NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has now collected two rock samples with signs that they were in contact with water for a long period of time, boosting the case for ancient life on the Red Planet. “It looks like our first rocks reveal a potentially habitable sustained environment,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for the mission, in a statement on Friday. “It’s a big deal that the water was there for a long time.” The six-wheeled robot collected its first sample, dubbed “Montdenier” on September 6, and its second, “Montagnac” from the same rock on September 8. Both samples, slightly wider than a pencil in diameter and about six centimetres long, are now stored in sealed tubes in the rover’s interior…

Across the vast desert plains of Western Australia, on the lands of the Wajarri Yamatji people, lies one of the most capable radio telescope arrays in the world. Containing 36 dish antennas, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, ASKAP, is an eye to the universe. The three dozen antennas watch for radio waves that crash over the Earth. Over the last two years the antennas have, on occasion, been pointed toward the heart of the Milky Way, our home galaxy. And, on occasion, they’ve detected a highly unusual radio signal — one that does not seem to fit with any object we currently know is lurking in the cosmos. The detection of the signal appears in the Astrophysical Journal on Oct. 12. It was first published as a preprint on arXiv in September. The name of the strange signal is a mouthful: ASKAP J173608.2-321635. We’re going to call it the Ghost. Between April 2019 and August 2020, the Ghost was spotted 13 times but without any consistent timing. It exhibits a range of characteristics that make it highly unusual and unlike other radio sources from the depths of the Milky Way…

A six-year search of space beyond the orbit of Neptune has netted 461 newly discovered objects.  These objects include four that are more than 230 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (An astronomical unit is the distance from the Earth to the sun, about 93 million miles or 149.6 million kilometers). These extraordinarily distant objects might shed light on Planet Nine, a theoretical, never-observed body that might be hiding in deep space, its gravity affecting the orbits of some of the rocky objects at the solar system’s edge…

Pope Francis met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday. At the meeting, the Pope emphasized the importance of the “Two-State Solution” which would create an unprecedented Arab state inside of Israel’s borders, ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its capital in the section of Jerusalem containing Judaism’s holiest site. The Vatican released a statement saying that “during the cordial talks in the Secretariat of State,” the two sides acknowledged “the good relations between the Holy See and the State of Palestine” and discussed “bilateral issues of mutual interest..” The talk “stressed that it is absolutely necessary to reactivate direct dialogue in order to achieve a two-state solution, also with the help of more vigorous effort on the part of the international community…

Rohr’s website admits, “the Enneagram as we know it today” traces back to the 1960s, when Óscar Ichazo was the first to assign the elements of the enneagram to personality types. But Ichazo, notes a draft report from the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices in the National Catholic Reporter, “claimed to have discovered the personality type meaning of the enneagram while in some kind of ecstatic state or trance under the influence of some spirit or angelic being.” Ichazo, his student Claudio Naranjo, and other followers developed the enneagram and eventually brought it from Ichazo’s school in South America into wider prominence, where it caught on among types like Richard Rohr. Other names that are often cited in reference to the enneagram’s history include the early 20th century mystics Pyotr Ouspensky and George Gurdjieff, although neither connected it to personality. “The earliest mention of the Enneagram is found in the writings of the Russian occultist P. D. Ouspensky, who attributes it to his teacher, the Greek American occultist [George] Gurdjieff,” writes The Gospel Coalition’s Joe Carter… In addition to its suspect pedigree, the modern enneagram still isn’t divorced from its New Age-y roots.

One of the more enigmatic entities of ancient history, Urartu rose to power in the 9th century BC, spreading its influence around illustrious Van Lake in present-day Turkey. From the start, Urartu was a powerful rival of its neighbor, the Assyrian Empire. Assyrian inscriptions tell us a lot about the ancient Urartu people and culture. The kingdom waned in power during the 6th century BC, before being overcome by the expanding Iranian tribe of Medes. Today, the realm of Urartu is connected with the identity of the people of Armenia and plays a major role in that nation’s nationalism. In modern historiography however, Urartu continues to be a subject of much research. One topic that still needs a lot of study is the pantheon of this ancient kingdom. Who were the enigmatic Urartian gods?