Trees talk to each other deep underground. It’s an idea still relatively new to science but familiar to ancient beliefs.
Today, scientists are confirming that forests act like one big superorganism. Below the ground, fungal highways connect the trees. Through this highway, the oldest trees nurture their young. What’s more, the trees communicate and cooperate with other species. Thus, they may help each other, contrasting with the idea of selfish competition.
Trees Talk on the ‘The Wood-Wide Web’
Yes, trees talk to each other, but how?
After millions of years of evolution starting 600 million years ago, fungi and plants formed symbiotic relationships called a mycorrhiza. Notably, the word comes from the Greek for fungus and root.
Here’s how it works: In exchange for sugars and carbon from the trees, the fungi provide what trees require: minerals, nutrients, and a communication network.
Similar to an internet connection, the mycorrhizal network extends throughout the forest. Fungal threads called hyphae create a highway and merge with tree roots. Then, trees can send and receive items like these:
nitrogen
sugars
carbon
phosphorous
water
defense signals
chemicals
hormones
Amazingly, one tree can connect to hundreds of other trees, sending out signals. Along the threads, bacteria and other microbes swap nutrients with the fungi and the tree roots.
A Global Map of the Tree Network
In 2019, scientists began mapping this “wood wide web” on a global scale. Since then, the international study produced the first global map of the mycorrhizal fungi network. Importantly, it could be the most important and ancient social network on Earth.
See how trees secretly talk via It’s Okay To Be Smart
‘Mother Trees’ Protect the Forests
For three decades, ecologist Suzanne Simard from the University of British Columbia has studied how trees talk. After extensive experimentation, she has learned how the network she calls “the otherworld” connects life in forests.
“Yes, trees are the foundation of forests, but a forest is much more than what you see,” says Simard.
“You see, underground there is this otherworld, a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate, and allow the forest to behave as if it is a single organism. It might remind you of a sort of intelligence.”
Reaching out along the network, hub trees, she calls Mother Trees can nurture growing saplings. When older trees die, they may bequeath their nutrients, genes, even a kind of wisdom to others. Thus, by tapping into the otherworld, trees gain valuable resources and insight into their surroundings.
Community Resilience
As a consequence, connected trees have a distinct advantage and resilience. However, if you cut a tree off from the network it becomes vulnerable. Often, they succumb to disease at much higher rates.
Unfortunately, practices like clear-cutting or replacing forests with a single species decimates this intricate ecosystem. Sadly, trees that don’t tap into the community network are vulnerable to disease and bugs. As a result, harvesting becomes unsustainable.
In a TED presentation, Simard notes:
“…Trees talk. Through back and forth conversations, [trees] increase the resilience of the whole community. It probably reminds you of our own social communities, and our families, well, at least some families,” said Simard.
See Simard discuss her research via TED
Ancient Beliefs and Trees
Today, scientists can confirm that trees communicate in a social manner. However, the idea isn’t new. For example, for centuries, indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast, called the Tsimshian, have known that life in the forests is interconnected.
Suzanne Simard’s graduate student, Sm’hayetsk Teresa Ryan, is of Tsimshian heritage. In a recent New York Times piece, Ryan explained how Simard’s studies of mycorrhizal networks are similar to aboriginal traditions. However, European settlers were quick to dismiss these ideas.
“Everything is connected, absolutely everything,” said Ryan. “There are many aboriginal groups that will tell you stories about how all the species in the forests are connected, and many will talk about below-ground networks.”
The Menominee Forest
Ryan explained how the native American Menominee tribe sustainably harvest the 230,000-acre Menominee Forest in Wisconsin. Rather than focusing on money, they focus on ecology and are richly rewarded for it.
“Sustainability, the Menominee believe, means “thinking in terms of whole systems, with all their interconnections, consequences and feedback loops.” They maintain a large, old, and diverse growing stock, prioritizing the removal of low-quality and ailing trees over more vigorous ones and allowing trees to age 200 years or more — so they become what Simard might call grandmothers.”
By allowing old growth to continue, the forest continues to remain profitable, healthy, and densely forested today.
“Since 1854, more than 2.3 billion board feet have been harvested — nearly twice the volume of the entire forest — yet there is now more standing timber than when logging began. “To many, our forest may seem pristine and untouched,” the Menominee wrote in one report. “In reality, it is one of the most intensively managed tracts of forest in the Lake States.”
What if all forests were managed using the wisdom of Native tribes? Imagine the potential if forests were always sustainable rather than exploited for short-term gains?
As we learn more about the intricate network of forests, it becomes clear there is a desperate need to change how we treat them.
“The razing of an old-growth forest is not just the destruction of magnificent individual trees — it’s the collapse of an ancient republic whose interspecies covenant of reciprocation and compromise is essential for the survival of Earth as we’ve known it,” write Ferris Jabr.
Today, Sir David Attenborough and thousands of scientists believe urgent action is needed to combat the climate crisis. Forests are a fundamental component of the recovery. Thus, rewilding the world, restoring and wisely managing forests as stewards is a top priority.
“We’ve taken trees for grants and cleared nearly half of our planets’ forests,” said Attenborough. “Luckily, forests have an extraordinary ability to recover,” he explained.
After centuries of decimating trees, it’s critical to preserve ancient forests. Attenborough calls for better farming techniques and planting more forests as part of an essential global restoration. In return, people would have more natural forests than ever, stabilize the climate, and get all the resources we need.
Ancient beliefs from all over the world have held trees as symbols of connection and worship: The Tree of Life.
“Trees have always been symbols of connection. In Mesoamerican mythology, an immense tree grows at the center of the universe, stretching its roots into the underworld and cradling Earth and heaven in its trunk and branches. Norse cosmology features a similar tree called Yggdrasil. A popular Japanese Noh drama tells of wedded pines that are eternally bonded despite being separated by a great distance,” wrote Ferris Jabr for the Times.
In ancient Mesoamerica, the ceiba tree was the Tree of Life where the world came into existence. Its roots went deep into the underworld while its branches supported the heavens. In the Bible, the Garden of Eden was home to the Tree of Life.
Egyptian myths also refer to the Ished-Tree, where the gods were born. In ancient Assyria, artists often carved a tree that some say looks like DNA central to sculptural reliefs. Throughout world religions, a mystical tree appears in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism.
Trees have been important to cultures around the world since the beginning. Today, it’s never been more important to protect trees and our interconnected natural world.
This is an extraordinary time for anyone interested in Egyptian tombs.
A new fascinating film, Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb, has premiered on Netflix. Plus, we just learned that over 100 new ancient coffins and rare 40 wooden and gilded statues have been discovered in Saqqara, meaning another film is probably in order!
Saqqara is home to the first-known burial pyramid, the Step Pyramid of King Djoser, as well as over a dozen others. Today, the vast pharaonic necropolis 20 miles south of Cairo reveals ever more finds with more predicted soon.
At the feet of the Step Pyramid of Djoser, a makeshift exhibit took place on November 14, 2020. The exhibit showed off the colorful, exquisitely detailed finds from Saqqara, part of the ancient capital of Memphis.
Although thousands of years old, the relics remain delicately painted and decorated. Notably, some look incredibly ornate. It’s as though they were created a short time ago.
Tourism and Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Anany spoke to a news conference:
“Saqqara has yet to reveal all of its contents. It is a treasure,” El-Anany said. “Excavations are still underway. Whenever we empty a burial shaft of sarcophagi, we find an entrance to another.”
The perfectly preserved wooded coffins are sealed, and many have mummies inside, now seeing daylight for the first time in at least 2,500 years. Notably, they came from the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt for some 300 years from 320 BC to about 30 BC, and the Late Period (664-332 BC).
See some of the finds from Al Jazeera English below:
The Grand Egyptian Museum
Today, some of the coffins are on their way to a new museum near the Giza Pyramids. Hopefully, the new Grand Egyptian Museum may display some of the coffins in public if it opens next year.
Earlier in September, some 140 sealed sarcophagi containing mummies were found in the same area of Saqqara. Among them was a cache of mummified animals, including a lion cub. The Netflix movie focuses on this find, a previously unknown royal priest called “Wahtye”, and his family.
Mostafa Waziri from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities says he expects to locate an ancient workshop where the coffins were created –perhaps in 2021.
Despite the pandemic, Egypt reopened its borders to visitors in July. After revealing these discoveries, they hope to see a surge in tourism, which has waned due to Covid-19.
Video shows Louisville officers searching around a home for the missing child; as a dog barked nearby, officers decided to follow the dog, finding the boy in a vehicle
The Carolinas are a hotbed of documented UFO sightings. In fact, the Queen City of Charlotte has been rated among the top 10 large North American cities for UFO sightings. So far, there have been 153 sightings of mysterious lights, discs, and orbs in the sky since 1910.
Last year, we shared the story of a man from Liberty, North Carolina, who caught a UFO on a Facebook Live video. Now, there has been another similar UFO sighting reported in the Charlotte Observer.
This time, an 88-year-old Korean War combat veteran and 45-year pilot came forward with his UFO account. Charles Cobb of Morganton once served on a Navy destroyer during the Korean War. Thus, he’s certainly familiar with aircraft, but at 11:18 a.m. on June 12, 2020, he saw something unlike he’d ever seen before.
“None of my flying friends have any idea as to what it was,” he said.
Zooming Orange Orb UFO with Kite-like Tail
Cobb makes daily visits to Silver Creek Airport in Morganton, where he keeps a 1940 Piper Cub. On Friday, the 12th, he was sitting at the airport and spotted a strange object in the sky.
An orange-tinged orb was moving in the sky. As it shot up and down, it moved in the direction of Table Rock, a popular tourist spot with a panoramic view. For 15 to 20 minutes, he observed it flying.
After all his years around aircraft, he hadn’t seen one that could “zoom up almost out of sight” as it was doing.
Definitely Not a Comet
The longtime pilot described a round, irregular orb shooting thousands of feet into the air. Then, it would plummet back down and soar back up again. Cobb estimated it was some 30,000 to 40,000 feet high with an exhaust plume trailing behind it. At times, it would vanish and then fly paralell to the ground.
As a pilot, he knew how to identify aerial phenomena such as comets, and this was no comet.
“Comets come toward you,” he said. However, this object “always pointed north.”
At first, he thought it appeared to be “a huge kite with a tail.” In the middle of the orb, it appeared to be “opaque.” After watching a while, he took out his iPad and snapped photos of the object, which he later shared with the Observer.
The Observer confirmed with the nearby Astronomy Club that the object was almost certainly not a comet. Bernard Arghiere, the board director of the Asheville group confirmed:
“There is no reported astronomical object, certainly not a comet, in the sky that would appear that bright on that June 12, 2020, date,” Arghiere said in an email. “There were no comets then that would be that bright, so they would be visible in the daytime sky.
“It really looks to me more like sunlight reflected off a distant jet and its related condensation trail; typically, that would disappear from sight in less than 20 minutes.”
“Good luck getting a definitive answer on this one,” he added.
Veteran Pilot Says It Wasn’t a Plane or Reflection
Notably, Cobb pointed out that he viewed the orb for an extended period and was convinced it was not a plane reflection.
“No reflection off a jet,” he said. “This object, while zooming to incredible heights, and coming back down, was always heading in a northerly direction as the photos show, yet it remained in the general area that I was viewing.
“A plane of any sort passing through my viewing area would have been out of sight in a matter of a few minutes,” he said.
More Sighting Nearby
Going by reports to the National UFO Reporting Center, we can see that similar reports took place around the time of Cobb’s sighting, the morning of June 12.
About ten hours after Cobb saw the orb, Huntersville’s witness reported seeing “bright light flares” turning 90 degrees in the sky.
Then, in nearby Salisbury the following morning, someone reported a “spear or teardrop structure streaming across the sky with a vapor trail and cast off glare from the rising sun.”
In Arden, NC, someone reported a “Glowing orange inverted teardrop silently flying low overhead,” on June 29. Alos, orange orbs were reported in Ocean Isle Beach on the same day and previously on the 25th over North Myrtle Beach.
Indeed, the reports about orange flying orbs are very common. Below, see a couple of the posts we’ve made about these UFOs.
The International Business Times shared the story about Cobb’s UFO sighting. Also, they noted that “UFO sightings in various parts of the globe have increased drastically.” The rise in reports follows the 2017 Pentagon admission that they have secretly been studying unidentified aerial phenomena for years.
Cobb decided to come forward with his account after seeing the video below about an airline pilot who reported a UFO. The object came dangerously close to the plane he was piloting as it traveled from Dallas-Fort Worth to Charlotte in 2003.
If extraterrestrials visited Earth in the distant past, what kind of evidence might they leave behind? For Paul Davies, an Astrobiologist from Arizona State University, the traces of ancient alien (or their robot) visits might be found in one of three places:
Now the third option isn’t literal but could be any number of things. For example, Davies suggests that the message “could be living cells.”
“One idea I had is that maybe the “bottle” [is] living cells -terrestrial organisms, and that message is encoded in DNA. Viruses are continually infecting organisms and uploading their DNA into the genomes of those organisms,” notes Davies.
Davies noted that viruses could encode DNA, so why not extraterrestrials? Indeed, it’s one of the hallmarks of today’s ancient astronaut theory.
“If viruses can do it, E.T. can do it. And it seems to me that we could; in addition to scouring the skies for radio waves with a message encoded; we could scour terrestrial genomes, which are being sequenced anyway, to see if there’s a message from E.T. encoded.”
See Davies discuss this in the video from Big Think below:
Intentionally Seeded Ancient Code
At the time, Davies knew that finding a message from extraterrestrials in our DNA was a stretch. However, not long after, two scientists from Kazakhstan reported they might have discovered just that: an “intelligent “signal within the human genetic code.”
The mathematician and astrobiologist titled their paper “The ‘Wow! signal’ of the terrestrial genetic code.” The Acknowledgments give the nod to Davie’s ideas. The “Wow” refers to the now-famous 1977 SETI signal that prompted a researcher to write, “Wow!” next to it.
The researchers didn’t use the phrase “intelligent design,” but suggested they found code that seemed to be “seeded intentionally.” That information, they argued, appeared to be non-biological and mathematical and symbolic.
They speculated the ancient code came from another solar system, possibly intentionally seeded by panspermia. Could it be the “message in a bottle” that Davies suggested before them?
“Whatever the actual reason behind the decimal system in the code, it appears that it was invented outside the solar system already several billions years [sic] ago,” they wrote.
You can see more about this study in the video clip from the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series below. Prepare to entertain the idea the humans are nothing more than artificially created “organic robots” with artificial intelligence. (A.I.)
DNA From Alien ‘Close Encounters’
The scientists from Kazakhstan don’t claim to know how an ancient code was seeded in our genes. Rather, they suggest the DNA code could have arrived on Earth through panspermia, space dust that drifted from outer space.
However, modern stories about extraterrestrials actively tinkering with humans’ DNA are commonly accepted by Ancient Astronaut theorists.
In at least one case, there was some evidence of interbreeding between an extraterrestrial and human. A man named Peter Khoury claimed that two humanoid females entered his room. One of the humanoids had long blond hair, large eyes, and a long chiseled face. The other appeared to be Asian in appearance.
Following a bizarre sexual encounter with the blond woman, he found and kept a piece of her hair she left behind.
Later the DNA from the optically clear hair was tested, revealing rare DNA markers. Instead of being typical of a light-skinned caucasian woman, they were characteristic of rare Chinese and old Gaelic lineage.
See Khoury discuss the story in the video from the History Channel below:
Rewriting the Code of Life
Are extraterrestrials actively designing humans’ DNA in some way even today? Well, now, humans are doing it themselves. The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their 2012 work in precisely editing DNA.
As they were introduced for the prize, the secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Goran K. Hansson, said:
“This year’s prize is about rewriting the code of life.”
The two women stumbled across the revolutionary technique called Crispr while studying the bacteria that causes scarlet fever. When inspecting the microbe’s DNA, they found repeating segments. These segments were made up of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats: Crispr for short.
The segments were derived from a virus that had attempted to infect the bacteria.
Thanks to their research, repeating code from a virus has revealed how to change our DNA effectively. As Paul Davies said, “If viruses can do it, E.T. can do it.” Now, we are doing it too, and rapidly transforming science, the world, and probably ourselves.
Is it possible this discovery was inevitable, something artificially ingrained in our being all along? Are we artificial
An enhanced version of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket will blast off Thursday to launch 32 satellites into orbit, forming part of the Amazon Leo network, which it hopes will rival Elon Musk’s Starlink.
This stunning image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveals a dramatic interplay of light and shadow in the Egg Nebula, sculpted by freshly ejected stardust. Located approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Egg Nebula features a central star obscured by a dense cloud of dust—like a “yolk” nestled within a dark, opaque “egg white.” Only Hubble’s sharpness can unveil the intricate details that hint at the processes shaping this enigmatic structure.
Scientists from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the CAS Aerospace Information Research Institute, and other institutions, have revised the decades-old lunar crater chronology model, using samples collected from the far side of the moon by China’s Chang’e-6 mission and complementary remote sensing imagery.
NASA is now aiming to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, in another delay over weather conditions, the U.S. agency announced Tuesday.
Researchers from Columbia University and Breakthrough Listen, a scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth, have published new results from the Breakthrough Listen Galactic Center Survey, one of the most sensitive radio searches ever conducted for pulsars in the dynamically complex central region of the Milky Way. The study, led by recent Columbia Ph.D. graduate Karen I. Perez, was published in The Astrophysical Journal.
A team of US researchers has unveiled a device that can conduct electricity along its fractionally charged edges without losing energy to heat. Described in Nature Physics, the work, led by Xiaodong Xu at the University of Washington, marks the first demonstration of a “dissipationless fractional Chern insulator,” a long-sought state of matter with promising implications for future quantum technologies.