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Explanation: This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These Martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of our Solar System. The larger moon, Phobos, is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning color image from the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which can image objects as small as 10 meters. But Phobos orbits so...

The AD/CE system we use to date the year was introduced - more or less by accident - during the Middle Ages. Before its invention, the classical world used a wide range of dating systems. How did the Greeks and Romans count Years? | 7:52 toldinstone | 615K subscribers | 435,313 views | December 31, 2021

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Explanation: Eight billion people are about to disappear in this snapshot from space taken on 2022 November 21. On the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, their home world is setting behind the Moon's bright edge as viewed by an external camera on the outbound Orion spacecraft. Orion was headed for a powered flyby that took it to within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. Velocity gained in the flyby maneuver was used to reach a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That orbit is considered distant because it's another 92,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, and retrograde because the...

Who were the Celts really? Mythical druids of legend or feared warriors of antiquity? Deep inside the European Alps, sealed salt mines have preserved astonishing evidence of a powerful civilisation that flourished more than 3,000 years ago. These people were neither barbarians nor island dwellers -- they were the rulers of a vast Kingdom of Salt, enriched by one of the most valuable resources of the ancient world. Now, a remarkable discovery raises new questions. Inside a 2,400-year-old Celtic tomb, the remains of an aristocratic woman and two unusually large men are uncovered. Were they relatives, ritual sacrifices, or part...

Explanation: Very faint planetary nebula Abell 7 is about 1,800 light-years distant. It lies just south of Orion in planet Earth's skies toward the constellation Lepus, The Hare. Posing with scattered Milky Way stars, its generally simple spherical shape about 8 light-years in diameter is revealed in this deep telescopic image. The beautiful and complex shapes seen within the cosmic cloud are visually enhanced by the use of long exposures and narrowband filters that capture emission from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Otherwise Abell 7 would be much too faint to be appreciated by eye. A planetary nebula represents a very...

According to a Science in Poland report, traces of four unusual huts dated to the eleventh or twelfth century have been uncovered on an island in the Baltic Sea near the coast of Poland. Researchers were excavating an area once known as Srebrne Wzgórze on the northern edge of the medieval town, where there had been a market and craft workshops, when they unearthed the huts. “They are platforms made of clay and sand, surrounded by a ditch,” said Wojciech Filipowiak of the Polish Academy of Sciences. “Some have a hearth, some have an oven,” he added. Pottery, animal bones,...

According to a Live Science report, the 1,100-year-old graves of three warriors have been excavated in southern Hungary by a team led by Wihelm Gábor of the Katona József Museum. A total of 81 coins were recovered from the three burials. Most of these coins were minted in northern Italy during the reign of Berengar, between A.D. 888 and 924. Gábor and his colleagues suggest that the three warriors may have participated in military campaigns in northern Italy and carried the coins home. The first man was 17 or 18 years old when he died. He was buried wearing a...

Explanation: The silhouette of an intriguing dark nebula inhabits this cosmic scene. Lynds' Dark Nebula (LDN) 1622 appears against a faint background of glowing hydrogen gas only visible in long telescopic exposures of the region. In contrast, a brighter reflection nebula, vdB 62, is more easily seen just above the dusty dark nebula. LDN 1622 lies near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, close on the sky to Barnard's Loop, a large cloud surrounding the rich complex of emission nebulae found in the Belt and Sword of Orion. With swept-back outlines, the obscuring dust of LDN 1622 is thought...

A pet cow named Veronika uses a tool in a surprisingly sophisticated way—possibly because she has been allowed to live her best life. In news that is sure to delight fans of a certain Gary Larson cartoon turned meme about the limitations of bovine cognition, cow tools are real. Larson’s 1982 comic for his series The Far Side showed a cow standing behind a table bearing an array of oddly shaped objects. The text below the image read simply “cow tools.” Now a pet cow named Veronika has been documented not only using a tool but doing so in a...

Over the past couple of years, I have had several posts here expressing skepticism about whether electric vehicles (EVs) were really the wave of the future. Most recently, I had a post on December 17 noting the rapid decline of EV sales in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2025, following the expiration of certain tax credits on September 30. Overall, my take has been that the EV market has been propped up by government subsidies and benefits and, like all businesses dependent on government handouts, would likely shrink drastically (if not completely disappear) without them. For a different...

In a remarkable twist that bridges ancient ambition with cutting-edge science, physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider have achieved what medieval alchemists only dreamed of: turning lead into gold. While attempting to recreate conditions moments after the Big Bang, researchers on the ALICE experiment in Switzerland inadvertently produced minuscule quantities of the precious metal, marking an unexpected breakthrough in particle physics. The Accidental Discovery The extraordinary transformation occurred during experiments where beams of lead nuclei were fired at each other at velocities approaching the speed of light. While the primary goal was to study the primordial state of the...

Every year from mid- to late February, the setting sun hits Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall along the eastern edge of the soaring El Capitan at just the right angle, creating the illusion that the 1,575-foot waterfall is on fire. This Yosemite National Park phenomenon, aka “firefall,” is ultra-popular, and this year is expected to be even more crowded. For the first time since 2021, park reservations are not required to visit Yosemite during firefall. The past 12 months have been tumultuous for the National Park Service, with a 43-day government shutdown, changing free-entry days, and price increases. Now, its rangers will...

Explanation: A mere 56 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is an enormous barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter. That's twice the size of our own barred spiral Milky Way. This sharp image from the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveals stunning details of this magnificent spiral in infrared light. Webb's field of view stretches about 60,000 light-years across NGC 1365, exploring the galaxy's core and bright newborn star clusters. The intricate network of dusty filaments and bubbles is created by young stars along spiral arms winding from the galaxy's central bar....

Many people who successfully lost weight on Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonist drugs are having trouble weaning themselves off the injectables, according to the BBC, because the hunger for food comes roaring back with a vengeance — and hence the pounds start creeping up again, hinting that patients are likely to develop life-long dependencies on the substances. “For the first 38 years of my life, I was overweight — now I’m six stone (38kg) [83 pounds] lighter,” Tanya Hall, a Wegovy user who can’t get off the drug, told the news organization. “Therefore, there’s part of me that feels like...

An international team of researchers has found the DNA of Y. pestis in a 4,000-year-old domesticated sheep from the fortified Bronze Age settlement of Arkaim, in the southern Ural Mountains in present-day Russia, which marks the first confirmed case of a Bronze Age plague infection in a non-human host. It proves that livestock played a role in prehistoric plague dynamics.The sheep was associated with the Sintashta-Petrovka cultural complex, which was known for its sophisticated metallurgy, horse riding, and large, mobile herds. Genetic studies indicate that the bacterium found in the sheep belongs to the Late Neolithic–Bronze Age plague lineage that...

Brusselstown Ring lies within the Baltinglass hillfort cluster, a landscape of up to 13 large hilltop enclosures that shows nearly continuous activity from the Early Neolithic through the Bronze Age. What is singular about Brusselstown, however, is its extraordinary scale and layout. Two widely spaced ramparts surround the site, with the outer boundary encompassing not only the main hillfort but also the nearby Neolithic enclosure at Spinas Hill 1. Enclosures extending across more than one hill are rare in Ireland and Britain and are very uncommon even in later Iron Age Europe.Airborne and topographical surveys identified more than 600 subtle...

More than 7,000 artifacts, including clay seal impressions, clay tokens, figurines, and cylinder seals, have been uncovered at Tapeh Tyalineh, a 5,000-year-old site on the Mereg River in western Iran, according to The Greek Reporter. The objects were found in the remnants of mudbrick structures and in trash pits. Shokouh Khosravi of the University of Kurdistan said that the artifacts would have been used to mark jars, seal doors, and keep track of goods such as grain, oil, and possibly wine. The more than 200 designs on the artifacts are similar to those seen on seal impressions from other Early...

As I was typing in a contribution to Free Republic and ready to hit the Enter Key, it all disappeared. Yep all that I had typed had simply disappeared. No warning message, nothing. Has it happened to anyone else? Then it hit me,