Megalodon was slightly faster than a great white according to a new study that looked at sharks’ denticles as an indicator of their hunting speed. Despite the significant difference between the enormous estimated size of megalodon and its comparatively smaller extant relative, both were estimated to hunt at a pace comparable to that of an average human jogger – so you’d have quite the upper hand if they tried pursuing you on land.You may have heard the old adage that dolphins are smooth like olives while a shark is a bit like velvet, smooth one way and coarse the other. This is a reference to their bizarre skin that’s covered in dermal denticles: V-shaped structures that are more comparable to teeth than scales.Swimming around with modified teeth for skin is thought to decrease drag and turbulence for sharks, meaning they can glide through the water faster and without creating as much noise. Given that different species exhibit different denticles, that got scientists wondering if the denticles themselves could be an indicator of hunting speed in sharks. And if you’re going to study shark hunting speeds from their tooth skin, why stop at the ones still alive today?The researchers looked at previous studies that have estimated the size and spacing of Otodus megalodon denticles, which found them to be similar to that of the extant great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias. They were then able to take this data, and denticle data from several modern shark species, to estimate speed by focusing on ridge spacing and the drag reduction efficiency of each species’ denticle structure, as well as the sharks’ body lengths.The results showed that megalodon was likely hunting at speeds of 5.9 meters (19.4 feet) per second, meanwhile the extant great white swims at a close second of 5.7 meters (18.7 feet) per second. So, in a race of megalodon Vs great white, megalodon would be the winner – but only just. However, both behemoths were bested by the shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus) that, by their denticle estimations, is theoretically clocking hunting speeds of 10.5 meters (34.4 feet) per second. Zoomin'.The study marks a scientific first in using X-ray CT to reveal the detailed three-dimensional surface morphology of white shark denticles, and it’s hoped this information could inspire new riblets – a type of structure used to reduce drag in fluid dynamics – that can be adapted to perform at a wide range of speeds. It also welcomes a new approach for estimating the swimming speeds of sharks that can be applied even to extinct species, meaning the theoretical animal Olympics just got even wilder.The study is published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

The liberal media were in full spin mode Tuesday as they ramped up their full-throated support for Vice President Kamala Harris, trying desperately to make her appealing to voters. While CNN had tried to use Gen Z slang to woo younger voters, ABC’s The View was insisting that she was somehow a “moderate,” with no evidence nor explanation. Ignoring the fact that President Biden had picked a running mate on how well she would help sure up the liberal base (since he was framed as the moderate Democrat) – as well as on the basis of her being a diversity hire, pretend independent co-host Sara Haines scoffed that “the big attack” on her, “in addition to the dirty things, are ‘she's too liberal. She's too liberal.’” She thought it was “very rich” for people to call Harris far-left because former President Trump picked Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) to be his running mate: That is a very rich comment on her right now, because what Trump did was name J.D. Vance and – as you said – he's further right. He’s Project 2025. He is the Heritage Foundation. He is the MAGA agenda. He had a chance to do something else and said here the convention was just a doubling down on extreme agenda.     Haines proceeded to gush about how Harris was supposedly speaking to independents like her: Vice President Harris is really – and this is my -- I don't have input but what I'm seeing only looking at moderate beloved Democrats and what that says to me is, for the person saying you're too extreme, she's the only one that's actually checking in with the American public. 43 percent of this country identifies as independents. They are more moderate than the minority extremes would like you to think. By minority I mean partisan extremes. But the country is in the middle. She's saying, ‘I see you as voters.’ So, it’s not just political strategy. I feel like she's thinking about people like me when she's picking her vice presidential candidate. “Well, to be clear, she's pretty moderate also. She's pretty moderate also,” staunchly racist and anti-Semitic co-host Sunny Hostin (the descendant of slave owners) chimed in. Hostin also tried to throw herself in there by suggesting “former prosecutors aren’t leftist.” Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin only lightly opposed her fellow cast members. “And for what it's worth, I think moderate probably on the left-wing side,” she said. “I don't think any Republicans see her as moderate.” “But I do think it’s a very wise idea to find a moderate vice president to open it to the biggest voting bloc,” Farah Griffin commended. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s The View July 23, 2024 11:08:02 a.m. Eastern (…) SARA HAINES: One thing I also really love is, right now, the big attack for her, in addition to the dirty things, are ‘she's too liberal. She's too liberal.’ That is a very rich comment on her right now, because what Trump did was name J.D. Vance and – as you said – he's further right. He’s Project 2025. He is the Heritage Foundation. He is the MAGA agenda. He had a chance to do something else and said here the convention was just a doubling down on extreme agenda. Vice President Harris is really – and this is my -- I don't have input but what I'm seeing only looking at moderate beloved Democrats and what that says to me is, for the person saying you're too extreme, she's the only one that's actually checking in with the American public. 43 percent of this country identifies as independents. They are more moderate than the minority extremes would like you to think. By minority I mean partisan extremes. But the country is in the middle. She's saying, ‘I see you as voters.’ So, it’s not just political strategy. I feel like she's thinking about people like me when she's picking her vice presidential candidate. SONNY HOSTIN: Well, to be clear, she's pretty moderate also. She's pretty moderate also. HAINES: Yeah, but I’m saying that doesn't hold water when you look at what she’s doing. HOSTIN: Yeah, but former prosecutors aren’t leftist. ALYSSA AFRAH GRIFFIN: And for what it's worth, I think moderate probably on the left-wing side. I don't think any Republicans see her as moderate. But I do think it’s a very wise idea to find a moderate vice president to open it to the biggest voting bloc. (…)

Elon Musk believes that his estranged transgender child was "killed by the woke mind virus" after undergoing so-called gender-affirming treatments.Musk's child came out as transgender at age 16. The billionaire's 20-year-old biological son — born Xavier Musk — has transitioned to Vivian Jenna Wilson. Wilson dropped Musk's last name in favor of using the last name of the Tesla CEO's ex-wife, Justine Wilson. Musk's child legally changed names in 2022. 'They strive to give an answer, but they are trained to be politically correct, and the woke mind virus is woven throughout them.'Musk — who is the father of 12 children — said in 2023 that he “made many overtures” to connect with his estranged child, “but she doesn’t want to spend time with me.”In a recent interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Dr. Jordan Peterson, Musk explained the challenges of his child transitioning.“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys,” Musk explained. “This was really before I had any understanding of what was going on, and we had COVID going on, so there was a lot of confusion and I was told Xavier might commit suicide if he doesn’t.”Musk added, “It’s incredibly evil, and I agree with you that the people that have been promoting this should go to prison.”The 53-year-old SpaceX founder said his child was figuratively killed by the "woke mind virus." “I lost my son, essentially,“ Musk stated. “They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead. My son Xavier is dead — killed by the woke mind virus.” Musk proclaimed, “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that. And we’re making some progress.”Earlier this month, Musk vowed to move the headquarters of two of his major companies out of California in reaction to new gender identity legislation for students in the Golden State.California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1955, which prohibits school districts from having policies that require parents to be notified if their child identifies as transgender.Musk wrote on his X social media platform, "This is the final straw. Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas."He also proclaimed that the San Francisco headquarters for X will be relocated to Austin, Texas.Also in the interview, Musk declared that he would create a better artificial intelligence that is free of the "woke mind virus."Speaking on the topic of AI, Musk said he would attempt to create an artificial intelligence that was "better, to some degree, than what others are doing." The world's richest individual — who has a net worth of nearly $250 billion — said he would strive to avoid some of the "pitfalls" that other artificial intelligence companies have experienced. He noted that other AI companies "do not strive for truth." Peterson asked, "What do they strive for?" Musk replied, "They strive to give an answer, but they are trained to be politically correct, and the woke mind virus is woven throughout them." As previously reported on Blaze News, Musk told Peterson in the interview that he is a "big believer in the principles of Christianity" and considers himself a "cultural Christian."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The abrupt resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle a day after her disastrous appearance before a U.S. House committee has only increased calls for deep-dive investigations into the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump.Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, predicted “there will be more accountability to come” through a “full accounting of how these security failures happened.”“Egregious security failures leading up to and at the Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally resulted in the assassination attempt of President Trump, the murder of an innocent victim, and harm to others in the crowd,” Comer said.Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Christopher Paris added one big detail to the mystery on July 23 when he said would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks got off eight shots before he was killed by a counter-sniper.“Eight casings have been recovered," Paris told lawmakers during a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security.Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), a former Navy SEAL and sniper, asked Paris whether Pennsylvania State Police teams conducted investigations at the Crooks home in Bethel Park.“I believe we had people that participated in that, securing of it,” Paris said. “There were bomb assets that we provided.”Crane also asked whether state police noticed “anything fishy” at the home, such as no silverware or trash present, or extreme cleanliness “almost like a medical lab?”“I wasn’t given any of those details,” Paris said.Cheatle’s four-hour appearance before Comer’s committee the day before shed almost no light on how Crooks came so close to executing a former president and a leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election. It highlighted in stark relief the volumes of information that Cheatle said she didn’t know about the July 13 tragedy — and also what she apparently did know but would not share with Congress.'There are some of us up here that don't have a lot of confidence in the FBI.'“The failed attempt on President Trump’s life demands urgent and comprehensive congressional oversight,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. “We must understand how it happened — and ensure changes are made — so this never happens again.”Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he would introduce a bipartisan bill with Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) to require Senate confirmation of candidates for director of the U.S. Secret Service.“The Secret Service’s core mission is to protect the individuals entrusted to its care,” Grassley said in a statement.“President Trump’s brush with death was a Secret Service failure of epic proportions, and this mission failure must never be repeated,” Grassley said. “Our bill is a crucial step toward providing the transparency and accountability that Congress and the American people deserve from the Secret Service.”Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent turned radio and podcast host, said investigators will quickly discover the number of times the Trump campaign requested more protection from the Secret Service only to have the requests denied.“Folks, this thing is about to get so much worse," Bongino said on his July 23 podcast. "I’m telling you there is an email trail and white papers out there. A long email trail documenting multiple security enhancement requests for the DTD — Donald Trump protective detail — that were rebuffed and denied. Kim Cheatle is never, ever going to be able to hide from that."Appearing on "The Glenn Beck Program," Bongino said he was called a conspiracy theorist for the past year for warning that an attempt would be made on Trump's life.“All I'm telling you is the failure here was so apocalyptic, everyone on that advance team should have resigned the next day," Bongino said. "The director, the deputy director, all of them. How they still have jobs is incredible.”'What are you covering up?'Ten days out from the assassination attempt that took the life of a retired firefighter and seriously wounded two others, the picture of what happened at the Butler Farm Show Inc. fairground is not filling out nearly fast enough for lawmakers.Cheatle was asked repeatedly how many rifle shell casings were recovered from the roof of Building 6 at the American Glass Research complex from which Crooks staged his attack on Trump and the rally crowd. She deferred time and again to the FBI, which is handling the criminal investigation, but then let on she knew more than she was telling.“Did they share with you how many shell casings were on the roof?” asked Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.). When Cheatle began to answer, McClain cut her off and repeated the question.“Yes,” Cheatle replied.“So, they’ve shared the information with you,” McClain said. “You just don’t want to share the information with us, correct?”McClain then tried repeatedly to get Cheatle to reveal how many shell casings were recovered, but Cheatle didn’t budge.“If you’re supposed to be in charge, if the buck stops with you, how come you can’t share the answers?” McClain asked. “What are you covering up?” U.S. Secret Service agents swarm former President Donald J. Trump after he was shot by a would-be assassin at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds in Butler, Pa., on July 13.(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)Under questioning by Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.), Cheatle said the Secret Service radio communications from the Trump rally were not recorded or preserved. “We do not have radio communications from that day,” she said.A shooting timeline assembled by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) showed delays occurred between intelligence gathered by local police and it being sent to and received by the Secret Service. Photographs of Crooks taken by a local police counter-sniper at 5:14 p.m. — nearly an hour before the shooting — were not transmitted to the command center until 5:49 p.m. The command center, which included Secret Service personnel, didn’t acknowledge receipt of local police messages that they were seeking a suspicious person until 5:55 p.m. Crooks opened fire on Trump and the crowd just after 6:11 p.m.Secret Service communications problems have been a recurring theme in the agency’s recent history, according to sources on Capitol Hill. A forthcoming report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General is expected to identify Secret Service communication failures on Jan. 6, 2021, a senior congressional aide told Blaze News.'Joint terrorism task forces are almost exclusively focusing on anonymous tips about a ‘right-wing’ response to the failed assassination attempt.'Inspector General Joseph Cuffari learned in December 2021 that the Secret Service had erased phone text messages received and sent by its agents on Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, during a system migration. Cuffari was heavily criticized by House Democrats for failing to notify oversight committees in a timely manner.Serious questions have been raised about the behavior of Secret Service agents at the scene of a pipe bomb found next to the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., the afternoon of Jan. 6. After a Capitol Police officer discovered a bomb near a park bench just outside the DNC building, security video showed agents sitting in vehicles in the driveway finishing their lunches before exiting the SUVs to investigate.About 90 minutes before that, a Secret Service protective detail brought Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to the DNC and drove into a garage just feet from the pipe bomb. The lack of urgency on the part of Secret Service agents and local police after the bomb discovery is being investigated by U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).Another key question that Cheatle did not answer at the July 22 hearing was whether her agency or the FBI had tracked Crooks’ whereabouts in the days and months leading up to the shooting.“We need to have confidence that if the FBI is leading this investigation, that they're leading a credible investigation, because there are some of us up here that don't have a lot of confidence in the FBI,” Comer said.Worry about the FBI probe of the Trump shooting prompted the Oversight Project at Heritage Foundation to launch its own assassination investigation. Some of the early results released July 22 showed that a cell phone that had visited Crooks’ home and work addresses also pinged from a Washington, D.C., mall and office building that includes offices of the FBI.The Oversight Project, using commercially available geolocation data, also found that a phone likely belonging to Crooks himself visited Butler, Pennsylvania, twice in the 10 days leading up to the Trump shooting.'The Biden/Harris administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy.'Oversight’s report said a phone traveled from Crooks’ home address in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, to Butler, including a stop in the parking lot of a Home Depot store.The report issued by Sen. Johnson said Crooks visited a Home Depot in Butler the morning of the shooting, purchasing a 5.5-foot double aluminum ladder.The FBI seems more interested in pinning the political violence on domestic extremists than solving the criminal investigation of Crooks, according to former FBI special agent Steve Friend, a whistleblower who left the Bureau in February 2023 after being suspended for raising concerns about FBI tactics in Jan. 6 cases.“More of my @FBI moles are confirming. Their joint terrorism task forces are almost exclusively focusing on anonymous tips about a ‘right-wing’ response to the failed assassination attempt," Friend wrote on X. “There needs to be a parallel independent investigation.”The Oversight Project agreed, asking for the public's help with its investigation of the assassination attempt. Tips can be sent via email to tips.oversightproject@heritage.org.“This is part of the reason why we are conducting an independent investigation,” Oversight Project posted on X. “The system cannot investigate itself.”The FBI has not issued an update on its investigation in the past nine days.Trump took to social media with some new comments on the shooting.“The Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It was my great honor to do so!”Trump's former presidential physician, Ronny Jackson, expressed frustration with people minimizing the severity of Trump’s bullet wound.“People forget how serious this was. He was less than 2 centimeters away from having a bullet traveling at 3,300 feet per second, enter the back of his head,” Jackson told Fox News.“It irks me to no end how people are trying to minimize what happened,” said Jackson, who has examined Trump and reported the former president is “recovering well and is in good spirits.""By the grace of God, he was spared.”Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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