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Science (General/Chat)

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  • James Webb Space Telescope Made a Salty Discovery in This Unusual Exoplanet’s Skies

    06/20/2026 11:57:11 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 18 replies
    The Debrief ^ | June 20, 2026 | Ryan Whalen
    Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations have revealed the colorful secret of the Pink Planet, the coldest object of its type ever directly observed. A team of astronomers led by Northwestern University has revealed their findings in a recent paper published in The Astronomical Journal, finally describing the rose-colored haze covering the planetary-mass companion GJ504b, thanks to JWST data. For over a decade, researchers have speculated that atmospheric salt clouds may create the pink planet’s strange hue, but this is the first concrete evidence for the hypothesis. The Pink Planet Since its discovery in 2013,...
  • stronomy Picture of the Day - Daytime Moon Meets Evening Star

    06/20/2026 11:55:50 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 12 replies
    NASA ^ | 20 Jun, 2026 | Image Credit & Copyright: Debra Ceravolo
    Explanation: Venus is now appearing on the celestial stage as Earth's brilliant evening star, performing with the Moon, other wandering planets, and bright stars in western skies. For evening sky gazers on June 17, the celestial beacon rose after sunset close by a young, slender, crescent Moon. But from some locations the Moon could be seen to occult or pass in front of Venus. And from a backyard observatory in southern British Columbia, Canada, the lunar occultation was played out in daylight. This stunning telescopic snapshot captured a scene in dramatically cloudy skies, following Venus' hour long disappearance, as the...
  • Private Citizen Returns Ancient Vessel to Cyprus

    06/20/2026 11:04:23 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 7 replies
    Archaeology Magazine ^ | June 11, 2026 | editors / unattributed
    The Cyprus Mail reports that an ancient ceramic vessel has been reclaimed from an online auction and returned to Cyprus after a year-long investigation. Cypriot officials who monitor online activity determined that the vase was in the hands of a collector in Canada, who eventually agreed to repatriate it. Researchers from Cyprus' Department of Antiquities determined that the engraved, black-polished hemispherical bowl dates to about 1900 B.C. For more on the archaeology of Cyprus, go to "In the Time of the Copper Kings."
  • Check out NASA's latest space telescope that will help discover planets beyond our Solar System

    06/20/2026 11:01:58 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 15 replies
    Not The Bee ^ | June 20, 2026 | Harambe Harambe
    Via NBC, we're about to see a whole lot more of outer space than we've ever witnessed before: After nearly two decades of development, $4.3 billion and the labor of hundreds of scientists and engineers, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is less than three months from launch. From a point roughly 1 million miles from Earth, the telescope is expected to survey the cosmos, capturing panoramas of hundreds of millions of stars and billions of galaxies. With this observatory, NASA hopes to unravel the secrets of dark matter and dark energy and discover thousands of planets beyond our solar...
  • Intact Roman Sculptures Unearthed in Israel

    06/20/2026 10:56:42 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 14 replies
    Archaeology Magazine ^ | June 16, 2026 | editors / unattributed
    Haaretz reports that two 1,700-year-old marble busts have been discovered in a wine-collection pit at a winepress dated to the Roman and Byzantine periods in northern Israel. One of the busts is inscribed in Greek with the name "Lycurgus," perhaps referring to the legendary founder of Sparta, or a statesman and orator who lived in Athens in the fourth century B.C. Archaeologists Eliran Oren and Michael Solotskin of the Israel Antiquities Authority said that sculptures may have been buried in the pit to hide them during an invasion. "In the Roman period, statues of this kind were displayed both in...
  • Earliest Evidence of Cereal Processing in the Canary Islands Uncovered

    06/20/2026 6:04:32 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 28 replies
    Archaeology Magazine ^ | May 5, 2026 | editors / unattributed
    Archaeologists uncovered the earliest known evidence of cereal harvesting in the Canary Islands, according to a report in La Brújula Verde. The discovery was made at the C008 cave complex at the Roque Bentayga rock formation on Gran Canaria. The site was likely used as a granary, for plant processing, and, later, as a burial ground by the ancient Canarians, a people of Amazigh, or Berber, origin, between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries. Excavations within the caves yielded over 200 lithic artifacts. Microscopic analyses of wear patterns on some of the objects, particularly a small basalt knife, determined that...
  • Why am I paying for AC when I use DC ?

    06/20/2026 2:48:23 AM PDT · by knarf · 123 replies
    self ^ | June 20, 2026 | knarf, Tessla and Edison
    I'm not smart enough to analyze this correctly, but most of my house is operating low voltage items . . . TV's, lap tops and a ton of smaller lights and stuff that all have those little black boxes for plugs.
  • The Best-Paying Jobs in Ancient Rome [6:41]

    06/19/2026 8:35:43 PM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 28 replies
    YouTube ^ | January 21, 2022 | Garrett Ryan, Ph.D (as toldinstone)
    Some of the highest-paying jobs in the Roman world mirrored modern careers: doctor, lawyer, famous actor. Others - like charioteer and exhibition gladiator - were a bit less familiar. The Best-Paying Jobs in Ancient Rome | 6:41 toldinstone | 633K subscribers | 286,466 views | January 21, 2022 Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 0:36 Laborers 1:05 Craftsmen 1:31 Soldiers 2:13 Lawyers 2:49 Doctors 3:33 Teachers 3:59 Actors 4:26 Gladiators 4:48 Charioteers 5:12 Landed Aristocrats 6:07 Conclusion
  • World’s largest meat supplier shuts two plants - and it’s bad news for beef

    06/19/2026 3:16:18 PM PDT · by Libloather · 43 replies
    NY Post ^ | 6/19/26 | Reda Wigle
    A major meat supplier is shuttering two US plant locations, and experts say it’s bad news for carnivores. JBS USA, a meat-processing company that supplies Costco and BJ’s, as well as grocers such as Food Lion, Weis Markets, WinCo, and Stop & Shop, announced this week that it is closing its operations in Philadelphia and Memphis, eliminating a total of 2,000 jobs. “These decisions are never easy because they directly affect our team members and the communities where we operate,” said Wesley Batista Filho, CEO of JBS USA. “We are deeply grateful to the team members at these facilities for...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Starry Night II

    06/19/2026 10:25:44 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 18 replies
    NASA ^ | 19 Jun, 2026 | Image Credit & Copyright: Rodrigo Guerra, Original Painting: Vincent van Gogh
    Explanation: Does this scene look familiar? It is a modern recreation of the famous painting Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. Both the image and the painting depict a tall tree on the left, a crescent moon on the upper right, the planet Venus just to the right of the tree, a foreground horizon rising from left to right, and clouds above the horizon. Differences include that the photograph was taken in mid-April earlier this year in Cascavel, Brazil, while the painting was composed in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, in 1889. The original Starry Night is considered by many to be one...
  • Chomsky was wrong.They taught me a lie. [24:41]

    06/19/2026 8:07:36 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 39 replies
    YouTube ^ | May 29, 2026 | languagejones
    I nearly failed out of grad school, defending Chomsky's theory of syntax. Half a decade later, I'm done pretending it was worth it. Chomskyan generative grammar -- X-bar theory, Government and Binding, the Minimalist Program -- was taught to me at the University of Pennsylvania as the only legitimate science of language. It was the gatekeeper, the screener, the thing students were washed out of linguistics PhD programs over. As I've come to discover, decades of work in dependency grammar and construction grammar -- frameworks I was told didn't exist, didn't matter, or had been "subsumed" -- were doing better...
  • Why Building AI Data Centers Isn’t Working Anymore

    06/19/2026 7:58:43 AM PDT · by fireman15 · 64 replies
    Cold Fusion ^ | Jun 8, 2026 | Dagogo Altraide
    High-Level Overview: The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure is hitting severe physical, economic, and social constraints. Tech giants have committed trillions of dollars to construct massive hyperscale data centers, but nearly half of the projects scheduled to open in the United States this year have already been delayed or canceled. The briefing investigates how the friction between digital ambition and physical realities—ranging from severe power grid bottlenecks to intense local community pushback—is halting the global AI buildout. The Creator's Main Argument: The primary thesis of the video is that the explosive, unconstrained AI data center boom is hitting a...
  • Flowerpot Used For 200 Years Turned Out to Be a Rare Treasure

    06/19/2026 6:54:28 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 11 replies
    ScienceAlert ^ | 19 June 2026 | Michelle Starr
    Its scene was sketched by the Italian artist Battista Franco Veneziano before 1530; the sketch is currently housed at the Städel Museum in Germany.The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the US also has a 16th-century sketch of the sarcophagus, attributed to an unknown artist.In 1882, it was included in the book Ancient Marbles in Great Britain by Adolf Michaelis.In 2010, an anonymous visitor posted a picture of the object in the Blenheim grounds to TripAdvisor with the Blenheim Palace, "a flower bed that looks like a Roman lenos sarcophagus". A lenos sarcophagus is one that is shaped like a bathtub...The...
  • Numantia: Ancient Rome's Vietnam [10:03]

    06/19/2026 6:15:30 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 9 replies
    YouTube ^ | June 12, 2026 | Garrett Ryan, Ph.D (as toldinstone)
    For two decades, the Spanish town of Numantia defied the might of the Roman Republic. Numantia: Ancient Rome's Vietnam | 10:03 toldinstone | 633K subscribers | 56,715 views | June 12, 2026
  • From #MeToo to Maine? Dem experts weigh in on how Platner's rise tests party standards: 'Pulling the plug'

    06/19/2026 1:44:44 AM PDT · by Libloather · 19 replies
    Fox News ^ | 6/18/26 | Kiera McDonald, Andrew Mark Miller
    Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner's scandal-plagued rise is causing rifts within the Democratic Party, and several Democratic strategists who spoke to Fox News Digital warned of the long-term implications of the party embracing him. "Anyone paying attention to the intersection of culture and politics knows that my party pushed #MeToo well beyond the bounds of common sense long before Graham Platner's rise," Michael LaRosa, former press secretary to first lady Jill Biden, said about whether the #MeToo movement rings hollow within the party now that top Democrats have rallied behind Platner. "But the reflexive partisan instinct to circle the...
  • Etruscan Wine Makers Cloned a Single Grape Variety for Hundreds of Years

    06/18/2026 8:54:47 PM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 17 replies
    Archaeology Magazine ^ | June 15, 2026 | editors / unattributed
    According to a statement released by the University of York, analysis of grape seeds recovered from mud at the bottom of wells carved into the rock at the Etruscan and Roman site of Cetamura del Chianti suggests that vintners there cloned vines that produced white berries. Oya Inanli of the University of York said that a majority of the seeds in the study were dated to between 300 B.C. and A.D. 300 and belonged to this single variety of grape. After the Romans conquered central Italy, new varieties of grapes were introduced to the site. The study also showed that...
  • Medieval Helmets Found Off Spanish Coast Identified

    06/18/2026 8:47:55 PM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 8 replies
    Archaeology Magazine ^ | June 9, 2026 | editors / unattributed
    According to a Gizmodo report, a new evaluation, including radiocarbon dating, of five of the 43 helmets discovered under about 20 feet of water off the northeastern coast of Spain in 1990 indicates that they were made between the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and not during the Roman period as had been previously thought. "At the beginning, it was difficult to place them in a specific era because they featured traits that recalled both Late Roman models and potential medieval pieces inspired by classical traditions," said Manuel Frallicciardi of the University of Alicante. Political turmoil from the late...
  • 'Scientists were dead right': Al Gore says on 20th anniversary of 'An Inconvenient Truth' (only 4.62 years left)

    06/18/2026 6:38:54 PM PDT · by Libloather · 43 replies
    ABC News ^ | 6/16/26 | Julia Jacobo
    The scientists have been right about climate change all along, says former Vice President Al Gore on the 20th anniversary of the release of "An Inconvenient Truth," the Oscar-winning documentary about Gore's campaign to educate people about climate change. When asked by ABC News chief meteorologist and chief climate correspondent Ginger Zee whether the film and its predictions on global warming hold up, Gore responded, "Unfortunately, yes." "The scientists were dead right on all the important elements of it, and it really is insane that we are continuing to use the sky as an open sewer and we're trapping so...
  • Long-forgotten brand is bringing back the flip phone with no apps — and tech-weary fans are relieved: ‘Take my money’ (Commodore Callback 8020)

    06/18/2026 5:38:48 PM PDT · by Libloather · 43 replies
    NY Post ^ | 6/18/26 | Ben Cost
    They’re flipping off social media. Nostalgic ’80s tech firm Commodore is hoping to combat tech addiction by releasing a retro flip phone that banishes social media apps. Dubbed the Commodore Callback 8020, this vintage phone reboot is billed as a “retreat from Black Mirror technology” designed to “help you spend less time staring at a screen,” per the blog. This throwback perhaps marks a fitting release for a nostalgic company that kickstarted the personal computer revolution of the 1980s and released the Commodore 64 — the best-selling PC of all time. The Callback, which will be available later this year,...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Possible Supernova Remnant in Galactic Center

    06/18/2026 12:00:27 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 7 replies
    NASA ^ | 18 Jun, 2026 | Image Credit & Copyright: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UCLA/Z. Zhu et al.; ESA/XMM-Newton; Optical: PanSTARRS; Ra
    Explanation: Do you see that blue blob to the lower right of the image center? Astronomers think that it shows where a massive star exploded as a supernova whose light reached Earth 1,700 years ago. The image combines optical data from the PanSTARRS telescopes in Hawaii (background stars in red, green, and blue), radio from the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa (large red cloud) and X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton (shown in blue). The large cloud is a star forming region called Sagittarius C, which is approximately 50 light-years in extent and about 26,000 light-years from...