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Explanation: Within our own Milky Way galaxy, two bright, spiky stars stand like sentinels in the foreground of this cosmic snapshot. Far beyond them are the galaxies of the Hydra Cluster. In fact, while the spiky foreground stars are hundreds of light-years distant, the Hydra Cluster galaxies are well over 100 million light-years away. Three large galaxies near the cluster center, two yellow ellipticals (NGC 3311, NGC 3309) and one prominent blue spiral (NGC 3312), are the dominant galaxies, each about 150,000 light-years in diameter. An intriguing overlapping galaxy pair cataloged as NGC 3314 lies above and left of NGC...

Antares Nuclear Inc.’s Mark-0—a sodium heat-pipe-cooled microreactor fueled by high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) fuel compacts—has achieved zero-power criticality at Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL’s) Reactor and Critical Experiment (RACE) facility, becoming the first advanced reactor to reach that milestone under the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Reactor Pilot Program.The development, announced on June 4, also marks the 53rd reactor built at the INL site since 1951 and the first novel reactor design to achieve criticality at the laboratory in more than 50 years, according to INL Laboratory Director John Wagner. The much-watched DOE Reactor Pilot Program, established under President...

Glyphosate-based formulations (GBFs), such as Roundup, are the most heavily used herbicides in the world. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that glyphosate and GBFs are probably carcinogenic to humans, mainly for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL)... In 2021, the French Institute of Health and Medical Research... also found that many studies demonstrated genotoxic damage (DNA breaks or structural changes) consistent with the induction of oxidative stress by glyphosate/GBFs, sometimes at exposure levels experienced by human populations... In a recent study of Thai farmers, a high frequency (97.6%) of those spraying GBFs with backpack sprayers had high...

Another media global warming team has been terminated, this time the National Public Radio climate desk. This is what happens when “journalists” keep reporting about a dead horse. Eventually the public realizes the horse has perished and there’s nothing left to talk about. Or that there was no horse to begin with. NPR is the third media outlet to rein it its diehard band of Democratic Party scribes dedicated to exaggerating climate fears, following the Washington Post and CBS News. The former was sawed roughly in half while the latter was, to our grand delight, “gutted.” Unfortunately, taxpayer-funded radio...

Nearly two decades ago, four graduate students from MIT united around a shared idea. "We believed that programming cells would ultimately be more important than programming computers," says Jason Kelly. It felt like an outlandish bet at the time. Things like gene editing or testing new molecules typically demanded many hours in the laboratory — carefully mixing hundreds of chemical cocktails by hand and pipetting them into petri dishes, tasks that required an enormous amount of human labor. Early potential investors, Kelly recalls, were not excited. "We were living on ramen, buying equipment on eBay, and we could not raise...

The Shocking Damage Caused by Covid PoliciesThe Covid lockdowns may not have been remotely effective, but at least they harmed millions of people and created long-lasting negative impacts that we’re still dealing with today.That’s the conclusion of a massive new body of research into the nonsensical policies promoted by the public health “expert” class, promoted by their media partners, and enacted by incompetent, cowardly politicians.Mask mandates had been thoroughly discouraged by decades of pre-Covid pandemic planning. There was no body of research supporting the closing of certain businesses at different hours of the day, as many jurisdictions demanded.No studies were...

A slice of NWA 12774.The green circle is an olivine crystal, a magnesium-rich mineral. (Credit: John Kashuba) In A Nutshell A meteorite recovered from the Sahara contains crystals that could only have formed deep inside a large, now-destroyed ancient planet, giving scientists their first direct physical evidence of its enormous size. Using a newly developed pressure-measuring tool, researchers calculated the parent body was at least 1,000 kilometers in radius, far larger than any asteroid previously linked to this class of meteorite. Textural clues in the crystals suggest the planet may have been Moon-sized or even larger, though that conclusion depends...

WASHINGTON – Water began refilling the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Thursday, President Donald Trump announced from the Oval Office. Trump showed a video during an unrelated event with water bubbling into the freshly painted basin at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. “That's clean, beautiful water,” the president said. Live video showed water accumulating in the center of the basin, with workers and trucks still inside the pool. Trump noted the work to paint the shallow basin a deep shade, which he calls “American flag blue,” was completed Wednesday. The administration said in a court filing that...

California voters frustrated by the routine failures of state and local leadership look set to send Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton to runoff elections for mayor and governor after the first few ballot drops. In a major rebuke of Democratic rule in both Los Angeles and the state, both Pratt and Hilton held their positions steady Wednesday night. Hilton remained in the lead for the governor’s race with 27.6% of the vote and Xavier Becerra was in second place with 25.6% with 56% of the ballots counted. Pratt remained in second place with 29.91% of the vote behind incumbent Mayor...

Explanation: What is happening inside this unusual nebula? Planetary nebula Tc 1, captured here in exquisite detail by the James Webb Space Telescope, is the celestial site where buckyballs were first identified in 2010. Buckminsterfullerene — as buckyballs are officially called — is a molecule with 60 carbon atoms (C60) arranged in the shape of a soccer ball. The molecule is named for architect Buckminster Fuller because of its resemblance to the geodesic dome he helped popularize. Webb’s new data reveal where the C60 molecules live in this nebula, and the geometry is striking: they populate a thin spherical shell...

The culprit behind all three eruptions from the sun is Earth-facing sunspot region 4455. The unstable region produced an M9.3 solar flare that peaked at 9:36 p.m. EDT June 2 (0136 a.m. GMT on June 3), followed by an M7.9 flare at 3:00 a.m. EDT (0700 GMT) and an X1 at 7:28 a.m. EDT (1128 GMT) — the most powerful category of solar flare. The trio of eruptions triggered radio blackouts across Earth. The M9.3 flare triggered a moderate R2 radio blackout across parts of East Asia and Australia, while the M7.9 eruption caused another R2 blackout affecting portions of...

The term for the political tactic of manipulating boundaries of electoral districts for unfair political advantage derives its name from a prominent 19th-century political figure -- and from a mythological salamander.The term, originally written as "Gerry-mander," first was used on March 26, 1812, in the Boston Gazette -- a reaction to the redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under Gov. Elbridge Gerry.Though the redistricting was done at the behest of his Democratic-Republican Party, it was Gerry who signed the bill in 1812. As a result, he received the dubious honor of attribution, along with its negative connotations.Gerry, in fact,...

The Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C., Cardinal Robert McElroy, on Wednesday removed a well-known priest as an exorcist of the archdiocese after he made public comments suggesting that UFO sightings were the work of demons. McElroy said the archdiocese also was cutting ties with the St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, a Washington-based nonprofit headed by the priest, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti. The archbishop said Rossetti’s statements “linking UFOs to demonic presence and the Center’s recent use of social media gravely undermine the Church’s very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism.” “There’s a danger here,” Rossetti said Friday in...

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, was caught on video calling Homeland Security Sec. Markwayne Mullin a “racist” during a House committee meeting Wednesday focused on department funding. Following the initial outburst, Green proceeded to tell Mullin to “shut up.” The Homeland Security secretary could be seen cocking his head in apparent surprise, as Green continued the verbal attack, repeating “shut up.” “Did you just tell me to shut up,” Mullin asked. As the sound of the gavel rang out, Green shouted back, “It’s my time.” “I’m not going to let anybody call me a racist chairman,” Mullen calmly told Rep. Andrew...

WASHINGTON — The mystery woman Rep. Jimmy Gomez admitted to making “mistakes” with is his best buddy Eric Swalwell’s former chief of staff, The Post can reveal. The married California Democrat had an 11-month-old child at home when he was caught in a moment of passion with Swalwell’s minxy congressional aide Yardena Wolf three years ago. Gomez, the founder of the Dads Caucus in Congress, confessed Tuesday in a statement that he cheated on his wife after The Post’s reporting on the encounter with Wolf, which kicked off a House Ethics Committee investigation, yielding fresh tips on his conduct. Wolf,...

Explanation: Over 1000 years ago, Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi published humanity’s oldest known record of the Andromeda Galaxy in "The Book of Fixed Stars" (Bodleian Library MS. Marsh 144 p. 167). 800 years later, Andromeda became the 31st entry in Charles Messier’s "Catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters". From “a small cloud” to “nebula” and now known to be our nearest major galaxy, Andromeda has remained a fundamental astronomical object. Today’s image, taken over 202 hours, shows how far we have come in our ability to observe our neighbor. The diffuse red and blue clouds are mostly foreground ionized...

But the deepest of the Finger Lakes hides secrets down below. Many have heard what can only be described as cannon shots coming out of nowhere. Known as “Seneca guns” or “Seneca drums,” the phenomenon was thought by the local Seneca Tribe to be the bellowing shouts of Manitou, the Great Spirit, when he was angry. Later, European settlers thought they were hearing ghosts of Seneca warriors still fighting for their land as the ground turned red with blood. It also inspired James Fenimore Cooper to write his short story The Lake Gun, in which he observes: “A sound resembling...

A mysterious civilization that ruled Italy long before the Roman Empire. The Etruscans were masters of the sea, legendary traders who dominated the Mediterranean. Yet, for centuries, their maritime secrets remained hidden beneath the waves. In February 1999, a high-tech COMEX robot made a stunning discovery off the French coast: an intact Etruscan shipwreck resting 70 meters deep for over 2,500 years. Loaded with hundreds of amphorae, this "interrupted journey" offers archaeologists a unique window into the trade routes and lives of these forgotten pioneers. Follow the scientific investigation to solve the enigma of the masters of the ancient sea....

Explanation: The explosion is over, but the consequences continue. About twelve thousand years ago, a relatively normal star in the constellation Vela suddenly exploded, creating a strange point of light briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of recorded history. The outer layers of the star crashed into the interstellar medium, driving a shock wave that is still visible today. The featured image, taken piecemeal over 60 hours from the Khomas Region of Namibia, captures some of that filamentary and gigantic shock in visible light, with details highlighted by hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue) emissions. As gas flies away...

We live in an age of wonders made possible by a combination of free markets and scientific advancement. This weekend a large group of oncologists, doctors who specialize in the treatment of cancer, met to show off their latest breakthroughs at a conference called ASCO26. The news from this conference is so good that it brought standing ovations from the assembled doctors. The big breakthrough that everyone is excited about involves pancreatic cancer which has long been a death sentence for many people. For instance, cartoonist Scott Adams died from metastatic prostrate cancer earlier this year. But a new drug...