052 had never been seen before. Around 87% of the candidates were spotted transiting twice or more, allowing the researchers to calculate the planets' orbital periods, which range from 0.5 to 27 days, according to StellarCatalog.com.

Using one of the 21-foot (6.5 meters) Magellan telescopes in Chile's Atacama Desert, the team identified a "hot Jupiter" exoplanet, dubbed TIC 183374187 b, that orbits a star around 3,950 light-years from Earth — right where the algorithm predicted.

TESS was specifically designed to detect transiting objects, and it has already discovered 882 confirmed exoplanets — roughly 14% of the current total — so it may seem strange that no one has seen most of the new candidates until now.

Most researchers prioritize analyzing the light curves of the brightest stars in the TESS dataset, because transit events for these stars are much more noticeable and easier to confirm. But there are many more faint stars that end up being captured in the telescope's wide-field photos.

Source:

 Harry Baker 2026 Scientists identify 10,000 'impossible' exoplanet candidates, potentially tripling the number of known alien worlds | Live Science 2 May

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tiny frozen world unexpectedly appears to have an atmosphere

 

Image courtesy of NAOJ/Ko Arimatsu.

Joel Kontinen

A tiny The object, located in the Kuiper Belt of distant frozen bodies at the edge of the solar system, is formally named (612533) 2002 XV93, after the date of its discovery nearly a quarter of a century ago. It has a diameter of less than 500 kilometres.

he object also belongs to a class of objects known as plutinos because they are in the same stable orbit as Pluto, completing three revolutions around the sun for every two made by Neptune.

It seems that this object, though it is small,  has an atmosphere,   

On 10 January 2024, 2002 XV93 passed in front of a distant star, causing what is called an occultation. Ko Arimatsu at Kyoto University and his colleagues observed this event from three locations in Japan.

The team saw the star gradually fade and recover over about 1.5 seconds near the edge of the shadow.

“These gradual changes are best explained if the star’s light was bent by a very thin atmosphere around 2002 XV93,” says Arimatsu.

The team estimates a surface pressure of about 100 to 200 nanobars, roughly 5 million to 10 million times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere and about 50 to 100 times thinner than Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere.

“You could not breathe it, feel wind from it, or see anything like Earth’s sky,” says Arimatsu. “But it is not negligible scientifically because even such a thin atmosphere can measurably bend starlight, and it tells us that volatile gases are present or being supplied around a very small icy body.”

The team couldn’t determine the composition of the atmosphere directly from the data. Arimatsu suggests methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide are the most plausible candidates because they are among the few substances volatile enough to become gases at the very low temperatures of the outer solar system.

“This discovery challenges our conventional view of small worlds in the outer solar system,” says Arimatsu. “Until now, clearly detectable atmospheres in the solar system were essentially associated with planets, dwarf planets and some large satellites. 2002 XV93 appears to be one of the smallest solar system bodies yet with a clearly detected atmosphere.”

Souurse:

James Woodford 2026 Tiny frozen world unexpectedly appears to have an atmosphere | New Scientist 4 May

 

Human heads have changed shape a lot in the past 100 years

 

Image courtesy of Zeresenay Alemseged

Joel Kontinen

Since the early 20th century, people’s skulls have got rounder and their jaws have got wider, probably because of changes in health, diet and environment.

In the past 100 years, the heads of Japanese people have got rounder, with narrower cheekbones, wider upper jaws and slimmer, more prominent noses.

While changes outside Japan may vary, the overall trend is probably common across the globe, says Shiori Usui at the National Research Institute of Police Science in Chiba, Japan.

Humans are the only primate that has a chin. This is not according to Darwinian evolution but according to creation.  

Source:

Christa Lesté-Lasserre 2026 Human heads have changed shape a lot in the past 100 years | New Scientist 30 April