Free Republic

The AI industry is growing at a fierce pace, but so is skepticism about where it will lead, with some worried about data centers sucking up power and jobs being replaced with computers. Capitalizing on those fears, socialist wacko Bernie Sanders has proposed the “American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act” — which has grabbed headlines for claiming it will raise $7 billion and distribute thousands of dollars to every American. It’s a pie-in-the sky scheme, doomed from the start. Not least because it would force all major AI companies to hand 50% of their equity over to the federal government!...

At the beginning of April, I did a little roundup of the current waste-disposal difficulties renewables were facing, both in solar and in the wind industry. The solar nightmare is incoming... By 2050, the estimated total boundary area required for 1.5 million wind turbines is expected to reach 3.1 to 4.6 million square kilometers - the combined size of India and Argentina. The obvious question regarding this transition—with its towering turbine skeletons, virtually indestructible composite blades, and billions of solar panels—is this: Just where will all this metal, silicon and concrete be buried?

Trillionaire Elon Musk aims to have rockets blast off from Earth before the end of 2026, sending the first materials to the moon and Mars to start building colonies. The world’s first trillionaire is then planning to send robots to prepare the infrastructure needed for humans to survive. Musk said recently he has shifted Space X’s focus as it is closer and “much faster to complete a moon city,” with a timeline of getting it established in the next 10 years. However, he is optimistic he can also start sending material to the red planet within seven years too. This...

More late-stage diagnoses add to higher cancer mortality burden for menKey Takeaways: -Men have a significantly higher likelihood of late-stage cancer diagnosis across 20 different tumor types. -The largest disparities involved tongue, thyroid, and salivary gland cancers. -The reasons for the disparity appear to be multifactorial, involving biological, social, and cultural determinants. Men had a higher likelihood than women for late-stage diagnosis of 20 different types of cancer, data from a national registry network showed. The analysis of 30 nonreproductive organ cancers showed men had higher odds ratios for regional or distant metastasis at diagnosis in two-thirds of the cancer...

Explanation: This Cosmic Bat wishes you a happy Summerween! This mid-year celebration of Halloween transcends hemispheres, even though summer in the Northern hemisphere is winter in the South. Contrary to its eery aura, the Cosmic Bat Nebula (LDN 43), not to be confused with the Bat Nebula (NGC 6995), is a vibrant birthplace for stars. A bit of young starlight peeks through the dense clouds of gas and dust that make up the Cosmic Bat’s 12 lightyear wingspan. The ultraviolet light from the young stars energizes the nebula’s hydrogen gas, causing it to glow an ominous red. The jet of...

Advocates of generating electricity mostly with intermittent wind and sun, when challenged on how they would deal with a calm night, are always ready with the obvious answer: energy storage. Just get some batteries, store up excess power from the windy mid-days, discharge as needed, and everything will work out. Unfortunately, the advocates never acknowledge that the problem of making an electrical grid work 24/7/365 with mostly wind and solar generation is much more difficult than just storing power from the day to discharge that night. Both wind and sun are subject to regular “droughts,” just like rain. There can...

The near-Earth Object 2009 FD, as seen by the ESO's Very Large Telescope (Image Credit: ESO) Every year, more than 5,000 tons of material with cosmic origins lands on Earth’s surface, with as much as 15,000 tons of this “space dust” making its way into the atmosphere but vaporizing during reentry. The resulting rain of micrometeorites that reaches our planet consists mostly of tiny objects anywhere from 30 to 200 micrometers in size, based on past studies. But what are the origins of these large volumes of material that accumulate over time as they shower the Earth throughout the year?...

In the fevered corners of the internet where men — primarily white — gather to "optimise" every little detail of their bodies, there is a belief that even the brain can be beaten into shape to make men seem more attractive. Here, cortisol affects "facial fat redistribution", dopamine affects "eye contact quality", serotonin affects "resting expression", and acetylcholine affects “intelligence in social contexts".

Explanation: Sometimes we can all use a little help from a friend. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory needs a boost to stay in orbit after almost 22 years of service. This video shows an artist's visualization of the Swift Boost Mission: The Katalyst's LINK spacecraft was launched aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on July 3 and it is now en route to rendezvous with Swift and boost it to a higher orbit over the course of the next several months. This type of maneuver has never been attempted before. If successful, it will be the technology demonstration of...

If they were visible to the naked eye, these structures would be huge in the sky. Image Credit: UCLan/Stellarium ========================================================================= The cosmological principle states that, on the largest scales, the universe is uniform and isotropic. In other words, it should look broadly the same no matter where you are or which direction you look. You would not expect to find a single enormous structure in one particular region of the sky. Finding two in relatively close proximity is even more surprising. Five years ago, researchers discovered the Giant Arc, a vast crescent of galaxies stretching 3.3 billion light years across...

The Chinese Tianwen-2 mission has captured the first imagery of a space object that some astronomers are calling Earth’s “quasi-moon.” The object was captured in images released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), after its Tianwen-2 spacecraft reached the tiny asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa. Initially discovered in 2016, the asteroid became the target of a sample return mission launched by China on 28 May 2025. Officially the CNSA’s second mission under its Planetary Exploration of China Program, Tianwen-2 aims to return close to 100 grams of samples from the surface of the small object. Earth’s Mysterious Quasi-Moons Quasi-moons are the...

Millions of retirees are set to cash in. The first wave of Social Security checks will hit accounts — or be distributed for those who still love a paper check — on July 8. Typically, payments are issued on Wednesdays and roll out three times a month based on your birthday. This means recipients born from the first to the 10th of the month will get their monthly benefits on Wednesday, July 8, according to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) payment calendar. Those born from the 11th to the 20th are paid on the third Wednesday, and beneficiaries born after...

Image Credit & Copyright: Rod Prazeres Explanation: Where can you find dragons fighting in the night sky? In the southern constellation of the Altar: Ara. The dragons are, of course, actually made of suggestively shaped gas and dust. The celestial home of the mythological battling beasts is cataloged as NGC 6188 and located about 4,000 light years away near the edge of a large molecular cloud. Massive, young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association were formed there only a few million years ago, sculpting the dark shapes and powering the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation....

Ancient inscriptions written in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, have revealed a forgotten chapter of early Christianity's rise across the Roman Empire. Etched into stone, the text mentions both Jesus Christ and Mithras, the deity worshipped by a mysterious all-male religion once popular among Roman soldiers and merchants. The inscriptions were discovered at the entrance to an underground Mithras temple in southeastern Turkey, where researchers say it records the sanctuary's symbolic closure by early Christians around 1,700 years ago. Located at Zerzevan Castle, the remarkably preserved temple still contains four sacrificial hangers, a basin believed to have collected the blood...

Located in Thailand's Loei Province, Phu Khat stands as the highest peak in the Phu Khat Wildlife Sanctuary, rising to a height of 1,307 metres above sea level.In a routine patrol by Rangers from the sanctuary, two previously unknown archaeological sites were discovered near the mountain summit, both only 300 metres apart.Collectively named Pha Pang Puey, the sites feature carved or eroded linear markings across the rock face, forming geometric or abstract patterns rather than natural fractures – indicating ancient rock art. The rock surface is primarily reddish-brown, interspersed with lighter grey patches caused by lichen and erosion.According to experts,...

The largest Roman bathhouse complex ever discovered in the Netherlands has surfaced, shedding new light on the wealth and importance of the ancient Roman city of Ulpia Noviomagus.Researchers from the archaeological firms RAAP and BAAC were conducting routine investigations in Nijmegen's Waalfront district, a site slated for new residential development. The excavation, which began in September of last year and will conclude in July, uncovered a public bathhouse, residential blocks, luxury townhouses, streets, and a tower dating back nearly 2,000 years...The bathhouse complex, or thermae, covered at least 4,900 square meters, making it the second-largest excavated Roman public bath complex...

James from History Victorum explores the expansive House of the Faun, detailing its architectural layout, including two atriums and peristyles. The tour highlights intricate mosaics, such as the famous Alexander Mosaic and depictions of daily life, while examining household artifacts that provide clues about the inhabitants. House of the Faun | Pompeii, Italy Alexander Mosaic | 4K | 13:38 History Victorum | 22.3K subscribers | 334,345 views | February 1, 2022

Explanation: What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is on the left and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy so that from inside, it appears as a band of comparable brightness all the way around the sky. The less commonly seen band, on the right, is zodiacal light -- sunlight reflected from dust orbiting the Sun in our Solar System. Zodiacal light is brightest near the Sun and so is best seen just before sunrise or just after sunset. On some...

The heat was Frank-ly unbearable. A semi-truck leaked a whopping 40,000 pounds of sticky Frank’s RedHot sauce onto an Ohio highway amid a brutal heatwave last week. The truck carrying loads of the popular condiment began leaking while traveling north on Interstate 71 in Delaware County on Thursday, leaving a trail of the spicy sauce on the roadbed before its driver realized, the Columbus Dispatch reported. The driver eventually pulled into a truck stop as fire crews followed the trail of the bright-red mystery fluid to find its source. “Our crews were out on the highway trying to track it...

Explanation: What has happened to Saturn's moon Iapetus? Vast sections of this strange world are dark as coal, while others are as bright as snow. To help better understand this unusually tinted moon, in 2007 NASA directed the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting Saturn to swoop within 2,000 kilometers. Pictured here, from about 75,000 kilometers out, is the hemisphere of Iapetus that is always trailing. A large impact crater seen in the south spans 500 kilometers and appears superposed on an older crater of similar size. The dark material is seen increasingly coating the easternmost part of Iapetus, darkening craters...