Pope offers refuge to Myanmar's jailed Suu Kyi: report
AFP
Tue 24 September 2024 


Aung San Suu Kyi, 79, is serving a 27-year prison sentence on charges ranging from corruption to not respecting Covid pandemic restrictions (Vincenzo PINTO) (Vincenzo PINTO/AFP/AFP)

Pope Francis has offered refuge on Vatican territory for Myanmar's detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Italian media said on Tuesday.

"I asked for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and I met her son in Rome. I have proposed to the Vatican to give her shelter on our territory," the pope said, according to an account of his meetings with Jesuits in Asia during a trip there earlier this month.

The Corriere della Sera daily published an article by Italian priest Antonio Spadaro that provided extracts from the private meetings, which took place in Indonesia, East Timor and Singapore between September 2 and 13.

"We cannot stay silent about the situation in Myanmar today. We must do something," the pope is reported as saying.

"The future of your country should be one of peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of everyone and respect for a democratic system that enables everyone to contribute to the common good."

Suu Kyi, 79, is serving a 27-year prison sentence on charges ranging from corruption to not respecting Covid pandemic restrictions.

Rights groups say her closed-door trial was a sham designed to remove her from the political scene.

AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment on the reported offer from Pope Francis.

Suu Kyi's son Kim Aris told AFP he was sure his mother would be grateful for the offer.

"I am sure that Maymay would express her gratitude to Pope Francis for urging the military junta to release her and his proposal to the Vatican to offer her refuge," he said, using a Burmese word for mother.

"Nonetheless, I am doubtful that the junta would take such a request into account, as they remain fearful of Maymay's popularity among the Burmese people, even from outside of the country."

In 2015 Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won Myanmar's first democratic election in 25 years.

The military arrested her when it staged a coup in 2021 and she is said by local media to be suffering health problems in detention.

The 1991 Nobel Peace laureate was once hailed as a beacon for human rights.

But she fell from grace among international supporters in 2017, accused of doing nothing to stop the army persecuting the country's mainly Muslim Rohingya minority.

The crackdown is the subject of an ongoing United Nations genocide investigation and persecution continues, according to Rohingya refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi remains widely popular in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which has been in turmoil since the 2021 coup, with the junta fighting both established ethnic rebel groups and newer pro-democracy forces.

cmk/gab/gil/yad/rma/gv

AI-generated images of stranded elephants circulate in Myanmar after Typhoon Yagi

AFP Thailand / AFP Sri Lanka
Tue 24 September 2024 

Two AI-generated images of elephants stuck in trees have been shared online alongside a false claim that they were taken in Myanmar after Typhoon Yagi rolled through Southeast Asia. The creators of the images -- originally shared in Facebook groups dedicated to AI-generated content -- told AFP that they did not show real events.

"An elephant got stuck in a tree even after waters receded in Taungoo," read a Burmese-language Facebook post uploaded on September 19, 2024.

The images began circulating on Burmese social media after water from the Sittaung River spilled over and submerged 30 villages in Taungoo township, in Myanmar's Bago Region, forcing hundreds of residents to flee in September 2024 (archived link).

Screenshot of the first false Facebook post taken on September 24, 2024


Screenshot of the second false Facebook post taken on September 24, 2024

Typhoon Yagi battered Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Thailand triggering floods and landslides that have killed hundreds of people across the region, according to official figures (archived link).


In Myanmar, the death toll had climbed to 419 as of September 24, 2024, according to the junta, AFP reported.

The images were shared alongside false claims on Facebook here, here, here, here, here and here.

However, the images were originally published in Facebook groups dedicated to sharing AI-generated content.
Facebook groups

Reverse image searches on Google found the first photo published in a group called "Lightroom Editing".

The group -- with more than 297,000 members -- was created by photo-editing enthusiasts in Sri Lanka.

One of the group's administrators, Janaka Senevirathne, uploaded the photo on March 25, 2024 (archived link).

Screenshot of the image posted in the "Lightroom Editing" Facebook group, taken on September 24, 2024

Senevirathne, who regularly uploads AI-generated content and describes himself as a digital creator, confirmed to AFP that he created the image using AI technology.

Another reverse image search on Google led to the second photo uploaded by Tatarat Trainarong (Earl) in a Thai-based Facebook group dedicated to AI content on March 23, 2024 (archived link).


Screenshot of the image posted in AI CREATIVES THAILAND Facebook group, taken on September 24, 2024

"CCTV News has brought you some weird images caught on camera – from a dog who lost its temper because the monk fed him late to an inexplicable mystery," read the caption in Thai language.

The post's author, Tatarat Trainarong, confirmed with AFP on September 23, 2024 that he used the generative AI program Dall-E 3 to create the images published in the post.
Signs of manipulation

Furthermore, visual clues in the images indicate that the images were created with AI.

In the first photo, the jeep's windscreen and number plate were blurred, and the "Yala National Park" watermark at the bottom-right corner is misspelt.

In the second photo, the vehicle's light source was not aligned with the headlights while the elephant did not appear in a natural balancing posture on the tree.

In addition, in the bottom-right corner of the photo, there was a watermark with the creator's name, Tatarat Trainarong.

Below is a screenshot of the AI-generated images, with visual inconsistencies highlighted by AFP:

Screenshot of the AI-generated images, with visual inconsistencies highlighted by AFP

Fabricated images are best ascertained by identifying visual inconsistencies, according to AFP's guide to spotting AI-generated images.

AFP previously debunked the same image shared in Sri Lanka here.

Parts of the Sahara Desert are turning green amid an influx of heavy rainfall

JULIA JACOBO
Mon 23 September 2024



One of the driest regions on earth is shifting green, as an influx of heavy rainfall causes vegetation to grow in the typically barren landscape.

Satellite images released by NASA show pockets of plant life popping up all over the Sahara Desert after an extratropical cyclone drenched a large swath of northwestern Africa on Sept. 7 and Sept. 8.

Treeless landscapes in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya -- areas that rarely receive rain -- are now seeing traces of green sprouting up, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.

PHOTO: The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color image (right) of the resulting runoff and floodwater on September 10, 2024. The image on the left shows the same area on August 14. (NASA)

The plants include shrubs and trees in low-lying areas, like riverbeds, Sylwia Trzaska, a climate variability researcher at the Columbia Climate School, told ABC News.

It is not wholly unusual for the plant life to sprout in the Sahara when a deluge of rain pours in, past research has shown. When parched regions in this part of Africa get heavy rainfall, the flora responds almost readily, Peter de Menocal, president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told ABC News.

"When you get these really exceptional rainfall events, the dunes become these just incredibly verdant and flowered fields where the plants will just instantly grow for a short period of time to take advantage of," he said.

MORE: Why the Atlantic Basin has been unusually quiet as peak hurricane season nears

The region was once permanently home to lush greenery. Between 11,000 and 5,000 years ago, the Sahara was covered with vegetation and lakes, according to a 2012 paper authored by De Menocal.

"It looks like a desert, and then when the rain comes, then everything starts greening very quickly," Trzaska said.

PHOTO: Extensive flooding in the Diffa region in Niger. (Giles Clarke/Getty Images)

In addition, lakes that are typically empty are filling up due to the most recent event, Moshe Armon, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Earth Sciences and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said in a statement released by NASA.

Between 2000 and 2021, Sebkha el Melah, a salt flat in central Algeria, has only filled six times in the past, according to research conducted by Armon and his colleagues.

Preliminary satellite analysis shows rainfall accumulations topping half a foot in the areas affected, according to NASA. Some areas of the Sahara receive just a few inches of rain per year.

MORE: Arctic fossils indicate ice shelf is not as stable as previously thought, scientists say

While some degree of rainfall every summer is normal due to the West African Monsoon season, it is unusual for the Intertropical Convergence Zone -- or the tropical rain belt -- to reach as far north as the Sahara, De Menocal said.

PHOTO: A view of Africa from NASA. (NASA)

The northward displacement of the storm track helped a developing system dump a year's worth of rainfall in some areas in just a matter of days, according to NASA. The system formed over the Atlantic Ocean and extended far southward, pulling moisture from equatorial Africa into the northern Sahara, according to NASA.


Since mid-July, the Intertropical Convergence Zone has been sending storms into the southern Sahara, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center.


While much of the torrential rain fell in sparsely populated areas, more than 1,000 people have died from flooding in parts of West and Central Africa, including Chad, Nigeria, Mali and Niger, The Associated Press reported.

About 4 million people across 14 African countries have been impacted by flooding, according to the World Food Programme.

MORE: Prolonged ice-free periods putting Hudson Bay polar bear population at risk of extinction: Study

Record-high ocean temperatures in the northern Atlantic ocean is contributing to the shift in the rain belt, bringing heavy rainfall typical of regions in the equator farther north, De Menocal said.

The transition from El Niño to La Niña likely affected how far north the Intertropical Convergence Zone moved, Trzaska said.

PHOTO: Flash flooding in Merzouga, a small Moroccan town in the Sahara Desert, near the Algerian border. (Majority World/ Universal Images/Getty Images)

Climate change could cause the rain belt to shift farther northward in the future, according to a study published in Nature earlier this year. But as the ocean temperatures elsewhere in the world catch up to the Atlantic the rain belt will likely shift back down, even south of the equator, De Menocal said.

"Decades from now, when the larger oceans have warmed more uniformly, we expect the rain belt to actually go back to its original position, and it can even shift into the other hemisphere," he said.

MORE: What to know about Saharan dust affecting the US and how it can affect health

The northward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone across West Africa has also likely contributed to a lull in tropical activity in the Atlantic Basin, according to experts.

Disturbances moving across this region are then entering the Atlantic over relatively cooler waters, Dan Harnos, a meteorologist at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, told ABC News last month. With greater exposure to dry air from the mid-latitudes, the chances of a storm developing are hindered.

Parts of the Sahara Desert are turning green amid an influx of heavy rainfall originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Climate change doubles chance of floods like those in Central Europe, report says

Reuters
Tue 24 September 2024 

Flooding Danube in Hungary


WARSAW (Reuters) - Climate change has made downpours like the one that caused devastating floods in central Europe this month twice as likely to occur, a report said on Wednesday, as its scientific authors urged policymakers to act to stop global warming.

The worst flooding to hit central Europe in at least two decades has left 24 people dead, with towns strewn with mud and debris, buildings damaged, bridges collapsed and authorities left with a bill for repairs that runs into billions of dollars.

The report from World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists that studies the effects of climate change on extreme weather events, found that the four days of rainfall brought by Storm Boris were the heaviest ever recorded in central Europe.


It said that climate change had made such downpours at least twice as likely and 7% heavier.

"Yet again, these floods highlight the devastating results of fossil fuel-driven warming," Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at Imperial College London's Grantham Institute and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

"Until oil, gas and coal are replaced with renewable energy, storms like Boris will unleash even heavier rainfall, driving economy-crippling floods."

The report said that while the combination of weather patterns that caused the storm - including cold air moving over the Alps and very warm air over the Mediterranean and the Black Seas - was unusual, climate change made such storms more intense and more likely.

According to the report, such a storm is expected to occur on average about once every 100 to 300 years in today's climate with 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming from pre-industrial levels.

However, it said that such storms will result in at least 5% more rain and occur about 50% more frequently than now if warming from pre-industrial levels reaches 2 C, which is expected to happen in the 2050s.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Ros Russell)

Deadly flooding in Central Europe made twice as likely by climate change

SUMAN NAISHADHAM
Updated Tue 24 September 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — Human-caused climate change doubled the likelihood and intensified the heavy rains that led to devastating flooding in Central Europe earlier this month, a new flash study found.

Torrential rain in mid-September from Storm Boris pummeled a large part of central Europe, including Romania, Poland, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany, and caused widespread damage. The floods killed 24 people, damaged bridges, submerged cars, left towns without power and in need of significant infrastructure repairs.

The severe four-day rainfall was “by far” the heaviest ever recorded in Central Europe and twice as likely because of warming from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, World Weather Attribution, a collection of scientists that run rapid climate attribution studies, said Wednesday from Europe. Climate change also made the rains between 7% and 20% more intense, the study found.

“Yet again, these floods highlight the devastating results of fossil fuel-driven warming," said Joyce Kimutai, the study's lead author and a climate researcher at Imperial College, London.

To test the influence of human-caused climate change, the team of scientists analyzed weather data and used climate models to compare how such events have changed since cooler preindustrial times to today. Such models simulate a world without the current 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming since preindustrial times, and see how likely a rainfall event that severe would be in such a world.

The study analyzed four-day rainfall events, focusing on the countries that felt severe impacts.

Though the rapid study hasn't been peer-reviewed, it follows scientifically accepted techniques.

“In any climate, you would expect to occasionally see records broken," said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College, London, climate scientist who coordinates the attribution study team. But, “to see records being broken by such large margins, that is really the fingerprint of climate change. And that is only something that we see in a warming world.”

Some of the most severe impacts were felt in the Polish-Czech border region and Austria, mainly in urban areas along major rivers. The study noted that the death toll from this month's flooding was considerably lower than during catastrophic floods in the region in 1997 and 2002. Still, infrastructure and emergency management systems were overwhelmed in many cases and will require billions of euros to fix.

Last week, European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen pledged billions of euros in aid for countries that suffered damage to infrastructure and housing from the floods.

The World Weather Attribution study also warned that in a world with even more warming — specifically 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since preindustrial times, the likelihood of ferocious four-day storms would grow by 50% compared to current levels. Such storms would grow in intensity, too, the authors found.

The heavy rainfall across Central Europe was caused by what's known as a “Vb depression” that forms when cold polar air flows from the north over the Alps and meets warm air from Southern Europe. The study's authors found no observable change in the number of similar Vb depressions since the 1950s.

The World Weather Attribution group launched in 2015 largely due to frustration that it took so long to determine whether climate change was behind an extreme weather event. Studies like theirs, within attribution science, use real-world weather observations and computer modeling to determine the likelihood of a particular happening before and after climate change, and whether global warming affected its intensity.

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Global heating ‘doubled’ chance of extreme rain in Europe in September

Ajit Niranjan Europe environment correspondent

THE GUARDIAN 
Tue 24 September 2024

Residents wade through flood water after the Nysa Klodzka River flooded the town of Lewin Brzeski in south-west Poland on 19 September.Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

Planet-heating pollution doubled the chance of the extreme levels of rain that hammered central Europe in September, a study has found.

Researchers found global heating aggravated the four days of heavy rainfall that led to deadly floods in countries from Austria to Romania.

The rains were made at least 7% stronger by climate change, World Weather Attribution (WWA) found, which led to towns being hit with volumes of water that would have been half as likely to occur if humans had not heated the planet.

“The trend is clear,” said Bogdan Chojnicki, a climate scientist at Poznań University of Life Sciences, and co-author of the study. “If humans keep filling the atmosphere with fossil fuel emissions, the situation will be more severe.”

Storm Boris stalled over central Europe in mid-September and unleashed record-breaking amounts of rain upon Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The heavy rains turned calm streams into wild rivers, triggering floods that wrecked homes and killed two dozen people.

The researchers said measures to adapt had lowered the death toll compared with similar floods that hit the region in 1997 and 2002. They called for better flood defences, warning systems and disaster-response plans, and warned against continuing to rebuild in flood-prone regions.

“These floods indicate just how costly climate change is becoming,” said Maja Vahlberg, technical adviser at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and co-author of the study. “Even with days of preparation, flood waters still devastated towns, destroyed thousands of homes and saw the European Union pledge €10bn in aid.”

Rapid attribution studies, which use established methods but are published before going through lengthy peer-review processes, examine how human influence affects extreme weather in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

The scientists compared the rainfall recorded in central Europe over four days in September with amounts simulated for a world that is 1.3C cooler – the level of warming caused to date by burning fossil fuels and destroying nature. They attributed a “doubling in likelihood and a 7% increase in intensity” to human influence.

But the results are “conservative”, the scientists wrote, because the models do not explicitly model convection and so may underestimate rainfall. “We emphasise that the direction of change is very clear, but the rate is not.”

Related: Storm Boris batters central Europe – in pictures

Physicists have shown that every degree celsius of warming allows the air to hold 7% more moisture, but whether it does so depends on the availability of water. The rains in central Europe were unleashed when cold air from the Arctic met warm, wet air from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Warmer seas enhance the rainy part of the hydrological cycle, though the trend on parts of the land is towards drier conditions, said Miroslav Trnka, a climate scientist at the Global Change Research Institute, who was not involved in the study. When the conditions were right, he said, “you can have floods on steroids”.

Trnka compared the factors that result in extreme rainfall to playing the lottery. The increase in risk from global heating, he said, was like buying more lottery tickets, doing so over a longer period of time, and changing the rules so more combinations of numbers result in a win.

“If you bet long enough, you have a higher chance of a jackpot,” said Trnka.

The study found heavier four-day rainfall events would hit if the world heats 2C above preindustrial levels, with a further increase from today of about 5% in rainfall intensity and 50% in likelihood.

Other factors could increase this even more, such as the waviness of the jet stream, which some scientists suspect is increasingly trapping weather systems in one place as a result of global heating. A study published in Nature Scientific Reports on Monday projected that such blocking systems would increase under medium- and worst-case emissions scenarios.

Hayley Fowler, a climate scientist at Newcastle University, who was not involved in the study, said: “These large storms, cut off from the jet stream, are able to stagnate in one place and produce huge amounts of rainfall, fuelled by increased moisture and energy from oceans that are record-shatteringly hot.”

“These ‘blocked’ slow-moving storms are becoming more frequent and are projected to increase further with additional warming,” she added. “The question is not whether we need to adapt for more of these types of storm but can we.”

WWA described the week following Storm Boris as “hyperactive” because 12 disasters around the world triggered its criteria for analysis, more than in any week in the organisation’s history.

The study did not try to work out how much global heating had increased the destruction wreaked by the rains but the researchers said even minor increases in rainfall disproportionately increased damages.

“Almost everywhere in the world it is the case that a small increase in the rainfall leads to a similar order-of-magnitude increase in flooding,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute and co-author of the study. “But that leads to a much larger increase in the damages.”

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Climate Central Europe Floods
FILE - Firefighters walk through a flooded road of Jesenik, Czech Republic, Sept. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek, File)
ASSOCIATED PRESS

‘We’re getting rid of everything’: floods destroy homes and lives in Czech Republic

Ajit Niranjan
Tue 24 September 2024 

A resident and his dog are evacuated from his flooded house in Jesenik. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Jarmila Šišmová did not know what to expect when rain began to pound the small town of Litovel in the Czech Republic, and she was not prepared for the nightmare that would await her once it stopped.

The authorities told Šišmová to leave her home, so she took her children to their grandmother to wait out the storm. As the water level rose, a neighbour – one of the few on her street who stayed behind – checked the front of the house and saw the sandbags holding firm. But from the back, Šišmová would soon find out, the flood had burst into the building, drenching her belongings in dirty brown water.

“It was devastating for me,” said Šišmová, a sales manager and single mother of three, gesturing to a skip full of furniture, clothes and toys. “We’re getting rid of everything.”

Stories like Šišmová’s are being echoed around the world. The Czech Republic sat at the centre of a storm that has killed two dozen people across central Europe and prompted the EU to promise €10bn in aid to flood-stricken countries. It came as torrential rains swept through parts of Africa and Asia, triggering inundations that have killed more than 1,000 people. The UK was also hit by downpours on Monday, with more than a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours in some parts of the country.

The extreme levels of rain in Europe were made twice as likely by planet-heating pollution, a rapid attribution study found on Wednesday, and 7% stronger.

Miroslav Trnka, a climate scientist from the Global Change Research Institute, said a 7% average increase may not sound like a lot but can be enough to render a dam useless.

“It’s a binary problem” he said. “It’s not like flood defences partly work, they either don’t work or fully work, and there is a relatively small space in between.”

In towns along the Czech Republic’s border with Poland, where the floods hit hardest, residents described how the supercharged torrents of water tore their lives apart.Interactive

In Krnov, where three people died, the city library said it lost more than 20,000 books to the flood waters and only had enough time to save the most important volumes from its collection. Jakub Mruz, the director of the library, said the loss was “negligible” compared with what other people had experienced, but “it is sad and painful for anyone who loves books to see something like this.”

In Jesenik, where one person died, nearly 500mm of rain fell in five days, aggravated by wind patterns in the mountains and the bare slopes on which bark beetles had ravaged spongy spruce forests. The sewage system in the city failed and the flood smeared a layer of toxic mud across its streets.

“Now it’s dried up, people are breathing the dust and getting diarrhoea,” said Adriana Černá, an executive board member of People in Need, a humanitarian group working with the rescue services. “From day to day the situation is getting better. But there’s a big mess.”

Scientists have shown that warm air can hold more moisture – about 7% for each 1C increase in temperature – which allows for more violent rainfall if enough water is available.

Mountain towns such as Jesenik are particularly vulnerable. A study last year found a 15% increase in extreme rainfall per degree of warming at high altitude – double that expected by the physical relationship between temperature and moisture content.

In Litovel, further south, Petr Švancr, whose guesthouse was inundated, estimated the damage would come to 2m Czech crowns (£66,000). “The hotel’s closed, the restaurant is closed, everything is closed. My life has closed – it’s finished.”

Šišmová, who moved to Litovel 10 years ago, said she had cried in recent days because she no longer knew if she wanted to live there.

“If you have to start from zero, you can start anywhere,” she said. “I don’t know if I want to be part of another flood in a few years.”

In 1997, central Europe was devastated by what was dubbed the “flood of the century” – a disaster that killed 56 people in Poland and 50 in the Czech Republic. Since then, investments in systems to predict rain, warn communities and manage water have lowered the death toll from floods even when rains have hit hard.

But Michal Žák, a meteorologist at Czech Television, said although more rain fell over the total period in 1997 than in 2024, the one-day maximum amounts were greater in the latest disaster. “The extremity of the precipitation in the models was quite impressive,” said Žák, who had been alarmed by the projections. “I was not so sure it would really happen, but finally it did.”

Volunteers have been arriving to help clean up, with authorities asking that they register with aid groups before arrival. Václav Kvapil, a carpenter who runs a guesthouse in a village near Jesenik with his wife, said they hosted 80 volunteers for free after prospective visitors cancelled their reservations.

“We were surprised how many people wanted to come,” he said. “In the end, we were forced to refuse some people because the house was so full.”

First Look At Mystery Object Shot Down Over Canada By F-22 Raptor Last Year

Joseph Trevithick
Tue, September 24, 2024

Canadian authorities have released an image of an unidentified object that was shot down over the country's Yukon Territory by a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter in February 2023.


Canadian authorities have released an image of an unidentified object that was shot down over the country’s Yukon Territory by a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter in February 2023. This is the first image of any of a trio of still-unidentified objects that were downed over the United States and Canada that month, details about which remain scant. The new disclosure continues to raise more questions about those incidents given that the picture appears to have been declassified within days of the shootdown, but was then withheld from release until now.

Canada’s CTV News first published the image of what is also known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) 23, seen at the top of this story and below, along with an accompanying string of partially redacted internal emails from members of the Canadian armed forces earlier today. UAP is the term U.S., Canadian, and other authorities currently use to refer to what have been commonly described as unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the past. The outlet said it independently verified the records after recieving them from an unnamed source who had obtained them via an Access to Information request. Canada’s Access to Information Act is similar in many respects to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but the former is only accessible to Canadian citizens.

Canadian DND via Access to Information Request Via CTV News

UAP 23 was downed over the Yukon on February 11, 2023. This came two days after another unidentified object, also known as UAP 20, was shot down in U.S. airspace off the northern coast of Alaska. A shootdown of a third unidentified object as it passed over Lake Huron came on February 12. This all followed U.S. and Canadian authorities tracking a Chinese spy balloon passing through their airspace for days before deciding to destroy it as it soared out over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.

The very low-resolution and grainy image we now have of UAP 23 shows a broadly doughnut-like shape with an open center, as well as an apparent notch or gap in its circumference on one side. It is possible that what is seen is light reflecting only from certain parts and that what is visible is not truly representative of its full shape.

The quality of the picture, which CTV News notes “appears to be a photocopy of an email printout,” makes it impossible to discern any definitive details. “The image appears to have been taken from an aircraft below it, although that has not been confirmed,” CTV News‘ report adds.

“The best description we have is: Visual – a cylindrical object. The top quarter is metallic, remainder white. 20 foot wire hanging below with a package of some sort suspended from it,” one of the associated emails, dated February 11, 2023, says. Looking at the released picture again with this description in hand it looks like it might show a balloon catching the sun with a payload underneath.

At the time, Canadian authorities described what had been shot down over the Yukon as a “small, cylindrical object.”

An F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, like the one seen here, shot down UAP 23 over the Yukon on February 11, 2023. USAF Senior Airman Julia Lebens

“It is unknown whether it [UAP 23] poses an armed threat or has intelligence collection capabilities,” according to a memo provided to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 15, 2023, says. “The area in which the impact [after shootdown] occurred is a known (caribou) migration route, which opens the possibility of future accidental discovery by Indigenous hunters.”

CTV News published the heavily redacted document, which it also received from an unarmed source who obtained it first via an Access to Information request, in September 2023. The release of the memo had already raised new and still largely unanswered questions about what Canadian and U.S. authorities may or may not know about the trio of downed objects, as well as what other UAPs had been monitored in either country’s airspace before then, as you can read more about here.

No remains of any of the three still-unidentified objects brought down in February 2023 are known to have been recovered. The owners and/or operators of those objects, and whatever their purposes might have been, remain unknown, at least publicly. Past reports have suggested UAP 23, specifically, may have been a so-called “pico” balloon often launched by amateur radio enthusiasts.

U.S. officials subsequently said that the trio of objects appeared to be benign, which looks to have been a direct factor in withholding the image of UAP 23 from the public. The unredacted portions of the newly disclosed Emails, which you can find here, show a clear push between February 11 and February 15, 2023, including from then-Canadian Chief of the Defense Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre, to not only declassify the image, but also proactively release it, including on social media. However, by the end of February 15, the emails have taken a decidedly different tone.

Then-Canadian Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre, at left, walks with Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David Thompson, at right, during a visit to the Pentagon in November 2023. USAF Eric Dietrich

“Should the image be released, it would be via the CAF [Canadian Armed Forces] social media accounts,” Taylor Paxton, then-acting Assistant Deputy Minister for Public Affairs with Canada’s Department of National Defense, writes in one Email. “Given the current public environment and statements related to the object being benign, releasing the image may create more questions/confusion, regardless of the text that will accompany the post.”

Major Doug Keirstead, Public Affairs Officer to Chief of the Defense Staff, subsequently sent another Email to his boss, Gen. Eyre, reiterating advice from acting Assistant Deputy Minister Taylor, as well as others, to hold off on releasing the image “pending U.S. engagement.”

The War Zone has reached out to the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense and the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) for more information.

If the goal behind not releasing this image and any others from the Febraury 2023 shootdowns was to avoid confusion and speculation, it only appears to have had the opposite impact. The War Zone, along with others, has tried to obtain imagery from these incidents from the U.S. side on multiple occasions to no avail and we have called into question the puzzling optics of not doing so in the past.

Amazing how quickly they declassified the MQ-9's MTS-B sensor footage of the Su-27 collision but we still haven't even gotten a single still frame of the 3 objects NORAD shot down over North America during the great balloon hunt.

Quite telling.

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) March 16, 2023

Even before February 2023, many members of Congress in the United States with access to classified information had criticized and otherwise called into question the U.S. military’s attitude towards UAP issues, broadly. The Department of Defense did establish an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022 as a focal point for tracking and investigating all things UAP, but significant questions have been raised since about its resourcing and authorities. There have also been as yet unsubstantiated accusations of AARO and others within the U.S. government engaging in more active coverups.

“Data release and footage is prioritized based on the geopolitical environment at the time,” then-head of AARO Sean Kirkpatrick said in response to a question from The War Zone about why imagery from the February shootdowns had not been released at a press briefing in October 2023. “So engagements with Chinese fighters, Russian fighters have a much larger priority in getting it through the review process or declassification than UAPs or other similar engagements.”

“We are however, working through those processes, which all exist and we’ve got several of them actually already declassified and ready to update on our website [which] we’ll be doing on the next update to the website,” Kirkpatrick, who left AARO in December 2023, added at that time. “And we’re putting them out as quickly as we can get them through their proper steps.”

In a report released earlier this year, the Department of Defense’s own Office of the Inspector General (DODIG) went so far as to warn that a continued “lack of a comprehensive, coordinated approach to address” UAP issues “may pose a threat to military forces and national security.” The War Zone has repeatedly highlighted the significant evidence that a substantial number of UAP sightings are not only explainable, but are likely drones, high-altitude balloons, and other uncrewed aerial assets that hostile actors are using to gather intelligence on critical capabilities and installations in and round the United States.

A more recent Congressional effort to push for more UAP transparency through an amendment to the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for the 2025 Fiscal Year looks to have collapsed, at least for now.



UFO UPDATE:
THE UAP DISCLOSURE ACT FAILS TO MAKE THE CUT FOR THE MANAGER'S AMENDMENT TO THE NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) and ranking Republican Roger Wicker (R-MS) yesterday (Sept. 19, 2024) filed a massive… pic.twitter.com/qVZdgUjLmF

— D. Dean Johnson (@ddeanjohnson) September 20, 2024

It will be interesting now to see whether or not the Canadian government’s decision to release the image of UAP 23, such as it is, and the accompanying emails, will lead to further disclosures about the February 2023 shootdowns by that country or the United States.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

B.C. man speaks out on wrongful arrest after watchdog slams RCMP conduct at Fairy Creek

CBC
Tue, September 24, 2024 

Brian Smallshaw speaks with officers before his arrest at Fairy Creek in 2021. (Tom Mitchell - image credit)

A British Columbia man is speaking out after the RCMP watchdog chastised a controversial unit for its "frequent unreasonable actions" at Fairy Creek in 2021.

Brian Smallshaw, a web developer and historian from Salt Spring Island, said he suspected the force was breaking the law and breaching rights when arresting activists during protests against old-growth logging on Vancouver Island.

But now that the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission has upheld his allegations, he knows it.

In a scathing report completed last month, the commission found the Mounties wrongfully arrested Smallshaw while he was hiking three years ago when he wouldn't submit to a search he considered unconstitutional.

The company that owns the logging rights in the contested area, Teal-Jones Group, was granted an injunction in B.C. Supreme Court prohibiting protesters from blocking access to roads and company activity.

The report harshly criticizes the RCMP's Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) for using legally unjustified, "disproportionately intrusive" methods when enforcing that injunction.

"The commission is concerned about similarly broad and intrusive strategies being implemented during future protests, leading to similarly unreasonable searches and arrests," says the report.

Smallshaw is led away in cuffs on September 7, 2021.

Smallshaw is led away in cuffs on September 7, 2021. (Tom Mitchell)

The report, which Smallshaw agreed to share in full with CBC Indigenous, says the complaints commission made similar findings about C-IRG in three subsequent reviews, which are not yet public.

"Indeed, the RCMP C-IRG has repeatedly acted in a way that is contrary to the jurisprudence and to the rule of law," reads the report.

C-IRG was established in 2017 to deal with anticipated Indigenous-led protests against resource extraction projects, namely the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and Coastal GasLink pipeline, its founding documents show.

The same unit faces abuse of process proceedings launched by First Nations activists who allege the unit violated their Charter rights during the Coastal GasLink pipeline dispute in northern B.C.

The evidence there includes recordings of Mounties mocking activists arrested at Wet'suwet'en-led blockades as "orcs" and "ogre" and laughing while discussing beating a man and twisting his genitals during one arrest.

Smallshaw said he became determined to challenge C-IRG's exclusion zone practices after observing what he considered disturbing and heavy-handed police tactics.

His historical research has examined the internment and dispossession of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War and looked at the ways governments have used the law against different groups of people, Smallshaw said.

"I think we really have to be vigilant with governments and police agencies to know what they're doing, watch what they're doing, and be concerned when they start to overstep their bounds," he said.

'A recipe for a police state'

The review found two Mounties tried to subject Smallshaw to an intrusive search to enter an exclusion zone that was overly broad, then groundlessly arrested him and released him without charges.

The watchdog agency cites leading court decisions that warn it "is a recipe for a police state, not a free and democratic society" when police use intrusive powers as a first resort to prevent rather than investigate crime.

The arresting officers were "perfunctory, grudging, and dismissive" when asked why they removed their name tags, which they were ordered to do at Fairy Creek, a policy the commission says hinders police accountability.

"The public might fear that police officers who cannot be identified will act with impunity," the review says.

The commission concluded this policy was unreasonable and also found one officer acted unreasonably when wearing a "Thin Blue Line" patch on his uniform, contrary to RCMP policy.

"The arrest raises serious questions about the quality of the training given to RCMP members acting to enforce the injunction, and about the attitudes of the individual police officers on the ground towards the rule of law and civil liberties," says the report.

In a statement, the RCMP said it values independent reviews and welcomes commission findings and recommendations at the conclusion of its investigations. The RCMP agreed with the recommendations, including that someone should apologize to Smallshaw.

'Carte blanche'

David Milward, a law professor at the University of Victoria and member of the Beardy's and Okemasis Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, said the commission's concerns are justified.

When you have exclusion zones of enormous size and infinite duration, strategically designed to cut off access by as many protesters as possible, "that starts to raise problems for the rule of law, when you just give the RCMP that kind of carte blanche," Milward said.

He suggested the Smallshaw report should serve as a reminder that limits on police powers are necessary to preserve democracy.

"If you're too condoning towards police conduct that runs roughshod over civil liberties and everything else, you run the risk of losing what you took for granted," he said.

The law professor previously reviewed C-IRG's founding documents, which CBC Indigenous obtained under access to information law.

At that time, Milward called the unit's focus on information collection and monitoring of Indigenous activism "a pretty scary dive off the slope to preventative repression, but it's targeted specifically towards Indigenous peoples."

The commission's latest review reinforces his initial view, he said.

For his part, Smallshaw said he is mostly satisfied with the commission's findings but saw a shortcoming in the lack of criticism for senior officers who greenlit the operation and drew up the policies.

The commission is doing a systemic investigation of C-IRG's operations that may cover those issues.

The unit was rebranded as the Critical Response Unit (CRU-BC) in April

SPACE/COSMOLOGY

NASA Scientists Startled When Mars Rover Finds Rock With Stripes

Sharon Adarlo

FUTURISM
Tue, September 24, 2024 


Rock the Casbah

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has encountered something unlike anything else discovered on the Red Planet: a zebra-striped rock that sticks out like a sore thumb in the midst of the planet's dusty, notoriously red landscape.

The rover found the unusual stone, measuring about 7.8 inches in width, last week, according to NASA in a statement about the disovery, while the craft was exploring the Jezero Crater, located north of the planet's equator and which is believed to have been the site of an ancient lake and river delta.

"The science team thinks that this rock has a texture unlike any seen in Jezero Crater before, and perhaps all of Mars," reads the statement from the space agency. "Our knowledge of its chemical composition is limited, but early interpretations are that igneous and/or metamorphic processes could have created its stripes."


Researchers are now calling the rock "Freya Castle" — a nod to a craggy peak in the Grand Canyon — and are surmising that it came from somewhere at a higher elevation, according to NASA. Basically, this loose stone rolled there and gathered no moss.
Stone Alone

Freya Castle isn't the only weird rock that Perseverance has found this year at the crater. Earlier this summer, the probe chanced upon an arrow-shaped slab with tiny "leopard spots" that could hold tantalizing evidence of microbes from billions of years ago, back when scientists believe there might have been water on the surface of Mars.

Perseverance took a core sample of that rock, now called "Cheyava Falls," for further analysis. The rover has also found two other boulders, nicknamed "Atoko Point" and "Bunsen Peak," both of which may have hold more clues on Mars' early history.

These are all incredible finds for Perseverance, which landed on Mars back in 2021 and whose current mission is to find any evidence of alien microbes that could have flourished on Mars when it was wetter and warmer.

NASA is hoping that the samples the rover has collected will be sent back to Earth for further analysis as part of its troubled Mars Sample Return mission, in hopes that the data will tell us more about the Martian climate billions of years ago, and what happened to make the planet cold and desolate.

Until then, Perseverance is leaving no stone unturned.

More on Mars: Mars Appears to Be Missing a Moon, Astronomer Finds

This Might Be the Most Amazing Video of a Rocket Explosion We've Ever Seen

Frank Landymore
Mon, September 23, 2024

FUTURISM



Action Spectacular

We bet you've seen a lot of videos of exploding rockets.

But we'd also wager that you haven't seen one quite as mind-blowing as this new footage of a Chinese rocket blowing up as it touches down, because the failure is filmed so dramatically that you kinda just have to tip your hat to everyone involved — even if things didn't go quite as planned.

The star of the show is a Nebula-1 launch vehicle, a reusable, two-stage, kerosene-fueled rocket manufactured by the Chinese company Deep Blue Aerospace.

As part of a high-altitude vertical flight test on Sunday — all captured on video — the rocket took off from its launchpad in Ejin Banner Spaceport in Inner Mongolia, engaged all three of its Thunder-R engines, flew to an altitude of about three miles without issue, and came back down to make a landing, according to Ars Technica.

But that's when the footage launches into a sequence of gonzo action filmmaking that could make Michael Bay weep.

As the rocket levitates down to the pad and deploys its landing gear, we cut to a drone camera spiraling down from above. It pirouettes about its subject in epic swoops until it moves in close for the money shot: the rocket holding position a few yards above the ground, before dropping and exploding in a fireball — which is right when the slow motion kicks in. Cinema, baby.

https://twitter.com/SpaceBasedFox/status/1837856903357255849

Almost There

Deep Blue Aerospace released a detailed statement about what it's learned from the test, which Ars notes is one of the things that sets it apart from its domestic competitors: its transparency.

According to the company, it completed 10 of its 11 major objectives, achieved a landing accuracy of about 1.6 feet, and expects to perform its next vertical flight test in November.

This failure will sting, though, because it's not clear what caused the crash. It could be that the rocket's instruments incorrectly calculated its height from the ground, causing the drop to be too severe. It's also possible that the single engine left on for the landing didn't throttle properly.

In any case, it will likely be a while before the rocket can level up to perform a full-blown orbital flight test: Ars guesstimates that won't be until at least 2025.

Fully-loaded, the Nebula-1, which is about 11 feet wide and 69 feet tall, is billed to be capable of carrying around 4,400 pounds to low-Earth orbit, with plans to up that figure to over 17,000 pounds, according to SpaceNews. Compared to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket — the gold standard of kerosene-fueled rockets — which can carry 50,000 pounds to LEO, it's not a massive payload, but the rocket is also less than half the size.

It'll be disappointing that the rocket failed at the final hurdle, but at the very least, the engineers will be walking away with heaps of data — and also an absolutely blockbuster video.

More on rockets: SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Crashes While Landing


Side-by-side images from the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes show why NASA spent 25 years and $10 billion on the Webb

Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Mon, September 23, 2024 

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is by far the most powerful observatory ever launched into space.


Even Webb's very first images show why NASA spent 25 years and $10 billion.


The Hubble Space Telescope captured the same sights, but JWST revealed details that were invisible.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope floored astronomers and spectators across the globe when it released its first full-color images.

Even the scientists who worked on the telescope were taken aback when they saw those first snapshots in the summer of 2022, telling reporters that they sobbed, fell speechless, or dropped their jaws so far that they "nearly broke."

The telescope — called Webb or JWST for short — has continued to wow the world with new discoveries and mesmerizing portraits of the universe.

It has investigated distant planets that could be habitable, spotted the oldest black hole ever, and peered into the universe's ancient dark ages, giving astronomers answers in some cases and raising new mysteries in others.

Webb has even spotted a pair of galaxies that look like a question mark.NASA, ESA, CSA. Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

JWST has snagged so many feats that it's easy to forget what a scientific marvel each image is. To grasp how far Webb has taken us, we can revisit its first images.

Even those preliminary snapshots revealed countless stars, galaxies, and fine details that hadn't been seen before. They painted the births and deaths of stars in sharp, new colors and peered further into the distance than any infrared telescope ever had.

Before Webb, images like these only came from the Hubble Space Telescope, which rocketed into Earth's orbit in 1990. But the JWST pictures reveal the rewards of the 25 years and $10 billion NASA spent on the observatory — all in a new, wide-ranging spectrum of infrared light.

A side-by-side collage of the same area taken by Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope in its very first image.NASA/STScI; NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI

"We're making discoveries, and we really haven't even started trying yet," Eric Smith, the chief scientist of NASA's astrophysics division, said in a 2022 briefing where the Webb team revealed its first images.

Indeed, these pictures were only warm-ups for the years of science ahead. Here's what they revealed.
JWST clearly showed two stars at the center of this nebula, where Hubble only saw one

Hubble's image of the Southern Ring Nebula, left, has just one light at its center, while JWST, right, clearly shows two stars.The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA); NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

The Southern Ring Nebula is a dying star that has imploded and is slowly expelling the layers of its atmosphere in successive waves, creating ever-expanding bubbles of colorful gas. Scientists knew there were two stars at its center, but couldn't see them in images.

The new JWST picture showed the dying star, which glows red because it's surrounded by dust, right next to its white companion star.
With other wavelengths of infrared light, JWST saw different details in the same nebula
The Southern Ring Nebula, captured by JWST in near-infrared light.NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

This image, captured in near-infrared wavelengths of light, shows the structure of the nebula. The blue bubble at the center is hot, ionized gas that the leftover core of the star has superheated. In the foamy orange outer regions made of newly formed hydrogen, rays of the starlight beam through holes in the inner bubble.
A cluster of five galaxies was much sharper through JWST's lens

The galaxy cluster Stephan's Quintet, as imaged by Hubble (left) and JWST (right).Hubble SM4 ERO Team/NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI

Four of the galaxies in this image are about 300,000 light-years away, locked in a cosmic dance as each galaxy's gravity influences the others.
In the JWST image, you can see galaxies in the background that were invisible to Hubble

A few galaxies that are clearly visible in the JWST image, but not the Hubble image.Hubble SM4 ERO Team/NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI

Webb is 100 times stronger than Hubble, capturing far more galaxies than its predecessor could.
The JWST image also revealed the stellar nurseries created as galaxies merge

The JWST image shows a region of gas compressed between merging galaxies.Hubble SM4 ERO Team/NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI

"We now see gas and dust, which is being heated up in the collision between those galaxies," Mark McCaughrean, the senior advisor for science and exploration at the European Space Agency — which is collaborating with NASA on the telescope — said when the images were released in 2022.

As gas and dust get compressed and heated, they collapse into new stars. That means the cloud between galaxies in the JWST image is a nursery for the birth of new stars.

"We're actually seeing the process of creation of new stars in this region," McCaughrean said.
This is Hubble's image of a star nursery in the Carina Nebula

The star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula, captured by Hubble.NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
And this is JWST's image of the same region

The star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula, captured in infrared by JWST.NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

"When I see an image like this, I can't help but think about scale," Amber Straughn, a NASA astrophysicist on the JWST team, said in 2022. "Every dot of light we see here is an individual star, not unlike our sun, and many of these likely also have planets. And it just reminds me that our sun and our planet, and ultimately us, were formed out of the same kind of stuff that we see here."
The JWST image revealed hundreds of stars that weren't visible before

A portion of the Carina Nebula, imaged by Hubble (left) and JWST (right).NASA/ESA/The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)/CSA

"This is going to be revolutionary," Jane Rigby, a NASA scientist overseeing JWST operations, said in the briefing. "These are incredible capabilities that we've never had before."

Indeed, Webb has been revolutionary in the two years since. There are still more discoveries to come.

This story was originally published on July 12, 2022, and most recently updated on September 23, 2024.

Scientists May Have Found A Whole New Region of Our Solar System

Darren Orf
Tue, September 24, 2024 

Is There a Second Kuiper Belt?bymuratdeniz - Getty Images

New Horizons—the famous NASA spacecraft that flew by Pluto in 2015—is now making new discoveries beyond the Kuiper Belt.

With help from the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, scientists have discovered what could be a second belt of icy bodies beyond the known Kuiper Belt.

This possible discovery only highlights how much more there is to learn about our Solar System beyond the reaches of Neptune.

With the James Webb Space Telescope in orbit at Lagrange point 2, roughly 1 million miles from Earth, humanity’s view of the universe now extends some 13.5 billion years into the past. And while astronomers and cosmologists are eager to study the early days of everything, there’s still a lot we don’t know about our own stellar neighborhood.

We know that the Earth orbits the Sun (thanks for that one, Copernicus), and that our star hosts eight full-fledged planets (sorry about that one, Pluto). But astronomers still only have a fuzzy picture of what lies beyond the reaches of Neptune. In 1951, Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper hypothesized that a belt of objects must lie beyond the most distant planet, and that prediction proved true in 1992 with the discovery of the Kuiper Belt. Now, mounting evidence suggests that a second Kuiper Belt might even lie beyond this first one. A study detailing this discovery, which will be published in the Planetary Science Journal, was recently published on the pre-print server arXiv.

“Our Solar System’s Kuiper Belt long appeared to be very small in comparison with many other planetary systems,” Wes Fraser, the lead author of the study from the National Research Council of Canada, said in a press statement, “but our results suggest that idea might just have arisen due to an observational bias. So maybe, if this result is confirmed, our Kuiper Belt isn’t all that small and unusual after all compared to those around other stars.”

These results come from a joint effort of the New Horizons probe—which famously flew by Pluto back in 2015—and the 8-meter Subaru telescope Mauna Kea, which sits atop the mountain from which it gets its name and has been searching for potential Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) for New Horizons to visit. For years, Subaru’s search for objects was complicated by being located in front of the dense background of the galaxy’s center. But now that it’s located in a sparse region of the sky, the telescope’s Hyper Suprime-Cam has spotted 239 KBOs in just four years. Of those, about a dozen are particularly interesting.

"The most exciting part of the HSC was the discovery of 11 objects at distances beyond the known Kuiper Belt,” Fumi Yoshida, a co-author of the study from the Chiba Institute of Technology, said in a press statement. “If this is confirmed, it would be a major discovery.”

Their unique nature has to do with their relative distance from both the Sun and the “first” Kuiper Belt, which lies roughly 35 to 55 astronomical units (AU) out from the center of our Solar System (one AU is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun). However, according to Space.com, these newly discovered objects lie between 70 and 90 AU from the Sun.

So, why aren’t these farflung KBOs considered part of the (much larger than expected) original Kuiper Belt? Well, there appears to be a gap of objects located between 55 AU and 70 AU from the Sun (New Horizons is currently located at around 60 AU from the Sun). That means these 11 objects appear to be forming a defined second ring around the Solar System.

The researchers say they’ll continue to track these objects while searching for more like them, and considering that these are clustered in a small part of the sky, there are likely many more out there. Upcoming surveys—especially the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory—will search for unknown KBOs that lie beyond our (current) understanding.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about our Solar System, but much like our broadening view of the universe, some new facts are certainly coming into focus.

  CRYPTOZOOLOGY

Archaeologists Uncovered a Painting That May Prove the Existence of a Mysterious Creature

Tim Newcomb
Tue, September 24, 2024


African Rock Art Depicts Ancient Horned ReptileTim Boyle - Getty Images

Archaeologists discovered a rock painting of an animal from at least 200 years ago in South Africa that may match with fossils found in the area.

The art depicts a horned serpent that may be a now-extinct creature called a dicynodont.

Pairing the art with fossil finds and long-standing legends from the San people has scientists eager to discern if the horned serpent’s existence was a reality instead of merely legend.

There’s something intriguing, even frightening, about the image of an ancient horned serpent roaming across the land. Thanks to some suggestive fossils and legends of old, talk of such a creature isn’t a new concept. But the recent discovery of 200-year-old rock paintings found in South Africa now has scientists hypothesizing that this ancient creature may have been far more than just a legend.

The first formal scientific descriptions of this horned serpent—a supposed member of the dicynodont group—appeared in 1845. Considering the abundance of dicynodont fossils found in the Karoo Basin in South Africa, some have pondered whether this long-thought mythical horned serpent is rooted in reality. The discovery of rock art dated to between 1821 and 1835 adds even more credence to the legend, as the painting is older than the first formal reference to the dicynodont. If we’re lucky, it could provide further clues as to just how intertwined this horned serpent was with South Africa’s indigenous San culture.

In a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, Julien Benoit from the University of the Witwatersrand confirmed that the rock art from the early 1800s depicts a tusked animal, and that it sits alongside tetrapod fossils in the immediate vicinity. “Altogether,” the Benoit wrote, “they suggest a case of indigenous paleontology.”

Still, it will need to take more than a 200-year-old painting to match a smattering of unknown fossils to a long-extinct creature unlike anything seen in the area today. “The ethnographic, archaeological, and paleontological evidence are consistent with the hypothesis that the Horned Serpent panel could possibly depict a dicynodont,” Benoit wrote in the study. He added that the downward orientation of the tusks, which doesn’t match any African animal (but does match dicynodonts), the abundance of fossils in the area, and the belief held by the San of the existence of this long-extinct large animal further support the theory.

“Of course, at this point it is speculative,” said Benoit, according to IFL Science, “but the tusked animal on the Horned Serpent panel was likely painted as a rain-animal, which means it was probably involved [in] rain-making ceremonies.” These ceremonies often evoked known extinct animals to help the people encourage the gods to send rain.

The San were known to have a robust mix of animals belonging to their ‘spirit world,’ but Benoit said that these animals were generally inspired by reality—even if extinct. Coupled with the San’s interest in fossils, Benoit believes a fossil discovery could have led the San to recreate the horned serpent, using a long-held legend in which their ancestors described the creatures as “great monstrous brutes, exceeding the elephant or hippopotamus in bulk” as the template.

There’s plenty of leaps from legend to scientific grounding that may be too large for a fabled horned serpent to make. But after further studies, the 200-year-old paintings could spin a different tale.