Researchers at the University of Virginia report a small but statistically significant link between sudden death and a shorter wait for reincarnation, while stressing that the evidence falls short of proof.
Image: IFL Science
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. — A study from the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies reports an odd pattern in claimed memories of past lives: the more violent the supposed previous death, the sooner the next life is said to have begun. According to IFL Science, which reported on the work, the findings appear in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research and Practice.
Researchers in Scotland and England propose using circularly polarized light to spot organisms built from reversed molecules, none of which are known to have been made.
Image: The Debrief
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND — Scientists at the University of Strathclyde and Durham University have proposed what they believe is the first method for detecting "mirror life," a hypothetical form of biology that has not yet been created, according to a report in The Debrief.
The Daily Grail's roundup of October 21 ranges from Maltese stone tracks to a computer built from living human brain cells.
THE INTERNET — The Daily Grail, in its news briefs for October 21, 2026, offers readers a broad sweep of the curious, beginning with the vexed matter of Havana Syndrome. The site's authors say they have recorded a video chat for its Patreon page examining what they regard as the most likely explanations.
The Debrief's weekly roundup reports on lab-grown brain tissue, a 75,000-year-old skeleton from Iraqi Kurdistan, and white dwarfs in unexpected colors.
Image: The Debrief
THE INTERNET — The science site The Debrief has issued its weekly digest of curiosities, led by a report from the University of Bristol. According to the roundup, researchers there have shown that small organoids grown from living human brain cells can process information from Braille characters. The write-up notes the work stops short of demonstrating actual learning, though it is described as a step toward biological computing.
Avi Loeb's first paper for the advisory council reports that brightness flicker in a declassified infrared video matches bird wingbeat rates.
THE INTERNET — A digest entry on The Anomalist, dated October 19, 2026, reports what it calls perhaps controversial news. The head of the US Government's UAP Science Advisory Council, Avi Loeb, has summarized and expanded upon the council's first paper. The paper is titled "Six Objects Reported at 480 mph in a Declassified Military Infrared Video Show Brightness Flicker at Bird Wingbeat Rates."
Season 3 of The Telepathy Tapes opens with researcher Carol Bowman, who says a child's talk of a former life eased his terror.
THE INTERNET — The third season of the Telepathy Tapes podcast has taken up a new subject, The Reincarnation Records, according to a digest entry published by The Anomalist. The first episode features Carol Bowman, an author and past life researcher.
A post on r/HighStrangeness points to a study whose senior author reportedly says skeptics' explanations do not hold up against the data.
THE INTERNET — A Reddit user posting to r/HighStrangeness has drawn the attention of the board's readers to a report of university research on cases of possible reincarnation, under a headline announcing a "new correlation" in the material.
A NASA risk specialist says the 2027 Planetary Defense Conference exercise will center on a hypothetical Tunguska-sized object, and that uncertainties remain large.
MOFFETT FIELD, CALIF. — Experts in the business of imagining the sky falling are preparing a new drill. According to a report by The Debrief, an exercise now under way for the 2027 Planetary Defense Conference is built around a hypothetical impact threat from a roughly Tunguska-sized object.
Three lab-grown organoids, working in concert, identified Braille letters with 83 percent accuracy, according to a new paper.
BRISTOL, ENGLAND — Researchers at Bristol University report that tiny models of the human brain, grown from living cells, have been put to work decoding Braille, according to a report in The Debrief. The study appeared in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence on October 15, 2026.
A poster on r/Experiencers reports that sounds drawn from plants' electrical signals shifted with touch and sometimes seemed to follow no pattern at all.
THE INTERNET — A Reddit user posting to r/Experiencers has described a year spent listening to plants, and says the work has altered their view of what it means to communicate with other forms of life.
Astronomers report a white dwarf whose atmosphere absorbs orange light, leaving the object glowing an unusual green.
Image: Unexplained Mysteries
LOW EARTH ORBIT — Astronomers have announced what they describe as the first known green star, a body catalogued as WD J1330+6435 and situated some 326 light-years from Earth, according to a report by T.K. Randall of Unexplained Mysteries, which drew on coverage by Space.com.
A user on r/HighStrangeness wonders aloud about a recorded lunar ripple and whether the Moon itself might be fake.
THE INTERNET — A Reddit user posting to r/HighStrangeness has put a question to fellow readers that astronomers have not, so far as the record shows, been asked to answer: did anyone else record the lunar wave?
Astronomers report the first known white dwarf that would appear green to the human eye, along with pink, cyan, yellow and purple cousins.
WARWICK, ENGLAND — A white dwarf that would look green to a human observer has been identified for the first time, according to a paper in RAS Techniques and Instruments dated October 14, 2026. The report, as relayed by The Debrief, also describes stars in a wider palette of unexpected colors.
A digest item pairs a Madrid study of magic tricks with a Noetic Sciences experiment in which observers allegedly dimmed a flame by intention.
MADRID, SPAIN — A digest entry circulated by The Anomalist, drawing on a report in The Debrief, brings together two lines of research on how the mind meets the world. Neither is presented as settled, and the second is considerably bolder than the first.
Beatriz Villarroel and Stephen Bruehl argue that a link between nuclear testing and transient plate markings points to an intelligence watching Earth, according to a digest of recent coverage.
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — A digest published by The Anomalist, summarizing a report from Sentinel News, says the astronomer Beatriz Villarroel, the researcher Stephen Bruehl and their colleagues continue to issue academic papers that the digest calls "eye-popping." The latest concern transient markings found on astronomical plates made before the launch of Sputnik.
A Reddit user argues the 2011 Roundway Hill crop circle depicts melatonin and was meant to alert humanity to herbicide residues in wheat.
ROUNDWAY HILL, WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND — A Reddit user posting to r/HighStrangeness has advanced a theory that a celebrated crop formation, said to have appeared at Roundway Hill, Wiltshire, on July 23, 2011, was a deliberate message to mankind concerning the safety of its bread.
Researchers report an archaeon with only 189 protein-coding genes, a creature never seen under a microscope and named for a thumb-sized Japanese deity.
THE OPEN OCEAN — An international team of researchers has identified a microscopic organism whose genome is the smallest yet reported for any member of the archaea, according to a report in The Debrief. The findings were published in the journal Current Biology by a group that includes researchers from the University of Nottingham and the University of Tsukuba.
An international team reports that turbulent plasma sampled by the Parker Solar Probe changes its direction of magnetic rotation, and that the point of change drifts with distance from the Sun.
NEAR THE SUN — Researchers in ten countries have reported a previously unnoticed reversal in the way magnetic fields rotate within turbulent space plasma, according to a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, as relayed by The Debrief.
Rep. Eric Burlison suggests openness about unidentified phenomena could burnish America's reputation, while researchers trade notes on birds, sensors and Norwegian lights.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A New York Post report, flagged by The Anomalist, raises the prospect that the United States, China and Russia could be entering a new kind of contest, one conducted in the realm of unidentified aerial phenomena rather than warheads.
A university commuter says she was certain she sat behind the driver, but onboard footage reportedly shows otherwise.
THE INTERNET — A commuter who says she fell asleep on a long bus ride to university has reported waking in a seat far from where she remembers sitting, in a post to the r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix forum on Reddit.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope report the first direct confirmation of variable water clouds beyond our solar system, on the coldest known brown dwarf.
Image: MessageToEagle
TUCSON, ARIZ. — A team led by Brittany Miles, an assistant astronomer at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, has reported that water clouds on a distant object change in thickness over time, much as weather does on Earth, according to a report published by MessageToEagle.com.
An international team says a typographical error in an 1871 Nature article hid the true date of an early solar disruption of railway telegraphs.
Image: MessageToEagle
EXETER, ENGLAND — A train due to leave Exeter at 10:05 p.m. sat motionless for 16 minutes, and a new study says it did so seven years later than science has long supposed. According to the report, the delay was caused by a disturbance from the Sun that upset the railway's telegraph.
Investigative journalist George Knapp reports that the Defense Intelligence Agency has begun gathering older files to fill gaps left by the recent releases.
Image: Unexplained Mysteries
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The long-awaited UFO documents promised by President Trump have been released, but according to a report on Unexplained Mysteries, many of the files arrive without context, and the video clips are said to lack much of their relevant metadata.
A user on r/UFOs asks fellow enthusiasts whether a viral podcast interview strengthens the case of the so-called 4chan whistleblower.
THE INTERNET — A Reddit user posting to r/UFOs has put a question to the forum's readers: does the latest interview given by David Grusch on the Joe Rogan Experience make the so-called 4chan whistleblower more believable? The post, published on October 11, 2026, notes that the interview is currently going viral.
A project named GIMLI would combine radar, seismic and gravity instruments to learn whether the Marius Hills Pit leads to a lunar cave system.
Image: Unexplained Mysteries
MARIUS HILLS, THE MOON — A hole in the surface of the Moon, first found by Japan's Kaguya (SELENE) orbiter in 2009, is to receive renewed scientific attention, according to a report by T.K. Randall of Unexplained Mysteries, which cites Mail Online.
A post on r/UFOs gathers congressional remarks, a 1989 film, a Baltic anomaly and a Bahamian naval facility into one theory of the deep.
THE INTERNET — A Reddit user posting to r/UFOs has assembled a short list of reading and viewing for those who suspect that the ocean floor harbors more than fish. The post, titled "Looking at Grusch comments on Deep Sea Bases," offers topics rather than conclusions, and leaves the reader to draw the lines between them.
University of Vienna researchers report that a sudden folding upheaval in cephalopod DNA, hundreds of millions of years ago, may have laid groundwork for their elaborate nervous systems.
VIENNA, AUSTRIA — Scientists at the University of Vienna have put forward a new account of how the octopus came by its remarkable mind, pointing to an ancient rearrangement in the way its genetic material is folded inside the cell. The study, according to The Debrief, appeared in Nature Communications on October 9, 2026.
A laser-formed column of plasma, fed by a metal ring, has been made to transmit signals at around 30 megahertz, according to a new study.
RALEIGH, N.C. — Researchers at North Carolina State University have built what they describe as a glowing plasma "lightsaber" capable of transmitting radio signals, according to a report from The Debrief on a study in the IEEE Journal of Microwaves.
European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter samples a 'switchback' in the solar wind and traces it to the Sun's atmosphere, according to a new paper.
BETWEEN EARTH AND THE SUN — The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has flown through a sharp, S-shaped bend in the Sun's magnetic field known as a switchback, and the data it gathered may bear on the forecasting of dangerous space weather, according to a report in The Debrief.
A MARUM-led team says niobium in a fjord sediment core shows the North Atlantic Oscillation has steered southern Greenland's rain and snow for millennia.
Image: MessageToEagle
NARSAQ SOUND, GREENLAND — Scientists have found a record of ancient precipitation in the mud at the bottom of a Greenland fjord, according to a report published by MessageToEagle.com describing a new study led by the MARUM research centre at the University of Bremen.
A paper in Physical Review D suggests that primordial black holes formed with five-dimensional properties could help explain the universe's missing mass.
THE INTERNET — An international team of astronomers has put forward the suggestion that the unseen substance known as dark matter may be stranger than supposed, according to a report by The Debrief. The researchers, from Lehman College, the CUNY Graduate Center, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the Max Planck Institute, published their paper in Physical Review D.
A New Scientist report describes Montreal experiments, while a linked item asks whether advertisers will follow into the bedroom of the mind.
MONTREAL, CANADA — Researchers at the University of Montreal may have found a way to nudge sleepers into lucid dreams, according to a digest entry on The Anomalist that summarizes a report originally published by New Scientist.
Researchers say a yearly ice cloud over Arsia Mons can be modelled only if a process long deemed theoretical is allowed to occur.
ARSIA MONS, MARS — A cloud that appears each year above a Martian volcano has led scientists to propose a process never before identified in a planetary atmosphere, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience on October 7, 2026.
A team reports that the spin of trapped electrons produced enough force to move a centimeter-scale object suspended against gravity, though it stops short of true quantum superposition.
Image: The Debrief
OKINAWA, JAPAN — Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) report that they have used the quantum spin of electrons to move a diamond held in levitation, according to a study published in Science Advances and summarized by The Debrief.
A 28-year-old laboratory technician's death from pneumonia of unknown cause has drawn inquiries from Washington and the World Health Organization.
Image: The Debrief
IRKUTSK, RUSSIA — The death of a young laboratory technician at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute in Siberia has prompted health precautions in several countries, according to a newsletter published by The Debrief. Russian state media identified her as 28-year-old Darya Shipilova.
