Free Republic

Scientists have never been able to adequately explain where lightning comes from. Now the first detailed observations of its emergence inside a cloud have exposed how electric fields grow strong enough to let bolts fly. VIDEO AT LINK.......................... In this animation of a lightning flash recorded by the LOFAR radio telescope network, each dot is the location of a radio source. The flash, which is 5 kilometers wide, grew out of a small region of the cloud measuring tens of meters across. During a summer storm in 2018, a momentous lightning bolt flashed above a network of radio telescopes in...

Pardon me, boy Is that the Chattanooga choo choo? (yes yes) Track twenty-nine Boy, you can gimme a shine?

A daredevil has broken the slackline world record after walking between two hot air balloons more than a mile above the ground. Rafael Zugno Bridi, 34, balanced precariously on the narrow inch-wide slackline among the clouds over Praia Grande in his native Brazil. The adrenaline junkie was barefoot 6,131ft in the air when he broke the record of the highest ever tightrope walk at more than double the height of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa which stands at 2,722ft.

The murderer says — ‘Be safe everyone, wear a mask and get the Booster.’

After a spate of bad publicity over winning a Goliath-versus-David lawsuit, Eric Clapton’s management has announced it does not intend to collect the money owed by a German woman who was sued for putting a bootleg CD of a 1980s Clapton concert up for sale on eBay.The woman had been ordered to pay approximately $4,000 after a judge ruled she had infringed Clapton’s copyright by trying to sell the more than 30-year-old CD, which her late husband had purchased at a department store, for 9.95 euros, or roughly $11.20. The illicit disc was removed from the site after a day...

In Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis,” Oscar Isaac’s folk musician is trying to make it on his own, without his longtime partner. He travels to Chicago to audition for Bud Grossman, who gives the damning judgment: People need time to get to know you, he says, "buy you as a solo act.” “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Joel Coen’s first time directing without his brother, is going much better for him than it did for Llewyn. An intoxicatingly expressionist Shakespeare adaptation dense in fog and shadow, Coen's “Macbeth” is a solo debut from a filmmaker whose visual virtuosity has...

(David Ennis/Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife) NATURE Spectacularly Rare, Enormous Eagle Shows Up in North America, 5,000 Miles From Home FIONA MACDONALD22 DECEMBER 2021 Bird watchers in Massachusetts have been given an early Christmas present in the form of an incredibly rare sighting – a Steller's sea eagle, which is native to Asia almost 8,000 km (5,000 miles) away. The large sea eagles are native to the Kamchatka Peninsula in far eastern Russia, and also seen in Japan, China, and Korea. There are estimated to be only around 5,000 individuals left, including this one, which has somehow made its...

President Joe Biden greets the Washington Nationals’ Racing Presidents at the Congressional Baseball Game, Wednesday, September 29, 2021, at Nationals Park in Washington.

Artist’s impression of the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb), folded in the Ariane 5 rocket during launch from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Credit: ESA – D. Ducros _____________________________________________________________________________ On December 17 the Ariane 5 rocket fairing was closed around the James Webb Space Telescope. This protective fairing, or ‘nose cone’, will shield the telescope during liftoff and its journey through the atmosphere on December 24. Last week, Webb was placed on top of Ariane 5 and a protective ‘shower curtain’ was put up to avoid any contamination. VIDEO AT LINK............ On the day of encapsulation in the fairing, a...

The new map has revealed a new substructure of the Milky Way’s outer disk using data from the Gaia space misison. Credit: C. Laporte et al. (MNRAS, 2021) An international team of astronomers led by researcher Chervin Laporte of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB-IEEC) has revealed a new map of the Milky Way’s outer disk using data from the Gaia space misison. The findings have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “Typically, this region of the Milky Way has remained poorly explored due to the intervening dust which...

Series 1Series 2Series 3Series 4

It’a that time of year again — that very special season when you can’t walk into a grocery store without getting ambushed by “Jingle Bell Rock” or dive-bombed by Paul McCartney wishing you a “Wonderful Christmastime.” Every artist who ever sells more than two records eventually tries a Christmas tune. The amount of great Christmas music out there is staggering. But along with all that Yuletide goodness comes plenty of Yuletide dreck. Our list of the worst Christmas songs includes psychotic butcherings of beloved classics, horrific attempts at new standards, hideous novelty tunes, and more. At the family Christmas party...

(NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory) Many science fans were freaking out this week when NASA confirmed that its Parker Solar Probe had become the first spacecraft ever to 'touch the Sun' back in April. But if you thought that was mind-boggling, hang on to your seat, because there's actually time-lapse footage of the spacecraft's view as it swoops into the Sun's corona – and it's one of the most spectacular things we've seen in a very long time. The footage is made up of individual images captured between August 8 and 12 this year, during the probe's ninth perihelion,...

Director slams woke mob as “a small group of closed-minded, humour-averse ideologues” irector and Monty Python legend Terry Gilliam has found himself the latest victim of cancel culture as the Old Vic Theater in London dropped plans for a production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods after Gilliam merely suggested on social media that people should watch Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix special. Essentially Gilliam was canceled by the Old Vic for engaging in wrong think. Not one to keep his opinion to himself, Gilliam blasted the move as the theater caving to a minute mob of woke complainers. Gilliam...

After exiting "General Hospital" following almost two decades on the program, actor Ingo Rademacher joined "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox Nation to discuss his new lawsuit against Disney subsidiary ABC over its coronavirus vaccine mandate. Rademacher, who was denied a religious exemption, told host Tucker Carlson that submitting to the injection would go against many of his beliefs, including religion.

This is an introduction to a movie reviewer who goes by the name The Critical Drinker. I thought there might be a few of my fellow Freepers who would appreciate his reviews. DO NOT CLICK if you are offended by naughty language. DO NOT CLICK if you don't want to view a video.

The fish’s eyes (pointing up here) are capped by bright green lenses. (© MBARI 2004) NATURE ===================================================================================== Thousands of feet beneath the surface of Monterey Bay off California, scientists recently captured footage of a fish with a bulbous, translucent head and green orb-like eyes that peer out through its forehead. This bizarre creature, known as a barreleye fish (Macropinna microstoma), is very rarely seen. Researchers with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have only spotted the species nine times, despite having sent their remotely operated vehicles (ROV) on more than 5,600 dives in the fish's habitat, MBARI tweeted on...

This is better than anything our media has produced. I don't know about death totals or anything, but it's impressive the power of a tsunami. I had to edit the title, just to show what it was about because there is no English

(NASA/Chris Gunn) VIDEO AT LINK............................. The James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space observatory ever built, is finally set for launch in late December after decades of waiting. An engineering marvel, it will help answer fundamental questions about the Universe, peering back in time 13 billion years. Here are five things to know. 1. Giant gold mirror The telescope's centerpiece is its enormous primary mirror, a concave structure 21.5 feet (6.5 meters) wide and made up of 18 smaller hexagonal mirrors. They're made from beryllium coated with gold, optimized for reflecting infrared light from the far reaches of the...

Sotheby’s Dubai has opened its exhibit of Sandro Botticelli’s The Man of Sorrows, a rare example of the artist’s later work. The painting is expected to sell at an estimated excess of $40 million at Sotheby’s Old Masters sale in New York in January, and it's on view in Dubai until Tuesday. The brooding portrait of the resurrected Christ was executed in the late 15th or early 16th centuries – the last decade of the artist’s life. For Christopher Apostle, head of Old Master Paintings at Sotheby’s New York, the work presents an unusual moment in the artist’s oeuvre. “Botticelli...