For decades, the possibility of discovering extraterrestrial intelligence has captured the imagination of scientists, sci-fi enthusiasts, filmmakers, and the public alike.

In line with such efforts, the IAA SETI Committee and the uNHIdden Foundation, two separate not-for-profit organizations, have recently released updated rules for evaluating and disclosing detections, and preparing for public preparedness in the event of potential disclosure of extraterrestrial intelligence.

With the release of director Steven Spielberg’s new alien film Disclosure Day, nearly coinciding with the recent release of the government records from the Department of War related to UAP, it seems a growing number of individuals, from the film industry to the science community, have extraterrestrials and “disclosure” on their minds. 

The IAA SETI Committee Rules 

In June 2026, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) approved a major update to the protocols governing the evaluation, verification, and communication of evidence related to extraterrestrial intelligence. The revised guidelines were designed to address a modern information environment shaped by social media, artificial intelligence, and the rapid pace of the 24-hour news cycle.

Professor Michael Garrett, Sir Bernard Lovell Chair of Astrophysics, led the international effort to revise the long-standing post-detection protocols used by researchers engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The updated guidelines have since been formally ratified by the IAA.

“The information environment we operate in today is vastly more complex than it was in 2010,” said Garrett, Chair of the IAA SETI Committee, in a statement. “In an era of deepfakes, automated misinformation, and instant global connectivity, a single unverified claim could trigger confusion or panic. These new protocols ensure that scientists maintain the highest standards of evidence before making announcements to the world.”

The revised declaration reflects the broader scope of modern SETI and technosignature research. Since the previous guidelines were adopted in 2010, advances in technology have enabled scientists to investigate the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including excess infrared heat signatures that could indicate megastructures, optical laser emissions, and even multi-messenger signals.

The updated framework also addresses modern challenges, including protections for researchers who may face harassment, doxxing, or intense media scrutiny. It further emphasizes the importance of distinguishing verified scientific data from viral rumors, hoaxes, or terrestrial interference.

New Contact Rules at SETI

At the heart of the new guidelines is a familiar scientific principle: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Under the revised protocols, no public announcement should be made until a signal or artifact has been rigorously verified by independent organizations using different instruments and methodologies.

“We do not shout ‘alien’ the moment we see a strange blip,” said Garret in a statement. “The scientific method demands we check, check again, and then ask others to check. Only when we have reached a consensus that a signal is credible do we bring it to the world.”

While the protocols explain how to share discovery news, they make one rule clear: no reply should be sent.

“The threshold for ‘extraordinary evidence’ is subjective,” Siemion says. “Because of the vast diversity of modalities in which a technosignature might manifest, it is impossible to state explicitly the criteria that would meet this threshold under all circumstances.”

“In the case of a coherent electromagnetic signal, like a narrowband carrier or a series of laser pulses, an example of ‘extraordinary’ would be if we repeatedly detected the signal at the same location with multiple independent observatories,” Siemion adds.

He also noted that, for a transient signal, compelling evidence might include multiple lines of data indicating that it traveled through interstellar space. Determining whether a phenomenon truly originated from extraterrestrial technology would likely be a lengthy process, with evidence presented, challenged, and reassessed over time.

The declaration reinforces that any response to extraterrestrial intelligence would be a decision for all humanity and should only occur following international consultation, particularly through the United Nations.

With the updated declaration now ratified by the IAA Board, it will be shared with stakeholders, including the United Nations. A formal presentation of the protocols is scheduled for the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Türkiye later this year.

“The release of these updated rules and protocols marks an important step in acknowledging both the radically different media landscape that science functions within today, and the vastly expanded efforts in terms of technology and resources being deployed in the search for intelligent life beyond Earth,” said Bill Diamond, President and CEO of the SETI Institute and IAA SETI Committee member. “We applaud Prof Garrett’s leadership in developing these new protocols and the IAA for their ratification.” 

First Contact and Humanity’s Mental Health

Another nonprofit organization has taken a different approach, focusing on the potential psychological and public-health implications of disclosure. The uNHIdden Foundation, whose mission is to support mental health related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), recently released a preparedness framework addressing the societal impact of a paradigm-shifting discovery.

If governments prepare for natural disasters, pandemics, and other low-probability, high-impact events, should humanity also consider preparing for the possibility of contact with another intelligent civilization?

On June 8, uNHIdden Foundation Founder and Chairman John Priestland, alongside clinical spokesperson Dr. Martin Abbas, launched what they describe as the first public-health preparedness framework focused on disclosure-related scenarios.

Developed by healthcare practitioners, physicians, clinical psychologists, and public-health specialists, “Preparing for Disclosure: A Public Health Framework for Paradigm-Shifting Revelations” examines how society might reduce harm, build resilience, and support individuals processing a profound shift in humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe.

“This report is not a prediction. It is a preparedness exercise,” Priestland says. “Governments prepare for all kinds of low-probability, high-impact events.”

“Our view is that if a paradigm-shifting disclosure were ever to occur, we should at least have thought about the human consequences in advance,” Priestland added. 

The report suggests that certain groups could be more vulnerable to disclosure-related distress, including individuals with pre-existing mental health conditions, those facing socioeconomic hardship, UAP experiencers, highly religious individuals, and some STEM professionals. The authors emphasize that the report neither predicts disclosure nor attempts to judge future discoveries; rather, it argues that preparedness is a prudent response to the possibility of transformative new information.

David Whitehouse, former BBC Science Correspondent, wrote the report’s foreword, arguing that planning is essential should such a discovery ever occur.

The new framework proposes several practical actions to be taken, which include:

• Reducing stigma surrounding anomalous experiences and disclosure-related concerns
• Building public resilience and psychological flexibility
• Developing trusted sources of information and support
• Creating community conversation groups and peer-support networks
• Strengthening mental health preparedness and triage capability
• Encouraging collaboration between healthcare professionals, researchers, government, and civil society

The report argues that stronger community resilience, clearer communication during periods of uncertainty, and improved mental-health support would be critical not only during a disclosure event but during any large-scale societal disruption.

Ultimately, the question remains whether humanity is truly prepared—or whether a globally coordinated framework is still lacking. Voices ranging from the UAP community to figures within the U.S. government have argued that the public is ready. However, only time will tell what the result may be if confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligence were to arrive—and how humanity will collectively respond to the discovery.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

A shelter-in-place order issued at the Pentagon on Thursday has now been lifted, officials have confirmed, following what was characterized as a “hazardous materials incident”.

Earlier on Thursday, firefighters arrived at the building, which serves as the headquarters of the United States Department of War, in response to concerns involving air quality at the facility.

“Earlier this morning, Pentagon occupants were notified of a potential air quality issue, prompting immediate precautionary safety measures and evaluation,” said Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell in a posting on X.

“Subsequent testing confirmed no hazard exists, and normal operations have resumed,” Parnell said. “We express our sincere appreciation to the first responders for their swift actions to ensure the safety of all personnel.”

In an earlier post, Parnell said that the Pentagon houses “sophisticated systems to ensure the safety of the building and its occupants,” which had reportedly detected “an air quality issue necessitating precautionary measures until we determine its significance.”

In response to the unspecified air quality issue, the Department of War observed what Parnell characterized as “standard protection protocols, including a shelter-in-place order for the affected area.”

“Response teams are in place and ready to support building occupants,” the early statement read.

Separate postings on social media from Arlington County Fire and Rescue indicated that its personnel were on the scene supporting hazmat teams while the incident was under investigation.

Presently, it remains unclear what the issue was that prompted the concerns at the Pentagon, where close to 30,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel are employed.

This is a developing story, which may be updated as new information is made available.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

Researchers from the private nuclear fusion energy company Commonwealth Fusion Systems have published a series of papers that they claim confirm that their flagship ARC reactor will produce more usable energy than it consumes if built as designed.

Although the company projects it will deliver the first commercial fusion plants by the early 2030s, other researchers say there are remaining challenges to overcome, and won’t declare the ARC reactor successful until an operational version is constructed to validate the research team’s theoretical predictions.

ARC Fusion Reactor ‘Will Work’ When Built

Scientists have long dreamed of capturing the nuclear fusion reaction that fuels our Sun and using it to generate clean, renewable power. Private fusion firms like CFS have received nearly $10 billion in funding over the last decade alone.

The first laboratory “net-energy” controlled fusion reaction, which fusion scientists call “ignition,” didn’t occur until 2022, when physicists at the US National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, successfully produced more energy than was used to generate the reaction. Although brief, that moment has fueled speculation that practical fusion energy generation may be right around the corner.

Now, the Commonwealth team, which includes 58 researchers from the company and partner institutes, has published scientific papers outlining the physics of their ARC reactor, including new models that they say account for the “expected behavior” of the superhot plasma at the heart of the design.

Brandon Sorbom, the company’s chief science officer, said that the published works  “confirm that when we build the ARC fusion power plant, it will work”.

Company Claims ARC Will Produce 400 Megawatts of Net Electricity

After nearly a decade of research, CFS, founded in 2018, is currently preparing its prototype for a 2027 demonstration it calls ‘SPARC.’ The company said they expect that trial run, which will demonstrate their technology’s ability to generate more energy than it needs to heat the plasma, will help them fine-tune ARC’s final design.

According to the Commonwealth-led team, ARC will generate more energy than is required to operate the entire facility, including plasma heating, resulting in a true net-positive power-generation facility. This includes producing approximately 400 megawatts of net electricity, which the team noted is enough to power 280,000 average US homes. For comparison, recent census data indicates that Boston, Massachusetts, near the company’s headquarters in Cambridge, has around 271,000 U.S. homes.

Like SPARC, the ARC reactor uses high-temperature superconducting magnets to compress the plasma, which remains suspended by the magnetic fields, preventing it from damaging the chamber walls and terminating any potential fusion reaction. Under this extreme pressure, the nuclei of heavy hydrogen trapped inside the chamber fuse to form helium, the same reaction that takes place inside the Sun.

This fusion reaction results in the release of energy, primarily high-speed neutrons. At its hottest, the donut-shaped ring of plasma reaches seven times the temperature of the Sun.

Critics Applaud Publication While Highlighting Unproven Concepts and Systems

Tony Roulstone, a nuclear engineer at the University of Cambridge, UK, conceded that the CFS team and its collaborating authors are “some of the best in the fusion business” and noted the company’s ARC reactor concept is the result of “good work over many years.” However, Roulstone also warned of the pressure on researchers in privately funded companies to “claim things before the evidence is fully in place.”

David Hammer, a nuclear engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said it is a good sign that the team is publishing at a high volume, but also warned that published papers will not guarantee that the built device will work as intended.

Their modeling “has to be proven correct by a fusion reactor that works as designed”, he adds. If the firm can get SPARC operating successfully next year, “it will be an important step forward”, he says.

Hamner also noted that several of the design’s subsystems require further development before it can be declared complete. This includes addressing how plasma will behave in the real world when it becomes unstable versus its modeled behavior, proving out the process for extracting usable energy from the generated heat, and demonstrating that the reactor is robust enough to operate for long periods.

The scientists also noted the challenges in sourcing tritium, the isotopic fuel the reactor requires to operate. Although CFS has outlined its tritium generation process, Hamner noted that the series of published papers neither details the process nor demonstrates its viability.

“There are candidate blanket materials and blanket designs, but there are many engineering person-years needed” to bring a functional ARC-style plant to fruition, he explained.

“We certainly have to build more on top of that foundation laid out in these papers,” a company spokesperson said, adding that they will “be able to produce tritium for operations and for future power plants.”

The following articles were published by the CFS-led team: “Overview of the physics basis for the ARC fusion power plant“; “ARC disruption physics and strategy“; “Performance and Transport in the ARC Tokamak“; “Power and particle exhaust for the ARC fusion power plant“; “ARC Physics Basis-Magnetohydrodynamics.”

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to correct a previous version that described neutrinos, rather than fast-neutrons, in the context of the reporting, and to clarify that the first achievement of a “net-energy” controlled fusion reaction (ignition) occurred in 2022. 

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

The Cozumel dwarf fox, a rare species previously known only from secondhand reports and fossil records, has been discovered alive on Cozumel, a small Caribbean island off the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula.

Researchers published the announcement in Neotropical Biology and Conservation, describing the rescue and identification of the rare dwarf fox before it was released back into the wild. They caution that this rare species, previously believed extinct, faces extreme danger from a host of threats.

The Cozumel Dwarf Fox

As one of the rarest canids on the planet, the species had never before been documented alive by scientists. The Cozumel dwarf fox (Urocyon sp.) is a close relative of the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), which is found on the Mexican mainland. After several millennia of isolation on the island—possibly predating Maya settlement—the Cozumel fox underwent insular dwarfism, evolving to only 60–80% the size of its mainland relatives.

Evidence for the animal has been remarkably scarce, and while subfossil remains provided conclusive proof that the species once existed, there had not even been a secondhand report since 2001, leading many researchers to assume it was extinct.

That changed on September 14, 2023, when members of the public reported a disoriented fox along a coastal highway near kilometer marker 29.

Responders from the Fundación de Parques y Museos de Cozumel recovered the animal and cared for it for three days while monitoring its health. On September 17, 2023, the fox was released into the Laguna Columbia State Reserve, where it would be protected from traffic and other hazards.

The sighting marks the first time the Cozumel fox has been formally documented by scientists and recognized as taxonomically distinct.

Cozumel Fox Habitat

Although the sparse evidence of these creatures may not be enough to conclusively map their habitat, the researchers have some idea where the Cozumel fox typically resides.

“Historical sightings have been concentrated around the community of El Cedral and near the entrance of Punta Sur Ecological Park, which is where this photographic record also took place,” lead author Travis Bayer of Pathos Wildlife told The Debrief. “No sightings have ever been observed further north than El Cedral, which leads us to believe that may be the extent of their range on the island, which would also be very concerning due to the already limited space on an island.”

“If their home ranges are restricted to the Southern end of the island, they may have home ranges around 100 km2,” Bayer continued. “If they associate with only wetland/mangrove habitats, the size gets considerably smaller and more concerning for their conservation, as those habitats mainly only occur along the coastline and are at high risk for development for restaurants and resorts.”

Staying Hidden

Given that Cozumel is a popular tourist destination known for its beaches and resorts, it may seem surprising that an animal the size of a fox could remain undetected for so long. Bayer says part of the explanation lies in the island’s difficult terrain and the species’ elusive behavior.

“Cozumel is home to many different terrestrial ecosystems, many of which are not easily accessible either,” Bayer explained. “Habitats like the mangrove forests and wetlands are almost impenetrable to us, but to a fox, easily traversable.”

“Also, not that many people are out there looking for this animal, as the public awareness of it was extremely low, and the scientific investment was limited to one primary publication and a few brief mentions in others,” he added.

Additionally, the combination of grey foxes’ typical elusiveness, their nocturnal habits, and the highway cutting through their habitat being closed at night all combine to make the species easy to miss.

Preserving the Cozumel Fox

“In collaboration with a team of local biologists, led by Rafael Chacón, we have begun developing an emergency conservation action plan for the Cozumel fox aimed at locating remaining individuals, estimating population size, identifying critical habitat, and determining immediate threats,” Bayer said.

Ensuring that the species does not disappear again is now a top priority. Researchers consider the fox critically endangered, with its limited habitat threatened by development, invasive species, and natural disasters.

Several introduced animals also pose significant risks. These include invasive boas released during a 1971 film production that have since spread across the island. Domestic dogs and cats may also threaten the fox through competition, predation, or disease transmission. In addition, predators such as ocelots and margays were introduced as exotic pets before eventually being released into the wild.

“Using thermal drone surveys, large-scale camera trap networks, and other advanced monitoring technologies, we aim to rapidly generate the data needed to guide immediate conservation intervention,” Bayer said. “Simultaneously, we are collecting the evidence necessary to formally describe the animal as a new and distinct species deserving of critically endangered recognition and legal protections.”

“One of the most important takeaways from this research is that species can quietly disappear without the world even realizing they are gone,” Bayer concluded.

“We often think extinction is something dramatic and obvious, but in reality, it can happen gradually and silently, especially for rare species living in remote or understudied habitats.”

The paper, “First Photographic Evidence of an Insular Dwarf Fox (Urocyon sp.) on the Island of Cozumel, Mexico,” appeared in Neotropical Biology and Conservation on May 4, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

A new study has taken a fresh look at a late 2025 Yonsei University study claiming the universe’s expansion is stalling out and instead has found that the universe is still expanding as previously believed.

Led by researchers from the University of Southampton, the team behind the new analysis acknowledged the scientific value of the 2025 team’s work, noting that their calculations were not wrong but lacked the additional data needed to confirm the universe’s expansion rather than refute it.

The lead author of the 2025 study, Dr. Chul Chung, told The Debrief that he and his colleagues “have already submitted our response to Wiseman, Riess et al. 2026 on May 14,” adding that the paper, “Still accelerating: age bias correction in supernova cosmology is robust to host-progenitor age mapping,” has also been posted on arXiv.

“The abstract summarizes the two main issues we identify in Wiseman et al., so I think it provides a concise overview of our position,” Chung told The Debrief.

Challenging Universal Expansion

According to a statement announcing the findings, scientists first confirmed the universe’s expansion was accelerating in 2011, a discovery that won astrophysicists Professor Adam Riess and Professor Brian Schmidt the Nobel Prize in Physics. Since that discovery, cosmological models have incorporated this accelerating expansion, with experiments on dark matter and dark energy attempting to explain it.

Then last year, a separate team of astronomers announced that a new analysis of stellar phenomena indicated that the universe was no longer expanding. Adding to the controversy was the team’s claim that dark energy may not exist, citing the lack of concrete evidence for a universe undergoing accelerating expansion.

According to the Southampton-led team behind the new study, the 2025 study suggested that previous methods used to measure the universe’s expansion, such as measuring supernovae, “were fundamentally flawed.”

“This points to a time-varying dark energy and a universe that is no longer accelerating, representing a potential paradigm shift in cosmology if confirmed,” explained Professor Chul Chung, co-lead author on the study, in a 2025 email to The Debrief.

The claims sent shockwaves through the scientific community, a result that the researchers note could have dismantled the Nobel Prize-winning team’s historic findings, and “nearly three decades of astronomical progress.”

When discussing the 2025 team’s work, the lead author of the new study, Dr Phil Wiseman, said the team’s findings and the resulting debate were not necessarily incorrect. Instead, the Southampton researcher said it was primarily a result of a scientific understanding.

“The previous and well-accepted measurements were, in fact, fine and our current understanding of the fate of the universe remains robust.”

Recalculating Galaxy Masses and White Dwarf Star Ages Reestablishes Expansion

In their reanalysis, the Southampton-led team recalibrated the original data to account for variables not in the original study. According to Wiseman, these included “different host environments and populations.”

For example, the research team looked at Type 1a supernovae, which are violet, extremely bright explosions of white dwarf stars. The authors of the 2025 study claimed that this class of supernova had “different maximum brightness,” which had tricked astronomers into thinking the cosmos was accelerating, when their analysis said it was actually slowing down.

When they took a fresh look at the data, the Southampton team found that they had incorrectly estimated the age of these stars. The new study also says the 2025 team didn’t account for the mass of the galaxies hosting these cosmological phenomena, which they described as “a standard correction used in modern cosmology to prove accuracy.”

When his team factored those data points in, Wiseman said the evidence for a stalling expansion was not supported. Instead, the researcher observed that “the evidence for cosmic acceleration remains remarkably consistent.”

In their reply on ArXiv, the Yonsei University team said the new research failed to factor in two variables of their own, adding that “when these two effects are consistently combined in computing the redshift-dependent magnitude correction, the final correction, and hence the resulting cosmological impact, remain largely unchanged,” from the original 2025 calculations.

“Extraordinary Claims Require Especially Careful Testing”

When discussing the new study’s findings, Southampton Professor Mark Sullivan highlighted the benefits of scientific review, noting that “this is how progress is made.”

“Although this idea did not turn out correct, it has opened up new ways of thinking about how supernovae explode and how we can measure dark energy more accurately,” the researcher added.

Paper co-author, Dr Brodie Popovic agreed, noting that the 2025 study provided astronomers a good opportunity to “go back over all of our assumptions,” adding that “it turns out, yes, we do understand this stuff, and we’re accounting for it in our cosmology measurement.”

In a salute to the Sagan Standard established by astronomer Carl Sagan, which says “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” Reiss seemed to celebrate the new findings that reestablish his original work by quipping that “extraordinary claims require especially careful testing.”

With the accelerating expansion of the universe seemingly reestablished, at least for now, Dr Wiseman said: “we can get back to trying to understand what dark energy actually is, rather than wondering if it exists at all.”

“Thankfully we have averted this crisis, but the mystery about why the universe is still accelerating in size remains,” he added. 

The study “Still Accelerating: Type Ia supernova cosmology is robust to host galaxy age evolution” was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

Fog is a living ecosystem for bacteria, rather than just a sterile cloud of mist,  and may provide an unexpected buffer against harmful pollution.

In a recent paper published in mBio, an Arizona State University team led by then PhD candidate Phi Thuong Thuong Cao, now a graduate, revealed that bacteria are present in fog that cleans the air at a surprising rate, but also poses a possible risk to drinking water collection.

While scientists have long known that bacteria exist in fog, the researchers were surprised to find that the bacteria are not merely present but form an active, if short-lived, ecosystem.

Investigating the Mysteries of Fog Bacteria

“There’s very limited knowledge about what kinds of bacteria are present in fogs, which are like clouds at the ground level,” Cao said.

To probe the mystery of fog bacteria further, Cao focused on two questions: what kinds of bacteria are present, and whether they are active. Discovering growing bacteria within fog droplets elevates fog from a simple atmospheric phenomenon to a biological habitat, a major shift in how researchers have traditionally viewed it.

Fog is composed of tiny droplets of water, each less than a tenth the width of a human hair and too small to fall to the ground. These minuscule droplets form around particles, which can occasionally be living microbes. Although fewer than 1% of droplets contain bacteria, that still represents a substantial population, with bacterial concentrations roughly comparable to those found in the ocean. About 10 million individual bacteria inhabit just a thimbleful of fog water.

A major challenge in studying fog is the wind. Sampling the same location before, during, and after a fog event can produce misleading results because airborne particles are constantly being transported and mixed. For this reason, Cao focused on radiation fog, which forms in still air near the ground as temperatures cool. This allowed the team to minimize complications associated with sample collection.

Standout Bacteria

In Cao’s investigation, one particular type of bacteria, methylobacteria, predominated within the fog droplets. Intriguingly, samples collected during fog events contained far more bacteria than samples of dry air gathered beforehand, suggesting that these microbes thrive in foggy conditions. Among the compounds methylobacteria consume are simple carbon-based molecules, including pollutants such as formaldehyde. In a laboratory setting, Cao was able to observe and experiment on samples collected in the field.

“We observed them under the microscope to see that, yes, the bacteria are getting bigger, and they’re dividing, so there is growth,” Cao explained. “We also found that they’re using the formaldehyde as food to support their growth.”

Even more surprising was the rate at which methylobacteria were breaking down formaldehyde—far faster than they could consume it. This led the team to conclude that because formaldehyde is toxic to the bacteria, they were converting much of it into carbon dioxide to make their environment safer, doing so even faster than they could use it as a food source.

Potential Hazards

The team’s research suggests that fog may play a more important role in Earth’s ecosystems than previously understood, serving as both a temporary aquatic habitat and a natural filter for harmful pollutants.

The implications of the findings are varied. Harvesting fog for drinking water and crop irrigation is already practiced in some regions of the world. This study suggests that such water may contain more bacteria than previously recognized, potentially requiring additional filtration. The risk to most people appears minimal; researchers say only a slight risk may exist for individuals with severely compromised immune systems who are exposed to fog. However, more work is needed to determine the potential benefits and drawbacks of consuming water collected from fog.

Harvesting fog for drinking water and crop sustenance is an ongoing practice. This work shows that water may be full of bacteria, requiring more filtering than previously understood.  The risk to most people is very minimal; only a minor risk exists to people with heavily compromised immune systems from breathing in fog. However, the researchers say that more work is needed to determine the benefits and harms of drinking fog water.

“It’s relatively new that people are starting to look at biological activities in clouds, so there’s still a lot which we don’t understand,” said co-author Pierre Herckes. “At nighttime, for example, there isn’t that much atmospheric chemistry going on. Chemistry is largely driven by the sun and by light. But if the bacteria are still doing their thing even during the nighttime, they can be important.”

Many questions remain unanswered in the wake of this discovery. Cao’s team focused on a single type of fog, leaving open which bacteria thrive in other kinds of fog in other locations, what they eat, and how they impact air quality, all of which will require further study.

“The sky’s the limit,” co-author Ferran Garcia-Pichel says. “No pun intended.”

The paper, “Growth and Formaldehyde Degradation of Photoheterotrophic Methylobacterium within Radiation Fogs,” appeared in mBio on May 11, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

California could be due for a major earthquake in the near future, according to concerning new models based on data comprising 1,000 years of quake activity on the West Coast.

According to recent findings, tectonic stress has quietly been building in California to levels not seen since the last major earthquake in the region, which bore a magnitude of 7.9 and struck the West Coast nearly 170 years ago.

That event, known as the Fort Tejon earthquake, affected the greater Los Angeles area, and since the time of those historic rumblings, researchers have grown increasingly concerned about a period of seismic silence that could point to the likelihood of an event of similar magnitude at some point in the future.

The potentially concerning new forecast was detailed in a recent study by an international team of researchers led by Dr. Liliane Burkhard of the Division of Space Research and Planetary Sciences (WP) at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, which focused on historic earthquake data as a means of gauging current stress loading at Cajon Pass.

The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, indicates tectonic stress levels that are now believed to exceed the highest seen during the years the team surveyed.

The “Earthquake Gate” at Cajon Pass

The researchers aimed to investigate stress that has slowly built along the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults and incorporated what they likened to an “earthquake gate” at Cajon Pass, which, in their models, functioned like a point of control that governed the size of earthquakes and whether they could spread to both systems.

For their research, they used a four-dimensional earthquake cycle model that allowed them to replicate certain processes both in spatial dimensions and across time.

Using a millennium of reconstructed earthquake data from the region based on geological information such as radiocarbon dates, unusual events recorded in dendrochronological data (i.e., information obtained from tree rings), and historical information sources, the team gave this to the model they devised.

Dr. Burkhard said the team’s simulation offered them a unique opportunity to better understand the ways stresses in the fault system build up over long periods of several centuries.

“By running the earthquake history of Southern California as a simulation, we can estimate the extent to which the fault system is already under stress today,” Dr. Burkhard said. The results of those simulations weren’t particularly promising either: according to Burkhard, current stress levels in the region are the highest they have been in 1,000 years, based on the data.

Concerning New Earthquake Data

The team also identified significant new information regarding the function of the so-called “earthquake gate” at Cajon Pass.

“The earthquake gate concept captures something important about how fault junctions work,” Burkhard said in a recent statement. “Cajon Pass doesn’t simply block or channel earthquakes: It responds to stress conditions, and those conditions change over centuries.”

Not only this, but Burkhard and her team also determined that a key element to these quakes involves not only the level of stress that accumulates at a single fault, but perhaps more significantly, the way stress between two systems can align. This is because, as the stress across a pair of faults rises together over longer periods, this appears to be most conducive to a large joint rupture comparable to the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake.

Conversely, if stress levels are not in concert as they evolve, the team determined that this causes quakes that probably will not propagate beyond the junction.

In short, a more severe earthquake event today would entail a joint rupture that crosses the Cajon Pass, as opposed to one constrained either to the San Andreas or the San Jacinto Fault alone. Should such an event occur, it would likely impact one of the largest population centers, as well as a crucial infrastructure system that supplies energy and transportation to surrounding areas.

For Burkhard, “The question of when and how the next major earthquake will occur in this region is one of the most pressing problems in applied geoscience.” Based on the team’s findings, they say that their new modeling hopes to provide a much more complete picture of the science behind the factors that could lead to a major quake—conditions that could apply equally to other parts of the world as they do to California.

Burkhard adds that her team’s study is not intended merely as a prediction for when the next major earthquake could potentially occur, but also as a means of preparing for future quakes and mitigating their effects.

“What we can say is that the system is critically stressed and that physics-based models like ours give a clearer picture of the range of scenarios we should be prepared for,” Burkhard says. “This information is important for hazard assessment, infrastructure planning, and emergency preparedness.”

The team’s study, “Cajon Pass and the Southern San Andreas Fault System: Earthquake Cycle Stress Accumulation and Present‐Day Loading,” appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers are testing a new category of advanced-propulsion “electrospray” thrusters that combine the benefits of modern chemical and electrical thrusters used to drive satellites and other spacecraft into one hybrid system.

The team behind the novel propulsion technology said that electrospray thrusters could allow mission planners to design smaller, more nimble satellites and spacecraft capable of performing faster, more powerful maneuvers or slower, more precise adjustments, depending on mission requirements.

Electrospray Combines the Best of Chemical and Electric Propulsion

Launching rockets into space still requires chemical thrusters, but once spacecraft and satellites reach orbit, engineers continue to develop novel propulsion methods that are more efficient than chemical propulsion technologies. Given the strict weight requirements of spacecraft launches, finding alternatives to chemical propellants has opened up a wider range of mission profiles.

Among the most common alternatives to chemical thrusters are designs that combine electrical energy with small amounts of propellant to produce small but sustainable thrust. Although electric thruster designs require less fuel, saving significantly on launch weight, they also lack both the power and the rapid, quick burst performance of chemical thrusters.

According to study author Amelia Bruno, a former postdoc in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), combining chemical and electrical propulsion into a single system is “the best of both worlds.”

“This opens the door for small satellites to do even more science, more observations, and more interesting missions, all on a smaller and cheaper platform,” Bruno explained to MIT News.

Study co-author Paulo Lozano, the Miguel Alemán Velasco Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, agreed, noting that combining both technologies could enable a CubeSat mission to Mars “where they could make the journey slowly, using electrospray thrusters.”

“You could then use your chemical thrusters to quickly move to look at interesting features,” the professor added. “You could have a lot more flexibility to do a lot more things.”

ASCENT Rocket Fuel as the Thruster’s Ionic Liquid Propellant Enables Hybrid Design

According to a statement detailing the new electrospray thruster’s design, the ones developed by the MIT team are about the size of a thumbnail. Each thruster is also placed directly above a small fuel reservoir. For the MT electrospray thrusters, the fuel is an ionic liquid propellant, a liquid composed of salts that remain dissolved in a solution.

“Ionic liquids are very stable and can even remain a liquid in space, which not a lot of materials can do,” Bruno explained. “And it’s basically a sea of ions, which is why we base our technology around it, so we can pull those ions out into an electrospray.”

When a spacecraft’s battery delivers an electric charge to the fuel reservoir, the ions within the fuel also become charged. The thruster’s design channels the charged particles from the reservoir and through the thruster tips, expelling them into space.

Although the team has tested several types of ionic propellant in its electrospray propulsion thrusters, Bruno and Lozano have collaborated with the U.S. Air Force to synthesize an all-new ionic liquid propellant, which they are calling the Advanced SpaceCraft Energetic Non-Toxic propellant, or ASCENT.

Originally designed as a “green” alternative to extremely hazardous hydrazine rocket fuel that has been the staple in the rocket industry for decades, Bruno notes that ASCENT “happens to be an ionic liquid mixture.”

“And we said, hey, that’s the stuff we typically use,” the researcher added. “Theoretically, this should work. Let’s go figure out how.” 

Tests: Chemical Propellant Equally Efficient as Conventional Ionic Liquids

To test their electrospray design, each tested thruster was attached to a small reservoir about the size of a single Lego brick, and then the reservoir was filled with ASCENT. Next, electrospray thrusters were mounted on opposite sides of a traditional CubeSat.

To simulate the microgravity environment of Near-Earth Orbit, the team placed the thruster-equipped CubeSat on a MagLev stand. The team noted that the MagLev in Lozano’s lab is installed inside a large vacuum chamber. This design allows the researchers to fine-tune the environment to best mimic the conditions in space.

During a series of tests, the team applied varying voltage levels to the electrospray thrusters. As expected, the reaction produced a spray from the thruster nozzles, which spun the CubeSat around on the MagLev stand like a freely spinning top.

During each thruster firing, the team measured the amount of thrust produced. This data, combined with the voltage and fuel data, allowed the team to calculate ASCENT’s fuel efficiency during continuous operation. Some tests lasted up to 100 hours.

When the MIT group evaluated the results, they first determined that the choice of ASCENT was correct, as it successfully fueled each electrospray thruster. Even more significantly, the tests revealed that the readily available chemical propellant was equally efficient as conventional ionic liquids.

“Compared to our normal electrospray propellants, ASCENT can provide similar performance in terms of thrust,” Bruno explained. “Now that we know our thrusters work with ASCENT, we can start thinking of all the ways we can make them even better.”

Testing Electrospray Thrusters on NASA’s Green Propulsion Dual Mode Mission

When discussing the benefits of their successful electrospray thruster tests, Lozano noted that a spacecraft with electric and chemical thrusters can share a single fuel tank. Due to its compact design, this hybrid electrospray thruster could be mounted on a small satellite.

Fortunately, the team won’t have to wait long to see their thruster in action. According to the research team, whose work was partially supported by NASA, their design will be incorporated into NASA’s upcoming Green Propulsion Dual Mode mission scheduled to launch in November. The Green Propulsion Dual-Mode mission will carry a briefcase-sized CubeSat with a primary chemical thruster and specially designed electrospray thrusters, making it the first attempt to combine electrical and chemical propulsion in a small spacecraft.

“This will be the first time that a satellite will have a shared propellant tank,” Lozano explained.

Although a large portion of proposed electric propulsion missions that might employ the new electrospray thruster are designed to explore deeper into the Solar System and beyond, Lozano also highlighted the technology’s possible applications closer to home. For example, satellites equipped with both technologies could rapidly respond to environmental or climate changes in real time with a speed and efficiency unavailable with current propulsion options.

“Say there’s a storm coming, and you’d want to deploy your constellation of small satellites to observe over one location,” the researcher explained. “You could choose to send them quickly or slowly, depending on the nature of the observation.”

“And the only way to do that is if you have two propulsion systems, which is now possible,” he added.

Although the mission will not launch before November, Bruno noted that a successful test could allow engineers to consider missions they never thought possible.

“Now that we know our thrusters work with ASCENT, we can start thinking of all the ways we can make them even better,” the researcher explained.

The study “Performance Characterization of Electrospray Thrusters with Energetic Ionic Liquid Monopropellant” was published in the Journal of Propulsion and Power.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

The ancient history of our planet’s impact events is coming into focus, thanks to researchers who have triangulated similarly aged impacts on Earth, the Moon, and the asteroid 4 Vesta in a new study.

The lunar meteorite NWA 12593 correlates not only with impact events observed across three locations in our solar system but also contains evidence of three separate impact events that occurred at different times.

The findings, revealed in a recent paper published in Geology, show that scientists are using this new impact data to fill in the volatile early-Earth period when life began.

Early Earth Impacts

The Archean period, roughly 4 to 2.5 billion years ago, was a consequential time from which our earliest fossil records date, corresponding to around 3.5 billion years ago. Researchers believe that life likely first arose at this time, yet it may have faced adversity from bombardment by space rocks between 3.2 and 3.5 billion years ago, although scientists disagree on how intense this impact activity was.

Our planet’s geological activity eventually destroys evidence of the ancient past through erosion, subduction, and burial, continually reshaping the surface. Yet those early years are essential to understanding the origins of water, atmospheres, and life on Earth. 

“On Earth, the first fossil evidence of life shows up around 3.5 billion years ago, meaning that life is emerging and evolving before then. The question that we often have, even going back further, is what was the impact record when life was emerging?” said lead author Carolyn Crow, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“It is important for understanding how life is taking hold, how life is emerging,” Crow added. “The cadence of these catastrophic events is an important part of the equation.”

A Neighbor Remembers

While Earth’s surface is constantly renewed by geological processes, our nearest significant neighbor, the Moon, is much more stable, retaining its geological record for longer periods. Because of this, lunar meteorites provide a resource for scientists to understand the impact of Earth and the inner solar system by matching them to known impacts on our planet and in the asteroid belt.

For the recent study, the team focused on a lunar meteorite discovered in northwest Africa, designated NWA 12593, and identified three separate impact events in a single sample. 

Radiometric dating traced the oldest to 3.5 million years ago, intriguingly close to the time of the earliest known fossils. Extraordinary in power, this impact produced the mineral zirconia by melting the lunar surface into a lava-like flow. Without the precise laboratory conditions required to produce stable cubic zirconia, only traces of mineral remained in the sample.

According to the team, the first impact aligns with previously known impact events on Earth, and the fourth-largest object in the asteroid belt, 4 Vesta. It’s extremely rare to find such corresponding evidence between three bodies, providing important data on this time of frequent collisions.

“It’s not very common, which is why we’re very excited about it,” says Crow. “It’s pretty rare to have all three records line up like this.”

Later Impacts

Evidence of later impacts included breccia composed of large, angular, broken mineral fragments cemented together. The team believes the breccia resulted from a second impact that struck the melt sheet formed by the first.

“Breccias are similar to what you would see if you went and chipped out a chunk of concrete. You would see all these little rocks, and then it’s fused together by the cement,” says Crow. “But the meteorite is fused together by the impact process. You get all these chunks of different kinds of rocks that the impact hit into. These all get mixed up, and then it gets fused together like your concrete sidewalk.”

As for the third impact, the evidence for this is the meteorite’s mere presence on Earth; an event that occurred some time after the first would have ejected the lunar breccia, the researchers say, allowing it to eventually land on our planet.

In total, the sample reveals an intriguing impact history, preserving a record of bombardment that provides solid evidence for a flurry of activity in the inner solar system during a violent chapter in the early history of our Solar System.

The paper, “Three-Body Evidence of Ca. 3.7 Ga to 3.2 Ga Bombardment Across the Inner Solar System,” appeared in Geology on May 12, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

A curious recent discovery has revealed a promising new underground archaeological find at the ancient site of Buto in Egypt’s Nile Delta.

Researchers who were testing a remote sensing technology designed to locate buried structures and other below-ground features reported the unique find earlier this year, which could be a previously undiscovered tomb or temple now believed to date as far back as 2,600 years.

The discovery was made at the Tell el-Fara’in site, more commonly known as Buto, which comprises the remains of an ancient city that thrived around 5,600 years ago during Egypt’s Predynastic period.

Origins of a Mystery

Buto underwent several periods of destruction and reassembly throughout its history, making it a significant focus of past archaeological work.

Some of the city’s oldest portions are currently entombed beneath several centuries’ worth of accumulated mud and soil, a factor that significantly complicates traditional excavations. To help them locate an ideal location for future excavation, the team employed an approach that combined SAR (Sentinel-1 GRD) satellite imagery with electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) measurements, which helped them pinpoint an ideal location to dig that would best enable an investigation of Buto’s settlement phases.

“Sentinel-1 (C-band) satellite imagery captured on May 5, 2018, was processed using SNAP software (version 9.0.0) to identify large-scale anomalies indicative of buried structures,” the team reports in a paper detailing their findings, which appeared in Applied Geophysics in March.

“Based on these detected anomalies, the locations for ERT profiles were strategically selected to maximize the likelihood of indicating significant subsurface features,” the team explained.

ERT technology is ideal for such carefully targeted excavation, since it relies on electrical currents placed into the ground, which researchers then use to collect data that helps them assemble a three-dimensional model of the buried structures. This imagery is generated based on differences in the way various materials either display electrical conductivity or resistance.

Buried Discoveries Emerge

Based on the team’s scans, the top three meters of the area revealed a distinctive layer of material, which the team judged to be broken pottery and debris—likely associated with Roman periods of occupation.

However, going further down in their scans, descending to a depth of approximately six meters, the team discovered something more intriguing: what appeared to be some kind of large buried structure.

Based on its depth, the team believes this unique structure is likely associated with the Saite period, which dates it to around 2,600 years ago. Although it remains unknown precisely what the structure is, or what its exact purpose may have been, one possibility is that it could be a large shrine, or even a tomb.

Uncovering Religious Artifacts

Following the initial discovery, the team undertook preliminary excavations of a small 10 x 10-meter area. This revealed walls constructed of mudbrick, as well as religious artifacts in locations that aligned with the team’s scans.

“The presence of a small offering basin along with numerous religious amulets depicting Egyptian deities such as Isis, Horus, Taweret, and Wadjet further supports the temple hypothesis,” the team writes in their study.

Also among the religious artifacts uncovered at the site were a “remarkable bronze amulet with a suspension hole, representing Horus the child” as well as amulets featuring a crouching lion, an amulet of Anubis, and the remains of limestone statues “in sexual positions” along with “a faience plaque with relief carvings of Hathor on both sides.”

However, the team reports that one of the most significant artifacts recovered from this area of the excavation was a steatite scarab bearing the name of King Thutmose III, which the team believes “may have functioned as an amulet or seal.”

“Collectively, these artefacts indicate the presence of a religious site with strong cultic and ceremonial associations, further reinforcing the interpretation of the structure as a temple from the 26th Dynasty,” the team says.

Ongoing Excavations

While still in the early phases, the team’s discoveries so far help to validate the geophysical and remote sensing techniques that made the discovery possible. “The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of combining geophysical measurements and remote sensing data,” the team writes, adding that they provided “a very accurate vision in detecting buried settlements in a complex region.”

“3D inversion algorithms were particularly effective in delineating buried mudbrick walls and architectural structures, significantly enhancing our understanding of site formation processes,” the researchers add.

Going forward, the team recommends further ERT surveys, which may help to reveal additional information about the site’s deepest occupation levels. For the time being, the team believes the evidence in hand points to the interpretation of the site and its features as an ancient temple, and that evidence points to the possibility that another may be located nearby.

“Our findings suggest that, in addition to the known temple, another temple may remain buried under a thick clay layer, which will be investigated through extensive measurements in forthcoming studies,” the team writes.

The recent paper, “Multi-scale detection of buried archaeological elements across different occupation phases: an integrated approach using radar satellite imagery and electric resistivity tomography at Buto, northwestern Nile Delta of Egypt,” appeared in Applied Geophysics on March 10, 2026.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

An unexpected human behavioral tendency to prefer turning counterclockwise rather than clockwise has been uncovered by a team of researchers in Spain and Japan, and its cause remains unknown.

In a recent paper published in Nature Communications, the team sought to identify patterns in individual human behavior among large crowds and determine which factors influence them. Surprisingly, the team found that counterclockwise turning is the overwhelmingly common behavioral preference, regardless of gender or culture, with only age making a slight difference.

An Unexpected Behavior

The team’s work could have ramifications not only for psychology but also for architecture, engineering, and design, enabling more intuitive layouts. Work on the project began at Spain’s University of Navarra, before experiments continued at the University of Tokyo in Japan.

The University of Navarra team discovered the phenomenon entirely by accident while researching social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, their interest was in monitoring how effectively the recommended six-foot spacing could be maintained in public spaces. They observed how humans moved through spaces, such as museums, without a set route. While closely monitoring crowd video, they were surprised to witness the counterclockwise trend emerge.

“When analyzing the experiments, my colleagues realized by chance that in 32 out of 33 experimental trials, as people moved and turned, they noticeably preferred to turn counterclockwise,” said co-author Professor Claudio Feliciani from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

“This was completely unexpected as, at least instinctively, when people walk around randomly, you imagine people turn as their needs suit them with little sign of an overall preference,” Feliciani added. “But there was a definite, measurable tendency for people to turn counterclockwise over clockwise, all things being equal.”

Exploring Internationally

With their curiosity piqued, the University of Navarro team sought to test their findings against further observations to determine which factors might be influencing the behavior. They decided to seek international follow-up observations. This brought them into contact with Claudio Feliciani, whose presence in Tokyo would allow the project to test how the trend played out across cultures, and among other factors. 

For the second stage of the project, Feliciani and his team developed a series of experiments targeting age, handedness, gender, group size, and cultural influence. They observed pedestrian test subjects in both constrained and open environments.

“Of all these things, the only thing that stood out was that kids tend to have a stronger bias for the counterclockwise direction, so probably age plays a role in making the effect weaker or stronger,” said Feliciani. “Our results may appear as a minor, insignificant discovery, but in nature, most phenomena related to locomotion show that animals mostly walk without directional preference.”

“The strong bias found in people hints to some asymmetry at the biomechanical level,” Feliciani added.

Unknown Behavioral Causes

With the international project having confirmed the counterclockwise trend, the researchers are now moving on to more granular exploration of the phenomenon at the individual level. They hope that this more individualized research will yield some information on what biomechanical factors may be driving the behavior.

“It likely does not come from the eyes, because we tried to patch people’s left or the right eyes and the bias was still there,” Feliciani said. “And some people asked us if it might be large-scale phenomena like the Coriolis force or Earth’s magnetic field, but this seems unlikely given what we have managed to point to so far. “

Both lead investigator Iñaki Echeverría Huarte and Feliciani say that the Coriolis effect has become something of a joke among the team, and that they are invariably asked about it when presenting their findings.

“As a curious aside, a friend and collaborator in Argentina was intrigued enough to run some similar experiments when he heard about this,” Huarte told The Debrief of the team’s research in an email. “He tells me that, with no proper scientific confirmation yet, the counterclockwise rotation still seems to be there in the southern hemisphere too.

“There are some interesting parallels to certain sports,” Feliciani concluded. “Some running and driving competitions are always, but inexplicably, taken on courses that run counterclockwise. But that’s an investigation for another time.”

The paper, “Individual Locomotor Bias Drives Counterclockwise Motion in Pedestrian Crowds,” appeared in Nature Communications on June 10, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

In 1925, while exploring the remote jungles of the Amazon on a quest to uncover a fabled lost city, British explorer Percy Fawcett and his small expedition party vanished without a trace.

Fawcett, a noted geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, surveyor, and archaeologist, set off into the rainforest accompanied only by his son, Jack Fawcett, and Jack’s best friend, Raleigh Rimell. Their goal was to locate an ancient lost city rumored to exist in the heart of the Amazon that Fawcett and others called “The Lost City of Z.”

While Fawcett and his expedition crew’s fate remains unknown, new advancements in modern archaeological science, propelled by technologies that include unmanned aerial vehicles and LiDAR, are now revealing what could be the archaeological reality behind part of what the ill-fated British explorer sought.

“The reward is that we’re finally finding the ‘lost civilisation’ that explorers like Percy Fawcett were searching for a century ago,” says José Iriarte, a professor of archaeology at the University of Exeter, writing in a piece featured at The Conversation, though adding that such discoveries are now being made “by cajoling a drone rather than battering through jungle.”

LiDAR: Unearthing Lost Worlds Hidden from Time

For a time, archaeologists presumed that the Amazon rainforest was a vast wilderness that, while abundant in resources, would have been capable of supporting only small, scattered communities.

With the aid of modern technologies, those past ideas have gradually changed as new archaeological evidence continues to push researchers toward rethinking past assumptions. Among these technologies is advanced laser-mapping technology known as LiDAR (light detection and ranging), which archaeologists have put to great use in the last several decades to aid in uncovering evidence of surface features that were once either inaccessible or otherwise invisible during ground-based surveys.

Something else that LiDAR excels at is penetrating the dense forest of areas like the Amazon, enabling researchers to get unprecedented aerial views of the surface below the canopy, along with any structures that may have been left there by humans from long ago. The result has been evidence of sprawling ancient societies hidden beneath the cover of thick jungle, revealing the Amazon as a region that once supported large populations that existed in sophisticated, interconnected landscapes.

Rediscovering a ‘Lost Civilization’ in the Amazon

A particularly striking example of such discoveries involves the Llanos de Moxos region of northern Bolivia, where recent LiDAR surveys have revealed the presence of a sprawling archaeological site long hidden by dense jungle. Archaeologists believe the ancient settlement is linked to what is called the Casarabe culture, which would have thrived in the area sometime between A.D. 500 and 1400.

“The Casarabe organized into a hierarchy of four different sizes of settlements,” writes Professor Iriarte in his recent piece at The Conversation. “The biggest ones—the primary settlements—were as large as 3km² or 300 hectares.”

“That’s enough space for over 400 football pitches,” Iriarte notes, “suggesting that they could have accommodated substantial numbers of people.”

Unseen Evidence of an Ancient Amazonian Culture

Viewed from the ground, an observer who braved this dense region of Bolivian jungle might only see thick patches of forest separated by grassland savannahs.

That all changes when viewing LiDAR imagery obtained during aerial surveys, however. Through the sensitive detection capabilities afforded by laser pulses that can easily penetrate the dense vegetation, a lost world emerges—one the likes of which Percy Fawcett and other early explorers once only dreamed of rediscovering.

Researchers have now successfully identified a vast network of settlements at Llanos de Moxos, connected by raised causeways, canals, reservoirs, and engineered agricultural systems that cover an area of close to 20,000 square kilometers.

These complexes upend past thinking about the presence of isolated settlements in the region, and instead appear to show sites covering areas as large as three square kilometers, featuring monumental civic and ceremonial architecture, towering conical pyramids that ascend to heights of 20 meters, and the presence of massive U-shaped structures, which archaeologists believe had likely served as ceremonial structures that once hosted gatherings.

Unprecedented Scale of a Hidden World

Another surprising feature is the scale of the structures archaeologists have uncovered, which they say rivals some of the most well-known monuments like those of the ancient Tiwanaku civilization in the Andes.

Yet, unlike many densely packed ancient cities, the Casarabe landscape also differs in several ways: the unique variety of urbanism it reflects is suggestive of dispersed populations whose connected infrastructure also brought them together through ancient shared water management systems.

“It was clearly all planned and coordinated,” Iriarte explains, adding that the ancient builders at Llanos de Moxos engaged in precocious designs that were intended “not only as living spaces but for integrating the population across the region.” Similar architectural planning has been observed at other ancient sites around the world, which include those assembled by the ancient Maya of Central America, as well as the builders of Angkor across the world in Cambodia.

The “Dark Earth” Enigma

Beyond just architecture and clues to the way of life of these ancient societies, researchers are also gaining new insights into the agricultural practices of the early Amazonian world.

For many decades, scientists presumed that a major limiting factor on the region’s ability to sustain larger populations hinged on the presence of factors that included poor soils, seasonal flooding, droughts, and tropical diseases. However, mounting evidence suggests that the indigenous societies of the region were far from hindered by the landscape, and instead managed to transform and manage farmland at scales previously unimagined.

Along with sophisticated agricultural systems, ancient Amazonians were also capable of engineering remarkably fertile soils, known as Amazonian Dark Earths, which Iriarte says “combined charcoal, bone and waste materials with the existing poor-quality soil to make it fertile enough for widespread farming.”

“Amazonia had reclaimed vast expanses of seasonally flooded savannahs over several thousand years to create raised and drained field systems,” he adds, also noting the construction of extensive drainage networks and the cultivation of diverse crops such as maize. Rather than merely adapting to the rainforest, the ancient inhabitants of the Amazon actively reshaped it.

An Amazonian Archaeological Revolution

Thanks to similar LiDAR surveys that have recently been undertaken in nearby countries, including Ecuador’s Upano Valley, where thousands of structures linked by roads and organized according to highly structured settlement plans have been detected, the recent findings at Llanos de Moxos are one of the latest additions to a broader revolution in archaeology made possible through such exciting Amazonian discoveries.

In addition to Bolivia and Ecuador, researchers have also documented ceremonial earthworks, geometric enclosures, and sprawling ancient settlements in Colombia, Peru, and Brazil in recent years, all of which are challenging decades of past assumptions about ancient life in the Amazon.

Despite the recent advancements in our understanding, many questions remain unanswered. Among the questions archaeologists have are those related to how these ancient societies were governed, as well as what factors led to their decline, a fall which was precipitated by unknown factors that occurred before European arrival.

Possible contributing factors may include shifts in ancient climates, as well as environmental pressures. It is also possible that political changes or conflicts that emerged between neighboring societies may have played a role, which could have contributed to disruptions in trade networks that may have further weakened these once thriving societies.

Despite the remaining mysteries about these enigmatic cultures, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: the Amazon was far from being the unclaimed tropical wilderness many long believed it to be. In many ways, the fascination with lost cities and ancient civilizations that drove explorers like Percy Fawcett—and which led to his untimely fate—had more basis in reality than many historians, archaeologists, and explorers probably guessed.

As ongoing LiDAR surveys continue to expand across previously unexplored regions, archaeologists believe thousands more structures may still await discovery, suggesting that some of the Amazon’s greatest archaeological secrets remain hidden, but no longer kept entirely from view.

“What lies beneath the Amazon is not just a hidden past,” Iriarte says. “It is a reminder that even the most seemingly untouched landscapes can carry deep histories, waiting—sometimes just beneath our feet—to be revealed.”

Professor José Iriarte’s complete article appeared at The Conversation on June 8, 2026.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

A new proposed Senate bill aims to establish clear guardrails for the U.S. military’s use of artificial intelligence (AI), drawing a definitive line on one of the most consequential questions in modern warfare: who has the final say when lethal force is used?

On June 8, Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced the proposed Human Authority in Lethal Operations Act of 2026, or “HALO Act,” which would impose sweeping requirements on the Department of War (DoW) to ensure that autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems remain under meaningful human control.

The legislation would establish new design standards, testing requirements, oversight procedures, and legal safeguards for military systems that use artificial intelligence to identify, recommend, prioritize, or engage targets.

The bill aims to ensure that responsibility for battlefield decisions remains with human commanders, rather than shifting to algorithms. The legislation would require the Pentagon to designate accountable commanders for any engagement involving AI-enabled autonomous or semi-autonomous weapons and mandates that those commanders retain “ultimate discretion, judgment, and control over the use of force.”

“The past few months have shown us that there is an urgent need for commonsense guardrails to ensure the Defense Department’s use of AI is in line with Americans’ national security and privacy priorities,” Sen. Schiff said in a press release. “There are good reasons to use AI technology to advance our national security,” although he emphasized that, like with any tool, AI should not be allowed solely to guide human enterprises, “particularly when the risks of harm can be fatal.”

The proposal arrives amid growing concern among policymakers, military planners, and technology experts about the increasing role of artificial intelligence in combat operations.

Significantly, these concerns are no longer theoretical. As The Debrief previously reported, Israel’s reported use of the AI targeting system “Lavender” in Gaza triggered renewed debate over how much trust militaries should place in algorithmic target selection, particularly when civilian lives may be at risk.

Other recent examples have added to the concern, including studies showing that AI models can escalate dangerously in simulated war games, as well as the Pentagon’s continued push toward autonomous drones, AI-controlled aircraft, and robotic battlefield systems.

Even Pope Leo XIV recently weighed in on the issue in Magnifica Humanitas, his first encyclical, or formal papal teaching letter, warning that autonomous weapons could make war more feasible and less subject to human control, and arguing that lethal decisions must not be delegated to opaque or automated processes.

While the Pentagon has repeatedly stressed its commitment to responsible AI development, the HALO Act would codify many of those principles into law and create new statutory requirements governing how military AI systems are designed, tested, approved, and monitored.

Among the bill’s most significant provisions are requirements that autonomous weapon systems operate within predefined geographic areas, target sets, and timeframes. If a system cannot complete an engagement within those authorized parameters, it would be required to terminate the engagement until additional human operator and commander review is completed.

The legislation also calls for extensive record-keeping, cybersecurity protections, and continuous oversight to guard against unintended engagements and hostile manipulation.

The bill would also require senior Pentagon officials to conduct formal reviews before AI-enabled weapons enter development and again before they are fielded. Those reviews would assess legal compliance, operational safety, reliability, cybersecurity, and risks to civilians and protected infrastructure under the Law of Armed Conflict.

Beyond battlefield autonomy, the legislation targets several controversial uses of artificial intelligence in national security. It would prohibit covered Defense Department AI capabilities from inferring a person’s religion, race, political identity, sexual orientation, or emotional state. It would also restrict the purchase or receipt of Americans’ personal data from data brokers or other third-party sources when that data was obtained in a manner that would violate the bill’s rules.

Perhaps most notably, the proposed HALO Act explicitly forbids removing humans from decision-making processes involving presidential actions related to nuclear weapons.

“No covered artificial intelligence capability may be used with the intent, purpose, or outcome of… removing a human from the chain of decisionmaking for actions critical to informing and executing decisions by the President, including initiating or terminating nuclear weapons employment,” the proposed bill reads.

The measure also includes whistleblower protections for personnel working on military AI systems, mandates regular reporting to Congress, and requires the Pentagon to identify and remediate any fielded systems that fail to meet the law’s requirements.

Existing autonomous systems would undergo a comprehensive review, and any system found to be noncompliant could face retirement, modification, or suspension pending corrective action.

While the bill includes exemptions for certain defensive systems, cyber capabilities, mines, and other categories of military technology, its wider message is that as artificial intelligence becomes more deeply integrated into national defense, Congress wants humans, not machines, to remain responsible for high-stakes decisions.

The HALO Act is not the only effort underway on Capitol Hill to establish guardrails around military AI.

In March, Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) introduced the AI Guardrails Act. Last week, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) introduced separate legislation that would similarly prohibit the Pentagon from using artificial intelligence to launch nuclear weapons, conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans, or deploy fully autonomous weapons.

“Right now, the Pentagon is moving toward deploying incredibly powerful AI technology without commonsense guardrails in place, which could have catastrophic consequences that make all of us less safe,” Sen. Gillibrand said in a statement. “We must act now – not to stifle technological progress, but to establish clear rules of the road that keep humans in charge and keep AI’s use in warfare smart and safe.”

The competing proposals could set the stage for a broader congressional debate over the role of artificial intelligence in future military operations, particularly if lawmakers seek to incorporate them into the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Before that can happen, however, the HALO Act and similar proposals must navigate the legislative process. The bills will first be considered by the relevant Senate committee, where lawmakers may hold hearings, debate their provisions, amend the text, or decline to advance them. If approved, it would then need to pass both the Senate and the House before being sent to the president for signature, either as a standalone measure or as part of a larger NDAA.

“My legislation would protect Americans from unlawful domestic surveillance, ensure that humans in the chain of command exercise responsibility for the use of any lethal technology, and maintain strong ethical protections in the deployment of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons,” Sen. Schiff said in a statement.

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

A multi-institutional team of researchers led by University of Connecticut Professor Zhe Zhu has developed a method for measuring the dynamic, real-time activity of urban environments from space, which they are calling an “Urban Pulse.”

The research team behind the novel urban activity metric said that monitoring a city’s Urban Pulse could help mitigate uncontrolled urban sprawl or decay and enable environmentalists and urban planners to intervene before disasters become unavoidable.

Measuring an Urban Pulse Could Reveal Neighborhoods ‘Not Doing Well”

Although environmentalists and urban planners have a wide range of tools to measure the activities within a city, Zhu notes that scientists have spent decades merely capturing the “outcome of urbanization,” such as a finished road or a newly completed home. However, the researcher and lead author of a study detailing the Urban Pulse methodology added that, even with all the current tools, “you don’t really see the dynamics within an urban area.”

According to a statement detailing the new approach, a city’s pulse is determined by all construction activity within it. Along with new construction, the metric includes repairs, infrastructure improvements, or expansion into previously undeveloped green spaces. When used correctly, the researchers said that it can help determine “if and where their city is not doing well.”

“This would allow (authorities) to be proactive rather than conducting a metaphorical autopsy after the decay of an area is evident,” the team explained.

Bridging the Gap Between Abstract Urban Theories and Measurable, Real-World Data

To test their approach, the team evaluated the Urban Pulse of six cities: Seattle, Shenzhen, Lagos, Mumbai, Dubai, and Mexico City. This involved a deep examination of what the team termed “decades of dense time-series data” collected by NASA’s Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS)  satellites for physical transformations in an urban environment, such as new construction, measurable infrastructure improvements, and demolition.

Instead of analyzing each city’s changes manually, the team evaluated the above changes on what they called “the neighborhood level” using a deep-learning and time-series-analysis approach called CAPES, developed by former UConn postdoctoral researcher Ji Won Suh. The team said that, by observing these “high-frequency rhythms of development” from a broad ‘outer space’ perspective, their approach “bridges the gap between abstract urban theories and measurable, real-world data.”

After examining CAPES’ results, the team found several key markers within the Urban Pulse. For example, the view from space revealed that growth within cities is not smooth and steady. Instead, Zhu and colleagues said that development happens in “abrupt, intense, and episodic bursts of construction.”

CAPES also revealed that the rhythms of an urban environment are cyclical. For example, while a city may show relatively steady growth on a broader level, individual neighborhoods go through “dramatic boom-and-rest cycles” of expansion and dormancy that don’t appear to follow predictable annual seasons.

The third pattern revealed by measuring the six cities’ Urban Pulse from space was that cities are “asynchronous,” meaning a single city does not ‘beat’ in unison. The team noted that neighborhoods “pulse at completely different times.” When it functions properly, this “uncoordinated rhythm” helps prevent the city’s infrastructure and labor markets from “overheating.”

Unlike previous methods for tracking a city’s evolution, the team noted that their Urban Pulse approach can help researchers “visualize a city’s reaction to global shocks.” For example, the team said that their analysis captured “the exact moment the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a widespread, synchronized ‘cardiac arrest’ in urban development worldwide.”

However, their new tool also revealed what the researchers termed “profound inequalities” in how individual cities recovered from the dramatic halt to urban growth. For example, the team said that the Urban Pulse of Shenzhen revealed synchronized ‘dips’ in activity, followed almost immediately by “rapid, policy-driven rebounds.” However, the same Orban Pulse analysis showed that the reactions in Mumbai and Mexico City were much more “muted.”

“It’s like in human beings,” Zhu explained. “When you get a disease, it’s not going to show up exactly the same in different people.”

A ‘Very Impactful Tool’ for Navigating Cities

Although the Urban Pulse metric offers a tantalizing tool for academics, the team noted real-world benefits for global policymakers, urban planners, and environmentalists, adding that “it serves as an early warning system.”

“By monitoring the rhythm, rate, and amplitude of neighborhood pulses, governments can identify early signs of urban decay or unsustainable sprawl and intervene before crises become entrenched,” they explained.

The team also suggested that making Urban Pulse data publicly available could “revolutionize how everyday people interact with their cities.” For example, an urban family considering a move to a new city or a new part of their current city could track a target neighborhood’s pulse to spot early warning signs of decay or early indicators of positive-trending growth. The same data could help business owners plan new locations or expanded service routes, depending on the business profile and the local Urban Pulse trends.

“This is going to be a very impactful tool influencing not only top-down policy decisions from governments but also bottom-up decisions from everyday people navigating their cities,” Zhu explained.

In a recent study, “The Urban Pulse: Diagnosing the urbanization process as spiky, cyclical, and asynchronous” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

For years, people around the world have reported being disturbed by a low, persistent droning sound of unknown origin.

Often described as more of a vibration than a specific tone, this sound has become widely known as “The Hum,” a phenomenon that is more frequently reported in certain cities and specific areas than others.

Over time, possible explanations have included industrial ventilation systems, military sonar experiments, and, in some online discussions, extraterrestrial signals, although none of these theories are supported by evidence.

However, in a recent study from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), published in PLOS ONE, researchers now offer evidence that, for most people who experience this phenomenon, the source is probably not external, but instead may actually originate within their own auditory system.

From Bristol to Taos and Beyond

Residents of Bristol, England, first widely reported The Hum in the mid-1970s, when the Bristol Evening Post received several reports from people who claimed they experienced hearing a strange, low sound. People initially thought the industrial fans in an area warehouse were responsible, but the hum persisted after the warehouse shut down.

By the 1990s, reports of a similar phenomenon began surfacing in Taos, New Mexico, where residents described a persistent, diesel engine-like rumble. Both state and federal authorities investigated the sound but could not explain it. The Taos Hum became one of the most studied and widely recognized examples of this phenomenon. Since then, similar reports have come from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and several European countries.

As reports grew, people proposed explanations ranging from ocean-generated infrasound to military sonar and CIA transmitters. Some online discussions have even suggested alien technology as a possible cause. In 2012, Canadian teacher Glen MacPherson, who first experienced The Hum on the west coast of British Columbia, created the World Hum Map and Database Project to document cases worldwide. The project has since collected thousands of entries.

Testing Two Hypotheses

To investigate the phenomenon, Professor Markus Drexl at NTNU recruited 28 people in Germany who all reported hearing a persistent, unexplained humming sound. Clinicians refer to this as a low-frequency sound percept, or LFSP. Most participants described the sound as having a frequency around 50 Hz, about the same as a deep mechanical rumble.

The research team tested two main explanations: whether participants had unusually acute sensitivity to low-frequency sound, or whether some were perceiving sounds generated by their own inner ears.

“We know that there are people who hear low-frequency sounds that can actually be measured, even if other people don’t hear them,” Drexl said. “But it’s not so easy to find the source of these sound waves, because it’s a struggle to localize low-frequency sounds.”

What the Ear Produces on Its Own

The cochlea, a spiral-shaped structure in the inner ear that converts sound waves into neural signals, also actively amplifies incoming sounds. This amplification produces faint sounds emitted from the ear, known as spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs).

Most people are not aware of these emissions. In rare cases, people perceive SOAEs as tinnitus. Drexl’s team investigated whether people who hear the Hum might be detecting a low-frequency version of this phenomenon.

The results did not support this idea. The team found no low-frequency SOAEs in any participant. The hypothesis of unusually acute low-frequency hearing was also not supported; while a few participants had slightly better low-frequency hearing than average, most did not.

“Even though the group we tested was small, it still means that the hypothesis of having especially good hearing for low-frequency sounds does not hold for most people,” Drexl said.

When the Sound Has No Source

This left a third group: participants who reported hearing something that no external instrument could detect. “Then there are people who hear something that cannot be measured objectively. We believe people in this category have a form of low-frequency tinnitus,” Drexl said.

The Hum differs from typical tinnitus because most people who experience it first believe the sound comes from an external source, sometimes spending years searching for its origin before realizing it is internal. The researchers still have not ruled out external causes completely. In some cases, near industrial sites or coastlines, genuine low-frequency sources may exist. However, researchers identified no external source for most participants in the study.

“Based on our results, although we haven’t ruled out cases of physical external sound sources, we suggest that subjective tinnitus in the low-frequency range is often the cause of hearing pulsations of low-frequency sound perceptions,” Drexl said.

The Blind Spot in Auditory Research

The study also highlights that the low-frequency range of the auditory system remains poorly understood in hearing science.

“What we know about the hearing system is mainly based on how we capture and process sound with higher frequencies. We know less about how the auditory system handles and processes low-frequency sound, or infrasound,” Drexl said.

Although the cause of well-known cases like the Taos Hum remains unresolved, the new findings suggest that many reports of unexplained low-frequency sounds may actually originate from within the auditory system rather than from an external source.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

The foundation of global space law that has governed human activity outside Earth for nearly six decades may be approaching a breaking point, according to a new analysis by two astronomers who argue that the legal framework created during the Cold War is inadequate for an era of commercial spaceflight, global political instability, and growing militarization of orbit.

The study, published in Frontiers in Space Technologies, argues that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), long regarded as the foundation of peaceful space exploration, confronts mounting challenges from transforming global power shifts, increasing orbital competition, and the emergence of private companies as dominant players in space activities.

Dr. John Barentine of the Center for Space Environmentalism and Dark Sky Consulting, along with Dr. Aparna Venkatesan, a physicist and astronomer at the University of San Francisco, contend that while the treaty remains valuable, it may not be able to address the realities of the modern space age.

Rather than emphasizing legal reforms alone, the paper raises a wider question about humanity’s relationship with space itself. Researchers suggest that future governance of outer space may require a fundamental shift away from viewing space as a resource to be exploited and toward treating it as an environment that deserves stewardship and protection in its own right.

Although neither author specializes in international relations or military affairs, they argue that astronomers are uniquely positioned to witness how changes in space policy increasingly affect scientific research and humanity’s future in orbit.

“We are living through a time in which Earth and near-Earth space are facing unprecedented levels of potentially irreversible change,” researchers write. “The modern history of our discipline is inseparable from the technological developments brought on by those who sought to make a warfighting domain of outer space.”

A Space Treaty Born From the Cold War

The Outer Space Treaty emerged during one of the most tense periods of the Cold War. Negotiated primarily by the United States and the Soviet Union, the agreement established several basic principles that still govern space activities today.

Among them are prohibitions on national sovereignty claims over celestial bodies, restrictions on the placement of weapons of mass destruction in space, and commitments to use outer space for peaceful purposes.

For decades, the treaty has been credited with helping prevent an outright orbital arms race. Yet, Dr. Barentine and Dr. Venkatesan argue that the document was written for a vastly different world. One in which only a handful of nations possessed launch capabilities and private space companies were virtually nonexistent.

Today, dozens of countries operate satellites, commercial firms launch rockets at unprecedented rates, and ambitious plans for lunar bases, asteroid mining, and cislunar infrastructure are rapidly moving from science fiction to reality.

Researchers argue that the treaty’s framers could not have anticipated many of these developments, leaving major legal and moral questions unresolved. They note that the treaty lacks robust enforcement mechanisms and provides no definitive mechanism for resolving disputes between member states.

Space Has Always Been a Military Domain

A central theme of the paper is that warfare and space exploration have been intertwined from the beginning.

The authors trace the history of military activity in space back to the V-2 rockets of World War II and the launch of Sputnik in 1957, which demonstrated Soviet intercontinental missile capabilities as much as scientific achievement.

They also recount historical examples such as Soviet space weapons experiments, anti-satellite weapon testing by multiple nations, and the Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s, often remembered by its popular nickname, “Star Wars.”

In recent years, nations including the United States, China, India, and Russia have invested heavily in military space capabilities. Meanwhile, proposals such as advanced missile-defense architectures and growing concerns about anti-satellite weapons have renewed fears that space could become an increasingly contested military environment.

The researchers warn that global disputes on Earth are increasingly likely to spill into orbit, where the consequences could be especially severe. In contrast to terrestrial battlefields, debris generated by destructive actions in space can persist for years or even decades, threatening spacecraft belonging to many nations.

The Commercial Space Revolution Creates New Questions

The study additionally highlights the rapid rise of private space companies as a challenge that the Space Treaty never fully anticipated.

Under Article VI of the Space Treaty, governments are responsible for overseeing activities conducted by non-governmental entities within their jurisdictions. However, the researchers argue that the explosive growth of commercial spaceflight is creating uncertainty concerning regulatory oversight and responsibility.

This issue is especially important for the United States, which currently accounts for more than half of all low-Earth-orbit launches and operates the majority of active satellites.

As commercial firms assume larger roles in launch services, communications infrastructure, and moon missions, questions about who bears responsibility for environmental impacts and operational decisions become increasingly important.

The researchers suggest that future governance systems must address not only nation-state behavior but also the increasing influence of private actors whose interests may not always coincide with long-term environmental management.

A Forthcoming Lunar Land Rush?

One of the study’s most important observations concerns the Moon.

Dr. Barentine and Dr. Venkatesan describe moon missions as an early glimpse of future space geopolitics. Five nations have already successfully landed spacecraft on the Moon, and plans for permanent infrastructure continue to accelerate.

Because the Space Treaty prevents claims of sovereignty but does not completely resolve questions about resource use and operational exclusion zones, the researchers warn that countries arriving first could effectively secure the most valuable locations for science, resource extraction, or future settlements.

That dynamic, they argue, risks creating new forms of competition despite the treaty’s intent to promote cooperation.

The same concerns extend to orbital congestion and space debris. Researchers note that nations with little or no involvement in space activities may nevertheless bear the consequences of falling rocket stages and orbital debris generated by major space powers.

Rethinking Humanity’s Relationship With Space

Rather than advocating abandoning the Outer Space Treaty, the researchers ultimately argue that it remains the best framework currently available. However, they contend that future agreements must move past traditional geopolitical thinking.

The paper proposes drawing inspiration from the growing global “Rights of Nature” movement, which argues that ecosystems possess intrinsic value and deserve legal protections independent of human economic interests. Applied to space, such an approach would emphasize environmental health, reciprocity, and long-term stewardship over competition and exploitation.

Dr. Barentine and Dr. Venkatesan point to examples such as the peaceful management of Antarctica, international cooperation aboard the International Space Station, and partnerships among scientific institutions and Indigenous communities as models that could help shape future space governance.

Ultimately, they argue that the greatest threat to the space environment may not be legal loopholes nor technological restrictions, but humanity’s own willingness to abandon cooperation when competition becomes tempting.

“As our title reveals, the fundamental challenge lies in defending the space environment from failure of human goodwill and trust, rather than defending the space environment from the blind spots of current treaties,” researchers write. “The story of humanity in space is still being written, requiring innovation and determination from institutions and communities alike.”

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

The mystery of the Greenland shark’s incredible longevity may finally be unraveling, as a team of international researchers has completed the first comprehensive genome map of the creature.

Native to the cold waters between Greenland, Iceland, and Canada, Greenland sharks boast one of the longest vertebrate lifespans on Earth, approaching 400 years. In a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers led by Shigeharu Kinoshita of the University of Tokyo have identified some of the genetic basis of that extraordinary lifespan, which they say future researchers may exploit to treat cancer and age-related illnesses.

Greenland Sharks Longevity

As genetic sequencing technology has improved and costs have fallen, there has been a major increase in the number of sequences from long-lived species for comparative analysis. Discoveries have included identifying increases in genes related to the immune system and growth hormone receptors in rockfish and bat species noted for their longevity.

With an entire lifecycle in slow motion, Greenland sharks’ longevity can be traced to their prolonged development: they take 150 years to reach sexual maturity, growing only 1 centimeter per year. Despite being one of the slowest swimmers in the ocean, the species undertakes large-scale migrations spanning over 1,000 kilometers.

Genome Mapping

Large genome sizes, like those of the Greenland shark, pose enormous mapping challenges, full of many repetitive sequences. Despite their importance for management and conservation, few whale and shark species have been sequenced due to the difficulty involved. To fill data gaps in the genetic causes of longevity, aquatic species evolution, and the risks of biodiversity loss, the team chose the Greenland shark as their subject.

The University of Tokyo-led team mapped roughly 5.9 billion DNA base pairs, accounting for 96.7% of the shark’s genome. Among the discoveries were the identification of specific genetic features likely related to the Greenland shark’s longevity. 

In their paper, they wrote of discovering “genetic traits associated with cancer, immune response function, genome stability, and cardiac function, deep-sea adaptations, and population size dynamics,” in the new research.

Longevity Results

One of the most crucial of these traits is how the shark appears to mitigate the genetic strain that contributes to aging by stabilizing the building blocks of chromosomes. Chromatin is a structure consisting of DNA, RNA, and proteins, which makes up chromosomes.

In the Greenland shark, the histone H1.0 protein, which binds DNA in chromatin, undergoes an amino acid substitution that may enhance stability and reduce the effects of aging.

Another genetic tool aiding the shark’s longevity is the presence of 59 copies of the FTH1b gene, which researchers discovered on pseudochromosome 33, far above the number seen in other shark or fish species. This helps regulate ferroptosis, a form of programmed cell death, thereby mitigating cell damage. Since the gene controls iron storage and ferroptosis is iron-dependent, the researchers say this multiplication of FTH1b could prevent oxidative cell damage.

Beyond those specific expressions, researchers also found expansion of entire gene families associated with DNA repair, immune functions, and cancer resistance.

Although limited to a single species, the research does advance general understanding of the genetic factors involved in extended lifespans. However, it will be up to future researchers to identify how this new information can be applied to human concerns.

The paper, “The Greenland Shark Genome: Insights into Lifespan Extremes and Population Dynamics,” appeared in Earth and Planetary Science Letters on May 19, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

For patients with disorders of consciousness such as coma, vegetative states, or unresponsive wakefulness, clinicians face a longstanding challenge of determining whether any awareness remains. While surface brain recordings can measure general electrical activity, they do not reveal what is happening deep within the brain.

Now, a new study from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München may bring clinicians closer to a measurable indicator of brain states in these conditions.

Researchers at LMU have found a new type of electrical rhythm in the central thalamus, a small area deep inside the brain. Published in Nature Human Behaviour, the study suggests that this rhythm could serve as a biological indicator of conscious states.

A Signal That Tracks Awareness

The signal does more than just appear with consciousness. It also changes as the brain moves between different states. For example, the rhythm becomes stronger during REM sleep, which lets researchers see small shifts in awareness even within the same stage of sleep.

“Our results show that the central thalamus plays an important role in regulating brain states,” said Dr. Aditya Chowdhury, lead author of the study. “In the context of existing research, our results show that this small deep-lying brain structure could actively influence our states of consciousness.”

Professor Tobias Staudigl, who led the research team, argues the signal’s consistency makes it more than just an interesting discovery. “These characteristic rhythm patterns can be reliably attributed to specific states and thus have the potential to serve as a measurable biological signature of states of consciousness,” Staudigl said.

Getting Inside the Deepest Part of the Brain

Recording electrical activity from deep brain structures is one of neuroscience’s most persistent technical problems. Standard surface EEG can detect general patterns from the brain’s outer layers, but it misses details from deeper areas. Since the thalamus sits at the center of the brain, it has remained largely inaccessible through non-invasive methods.

The LMU team had a rare chance to study this. Their research involved patients already undergoing deep-brain stimulation therapy for epilepsy, which uses electrodes in the thalamus to help control seizures. These electrodes let the researchers record signals directly from inside the thalamus, something that is almost never possible otherwise.

The team combined these recordings with surface EEG, eye-tracking, and detailed sleep-stage analysis. This approach allowed them to see how thalamic activity changes as patients transition between wakefulness and different sleep stages. Their findings offer the most detailed picture yet of what the thalamus actually does as consciousness changes.

Medical Implications

Disorders of consciousness, like coma, vegetative state, and minimally conscious state, are some of the hardest problems in neurology. One reason is that doctors have lacked reliable biological markers to assess patients’ awareness. The thalamic rhythm found in this study could help solve that problem.

If this signal truly tracks brain states linked to consciousness, it could help doctors evaluate awareness in patients who cannot communicate, guide treatment choices, and monitor how patients respond to care over time. The researchers believe it could also be used to improve deep brain stimulation therapy by allowing doctors to adjust treatment based on real-time thalamic activity rather than general clinical signs.

Staudigl was recently awarded funding by the European Research Council to explore the clinical potential of this discovery and to develop applications for treating neurological disease.

Understanding consciousness has always been one of science’s most difficult challenges. While the study does not answer the fundamental question of what consciousness is, these findings provide a consistent, measurable signal that indicates how the brain moves between conscious and unconscious states.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

An iron artifact recovered by archaeologists may be the oldest of its kind ever found in Japan, according to new research.

Recovered during excavations at the Hayashi-Fujishima archaeological site in Fukui, the capital city of Fukui Prefecture, the artifact measures slightly more than an inch and a half across, just under an inch in width, and just a millimeter in thickness.

The presence of tiny, triangular teeth measuring up to 3 millimeters deep indicates the artifact’s use as an early saw, according to investigations by the Fukui Prefectural Archaeological Research Center, which recently announced the discovery.

While similar discoveries have been made in Japan, none are believed to be as old as this saw, which archaeologists have tentatively dated to the late Yayoi Pottery Culture Period, which thrived between the second and third centuries, making it the oldest known in the country.

Tomokatsu Uozu, Deputy Director at the Center, said the age of the discovery indicates the advancement of early iron technologies along the region’s coastal communities during the period.

“The artifact could be an important piece of evidence supporting the advancement of ironware culture along the Sea of Japan coast during the Yayoi period,” Uozu recently told The Asahi Shimbun.

Similar Discoveries in the Ancient East

The saw uncovered at the Hayashi-Fujishima archaeological site bears some similarities to saws from the same period that have been unearthed during past excavations in China.

Such similarities are important, since it is believed that the same iron processing techniques used in the creation of the saw from the Hayashi-Fujishima site originated in China, having been carried across the Korean Peninsula and eventually reaching northern Kyushu, where ancient traders carried it along the Sea of Japan to its eventual arrival at Fukui.

The saw recently showcased by the Fukui Prefectural Archaeological Research Center is only one example of the many artifacts recovered from the Hayashi-Fujishima site.

Identified Decades After Its Discovery

Past work at the site has uncovered additional iron artifacts, as well as stone tools, pottery, distinctive “magatama” and “kudatama” bead varieties, and a range of items during primary excavations, which were conducted during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The site is believed to also host what remains of an ancient settlement dating to the Yayoi period, a period that was significant for the emergence of organized food production, as well as a unique element associated with the culture: the creation of distinctive, keyhole-shaped burial mounds.

However, it wasn’t until 2021, during restoration work with many of the artifacts retrieved from the site, that researchers first noticed something significant that had gone unnoticed decades earlier at the time of the artifact’s discovery: tiny serrations were present on one of its edges.

Further examination with the help of X-ray CT scan imaging confirmed the artifact’s identity as a triangular or “beak-shaped” saw, similar to other discoveries from later periods. At the time of its use, the complete saw would likely have measured up to five times the length of the remaining fragmentary portion.

Another notable feature of the saw is that the tip of the blade is bent, which archaeologists think may indicate that the saw was used for work involving fine crafting of wooden or stone items.

Breaking Earlier Records for Japan’s Oldest Saw

The discovery now overturns the previous oldest artifact of its kind known from the region, which was uncovered from a third-century burial mound in Hyogo Prefecture. That saw’s association with the Kofun Period, which thrived near the end of the third century, made it the oldest known at the time of its discovery.

Although additional studies are required, the team says that confirmation of the age of the Hayashi-Fujishima site’s saw would extend the timescales once again on the earliest use of such technologies by as much as a century.

A meteorite discovered in Africa could be evidence of a lost protoplanet that once orbited our Sun, according to researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In a recent paper published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, the team revealed evidence of an ancient protoplanet that may have been as large as Mars based on simulations of how the meteorite sample may have formed.

The four-and-a-half-billion-year-old world carried an unexpected geological makeup, which the researchers say casts doubt on common assumptions regarding planetary evolution.

Protoplanetary Demise

According to the UC Boulder team, the massive protoplanetary body collided with another object four and a half billion years ago, shattering it completely. This is the first definitive evidence of a lost protoplanet in our solar system, based on analysis of the angrite meteorite NWA 12774, a shard of that planetary embryo recovered from the Sahara Desert.

“It’s incredible to think there was once a world this large,” said lead author Aaron Bell, an assistant research professor in the Department of Earth Science at CU Boulder. “We only know it existed because a few fragments of it happened to land on Earth. These meteorites preserved evidence of a completely different pathway through which early planets developed.”

A Rare Meteorite Sample

Angrites, a rare type of volcanic rock, serve as a record of our solar system’s distant past. These rocks began forming only a few million years after the solar system’s birth, making them valuable evidence of this early era. However, they are extremely rare and difficult to find.

NWA 12774 is one of only 68 angrite samples identified among more than 80,000 meteorites cataloged by scientists. Given its rarity, the discovery could potentially reshape how researchers understand these ancient rocks.

Until now, scientists had assumed that angrites originated from relatively small asteroids less than 124 miles (200 kilometers) wide, based largely on their chemical composition. Large rocky planets such as Earth and Mars contain significant amounts of silicon dioxide, while angrites contain very little of the compound.

Unexpected Meteorite Discovery

Researchers began to reconsider those assumptions when they identified clinopyroxene in the meteorite sample. This mineral, commonly found in Earth’s crust and mantle, appeared unusually rich in aluminum, suggesting that it formed under significant pressure deep within a planetary body.

To investigate this unusual characteristic of NWA 12774, the University of Colorado Boulder team recreated the conditions under which the sample could have formed. Their analysis revealed that pressures of at least 17.5 kilobars were required to produce the aluminum-rich clinopyroxene found in the meteorite. For comparison, one kilobar is roughly equivalent to the pressure at the deepest part of Earth’s oceans, near the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Rethinking Meteorite Origins

The researchers’ discovery proved that at least this particular angrite sample could not have formed inside a small meteorite, as a body with a radius of at least 621 miles would be required to generate the pressure needed to produce the crystals. 

Additional evidence suggested the parent body may have been even larger. The crystals’ sharp edges and delicate internal structures indicate they likely formed at relatively shallow depths beneath the surface. Reconciling both the high-pressure conditions and the shallow formation depth suggests that the parent body may have ranged in size from the Moon to Mars.

“There are many meteorites sitting in drawers that haven’t been thoroughly studied, so there were likely more of these protoplanets we don’t know about,” Bell said.

Exactly what happened to this ancient world remains uncertain, but researchers believe it was likely destroyed in a massive collision early in the solar system’s history. Fragments of that lost protoplanet may have later contributed material to other bodies, potentially including Earth itself.

“The materials that formed the angrite parent body are fundamentally different from the ingredients of Earth and Mars,” Bell concluded. “It points to a distinct and separate evolutionary path in planetary formation in the early history of our solar system.”

The paper, “High-Pressure Clinopyroxene in Northwest Africa 12774 and New Geobarometric Evidence for a Planetary Embryo-Sized Angrite Parent Body,” appeared in Earth and Planetary Science Letters on July 1, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.