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87 investigations

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Showing 87 of 87 investigations

SCR-019 · Anomalies & Belief

The Nimitz Encounter

The public record confirms a genuine Navy recording and sworn testimony, but lacks the raw radar and metadata needed to verify the strongest performance claims independently.

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SCR-022 · Human Origins

When Did Humans First Reach the Americas?

A human presence by about 14,500 years ago remains strongly supported, while Monte Verde’s chronology is now directly contested. White Sands still provides several dating lines consistent with people during the Last Glacial Maximum.

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SCR-024 · Wildlife & Natural World

Are Insects Really Disappearing?

It is wrong to say every insect is disappearing everywhere. It is equally wrong to dismiss the crisis because some populations rise. Multiple independent datasets show major losses, while the scale and drivers remain poorly measured across much of the planet.

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SCR-026 · Space & Cosmos

Could Enceladus Support Life?

Enceladus has moved beyond “might contain water.” It is a chemically active ocean world with accessible samples. The next scientific question is no longer whether the environment is interesting, but whether its plume contains robust evidence of biology.

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SCR-028 · Future Earth & Technology

Could Solar Geoengineering Cool Earth Safely?

Solar geoengineering may one day reduce some climate harms, especially during an emergency, but it cannot make continued emissions safe. Its physical effects, distributional consequences and governance risks mean it should be treated as a possible supplement—not a substitute for mitigation and carbon removal.

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SCR-038 · Wildlife & Natural World

Do Plants Think?

Plants sense their environment, communicate chemically and change behaviour. Whether that deserves the word “intelligence” depends on what the word is doing.

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SCR-052 · Earth in Transition

What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?

The Chicxulub asteroid impact is the best-supported primary cause of the non-avian dinosaur extinction. Volcanism was an important environmental stressor, but the impact provides the clearest abrupt global kill mechanism.

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SCR-053 · Earth in Transition

Could Yellowstone End Civilisation?

Yellowstone could cause a global-scale disaster in an extreme future eruption, but it is not ‘overdue’, there is no evidence a supereruption is imminent, and such an event would not automatically mean human extinction.

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SCR-054 · Oceans & Submerged Worlds

How Big Can a Tsunami Get?

Tsunamis can reach tens of metres at exposed coasts, while rare landslide-driven local events can run hundreds of metres up nearby terrain. A 500-metre local run-up is not the same as a 500-metre ocean-crossing wave.

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SCR-056 · Wildlife & Natural World

Are We Living Through a Sixth Mass Extinction?

Yes in the sense that human-driven extinction rates and population losses are exceptionally elevated and consistent with an incipient mass-extinction process. No in the sense that the full losses of a completed Big Five event have not yet occurred.

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SCR-057 · Future Earth & Technology

Could We Ever Clone a Dinosaur?

With known biology and preservation chemistry, no. We do not have recoverable non-avian dinosaur genomes, and cloning cannot reconstruct a genome that has been chemically destroyed.

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SCR-061 · Mind & Consciousness

What Are Dreams For?

We do not yet know one definitive function of dreams. Sleep has established roles in memory and brain restoration, and dreams are plausibly entangled with those processes, but the dream narrative itself has no single proven purpose.

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SCR-062 · Mind & Consciousness

Can Memories Be Rewritten?

Yes, memories can be updated after they are reactivated, and recall itself can alter later remembering. No, current science cannot edit or erase complex personal memories with the precision of a computer file.

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SCR-063 · Mind & Consciousness

What Does Anaesthesia Reveal About Consciousness?

Anaesthesia shows that consciousness depends on coordinated, dynamic brain activity rather than simple wakefulness alone. It reveals several important network mechanisms, but no single brain region or signal has emerged as a universal consciousness switch.

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SCR-064 · Mind & Consciousness

Has Neuroscience Disproved Free Will?

No. Neuroscience has shown that decisions have unconscious precursors and that conscious intention is not the whole causal story, but it has not experimentally disproved every coherent concept of free will.

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SCR-066 · Archaeological Discovery

Can Ancient DNA Rewrite Archaeology?

Yes, ancient DNA can rewrite population-history models when it provides direct genetic evidence that contradicts older assumptions. It does not replace archaeology; the strongest reconstructions combine genomes with context, chronology and material evidence.

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SCR-071 · Human Origins

Who Were the Denisovans?

Denisovans were a widespread archaic human lineage closely related to Neanderthals, capable of living in very different Asian environments and interbreeding with ancestors of living humans.

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SCR-072 · Human Origins

When Did Human Language Begin?

We cannot date the beginning of language precisely. Its neural and communicative precursors are ancient, and complex human language most plausibly emerged gradually rather than in one identifiable prehistoric moment.

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SCR-073 · Earth in Transition

Do Stars Control Earth’s Clouds?

Cosmic rays can affect aerosol nucleation and may assist particle survival towards cloud-condensation-nucleus sizes. That mechanism is experimentally real. What has not been demonstrated is that ordinary solar-driven cosmic-ray changes produce a large global cloud response or dominate recent climate change.

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SCR-074 · Space & Cosmos

Does the Milky Way Decide Which Worlds Can Support Life?

Yes. The Milky Way can influence whether a world remains habitable through stellar radiation, supernova exposure, close stellar encounters and the chemical history that formed the system. But current evidence suggests the planet’s own atmosphere and its host star are more immediate constraints than a simple ‘safe region of the Galaxy’ label. We already know dozens of rocky habitable-zone worlds worth testing; none is yet known to host life.

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SCR-075 · Ancient Worlds

How Old Is the Great Sphinx — and Can Geology Really Date It?

The Great Sphinx is best placed within the Fourth-Dynasty Giza building programme, with Khafre still the most probable patron, but its exact builder and start date are not fixed by a contemporary inscription. Geology can constrain sequence and erosion history; it does not currently provide an uncontested absolute carving date. Colin Reader's current work makes a pre-Khufu or Early Dynastic phase a serious alternative worth testing. No reviewed evidence demonstrates a 7000 BCE, Younger Dryas-age or other deep-prehistoric Sphinx.

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SCR-076 · Human Origins

When Did Humans First Control Fire — and When Could They Make It?

Hominins were probably transporting and managing naturally acquired fire at Wonderwerk Cave between about 1.79 and 1.07 million years ago, with especially strong in-situ evidence by roughly one million years ago. Repeated control is well supported at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov by about 790,000 years ago. The earliest current evidence specifically for making fire is Barnham at about 400,000 years ago. No single date captures the whole transition.

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SCR-077 · Space & Cosmos

Can Exodus Propulsion Really Create Thrust Without Propellant?

Exodus may be measuring a repeatable force, but the public evidence does not yet establish propellantless thrust. The decisive gap is independent, self-contained replication with a complete uncertainty budget. Conventional measurement artefacts or momentum exchange with the test environment remain more plausible than a new fundamental force. If the effect were confirmed, even modest continuous thrust without propellant could transform satellite lifetime and deep-space delta-v; current results do not establish a flight-ready drive, Earth lift-off or rapid interplanetary travel.

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SCR-078 · Oceans & Submerged Worlds

How Much Do We Really Know About Rare Deep-Water Sharks?

Rare deep-water sharks show that scientific visibility and biological abundance are not the same thing. The 2026 goblin-shark observations, the one-specimen American pocket shark description, the five-specimen southern African frilled-shark description and individually catalogued megamouth encounters all expose how thin deep-ocean sampling can be. The evidence supports more systematic cameras, genetics and repeated survey effort—not claims that any specific prehistoric giant has survived unseen.

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SCR-079 · Archaeological Discovery

What Does Ancient Cacao DNA at Etowah Actually Prove?

A peer-reviewed 2026 archaeogenomic study reports highly fragmented ancient Theobroma cacao DNA in two residue samples associated with 11th–12th century Etowah pottery and feasting contexts. Together with earlier residue chemistry, the result strongly supports cacao presence and consumption at Etowah. It does not identify the cacao's source or prove direct Maya, Mexican or Southwestern contact.

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SCR-080 · Earth in Transition

What Triggered Nepal’s Catastrophic 2026 Flash Flood?

Current USGS, ICIMOD and satellite-based assessments support a major ice-rock/glacial collapse near Langtang Lirung as the trigger for the 26 August 2026 Nepal–Tibet border debris flow and flash flood. USGS says the collapse itself generated seismic energy equivalent to about a magnitude-5.2 earthquake and the flow travelled roughly 100 kilometres. The exact failure mechanism and the role of climate change in this specific event remain under investigation.

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SCR-081 · Ancient Worlds

What Did the Great Pyramid Vibration Study Actually Measure?

The 2026 survey found a repeatable dominant HVSR pattern across much of Khufu’s pyramid, centred near 2.3 Hz, distinct from nearby ground at about 0.6 Hz. It also measured a lower relative ratio in the upper relieving chambers than the maximum observed around King’s Chamber level. These results are compatible with structural features that reduce some resonance and amplification risks. They do not show the response to a specific earthquake, prove that the whole monument is earthquake-proof, or establish that Old Kingdom builders intentionally optimised it for seismic performance.

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SCR-082 · Ancient Worlds

What Does Karahantepe’s Human-on-Leopard Sculpture Actually Tell Us?

Karahantepe’s newly announced human-on-leopard sculpture is a real, unusually well-contextualised Neolithic find: approximately 11,000 years old, about 70 centimetres high, and reported in situ on a bench inside a roughly three-metre circular structure with a flat-stone floor. That context can support serious archaeological testing. It does not yet establish whether the image represented power, masculinity, a ruler, deity, shaman, ritual authority, domination over nature or a named myth.

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SCR-083 · Space & Cosmos

Did JWST Discover a ‘Black Hole Star’? What the Evidence Actually Shows

JWST has measured a remarkable cosmic-dawn source whose spectrum is well modelled as an accreting supermassive black hole buried in extremely dense, turbulent, dust-free gas. The Nature paper supports an enshrouded-black-hole interpretation and links it to rapid early black-hole growth. It does not by itself confirm a new universal class called ‘black hole stars’, prove that all little red dots share one physical nature, or close the alternative-observation tests still being pursued.

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SCR-084 · Space & Cosmos

Saturn Has a New 10-Sided Atmospheric Wave — What Hubble Actually Found

Hubble has observed a real 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn’s south pole. The decagon is embedded in a jet stream, appears across multiple atmospheric layers and became increasingly distinct after subtle signs in 2023. It is not a solid geometric feature of Saturn. Its exact dynamics and long-term stability remain open questions for continued monitoring.

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SCR-085 · Human Origins

New Archaeology Strengthens Roti Island’s 30,000-Year Human Record

The new study strengthens evidence that people were using Lua Meko on Roti Island around 30,000 years ago. A marine-shell sample dates to 30,257–29,657 cal BP, while cultural material extends deeper in the deposit. Those deeper deposits may preserve an older record, but they have not yet been directly dated into Marine Isotope Stage 3. The paper also notes that local marine ΔR correction data are unavailable for Wallacea, adding uncertainty to the exact calendar placement of shell dates.

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SCR-086 · Human Origins

Did Childhood Come Before the Big Human Brain?

A new 2026 review argues that prolonged childhood may have begun before major human brain expansion. Fossil evidence from Australopithecus, Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis is consistent with slower or highly dependent early development in relatively small-brained hominins, while Amud 7 suggests faster early Neanderthal growth despite a large brain. The review proposes that cooperative childcare may have helped make prolonged development viable before later encephalization, but the causal sequence remains a hypothesis rather than a settled result.

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SCR-087 · Archaeological Discovery

Were Northern Europe’s Earliest Cattle Already Moving Through Exchange Networks?

A new 2026 isotope study shows that several livestock animals at Early Neolithic Swifterbant in the Netherlands were non-local and that some moved between different environments during life. The pattern is especially associated with a forest-grazing dietary group, while floodplain-grazing animals were mostly local. This provides the first evidence of livestock mobility in northern Europe during the fifth millennium BCE and supports wider interaction networks—but it does not by itself prove large-scale human migration or identify the exact route by which each animal moved.

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