Two-State Solution?

 

Palestinians and some European states prefer a two-state solution, but Israel says it is not possible any more.

Why Should Christians Be Zionists?

 

Why Should Christians Be Zionists? 

Caves carved by water on Mars may hold signs of past life

 

Image courtesy of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor

Joel Kontinen

Evolutionists suppose that there might be traces of past life on Mars. They found in traces of channels that might speak of ancient life. However, life needs a creator to begin.

Caves carved by water that once flowed beneath Mars’s surface could have been ideal for life to thrive, if it once existed on the Red Planet, and they might still preserve traces of it today.

Mars is dotted with holes that look like cave entrances, but these are usually near regions that are suspected to have been volcanically active, which suggests they formed due to processes like underground lava flows, rather than the passage of water.

Source:

Alex Wilkins 2025 Caves carved by water on Mars may hold signs of past life | New Scientist 11 November 

Enceladus’s ocean may be even better for life than we realised

 

Plumes of ice particles, water vapour and organic molecules spray from Enceladus’s south polar region. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltec

Joel Kontinen

Evolutionists think that there might be some kind of life on Enceladus.

The liquid water ocean hidden underneath the icy crust of Enceladus has long made this moon of Saturn one of the best prospects in the hunt for extraterrestrial life – and it just got even more promising. The discovery of heat emanating from the frozen moon’s north pole hints the ocean is stable over geological timescales, giving life time to develop there.

“For the first time we can say with certainty that Enceladus is in a stable state, and that has big implications for habitability,” says Carly Howett at the University of Oxford. “We knew that it had liquid water, all sorts of organic molecules, heat, but the stability was really the final piece of the puzzle.”

Howett and her colleagues used data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017, to hunt for heat seeping out of Enceladus. Its interior is heated by tidal forces as it is stretched and crunched by Saturn’s gravity, but so far this heat has only been caught leaking out of the south polar regions.

For life to have developed in Enceladus’s ocean, it would require balance: the ocean should be putting out as much heat as is being put in. Measurements of the heat coming out of the south pole don’t account for all of the heat input, but Howett and her team found the north pole is about 7°C warmer than we previously thought. Combined with the heat radiating from the south pole, that matches the total almost exactly – the ice shell is thicker around the equator, so heat only escapes in significant amounts at the poles.

This means the ocean should be stable over long periods of time. “It’s really hard to put a number on it, but we don’t think it’s going to freeze out anytime soon, or that it’s been frozen out anytime recently,” says Howett. “We know life needs time to evolve, and now we can say that it does have that stability.” Actually finding that life, if it is there, is another story entirely. But both NASA and ESA have missions in the works o look for it over the coming decades.

But life needs a Creator.  Life cannot just spring from nothing.

Source:

Leah Crane 2025 Enceladus’s ocean may be even better for life than we realised | New Scientist 7 November 

Kristallnacht

 

Kristallnacht was the start of the Holocaust, which 6 millions Jews were killed. But in 2023 Hamas made also Holocaust. 

A distant galaxy is being strangled by the cosmic web

 

Image courtesy of Illustris Collaboration/ESO

Can a cosmic web strangle a galaxy? This seems to be the case with a distant galaxy.

The cosmic web is killing a galaxy. Galaxies can only continue to form stars when they are full of gas, and one dwarf galaxy nearly 100 million light years away is being stripped of its stellar fuel by the enormous web of matter that stretches throughout the universe.

One side of this galaxy, called AGC 727130, looks completely normal. On the other side, though, the gas is stretched well beyond the galaxy’s edge, pulled away by some unseen force. Nicholas Luber at Columbia University in New York and his colleagues spotted this disintegrating galaxy using the Very Large Array, a radio observatory in New Mexico.

 Source: 

Leah Crane 2025 A distant galaxy is being strangled by the cosmic web | New Scientist 7 November

Toxic algae blighting South Australia could pose a global threat

 

Image courtesy of Australian Associated Press/Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Algae bloom poses a great problem in Australia. It is killing fish.

Over the past eight months, a vast and deadly algal bloom in South Australia has ravaged over 20,000 square kilometres of the marine environment, killed an estimated 1 million animals from more than great 550 species and had widespread impacts on human health.

Now, researchers have finally identified the species behind the ecological disaster, and they warn that it represents an “emerging international threat with unknown consequences”.

The culprit is an algal species named Karenia cristata, which has only previously been reported in two locations near South Africa, where it caused fish die-offs in 1989 and again the mid-1990s, as well as off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

 Source:

James Woodford 2025 Toxic algae blighting South Australia could pose a global threat | New Scientist 5 November 

 

Evolutionary scientists may have found a surprisingly nearby cluster of primordial stars

 

Evolutionists think that the very first generation of stars, called Population III stars, are mostly expected to be too distant to see directly – but astronomers may have found some for the very first time. Image courtesy of NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/Spaceengine/M. Zamani

Joel Kontinen

We may have finally seen the first generation of stars. Astronomers have been looking for these primordial behemoths, called Population III stars, for decades. Now they have found what may be the most promising candidate yet.

Population III stars are expected to be very different from modern, or Population I, stars, says the evolutionists. They would have formed from pristine hydrogen and helium gas, before heavier elements were distributed throughout the universe by supernovae and powerful stellar winds. They are also expected to be bigger and hotter than modern stars.

That is exactly what Eli Visbal at the University of Toledo in Ohio and his colleagues found when they did a detailed analysis of previous James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of a distant galaxy called LAP1-B. It is at a redshift – a number that astronomers use to measure distance – of 6.6, which means we see LAP1-B as it was just about 800 million years after the big bang. That is so far away the only reason we could spot it at all is because its light was magnified by a nearer galaxy cluster in a process called gravitational lensing.

“There should be tons and tons of these all over the observable universe, but we can only look sort of under the lamppost of this cluster that’s magnifying the light,” says Visbal. When he and his team calculated how many Population III star clusters we should find at this redshift, they found that it should be about one – which is what they saw..

Another point in LAP1-B’s favour is it only seems to have enough stars to make up a few thousand times the mass of the sun. Other candidates for Population III galaxies tend to have much higher stellar masses, inconsistent with simulations of how clusters of Population III stars form. “This is the best candidate we have so far,” says Visbal.

Most Population III stars are expected to have lived and died between about 100 and 400 million years after the big bang, after which there would have been enough heavy elements in the cosmos to form stars that are more similar to the ones we see today. “This object ticks many of the boxes, but I am a bit sceptical because it’s late in the game for these stars to be around, and there may be alternatives that might do the job as well,” says Ralf Klessen at Heidelberg University in Germany. “It would be super interesting to see a Population III star cluster, but statistically this would certainly be an outlier.”

 “[For these to be Population III stars], it must be an extremely lucky combination of different factors, each of them extremely rare on its own, and much more rare when they have to happen together.” It will take deeper observations and more detailed simulations to find out for sure if LAP1-B marks the first time we have seen these strange stars.

This is important because understanding Population III stars is crucial to figuring out how and when the first heavy elements formed. “They can tell us how the chemistry of the universe evolved from just hydrogen and helium to all the cool chemistry and life and everything that we have in the universe today,” says Visbal. Population III stars were the first building blocks of the complexity that surrounds us now.

Source:

Leah Crane 2025 We may have found a surprisingly nearby cluster of primordial stars | New Scientist 3 November 

 

Rhinos in Canada

 

Image courtesy of Julius Csotonyi

Joel Kontinen

Ancient 'frosty' rhino from Canada's High Arctic rewrites what scientists thought they knew about the North Atlantic Land Bridge

Rhinos were not supposed to life so far from the equator.  The evolutionists have a reason for this – they claim that the land bridge had brought the continents together, no mention of a global flood which is the more plausible examination as fossils from the flood could have brought to Canada.

Darwinists think that it took millions of years for these animals to reach Canada.

Scientists have called the animal Epiatheracerium itjilik, with the species name meaning "frost" or "frosty" in Inuktitut. These creatures were similar in size to modern Indian rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis), according to a statement from the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN). The newly identified fossils are the only specimen found to date and show that the animal died of unknown causes as a young adult.

"What's remarkable about the Arctic rhino is that the fossil bones are in excellent condition," Marisa Gilbert, a CMN paleobiologist and co-author of a new analysis of the remains, said in the statement. "They are three-dimensionally preserved and have only been partially replaced by minerals. About 75% of the skeleton was discovered, which is incredibly complete for a fossil."

The bones were preserved inside the 14-mile-wide (23 kilometers) impact crater thanks to it rapidly filling with water. The crater formed from an asteroid or comet around the same time that the Arctic rhino lived, which suggests the rhino died inside the crater before it became a lake.

The climate in this region was far warmer then than it is today, and plant remains show that the Canadian High Arctic — specifically, Devon Island in Nunavut, where the crater is located — hosted a temperate forest, according to the statement.

As the Miocene epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago) transitioned into the Pliocene epoch (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago) and finally gave way to the last ice age, the fossils were broken up by freeze and thaw cycles and gradually pushed to the surface of the crater. Researchers then found the fossils in 1986.

 Source:

Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent 2025 Scientists Discover 'Frosty' Polar Rhino That Roamed the Canadian Arctic 23 Million Years Ago 29 October

 

 

 

 

Denisovans may have interbred with mysterious group of ancient humans

 

Illustration of a teenage girl who is the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father. Image courtesy of John Bavaro Fine Art/Science Photo Library

Joel Kontinen

For only the second time, researchers have obtained the full genome of a Denisovan, a group of ancient humans who lived in Asia. The DNA was extracted from a single 200,000-year-old tooth found in a Siberian cave.

Denisovans were the first ancient humans to be described using just DNA. A sliver of finger bone from Denisova cave in Siberia held DNA unlike that of either modern humans or the Neanderthals from western Eurasia. The genome revealed that Denisovans interbred with modern humans: people in South-East Asia, including the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, carry Denisovan DNA.

Based on the number of mutations in the genome and comparisons to other ancient humans, the team estimated that the individual lived about 205,000 years ago. In line with this, the sediments in which the tooth was found were dated to 170,000-200,000 years ago. In contrast, the other high-quality genome is from a Denisovan who lived 55,000-75,000 years ago, meaning that the new genome reveals a much earlier stage of Denisovan history.

Based on comparisons with other remains from Denisova cave, the team says there seem to have been at least three discrete Denisovan populations. The oldest group included the male whose tooth was analysed. A second group replaced this older population at Denisova cave, thousands of years later.

The third group, not represented at the cave, interbred with modern humans, based on DNA testing. In other words, all the Denisovan DNA in modern humans comes from a population of Denisovans that we know little or nothing about.

The new genome reveals that Denisovans repeatedly interbred with Neanderthals, who sometimes lived in or near Denisova cave.

The Denisovans also seem to have interbred with an unidentified group of humans. They might also  have interbred with Homo erectus.

According to Genesis, we all are members of the human  race,  the  descendants of Adam  and Eve.

Source:

Michael Marshall 2025 Denisovans may have interbred with mysterious group of ancient humans | New Scientist 31 October

Prehistoric crayons provide clues to how Neanderthals created art

 

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal girl. Christopher P.E. Zollikofer. Anthropological Institute, University of Zurich Image from Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

Ochre artefacts found in Crimea show signs of having been used for drawing, adding to evidence that Neanderthals used pigments in symbolic ways.

A remarkable yellow crayon unearthed in Crimea, still sharp after more than 40,000 years, indicates that painting lines on objects was part of Neanderthal culture. This discovery is the firmest evidence yet that some Neanderthal groups used coloured pigments in symbolic ways.

According to evolution, the use of ochre – an iron-rich mineral with red, yellow or orange hues – has ancient roots, dating back at least 400,000 years in Europe and Africa. Bits of ochre are found at many Neanderthal sites, where they seem to have been used for practical purposes such as tanning clothing and as fire accelerants, as well as sometimes smeared on shell beads.

Neanderthals may have also used ochre to decorate their bodies, clothing and other surfaces, but such traces have long since disappeared. To investigate further, Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux, France, and his colleagues carried . out a detailed analysis of ochre pieces found at Neanderthal sites in Crimea, Ukraine. By studying how ochre pieces were modified by Neanderthals, as well as performing a microscopic analysis of how they became worn down, the researchers could build a picture of how the objects were used.

“It was a tool that had been curated and reshaped several times, which makes it very special,” says d’Errico. “It’s not just a crayon by shape. It’s a crayon because it was used as a crayon. It’s something that may have been used on skin or  rock to make a line – the reflection, perhaps, of an artistic activity.”

The research team also identified another more ancient broken crayon, perhaps 70,000 years old, made from red ochre.

“It tells us so much just from those small bits of ochre,” says Pomeroy. “It’s that little bit of humanity that we can relate to. It really brings those individuals into touching distance.”

The Crimean crayon discoveries add to the small but growing body of evidence indicating the artistic talents of Neanderthals, such as 57,000-year-old finger carvings on a cave wall in France and mysterious circles crafted from stalagmites 175,000 years ago in another French cave.

They also lend weight to the idea that symbolic behaviour has very deep roots in our evolutionary past, rather than being a capacity that developed relatively recently only in Homo sapiens. 

Some evolutionists think that ability for symbolic behaviour is undoubtedly shared by the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Denisovans and Neanderthals more than 700,000 years ago.

On the other hand, creationists think that the date of 700,000 years is from evolution, they are not supported by facts.

Source:

Alison George 2025 Prehistoric crayons provide clues to how Neanderthals created art | New Scientist 29 October

See a spectacular shot of a once-in-a-millennium comet

 

Image courtesy of Josh Dury/SWNS

Joel Kontinen

Would you like to see a comet that will not return for a thousand years?

Captured here over Somerset, England, Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) made its closest approach to Earth on 21 October and won't be seen again for another thousand years.

Source:

New Scientist 2025 See a spectacular shot of a once-in-a-millennium comet | New Scientist 22 October

 

We may finally know why birds sing at dawn

 

Zebra finches are commonly studied in captivity by biologists. Image courtesy of Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Why do birds sing in the morning?  Perhaps they like to sing at that time of day.  God has given us much pleasure in nature.  

Birds all over the world break into a dawn chorus every morning – now experiments in zebra finches suggest both a mechanistic and a functional explanation for this phenomenon.

The dawn chorus of birdsong has inspired poets and nature lovers for thousands of years, but the reason why birds all over the world start the day this way is an enduring mystery.

Now, a series of experiments in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) suggests that while darkness inhibits singing, birds build up a stronger motivation to sing in the night that causes them to burst into song when the dawn breaks. The study also hints that a morning workout for the vocal muscles helps birds finesse their songs.

 Source:

James Woodford 2025 We may finally know why birds sing at dawn | New Scientist 24 October

Giant star Betelgeuse has a 'Betelbuddy' — and it's very little indeed

 

This image of Betelgeuse is a color composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). (Image courtesy of ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin.)

Joel Kontinen

The star Betelgeuse has a smaller star that’s named Betelbuddy. Betelgeuse is about 700 times the size of our sun and thousands of times brighter.

"It turns out that there had never been a good observation where Betelbuddy wasn't behind Betelgeuse," Anna O’Grady, a postdoctoral fellow at CMU,"said in a statement. "This represents the deepest X-ray observations of Betelgeuse to date.”

Impressively, capturing an image of Betelbuddy was only the start of the discoveries. The researchers had anticipated the companion to be a white dwarf or a neutron star, but they saw no signs of accretion, a distinct signature of both types of objects. Instead, they suspect it might be a young stellar object about the size of our sun.

And herein lies the next major discovery. The size ratio between Betelgeuse and Betelbuddy challenges what we currently know about binary stars. Typically, binary stars have similar masses. But Betelgeuse is about 16 to 17 times the mass of our sun, whereas Betelbuddy has about the same mass as our sun.

"This opens up a new regime of extreme mass ratio binaries,” O’Grady said. "It's an area that hasn’t been explored much because it's so difficult to find them or to even identify them like we were able to do with Betelgeuse."

Stars come in all sized but there is only one planet, that harbors life.

Source:

Stefanie Waldek 2025  Giant star Betelgeuse has a 'Betelbuddy' — and it's very little indeed | Space 22 October

Neanderthal-human hybrids may have been scourged by a genetic mismatcht

 

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal girl. Christopher P.E. Zollikofer. Anthropological Institute, University of Zurich Image from Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

When Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, a genetic variation affecting red blood cells may have hindered reproduction in women who we re hybrids, and this might have played a part in Neanderthals’ demise.

According to evolutionists, the Neandertals and Homo sapiens lived side by side for about 50,000 to 45, 000 years ago.   That is a lie, because all people are the descendants of  Adam and Eve.

Darwinist say that modern humans may indeed have wiped out Neanderthals – but not through war or morder alone. A new study suggests that when the two species interbred, a slow-acting genetic incompatibility increased the risk of pregnancy failure in hybrid mothers. A similar mismatch between n mothers and fetuses may also help explain a subset of pregnancies that fail today.

Darwinist know from genetic studies that there was sustained interbreeding between Homo esapiens and Neanderthals between approximately 50,000 and 45,000 years ago. The Neanderthals went extinct around 41,000 years ago, but some of their DNA has persisted in modern humans with non-African ancestry, making up around 1 to 2 per cent of the genome.

Source:

 James Woodford 2025 Neanderthal-human hybrids may have been scourged by a genetic mismatch | New Scientist 20 October

 

See the adorable baby numbats offering hope to an endangered species

Image courtesy of Julie Kern/Australian Wildlife Conservancy

Joel Kontinen

What is a numbat? It is one of the world’s rarest marsupials. It is an endangered species that is probably making a comeback.

These adorable baby numbats are among a group of seven that have been recently spotted across two different wildlife sanctuaries in New South Wales, Australia. Conservationists are working to reintroduce the species, which has been extinct in the wild in New South Wales for more than 100 years. These sightings raise hopes that one of the world’s rarest marsupials might be making a comeback.

Source:

New Scientist 2025 See the adorable baby numbats offering hope to an endangered species | New Scientist 15 October 

 

Fungal obstructionism

 

Some stinkbug species, such as Coridius chinensis pictured here, use a fungal symbiosis to protect their eggs from parasitic wasps. Image courtesy of Minoru Moriyama

Joel Kontinen

The fall of man, described in Genesis 3 brought death to the world.  But intelligent design has a way to  redress it.

Many invertebrates are preyed on by parasitoid wasps that lay their eggs in or on another organism’s body for their hatchling larvae to feed upon. Some researchers have found out that females of a small dinidorid stinkbug have relied on intelligent design  to help their offspring avoid this fate. The wasps have symbiotic organs on their hindlegs with a tympanum-like structure. The outer cuticle has pores through which h the authors observed fungal hyphae emerging. Several fungal species are selected by the females, which notably include cordyceps that are often insect pathogens. When the female bugs lay their eggs, they rub the cultivated hyphae across the egg mass. The hyphae grow to envelope the eggs and physically exclude attentive parasitoid wasps until the bugs hatch.

Source:

Caroline Ash 2025 In Science Journals | Science 17. October

Ancient lead exposure may have influenced how our brains evolved

 

 Image courtesy of frantic00/Shutterstock

Joel Kontinen

Does lead poisoning have to with how our brains evolved? That is what Darwinists acclaim.  

 Lead poisoning isn't just a modern phenomenon: fossil teeth show signs that it affected ancient hominids, and Homo sapiens may have coped better than our close relatives.

Prehistoric hominids have been exposed to poisonous lead for at least 2 million years, a study of fossil teeth suggests, and modern humans may have evolved to cope with the toxic metal better than our ancient relatives. That is what Darwinists say, Hominids means ape men.

Lead poisoning has long been thought to be a uniquely modern problem tied to industrialisation, poor mining practices and its use as an additive in fuel, which has been phased out since the 1980s.

It is particularly dangerous for children, impacting their physical and mental development, but it can also cause a range of severe physical and psychological symptoms in adults.

Source:

James Woodford 2025 Ancient lead exposure may have influenced how our brains evolved | New Scientist 15 October 

Early hominin had human-like dexterity and gorilla strength

 

A model of Paranthropus boisei at the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. Image courtesy of Cro Magnon / Alamy

Evolutionists believe that ape men where the ancestors of modern men so they depict ancient men as having ape like features.

The first confirmed fossil hands of Paranthropus boisei show that this ancient relative was capable of making tools, but was also much stronger than modern humans

A pair of hands belonging to an enigmatic ancient hominin that lived around 1.5 million years ago has been found for the first time, revealing that they had gorilla-like strength alongside the dexterity to make tools.

Paranthropus boisei was first discovered by archaeologist Mary Leakey in 1959 at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. The skull was found alongside a type of stone tool known as Oldowan and it was claimed the species was the oldest known maker of stone tools. But because no hand fossils had been found, anthropologists couldn’t be sure that P. boisei had made them.

Source:

James Woodford 2025 Early hominin Paranthropus boisei had human-like dexterity and gorilla strength | New Scientist 15 October

Dinosaur fossil rewrites the story of how sauropods got long necks

 

Illustration of the Triassic dinosaur Huayracursor jaguensis. Image courtesy of Jorge Blanco.

Joel Kontinen

Some Darwinist thinks that the evolution of dinosaurs followed a pattern of first small, then big.

A 230-million-year-old fossil found in Argentina shows that the evolution of sauropod dinosaurs’ long necks began earlier than previously thought.

High in the Argentinian Andes, a team of palaeontologists has found a small dinosaur fossil with the first hints of the extended neck that distinguishes sauropod dinosaurs like Diplodocus.

Named Huayracursor jaguensis, the fossil is a partial skeleton from a dinosaur that lived in the Triassic period, around 230 million years ago. It would have been around 2 metres long, weighing about 18 kilograms.

Later, sauropods such as Brontosaurus and Patagotitan would become some of the largest and longest-necked animals ever to have lived, reaching lengths of over 35 metres and weights of more than 70 tonnes.

Until recently, evolutionists  thought that the precursors of these long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs, known as sauropodomorphs, were small, short-necked and possibly omnivorous.

Other sauropodomorphs living at the same time as H. jaguensis were much smaller, around a metre in length, and showed no signs of the lengthening of the neck bones seen in the newly found species. It wasn’t until several million years later that sauropodomorphs began to significantly increase their body mass and lengthen their necks, palaeontologists thought.

The discovery of H. jaguensis at Santo Domingo Creek in north-west Argentina, made by Martín Hechenleitner at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council and his colleagues, changes the evolutionary  story of how these dinosaurs got their long necks.

“Huayracursor breaks somewhat with this idea of a gradual transition, because it coexisted with its small, proportionally shorter-necked relatives,” says Hechenleitner.

The dinosaur had a small skull compared with its contemporaries, robust hind limbs, slender hips and short arms with fairly large, robust hands.

It demonstrates that increased body size and neck lengthening were already evident from the beginning of the evolutionary history of its lineage, says Hechenleitner.

“Huayracursor drags the origin of the long neck and larger body size towards the first appearance of dinosaurs in the fossil record,” he says. “It’s fascinating to think that giant animals up to 40 meters long and over 30 tonnes, like Argentinosaurus and Patagotitan, are part of a lineage that began more than 100 million years earlier, with bipedal forms just over a meter long and a mere 10 to 15 kilograms [in weight].”

Source:

James Woodford 2025 Huayracursor jaguensis dinosaur fossil rewrites the story of how sauropods got long necks | New Scientist 15 October

Galaxies fling out matter much more violently than we thought

 

Black holes are extremely powerful matter distributors. Image courtesy of NASA Image Collection/Alamy

Joel Kontinen

From where does dark matter come? Even the ordinary cosmic matter is a mystery for some cosmologists. Now they have a solution, black holes.

Unexpectedly violent black holes may have caused the mystery of the missing cosmic matter.

Most of the universe is filled with mysterious dark matter, but even ordinary matter has stumped cosmologists. Some of this normal matter – made up of particles called baryons – seemed to have been missing for a long time. Researchers recently worked out where it was hiding, and now Boryana Hadzhiyska at the University of California, Berkeley and her colleagues have learned how black holes may have shaped its distribution and kept it hidden.

 Source:

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan 2025 Galaxies fling out matter much more violently than we thought | New Scientist 6 October

We've discovered another reason why naked mole rats live for so long

 

Image courtesy of Jannissimo/Shutterstock

Joel Kontinen

Why do naked mole rats live for so long? It may be to a thing that intelligent design has provided.

The longevity of naked mole rats may partly be due to them having a variant of a key protein that boosts DNA repair – a discovery that could help extend our own lives.

Naked mole rats live for up to 37 years – far longer than other rodents their size. What is the secret of their longevity? Among other factors, it could be down to a variant of an immune protein that boosts DNA repair

The discovery might lead to therapies that extend human lifespans, say Zhiyong Mao at Tongji University in Shanghai, China. It is also another piece of evidence supporting the idea that the accumulation of mutations – that is, the failure to repair damaged DNA – is one of the main causes of ageing.

The immune protein in question, called cGAS, is found in many animals. Its main function is thought to be to sound the alarm when it detects DNA outside the nucleus of a cell, which could be a sign of cancer or a viral attack.

But cGAS is also found in the nucleus of cells. In humans and mice, it has been shown to suppress DNA repair, increasing the mutation rate and the risk of cancer. Exactly why is unclear – it could be an undesirable side effect rather than an evolved function.

Mao’s team has now shown that the version of cGAS found in naked mole rats has the opposite effect in the nucleus, actually boosting DNA repair. This is due to differences in four of the amino acids that make up the cGAS protein. If these four amino acids are altered in mole rat cells, the animal’s cGAS no longer boosts DNA repair. Conversely, if these are changed in the human version of cGAS, the protein no longer inhibits DNA repair.

What’s more, when the team genetically engineered fruit flies to produce the naked mole rat version of cGAS, they lived for nearly 70 days, compared with around 60 days for unmodified flies.

So could making human cells produce the naked mole rat cGAS extend our lives? “Yes, gene editing and mRNA delivery could be potential ways to improve DNA repair and promote longevity in humans,” says Mao. But getting enough of the key cells in our bodies to produce the modified cGAS wouldn’t be easy, he says.

Another approach could be to find small-molecule drugs that interact with the human cGAS protein and make it behave like the mole rat one, says Mao.

The study does indeed suggest that cGAS influences lifespan, says Vera Gorbunova at the University of Rochester, New York, whose team has shown that a molecule called hyaluronic acid also contributes to the long lives of naked mole rats. “[So] modulating the activity of cGAS by pharmacological or genetic means can have beneficial effects on health and lifespan,” she says.

 Source:

Michael Le Page 2025 We've discovered another reason why naked mole rats live for so long | New Scientist 9 October 

'Sword Dragon' ichthyosaur had enormous eyes and a lethal snout

 

A reconstruction of what the Xiphodracon may have looked like. Image courtesy of Bob Nicholls

Joel Kontinen

A beautifully preserved skeleton found on the UK’s Jurassic Coast has been identified as a new species of the marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs

The ichthyosaurus was a predatory animal, that according to evolutionists live at the time when dinosaurs ruled the world.

The beautifully-preserved fossilised skeleton was found on the UK’s Jurassic Coast near an area called Golden Cap back in 2001, and sat for years in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada.

“They knew it was something interesting,” says Dean Lomax at the University of Manchester, UK. “They were going to work on it but they just never did.”

Lomax and his colleagues have now prepared and identified the specimen, which has an enormous eye socket and a long, sword-like snout. The fossil also has “needle-like piercing teeth [that] are very much designed for feasting on soft-bodied prey like squid and fish”, says Lomax. “You can get a good sense of how this thing would have been in life, basically relying on really good vision to hunt, probably in dim conditions.”

The animal would have been around 3 metres long – about the size of a common bottlenose dolphin – and lived during an age of the Early Jurassic called the Pliensbachian, some 193 to 184 million years ago.

It has features that have never been seen in an ichthyosaur before, including a unique bone around the nostril called a lacrimal with prong-like structures. “The level of three-dimensional preservation, particularly of cranial sutures and delicate structures such as the lacrimal and prefrontal projections, is exceptional,” says Aubrey Roberts at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo in Norway.

A dark mass between the ribs might be its last meal, but the team couldn’t determine what that was.

Source: 

Chris Simms 2025 'Sword Dragon' ichthyosaur had enormous eyes and a lethal snout | New Scientist10 October

Fossil claimed to be new species of mosasaur is suspected forgery

 

Artist’s impression of Carinodens, a mosasaur whose remains scientists suspect might have been manipulated and then labelled as a new species. Image courtesy of Henry Sharpe

Joel Kontinen

A jawbone found in Morocco is probably  a forgery.  Some folks thought that it belonged to a new species of mosasaur.

Remnants of a bizarre “shark-toothed” aquatic predator that lived alongside dinosaurs were proubably forged, according to new research.

The contentious fossil of a jaw fragment was apparently collected by miners working at the Sidi Chennane phosphate mines in Morocco, in rock that is 66 to 72 million years old. Nick Longrich at the University of Bath, UK, and his colleagues analysed the find and classified it as a new species of mosasaur named Xenodens calminechari in 2021.

The fossil possesses highly unusual blade-like teeth similar to those of sharks, which Longrich and his colleagues suggested would help carve up large prey.

Morocco is uniquely rich in mosasaur fossils, says Henry Sharpe at the University of Alberta in Canada. “Miners working in the phosphate mines come across mosasaurs all the time.”

The problem is many people in Morocco make a living selling fossils, says Sharpe. “So many of the mosasaur fossils being sold from Morocco are modified [there] – teeth are added, bones are sculpted, all to make the fossil worth more to sell.”

Source:

Taylor Mitchell Brown 2025 Fossil claimed to be new species of mosasaur is suspected forgery | New Scientist 16 January

Scientists find best evidence yet, that icy moon Enceladus is habitable

 

The Cassini spacecraft took this image while looking across the south pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus on Nov. 30, 2010. Jets of water from the moon's underground ocean are visible bursting through cracks in the ice. (Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

Joel Kontinen

An ocean flowing beneath the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus is spewing ice that holds the building blocks of life.

Scientists have discovered that the molecular building blocks needed for life are "readily available" on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.

At only 314 miles (505 kilometers) wide, Enceladus — and thanks to its liquid water, hydrothermal energy source and chemical tool kit, it has the potential to host extraterrestrial life.

Twenty years ago, NASA's Cassini spacecraft discovered evidence that a vast salty ocean hidden beneath Enceladus' surface was spitting out minuscule "ice grains" through cracks near the moon's south pole. Subsequent studies have spotted five of the six essential elements for life — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus (only missing sulfur) — within these grains.

Twenty years ago, NASA's Cassini spacecraft discovered evidence that a vast salty ocean hidden beneath Enceladus' surface was spitting out minuscule "ice grains" through cracks near the moon's south pole. Subsequent studies have spotted five of the six essential elements for life — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus (only missing sulfur) — within these grains.

However, the majority of these past studies looked at the relatively old ice grains that settled in Saturn's E ring — a diffuse ring outside the planet's bright main rings — after being ejected decades or centuries prior. This meant scientists couldn't be sure that the compounds truly came from Enceladus rather than from space weathering in the ring.

 But if there is life on Enceladus, it has to be created. Only Darwinists think that life can come from naturalistic ways.

 Source:

 Sophie Berdugo 2025 Scientists find best evidence yet that icy moon Enceladus is habitable | Live Science October 2

Rogue planet gains 6 billion tonnes per second in record growth spurt

Artist’s impression of Cha 1107-7626, a rogue planet about 620 light years away. Image courtesy of ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser

Joel Kontinen

A free-floating planet has been seen devouring astonishing amounts of matter, hinting that stars and planets are more alike than we thought.

A ravenous rogue planet has been caught eating 6 billion tonnes of gas and dust per second. This behaviour blurs the line between planets and stars, suggesting both can form in similar ways.

Rogue planets, free-floating balls of gas unattached to any parent star, appear to be extremely common, and may even exceed the number of stars we see in the galaxy. But astronomers still don’t understand whether they form like planets in orbit around a star and are then banished to wander the galaxy alone, or if they can form like stars by themselves.

Source:

Alex Wilkins 2025 Rogue planet gains 6 billion tonnes per second in record growth spurt | New Scientist 2 October 

Exceptional star is the most pristine object known in the universe

 

The Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, where the near-pristine star SDSS J0715-7334 was spotted. Image courtesy of Josh Lake/NASA/ESA   

Joel Kontinen

A star found in the Large Magellanic Cloud is remarkably unpolluted by heavier elements, suggesting it is descended from the universe’s earliest stars.

A relatively nearby star that appears to lack almost any of the heavy elements produced by supernovae could be a direct descendant of the very first stars that formed in the universe.

That is, according to evolution that states that God was not needed, and the planets just appeared from nowhere.

Astronomers think the first stars were made up of only the hydrogen and helium that were floating around after the big bang. It was only when these stars ran out of fuel and exploded in a supernova that elements heavier than helium were spread around. The leftover, element-rich gas from these initial explosions then formed the next generation of stars, with the cycle repeating to eventually produce all the elements we see in the stars and planets today.

 Source:

Alex Wilkins 2025 Exceptional star is the most pristine object known in the universe | New Scientist 3 October 

NASA's asteroid deflection test had unexpected and puzzling outcome

 

Illustration showing NASA’s DART probe, upper right, on course to strike the asteroid Dimorphos, left, which orbits Didymos. Image courtesy of Steve Gribben/Johns Hopkins APL/NASA/AP/Alamy

Joel Kontinen

The DART mission achieved its goal of changing one asteroid’s orbit around another, but questions remain about why the orbit continued to alter over the following month.

Space has its secrets.

After NASA smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, its orbit slowly but surely changed over the next month, and astronomers can’t explain why.

In 2022, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) flew a nearly-600-kilogram satellite into a small asteroid called Dimorphos, which orbits a larger one called Didymos.

Before the impact, Dimorphos completed an orbit every 11 hours and 55 minutes. Observations soon after revealed that the collision had reduced the orbital period by about 30 minutes, but in the following weeks and months, the orbit shrank even further, by another 30 seconds.

Source: 

Alex Wilkins 2025 NASA's asteroid deflection test had unexpected and puzzling outcome | New Scientist 1 October 

Astronomers captured an incredible view of M87’s black hole jet

 

Image courtesy of Jan Röder; Maciek Wielgus et al. (2025)

Joel Kontinen

A galaxy termed M87 at a distanced of 50 million light years from us has a black hole that spewed out an extremely hot jet of superheated plasma.

We have studied it for a century, we are only now seeing it in great detail.

More than a century ago, astronomer Heber Curtis spotted the first black hole jet – a vast stream of superheated plasma from the supermassive behemoth that sits at the centre of galaxy M87. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope has observed this jet in extreme detail.

Since it was first spotted in 1918, the jet from M87’s black hole – which was famously the first black hole to be imaged in 2019 – has been observed by a multitude of telescopes and is arguably the most studied black hole jet. However, many of its features still elude explanation, such as several bright-shining regions, as well darker helix-shaped regions. Astronomers think these are likely to be caused by the jet beam refocusing or different strands recombining as it encounters new material, such as a denser, gassy region. But the underlying mechanisms remain mysterious.

Source: 

Alex Wilkins 2025 Astronomers captured an incredible view of M87’s black hole jet | New Scientist 30 September