Time Traveler, World's First Cyborg, Superworms, Life on Venus and More Mysterious News Briefly

A roundup of mysterious, paranormal and strange science news stories from the past week.

According to a new study, as many as one in 500 men may carry an extra sex chromosome — either an X or a Y — but very few of them are likely to know that they’re XXY or XYY even though the extra chromosome can cause infertility, delayed puberty, learning disabilities, delays in acquiring speech and motor skills, type 2 diabetes, venous thrombosis, and unusually low muscle tone. Good luck convincing your boss an extra X is why you’re calling in sick.

Peter Scott-Morgan, the British scientist who became the 'world's first full cyborg', passed away at the age of 64 – Scott-Morgan tried to overcome his motor neurone disease (MND) by building a life-like avatar to express emotions, a wheelchair that let him move around upright, laser eye surgery for perfect eye-tracking an computer-using vision, a feeding tube to eliminate eating, a catheter and colostomy bag for elimination and a voice box with pre-recorded speech. Somewhere in the afterlife, he’s convincing an angel battery-powered wings are the way to go.

The ESA approved the construction and launch of the 2029 Comet Interceptor mission – a spacecraft that will sit at L2, 1.5 million km ‘behind’ Earth as viewed from the Sun, where it will wait for a suitable comet target, hopefully one from outside the solar system, and then meet it and observe it from multiple angles to build the first 3D profile of an interstellar comet. Did ‘Oumuamua just make a screeching turn to return for its closeup?

Those hoping to find life on Venus were dealt a blow by a new study which found the unusual behavior of sulfur in the planet' atmosphere cannot be explained by an 'aerial' form of extra-terrestrial life that consumes sulfur to survive. Used bookstores are busy applying black tape to the covers of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.”

The New York Court of Appeals rejected a lawsuit filed on behalf of 51-year-old Happy the Elephant, a 45 year resident of the Bronx Zoo, and declared that Happy is "a nonhuman animal” who is not a 'person' being subjected to illegal detention, so the writ of habeas corpus does not apply to Happy or any other nonhuman animals hoping to prove they are being confined illegally. Is anyone else more concerned that a court felt it necessary to use the redundant term “nonhuman animal”?

In a study published in Nature, an international team of researchers analyzed ancient DNA from human remains dating back to 1338 that were found in Central Asia, close to Lake Issyk Kul, in what is now Kyrgyzstan, and determined that this area was the source of the Black Death in Europe – the 500-year-long pandemic that killed up to 60% of the population after being carried across the Mediterranean via trade ships transporting goods from the territories of the Golden Horde in the Black Sea. Don’t ruin the researchers’ celebration by asking if they found any masks.

A "jaguar-like" creature was spotted roaming the fields of northern Lincolnshire in the East Midlands of England and locals are concerned that alien big cat sightings are on the rise in the area just as more people are going outdoors to enjoy the summer. British schoolchildren on summer break are learning a new kind of ABCs, but they still spell c-a-t.

From the “This is why we can’t have nice things’ file comes word from Mars that NASA's Perseverance rover recently spotted trash caught in a jagged rock that engineers on Earth determined was part of the thermal shield used to protect the Perseverance spacecraft from extreme temperatures and was discarded as descended to the surface. While Elon Musk works on a spaceship, some other billionaire will get even richer building space trash haulers.

Archaeologists working near a s middle and late iron age (400 BCE – 43 CE) settlement near Cambridge were shocked when they opened a ditch and found a huge number of frog skeletons, over 8,000 bones, with no obvious explanation as to why they were there – possibilities include an accident or an ancient fertility rite. Could this Bonehenge have been an early frog-and-chips shop?

Ghost Robotics has unveiled the latest version of its Vision 60 quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicles (Q-UGV), better known as robot dogs, and these metal pooches are equipped with 'tail' kit with a water jet propulsion system that gives them the ability to swim. Will ETs stop their development before these robot dogs learn how to fetch flying discs?

TikTok time traveler @timetravelhq, who claims to be from the year 2096, is here to warn us that a serial killer who breaks the record for most murders will be captured and jailed in 2023 – that record is currently held by Luis Garavito, nicknamed "La Bestia" or "The Beast", who confessed to killing 140 boys from October 1992 to April 1999 in South America and is  suspected of over 300 more murders. Why aren’t these time travelers following the code of time travel movies and attempting to stop the crimes themselves?

A new image taken by ESA's Mars Express orbiting satellite shows a large, city-sized, unnamed crater on the surface of the Red Planet that looks eerily like an enormous eye staring back at it (or us) – the 30 km (18.6 miles) wide crater was created 4 billion years ago during a violent period of the early Solar System known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. Giant Martian Eye  and Late Heavy Bombardment – todays’ great names for a band two-fer.

It’s not a Nazi base, but scientists in Antarctica are still excited about finding a never-before-seen subterranean habitat deep below the Larsen Ice Shelf — the ecosystem is swarming with tiny crustaceans known as amphipods. We might still be able to make it a conspiracy theory – could it be a secret Nazi experiment to create and army of killer amphibian warriors?

In a new study published in the journal Microbial Genomics, scientists report finding a species of "superworms" five times the size of mealworms and wax worms that can live on Styrofoam (polystyrene), a trait that could make them our saviors when it comes to breaking down plastic. “What could possibly go wrong?” asked we just before parking our car on a grassy hill filled with mysterious holes.

Mafe Walker, a Colombian influencer and self-described “interdimensional medium”, appeared on a TV show speaking in what she claimed was an extraterrestrial language she learned after opening “interdimensional portals” and learning to speak an alien tongue on a “galactic frequency” that only her vocal cords can reach. Isn’t that what they said about the vuvuzela?

The housing department of the French town of Fontenay-aux-Roses received a request for "emergency relocation" from ten residents of an apartment building claiming the first through fifth floors are "haunted" by ghosts that cast shadows, cause strange noises and mess with lights, prompting the residents to plead, “I can be crazy, you can be crazy, but the whole building cannot be crazy." They’ve obviously never been to Washington DC

Forget extra virgin olive oil -- Dr. Emlyn Dodd, an archaeologist specializing in the study of ancient food and drink, has recreated extra ancient olive oil using the original method of pressing Egyptian olive oil, called the twisting method, which was first documented 4,600-4,500 years ago. Just like us, ancient Egyptians probably adopted the “Mediterranean diet” until they got tired of it and went back to greasy camel burgers.

Many Long Eaton, Derbyshire, residents watched a UFO with flashing colored lights prevent multiple planes from landing at East Midlands Airport, but the East Midlands Airport Spotters determined it was a drone from the nearby Download Festival. Ban drones, not books.