Evidence of the octopus evolution show it would have happened too quickly to have begun here on Earth. Published in the Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology Journal, 33 scientists have declared the invertebrate sea-dweller an alien whose eggs landed from space.

Via Express:

But the scientists go on to make an even more extraordinary claim concerning octopuses, which seem to have evolved on Earth quite rapidly something like 270 million years ago, 250 million years after the Cambrian explosion.

The paper states: “The genome of the Octopus shows a staggering level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes more than is present in Homo sapiens.

“Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch colour and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene.

“The transformative genes leading from the consensus ancestral Nautilus to the common Cuttlefish to Squid to the common are not easily to be found in any pre-existing life form – it is plausible then to suggest they seem to be borrowed from a far distant “future” in terms of terrestrial evolution, or more realistically from the cosmos at large.

“One plausible explanation, in our view, is that the new genes are likely new extraterrestrial imports to Earth - most plausibly as an already coherent group of functioning genes within (say) cryopreserved and matrix protected fertilized Octopus eggs.

“Thus the possibility that cryopreserved Squid and/or Octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted as that would be a parsimonious cosmic explanation for the Octopus' sudden emergence on Earth circa 270 million years ago.”

Does extraterrestrial life exist? It's a question that, for the past 25 years, Congress didn't care to try and answer.

In 1993, just as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) was getting its shit together with a massive program that would see observatories around the world equipped to search the universe for signals that may have been produced by intelligent alien life, Congress pulled the plug on funding them, preferring to throw money at NASA instead. In the U.S. Capital, SETI became a four-letter s-word that didn't end in 'hit.' While all of this is literally in the past, it's now also figuratively in the past as well.

From Space.com:

The U.S. House of Representatives has proposed a bill that includes $10 million in NASA funding for the next two years "to search for technosignatures, such as radio transmissions, in order to meet the NASA objective to search for life's origin, evolution, distribution, and future in the universe." Such technosignatures would come in the form of radio waves that have the telltale features of being produced by TV or radio-type technologies. An intelligent civilization could also produce those signals intentionally to communicate with other civilizations like ours.

Having SETI funded by the U.S. Government, again, would represent one helluva boost in resources for scientists who, for the past two decades and change, have had to rely on funding from private interests like universities to continue their search for intelligent life beyond earth. However, as with all things the government sticks its snout into, there's a catch. Read the rest

Growing up near Dayton, Ohio, I was always intrigued by rumors that extraterrestrials were stored on ice at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Turns out, the closest thing may be these surreal murals painted by German prisoners-of-war held in the base's dining hall during World War II. What inspired them? From Dayton Daily News:

The existing mural in Building 280, built in the 1943, was restored in the 1980s, he said. Dayton Art Institute experts have cleaned the painting as part of the preservation.

“A lot of people have conjecture on what this means,” (Wright-Patterson cultural resources manager Paul) Woodruff said. “Some people think this is where the alien conspiracy theories began with the little green men at Wright-Patt. That’s one story that likes to be told.”

Another theory: Green goblin-like characters out of German folklore. And there’s another for the wall of flame.

“One of the conjectures is possibly it’s German culture up in flames – a statement of how they felt what was going on in the world at that point,” he said.

Read the rest

Remember the 1995 TV program Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction that we all wanted to believe was real? Of course, the ET autopsy turned out to be a hoax, or rather, according to producer Ray Santilli, a "reconstruction" of film shot in 1947 that he had seen. Now, one of the hoaxers, Spyros Melaris, has staged a one-man show in London's East End to tell the real (?) story behind the story of the autopsy that you can watch below. From Paul Seaburn's article at Mysterious Universe:

(Melaris) claims he was the director of the film and the one responsible for creating the fake aliens and other special effects. Melaris says he met Ray Santilli, the producer and name most associated with the autopsy film, in 1995 at a music event in Cannes. Santilli later confided that he had the actual footage of an alien autopsy and wanted Melaris to make a documentary about it.

However, when Santilli showed him a copy of the alleged ‘real’ film, Melaris determined it was a fake shot on video. He says he instead agreed to make a fake version of the autopsy on film, release it as the real thing and them make another documentary on how they pulled off the fake. He hired John Humphreys, a special effects expert who has worked on Dr. Who, to make the alien’s body using his 10-year-old son as a model. Melaris bought 1940s surgical outfits, used cow, sheep, pig and lamb organs (the local butcher must have loved them) for the alien’s internal parts and spliced in footage from a 1947 newsreel.

FRB 121102, a fast radio burst signal first picked up in 2012, was just observed emitting many new bursts of energy. Scientists from SETI and Breakthrough Listen were both very excited by the new findings. Read the rest

Supermarket tabloids have given us aliens in the White House, Bat Boy, Elvis lives, and the first photos of heaven, but I never thought I’d read this stunning sentence . . .

“In May, a new ferry service began moving up to 200 passengers and 1,000 tons of cargo every month between North Korea and the Russian port of Vladivostok.”

What the hell is happening at the ‘National Enquirer?’ They’ve gone so deep into Donald Trump’s corner that its readers who crave titilating details of celebrity scandal are being fed a weekly diet of Trumped-up propaganda, which this week brings us a cover story and three pages on “Trump’s secret plan to defeat North Korea’s Doomsday machine.”

America is evidently under siege by North Korea’s escalating nuclear weapons program, and “Donald

Trump has taken bold and extraordinary steps to ensure America survives the siege and emerges with total victory!”

That sounds like something that Kim Jong-un’s propaganda machine might churn out, but it’s here in the ‘Enquirer,’ which laboriously details tanker movements between North Korea and Russia, reporting: “It could be oil  -  or something much more sinister.” Maybe they’re shipping old copies of the ‘Enquirer’ to North Korea  -  what could be more sinister that that?

At least it’s not all geopolitics in this week’s tabloids.

Kim Kardashian has been allegedly “caught on drug video” claims the ‘Enquirer,’ though since it was filmed in 2003, that’s neither new or shocking. Dubious reporting abounds in the ‘Enquirer,’ which claims that Natalie Wood “was raped before her death!” The mag explains that a rape kit may have been used during the actress’s autopsy, but no results were ever released. Read the rest

A comedy skit from Chris and Jack. Read the rest

HirokA1007's youtube channel is a menagerie of enormous insects such as this Hercules beetle pupa. Below, a larva, also the size of his fist. [via JWZ]

Previously: Read the rest

If you're excited about the upcoming Alien: Covenant, perhaps this little tidbit will tide you over till the main course: Prologue: Last Supper. Read the rest

Mondo Tees has announced a line of Aliens xenomorph tiki mugs, ("in space, no one can hear you drink"), available for pre-order now with ship dates this summer (some glazes only available at Alamo Drafthouses). Read the rest

This is not even remotely new, but with so many folks eagerly waiting for Ridley Scott’s film Alien: Convenant, which opens in May, it’s time to revisit this so you can laugh now and get freaked out later.

Read the rest

Aliens is one of my all-time favorite movies. A perfect mix of action, sci-fi and horror, which I would argue hasn’t been replicated. Then there’s Alien 3, and everything that came after it. I don’t like to talk about that. But, in 1988 after Aliens came and four years before the next movie would come out, this comic series ran which gave me the followup story I wanted.

The series has been published as Aliens: Book One, Aliens: Outbreak, and in novel form as Aliens: Earth Hive (a lot to keep track of), but since these publications were made after Alien 3 came out, names were changed to avoid confusion from the films continuation of the story. So Wilcks = Hicks and Billie = Newt. Thankfully this comic doesn’t do that. This printing features the comic as it was intended to be read with the characters we’re familiar with.

The story picks up a few years after the film ended. An adult Newt and aged Hicks are struggling to deal with the horrors they witnessed, and Ripley is ominously missing. The black-and-white comics really capture the gritty world that the movies take place in, expanding on it in the best way. Although the comic ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, the story is continued in Aliens: Nightmare Asylum, but you will have to deal with the name change of the main characters.

The book itself is beautiful. And black. Very black. It feels like something that was designed by H.R. Read the rest

Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta talked space aliens today with CNN's Jake Tapper. Read the rest

Two amateur astronomers in different countries captured space images that astronomers say depicts an amazing cosmic event: something basically crashing into the planet Jupiter. Read the rest

NASA has released recordings of weird sounds Apollo 10 astronauts heard while flying around the far side of the moon, and the crew responding to the strange phenomenon. Read the rest

In 1977 radio astronomers at the Big Ear space telescope, searching for signs of extraterrestrial life, came across a signal that wasn't just odd, it was unbelievably strong! The signal, broadcast at at 1420.456 MHz, radiated from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and lasted just seventy-two seconds. When researcher Jerry R. Ehman came across the signal he wrote "Wow!" on the print out.

Antonio Paris, a professor of astronomy at Florida's St. Petersburg College, thinks he's figured out the source -- a pair of recently discovered comets!

Everything about the Wow! signal created huge interest. The frequency it was found on correlates strongly with the 'hydrogen line' and was believed to be a most-likely frequency to for Aliens to use when communicating with us. The intensity and sharp build-up/fall off of the signal led researchers to believe it came from a fixed point in the sky. Antonio Paris believes the signal was a sign of two comets, unidentified at the time of the recording, passing in front of the Big Ear.

Via New Scientist:

Comets release a lot of hydrogen as they swing around the sun. This happens because ultraviolet light breaks up their frozen water, creating a cloud of the gas extending millions of kilometres out from the comet itself.

If the comets were passing in front of the Big Ear in 1977, they would have generated an apparently short-lived signal, as the telescope (now dismantled) had a fixed field of view. Searching that same area – as subsequent radio telescopes did – wouldn’t show anything.

Earlier this morning David posted a photo of a woman on Mars. We now know why she's there. Her 4-wheeled pareidoliaopede broke down and she is walking home. This is a photo of the axle and two wheels that broke off.

Here's the original photo at NASA's site. Read the rest