SHOCK: Secret Service Agent Left Her Post Protecting Trump to Breastfeed Baby She Brought to Rally

Humans have drilled a record-breaking 1,268 meters (4,160 feet) into Earth’s mantle, gifting scientists with an extraordinary glimpse into the planet’s deep geology – and possibly the origins of life. The drill hole was made in a volcanically active region of the mid-Atlantic ridge located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.The mantle is the thickest layer of Earth, located between the crust and the core. While the mantle is typically located many miles below the crust, it is exposed by faulting in the mid-Atlantic ridge, providing a vantage point to explore the inaccessible layer through a "tectonic window."With the help of ocean drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution, the team managed to obtain a 1,268-meter (4,160-foot) long cylinder that provides a nearly continuous sample of mantle rock. In their new study, the international team of researchers have detailed the first insights from the unprecedented sample."Our study begins to look at the composition of the mantle by documenting the mineralogy of the recovered rocks, as well as their chemical makeup,” Professor Johan Lissenberg, study author from Cardiff University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said in a statement.Typically, Earth’s crust is between 4.8 to 69 kilometers (3 to 43 miles) thick, below which lays the mantle. In some parts of the world, however, the mantle rock is exposed due to tectonic activity.Image credit: Kolonko/Shutterstock.com"Our results differ from what we expected. There is a lot less of the mineral pyroxene in the rocks, and the rocks have got very high concentrations of magnesium, both of which results from much higher amounts of melting than what we would have predicted," explained Lissenberg. "We also found channels through which melt was transported through the mantle, and so we are able to track the fate of magma after it is formed and travels upwards to the Earth's surface,” he continued.This, the researchers explain, could help to inform our understanding of volcanoes, since mantle melt helps to fuel volcanic activity on the surface.Perhaps most exciting of all, the core sample may shed light onto the origin of life on Earth. The core sample offers early insights into the interactions between olivine, a plentiful mineral in mantle rocks, and seawater. These interactions trigger a cascade of chemical reactions that generate hydrogen and other molecules that are vital for sustaining life as we know it. "The rocks that were present on early Earth bear a closer resemblance to those we retrieved during this expedition than the more common rocks that make up our continents today,” explained Dr Susan Q Lang, an associate scientist in Geology and Geophysics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who served as a co-chief scientist on the expedition."Analysing them gives us a critical view into the chemical and physical environments that would have been present early in Earth's history, and that could have provided a consistent source of fuel and favorable conditions over geologically long timeframes to have hosted the earliest forms of life," she said.Bear in mind that this drill core is not the deepest hole ever dug by humans; that honor goes to part of the Kola Superdeep Borehole called SG-3. Soviet scientists bored the hole in the late 1980s, achieving a depth of 12,263 meters (40,230 feet) into the ground below northwestern Russia, not far from the border with northern Norway. Owing to the thickness of the crust here, the hole never made it into Earth’s mantle – unlike this latest study.The new study is published in the journal Science.

Some species in the animal world are known for their sleeping habits. From sloths snoozing in the trees to octopuses dreaming, what these animals get up to at bedtime is a source of fascination. Sharks, however, probably don’t feature very highly on the list of interesting sleepers – but they have just made a pretty strong bid to join, when researchers uncovered a surprise shark slumber party happening on the seafloor.In the Beagle Marine Park in the Bass Strait, Australia, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) filmed thousands of sleepy Port Jackson sharks (Heterodontus portusjacksoni) snoozing together on the seafloor. The sharks were first spotted here six years ago and the team have returned to conduct a survey on how conditions might have changed in the area. The ROV was operated from the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) research vessel MRV Ngerin.“It was very exciting when we managed to traverse over a rise in the reef to get a glimpse of the sharks snoozing 65 metres [213 feet] below the vessel in almost the same location as they were six years ago,” said Voyage Leader Dr Jacquomo Monk, of the University of Tasmania Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), in a statement. “A spectacular scene was relayed to us by a remotely operated vehicle equipped with seven cameras that was custom built by Boxfish Robotics in collaboration with IMAS. There were thousands of sharks tightly packed like a carpet spread across the seafloor.”      Port Jackson sharks are a distinctive species with blunt heads and harness-like markings across their bodies. They typically live in rocky environments near the bottom of the sea in southern Australia. They feed on a diet of mollusks, crustaceans, and sea urchins as well as small fish, foraging at night, explains the Australian Museum. The team noticed that the sharks sleeping together on the seafloor were only the females. While there is not a clear explanation for the girls-only slumber party, Port Jackson sharks are known to only come together for mating and live apart as males and females most of the year. “We don’t know exactly why the females are here. Perhaps they are feasting on the local delicacy – doughboy scallops – before the long trip north to lay their eggs,” continued Monk. There is one theory that the sharks are feasting before making the long swim to lay their eggs. These swims can be as far as 600-800 kilometers (373-497 miles) and occur between the breeding and laying sites.The fact that the sharks are still here six years after the first study shows the team that the habitat is still an important area for them. The park protects a range of diverse ocean habitats including reefs and sponge gardens, and is crucial not just for the sharks but for a wide range of above- and below-water species. 

A man has turned to Facebook for answers after noticing that his neighbor's house was projected upside-down onto his bedroom wall. It's not a sight you expect to wake up to – for one, neighbors' houses are generally not upside-down, and rarely on the inside of your own house. So, sharing photos of the incident, Stefan Lægaard Andersen appealed for an explanation."I'm sure that some of you fine gentlemen and/or gentlewomen know the answer to this ginormous mystery, that has my head spinning," Andersen wrote in the post. "Last night, as I was tucking my daughter into bed in our new house, this mirror image of the neighbours house showed up as a projection of sorts on our bedroom wall. I have absolutely no idea, how this happened, but I am hoping some of you can help understand this mystery."The man's window was covered at the time.Image courtesy of Stefan Lægaard, Heraldic artistFurther confusing the situation, and offering the explanation, was the fact that the man's bedroom window was covered at the time. Although stopping most of the light getting through, people were quick to point out the explanation. "So, having the window blocked off like that effectively makes it a pinhole camera, or camera obscura," commenter John Tougas explained. "The light reflecting off the building comes through the window, which is acting like a lens, and projects onto the wall. Very early experiments in photography used similar arrangements."      Pinhole camera effects are fairly commonplace, though not usually as spectacular as the one witnessed by Andersen and his daughter. Gaps in the light between the leaves of trees can create the same effect. On ordinary days, when the sun is out, you will see projections in the shape of the sun on the floor. This can be particularly pleasing during an eclipse.     IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.A similar effect using "pinhead mirrors" means you can even turn disco balls into an eclipse-viewer. Which is pretty neat.

Meet the latest act of leftist hypocrisy: accusing social media platform X of sabotaging Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid while ignoring the months-long election interference by Google against former President Donald Trump. On Monday, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) requested House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) launch an investigation into the Elon Musk-owned X platform, suggesting its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was attacking  “free and fair” elections by tipping “the scales in favor of one political party”—implying Republicans.  But why the concern now? MRC researchers caught Google burying Trump’s presidential campaign website on numerous occasions over 328 days, while it only took Musk’s Grok to make a correction after 10 days. “Happy to see that Congressman Nadler is finally in agreement with the MRC that Big Tech censorship is a major problem, especially as it pertains to protecting democracy,” said MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris. “Instead of cherry picking pro-free speech platforms like X who make corrections quickly, Rep. Nadler should focus his ire on those Big Tech platforms that are doing an overwhelming amount of election-interfering censorship.”  Morris’s remarks referred to two MRC recent studies showing the 41 times Google interfered in elections, and 39 times Facebook interfered in elections, since 2008 is a good place to start. Nadler’s cynical call to action stems from claims that Grok committed the unforgivable sin of affirming Harris had missed the ballot deadlines in nine states. The error lasted just over a week, with X taking swift action following complaints from the Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. In his five-page letter to Jordan, Nadler sounded the alarm (albeit unsuccessfully) about X’s “clear and imminent threat” to the 2024 presidential election. Of course, the so-called threat is that, for 10 days, an AI chatbot made an error despite openly warning users it might do so. Nadler’s hysteria stands in stark contrast to the left’s silence over Google’s nearly year-long interference in the 2024 presidential election by propping up the campaign website of the Biden-Harris campaign while burying those of Republican candidates, including former President Trump, now the presumptive nominee. MRC Free Speech America first unveiled evidence of such censorship on Aug. 22, 2023. Since then, MRC has published several reports about Trump and other Republicans' campaign websites being buried in Google’s search results. MRC conducted its most recent Google Search study, which drew similarly biased results, on July 15, 2024. That amounts to 328 days of continuous censorship. Speak about tipping the scale.  Nadler Press Secretary Daniel Rubin and Communications Director Matt Jansen did not immediately respond to MRC Free Speech America’s request for comment before publication. Minnesota Secretary of State Deputy Communications Director Cassondra Knudson did not offer detailed answers to MRC’s questions. Instead, she said, “Our office has not communicated with Rep. Nadler or the House Judiciary Committee on the letter.” Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

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