mystery

We thought we had solved the mystery of the giant “trees” of the Paleozoic. We couldn’t be more wrong

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More than a century ago, when the first known fossils of Prototaxitesintuition said that it should be the remains of a tree. Decades of study revealed to paleontologists that this fossil did not belong to a plant, so everything seemed to indicate that it was an immense fungus. Now a new study has reopened this unknown. Neither plant nor fungus. The study in question has revived the discussion About the nature and taxonomy of Prototaxitesprehistoric beings that so far the catalog scientific consensus as fungi. The involvement of “taking out” these beings from the evolutionary branch of fungi is that perhaps these beings belonged to an extinct and unknown branch of the tree of evolution. 400 million years ago. What we do know about Prototaxites For the fossil registry, it is that being trafficking with organisms that were alive towards the middle of the Paleozoic era, does Between 420 million and 375 million years. These beings had a more or less cylindrical structure, similar to a trunk and stood up to eight meters above the sky with a diameter that the subway could reach. These measures and their age make them one of the first large beings of those of which we have record in the fossil registry. The debate on the nature of these prehistoric living beings seemed to mid -2000s. It was then that an analysis revealed that the Prototaxites They did not obtain their carbon from photosynthesis, as is the case of plants, but obtained from other living organisms, as fungi do. Rhynie Chert. The new study that reopens the case It now contributes tests that this being did not belong to the kingdom of fungi and focuses on one of the known species of this genus, Taiti prototaxites. The team resorted to the fossils found at the Rhynie Chert site in Scotland. This site contains not only fossil remains of this species, but also of fungal species and others belonging to other kingdoms of nature. Similarities and differences. The new analysis of the fossils of this species ran into some similarities with fungal structures such as those that could be expected. However, despite having tubular internal structures similar to those of fungi, these tubes in P. Taiti They branched and linked in a different way from what they could expect. That was not, however the strangest detail. The analysis did not detect in fossils evidence of the products that are associated with the presence of chitina, a compound present in the cell walls of all contemporary fungi and that we know was also present in prehistoric fungi. They found that the chemical “firm” was more similar to that left behind by lignin, a polymer that we associate with vascular plants. The study has been published for now draft In the repository Biorxivso the standardized scrutiny of peer review has not yet passed. So what? This detail implies that we must extreme caution when drawing conclusions from the study we have in front. Even so, the signing team of the study outlines in this its conclusions, in principle preliminary. In his study, the team concludes that “the morphology and the molecular footprint of P. Taiti It is clearly different from that of fungi and other organisms preserved with it in Rhynie Chert, and we suggest that it is better considered a member of a group not described and totally extinct of eukaryotes. ” In Xataka | An amateur fossil search engine is behind a curious finding: vomiting of the dinosaurs era Image | Іщн

This 4,500 -year -old game was an absolute mystery. Until AI helped us decipher it

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A few years ago archaeologists found something unique at the Shahr-i Sokhta site: a board game. I had about 4,500 years old, and it is believed that it is the board game complete older ever discovered. The problem was that no one knew how it was played … until AI arrived. Persian games. That site was part of the Helmand civilization in the Bronze Age. Lying To the east of Iran and south of Afghanistan, in that discovery both the board were found, with 20 circular spaces, and four dice and 27 geometric pieces. But how were they used? No game manuals. In old board games hardly ever There were written rules, and the instructions passed orally. That probably caused the rules to end up being modified between different groups of players over the decades or centuries, experts point out. But that also facilitates the task of finding out how it was played: as explained in New Scientistit was not necessary to find the definitive rules, only those that approached those that were probably the most logical. AU helps learn to play. The used AI systems use techniques such as Monte Carlo Search Treewhich was also used for the Alphago developmentof Deepmind. With them it is possible to simulate rules that can be applied to the game based on the structure of the board and the available parts. They can evaluate multiple variations of the possible rules that allow evaluating not only if they are logical, but end up offering boring or fun games. Beyond chess. Among these games there are real jewels because of their age Senetthat for example was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. There are representations such as the main image – the Nefertari Egyptian queen playing Senet – that demonstrates its popularity in that culture. Others, like him Ur’s real gamefrom the ancient Mesopotamia, their secrets were able to discover a cuneiform tablet that It deciphered in 2007 In the British Museum. Shahr-i Sokhta game. Source: Persian Wonders First studies. One of the first applications of AI to the board games of antiquity is in the game Ludus Latrunculorum (“The game of thieves”), which was played among the Romans and that it is believed that it was already played (at least, in a previous version) in Greece. It is one of the best known thanks to the writings recovered from that time, and that allowed – thatNot effortlessly– rebuild its rules quite likely they were the ones that the Romans effectively used. Thus the Romans played. Cameron Browne, from the University of Maastricht, in Holland, led The call Digital Ludeme Project (DLP). It investigated about 1,000 traditional games over the 6,000 years of the history of humanity, and games such as Ludus Latrunculorum were studied. Simulations everywhere. It was not easy: this game – or its variants – appears with boards of different formats and sizes throughout history, but the AI ​​helped discover possible rules. Simulations were made to investigate which boards made more sense for the most plausible rules, and it was discovered how three games still active in our days – Khabebga, Seega and Tablut – had a strong relationship. All these tests allowed to conclude how the smallest boards were the ones that probably They were used in the Roman gameand others may be dedicated to other board games that experts have not been able to identify. You can play Shahr-i Sokhta. As with Ludus Latrunculorum, the help of AI served to raise what were the probable rules of the Shahr-i Sokhta game. So much so that developer Sam Jelveh and archaeologist Hossein Morad created An online playable version of the video game With complete information on how it was supposed to be played. Endless investigation. These efforts have not stopped there. More than 200 computer scientists, archaeologists and historians are collaborating in the project Gametable to develop even more advanced AI tools to discover the rules of old board games. And also, perhaps, to reveal why some came to our days transformed into current games – it is believed that UR’s real game ended up becoming the backgammon – and others disappeared without leaving just a trace. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | The 41 best board games: from ‘Catán’ to ‘Gloomhaven’

The sunset images on the moon are more than a curiosity. They will also help us solve an old mystery

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50 years after the last manned mission to the moon, NASA and other space agencies in the world have renewed their interest in exploration In situ of the satellite In the case of the US agency, this return to the moon has been bittersweet. To the recurring transpiés of the Artemis program The injured arrivals from American private probes are added. There are also exceptions here. Sunset on the moon. The first module mission Blue Ghost From the company Texana Firefly Aerospace has brought us A sequence of images They show us the sunset on the moon. The images are not only striking but can help us solve a question that persecutes us from the era of the Apollo missions. An enigma to solve. The doubt in question revolves around the phenomenon known as “Lunar horizon glow” (Lunar Horizon Glow) and is related to the dust of the satellite surface. This phenomenon was documented by THE SURVEYOR 7 MISSION that he arrived at the satellite at the end of 1968 and was also captured by the astronauts of the last manned lunar mission, Apollo 17. The data compiled by the probe could help us to inquire if this glow is due to the existence of small polka dust particles in suspension on the lunar surface and investigate in the phenomenon that would be causing this levitation in a place with a practically non -existent atmosphere such as the moon. The main hypothesis indicates that these particles could be electrically charged by the effect of solar radiation, which would make them repel with each other and thus levitate. Halo. The images show us for the first time in decades this unique luminous halo. In the photographs, the greenish glow caused by lunar dust in the lunar dusk can be seen. From eclipse to sunset. On March 2, the Blue Ghost module landed in the Mare Crisium de Luna region becoming the First private mission in reaching the satellite. The mission operated for 14 days, the strictly daytime part of the lunar day, that is, until a few hours later the dusk we see in the image. The mission brought 10 charges to the moon NASA experiments. During his activity period he sent 119 GB of data to Earth, of which 51 GB correspond to technological and scientific data, According to NASA. In those 14 days the mission too He could capture A unique event: the lunar eclipse of March 14. With unique detail: from the moon what was appreciated was an eclipse of sun caused when our planet interposed between the satellite and light in those 14 days the mission could also capture a unique event: the lunar eclipse of last March 14. With unique detail: from the moon what was appreciated was an eclipse of sun caused when our planet interposed between the satellite and light of the sun. CLPS The Firefly Aerospace mission is part of the Clps initiative (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) from NASA and the Artemis campaign. This program seeks that private companies cooperate with NASA in lunar exploration in order to outsource part of the agency’s efforts in this corner of the universe. The lunar missions framed in this initiative have been arriving with more grief than glory to our satellite. Only one of the four Missions launched to date has managed to land in the satellite with the ability to operate normally. In Xataka | It has passed again: the intuitive machines spacecraft has come alive to the moon, but has overturned at the last moment Image | Firefly Aerospace

A science fiction novel with mystery elements to the Agatha Christie, ‘Hermes file’ wins the XIX Minotaur

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The novel of Science fiction ‘Hermes file’ wins the Minotaur prize the year in which the dean publishing house dedicated to the fantastic turns 70 and her editorial group, planet, turns 75. The prize has been granted unanimously to a manuscript sent under pseudonym And with another title that has finally stayed aside, ‘Lovebot’, and that referred to an important element of the plot. The jury as always, brings together names from the press and the fandom of the fantastic, to which Asier Moreno Vizuete adds, winner of the XVIII Minotaur Award. Next to him have been part of the jury Isabel Clemente (member of Porticothe Spanish Fantasy, Science Fiction and Terror Association), Fernando Bonete (University Professor, Author and prescriber), Daniel Pérez Castrillón and Alberto Pluled (both booksellers and prescribers). In the contest, 274 manuscripts from different countries have participated this year, mainly Spain, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia, although they have also come from other European and even Asian countries. The winning novel has been praised by its Interesting use of classic elements of science fiction and authors such as Isaac Asimovwith issues on artificial intelligence heirs of those already raised by the author mixed with unusual ingredients in gender, such as agatha Christie -type criminals. In the book we moved to the twentieth century, when vacation cruises, Mars and Jupiter have been popularized. On board the SC Schettino, the head of security has to resolve the murder of Condesa Planck, multimillionaire and influencer. Its main witness is also the great suspect: the Lovebot of the deceased, an artificial humanoid created for pleasure. The trip will become an epic of discovery about what makes us human. Header | Minotaur In Xataka | In 1993, an author predicted devastating fires in Los Angeles of 2025 and the “Make America Great Again”

For five years we have tried to decipher a television signal that came from the sky. The mystery has been resolved

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The news for the year in the cosmos has a name and surname: 2024 YR4, that asteroid whose probabilities of impact on Earth do nothing but up. But thousands of kilometers from our planet continue to happen fascinating events. Without going very far, X -ray telescopes have just revealed A superstructure of more than one billion light years. There are more, because for five years astronomers had been looking for a response to a television signal that came from space. The enigma has just been resolved. The mystery of the signals. For five years, astronomers who analyzed the data of the Murchison Widefield Array radio in Western Australia found an unexpected enigma: A television signal from heaven. Since the telescope is located in A radioelectric silence zone Designated to avoid human interference in radioastronomy, the detection of said signal was particularly disconcerting for the community. Even more strange was the fact that the signal It seemed to move through the skywhich led to all kinds of speculation about possible reflections of our own transmissions until, of course, theories about extraterrestrial activity. The answer, as almost always, It was something simpler. The discovery: airplanes. Apparently, the turning point came when Jonathan Poly, physicist at Brown University and leader of the United States research team, He had a revelation: “We said: ‘I bet the signal is being reflected in a plane’”. While this hypothesis had already raised before, no one had confirmed it with certainty. To check it, the equipment used advanced signal processing techniques, as close field corrections and beam formationwith which they managed to better focus close sources of interference. What happened? That the analysis revealed that The reflected signal corresponded to the Channel 7 frequency bandan Australian digital television station. Perhaps more important than that, the calculations on the altitude and speed of the reflective object indicated that It was a plane in full phase of cruiseflying at 11.7 kilometers of altitude at a speed of 792 km/h, data that coincide with the usual characteristics of a commercial flight. A problem for astronomy. As indicated in your recently published studythis type of interference represents a serious problem for astronomers, since Contamin the data and can force the elimination of large amounts of valuable information. According to Jade Chucharmefrom Brown University, “It’s like trying to listen to a friend whispering on the other side of the table while a child screams in your ear.” In this way, every time a television signal is reflected in a plane, It overlaps cosmic waves That astronomers seek to analyze, which can make large sets of observations must be ruled out. Not just that. As they underline, the team’s discovery is key to Develop interference elimination methodswhich will allow filtering these reflexes without losing important astronomical information. However, the problem is not limited to airplanes: satellites in orbit represent an even greater threat. Are we too loud on earth for astronomy? It is the big question that slides from the finding. The number of satellites in orbit It is still increasingwhich aggravates the problem of radio interference. Although scientists are improving data filtering techniques, some begin to question whether planet Earth himself remains adequate place for radioastronomy. According to poor“If we cannot find a silent sky on earth, maybe the earth is no longer the indicated place.” Be that as it may, some astronomers have begun to consider The possibility of moving radioastronomy to spacewith projects that propose the installation of telescopes in the hidden face of the moon, where the terrestrial interference would be minimal. In that sense, the discovery of Poly and his team not only solves a five -year mystery, but also marks a crucial step for the preservation of radioastronomy in an era where electromagnetic pollution is a growing problem. With the advancement of technology, the struggle between the exploration of the cosmos and the signs generated by the human being could define the future of astronomy. Unfortunately for believers, no one was watching TV in space. Image | Pexels, Nara In Xataka | X -ray telescopes have revealed an unimaginable object: a superstructure of more than one billion light years In Xataka | The impact probability of asteroid 2024 YR4 has risen to 3.1% (1 of 32): why the UN waiting for May to act

The mystery of the best photography made to a UFO is still unresolved. And the United Kingdom Government has the fault

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In the set of UVNI eventsacronym for unidentified flying object that over time has been slightly modified to UAP, there are some more relevant than others. Obviously, those who have not been able to answer for lack of information They are the ones who have caught the public’s attention. Without going very far, Incidents revealed by New York Times In 2017 with The pentagon fighters avistando “something”They have turned the world around. And if we stick to a photograph, none like Calvine’s. Encounters in the moors of Scotland. Historius took place One night of August 1990when two hikers who worked as chefs in a nearby hotel claimed to have witnessed an inexplicable event in Calvine’s moors, a remote town in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. While they walked between the fog, They noticed the presence of a huge diamond -shaped object floating in the sky“A stranger” without sound or visible propulsion signs. Its metal structure remained static in the air, challenging common sense itself on the behavior of a conventional aircraft. The astonishment and fear of witnesses increased when A combat plane Harrier appeared on the scenesurrounding the object as if it were in a recognition maneuver. Before the men could process what they saw, the mysterious artifact amounted to high speed and disappeared. One of the witnesses managed to capture several photographs of the moment, images that, years later, would become one of the most enigmatic visual tests in the history of this type of events and considered as Better photography ever made to a UFO. The Ministry of Defense intervenes. Days later, hikers They sent the photos and their testimony to the newspaper Daily Record of Scotland. Andy Allen, image editor of the newspaper, was hit by the clarity of the photographs and decided to send the best to Craig Lindsay, then press officer of the Royal Air Force (RAF) at the base of Pitreavie Castle. Lindsay, surprised by the sharpness and realism of the image, referred it to the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MOD), that immediately requested the negatives and other copies. In addition, he instructed Lindsay to contact the witnesses and collect more details. Again and according to the story of one of the hikers, the ship had a metal appearance and levitated without any source of visible propulsion. The conversation with Lindsay was the last time the witnesses gave statements about the event, and His identity was never publicly revealed. Shortly after, the MOD instructed Lindsay to cease any investigation and to leave the case in his hands. One of the two poor quality photocopies of ‘VUFOILS’ (Transparent Plastic Images) made from Calvine UFO photography, published by the National Archives of the United Kingdom in 2009 Photography disappears. That same fall, during a meeting at the MOD offices in London, Lindsay noticed that the best of UFO images had been extended to poster size and hanging on a wall. He was also able to observe the other five photos, in which the Harrier was seen moving around the object while he remained motionless. When consulting with the Ministry analysts, they confirmed that there were no indications of fraud, but that they could not identify the object. Despite the apparent initial interest, Calvine’s case was quickly filed. The Daily Record never published the story, and The photographs disappeared from any public registry For more than 30 years. It is unknown if the newspaper decided not to publish the article on its own initiative or if it received pressures from the British government to hide the incident. Where is the photo? It appears then The figure of the journalist and researcher David Clarkewho was aware of the case in 1996 through the book Open Skies, Closed Mindsby Nick Pope, a former MOD official who worked at the Ministry’s UFO investigation office. Pope described the case as one of the most intriguing in the MOD files and said that the analyzes had determined that the images were genuine, although the object remained without explanation. In 2009, Clarke began to examine declassified documents in the national archives of the United Kingdom and found a memorandum aimed at Ministers of Defense of the time of Margaret Thatcher. In this document, under the title “Defensive Lines to Take”, it was claimed that The mod had not reached definitive conclusions on the objectbut that the plane in the image was undoubtedly a Harrier. In addition, the memorandum indicated that there were no records of unusual activity in the area. Written version of a handwritten summary of Calvine’s sighting in September 1990, published by the United Kingdom National Archives in 2009 The (re) discovery. Over the years, Clarke tried to locate the original image without success, until In 2018 he found the name of a former defense intelligence department in government documents. After locating it on LinkedIn and contacting him, he confirmed that he remembered Calvine’s case and that at the time caused a stir within the ministry. According to his testimony, the most likely explanation was that it was an American experimental aircraft. This revelation led Clarke to Craig Lindsay, who still retained a copy of the photograph inside an old book in his garage. Thus, in 2022, after more than three decades of mystery and After examining with experts if the photograph was realClarke made the image public to the entire world, generating enormous media interest. What the hell happens here? The big question is still unanswered, although obviously there is hypotheses and possible explanations about the nature of the object. The most popular are three. The first is that, yes, That day an extraterrestrial ship was seen. In this regard, some ufologists argue that the object does not resemble any known aircraft, which reinforces the theory that it could be a ship of extraterrestrial origin. The second most commented option speaks of A United States Secret Project. This tip theory to which the object was an American aircraft prototype, possibly from the Aurora program, an alleged hypersonic spy developed … Read more

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