Which building blocks of life have been found in space, and which haven't?

 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock/nobeastsofierce

Joel Kontinen

How many building blocks of life have we found in space so far?

First, it's important to define what we mean by the building blocks of life. Scientists are looking for molecules that look like those found in life on Earth, including proteins; RNA; and lipids, the fatty molecules that make up cell membranes.

The building block of life cannot form life as such, Much more is needed. They have to be put together with intelligent design. 

 The asteroid Bennu, brought back to Earth in 2023, contained all five nucleobases of DNA and RNA, along with 14 of the 20 amino acids used by living organisms. Its sibling asteroid Ryugu also yielded all five nucleobases, including uracil, which is found in RNA.

Astronomers categorize the molecules ca they find by complexity, starting with a broad group called "complex organic molecules" (COM). These are carbon-containing molecules with six or more atoms. Of the 350 molecules of any kind discovered in space so far, "about 180 of them qualify as COMs," Sergio Ioppolo, an astrochemist and an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Aarhus University in Denmark, said. "That cutoff is an operational convention rather than a fundamental definition of complexity."

Some of the richest hunting grounds for these molecules are in molecular clouds ‪— interstellar regions of gas and dust that are dense enough for molecules to form. Using radio astronomy, Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, an astrochemist and staff researcher at the Center for Astrobiology in Spain, and her team have detected more than a dozen prebiotic molecules in molecular clouds at the center of the Milky Way, including the four-carbon sugar erythrulose   

They have also found a true sugar in space.

Source:

Ashley Hamer Pritchard  Edited by Laura Geggel, Laura Mondragón 2026 Which building blocks of life have been found in space, and which haven't? | Live Science 16 August

 

 

Monsoon-driven wildfires may have shaped human evolution

 

Image courtesy of Famartin, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Joel Kontinen

A reconstruction of East Africa's environment 1.75 million years ago suggests wildfires spiked during wetter times, which may have influenced human evolution. 

Wet climatic spells didn’t quench wildfires in East Africa’s Turkana basin 1.75 million years ago. Instead, they fuelled them. That’s what chemical traces from ancient plants in the region seem to suggest, and this pattern could have shaped our hominin ancestors’ evolution, including the use of fire and tools.

Rich in hominin fossils and archaeological finds, the Turkana basin – sometimes dubbed the Cradle of Humankind – has long been considered important for understanding the lives of our early ancestors. These include Homo erectus, a species that appeared about 2 million years ago and that is regarded as one of our earliest recognisably human ancestor, 

According to Darwinists, climate has been an influenced in human evolution,  This is against that what Genesis says about how we got here. We were created in God’s image without any evolution.

Source:

James Urquhat 2026 Monsoon-driven wildfires may have shaped human evolution | New Scientist14 August

Three black holes discovered in a young galaxy for the first time

 

Image courtesy of Hannah Übler

Joel Kontinen

This study throws a shadow on the big bang as massive black holes could not rise so soon after the big bang,

“This system is in the very, very early universe,” says Dougal Dobie at the University of Sydney, who wasn’t involved in the discovery. “So, how have we ended up in a situation where these three supermassive black holes have formed and come close together in only a billion years or so since the big bang?”

An analysis revealed two separate regions of high-velocity hydrogen gas in the centre of the galaxy, indicating two so-called accreting black holes that were separated by about 620 light years – a hop, skip and a jump in cosmic terms.

An accreting black hole is a super dense area of space, so compressed that light can’t escape, but that continuously drags in surrounding gas, dust and even stars. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has just one massive black hole at the core of its spiral arms.

Source:

James Woodford 2026 Three black holes discovered in a young galaxy for the first time | New Scientist12 August

Earth extremophile can grow in near-Mars-like conditions

 

A view of Mars’s surface captured by the Perseverance rover. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSS​S

Joel Kontinen

A salt-loving microorganism found in places like the Dead Sea can not just survive but actively grow in conditions close to those that may be found just under the Martian surface

Was there life on Mars? Some Darwinist suppose that there  was live in the past and some think that there might still be live there.  

 A study here on Earth has made that idea more plausible by showing that salt-loving, or halophilic, microbes can grow in conditions close to those that might be found in little pockets of highly salty water just below the surface of Mars.

“We show that these halophilic microorganisms can actively grow under a combination of anoxic [oxygen-free], low-pressure atmosphere conditions and a high-salt liquid media that contains harmful Martian chemicals that are similar to bleach, which are the perchlorates,” says Adam Robinson at the University of Florida. “And image courtesy that’s something that nobody had been able to show before.”

We have found tantalising hints that not only was there once life on Mars, but that it might still exist on the Red Planet. Now, a study here on Earth has made that idea more plausible by showing that salt-loving, or halophilic, microbes can grow in conditions close to those that might be found in little

The type of life we have seen about the Red Sea gives the researchers live on Mars.

Source:

 Michael Le Page  2026 Earth extremophile can grow in near-Mars-like conditions | New Scientist 10 August

Postbiotic supplement boosts body’s own GLP-1 and weight loss

 

Image courtesy of S Kunkel Microscopy/Science Photo Library

Joel Kontinen

A small trial suggests a supplement containing dead bacteria could offer a cheaper alternative to weight-loss drugs such as semaglutide, but further evidence is needed.

A postbiotic supplement is the answer to weight loss, as lactobacillus plantarum bacteria is found in fermented foods.  

According to a new study, boosting the levels of GLP-1 hormone in the body, according to a small trial. The findings suggest it could provide a cheaper, more convenient alternative to drugs like semaglutide – or help to maintain weight loss after stopping these medications.

GLP-1 drugs, which mimic an appetite-suppressing hormone made by the intestine, are widely used for weight loss. But about half of people who take them for this purpose in the US stop within a year due to high costs, drug shortages and side effects such as nausea, vomiting and stomach pain.

 Source:

 Carissa Wong 2026 Postbiotic supplement boosts body's own GLP-1 and weight loss | New Scientist 7 August

Ancient Egyptians may have built a massive dam near the Red Pyramid

 

The Red Pyramid in Dahshur, Egypt. Image courtesy of Reinhard Dirscherl / Alam y.

Joel Kontinen

The Egyptians build the pyramids, we might also say that they build a major dam. It is situated neart the Red Pyramid. According to evolutionists ancient people could not achieve so great feats.

Two large structures near the Red Pyramid in Egypt may be the remnants of an ancient dam, which would be one of the oldest major dams ever built. The work suggests a level of technical sophistication and that wasn’t previously expected of the engineers of the earliest pyramids. 

To further investigate the structures, Xavier Landreau at Paleotechnic, a private research institute in France, and his colleagues used satellite imagery, historical maps, topographical modelling and watershed analysis. Their results clearly outlined the features and how they fit the surrounding landscape, showing they each measured around 600 to 700 metres long, 15 to 30 m wide and 6 or 7 m tall, and are separated by about 200 m. Their arrangement within the downward sloping valley seems to suggest they are remnants of a large and ancient dam. 

“They would probably not have looked like modern concrete dams,” says Landreau. “They were more likely very broad embankments made of earth, marl, rubble and stone, possibly with stone protection on surfaces exposed to flowing water.”

Source:

Taylor Mitchell Brown 2026 Ancient Egyptians may have built a massive dam near the Red Pyramid | New Scientist 5 August 

  

Where to watch the next total solar eclipse anywhere in the world

 

Image courtesy of Red Bluff, CC BY-SA 3.0

Joel Kontinen

Have you ever seen an eclipse of the sun? Now, in many parts of the world, you can see an eclipse, for instance in Europe.

The total solar eclipse on 12 August will only be visible to a lucky few, but eclipses happen all over the world – here are the next ones to look out for, wherever you may be.

On 12 August, a total solar eclipse will sweep a narrow path across parts of Europe and the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Such an eclipse happens somewhere on Earth about once every 18 months as the moon and the sun line up just right so that the moon blocks out the entirety of the sun’s disc, darkening the sky and revealing the outermost layers of the sun that are usually hidden by the glare of its brighter surface. 

For the most part, this August’s total eclipse will only be visible from the ocean and relatively remote areas of land: northern Russia, Greenland, the ocean, and then more inhabited regions as it passes through Iceland and Spain. A broader swathe will see a partial eclipse, but views of the total eclipse’s grandeur will be limited. If you aren’t able to spot this one, though, there will be other chances.

Source:

Leah Crane 2026 Where to watch the next total solar eclipse anywhere in the world | New Scientist 31 July

Strange three-lobed asteroid seems to have its own tiny moon

 

The asteroid 44 Nysa, centre, and its tiny moon, marked with an arrow, Image courtesy of Kate Minker.

Joel Kontinen

Space is wonderful. Ever hard of an asteroid that has its tiny moon? the asteroid is called Nysa  It is  75 kilometres across with a tiny moon just a kilometre across.

Astronomers have spotted one of the strangest-looking asteroids we have ever seen. The space rock, called 44 Nysa, was discovered in 1857, but it wasn’t until now that we had the observational capability to figure out its shape – and its shape is weird.

An E-type asteroid, which is a relatively rare type rich in a mineral called enstatite, 44 Nysa circles the sun in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is the brightest E-type asteroid we know of and one of the largest, with an average diameter of about 75 kilometres, which makes it a tempting observational target.

Source:  

 Leah Crane 2026 Strange three-lobed asteroid seems to have its own tiny moon | New Scientist 29 July

 

 

The genome of a long-extinct ancient human is hiding within us

 

Image courtesy of S. Entressangle/E. Daynes/Science Photo Library

Joel Kontinen

The genome of a long-extinct ancient human is hi A reconstruction of Homo heidelbergensis, which may be a “ghost ancestor” detected in modern human DNA.

What are ghost ancestors in the human line? According to evolution, our ancestors interbred with at least two ancient human lineages in addition to Neanderthals and Denisovans, and now an improved method has given us a much better idea of which bits of our DNA came from them. In fact, it shows that nearly the entire genome of one of these “ghost ancestors” is preserved in small bits spread among all living humans.

But according to Genesis, Eve is the mother of all humans, so that this study is false.

In any person alive today, between 0.5 and 1 per cent of their DNA comes from this ghost ancestor, says Yulin Zhang at the University of California, Berkeley. But different people have different bits of DNA from them and, crucially, they are spread fairly evenly around the genome.

We all have bits of DNA from a long-lost “ghost ancestor” inside us – and by putting all the different bits together, we might be able to reconstruct their genome

Source:

Michael Le Page 2026 The genome of a long-extinct ancient human is hiding within us | New Scientist 30 July 

Mystery hominin left big footprints at ancient lake in Africa

 

Image courtesy of Kevin G. Hatala

Footprints left by eight ancient hominins 1.43 million years ago beside a Kenyan lake have puzzled researchers because they don’t look quite as expected for species known to have lived there at that time.

Altogether, 21 hominin footprints have been found at the Lake Turkana site, known to researchers as GaJi10, part of which was first discovered in 1978. They are not the footprints of homo erectus or Paranthropus boisei,  

 Source:

James Woodford 2026 Mystery hominin left big footprints at ancient lake in Africa | New Scientist 27 July 

 

 

Sabre-toothed cats could crunch through bone

 

Sabre-toothed cats were top predators during the Pleistocene epoch. Image courtesy of Mauricio Anton/Science Photo Library.

Joel Kontinen

In the ice age, the sabre-toothed cats were the top predators, they could bite through hard bones. They are the descendants of the predators that lived after  fall of Man  in Genesis 3, when animals could eat other animals.

An analysis of megafauna remains from Argentina reveals sabre-toothed cats could crunch through bones, reshaping views about their supposedly weak sabres.

The study focuses on the bones of several large South American herbivores uncovered from Salto de Piedra, which lies about 350 kilometres south of Buenos Aires. Prior work has uncovered the skeletons of an abundance of large animals from the site, including giant armadillos, giant land sloths, mastodons and sabre-toothed cats like Smilodon populator. The site is one of the only robustly dated Pleistocene localities in Argentina, allowing researchers to thoroughly track its animal populations over time.

Source:

Taylor Mitchell Brown 2026 Sabre-toothed cats could crunch through bone | New Scientist 22 July 

Having a young biological age could help with weight loss

 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Tatiana Bralnina. 

Joel Kontinen

 If one is of young biological age, it could help with weight loss apart from heart disease, cancer and dementia.

A new discovery suggests it may also aid with weight loss, possibly by making the more efficient at switching from using food for energy to using stored fat.

In February 2026, a review of existing research concluded that intermittent fasting – such as the 5:2 diet, where you eat as normal on five days a week and restrict calories on the other two – is probably no more effective for weight loss than doing nothing at all. But fasting can also involve eating no, or very little, food for a single, continuous stretch of time, which is sometimes done for religious reasons.

Source:

Emma Young 2026 Having a young biological age could help with weight loss | New Scientist 24 July

 

Dark energy doesn’t exist, claims controversial paper

 

Image courtesy of NASA/Hubble Heritage, STScI/AURA/R. Fesen, Dartmouth, J. Morse, Univ. of Colorado

Joel Kontinen

Dark energy  dues not exist, says a paper that some have claimed is controversial.  The paper says that the universe is not expanding so there is no need for dark energy,  

Dark energy may not actually exist. This is the conclusion of a controversial analysis that says not only have we got this wrong, but the universe’s expansion isn’t speeding up either, rebuffing a central pillar of modern cosmology. Though many researchers have yet to be convinced.

Since Edwin Hubble’s observations of pulsating stars in 1929, astronomers have known that the universe is expanding. For decades, that expansion was expected to happen at a roughly constant rate, but observations of a type of exploding star called a Type Ia supernova in the 1990s changed this.

Source:

Matt von Hippel 2026 Dark energy doesn't exist, claims controversial paper | New Scientist 23 July 

China is trying to regulate relationships with AI – can it work?

 

The film Ex Machina shows one way in which relationships with AI companions might go wrong. Image courtesy of BFA / Alamy Stock Photo.

Joel Kontinen

China  has begun to negotiate  relation with AI, But earnestly, something might go wrong with it.  Only when individuals speak with others can there be real understanding. We were not taught to communicate with AI but with  human individuals.  

China has begun regulating interactions with artificial intelligence in an attempt to protect its citizens from overreliance and exploitation. While many countries have been looking at rules around harmful content, China is the first to go a step further in legislating what kind of relationships with AI are permissible.

The new rules came into force this month and cover AI systems designed for sustained, human-like emotional interaction, while excluding customer-service bots and productivity assistants like straightforward AI chatbots.

Companies must now inform users they are talking to an AI, encourage them to take breaks and remind them of their usage. They must also monitor interactions to identify if someone is becoming dependent or having a crisis, then direct them to support or halt the conversation altogether.

 Source:

Chris Stokel-Walker 2026 China is trying to regulate relationships with AI – can it work? | New Scientist 22 July 

The animal that does not die

 

The animal that does not die?  Are we in the messianic age? More stories about Israel.

A Lazarus monkey has been found in the Congo

 

The newly recognised monkey species Colobus congoensis. Image courtesy of Daniel Rosengren

Joel Kontinen

A new Lazarus animal, black colobus monkey from a remote part of the Congo Basin rainforest, is thought to be severely threatened by poaching.

The monkey is known as Likweli to local people who hunt it for bushmeat, and it has been given the scientific name Colobus congoensis. It lives in one of the most inaccessible parts of Africa, without paved roads or infrastructure. This monkey is relative to other Asian colobine monkeys.

 “A typical expedition involves multiple modes of transportation: a flight, followed by a motorcycle ride, two days of hiking on foot and finally travel by dugout canoe to reach the monkey’s range,” says Kate Detwiler at Florida Atlantic University.

Detwiler and her colleagues believe the species’ mask-like face may represent ancestral traits that were present before the African and Asian colobine lineages diverged over 8 million years ago. according to evolution, “If so, likweli may have retained characteristics that were subsequently modified or lost in the other African colobus species,” says Detwiler.

Scientists first became aware of the species in 2008 when a team surveying on the banks of the Lomami river, in what is now Lomami National Park, took a photo that showed only a part of a monkey that had not been seen before, high in the canopy.

Then, in November 2018, another group again spotted the monkey, which is about 1.3 metres long and weighs around 7 kilograms. Between 2018 and 2022, there were 114 recorded observations of the new species, 25 of which were from vocalisations.

Source:

James Woodford 2026 Congolese monkey with mask-like face and strong BO is new to science | New Scientist 15 July

 

The Dinosaur Extinction Was More Complicated Than You Think

 

Joel Kontinen

According to evolution, the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. According to Genesis it happened during the time of Noah. It did not kill all the dinosaurs, as the account in Job tells us.  

Dinosaurs are the biggest creatures to have ever walked on land, dominating Earth for over 130 million years according to evolution. But how could such extraordinary creatures have simply vanished in the blink of a geological eye? For decades, we’ve assumed these prehistoric megafauna – a staple of our childhoods and Hollywood movies – went extinct for one simple reason: the asteroid that hit Earth was so unimaginably large that it changed everything in one single blow. But now, thanks to new research, an even more intriguing idea has emerged: size alone doesn’t explain what happened.

The real reason the impact was so devastating may have been its angle. Had the asteroid arrived a according Earth at the time, predominantly dinosaurs on land, marine creatures in the sea and pterosaurs in the air, it appears to have struck at almost the worst possible angle imaginable, launching vast quantities of rock, dust and climate-altering gases high into the atmosphere and triggering one of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

Source:

David Stock 2026  The Dinosaur Extinction Was More Complicated Than You Think | New Scientist July 16

How humans evolved to be twice as big as our ancestors

 

Image courtesy of Chuang Zhao.

Joel Kontinen

Artistic representations of ancient humans often show large men with bulging muscles – but our ancestors were actually smaller than us, in both height and body mass.

When we look at our evolutionary ancestors, we are twice as big as they were.  But there is one thing that about this – evolution does not make us bigger, but we are comparing us to beings that are smaller than us. They are only what evolutionist call ape men.

An article in New Scientist tells this about man and our evolution.

As someone who writes a lot about human evolution and archaeology, I’ve seen a great many artists’ impressions of prehistoric people. Some are remarkably believable, closely tied to scientific findings as much as possible. Others, not so much. I twitch every time I see a reconstruction of an African or tropical hominin with northern-European-style pale skin, and the twitches escalate whenever I see hairless hominins wandering around naked in temperate regions like Britain. Put something on or you’ll die.

Source:

By Michael Marshall 2026 How humans evolved to be twice as big as our ancestors | New Scientist 13 July 

Sugar molecules found in interstellar space for the first time

 

Image courtesy of NASA, JPL-Caltech, Susan Stolovy (SSC/ Caltech) et al.

Joel Kontinen

Researches have found sugar molecules in a cosmic cloud nearly  27light i yeas from us, The ones who believe in panspermia or that life could arise on other planets, suppose that asteroids brought them to earth.

Sugar molecules have been found in interstellar space for the first time. The finding adds further evidence to the idea that early life on Earth may have benefited from complex sugar molecules arriving from elsewhere.

Sugars arise from chemical bonds among carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Besides serving as an energy source, certain sugars are fundamental building blocks of RNA and DNA, the genetic material found in every living cell. However, there has long been a chicken-and-egg problem: living organisms make sugars with enzymes, but experiments recreating conditions on pre-life Earth have yielded relatively few.

Source:

Christa Lesté-Lasserre 2026 Sugar molecules found in interstellar space for the first time | New Scientist13 July 

  

Global warming already causing crop losses of over $20 billion a year

 

Image courtesy of  Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Evolution and global warming are the trends we have been forced to look at,  but this has not been present in Finland.  

Global warning -fuelled heat and drought is already hitting yields of maize, wheat and soybeans to the tune of $20 billion a year, a study has estimated.

There is great uncertainty about these kinds of projections, not least because so much depends on how farmers respond and adapt to a continually changing climate, for instance, by switching to different crops or adopting irrigation where it is possible. In fact, the whole point of this study is to raise awareness and encourage adaptation, to help ensure these projections turn out to be overestimates, says team member Kai Kornhuber, also at IIASA. “This is the entire mission of climate scientists: we make these cases for people to react, so our projections turn out to be wrong.”

The researchers started by gathering data on the yields per country of maize, wheat and soya from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Next, they took past climate data and calculated the drought level, using a standard approach that estimates soil moisture levels from rainfall and evaporation levels.

The researchers then calculated the economic losses, based on FAO data showing how much farmers would have been paid for their produce at the time. Finally, they used the same approach to project future losses in several different emissions scenarios, assuming that some adaptation takes place.

This could be an underestimate of the full impact of climate change for a number of reasons: it’s just three crops, and it doesn’t include flood, storm or rain damage, or the possibility that shortages could lead to big price increases, as is already happening with some other crops such as coffee and cacao.

Source:

 Michael Le Page  2026 Global warming already causing crop losses of over $20 billion a year | New Scientist 10 July

Fossil fruits sand flowering plants flourished in time of dinosaurs

 

Image courtesy of Brian Engh

Joel Kontinen

According to evolution, dinosaurs now lived  with flowering plants. This is new, as the standard view of din9saurs was that they only eat each other or some form of cones,

.“Jonathan Birch at the London School of Economics says the study is the first time he has  seen “wanting” and “liking” disentangled in a bee."

“We underestimate insects so much,” he says. “It’s led to a golden age of very charming studies where scientists use modern techniques – sometimes just high-resolution, high-frame-rate video, as in this study – to reveal behaviours people have been missing.”

A wide variety of fruits and seeds that were smothered in the ash from a volcanic eruption nearly 75 million years ago suggest flowering plants were diverse and thriving in the time of the dinosaurs, far earlier than previously known.

Researchers had thought the emergence of large seeds and fruits followed the end-Cretaceous extinction, 66 million years ago, and was tied to the rise of mammals and birds.

“Now, we have evidence that large fruit and seeds and the related ecological conditions can be traced back to 10 million years before the asteroid impact that according to evolution wiped out the dinosaurs,” says Jaemin Lee at the University of California, Berkeley.

The team discovered an extraordinary 77 different kinds of fruits and seeds. Such a ready banquet of nutritious fruit would almost certainly have been eaten by herbivorous dinosaurs and other animals.The first flowering plants emerge in the fossil record 136 million years ago, but, until now, it was thought early forms were mostly small and weedy and vastly different to the range of species that dominate Earth’s forests today.

In Cretaceous deposits elsewhere, the fruit and seeds are roughly the size of a poppy seed on average – far smaller than the blueberry-sized seeds at Jose Creek.

Yes, according to Genesis, flowers and animals were created at the same time.  

Source:

James Woodforg 2026 Fossil fruits show flowering plants flourished in time of dinosaurs | New Scientist 25 June 

A worm that lived half a billion years ago preferred turning right

 

Image courtesy of Scott Evans/AMNH

Joel Kontinen

Do animals prefer their right hand? This is shown by a fossil that evolutionist say is a half million years ago.  

A 555-million-year-old worm had a predilection for turning right, possibly indicating the oldest known example of handedness.

Scott Evans at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and his colleagues analysed 100 fossil specimens of a small flatworm-like creature, Spriggina floundersi, collected in South Australia over recent decades.

These animals lived during the Ediacaran Period, when multicellular life first became widespread. It preceded the Cambrian explosion, when animal life diversified dramatically and many groups of animals first appeared. according to evolution.

This is what evolutionist say, their dating in millions of years is not true.     

Source:

James Woodford 2026 A worm that lived half a billion years ago preferred turning right | New Scientist 9 July

‘Hobbit’ hominins scavenged meat left over by Komodo dragons

 

Image courtesy of Lionel Bret/Eurelios/Science Photo Library

Joel Kontinen

Did hobbits or Homo floresiensis  eat animal bones left by Komodo dragons, according to devolution, the science says it is so.

The diminutive ancient humans nicknamed hobbits that lived on the Indonesian island of Flores until around 50,000 years ago had limited hunting skills, according to a study of animal bones found in their caves. Instead, researchers think they scavenged meat that was left behind by Komodo dragons.

Fossils of Homo floresiensis were first announced to the world in 2004. These humans stood just over a metre tall and their remains have been dated to between 90,000 and 50,000 years old.

Source:

 James Woodford 2026 ‘Hobbit’ hominins scavenged meat left over by Komodo dragons | New Scientist 3 July

Catholic nun issues chilling warning about aliens amid religious conflict

 

Image courtesy of Phylyp, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Joel Kontinen

 A catholic nun says UFOs are rooted in the spiritual realm and can be fallen angels or evil spirits.  

However, Mother Miriam many UFO sightings and alleged alien encounters may be the work of fallen angels.

“Citing the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas, she noted that the medieval theologian described angels as extraterrestrial beings because they originate from another world, the spiritual realm.

'The Catholic position, there is such a thing as extraterrestrial intelligence,' she said. 'These creatures really are from another world, the spiritual world. They're what we call fallen angels.'”

Source:

Stacy Liberatore 2026 Catholic nun issues chilling warning about aliens amid religious conflict 26 June

This could be why we still haven’t found alien life

 

Image courtesy of NASA

 Joel Kontinen

Where is alien life? We have found hundreds planets but alien life is still missing. What is the reason for  this? It could be that alien life never existed or are there other valid reasons?

The search for extraterrestrial life has been a topic of fascination and speculation for centuries. The universe has not yet yielded conclusive evidence of alien life. This phenomenon, known as the Fermi Paradox, poses the question: given the high probability of habitable planets, why have we not detected signs of extraterrestrial civilizations? 

Scientists aren’t finding alien life because they are likely searching for the wrong signals or looking in the wrong places, a new study warns.

Astronomers are mainly focused on avoiding “false positive” cases of instruments being fooled by the biology-mimicking chemistry of non-living things on other planets. However, , the study says that they should consider false negatives as well. A false negative is when life is present on an alien world but it remains invisible to us because we aren’t looking for the right signals.

“We should be aware of these false-negative results,” Inge Loes ten Kate, an astrobiologist from the University of Amsterdam, said. “These shortcomings are not yet high on the research agenda.”

False negatives may yield from factors like poor preservation of biological traces, weak signals from planets or limits of existing instruments.

Some theories try to explain this:

The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Suggests that the conditions necessary for complex life are extraordinarily uncommon across the universe. 

Life Is Common, Intelligence Is Rare: Many scientists believe that while simple life forms may be abundant, the emergence of intelligence is a rare leap. 

The Great Filter: A theory that posits a barrier preventing most life from reaching our level of development, such as the leap from single-celled organisms to complex life. 

But what if there is no alien life?

 Source:

Vishwam Sankaran 2026 This could be why we still haven’t found alien life 28 May

The most detailed survey of the universe ever conducted starts now

 

Image Courtesy Of Nsf–Doe Vera C. Rubin Observatory/Noirlab/Slac​/Aura

Joel Kontinen

What do we know of the universe?  Not much, but the most detailed survey of the universe starts now.  Over 11 000 new asteroids discovered and ”they are expected to result in the most complete inventory of solar system objects ever created.”

“The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is finally beginning its mammoth survey of the universe. After a year of testing and calibration,it is starting the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which is poised to become the most detailed record of the universe ever captured.

For the next decade, Rubin will collect about 10 terabytes of data every night in the form of hundreds of high-resolution images of the southern sky. Each image will cover an area about 40 times the size of the full moon, and the completed survey will include nearly the entirety of the sky that is visible from the southern hemisphere.

This treasure trove of data will serve several purposes. The first, which has already begun, is to alert researchers to anything changing in the night sky, such as the appearance of supernovae or the motion of asteroids and comets. they are expected to result in the most complete inventory of solar system objects ever created,”

Source:

 Leah Crane 2026 The most detailed survey of the universe ever conducted starts now | New Scientist 30 June 

Early Homo sapiens may have lived in rainforests, new clues suggest — and it could overturn our understanding of human evolution

 

Image courtesy of Phil P Harris, CC BY-SA 2.5

Joel Kontinen

Did early humans live in the rainforests ages ago? This is what new study suggests.  

Nearly 70,000 years ago, modern humans created stunning rock art in an unexpected place: the tropical Indonesian island of Sulawe. The finding, announced in January, made headlines for being the oldest known rock art in the world.

But the discovery's location also highlighted another surprising finding: that members of our species, Homo sapiens, were thriving in the tropics tens of thousands of years ago.

But that perspective has been changing over the past few decades. Sulawesi's ancient rock art is one of several clues that modern humans may have lived in tropical rainforests for hundreds of thousands of years. That would mean modern humans could have been living in these hot, wet regions since soon after the emergence of our species in Africa around 300,000 years ago.

Understanding how, when and where modern humans inhabited rainforests — and how that shaped our evolution — "may give us an insight into something about what it means to be uniquely human," Patrick Roberts, an archaeologist and anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and author of the book "Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped World History" (Penguin, 2022), said, .

But the evolution thing is not true.

Conventional wisdom held that modern humans emerged from one parent population in an East African savanna and did not encounter rainforests until around 12,000 years ago, after agriculture emerged to support survival in these climes. The lack of H. sapiens fossils from Africa's tropics appeared to support this view.

Then, in 2017, scientists identified the oldest modern-human fossils — except they weren't in East Africa, but rather in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. The following year, Eleanor Scerri, an archaeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany, and her colleagues reviewed archaeological evidence, including the Jebel Irhoud fossils, and integrated it with genetic data from present-day populations. The evidence pointed toward H. sapiens originating from many subdivided populations across Africa.

Source:

Sophie Berdugo 2026 Early Homo sapiens may have lived in rainforests, new clues suggest — and it could overturn our understanding of human evolution | Live Science 26 June