A Jurassic-period colony of sea lilies, spanning nearly 100 square meters, has been uncovered! These ancient echinoderms were meticulously excavated by German paleontologists over 18 years. Now, you can marvel at this incredible fossil at the Urweltmuseum Hauff in Holzmaden.

#Paleontology #Fossils #SeaLilies #Jurassic #Echinoderms #ScienceNews #NaturalHistory #MuseumExhibit
#science

An ‘ice tsunami’ is often triggered by a sudden rise in temperature. As the ice begins to melt, it becomes more susceptible to movement, especially under the influence of strong winds.

These images capture the Amur River embankment in Khabarovsk / Russia 2021.

#IceTsunami #ClimateChange #ScienceNews #Khabarovsk #NaturePhenomena #AmurRiver #Meteorology #science

🎨 AI De‑noiser: Off‑the‑shelf image‑to‑image models break image protection

Researchers have uncovered a surprising vulnerability: standard image‑to‑image AI models (like Stable Diffusion, DALL‑E and similar) can be repurposed as generic “de‑noisers” — they strip away protective perturbations added to images by dedicated protection schemes.

What does it mean?
Many services add invisible noise to images to guard against copying, style mimicry, or deepfake manipulation. It turns out that breaking this protection doesn’t require specialized attacks — you can just ask any generative model to “enhance” the picture.

The experiment:
The team tested 8 case studies across 6 different protection systems. In every case, off‑the‑shelf models performed better than previous purpose‑built attacks while keeping the image quality high for the adversary.

Bottom line:
Many current protection schemes offer a false sense of security. Any future image‑protection mechanism must be benchmarked against attacks from readily available GenAI tools.

🔗 Paper (arXiv, Feb 25, 2026): https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22197
📄 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.22197

#AI #Security #Deepfake #GenerativeModels #ImageProtection #ScienceNews #Technology

🚀 Historic Moon Mission: Artemis II Launches!

For the first time in half a century, the United States has sent a rocket carrying astronauts toward the Moon. The Artemis II mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida earlier today.

Crew:
• Three NASA astronauts
• One Canadian Space Agency astronaut

Mission profile:
The flight will last approximately 10 days. Unlike the Apollo missions, Artemis II will not land on the lunar surface—that milestone is planned for 2028 under the Artemis III mission.

👨‍🚀🌍🌕 #ArtemisII #NASA #MoonMission #SpaceExploration #ScienceNews #science