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• The National UFO Reporting Center collects reports from the public

• Interest in UFOs has been increasing after whistleblower testimony

• A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for more transparency

The nonprofit organization collects reports of UFOs and investigates cases of unexplained sightings. The 2,174 sightings are an increase from previous years. In 2024, the agency logged 1,492 sightings between the beginning of January and the end of June, and in 2023, 2,077 were recorded in the same time frame.

UFO sightings in 2025

NUFORC collected more than 3,000 reports during the first six months of 2025, but because of the stigma around UFOs, the group notes that many of them happened years or even decades before they were reported.

Those numbers likely only represent a small number of actual sightings, said Christian Stepien, the group’s chief technology officer. Based on anecdotal evidence, he believes roughly 5 percent of sightings get reported.

The group takes reports from everyday citizens as well as air traffic controllers, police and members of the military.

Tungsten deposits are typically associated with crust-derived evolved granitoids. Whether the mantle has contributed to tungsten mineralization, however, is unknown.

Here, we provide new and compiled helium‒argon‒mercury‒strontium‒neodymium isotope data in South China and tungsten provinces elsewhere to evaluate this contribution.

Our analysis shows that oceanic-subduction-related extension is more likely to facilitate intense tungsten mineralization than other geodynamic processes, e.g., continental collision, post-collisional extension, and intracontinental rifting.

During this process, the mantle provides heat for inducing slab devolatilization, whereby abundant helium‒argon‒mercury‒(fluorine) are mobilized into the crust. The 1.8‒1.2 Ga neodymium model ages of the source rocks coincide with the Nuna supercontinent cycle, together with deep-time zircon data, suggesting that the considerable tungsten enrichment of the crust over geological time resulted from mantle-plume-related activities.

The above hypothesis is confirmed by the proportion of tungsten-rich basement rocks in major tungsten provinces, highlighting the essential role of the mantle in tungsten recycling and mineralization.

A mystery interstellar object discovered last week is likely to be the oldest comet ever seen—possibly predating our solar system by more than 3 billion years, researchers say.

The "water ice-rich" visitor, named 3I/ATLAS, is only the third known object from beyond our solar system ever spotted in our cosmic neighborhood and the first to reach us from a completely different region of our Milky Way galaxy.

It could be more than 7 billion years old.

Unlike the previous two objects to enter our solar system from elsewhere in the cosmos, 3I/ATLAS appears to be traveling on a steep path through the galaxy, with a trajectory that suggests it originated from the Milky Way's "thick disk"—a population of ancient stars orbiting above and below the thin plane where the sun and most stars reside.

Interestingly, the study indicates the possibility that the Inuit arrived in Greenland before the Norse people—although they may not have interacted much. The study authors write, "After 985 CE, it is known that Norse settlements were established in southwestern Greenland, but the degree of interaction between the Norse and their Inuit contemporaries remains unclear."

The feasters left behind the skulls of 19 wild boars, which they packed neatly together and sealed inside a pit within a round building. Butchery marks on the boar skulls show the animals were used for feasting, but until now we did not know where the animals came from.

By examining the microscopic growth patterns and chemical signatures inside the tooth enamel of five of these boars, we found at least some of them had been brought to the site from a substantial distance away, transported over difficult mountainous terrain. Bringing these boars to the feast – when other boars were available locally – would have taken an enormous amount of effort.

The Milky Way could have many more satellite galaxies than scientists have previously been able to predict or observe, according to new research. Cosmologists at Durham University used a new technique combining the highest-resolution supercomputer simulations that exist, alongside novel mathematical modeling, to predict the existence of missing "orphan" galaxies.

Their findings suggest that there should be 80 or perhaps up to 100 more satellite galaxies surrounding our home galaxy, orbiting at close distances.

If these galaxies are seen by telescopes, then it could provide strong support for the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) theory, which explains the large-scale structure of the universe and how galaxies form.

Robert Taylor talks he was attacked by a UFO in Dechmont Woods, Livingston, Scotland, 1979

Colossal volcanic eruptions like the kind that may have obliterated the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago are caused by mantle plumes that rise from shifting underground mountains deep within the Earth's mantle, new research led by University of Wollongong (UOW) geophysicists and statistical scientists has revealed.

The study has revealed that giant volcanic eruptions are connected to moving BLOBS. Reconstructing mantle convection from 1 billion years ago, the authors discovered that eruptions usually occur directly above or close to BLOBS, with the mantle plume gently tilting as it rises. Computer models show that volcanic hotspots like Hawaii tend to sit above areas where BLOBS have been located as they slowly move over millions of years.

Link to paper:

Large volcanic eruptions are mostly sourced above mobile basal mantle structures

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02482-z

Summary

•This study introduces a noninvasive video-based system to monitor cardiac activity in insects by analyzing subtle body movements.

•The method accurately captures heart signals without restraining the subjects, aligning closely with traditional invasive techniques.

•This approach offers a cost-effective and ethical tool for long-term ecological and physiological research.

Arthropods are vital to ecosystems and are among the most diverse and abundant living creatures on Earth. Understanding their physiological processes, such as cardiac activity, is essential for studying their health, behavior, and responses to environmental changes.

Traditional methods of monitoring cardiac signals often rely on invasive or contact techniques that require immobilization, which limits applicability of the methods in long-term studies and disrupts the insect's natural behavior.

This study proposes a noninvasive, video system to extract cardiac signals from insects by analyzing subtle body movements.

The results closely align with reference data obtained from established methods, validating the system's accuracy and feasibility.

The study provides a foundation for developing cost-effective, noninvasive tools that preserve insects’ natural behavior welfare while offering new opportunities for ecological and physiological research.

Media coverage surrounding unidentified flying objects, or what the government refers to as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAPs, has become increasingly bisected in recent months. The division centers on those who find a historic and continuing U.S. government cover-up of alien vehicles behind every door and those who suggest all UFOs can be categorized with conventional explanations.

On one side are the proliferators of clickbait-laden claims, which rely on sources and methods of an often weak nature. And while those pursuing this approach do sometimes, sometimes even often, provide original reporting on new UFO concerns, sensationalism is bleeding into too much media reporting. This impulse to sensationalism is easy to understand, of course. After all, it generates attention and web traffic but also opens up pathways to very lucrative opportunities. Opportunities such as getting a Netflix show or starring on programs such as the History Channel’s long-running The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.

The second side comes from reporting such as that of the two Wall Street Journal reports in June, which portrayed even the very strangest of UFO cases either as products of government disinformation efforts designed to hide highly classified military programs or as products of confused or disingenuous officials. We must accept that there is credibility to this reporting.....

It’s also true, as first reported by the Washington Examiner in 2023, that Department of Defense analysis of UFOs has sometimes skewed toward the extraordinary at the neglect of less extraordinary explanations, such as Chinese military intelligence drones. Still, secret U.S. or foreign aircraft cannot explain the full gamut of UFO reports defined by literally thousands of credible witnesses and sensor systems since the late 1940s. It should also be recognized that the aforementioned classified platforms rely upon engineering that, even if highly advanced, still conforms to at least open-source conceptual theories of engineering (pulse detonation engines, for example).

The Cambrian Explosion is a landmark moment in the history of life on Earth when many of the major groups of animals first appear in the fossil record.

New research, however, suggests that many of their key characteristics were already in place millions of years earlier during the Late Ediacaran Period.

The Cambrian Explosion may have been less of a burst of evolution, and more of a final flourish.

The four-year collaborative effort involves three Italian universities, each contributing specialised expertise to create an entirely new type of crop. Their biggest obstacle though is size. Even dwarf varieties of rice grown on Earth are too large for space habitats where every cubic centimetre matters. Traditional dwarf crops achieve their compact size by manipulating gibberellin, a plant hormone that reduces height but creates problems with seed germination and productivity.

The University of Milan is tackling this challenge by isolating mutant rice varieties that grow to just 10 centimetres high, roughly the height of a typical smartphone. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Rome are identifying genes that alter plant architecture to maximise production efficiency in minimal space. The University of Naples contributes expertise in space crop production, building on decades of research into growing plants in controlled environments.