Quote of the Day: “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” – James Baldwin
Photo by: kevin turcios
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On this day 153 years ago, records reveal that the first Men’s Singles championship was played at the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon. It would eventually become the world’s most celebrated tennis championship, known as one of the four “Grand Slams” in the international season. A 27-year-old named Spencer Gore was the first lawn tennis champion in England, beating William Marshall 6-1, 6-2, 6-2. READ a little more… (1877)
Power tools, cars, heavy machinery, office supplies, schools supplies—even land, there’s all kinds of things on the virtual auction block of Municibid.
This ‘eBay for government,’ is allowing state, county, and municipal governments to sell off valuable assets and supplies to reduce waste and invest back into the community.
All proceeds made on Municibid sales go back into the government’s operating budgets, ensuring tax dollars remain hard at work, and unnecessary waste remains out of the landfills.
Currently some 7,000 government entities at various levels use Municibid to sell off surplus—much of it the kinds of things you’d imagine a government to have, like cars, snow plows, desks, and land, but CEO and Founder Greg Berry says he’s seen electric guitars, jewelry, and sailboats.
Berry, a former councilman in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, said that the process of closed bidding at city hall for surplus government items was intimidating and far from fair in either direction.
“No one knew what the governments were selling, and if they did, the process was super inconvenient and intimidating and just wasn’t very easy,” Berry told CBS Pittsburgh.
CBS’ Meghan Schiller said she learned it was a popular place for parents to find their children’s first car, as old Ford police vehicles are often sold for cut rates because of how much time the engine has idled.
While mostly concentrated on the Mid-Atlantic coastline, government agencies in 17 states have so far signed up to use Municibid.
“We have realized hundreds of thousands of dollars funneled back into the District’s operating budgets, have saved thousands on hauling (dumping) fees, and have kept tons of surplus out of the landfills!” said Beth Showalter the Secretary of the Treasury for Upper Bern Township in Barks County, PA.
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The Prince of Darkness made his official curtain call recently with a benefit concert for Parkinson’s research and children’s hospitals that raised a staggering $190 million.
Featuring a star-studded lineup of heavy metal greats, and culminating in Black Sabbath’s final performance, the concert was livestreamed by millions around the world after tickets for the Birmingham show sold out in just 16 minutes.
Rage Against the Machine’s guitarist Tom Morello served as the music director for an event he hoped would be remembered for all time. The mountain of proceeds went to Cure Parkinson’s (which Osbourne, 76, suffers from), Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and Acorn Children’s Hospice.
Following performances from heavy metal stars Mastodon, Anthrax, Lamb of God, Alice in Chains, Pantera, Tool, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, and two different supergroups composed by Morello that included members of Aerosmith, Judas Priest, Blink 182, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden (and many others), Black Sabbath took the stage with the Parkinson’s-stricken Osbourne seated on a black throne.
It was the first time since 2005 that the original line-up of the band (Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward) had performed together live.
“THANKYOU @ozzyosbourne for trusting me to be the Musical Director of the ‘Back to the Beginning’ show,” Morello shared on his Instagram post. “It was over a year of hard work but heavy metal was the music that made me love music and it was a labor of love.”
Osbourne was likewise retrospective and sentimental in his thoughts about the show.
“It’s my time to go back to the beginning … time for me to give back to the place where I was born,” Osbourne said in a statement when announcing the show in February. “How blessed am I to do it with the help of people whom I love.”
HEAVY METAL HEADLINES:
Despite the Parkinson’s, Osbourne sang a 9-song set, rising from beneath the stage upon a bat-shaped throne, fully embodying his moniker as the Prince of Darkness.
“It’s so good to be on this f—ing stage, you have no idea,” the legendary rocker said at the onset, according to Variety. “Let the madness begin!”
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In 1966, the Beatles perched in the boughs of a giant cedar for the music video of their song, Rain.
Now, the tree has another claim to fame—a finalist in the UK’s Tree of the Year Contest.
Rightly nominated under this year’s theme of being “Rooted in Culture,” the Beatles’ Lebanese Cedar in Chiswick House and Gardens was planted in 1720. Queen Victoria, the Tsar of Russia, and the Shah of Persia have been among the admirers to predate the Fab Four.
The cedar’s vast boughs swoop down to brush the ground, creating an interesting spot for the band to sit and play their guitars on Rain. This shot was also used as the cover for their Nowhere Man EP.
Woodland Trust, which organizes the annual competition, uses cultural references from as far back as the 16th century, to as recently as a 2011 Radiohead album.
In a nod to the 16th century, it’s Bradgate Park’s oldest oak, a gnarled ancient whose crown was allegedly pruned in mourning of Lady Jane Grey, the infamous “9 Days Queen”, who was beheaded as an imposter by Mary I.
In the case of Radiohead, it’s a tree named ‘King of Limbs’ found in Wiltshire, England’s Savernake Forest.
Estimated to be over 1,000 years old, the branches of this mammoth tree were regularly cut back to encourage new growth, resulting in several huge digits extending in different directions. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke named an album, King of Limbs, in the tree’s honor.
Readers can see all 10 of the nominations on the Woodland Trust website.
Concluding just in advance of the UK Tree of the Year, voting for which begins today, the European Tree of the Year saw a remarkable turn of events: a Polish color-phase beech tree has taken the leafy continental crown for the 2nd year running.
LAST YEAR’S WINNERS:
Last year’s winner was called the “Heart of the Garden” but this year, it’s the “Heart of the Hills” of Dalkowskie. Two years, two beeches, two hearts, two champions, but one incredible arboreal country.
It took first place with 9-times as many votes as the UK’s entry—the Spinnish Oak, winner of the UK Tree of the Year from 2024.
The Polish beech tree grows in the historical park in the city of Dalków. For the local community, the tree is seen as ‘a heart that unites,’ and tourists make wishes by throwing peanuts into a hole in the tree, believing it will make their dreams come true.
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What happened when a wildcat and a small mammal met in the park? Dinner!
This joke isn’t only terrible, it’s actually wrong. Scientists camera trapping in the Amazon revealed an extraordinary behavioral trend between a wildcat species called the ocelot and an opossum.
Multiple video clips showed the two animals walking about “like old friends” the scientists mused.
The video was captured by a team of scientists from Germany and Peru working at the Cocha Cashu Biological Station in Peru’s Manu National Park. They had intended to study the behavior of birds, but in reviewing their footage they witnessed the predatory feline walking at a relaxed pace behind a common opossum, and knew they had to change focus.
After walking out of shot along a trail, they both returned 2 minutes later in the same order but heading in the opposite direction.
The scientists had to know more. They began soliciting their fellow researchers and soon it became clear that this wasn’t a one-off event. Published in the journal Ecosphere, the scientists report 4 separate recorded instances of this behavior.
Ocelots are well-known to prey on opossums, but each of the four events took place in a different region of the Peruvian Amazon, guaranteeing that it isn’t the same two animals. Additionally, the instances span 2019 to 2023.
In the third known instance, recorded in 2022 at the El Gato Concession in the state of Madre de Dios, the ocelot and opossum were captured not only walking together, but also interacting. It seems the ocelot might have pounced on the opossum, but prior to that interaction the opossum displayed no indication of wariness towards its strange acquaintance.
“Even though we still do not know if this is the case, we could be witnessing the South American counterpart to the well-known partnership between coyotes and badgers in North America,” explains Dr. Isabel Damas-Moreira, behavioral ecologist at the Faculty of Biology at Bielefeld University, Germany, and senior author of the study.
Such cooperations are particularly fascinating, “because they can show that these relationships can develop even between unrelated species.”
ALSO CHECK OUT: Rare Colocolo Cat Captured on Trail Cam in Chile Sauntering up as if on a Catwalk (Watch)
Using additional experiments in the wild, they also found that opossums have a clear attraction to the scent of ocelots, on which they often rub themselves against, ignoring other scent samples, such as those of pumas. This suggests a deliberate attraction to ocelots.
What could explain this association?
MORE ANIMAL FRIENDSHIPS: Tiger and Boar Call a Truce After Falling into Well and Waiting for Rescuers
Damas-Moreira and her team involved in the discovery have two hypotheses. The first is that the ocelot, which could simply make a meal of the arboreal marsupial, benefits in some way from the latter’s foraging behavior. The second is that the ocelot, which hunts at night, benefits from a potential blending between its natural scent and that of the opossum, fooling potential prey.
“This discovery was accidental. It reminds us how important it is to observe closely – because nature is often more complex than we think” says Damas-Moreira in a statement from her university.
WATCH the video below…
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Quote of the Day: “Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durant
Photo by: Lucrezia Carnelos @ciabattespugnose (cropped)
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
57 years ago today, the Intel Corporation was founded in Mountain View, California. One of the largest manufacturers of computer hardware, Intel was a key component of the rise of Silicon Valley as a high-tech center, as well as a pioneer of random access memory and microprocessors. It was one of the first companies listed on Nasdaq, and is today the third largest semiconductor producer in the world by revenue. READ more about this American tech powerhouse… (1968)
A story of resilience and maternal instinct comes now from Minnesota, where a foal belonging to Asia’s last remaining wild horse species is thriving thanks to an unexpected hero: a domesticated horse named Alice.
Having lost her own offspring, Alice decided to put Marat, the months old Przewalski’s horse foal, between her heart and her hooves.
Born May 17th at the Minnesota Zoo, the male foal is the result of a decades-long commitment to saving the endangered Przewalski’s horse, which over the last 15 years has progressed remarkably well.
Just days after his birth, the foal became critically ill and was transferred to the University of Minnesota’s Veterinary Medical Center. While he made a full recovery, the temporary separation led his mother, Nady, to reject him—a behavior not uncommon among wild horses after separation.
Enter Alice, a gentle Pony of the Americas mare from Brush Poppin Ranch in southeastern Minnesota. Just days earlier, Alice had lost her own newborn filly. Her owners, Sylvia and Jeff Passow, hoped her nurturing temperament and milk supply might help another foal in need.
Within hours of hearing about the orphaned wild foal, the Passows made the drive to the Minnesota Zoo. From their first meeting, Alice accepted Marat as her own, nuzzling him gently and allowing him to nurse. The two have formed a heartwarming bond, and Alice will remain by his side for the next several months as he continues to grow.
“This is the kind of story that reminds us of what conservation is all about: collaboration, compassion, and hope,” said Randy Kochevar, Chief Animal Care, Health, Conservation and Behavior Officer at the Minnesota Zoo. “Thanks to the Passows’ generosity and Alice’s instinct, this endangered foal now has a second chance.”
Przewalski’s horses are the world’s last truly wild horse species, never domesticated and genetically distinct from other horses. Once declared extinct in the wild by the 1960s, the species survived only through a small number of individuals in zoos.
Through decades of careful breeding, international cooperation, and scientific breakthroughs, including recent genetic research and cloning efforts, populations have been reestablished on the steppes of Mongolia and China. Fewer than 2,000 Przewalski’s horses exist today, making each foal born in human care critical to the species’ survival.
The Minnesota Zoo has long played a leading role in this global effort. Since opening in 1978, the Zoo has welcomed more than 50 foals as part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan (SSP), which coordinates breeding to maintain genetic diversity.
In 2024, the Zoo contributed to a landmark genetic study aimed at strengthening future conservation efforts for the species.
Along with Mongolia and China, this year GNN reported that 150 animals have been transported to the steppes of Kazakhstan, another of the horse’s former pastures. Released at the Altyn Dala Reserve in Kazakhstan’s Kostanay region, it’s hoped they will naturally breed and spread out, eventually becoming prey for the Turanian tiger, an extinct local subspecies Kazakhstan is also attempting to reintroduce.
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For the first time in over a century, Parisians are swimming in their own river again following a cleanup effort that ran over $1.5 billion.
PARIS EST MAGIQUE ! 🫶🏻🇫🇷#ParisJeTaime #Seine pic.twitter.com/9AvaKnYeoS
— Clément Beaune (@CBeaune) July 12, 2025
Currently open to 1,000 bathers daily in three different cordoned swimming locations for free, Parisians are flocking to enjoy their river the way their great-grandparents once did.
Excitement that pollution in the Seine river would be low enough to allow for healthy swimming grew and grew in the years and months leading up to the Summer Olympics in Paris in 2024, when it was supposed to be used for the triathlon event.
Both Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo and French President Emanual Macron promised to take a dip in the Seine in July before the Games’ opening, and while the former did, the latter was officially unable to because of campaign commitments, though critics accused him of fearing that pollution remained.
In 2023, GNN reported on the progress made by the $2.3 billion project that started shortly after Paris was awarded the Games. By 2018 the city had already passed a law which mandated the Seine’s many houseboats had to moor by sewage access. They had been dumping right into the river before.
More than half-a-billion euros was earmarked for huge storage basins and other public works that will reduce the need to let bacteria-laden water spill out into the Seine when it rains, while other government money is going to improve sewage treatment plants along the banks and at the tributary of the Marne.
One storage facility located near Paris’ Austerlitz train station can hold 20 Olympic swimming pools of dirty water from being spat raw into the river.
Following the Games, some of the athletes who swam in the Seine got sick, and the river as well as the government became easy targets for finger pointing.
NEWS FROM PARIS: First Ever Cheese Museum Opens in Paris: ‘It’s Gouda Brie a Delicious Visit’
In February of this year, the Guardian reported that water samples contained the DNA of rare mussels sensitive to pollution and thought to be on the point of extinction in France, indicating that efforts were paying off, if a little late.
The thick shelled river mussel, the black river mussel, and the depressed river mussel are all considered near-extinct, and the researchers sampling the Seine for DNA hadn’t even been looking for them; they were expecting fish, which they also found at 10-times the density and diversity of a study done in 1960.
CLEANING UP RIVERS: China Achieves ‘Excellent’ Water Quality in 90% of Rivers and Lakes, Now Looks to Improve Whole Ecosystems
Then, in early July as a heat-wave gripped Europe, the Seine was declared open for swimming. A much needed way to cool off that happens to be carbon-neutral, it’s believed the Seine swimming spots will become chief attractions inside the city and beyond, where another 10 such spots, cordoned off to protect swimmers from boat traffic, are planned to open.
Lifeguards, changing facilities, and showers are all present at the bathing spots, and now, despite whatever else he has going on, Macron can have no excuse from taking that dip.
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The story of how Sphenodraco scandentis came to be known is one for the ages: involving lies and deceit, and the well-trained eye of a brilliant paleontology student.
Ph.D. student Victor Beccari couldn’t shake the feeling he had seen the fossil before: it was a slab of rock containing the impression of a Jurassic-period reptile housed at the London Natural History Museum.
It was during the same visit that he realized where—at the Senckenberg Nat. History Museum in Frankfurt.
Beccari followed his instincts and confirmed that each museum contained a half of the whole: one had the fossil, and the other the imprint it made on the prehistoric sediment.
“It seems that someone in the 1930s decided to double their profit by selling both halves separately,” Beccari says in a museum statement. “As they didn’t tell either buyer that there was another half, the connection between the two fossils had been lost until now.”
“These kinds of fossils are normally preserved flat, so when they’re split open you often get the skeleton in one half and the impression of the skeleton in the other.”
When the two halves were reunited, something more was revealed other than intergenerational deception and buyer’s remorse—neither museum had identified it correctly.
Previously labeled Homoeosaurus maximiliani, it’s actually a new species of ancient lizard that dwelt among the trees. Sphenodraco scandentis, as the specimen has been renamed, is the earliest known member of the order Rhynchocephalia to have lived in trees.
These ancient lizard-like reptiles are actually not true lizards, but a third major reptile order alongside snakes and lizards. There is a living member of this order today, called the tuatara, that lives in New Zealand.
Beccari’s subsequent work on S. scandentis shows that it had a short body, long limbs, and long forefingers, similar to draco gliding lizards today. It strongly suggests an arboreal lifestyle, and would be the oldest rhynchocephalian known to live in the trees.
One of the key places on Earth for studying rhynchocephalians is an area of German rocks known as the Solnhofen Limestone. During the Late Jurassic, this region would have been a chain of islands across a subtropical sea, and it just so happens that it was where the Senckenberg Museum’s specimen came from.
Although the fossils are well-preserved, they’ve not all been studied in detail. Many of the historic descriptions of rhynchocephalians are somewhat vague, focusing on characteristics that are fairly broad across a variety of animals.
MORE ANCIENT REPTILES: Fascinating Species of 200 Million-Year-old Flying Reptile Discovered in Britain
“I think we’re really underestimating the diversity of these animals,” Beccari said. “In a lot of cases, fossils coming from the same place that look somewhat similar get lumped together. So, everything with longer limbs was called Homoeosaurus and everything with shorter limbs was Kallimodon.”
“The closer you look at how these animals have been studied in the past, the more you appreciate that the species aren’t that well-defined. We know that modern islands can have hundreds of species of reptiles, so there’s no reason that ancient islands didn’t too.”
“I’m going back over existing fossils to look for signs that other currently accepted species might cover multiple rhynchocephalians. There are also still a number of undescribed specimens that may also represent new species as well.”
ALSO CHECK OUT: Exquisite New Fossil Shows Scientists How Much More Ferocious Australia’s Crocs Once Were
“It goes to show just how important museum collections are to understanding ancient diversity. Even though many of these fossils were discovered almost two centuries ago, there’s still a lot they can teach us.”
GNN recently reported on other instances like this: a new tyrannosaurid that had sat in a museum drawer for 50 years, and a small, riverside dinosaur that had been poorly described for 150 years.
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Scientists have found that plants make a series of sounds that indicate they are under duress, and that certain animals have evolved to hear these and react to them.
Described as a “vast, unexplored field,” the phytoacoustics are inaudible to the human hear, but adjusted to frequencies that we can hear, the sounds are not unlike the popping of corn in a pan.
A genus of moths is known to lay its eggs on the leaves of the tomato vine so that the larvae have a ready food source when they emerge. Scientists at Tel Aviv University performed a series of trials to see if these moths would lay their eggs on plants which were sounding off that they were dehydrated or stressed in some way.
The hypothesis would be that if moths could hear the sound, they may choose to avoid laying their eggs on the ‘screaming’ plants, as a stressed plant would produce fewer or inferior tomatoes, resulting in weaker, less-nourished larvae.
The result was exactly that. When controlled for visual indicators on the leaves and fruit, moths reliably chose to lay eggs on the silent plants over the sounding ones.
“This is the first demonstration ever of an animal responding to sounds produced by a plant,” said Professor Yossi Yovel of Tel Aviv University who co-led the project. “This is a vast, unexplored field—an entire world waiting to be discovered.”
Dr. Yovel has made other foundational discoveries in plant signaling, including that stressed plants emit airborne sounds that can be recorded from a distance and classified, and another that showed plants ‘hear’ the sounds of pollinators nearby and rapidly increase the sugar concentration in their nectar.
On the back of this most recent paper, he plans to extend his research to make a catalogue of sounds from different plants, and begin to see how many, if any, animals are reacting to them.
“This is speculation at this stage, but it could be that all sorts of animals will make decisions based on the sounds they hear from plants, such as whether to pollinate or hide inside them or eat the plant,” said Dr. Yovel according to the BBC.
THE PLANT-POLLINATOR RELATIONSHIP: Bees Actually Bite Plants to Make Them Flower Early – Surprising Scientists
With all this talk about screaming plants and listening plants, the authors stressed that plants are not sentient as we understand it. The sounds are made by changes in the physical structure of leaves, not by compression and manipulation of air, the beating of extremities against other body parts, or any other vocalizations that we know of in the animal kingdom.
Others are slightly more convinced, however, such as forester and author Peter Wohlleben, who is eager to see when scientists can devise a computer which detects through pheromones what trees are ‘talking’ about. His work indicates this is a primary means of tree communication.
MORE PLANT AWARENESS STORIES: Plants Respond to Touch Sending Different Signals Through Their Cells, Shows New Study
Whether or not science is on the cusp of elaborating plant ‘intelligence,’ it’s undeniable that there is a virtually universal plant ‘awareness’ which if we’re honest, isn’t always an inferior quality to intelligence.
BBC was able to receive some of the recorded sounds of the plants, which can be listened to on their website.
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Quote of the Day: “We sit in the mud… and reach for the stars.” – Ivan Turgenev
Photo by: Ryan Jacobson
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
70 years ago today, Disneyland was dedicated and opened in Anaheim, California. It is the most visited theme park in world history with 757 million visits since it opened as of December 2021. In 2022, the park had approximately 16.9 million visits, making it the second most visited amusement park in the world that year, behind only Magic Kingdom, the very park it inspired. READ more… (1955)
Bat boys often blend into the background, becoming bit players in the operations of a major league baseball game.
But the Philadelphia Phillies recently gave their bat boy, Adam Crognale, the star treatment, creating a hype video that helped get him elected to this year’s All-Star Game ball crew.
Thanks in part to the video that showcased Adam’s skills snagging foul balls and supporting his team, the 26-year-old New Jersey native won the 3-day public voting to serve as the National League’s bat boy in the MLB All-Star Game last night.
Watch the hype film posted on social media by the Phillies…
The best Bat Man in the biz is on the All-Star ballot! Vote and let's send Adam to ATL 🤩
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) July 6, 2025
VOTE: https://t.co/vtcaziBvLx pic.twitter.com/gJUxOQr26l
“I know I’m living the dream of some 8 or 10-year-old kid in the stands,” Adam told CBS Philadelphia. “It’s a dream come true. I don’t take it for granted…”
The dream holds even more meaning considering what Adam has overcome in his young life—a cancer diagnosis of lymphoma in his knee that temporarily stole his ability to run.
Fortunately, his treatment was successful and he went on to graduate from Temple University and earn his ‘dream job’ as the Phillies’ bat boy.
“There’s nothing better than coming to this ballpark,” Adam told CBS Philadelphia in 2024. “I’ve said that since I was a 5-year-old kid, and I probably will not stop saying that.”
And now, his ball handling skills have made him an all-star.
(Watch this thoughtful young man being interviewed, before he won the vote…)
ANOTHER BASEBALL HOME RUN: Philadelphia Phillies’ New Service Dog is Instant Celebrity – And Will Support a Veteran After Training Camp
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A German backpacker lost for 12 days in the Australian outback has survived and spoken out regarding her traumatic experience.
Carolina Wilga’s disappearance gripped the nation after her friends and family lost contact with her in late June and her van was discovered immobilized off a trail in a nature reserve in the state of Western Australia.
The 26-year-old had been found walking along a track on the outskirts of the reserve, having been ravaged by mosquitos and chewed up in the rough terrain.
Inspector Martin Glynn of the Western Australia police said Wilga was found last Friday at 7:30 p.m. local time by a member of the public who took the backpacker to the nearest town, Beacon. It was there that she was airlifted to a hospital in Perth where she released a statement to the press on Monday.
“The thought of all the people who believed in me, searched for me, and kept hoping for me gave me the strength to carry on during my darkest moments. For this, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Wilga, who was pictured in the hospital among cards of well-wishes, flowers, and food required to “gain 12 kilos back.”
“Especially to the police investigators, searchers, the German Consulate, the medical staff and the wonderful nurses who took care of me with so much compassion. My deepest thanks also go to every single person who simply thought of me — and of course, to my rescuer and angel, Tania!”
A press conference from the WA Police on Friday revealed that, having been found by Tania Henley, her mental state was “quite… fragile.”
The details of Wilga’s survival ordeal are that her van became immobilized in mud, and that for a reason later revealed in her statement, she left it, became disoriented, and got lost. According to ABC News Australia, she was barefoot, and survived off drinking water from puddles and eating what little food remained in her pockets after she left the van.
“There’s a very hostile environment out there, both from flora and fauna. It’s a really, really challenging environment,” said Glynn.
She wandered around the Karroun Hill Nature Reserve from the point at which her van was stuck, which was 21 miles from any of the reserve’s main trails. At night the temperatures regularly fall to 32°F, and she sought shelter wherever it was available, including a cave.
“You’re always so hopeful with these missing person situations,” Glynn said. “It’s really quite traumatic because you obviously always go out with the best of hope that you will find the person. It’s just a great outcome for everyone involved.”
MISSING IN ACTION: 20-yo Hiker Survives to See Family Again After Incredible 50 Days Lost in the Rockies
In her statement, Wilga said that many people had asked her why she left the van. Her response was that when she careened off the trail, she hit her head significantly, became confused, wandered away, lost sight of it, and was lost, an all-too-common scenario for missing hikers.
Survival experts would agree unanimously: you should almost never leave your vehicle if it breaks down. It’s not only a ready source of shelter from the sun, wind, rain, and cold, but it’s much easier for rescuers to see it from the air. In the case of Wilga, the van was found by an aerial search, but she was long gone by then.
Outback survival experts speaking with ABC say there are two main reasons why people leave their cars. The first one is irrational, and known as an amygdala hijack, where an overcoming sense of panic and denial cause people to make irrational decisions, like believing they can follow a trail back to get help, or climb a hill to see if they can spot civilization in the distance.
The second is more rational, and its the sense of wanting to take action. In reality, sitting down, sipping some water, and having a think about things is a much better course of action that will typically result in the confirmation that waiting by the vehicle is the best option.
MORE SURVIVAL STORIES: Rescuers Relieved to Find Pilot, 2 Children Survived Crash Landing on Frozen Alaskan Lake
Additionally, Wilga’s story is a reminder of how easy it can be to get lost in remote country, even just a few hundred yards from a trail or a car. If wandering off the trail is necessary for any reason, take measures to ensure you know which way you came from, such as making signs on the ground, or bending down branches to mark your way.
Lastly, follow Wilga’s lead and never give up hope, as there will almost always be someone looking for you.
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A collaboration between humanity’s three gravitational wave detectors have identified a black hole merger event that created something 225-times the size of our Sun.
It’s the largest such event ever detected in the history of gravitational wave astronomy, and pushed the limits of the discipline and what it can teach us to the highest degrees.
In 2015, history was made when the LIGO observatories in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, detected a ripple in the fabric of space time cause by a black hole approximately 65-times the mass of the Sun.
Since then, LIGO has teamed up with the gravitational wave detectors Virgo in Pisa, Italy, and KAGRA, in Japan. Together they form the LVK collaboration, and have greatly expanded the capabilities of detecting these phenomena.
Using practically the entire Northern Hemisphere as a capture area, LVK during its most recent observations detected over 200 individual gravitational waves, but one labeled GW231123, named for its detection date on November 2023, blew all the rest away.
At between 2 and 13 billion light years from Earth, it was a literal universe shaking event. GW231123 marked the collision and merger of two rapidly spinning black holes, one measuring 103 solar masses, and the other 137 solar masses. Each was spinning 400,000 times the rotational speed of the Earth.
The high mass and extremely rapid spinning of the black holes push the limits of both gravitational-wave detection technology and current theoretical models.
“The black holes appear to be spinning very rapidly—near the limit allowed by Einstein’s theory of general relativity,” explains Charlie Hoy of the University of Portsmouth and a member of the LVK. “That makes the signal difficult to model and interpret. It’s an excellent case study for pushing forward the development of our theoretical tools.”
OTHER DEEP SPACE BANGS: Researchers Discover a New Type of Fast and Furious Cosmic Explosion–Name it After Liverpool Soccer Team
Scientists speaking with the media said it will take years before the event is fully understood, but the working hypothesis is that the two black holes in this merger may have come to exist through their own mergers of smaller black holes in the more distant past.
“This is the most massive black hole binary we’ve observed through gravitational waves, and it presents a real challenge to our understanding of black hole formation,” says Mark Hannam of Cardiff University and a member of the LVK Collaboration. “Black holes this massive are forbidden through standard stellar evolution models. One possibility is that the two black holes in this binary formed through earlier mergers of smaller black holes.”
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: NASA Visualizes What it Would Be Like to Plunge into a Black Hole – WATCH
Collaboration researchers are continuing to refine their analysis and improve the models used to interpret such extreme events.
“It will take years for the community to fully unravel this intricate signal pattern and all its implications,” says Gregorio Carullo of the University of Birmingham and a member of the LVK. “Despite the most likely explanation remaining a black hole merger, more complex scenarios could be the key to deciphering its unexpected features. Exciting times ahead!”
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In the Maldives, a mobile coral spawning system has been trialed with scintillating success, as 10,000 juvenile corals were grown by local operators.
It represents not only a major hope that island nations can abate the loss of coral reefs, but also that the spawning system’s $1.5 million grant investment was well-spent, and that an expansion in production of the technology could well be warranted.
Co-developed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and Maldives Marine Research Institute (MMRI), ReefSeed is a shipping container-sized, portable, seaside spawning laboratory for coral.
Designed to allow local marine scientists anywhere in the world to spawn and grow coral for reef restoration in weeks rather than months, and to operate without external power sources or the need for divers, ReefSeed received $1.5 million from the G20 Coral research and Development Accelerator Program.
It passed its recent acid test with flying colors, as the MMRI were able to use a single containerized ReefSeed unit to spawn 3 million larvae during a single spawning season, which they turned into 10,000 juvenile corals.
These corals were then deployed via 720 seeding devices across 9 different reefs. It was done without any of the AIMS experts present, proving its utility doesn’t require expertise in the system.
The spawning took place on Maniyafushi island in the South Malé Atoll of the Maldives, and AIMS coral reproduction scientist and ReefSeed co-lead, Dr. Muhammad Azmi Abdul Wahab, said the plan was to offer ReefSeed to as many other island communities as possible.
“We have learned much from working with colleagues at MMRI, which will help us make improvements in the training and refinements in the way the system itself can work,” Dr. Wahab told Oceanographic.
MORE REEF SPAWNING RESEARCH:
“Coral reefs in the Maldives sustain communities and livelihoods but, like coral reefs globally, they have been impacted by bleaching driven by climate change. Innovations like ReefSeed can play a role in supporting restoration efforts providing hope for these communities.”
MMRI scientists were invited to the Great Barrier Reef to witness, alongside their AIMS colleagues, the autumn spawning season on the world’s largest reef, something which GNN has reported before has to be seen to be believed—like the shaking of a giant snowglobe.
It was there they learned the fundamentals of coral spawning that they would take back to Maniyafushi island and their ReefSeed station.
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Quote of the Day: “Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens.” – Douglas William Jerrold
Photo by: Sergei Solo
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1403 years ago today, the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, journeyed with his followers from Mecca to Medina. As an event it’s known as the Hijrah, and the start of the Islamic calendar. The whole departure spanned about three months, during which Muhammad remained behind to convince those who were reluctant. The second Rashidun Caliph, Umar ibn Al-Khattab, designated the Muslim year during which the Hegira occurred the first year of the Islamic calendar in 638 or the 17th year of the Hegira. This was later Latinized to Anno Hegirae, the abbreviation of which is still used to denote Hijri dates today. READ more on this day… (622)
