Free Republic

Explanation: Do young stars blow bubbles? The larger view shows a stellar field observed with the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and the inset highlights HD 61005, a star like our Sun, only 120 light-years away. Much younger than the Sun, at just about 100 million years old, it blows a fast and dense stellar wind that pushes out the cooler dust and gas that surrounds it, forming a bubble called an astrosphere. The star-blown bubble was detected with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and it has a diameter roughly 200 times the Earth-Sun distance. Our Sun has a bubble...

Could bacteria replace your eye drops? Mice study says maybeIn A Nutshell -Researchers engineered a naturally occurring eye bacterium to secrete an anti-inflammatory healing protein directly on the eye’s surface -In mice, a single course of three bacterial applications kept the microbes active for 12 weeks and sped corneal wound healing -The bacteria preserved the eye’s normal immune defenses and did not increase susceptibility to infection -A human version of the therapy showed early promise in lab tests, but clinical use in people is still years away Forget the eye drops. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have engineered a...

For the first time in history, an international team of scientists and divers explores the depths of Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake. This documentary follows a high-stakes archaeological mission into a world of legends, uncovering pre-Columbian artifacts submerged for millennia. Join us as we reveal the hidden history of an underwater heritage and rewrite the story of ancient South American civilizations. Lake Titicaca's Sunken Civilization: The First Archeological Mission | 52:33 Show Me the World and History & Civilisations | 11,601 views | February 18, 2026

Lucy Biggers was once a devoted acolyte of the climate cult, affiliated with “activists” like AOC and Greta Thunberg. Then Covid happened, and, to give credit where it’s due, Biggers saw through the lunacy, wondering how in the world the people were expected to get to zero carbon emissions—the stated goal of the climate cult—if the oppressive lockdowns and forced quarantines only resulted in a (roughly) 5% decrease over the year? (That 5% number was offered by Biggers, though don’t take it as fact because I actually don’t know myself what the numbers are.) Like many others, Biggers was depressed,...

Explanation: Earlier this week, Earth’s shadow swept across the full Moon in the year’s only total lunar eclipse. This stunning sequence combines images showing the Moon’s path across the night sky. Each lunar image captures our planet’s shadow gradually engulfing the Moon, culminating in its red glow. Sunlight scatters and refracts as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere toward the Moon. Shorter wavelength light (blue and green) scatters more efficiently, leaving red, orange, and yellow hues to paint the lunar surface. Tsé Bit'a'í (”rock with wings”, also known as Shiprock), located in Navajo Nation, provides a powerful volcanic foreground central to...

Dramatic footage has captured the moment an Israeli stealth fighter shot down an Iranian jet in a first-of-its-kind combat strike on Wednesday. Footage released by the Israeli Defense Forces on Thursday showed the Israeli F-35 jet focusing in on its target – a Russian-made Iranian Yak-130 – over Tehran before the air-to-air kill. A streak of light can be seen blazing across the screen as the enemy plane comes down. “Target down. The target is down. Continue for strike,” Israeli forces say in the video, which is played to the “Star Wars” theme tune. It was the first shootdown in...

According to a statement released by Leiden University, a groundbreaking ancient DNA study has provided new information about a pivotal transitional period in prehistoric Europe. The research underscored the remarkable genetic stability in the Low Countries and shed new light on the mysterious origins of the so-called Bell Beaker culture. A team of geneticists and archaeologists analyzed the genomes of 112 individuals who lived in the Rhine–Meuse region of the Low Countries -- today's Netherlands, Belgium, and northwestern Germany -- between 8500 and 1700 b.c. The data revealed that when Europe's first farmers arrived from Anatolia around 4,500 years ago,...

ILULISSAT, Greenland (AP) — Fisherman Helgi Áargil no longer knows what to expect on Greenland ‘s fjords, where he spends up to five days at a time on his boat with his dog, Molly, and the ever-changing northern lights in the sky as company. Last year, his boat got stuck in ice that broke off the nearby glacier. This year, it’s been very wet instead. His income is just as unpredictable. An outing could bring him around 100,000 Danish kroner (about $15,700), or nothing at all. The Arctic’s rapidly changing climate is bringing more questions for Greenland, the semiautonomous territory...

Explanation: What’s looking back at you isn’t a cosmic eye, but Shapley 1, a beautifully symmetric planetary nebula. Shapley 1, also known as the Fine Ring Nebula or PLN 329+2.1, bejewels the southern sky constellation of the Carpenter's Square (Norma). The nebula is the result of a star near the mass of our Sun running out of fuel and shedding its outer layers. Glowing oxygen from those expelled layers makes up the circular halo. The bright central point is actually a binary: a white dwarf, the remaining stellar core after the outer layers are expelled into space, and another star,...

Proposed labeling change has become a priority for Tracy Beth HoegThe FDA's top drug regulator, Tracy Beth Hoeg, MD, PhD, is working to hire a researcher and friend who wants the agency to add new warnings to antidepressants about unproven pregnancy risks, the Associated Press has learned. Adam Urato, MD, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and critic of antidepressant safety, is pressing the FDA to add a boxed warning to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the drugs most commonly prescribed for depression. Urato's petition says the medications can cause pregnancy complications, including miscarriages and fetal brain abnormalities that may lead to...

Utah leaders are aggressively pursuing nuclear power, but a controversial “poison pill” lingers: what to do with the dangerous waste. Now the state is exploring whether to become one of the antidotes for the nation — by potentially storing nuclear waste in the massive salt deposit in Millard County. Caverns carved into the salt dome already hold natural gas liquids, gasoline and other fuels. Separate storage of hydrogen began there this year. The Trump administration wants states to volunteer as hosts for “nuclear lifecycle innovation campuses” — sites that will take radioactive material for a variety of uses, like storage,...

Deep in the Taurus Mountains, an unexcavated ancient city still waits. Selge: hidden, silent, and far older than Rome itself. This is its story. Selge: The Unexcavated Ancient City Hidden Above the Canyon | 21:44 Rumiseus -- Lost Civilizations | 426 subscribers | 392 views | March 1, 2026

Scientists think they may have discovered an ancient Roman board game with a little help from artificial intelligence. Did AI Just Solve an Ancient Roman Mystery? | 14:14Dig It With Raven | 76.7K subscribers | 12,122 views | March 1, 2026

A new method of studying the contents of soil samples has revealed Stone Age people in Sweden were buried in decorated fur-and-feather clothing.More than seven millennia ago, Stone Age mourners in what is now Sweden buried a boy with a crown of woodpecker feathers and, in another grave, interred a woman with multicolored fur-and-feather footwear, a new study finds.These details were unearthed thanks to a newly developed technique that can identify traces of hair and feathers in soil taken from ancient graves, the researchers said...In the study, published Feb. 20 in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Kirkinen and colleagues...

Explanation: If you could fly over the North Pole of Mars, what would you see? Images from ESA’s Mars Express mission in 2019 were compiled into the featured video which shows just such a trip. First you see below you a landscape tinted orange by rusted iron in the fine soil, with some land appearing darker due to exposed rock. Soon the northern polar cap comes into view, mostly white because of its reflective frozen water. Surrounding the polar cap is the North Polar Basin, a layered depression covered with dust and sand. The frames in the featured video were...

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his pediatrician wife Priscilla Chanhave bought a waterfront mansion in Miami that’s still under construction... The property on ultra-exclusive Indian Creek Island, otherwise known as ‘Billionaire Bunker,’ was on the market for $200 million. The price that Zuckerberg and Chan agreed to pay: a colossal $170 million. A message seeking comment from Zuckerberg was not returned by press time. The couple’s move from California to Florida follows in the recent footsteps of fellow online billionaires Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who are the co-founders of Google. They’re fleeing the Golden State as California prepares to...

Critics, including us, have been warning that New Yorkers’ energy costs are about to soar even higher, thanks to the state’s insane 2019 climate law. Now, a state agency itself is confirming those warnings — and has even put a price tag on the pain: a whopping $4,100 a year extra per household by 2031. That’s just for electricity, reports the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency; the bill for gas for home heating, as well as gasoline costs, are also set to shoot up. At the pump a gallon of gas is expected to go up an...

Explanation: How well do you know the night sky? OK, but how well can you identify famous sky objects in a very deep image? Either way, here is a test: see if you can find some well-known night-sky icons in a deep image filled with filaments of normally faint dust and gas. This image contains the Pleiades star cluster, Barnard's Loop, Orion Nebula, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Witch Head Nebula, Eridanus Loop, and the California Nebula. To find their real locations, here is an annotated image version. The reason this task might be difficult is similar to the reason it is initially...

But a new study has found a growing connection between cannabis use and detrimental effects on mental health. Smoking weed has previously been found to have an impact on the brain by altering dopamine activity that closely resembles patterns observed in psychosis. Now, a study led by McMaster University and published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry has shown that increasing cannabis use and worsening mental health symptoms are appearing together more and more often. “We see that Canadians who use cannabis tend to be more likely to meet criteria for anxiety and depressive disorders, and more likely to report...

New York University Abu Dhabi creates oral LED alternative designed to regulate appetiteAn enterprising team of scientists in Abu Dhabi have harnessed cutting-edge technology in a long-term quest to provide patients with a "holy grail" alternative to hugely popular weight-loss drugs. The researchers from New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have developed a tiny ingestible device that emits light and, in doing so, could stimulate nerve cells or neurons in the gut, potentially altering which nutrients are absorbed or affecting whether a person feels hungry. Dr Khalil Ramadi, an assistant professor of bioengineering at NYUAD, who heads the team...