The meteorite was found in 2022 out in the Sahara Desert in the country of Mali in western Africa. There in the northwest of the Sahara is the Taoudenni Salt Basin where the almost 2 lb. meteorite was discovered in the Teghaza salt plain. After years of careful study NASA determined that the chunk from the Red Planet was 4.1-billion years old. It now is part of a large collection of approximately 435 Mars’ rocks found on Earth and from NASA rovers that have all been confirmed to be from Mars due to the chemical and mineral comparative analysis. The age of Teghaza 001 led geochemists and astrogeologists to identify it as one of only three ancient Martian meteorites found on Earth. This makes Teghaza 001 an incredibly rare look of the planet’s crust and violent formation during the Noachin Period.
“”It was only after we started looking closely that we realized this meteorite is really unique,” said Yang Liu, the lead author of a paper detailing the age-dating process and related discoveries. Liu is part of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “One of the paper’s reviewers called it a Rosetta Stone for Mars.”
Previous ancient Martian meteorites provided narrower glimpses into the planet’s history. But Teghaza 001 shows how Mars’ crust formed from cooling magma and was then changed by water on the planet’s surface.” — Kerry Breen,CBSNews.com, Oct. 30, 2026
What the geochemists, astrogeologists, and other scientists learned with this Mars meteorite was how water and rocks interacted on ancient Mars during the Noachin Period and what separates this rock from the other two meteorites is its texture and age as well as the uniqueness of its igneous, or volcanic, minerals. “No one will ever know exactly where the meteorite originated on the surface of Mars,” writes Andrew Good of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, “but the paper identifies several potential locations that match Teghaza 001’s mineralogy and chemistry.“
Scientists identified 13 locations on Mars that match the mineralogy and chemistry of Teghaza 001, one of the most ancient Martian meteorites ever found on Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS
The scientists verified Teghaza 001 as Martian by matching its mineral and chemical components to data collected by NASA’s Mars missions, including the Viking landers as well as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. With those samples the oxygen isotopes served as geochemical fingerprints for different planetary bodies in our Solar System. In this case, the researchers matched the meteorite’s oxygen isotopes to those seen in other Martian meteorites. Teghaza 001 appeared to be a shergottite the most common class of meteorite from the Red Planet.
This slice of Teghaza 001, a Martian meteorite, was used to study its mineralogy and chemistry. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
What astounded researchers, Yang Liu and Caltech coauthor Francois Tissot was that the rock had been transformed by Martian water approximately 4.1-billion years ago implying that its origins were sooner than 4.1-billion years. It indicates that Teghaza 001 reflects a much more violent water cycle on the Red Planet. If anything, the Teghaza meteorite amply shows us how vitally critical Earth’s gravity, electromagnetic forces, adhesion/cohesion, our geomagnetic field, surface tension, our atmospheric cold-trap in the troposphere, our repeating eco-water cycle, and finally the Earth’s topography, all of it, keeps our living planet alive when compared to Mars’ earliest atmosphere that could not keep the Red Planet’s first oceans and seas (and life?) from radiation evaporation. We are an incredibly lucky species along with all other species on the planet. It MUST be wisely, scientifically cared for or else we face another (a sixth) extinction event that happens again, but caused by humans who are either wildly naïve and/or willfully indifferent to self-preservation.
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always
Have any of you ever been caught in a natural catastrophe? Have you ever experienced firsthand what it is like to endure a Category 5 or 6 hurricane? What about a tornado? Ever experienced in your life firsthand an EF5 twister? Have you been through a volcanic eruption? What about an out-of-control wild fire or a disastrous flash flood? Here’s one that is becoming more common, What about a total power outage for 3-10 days?
From February 10 to February 20, 2021, Texas suffered its most catastrophic major power-grid failure during an arctic blast from Winter Storm Uri. I went through Uri while living in Dallas, TX, at the time and it was bad, real bad. I had no way of saving all my electronic device batteries unless I went out to my car, started it, and hooked up the power adaptors to the devices. Doing this for a long, silent, semi-alone 10-days was quite difficult. It was the first time for me to go through a long blackout alone. Cell phone networks were still operating, thank goodness, but that lasted only as long as my batteries lasted and I’d go out to my car, fire it up, and recharge my phone. I needed to stay in touch with my Mom and sister 5.25 hours away down in Kerrville near San Antonio, TX. But I was also thinking when my cell battery was exhausted and I didn’t have a power source/outlet, then what? What if you use up all of your gasoline in the car during a much, much longer power outage and it will no longer start? Load up as much as possible with gas in small gas tanks then store them somewhere safe?
Eventually my brain methodically kept going, thinking through the possible (probable?) causes and effects of my situation, other’s situation, and then I thought of a more dark, sinister situation I learned during Hurricane Rita in 2005, an already Category 5 hurricane predicted to hit somewhere between Houston and Lake Charles, Louisiana. In 2005 metro Houston’s population was around 5.3-million people. Houston is the largest metropolitan area in Texas. Everyone in Houston, particularly in the south of Houston all the way to Galveston, Texas City, Dickinson, Kemah, Alvin, Pearland, Pasadena, Sugarland, and La Porte, all southern suburbs and towns near the Gulf of Mexico coast were urged by authorities to evacuate north or northwest as soon as possible. What did I learn and witness on the news? It was a seriously disturbing wakeup call to me.
The woman I was dating for over three years lived down in Friendswood, TX, another suburb of south Houston. She lived there with her two other younger brothers and their wives and children. The older brother and my girlfriend evacuated Friendswood two days early than the youngest brother, his wife, and three children who was trying to evacuate the day before of Rita’s expected landfall as she neared Houston, TX. Over the phone my girlfriend listened to her youngest brother and wife describe what they were seeing and experiencing live trying to get out of north Houston on two-lane Interstate Hwy. I-45N near Spring, TX, up to Conroe, TX, 40-miles north of downtown Houston.
Travel time/distance from Friendswood to Conroe, TX, thru downtown Houston, TX, in normal conditions and traffic – Google Maps
What they began seeing, moving sometimes only 10mph at the most or completely stopped, around them on I-45N was horrifying, bordering on total anarchy by hundreds of thousands of motorists. Cars, trucks, 18-wheelers (lorries in the UK) and motorcycles whizzing by up through the center of the highway in between vehicles or on the embankment passing all the other stopped vehicles with no regard for safety. Those with kids in the vehicles were beginning to urinate or defecate either in the median or off the embankment of I-45N. Adults would too. The brother and his wife also mentioned to my girlfriend how many people were absolutely disrespectful, angry, afraid, crazy and ready to do whatever it took to care for themselves and their immediate loved ones regardless of the higher risks to others. And in Texas the vast majority of Texans own weapons they carry or keep in their vehicle. My girlfriend told me she had never heard her brother and sister-in-law so scared shitless.
As I was remembering all those dark memories and thoughts in 2005, I couldn’t help but realize what might happen during Winter Storm Uri in 2021 if the power-grid was not returned to service in a reasonable amount of time. The entire state of Texas had no power for around 9-14 days depending on utility work crews available. I realized how much of our lives, our society is now utterly dependent on two facts of life: 1)electronic devices/machines, computers, cell phones, internet/WiFi, electrical electronics in our vehicles, ATM’s, satellite navigation and GPS, and2) the power, the electricity to power all of it and/or the fuel, energy to run everything electronic. To say I wasn’t paranoid of others and their erratic mindsets was a lie.
I was very aware of human nature then and today when it is put into circumstances of life or death, or serious harm, and little to no control over it or the ability to stop it. Many people do not cope well. They do not start using their survival instinct or their brain, they panic, they freak the hell out and lose all rationale, safety, and typically all altruism and ingenuity. Lifeguards at pools or on beaches, or the U.S. Coast Guard seamen and women all know that those they try to sometimes rescue can try to pull them under, fight them in order to breathe and save their own life at your expense. That is human nature under extreme stress and panic.
∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼
I watched a film today with the wife. It was on Netflix and it was about this exact same predicament I’ve described above happening to two families. The 2023 film is called Leave the World Behind and still streaming on Netflix. It stars Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, Myha’la, and Kevin Bacon. And if any of you have not seen it I highly recommend it. Why? Because number one Barack and Michelle Obama are executive producers through their Higher Ground Productions banner and notoriety. Number two, it disturbingly shows just how dependent our current U.S. culture and society are not just addicted to electronics in every way of our daily lives, but worse still how much 21st-century military defense, arms, and equipment like modern drones rely almost entirely on computer electronics. This doesn’t mention the fact that our private or government businesses and agencies and commerce rely heavily on satellite navigation systems, communications, and GPS in transportation and shipping sectors around the world via thousands upon thousands of Medium Earth Orbits to Low Earth Orbits. And by the way, if you haven’t heard, highly advanced computer AI corporations have already produced, released, and operate systems that monitor, build, or hack into other sophisticated AI systems.
Watch Leave the World Behind available on Netflix and get a harsh reality check about the high-tech world and nation we live in and under. Then if you can return here and share your thoughts about the film and just how closely it accurately reflects our present American lifestyles of hyper-dependence on energy, power, electricity, and computer system networks. Are we in control of our lives and our future? Is our current president and administration really intelligently capable of protecting Americans or themselves given the still ongoing 6-month War with Iran?
Nothing else needs saying, except this is just one colossal iceberg off the coast of Ilulissat, Greenland, among hundreds of others breaking off or calving at alarming rates over the last 10-20 years. This particular iceberg moved into Disko Bay, Greenland, after fracturing, melting and then became small enough to literally flip, doing a somersault and creating massive waves as it broke apart due to Climate Change.
Greenland, the world’s largest island, is also covered in one of the earth’s two ice sheets. The other cloaks Antarctica. Greenland’s encompasses around 80 percent of the nation’s land mass, spanning more than 650,000 square miles. But it’s also melting at an accelerating rate due to climate change, losing an annual average of 261 gigatonnes—one gigatonne is equivalent to 2.2 trillion pounds—contributing to rising sea levels that impact the rest of the world. And Greenland’s massive icebergs are a reminder of this exceptional scale. Once the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland erode past a specific amount of square miles, a point the Earth is reaching rapidly—unless the remaining superpower nations like the United States do more, A LOT MORE—the planet can no longer be saved. Most life as we know it, such as humans and most animals on land and in the seas, will perish. Us, we, and they will indeed go extinct. Guaranteed.
When 195 countries signed the Paris Agreement in 2016, the Copernicus Climate Change Service estimated that Earth would reach the 1.5 degrees threshold by 2042. But now, the European organization’s global temperature trend monitor predicts that Earth will hit 1.5 degrees Celsius in warming by 2029—just three years from now. No one country is doing enough, period. But for 2026 what 10 nations are doing the most to slow Climate Change?
Denmark — Overall score: 80.52
United Kingdom — Overall score: 70.8
Morocco — Overall score: 70.75
Chile — Overall score: 70.63
Luxembourg — Overall score: 70.45
Lithuania — Overall score: 70.3
Netherlands — Overall score: 67.27
Norway — Overall score: 66.83
Portugal — Overall score: 66.05
Sweden — Overall score: 64.91
Want to know where the United States ranks? Are you sitting down? The USA is #65 and dropping as of August 5, 2026, at 12:07pm CST (-5 hrs UTC).
Civilization must, I repeat MUST get off and stop burning fossil fuels and other gases and minerals causing Global Warming. It is so much worse than first predicted 40-60 years ago! What are you doing about it at home? What are you doing about Climate Change in your neighborhood, community, town, city, or state? What are you making your elected government officials address, and take action, not just hear their repeated lip-service?
Here’s the outlook, it’s bleak, very bleak if we continue with business-as-usual:
Not only will you, your spouse or partner suffer greatly from every imaginable disaster possible, severe food shortages, empty grocery stores, increased extreme temperatures, increased draughts more prolonged, increased flooding, more 1,000-year and 100-year Category 4 and 5 (and 6?) storms, hurricanes, typhoons, and tornadoes… but your own children, nieces, nephews, cousins, siblings, parents(?), and best friends, followed by your grandchildren and all of their relatives, will begin to die off from a wide variety of health issues, disease, malnutrition, and other problems yet unknown!
Doing nothing or very, very little, and too slowly has just ONE outcome for us all. It isn’t rocket science.
Yes, here we go again, just like in July 2025, but worse and faster. Some of you may have heard on national news broadcasts on July 16-18, 2026, that we here in Kerrville, Texas, and the Hill Country area once again experienced massive thunder showers from south of Center Point, Texas, up to Ingram, Hunt, Mountain Home, to south of Harper, Texas, and once again we suffered cataclysmic rainstorms and thunderstorms throughout the wee-hours of July 16, almost a year to the date of the major flooding here that took 139 lives, 117 of them just in Kerr County including the young girls at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas. So far this catastrophic flooding has taken 2 lives. What was this caused by? Was it the same weather event that happened July 4, 2026: a mesoscale convective vortex with enhanced tropical moisture? Yes, it was.
This highly unusual weather event only started last year, in 2025. In contrast, historically speaking, this sort of major flooding only happened rarely, on average about 20-40 years apart or more, if at all. Suddenly, it seems to be happening on a more regular basis. How can I say that? My Mom and her new second husband moved to Kerrville in 1997. I have been coming here to visit several times a year since then with my ex-wife and our two children. And of course, Mom and I would talk quite often on the phone when I was living up in Dallas, TX. That is practically 30-years for Mom and off-and-on for me. I am very, very familiar with the weather trends here in the Texas Hill Country. It was something my Mom’s generation often chatted about to people: how’s the weather(?), etc. They enjoyed talking about it frequently and Mom wouldn’t spare me the semi-trivial details. Therefore, I am practically a 3-decade encyclopedia of Kerrville weather trends since 1997. I also study historical data tables because just like the U.S. Stock Exchange, trends are significant for learning probabilities and possibilities… staying one-half step or a full step ahead of the game.
That said, Mom, her new second husband, and myself, knew what severe weather events can cause in Kerrville and the surrounding Hill Country. During those extreme storms Mom and Lloyd (husband) were sometimes locked in to their residential neighborhood sitting at the top of one of the highest hills in Kerr County, in Shalako Estates off Goat Creek Road or FM 1338. Goat Creek often flooded and was to high and powerful for them to exit the little spillway out of Shalako Estates.
Here is drone footage of the devastation at Buckhorn RV & Lake Resort close to us and caused by the early morning rise of surrounding creeks feeding into the Guadalupe River:
This same extreme creek-water rise to deadly rushing, powerful water carrying away even several (many?) White-tail Deer with it as well as cars, trucks, and RVs, all the way into the Guadalupe River is about 2.5-miles down FM 1338 and Goat Creek, south into the river. This low-ground toward the Guadalupe River runs under Junction Hwy or TX Hwy 27 only about 400-500 feet from our property. Here’s what it looked like at approximately 4:30am CST from a motorist on Junction Hwy/TX 27 right at the Mexican restaurant Taqueria Jalisco that has the bright neon sign at the entrance. Apologies if you are unable to view it; it was a private citizen on the spot atop his vehicle with his personal cell phone recording live:
Now, two years back-to-back (2025–2026) of extreme, deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country and Kerr County isn’t quite a frequent trend, yet. We’ve had our share of severe deadly floods going back many decades. However, the difference of those in past compared to now are different, significantly different in the meteorological systems then and now. What has changed are the upward trending weather systems of mesoscale convective vortexes that simply sit or stall in this part of Central Texas dumping upward of 7-10 inches or more of heavy rain in a matter of one hour, or one-and-a-half hours. Historically in previous flooding years in Kerrville the cause was 3-7 days and nights of rainfall, much more time for residents to prepare, evacuate, and get to higher ground. In July 2025 and again this July 16, 2026 that was not the case. One is a fool if you only look with horse-blinders on and conclude, ‘It was a rare phenomena that randomly happens. A one- or two-off.’ No. These sort of extreme weather events are happening not only across the United States, but around the globe. The evidence is piling up and piling up fast!
According to the Hays Trinity Conservation District (HTCD) and the NOAA/National Integrated Drought Information System at Drought.gov over the last two decades in Texas, Central Texas Hill Country specifically, this area has experienced increase “weather whiplashes,” defined by NOAA as severe, alternating swings between intense droughts and catastrophic “1,000-year” flash floods compounded by a steady, long-term rise in baseline temperatures. The HTCD further reports:
Key Climate Trends (2006-2026)
Warming Temperatures: The Hill Country has seen its warmest summers and mildest winters on record, with average temperatures trending roughly 1.5 to 3 degrees warmer than mid-20th century averages. [citation]
Precipitation Volatility: Annual rainfall totals remain unreliable, but the intensity of rainfall events has increased. Federal precipitation models updated in recent years reflect a 30% to 40% increase in benchmark extreme rainfall estimates for the region just west of San Antonio. [citation]
Weather Extremes: The region is frequently pinned between prolonged La Niña-induced droughts (most notably 2011–2015 and subsequent mid-2020s dry spells) and record-breaking floods, such as the catastrophic Guadalupe River floods. [citation]
If there is just one or two things that I have learned in my many years in Kerrville, Texas, going back to 1997–to the present, and learned from my late mother it is this: everything here in Kerrville, and the Texas Hill Country is much more extreme than it was on average back in the late 1990’s, the 2000’s and up to now. Temperatures are noticeably more extreme, the wind and wind gusts are definitely more extreme—my outdoor plants and herb garden bare witness to the destruction—reaching some days up to 30-40mph! This has increasingly reeked havoc on my allergies and sinus problems. 🤧🤨 Of course the extremes in rainfall, or no rainfall, for extended weeks or months are noticeably more unstable, the UV indices are noticeably way up with more frequent UV warnings for outdoor activities.
And as a herb grower and small gardener what I’ve noticed every summer (July-to-mid-September) going back to 2020… the insects are very bad. The huge grasshoppers that feed on just about anything a gardener grows, aphids are on a significant rise every summer due to fewer and fewer ladybugs, beetles and other natural predators, and lastly but not conclusively, more and more weird fungi/bacteria on and in soils, then flies, mosquitos, and all the pesty insects that winter temps or freezes would typically reduce their numbers. They too are on the rise due to our (and the world’s) shorter and shorter winters. The tangible accumulating evidence has become overwhelming with each passing year.
But very sadly and worse still, the superpower and semi-superpower nations such as China, Russia, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, South Asiatic nations, many Eastern European nations, and the United States are still failing to do enough to slow Global Warming and Climate Change caused primarily by fossil fuel burning/consumption, rising CO2 (carbon dioxide), CH4 (methane gas), N2O (nitrous oxide), fluorinated gases, then other less heating atmospheric gases, much less stabilize it by 2030 or 2050 from the point-of-no-return tipping point. I don’t know about where you may live and have lived for many years, but here in Texas where I’ve lived most of my life—the now super hardcore Red state where environmental regulations and Climate Change movements and/or policies are essentially non-existent—it is getting worse while most Texans just go on daily with their busy lives, redundant lives of working, spending-consuming, all in an invisible bubble around family, coworkers, and friends, not paying any attention to how Earth is changing.
Here in Red State Texas we are all just huge, obese bull-headed-frogs relaxing in the pot of gradually boiling water as if nothing is happening or has happened. Meanwhile, our elected officials just keep drawing a salary and pension for doing just enoughor less to keep the economy as one of the best in the entire Union; money, money, money! Spend, spend, spend!
What a sad, sad condition we will leave this Earth for our young children, grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren. 😢
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always – Do It Better Fast!
Yes, Earth has received a laser-beam signal from 8-billion light-years away! Who sent it? Or what sent the signal? How did it hit the MeerKAT Telescope array at the North Cape in South Africa and more astonishing it stayed needle-sharp for 4.7 hours!? That signal was with such extreme clarity from a hyper-extreme range that it puzzled scientists hinting that something else unusual was involved. It had to be because when the laser-signal originated at that distance, Earth was not even in existence! What was going on? What had gone on that long ago? Has extra-terrestrial life made contact with us?
The mega-maser coming from HATLAS J142935.3–002836 was detected by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, which is made up of 64 linked radar dishes. Credit: CSARAO/MeerKAT
Don’t jump to any conclusions yet. The Cosmos is our endless treasure trove of splendid weirdness and mind-boggling phenomena. It always challenges us and/or rewrites what we once thought was understood. Were we contacted, or was it something else?
After more extensive examination scientists determined that it was a hydroxyl megamaser which is a natural microwave amplifier triggered by two galaxies slamming together. Imagine our own Milky Way slamming into Andromeda, the nearest galaxy to us. In fact, cosmologists, astrophysicists, astronomers, etc., want to rename or make a new category for the phenomena called gigamaser. What is a megamaser or gigamaser?
“The word maser stands for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. It works like a laser but sends out radio waves instead of visible light. When galaxies collide, they crush vast clouds of gas into tight, turbulent pockets. Inside those pockets, molecules called hydroxyl—simple oxygen-hydrogen pairs—soak up energy from the crash.
As radiation passes through this excited gas, the hydroxyl molecules release additional photons at exactly the same wavelength and direction. The beam gets stronger. For this system, designated HATLAS J142935.3–002836, the signal arrived at roughly 18 centimeters in wavelength, near 1667 and 1665 MHz. Those are the standard lines astronomers search for when hunting hydroxyl masers.”
HATLAS J142935.3–002836 is only visible to us thanks to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. These 2014 images, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (left) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope (right), show a partial “Einstein ring” of magnified light from the distant galaxy merger. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/NASA/ESA/W. M. Keck Observatory
What happens when a host galaxy looks distorted and stretched to astronomers and other scientists?
“That is the telltale mark of gravitational lensing. A massive foreground galaxy sits almost exactly between Earth and the distant merger. Its gravity bends the fabric of space, acting like a natural magnifying glass that redirects more of the background signal toward us.
This effect does not create new light. It simply focuses what is already there. The lensing boost explains why a source at redshift z = 1.027 stayed detectable. Previous hydroxyl surveys had only reached redshifts around z = 0.25, much closer to Earth in cosmic terms.“
Illustration of the distant galaxy 8 billion light-years away (red), magnified by an unrelated foreground disk galaxy, resulting in a red ring. Credit: Inter-University Institute for Data-Intensive Astronomy (IDIA).
“The crash itself supplies the raw power. Smashing galaxies churn gas into dense regions where molecules build up and collide. Those conditions energize the hydroxyl into the state required for maser action. Earlier studies of the same system show signs of rapid star formation, exactly what you would expect from a merger burning through its fuel.”
In some 4.5 billion years our Milky Way galaxy will indeed collide, crash into the Andromeda galaxy—the gravitational pull is too great for us to escape it. It is already happening. When they do crash together it will form a new, giant elliptical galaxy, often nicknamed by scientists “Milkdromeda“. Here is a computer simulation of what that collision might look like from the outside of both galaxies… perhaps to another distant civilization monitoring their outer-space with highly advanced instruments:
Wow, talk about a non-stop fireworks show in the celestial night sky! Unless of course Earth is hit, wounded, or obliterated, vaporized. Yikes. 😧😬
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always
I have zero expectation that anything I ever say will end someone’s belief in their God. Not my goal or purpose. That alone belongs to the individual. ~ Zoe
