Carbon credits are flawed, but they can still help save forest

 

Image courtesy of Heikki Valve, CC BY-SA 3.0

Joel Kontinen

Carbon credits are wrong, but they can save forests that is good for the environment.

In 1986, an energy CEO heard a briefing about climate change and felt guilty that his company was building a coal-fired power plant in Connecticut. The company eventually paid to plant trees for timber in Guatemala so farmers would stop cutting down intact forest, in theory compensating for the coal plant’s carbon emissions.

The idea would develop into markets that allow companies to offset their emissions by buying “voluntary” carbon credits that help avoid deforestation, among other measures. Advocates say land users should be paid to leave a forest standing. Critics say maybe the land users weren’t going to cut down the forest anyway.

Source:

 Alec Luhn 2026 Carbon credits are flawed, but they can still help save forests | New Scientist12 May 

Space storms could switch train signals and cause serious accidents

 

Joel Kontinen

Critical safety equipment in many train systems is vulnerable to disruption by space weather, which could lead to fatal accidents. Space storms can  wreak havoc in some UK train stations.

A number of electrical systems in the railways of many countries, including the UK, are vulnerable to space weather. In the worst case, a red signal could be turned green, potentially causing a deadly train crash, says Cameron Patterson at Lancaster University in the UK.

“You could have disruptions to signalling systems, which are crucial to railway safety,” he says. “We have to prepare for these things now, and getting that message across, I think, is really important.”

A number of electrical systems in the railways of many countries, including the UK, are vulnerable to space weather. In the worst case, a red signal could be turned green, potentially causing a deadly train crash, says Cameron Patterson at Lancaster University in the UK.

“You could have disruptions to signalling systems, which are crucial to railway safety,” he says. “We have to prepare for these things now, and getting that message across, I think, is really important.”

Source:

 Michael Le Page 2026 Space storms could switch train signals and cause serious accidents | New Scientist 26 May 

Millions of planets might form around supermassive black holes

 

Massive amounts of dust swirl around active nuclei at the centres of galaxies, and these discs could give rise to vast numbers of rocky planets, some even the size of stars. Image courtesy of NASA and M. Weiss/Chandra X-ray Center

Joel Kontinen

What does black holes done for planets? According to a recently published study, they form planets around supermassive black holes.

The active centres of galaxies might be regions of extraordinary planet formation, where millions of worlds are born.

Most galaxies in the universe, such as our own Milky Way, host a supermassive black hole at their centre. Most of the time, these black holes are quiescent, as there is no matter falling into them. But occasionally they become active and consume huge amounts of dust and gas, perhaps from a merger with another according to evolution, becoming an active galactic nucleus for millions of years.

Source:

By Jonathan O’Callaghan 2026 Millions of planets might form around supermassive black holes | New Scientist 28 May

Weird and wonderful sea pen found on Mystery Ridge

 

Image courtesy of Paul Satchell/The Nippon Foundation/Nekton Ocean Census/Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Joel Kontinen

An ongoing census of sea life in the South Atlantic has identified over 1000 new creatures, including a new species of sea pen.

Odd creatures are found in the depths of the sea.  If you think this picture looks a bit like a feather pen, then you’d be correct. Except it’s not the type that you can write with. It is a type of coral that is found  805  metres below the sea level.

Sea pens are a type of coral that live on the sea floor and are made up of several specialised polyps. This particular sea pen is new to science, and was discovered at a depth of 805 metres on Mystery Ridge off the South Sandwich Islands, a chain of islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It was found thanks to the Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census, a global programme aiming to discover 100,000 new marine species over the seas.

Source:

Michael Dalton 2026 Weird and wonderful sea pen found on Mystery Ridge | New Scientist 26 May 

 

Israel News: Why Javier Milei, the President of Argentina have closed relation with Israel?

Why Javier Milei, the President of Argentina have closed relation with Israel? 

There's a new T. rex from the dinosaur age — and it ruled the seas with a skull-crushing bite

 

An artist's reconstruction of Tylosaurus rex swimming in the Cretaceous seas of North America. Image courtesy of Alderon Games/Path of Titans.

Joel Kontinen

There's a new T. rex in town.  However,  this one didn't hunt on land. It ruled the ancient seas.

Scientists have described a new species of mosasaur, a member of a marine reptile group that lived at the same time as dinosaurs during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). The newly named species fits into an already known genus: Tylosaurus. But its new species name, Tylosaurus rex — T. rex, for short — sets it apart from the other mosasaur species in the group.

The species name means "king of the tylosaurs," according to a new study published  May 21 in the journal Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. According to evolution, the fossils are about 80 million years old and were discovered mostly in northern Texas decades ago.

The mosasaur T. rex measured up to 13 meters) long, or about the length of a tour bus. It had finely serrated teeth, unusually powerful jaws, and evidence on its fossils of violent combat with its own species.

While examining a fossil in the American Museum of Natural History's collection, Zietlow noticed that a specimen labeled as Tylosaurus proriger — a well-known mosasaur species first described in 1869 — didn't quite match others of its kind. The unusual fossil was discovered in 1979 near an artificial reservoir outside Dallas.

After comparing the specimen with the original name-bearing fossil of T. proriger held at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, Zietlow and her colleagues found that it belonged to a newfound species

Compared with T. proriger, the newly described T. rex was  4 metres longer, had finely serrated teeth (which T. proriger lacked) and lived several million years later. Most T. proriger fossils were discovered in what is now Kansas and are roughly 84 million years old, while the fossils now identified as T. rex are mostly from Texas and date to about 80 million years ago. At that time, the Western Interior Seaway stretched from the Gulf of Mexico up to the Arctic and was home to many sea creatures, including mosasaurs.

But the dates in the millions of years are inflated.  

Source:

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry 2026 There's a new T. rex from the dinosaur age — and it ruled the seas with a skull-crushing bite | Live Science May 21

 

 

 

 

The ‘doomsday’ glacier’s giant ice shelf is about to break away

 

Image courtesy of Chang W. Lee/New York Times/ Redux/eyevine

Joel Kontinen

The floating ice shelf of world’s widest glacier – Thwaites glacier in Antarctica – is detaching, with worrying implications for global sea-level rise.

Can global warming spell doom for in Antarctica? Some say that the climate was established by God at the end pf the global flood in Noah's time but others are  more sceptical. They say that men can destroy the planet.

Antarctica’s most threatened glacier is about be further destabilised, as the floating ice shelf in front of Thwaites glacier is set to break away.

“Its final demise could happen suddenly, and to avoid being caught on the hop, we have already prepared an ‘obituary’ press release,” says Rob Larter at the British Antarctic Survey.

Dubbed the “doomsday glacier”, Thwaites is about the size of Britain, but it is shrinking rapidly and is already responsible for 4 per cent of all global sea-level rise. Worse still, its collapse is expected to set off a domino effect in the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, ultimately resulting in a calamitous sea-level rise of 3.3 metres and changing the coastline of the entire planet.

Source:

Alison George 2026 The ‘doomsday’ glacier’s giant ice shelf is about to break away | New Scientist 18 May 

Natural sunscreen found in fish eggs can be made by E. coli factories

 

Image courtesy of WILDLIFE GmbH / Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Intelligent design has provided  zebrafish eggs to produce a chemical that keeps the suns rays  from harming people. The chemical is known as gadusol.

A team led by Ping Zhang at Jiangnan University, China, inserted genes from zebrafish into the bacterium Escherichia coli to give it the enzymes needed to synthesise gadusol. Then, by using small RNA molecules to dial up gadusol production in the bacteria and tweaking their growing conditions, they increased the yield by nearly 93 times, from 45.2 milligrams per litre of liquid growth medium to 4.2 grams per litre.

In experiments, gadusol displayed antioxidant properties comparable to vitamin C, suggesting it may help neutralise free radicals that cause damage in cells.

Gadusol is transparent, unlike melanin, and yet is perfectly tuned to block out harmful UV rays from the sun, which makes it ideal for organisms hiding from prey. “I think we haven’t necessarily given it the praise that it deserves,” says James Gagnon at the University of Utah, who was part of a team that discovered gadusol’s role as a sunscreen in fish embryos. “This is a great molecule.”

Gadusol is found in the eggs of zebrafish, salmon and sturgeon, as well as coral, where it protects organisms from ultraviolet damage. But it’s only found in small quantities so extracting it from organisms for use as a sunscreen is impractical

Gagnon says further testing is needed, but the compound is likely to be safe for humans and the environment because so many animals already use it. Thanks to its transparency, it might also avoid the milky residue that some current sunscreens leave on the skin.

“Everyone wants to hint that this is going to be a great sunscreen for humans,” says Gagnon.

Source:

 Matthew Sparkes 2026 Natural sunscreen found in fish eggs can be made by E. coli factories | New Scientist 13 May 

 

Asteroid to miss Earth by a quarter of the length from us to the moon

 

Image courtesy of  buradaki/Shutterstock

Joel Kontinen

An asteroid that missed the Earth by some 90, 000 kilometers was very real, It was not the object can was mentioned in the book of Revelation that was called bitterness as it caused the seas to become bitter.   

Asteroid 2026JH2 will zoom past Earth at a distance of only 90,000 kilometers  next week. It has enough mass to wipe out a city, but simulations suggest there is no chance of an impact for at least the next century.

An asteroid with the potential to ruin a city will pass Earth next week. 2026JH2, as it has been labelled by the astronomy community, is predicted to zoom by our planet at an estimated distance of 90,917 kilometers – only a quarter of the distance between us and the moon.

“In astronomical terms, it’s as close as you can get without hitting,” says Mark Norris at the University of Lancashire, UK.

 Source: 

Matthew Sparkes 2026 Asteroid set to fly very close to Earth | New Scientist 13 May 

Ancient teeth hint at links between Denisovans and Homo erectus

 

Tooth found in Sunjiadong, China, thought to belong to Homo erectus. Image courtesy of Qiaomei Fu, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Joel Kontinen

Six teeth roughly 400,000 years old have yielded some of the first ancient proteins thought to belong to Homo erectus, providing molecular clues to their relationships with other hominins.

Some evolutionists said that Denisovans and Homo erectus were relatives, as their teeth are similar. Homo erectus is thought to be fully human, just as the Denisovans, And the dates of the fossilized teeth are not correct. The date is described in the book of Genesis.     

For the first time, researchers have obtained substantial amounts of preserved protein from fossils believed to belong Homo erectus.

While proteins have been recovered from H. erectus fossils before, this is the first time they have revealed meaningful information about the species. The proteins suggest that H. erectus interbred with another group of hominins in Asia, the Denisovans.

 Source:

Michael Marshall 2026 Ancient teeth hint at links between Denisovans and Homo erectus | New Scientist 13 May 

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