Six Secrets is now The Brief: Spy agencies brief people in power. We brief you. Each week we’ll bring you one story that matters, plus a few that don’t!

Your Brief for June 27, 2024: An astonishing butterfly migration, robo taxis, The Wilderness of Mirrors and more!

News

Two Asteroids Say Hello

An asteroid, 1.4 miles wide, is scheduled to pass by Earth today at 4:14 pm,  within 4.1 million miles of the planet's surface (17 times the distance of our Moon). A planet destroyer, the object is between 1 and 2.4 miles in diameter; about the size of Mount Everest, and among the largest to ever pass our planet! At 7,600 feet across it is larger than 99% of near-earth objects. Talk about good timing, the large asteroid and a smaller one, arrive just in time for Asteroid Day on June 30th. The smaller of the two asteroids is closer and will be visible with a pair of binoculars, depending on where you are in the world, as it passes within the distance of the Moon. Not to worry, scientists have been watching the asteroids and both have a zero percent chance of hitting the planet. That said, they only spotted the smaller one last week! The smaller of the two space rocks will travel past this Saturday at 9:46 am EST. People in the southwest of the US are more likely to spot the asteroid in the night sky as a spec of light zipping overhead. Keep your eyes peeled because it will happen fast!

True Spies

The Wilderness Of Mirrors

In the dying days of the Cold War, the West is on the verge of victory. But the Soviet Union’s feared secret service, the KGB, won’t give up without a fight.

It’s December 1989, and in the freezing depths of a West German winter, a US counterintelligence team is quietly pursuing a mother and her son on the streets of Munich. The team refers to the mother as Lance Blade and her son as the Son of Blade. Operation Lance Blade is underway. A heavyset woman in her early 60s, the female target regularly wore a heavy dark wig and a fake fur coat in the winter months. Her son, who’s in his early 40s, was also overweight and noticeably balding. The Operations Support Team (OST) has been tracking the pair for less than a week since receiving the case, and they are getting closer to their goal.

One Saturday morning the duo take off in their car while under watchful eyes and head for Austria, which at the time shared an open border with West Germany, all license plates are recorded entering and leaving! The intelligence team is aware that previous records show the two have been driving this same route every weekend for months,  raising eyebrows. Why all the fuss? They both work in the US Army Intelligence Facility, McGraw Kaserne, in Munich; the center of American intelligence in Europe! And now those same US intelligence services are beginning to suspect this mother and son of switching sides, and possibly to the KGB! What is the OST's true mission purpose?

Join former US Army Intelligence officer Aden Magee to find out as he tells the story of this mind-bending game of cat-and-mouse in this week's podcast selection ‘The Wilderness of Mirrors’.

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Science

A Moon First

It’s returned home! China’s Chang’e-6 probe achieved its historic milestone by returning to Earth. Its mission, the first of its kind, was to drill into the lunar soil, known as regolith, on the far side of the moon to collect samples estimated to be 4 billion years old. The re-entry capsule landed in Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia on Tuesday. The capsule can carry up to two kilograms of material taken from the dark side of the moon! Chang’e-6’s landing site, the Apollo Crater, is believed to contain some of the oldest regoliths on the Moon, offering valuable insights into the history of the celestial object. Scientists are eager to get their hands on the rare samples which according to Yang Wei, a geochemist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing, will be “different from all previous rocks collected by the US, Soviet Union, and China,” all of which were taken from the near side of the Moon. Chang’e-6 reached the Moon on the 8th of May, five days after launch. It touched the lunar surface on the 2nd of June inside the South Pole-Aitkin (SPA) basin. The drilling lasted two days, the capsule then returned to dock with the re-entry module and began its journey to Earth!

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Puzzles

Real Or Made Up?

Are you familiar with the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript? 

Named after rare book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912, the Voynich manuscript is a large encrypted text filled with drawings and passages written in an unknown cipher. The work features perplexing illustrations of plants, astronomical diagrams, and peculiar human-like figures and is thought to have been created in the 15th or 16th century. It has been stored in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University since 1969.

Carbon dating places the work's creation in the early 15th century. Still, its origins and meaning remain unknown. The text has drawn the attention of many famous codebreakers, linguists, and scientists. During World War II, American and British codebreakers who cracked complex wartime ciphers took on the challenge of the manuscript but ultimately found it hopeless. Even the famed cryptologist Colonel William F. Friedman, who momentarily led the US deciphering team that cracked the Japanese Purple machine in WWII, spent years attempting to decode the text, yet left it unresolved…

The illustrations depict plants that don’t exist, astrological charts of unknown origin, and human figures. Some scholars have speculated that it might be an elaborate hoax, a medicinal guide, or even an alien script, but no theory has been proven. Computer scientists and modern cryptographers have applied advanced algorithms to the text, but the Voynich Manuscript remains uncracked. Is it even possible?

Want to try and crack a puzzle of your own? Puzzlemaker Christina Iverson has prepared the crossword ‘Get Cracking’ for you to solve!

History

Hidden In Plain Sight

What would you do if you found an ancient artifact in your local thrift shop?

One lucky woman in Washington D.C. was thrilled to discover that a pot she bought was worth far more than she bargained for! Ann Lee Dozier, in 2019,  was browsing the 2A Thrift Store in Clinton, Maryland when she spotted a decorative vase sitting on a clearance shelf. Fond of the item, she purchased it for just $4 and brought it home. The pot sat comfortably at her house where her cat, dog, and three boys would play around it. Five years later, Dozier made a trip to Mexico City and visited the National Museum where to her surprise, the pots on display were strikingly similar to the one sitting on her mantle at home! Unable to forget about the uncanny likeness of the objects Dozier contacted the Mexican embassy in Washington upon returning. The $4 pot was not just any old find but an ancient Mayan artifact! Mexico’s US ambassador Esteban Moctezuma Barragán estimated the pots' construction between the 2nd and 8th centuries CE, the pinnacle of the Classical Mayan period! Would you keep it? Dozier has graciously decided to return the pot to its rightful home.

Technology

Robo Taxis

San Francisco, your ghost driver has arrived!

In 2021 autonomous driving technology company Waymo, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, opened its commercial testing service on the streets of San Fran offering a fully autonomous ride service; that’s if you managed to get through the 300,000-person waitlist!

But the wait is over.  Waymo is now available to anyone who has downloaded their mobile app; simply request a ride and your ghost taxi will be on its way. Pretty sci-fi! This is not a first for the company however, in 2020 they launched the same service in Phoenix, in hopes of cementing their lead in the robo-taxi industry. Is it safe? The rollout comes during a time of high scrutiny for driverless car companies after several crashes and critical errors have occurred on the streets of the US. Just earlier this month Waymo recalled its vehicles after one crashed into a telephone pole. Yikes! This is one of dozens of incidents involving Waymo vehicles that are being investigated. Would you take a ride?

Nature

An Astonishing Butterfly Migration

Butterfly, how did you get here?

In October 2013, on a beach in French Guiana, researcher Gerard Talavera stumbled upon a group of butterflies fluttering in his path. Not just any, these were painted ladies (Vanessa cardui). Though commonly found in many parts of the world, the painted lady isn’t common in South America! What could have brought them here and how did they travel so far from their typical range? Talavera and his colleagues, entomologists at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, have spent the better part of a decade investigating this, and thanks to a never-before-recorded butterfly migration they might have an answer!

The species pulled off the staggering 2,600-mile journey from West Africa, across the Atlantic, to South America thanks to ideal wind conditions. How did the team figure out their point of origin? Conventional means of hardware and trackers are far too large and heavy for the delicate butterflies, instead, researchers relied on local observations made by citizen scientists along with radar to trace the migratory route; making an educated guess. Weather conditions in the lead-up to Talavera's sighting were crucial in proving this theory; the wind conditions in the prior weeks were ideal for a voyage from Africa to South America. 

To aid this evidence the team also sequenced the genomes of the butterflies learning that they were related to insects from Africa and Europe, ruling out North America as a starting point. They also sequenced the DNA of pollen caught on the butterflies’ bodies to identify the plants they had recently visited. Findings showed that Guiera senegalensis and Ziziphus spina-christi, two West African shrub species, were present.

Cartoon

Cartoon by P.C Vey

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