Free Republic

12 July 2021 Danish Student solves how the Universe is reflected near black holesAstrophysics:In the vicinity of black holes, space is so warped that even light rays may curve around them several times. This phenomenon may enable us to see multiple versions of the same thing. While this has been known for decades, only now do we have an exact, mathematical expression, thanks to Albert Sneppen, student at the Niels Bohr Institute. The result, which even is more useful in realistic black holes, has just been published in the journal Scientific Reports. A disk of glowing gas swirls into the...

A "progressive parent" friend of mine was recently expressing enthusiasm over the fact that his children had taken to reading Young Adult dystopian novels. They were dying to see the new feature film adaptation of the book The Giver (see Sarah Palin's review, here), after having ploughed through the quartet of bestselling books by Lois Lowry. They had absorbed the blockbuster film adaptations of Divergent and The Hunger Games and had hungrily consumed the associated merchandise . They'd also made hundreds of new friends from all over the world who "shared" the same passion for dystopian teen icons Katniss, Tris...

"Captain America: The Winter Soldier," the sequel to Marvel's 2011 film about the Red, White and Blue super hero, smashed its way to $96.2 million in weekend ticket sales, setting a new record for an April release and speeding past last week's winner, "Noah." The film, which stars Chris Evans as a scrawny World War Two reject given super powers from an experimental serum, easily exceeded the April take for the racing movie "Fast Five," which collected $86.2 million in ticket sales in April 2011. "Noah," starring Russell Crowe as the biblical figure, was second with $17 million in ticket...