Boot on Mars, Largest Family Tree, Deepfake Museum and More Mysterious News Briefly — February 28, 2022

Mysterious News Briefly — February 28, 2022

The “black hole information paradox,” which ponders how black holes, by their sheer existence, are capable of destroying information about subatomic particles that (according to quantum physics) shouldn’t be able to be destroyed, may have been solved by theoretical physicist Samir Mathur who pictures black holes as “fuzzballs” or messy balls of strings where the information in a particle gets added to the fuzzball. Sounds like it’s time for a new Star Trek movie called “The Trouble with Fuzzballs.”

Self-styled ‘UFO expert’ Scott C. Waring says he’s found a photo taken by the Perseverance rover of an old boot on Mars and claims it’s "100% proof that NASA is hiding facts" from the public about life on the Red Planet. If a single lost boot is a sign of alien life, one look at a ‘lost and found’ closet would make you think schools are full of ETs.

An urban explorer illegally traipsing through an abandoned aquarium in Spain found the eerie rotting remains of a zombie shark in a tank and a dead squid on the floor which she dutifully posted on TikTok. It has over five million views – most of who are disappointed neither one is dancing.

University of Jena biologists studying ants trapped in amber over 100 million years ago found the oldest evidence that they were already participating in cooperative behavior or eusociality where the queen lays eggs, males fertilize them and workers look after the babies, find food and build nests. Good news for the researchers but bad news for ants with high hopes of one day not having to work so hard.

The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, has a new exhibit called “Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen” which looks at the technology of deepfake videos created using artificial intelligence and machine learning and challenges visitors to spot the fakes. How do you know it’s not a fake museum?

Astronomers used the pan-European LOFAR telescope array have mapped over a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere sky and identified 4.4 million objects from galaxies to black holes – most of which are billions of light years from the Earth. We will soon have the GPS – now all we need is the spaceship.

The Mars Curiosity rover recently photographed something that looks like a plant or a hand emerging from the ground. Time for a sci-fi movie called “Curiosity Killed the Martian Cat – and Now He’s Coming Back for Revenge.”

Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute have created the world’s largest family tree which dates back 100,000 years and links more than 27 million people living and dead that will help to someday map the entirety of human genetic relationships. This does not bode well for brides-to-be hoping to keep the wedding invitations down to a manageable number.

Clostridioides difficile is a germ that causes severe diarrhea and colitis and is considered to be a superbug resistant to antibiotics and now researchers know why – C. difficile is protected with a close-knit yet flexible outer layer that resembles and performs like chain mail. Can geneticists make antibiotics shaped like arrows?

Lily Dale, founded in 1879 and billed as "the world's largest center for the religion of spiritualism," has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. This small announcement about a place for mediums looms large in the validation of spiritualism.