Pentagon Answers Mysteries Involving UFOs

Last 19 November, a pentagon official told Congress that the agency has solved a prominent UFO mystery from 2016 which showed what appeared to be an object flying at a high speed just above water.

The object was recorded by a fighter jet from the USS Theodore Roosevelt off the east coast of Florida in 2016 and became known as the "GOFAST" video when it was made public the following year.

The grainy, black and white video, is from a fighter jet’s head-up display and eventually locks onto the object and the pilot can be heard shouting: "Ohhh, got it!... Oh my gosh dude."

Dr. Jon Kosloski, the director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which is tasked with investigating UFOs, or what the Pentagon calls unidentified anomalous phenomena (UPA), says that the object was not anomalous — or out of the ordinary — and hovering over the water but was in fact 13,000 feet above the sea.

He said the phenomenon was caused by a trick of the eye" called parallax, which made it look like the object is moving much faster.

"Through a very careful geospatial intelligence analysis and using trigonometry, we assess with high confidence that the object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet," said Kosloski, who added that the office has a detailed analysis of the parallax phenomenon on its website.

He said the object, which he did not identify, traveled in a relatively straight, riding trajectory with a slow curving descent near the end of the analyzed video.

Kosloski also presented two other resolved cases the Defense Department calls "The Puerto Rico Objects" and "Mt. Etna," the latter which was captured in 2018 from a UAV flying in the Mediterranean watching Mount Etna as it was erupting. He said he believed the public was not familiar with it.

"And it appears that that object is flying through the plume of superheated gas and ash," Kosloski said.

"This was a rather difficult case to resolve. We had to pull in support from a number of IC and S&T partners and even reach out to a volcanologist. And through very detailed remodeling and pixel-by-pixel analysis of the object as it’s traversing across the clouds, they assess that the object was actually 170 meters away from the plume and not flying through it."

He said his office is still actively investigating cases with an "orange orb" and "a metallic cylinder."

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Development In Nuclear Fusion Reactor Continues

Scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, a national lab run by the U.S. Department of Energy, reportedly achieved a major milestone in the development of a nuclear fusion reactor, Interesting Engineering reported.

The breakthrough in this area came in the form of the first quadrant of a super-powerful magnet for the core of the Princeton Lab's National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U) nuclear fusion reactor.

The scientists described their development as "two high-current magnets [joined] to create the toroidal field-ohmic heating coil (TF-OH) bundle." They further explained by noting that, "The magnets make up the core of the NSTX-U, similar to the core of an apple."

To break it down a bit further: The core is indeed similar to the core of an apple, if we imagine an apple that is incredibly difficult to build, but may one day have the capability to deliver virtually unlimited clean, renewable energy to replace the dirty energy sources overheating our planet.

There are existing nuclear reactors creating energy, but those reactors use a process called nuclear fission — the reaction where atoms split apart. The scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory are attempting to create a nuclear fusion reactor that would create energy by slamming atoms together, mimicking the process that powers the sun.

If successful, a nuclear fusion reactor could provide virtually unlimited clean energy, which has led some to dub it the "holy grail of clean energy."

Although the dream of a fully functional commercial nuclear fusion reactor has yet to be realized, the work of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory reportedly brings it one step closer.

"These magnets are critical to the NSTX-U experiment, and the team has been laser focused on this assembly," laboratory director Steve Cowley said. "Constructing the first quadrant is a big achievement."

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15th Century Mexicans Offered Mass Child Sacrifices To Rain God

There was a mass ritual sacrifice of young children to a rain god in 15th-century Mexico which coincided with a deadly drought in the region, according to new research.

The skeletal remains of at least 42 children, ages 2 to 7, were discovered at Templo Mayor, the most significant temple complex in Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City, in 1980 and 1981.

The skeletons, which were facing up and had their limbs contracted, were placed inside ashlar boxes on a layer of sand. Some were adorned with finery such as necklaces and had green stone beads in their mouths.

Recently, new research has revealed that the sacrifices were likely an attempt to end a great drought in the region by making offerings to the rain god Tláloc. The research was presented at the ninth Liberation through knowledge meeting: "Water and Life" at Mexico's National College.

"At first, the Mexica state tried to mitigate its effects by opening the royal granaries to redistribute food among the neediest classes, while carrying out mass sacrifices of children in the Templo Mayor to calm the fury of the tlaloque [rain dwarves who were assistants of Tláloc]," Leonardo López Luján, an archaeologist and director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History's (INAH) Templo Mayor Project, said at the meeting. "For a time, it faced the tragedy this way, but the excessive duration of the crisis made the state vulnerable, forcing it to allow the mass exodus of its people."

To find out why the mass offering was performed, INAH researchers studied geological data alongside entries in the Mexican Drought Atlas, which showed that a major drought occurred across central Mexico between 1452 and 1454.

The drought, which took place during the reign of Moctezuma I and the construction of the Templo Mayor, decimated harvests, devastated populations in the region and forced starving families to sell children to nearby towns in exchange for food, according to López Luján.

"Everything seems to indicate that droughts in early summer would have affected the germination, growth and flowering of plants prior to the canícula [dog days of summer], while autumn frosts would have attacked corn before it had ripened,” López Luján said. "Thus, the concurrence of both phenomena would have destroyed the harvests and led to occurrences of prolonged famine."

In an effort to alleviate the crisis, the sacrificed children's bodies were sprinkled with blue pigment, seashells and small birds and were surrounded by 11 sculptures made of volcanic rock.

The sculptures were made to resemble the face of Tláloc, the Aztec god of rain, water and fertility. In fact, the adornment of the children was likely an attempt to make the children resemble rain dwarves, López Luján said.

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Message From Space Was Decoded

An art project from the SETI Institute, a nonprofit in Mountain View, California, devoted to searching for life beyond Earth, received a message from outer space over a year ago before a father-daughter team of citizen scientists recently deciphered the message. Its meaning, however, remains a mystery.

After the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a European Space Agency spacecraft orbiting Mars, beamed a signal containing an alien-like message in May 2023, three observatories on Earth picked it up and released the raw data on the internet, giving citizen scientists across the globe a chance to decipher the transmission.

Ken Chaffin and daughter Keli, who worked on decoding the message for nearly a year, uncovered the answer in June, the European Space Agency announced last 22 October. Doing so required thousands of hours experimenting with various ideas and running mathematical simulations on a computer, the Chaffins told CNN.

In what appears to be clusters of white pixels on a black background, the visualized message is of five configurations that represent amino acids, the building blocks of life. The message is not static but is in motion and only displays the arrangement for about one-tenth of a second. The project’s designers confirmed that amino acids are the intended message, but they are leaving the interpretation open.

Now, citizen scientists are grappling with the meaning behind the cryptic cosmic puzzle. So far, the community engaged in the project has not been able to determine and agree on what the amino acids represent.

When Ken Chaffin came across the original image from the scrambled raw data, which the Discord community of citizen scientists referred to as the "starmap," he said he suspected a cellular automata algorithm produced it.

Cellular automata are grids of units that are mathematically coded to move or follow certain sets of rules. "I knew I had the skills to decode the message," he said, explaining he has decades of amateur experience working with cellular automata.

By running the cellular automata simulations on the "starmap," the Chaffins were eventually able to generate the image of the amino acids.

"I had no idea what the message would show or say," he added. "I suspected that it might have something to do with life." When the image of the clusters revealed itself, Chaffin said he immediately recognized them to be amino acids from school chemistry classes.

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Is King Arthur An Amalgamation Of Historical Figures?

In England, there is a story about a mythical Celtic warlord who held out against the Anglo Saxon invasion. His right-hand man was a wizard, he was handed his famous sword by a deity, and he was a romantic — and chivalrous — hero.

The story also says that he isn’t dead. He’s merely asleep, and will rise again when the time is right to expel the invaders and turn Britain back into a Celtic land.

He is widely known as King Arthur, a figure so imbued with beauty and potential. But was there a real man behind the myth? Or is he just our platonic ideal of a hero — a respectful king, in today’s parlance?

Today, Arthur's supposed exploits have left behind a tourist trail across the UK and beyond, with scores of sites claiming connections to his myth.

It’s nothing new. For centuries, the legend of Arthur has fascinated much of Europe.

He was supposedly the leader of a tribe of Celts — indigenous Britons — when the Saxons invaded Britain in the fifth century.

The Saxons — people from modern-day Scandinavia, Germany and France — eventually colonized Britain, but there were fierce pockets of resistance from the Celts, especially in the far west of the country. Wales and Cornwall — England’s southwesternmost county – were the last to fall. The Celtic languages that all Britons originally spoke held out here, while elsewhere people began to speak what would become English.

Arthur was, according to tradition, a leader resisting to the end against the Saxon colonizers. Fittingly, both Cornwall and Wales (among other places) claim him. Today, he is best associated with Tintagel Castle, where remains of a settlement dating back to the fifth century perch strikingly on an islet off the wild coast of Cornwall. Supposedly, Arthur was conceived here.

But the myth of Arthur is also bound intrinsically with Glastonbury Tor (a hill in Somerset where Merlin, his magician, is said to be asleep, waiting to return), Caerleon Castle in Wales (this was said to where Arthur had his court, Camelot), and South Cadbury in Somerset, where archaeologists in the 1970s thought they’d located Camelot.

In Wales alone, Arthur is meant to have killed a giant on Yr Wyddfa (Mount Snowdon) and a fearsome beast in Llyn Barfog lake, while Merlin is said to be buried both on Bardsey Island, off the north coast, and in a cliff at Nevern. Mind you, Arthur is also rumored to be sleeping in that cliffside — as well as buried at Glastonbury Abbey, Baschurch in Shropshire, and Mynydd y Gaer, a mountain in Wales. Even for a mythical figure, he got around.

There’s also Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh — the names of Arthur and Merlin are "right at the top of the list" of historical figures who’ve loaned their names to places, according to Mark Stoyle, professor of early modern history at the UK’s University of Southampton.

Even the French claim a link with him, with some arguing that he was from Brittany — another Celtic part of Europe. The study of his story is, apparently, on the national school curriculum in France.

For Stoyle, it’s likely that the myth of Arthur has at least its roots in fact.

"Nobody knows for sure," he says. "Historians are so divided on it."

He says that an increasing number of archaeologists and historians believe that Arthur is an amalgamation of various historical characters, rather than an actual figure himself —although plenty still believe that Arthur himself existed.

Stoyle himself is in the former camp.

"When the Roman empire fell, the Anglo Saxons took over in the east of England and then moved to the west. There was fierce resistance to them which lasted a long time, and it’s easy to believe that there was one or more local chieftains who opposed them, and that those stories are perhaps the germ for the story of Arthur," he says.

"My gut feeling is that there has to be someone extraordinary behind this [these stories] but we have so little hard evidence, and some things [which he is said to have done] he definitely couldn’t do."

That would be things like pulling a sword out of a rock in which it was lodged (this marked him out as the rightful king), or getting his most famous sword, Excalibur, handed to him by "the lady of the lake," a kind of water deity (Cornish people swear this happened at Dozmary Pool on Bodmin Moor). Excalibur has, of course, become so rooted in our global consciousness that it was not only the subject of the 1963 Disney film "The Sword in the Stone" but also is the name of a medieval-themed resort in Las Vegas.

Whoever inspired these stories is almost a moot point for Stoyle. "In a way, everybody has their own Arthur — perceptions about who we want him to have been," he says.

Perhaps he’s the chivalrous knight who spent more time instilling good behavior at Camelot than killing his enemies. This is the Arthur that went viral in the medieval period, when chivalry was all the rage.

Perhaps he’s the romantic hero, the king who fought for love when his wife Guinevere ran off with his most trusted confidant, Lancelot. That’s the erotic Arthur beloved by the pre-Raphaelite artists and poets who obsessed over him in the 1800s.

Perhaps he’s the mystic — the proto-New Age king who was led to victory by his trusted magician Merlin. Modern-day mystics swarm to Glastonbury to soak up his magic there.

Or maybe he’s supernatural — a man who never really died, but lies sleeping, ready to return when his country needs him. This Arthur will kick the Saxon colonizers out and return Britain to its native Celtic culture. That’s the guy who, says Stoyle, the Welsh and Cornish "absolutely believed" in for centuries.

As for Merlin, Stoyle says that most leaders of that age would have been accompanied by a sage. Merlin is the model in popular culture for the likes of Gandalf and Dumbledore, he says.

(Note: It was pointed out by one Historian that the Celts themselves were colonizers from Central Europe. England does not have indigenous peoples because it was settled, not fertile. The Beakers predate the Celts. Moreover, the Welsh and Cornish were Bretons, a sub-ethnic group of the Celts. To merely call them Celts erases their individual languages, customs, and beliefs.)

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Prehistoric Ecosystem Discovered Under The Italian Alps

Under the snowy slopes of the Italian Alps, there lies an ecosystem that predates the dinosaurs, revealed by melting snow before being stumbled upon by a hiker.

The discovery, made public last 13 November, includes well-preserved footprints of reptiles and amphibians that scientists say date back 280 million years to a geologic period known as the Permian period.

"Dinosaurs had not yet emerged at this time, but the animals responsible for the largest footprints here would still have been impressive, reaching up to 2-3 meters in length," said Cristiano Dal Sasso, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Milan, where the finds are now on display.

The fossils were discovered in the mountains of northern Italy's Lombardy region after the snow and ice that once covered them melted away, scientists say, as a result of the ongoing climate crisis.

Claudia Steffensen was hiking along a trail in the Valtellina Orobie mountain range in the summer of 2023 when she stepped on a gray stone marked with unusual patterns.

"My husband was in front of me, looking straight ahead, while I was looking toward my feet. I put my foot on a rock, which struck me as odd as it seemed more like a slab of cement. I then noticed these strange circular designs with wavy lines. I took a closer look and realized they were footprints," Steffensen told the Guardian newspaper.

Intrigued, she snapped photos and shared them with her friend, Elio Della Ferrera, a nature photographer. Della Ferrera then contacted Dal Sasso, at the museum in Milan, to learn more about the discovery.

Dal Sasso enlisted the expertise of two specialists: Ausonio Ronchi, a professor of stratigraphy at the University of Pavia in Northern Italy, and Lorenzo Marchetti, a fossil expert from the Natural History Museum in Berlin.

Marchetti told NBC News that he was "amazed by the quality and quantity of the material," and said that while he had studied other Permian sites in the area, none seemed as "rich" as this one.

The Permian period immediately predated the dinosaurs.

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NASA's Roman Space Telescope Close To Launching

Inside NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, scientists were able to integrate a crucial component onto the Roman Space Telescope. This device, known as the Roman Coronagraph Instrument, is designed to block starlight, enabling scientists to detect the faint light from planets beyond our solar system.

This achievement marks a significant milestone for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a next-generation space observatory that will launch around May 2027. With a field of view at least 100 times larger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman will be used to investigate scientific mysteries related to dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.

It will do so using its one science instrument called the Wide Field Instrument, and the Roman Coronagraph Instrument, which is a technology demonstration—a stepping stone for future space missions, like the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory, which would be the first telescope designed specifically to search for signs of life on exoplanets.

"In order to get from where we are to where we want to be, we need the Roman Coronagraph to demonstrate this technology," said Rob Zellem, Roman Space Telescope deputy project scientist for communications at NASA Goddard. "We'll be applying those lessons learned to the next generation of NASA flagship missions that will be explicitly designed to look for Earth-like planets."

The coronagraph, which is roughly the size of a baby grand piano, is a sophisticated system composed of masks, prisms, detectors, and self-flexing mirrors that work together to block the glare from distant stars, allowing scientists to detect the planets orbiting them.

Currently, exoplanets are observed through indirect methods, particularly using a technique called transiting. This method involves measuring dips in the light of a distant star that occur when an exoplanet passes in front of it. These dips provide valuable insights, including information about the planet's atmospheric composition, which is important in determining habitability. They may even reveal the presence of gases that could indicate the existence of life.

While this method has provided incredibly valuable insights, it also has its limitations. For one, only a small fraction of planets can be observed this way, as transits occur for just a brief period during a planet's total orbital cycle, restricting the amount of data that can be gathered.

Engineers will now perform different checks and tests before moving forward with the integration of the Wide Field Instrument and finally, the telescope itself.

"It's really rewarding to watch these teams come together and build up the Roman observatory. That's the result of a lot of teams, long hours, hard work, sweat, and tears," said Liz Daly, the integrated payload assembly integration and test lead for Roman at Goddard.

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Four Storms Forming In The West Pacific Headed To The Philippines

It is unusal and mysterious to see four separate storm systems churning their way through the West Pacific simultaneously and threaten to bring more misery to the storm-weary Philippines.

It is the first time that four named storms have existed at the same time in November since records began in 1951, Japan’s Meteorological Agency confirmed to CNN last 6 November. It’s also the first time in seven years that it has happened in any month.

Satellite images from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center show the four storms spanning the vast West Pacific basin, from Vietnam to Guam.

They are Typhoon Yinxing, Typhoon Toraji, Tropical Storm Usagi and Tropical Storm Man-Yi.

The Philippines is struck by multiple storms annually, but the relentless pace of successive typhoons in the last month has complicated recovery efforts and thousands of people remain in evacuation shelters.

Typhoon Yinxing hit the northeastern Philippines on 8 November, with winds equivalent to a Category 4 Atlantic hurricane. There were no casualties reported but the storm brought torrential rain, storm surges and landslides.

After moving through the Philippines and into the West Philippine Sea, Yinxing drifted west toward the Hainan Province of China before veering south to Vietnam, where it is currently unleashing heavy rains on the country.

The next day Typhoon Toraji slammed into the eastern coast of Luzon’s Aurora Province with winds the equivalent of a Category 1 Atlantic hurricane, prompting the evacuation of thousands more people.

Southeast Asia is already one of the most climate vulnerable regions of the world, experts warn, making it more susceptible to extreme weather like heatwaves, storm surges and floods.

Ocean temperatures have been historically warm this year, and hotter oceans provide a huge source of energy for storms to strengthen and grow.

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Ancient Battleground Discovered In Iraq

Several archaeologists have discovered the site of an ancient battle in what is now Iraq by comparing historical accounts with declassified images from US spy satellites.

Researchers from Durham University in the United Kingdom and the University of Al-Qadisiyah in Iraq say they have found the site of the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, which took place in 636 or 637 AD, according to a statement published last 11 November.

Despite the fact that the battle marked a significant victory for Arab Muslims and enabled their expansion beyond Arabia, its precise location was not previously known.

William Deadman, a specialist in archaeological remote sensing at Durham University, told CNN that the discovery was part of a wider project aimed at mapping archaeological sites across the Middle East.

Initially, the team was mapping out the Darb Zubaydah pilgrimage route from Kufa in Iraq to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, using declassified spy satellite images from the 1970s and historical texts, when they realized they might also be able to use the same pieces of information to identify the site of the famous battle.

"I thought this is a good chance at having a crack at trying to find it," Deadman said.

As a first step, he plotted a series of circles on the map using distances mentioned in the historical accounts, before taking a closer look at the areas where they overlapped on the satellite images.

Deadman told CNN he was "gobsmacked" to find a fort and double wall feature mentioned in the accounts.

"I couldn’t believe it," he said.

The team say the battle took place some 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Kufa in the Najaf Governorate, with Deadman’s analysis supported by on-the-ground investigations by researchers in Iraq.

The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah saw a smaller Arab Muslim army defeat a much larger force from the Sasanian Empire, which dominated the region.

After a few failed attempts, this was their "first really significant victory" in attempts to expand beyond Arabia, Deadman said.

"It was a pivotal moment in history," he said.

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Chinese Military Working On "Death Star" Laser Weapon

It was reported recently by several sources that China's military is working on an experimental weapon system that converges multiple streams of microwaves into a powerful energy beam.

The South China Morning Post confirmed the information and described the weapon as a smalle version of the Death Star from the "Star Wars" franchise.

According to the report, scientists claim they've "completed experimental trials on its potential military use."

However, whether their efforts will ever culminate in a weapon capable enough to destroy a planet like in "Star Wars," let alone destroy much smaller targets, remains to be seen.

For one, accumulating sufficient electromagnetic waves in the same location remains incredibly difficult. According to the SCMP, scientists calculated that they needed to achieve a positional accuracy of mere millimeters, and time synchronization of 170 trillionths of a second — more precise than an atomic clock.

Nonenthless, scientists claim to have achieved this level of accuracy during recent experiments. While it won't be blowing up adversary targets, the researchers found that it could jam signals of US-owned GPS satellites, "achieving multiple goals such as teaching and training, new technology verification, and military exercises."

The scientists say that combining streams of microwaves could end up with a higher output than the sum of the individual beams.

Unsurprisingly, the researchers remain vague about the future potential uses of the tech.

Meanwhile, the United States has long dabbled in similar tech. For instance, the Air Force has developed a high-power microwave directed energy weapon system called the Tactical High-power Operational Responder, designed to counter drones.

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The Self-Driving Grocery Came To Shanghai In 2017

The idea of a fully automated grocery store with no human employees might sound strange (or very appealing, depending on just how much the grocer hate interacting with people), and in 2017, Shanghai residents were able to see for themselves. The Swedish company Wheelys tested a mobile grocery store with no staff - and it can drive itself.

In order to shop at Moby, shoppers first have to download an app to their phone. That's what gets them through the door, which is otherwise kept locked.

They then walk through the store -- which is very small, fitting a maximum of four people at once -- and place their purchases into a smart basket. When the shopper is ready, they simply walk out the door. They are automatically charged for the food they purchased.

It's a concept that Amazon has been working on, but Wheelys may beat the retail giant to market. What's more, the solar-powered Moby is designed to restock itself automatically, driving to a warehouse, while another identical unit takes its place.

While Wheelys is testing its first Moby store in the bustling city of Shanghai, these autonomous, unmanned stores could also prove very useful in small, rural towns where grocery shops have closed, as well as urban food deserts. "I grew up in the countryside in Northern Sweden," said Tomas Mazetti, one of Wheelys' founders, to Fast Company. "The last store closed there in the 1980s sometime, and after that, everyone just commuted into the city, but that takes an hour. A little piece of the village died. Now, suddenly, in a place like that, the village can team up and buy one of these stores. If the village is really small, [the store] can move around to different villages."

The company is hoping to make these mobile markets affordable for small groups of people. They estimate a community could purchase a Moby store for around US$ 30,000, with an additional fee for logistical support. Eventually, the company wants to expand beyond groceries, as well as test the home delivery services.

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Quantum Computers Will Rely on Trapped Ions

Yahoo!Tech reported before that scientists and engineers that attempted to build a scalable and efficient quantum computer normally go about it in one of the two ways — by trapping ions in magnetic fields, or by using superconducting circuits. In either case, the systems created utilize "qubits," which are quantum computing equivalent of electronic computing bits bits, existing in a state of superposition.

The question that is often asked is this — which architecture, trapped ions or a superconducting device, leads to the creation of faster and more reliable quantum computers?

A team of researchers has, in a recent study, attempted to answer the question.

"If you want to buy a quantum computer, you’ll need to know which one is best for your application. You’ll need to test them in some way, and this is the first of this kind of comparison," Norbert Linke, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), said in a statement released recently.

The researchers pitted two quantum computers fashioned from two different technologies — a fully connected trapped ion system created at JQI and a device developed by IBM researchers that uses coupled regions of superconducting material. Both machines use five qubits and both machines have similar error rates.

For the purpose of their experiments, whose findings were published in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers ran several quantum programs on the devices, each of which solved a simple problem using a series of logic gates.

The conclusion? The trapped-ion module was more accurate for programs that involved many pairs of qubits, but the IBM device had quicker logic gates. Moreover, the superconducting platform's artificial qubits were all found to be slightly different from each other — something that introduced errors if the calculation required shuffling information between qubits — and had shorter lifetimes than their trapped ion counterparts.

"Whereas the superconducting system offers faster gate clock speeds and a solid-state platform, the ion-trap system features superior qubits and reconfigurable connections. The performance of these systems is seen to reflect the topology of connections in the base hardware, supporting the idea that quantum computer applications and hardware should be codesigned," the researchers concluded.

The experiments were, by necessity, restricted to only extremely rudimentary forms of the two most promising approaches, and the results still can't be applied to practical quantum computers that would contain thousands of qubits. However, the researchers believe that such "head-to-head" comparisons can, even in the future, serve as important benchmarks to assess the performance of quantum computers.

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"Leader for Life" Ambition Was Marcos' Biggest Blunder

For those who lived through the martial law days in the Philippines, it was obvious back then that President Ferdinand Marcos had lied to the people since the day he became president. His ambition to become the ‘leader for life’ was the greatest blunder he ever made and the country had to pay a very stiff price.

When Marcos defeated then President Diosdado Macapagal in the 1965 election, the country’s foreign debt was merely US$ 7 billion. But when he fled the country after 21 years in power, including 14 year of strongman rule, on widespread allegations of plundering the national coffers, the country’s foreign debt had ballooned to US$ 25 billion.

"The economy appeared to have improved because he was borrowing from the World Bank so he had money to show," said veteran journalist-lawyer Manuel F. Almario, editor of the independent Philippine News Service (PNS), when he was interviewed by Joel C. Paredes of InterAksyon.com in 2013.

When the strongman clamped down on all media networks in 1972, Almario was arrested. Military authorities sequestered the PNS, which was later renamed Philippine News Agency to become part of the government information network.

In 1969, Mr. Marcos was the first Philippine president to win with a great majority of votes for a second term, but amid charges by the opposition that he was re-elected because he spent government money for his campaign.

His inauguration in January the next year was marred by the first massive student demonstration in front of the old Congress building. As an emerging fiscal crisis cast a shadow on the country, Mr. Marcos was accused of having bankrupted the government. Prices were soaring and there was trouble in the streets.

Two months before the declaration of martial law in 1972, Almario wrote the cover story for the special edition of Weekly Graphic, a hard-hitting magazine, warning that if Marcos declared martial law he would be going against the Constitution.

The 1935 Constitution states that the President can declare martial law only in cases of rebellion, insurrection or invasion or imminent danger thereof.

But as early as February 1972, Manila Chronicle editor Amante Paredes had already come out with a front-page story quoting high-level sources on Marcos’ plan to impose martial rule to perpetuate himself in power.

That was also the time when Marcos heightened his anti-communist propaganda, accusing his opponents of conniving with the underground rebels to oust his government.

"But he (Mr. Marcos) was a smart lawyer and he said the country is facing a communist rebellion and a Muslim armed secession in the south," says Almario. "When you want to impose dictatorship, you’re going to lie to the people and tell them that they are going to get peace and order, justice, economic progress."

Marcos arrested alleged warlords, and Almario recalled having joined in his cell at Camp Crame, the strongman’s influential provincemate Roque Ablan and Moises Espinosa of Masbate.

"But that’s [arrest of warlords and strong local leaders] only for show, and he freed them afterwards when people believed that he was sincere," he says. The two men, Roque and Espinosa, became his trusted political allies in the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL), the monolithic party that he organized after the Charter was amended, allowing him to run in a new parliamentary system of government.

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Doritos Dye Can Make Mouse Skin Transparent

This could be a big breakthrough for medical practitioners who are looking for unconventional methods to advance their field of study. Recently, scientists have found one of the ingredients in triangle-shaped tasty tortilla chips that can make the skin of mice transparent.

Researchers at Stanford University detail, in the 6 September issue of the journal Science, how they were able to see through the skin of live mice by applying a mixture of water and tartrazine, a bright yellow-orange food coloring used in Doritos and other foods, drugs, and cosmetics.

The experiments arose from the quest for better methods to see tissue and organs within the body. The researchers chose tartrazine because the dye's molecules absorb blue and ultraviolet light, which makes it easier for light to pass through the mouse skin.

"For those who understand the fundamental physics behind this, it makes sense; but if you aren’t familiar with it, it looks like a magic trick," said Zihao Ou, the lead author of the study who is now an assistant professor of physics at The University of Texas at Dallas, in a description of the research on the university's website.

After testing the dye on mice tissue samples and raw chicken breast, the researchers rubbed the dye and water solution onto the skulls and abdomens of the mice. As the dye was absorbed, within a few minutes they could see "the skin, muscle, and connective tissues transparent in live rodents," the researchers write in the journal article.

Once researchers wash off the dye, the mice lost their translucency and the dye is excreted through urine, according to the university site's description of the study.

"It’s important that the dye is biocompatible – it’s safe for living organisms," Ou said. "In addition, it’s very inexpensive and efficient; we don’t need very much of it to work."

It might not work on humans though because our skin is about 10 times thicker than a mouse and it's not sure how much of the dye – or how it would be administered – is needed to work in humans, Ou said.

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Old Spacecraft Sends Radio Messages Back To Earth

An aging spacecraft, that NASA has long forgotten, has suddenly came alive and is communicating back to Earth. The 47-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is now billions of miles away in interstellar space, encountered technical issues that caused a days-long communications blackout with the historic mission.

The spacecraft is now using a radio transmitter it hasn’t relied on since 1981 to stay in contact with its team on Earth while engineers work to understand what went wrong.

As the spacecraft, launched in September 1977, ages, the team has slowly turned off components to conserve power, allowing Voyager 1 to send back unique science data from 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away.

The probe is the farthest spacecraft from Earth, operating beyond the heliosphere — the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond Pluto’s orbit — where its instruments directly sample interstellar space.

The new issue is one of several the aging vehicle has faced in recent months, but Voyager’s team keeps finding creative solutions so the storied explorer can zoom along on its cosmic journey through uncharted territory.

Occasionally, engineers send commands to Voyager 1 to turn on some of its heaters and warm components that have sustained radiation damage over the decades, said Bruce Waggoner, the Voyager mission assurance manager. The heat can help reverse the radiation damage, which degrades the performance of the spacecraft’s components, he said.

Messages are relayed to Voyager from mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, through the agency’s Deep Space Network. The system of radio antennas on Earth helps the agency communicate with Voyager 1 and its twin probe, Voyager 2, as well as other spacecraft exploring our solar system.

Voyager 1 then sends back engineering data to show how it is responding to the commands. It takes about 23 hours for a message to travel one way.

But when a command to the heater was sent on October 16, something triggered the spacecraft’s autonomous fault protection system. If the spacecraft draws more power than it should, the fault protection system automatically shuts off systems that aren’t essential to conserve power.

The team discovered the latest issue when it couldn’t detect the spacecraft’s response signal through the Deep Space Network on 18 October 2024.

Voyager 1 has been using one of its two radio transmitters, called an X-band based on the frequency it utilizes, for decades. Meanwhile, the other transmitter, called the S-band, which uses a different frequency, hasn’t been employed since 1981 because its signal is much fainter than the X-band’s.

Engineers suspect the fault protection system lowered the rate at which data was being sent back from the transmitter, which changed the nature of the signal shared by Voyager 1 to the Deep Space Network monitors. The Voyager 1 team ultimately located the probe’s response later on October 18 by sifting through signals the Deep Space Network was receiving.

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The Legendary Paulino "The Net Breaker" Alcántara

Football or soccer may not be as popular as basketball in the Philippines, but it has a long and rich history in the islands, dating back to the 1890s, when the British introduced the sport to the Spanish and European settlers.

The Philippine Football Federation (PFF) was established in 1907 and it would soon feature several Hispanic Filipino sportsmen that included FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad, Atlético Madrid and Real Zaragoza legends. Players like Manuel Amechazurra, Paulino Alcántara, Juan Torena, Eduardo Teus, Marcelino Gálatas and Gregorio Querejeta would eventually become the first Filipinos and Asian footballers to play for a professional European club in Spain.

Among these renowned soccer legends, Paulino Alcántara Riestrá (7 October 1896 – 13 February 1964) became a familiar and popular name. He went on to become the youngest Filipino footballer to play in Spain, where he made his professional debut as a striker at the age of 15 for Barcelona, which made him the club's youngest and second highest goal scorer behind Argentinian footballer, Lionel Messi.

Alcántara was born and raised in Concepcion, Iloilo, in the Spanish colony of the Philippines in 1896. He was the son of Eduardo Alcántara Garchitorena from Manila, and Victoriana Riestrá from Iloilo.

He was raised there until he was three years old when his family moved to Barcelona fleeing from the conflicts of the Philippine Revolution's war of independence from Spain, the same year that FC Barcelona was formed by Joan Gamper.

Alcántara was married to Blanca López Alcántara, a Spanish woman from Barcelona, with whom they had two children and raising two sons, the eldest being Eduardo López Alcántara.

In Spain, Alcántara started playing for FC Galeno, a Barcelona-based club that was founded by and largely made up of medical students and young doctors with their games played in the courtyard of a local hospital. He immediately impressed the coaches and in February 1912 he was scouted by Barcelona's president Joan Gamper who attended a Galeno match.

Alcántara then joined Barcelona's youth team and within the same week, he made his first-team debut at the age of 15 years, 4 months and 18 days on 25 February 1912 against Catalá SC (founded only weeks before FC Barcelona) in the Campionat de Catalunya (Catalan football championship) at the Camp de la Indústria, in front of about 100 fans. Barcelona won that game 9–0, with Alcántara scoring the first three goals of the game, setting the still unbroken record for being the youngest player to ever play and score for FC Barcelona in an official match.

He was also the youngest hat-trick scorer in the world at the time, a record that stood for 84 years. Among his teammates during his time at the club were Francisco Bru Sanz, Jack Greenwell, Romà Forns and club captain, also fellow countryman, Manuel Amechazurra.

He went on to help the club win two Campionat de Catalunya in 1913 and 1916 and the 1913 Copa del Rey (Spanish Cup), in which he missed the final that ended in a 2–2 draw with Real Sociedad, but then played in the replay as Barcelona came-out as 2-1 winners.

In 1917 he was selected by the U.S. Philippines national team and represented the country at the Far Eastern Championship Games in Tokyo, helping them defeat Japan 15–2, which became the Philippines' biggest win in international football.

In 1920 Alcántara, along with Zamora, Samitier and Sesúmaga, was selected to represent Spain at the 1920 Summer Olympics. However, Alcántara chose to stay at home to take his final medical exams. Without him, Spain was eliminated in the quarter-finals by the eventual champions Belgium, the same team against which he eventually made his debut on 7 October 1921, aged 25, scoring both goals in a 2–0 win.

In 1922, he was nicknamed "El Rompe Redes" or "Trencaxarxes" (the net breaker) after he broke the goal's net with a shot during a match against France. In total, he made five appearances and scored a then-national record of six goals for Spain between 1921 and 1927.

He also held citizenships from Spain, the Philippines, and the United States.

Alcántara retired on 3 July 1927 in order to become a doctor at age 31, the same day that FC Barcelona played against Spain in a testimonial match in his honour. He later served as a club director between 1931 and 1934.

Alcántara was one of the first footballers to write memoirs of his playing days. In 1951, Alcántara was one of three selectors, along with Félix Quesada and Luís Iceta, that coached Spain for three games against Switzerland, Belgium and Sweden. He won one game and tied the other two.

Alcántara fell ill of a rare condition of aplastic anemia and died in 1964 at the age of 67 in Barcelona, and is laid to rest in Cementiri de les Corts in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

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Chinese Company Developed Radiation-Detecting Chip

The researchers at a Chinese state-owned nuclear company has discovered the world's first chip that can detect X-ray and gamma radiation and now they have started mass production. This signals the latest efforts of China to seek semiconductor technology breakthroughs.

The state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) said in a press release it its official WeChat channel that the self-developed chip can measure dose rates of X- and gamma-ray radiation ranging from 100 nanoSievert per hour to 10 milliSievert per hour.

The typical dose rate of radiation exposure when flying on a commercial aeroplane, for instance, is around 3,000 nanoSievert per hour, while that of exposure to natural background is around 60 to 200 nanoSievert per hour.

CNNC said the proposed applications were "broad", as customers can use the chip to monitor radiation doses in various scenarios including nuclear-related workplaces, personnel and environmental settings, after adapting the circuit based on instructions in the manual.

It can also be integrated into smartphones and drones as a radiation sensor, which could then be used as smart devices with a radiation detection function, according to CNNC.

The chip's sensitivity is comparable to a Geiger-Muller counter widely used in environmental measurement, despite its small size of 15mm by 15mm by 3mm, according to CNNC.

It can detect energies from 50 kiloelectron volt to 2 mega electron-volt, and has extremely low power consumption of one milliwatt.

The US sanctioned CNNC said its team was involved in the whole development process, from chip design and tape-out to packaging and testing, and has now outsourced mass production to "authorised factories".

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