Free Republic

Explanation: What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. Taken from Krakow, Poland, the featured view utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Seen here right of the Bubble's center, a bright hot star is embedded in the nebula's reflecting dust. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from the star, which likely has...

Around 80 million years ago, a stretch of tropical coastline in what is now north-eastern Italy was lashed by monsoon rains and tropical cyclones. Those storms swept dinosaur carcasses, crocodiles, plants and river mud onto a tidal flat, where the tides and a film of microbes sealed everything away with extraordinary preservation.My colleagues and I have published a new study that reconstructs the violent tropical climate behind the Villaggio del Pescatore Lagerstätte near Trieste and reveals it preserves just four decades of life, recorded almost day by day. The Villaggio del Pescatore site near Trieste is one of the most...

Absolutely NOTHING appears in the CONUS North of about 39.5 degrees from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans. This is quite unusual, I believe

Explanation: How do clusters of galaxies form? Since our universe moves too slowly to watch, faster-moving computer simulations are created to help find out. One famous effort is TNG50 from IllustrisTNG, an upgrade of the famous Illustris Simulation. The first part of the featured video tracks cosmic gas (mostly hydrogen) as it evolves into galaxies and galaxy clusters from the early universe to today, with brighter colors marking faster moving gas. As the universe matures, gas falls into gravitational wells, galaxies forms, galaxies spin, galaxies collide and merge, all while black holes form in galaxy centers and expel surrounding gas...

Ask someone who investigates foodborne illness for a living what they won't put on their plate, and the list is shorter—and stranger—than you'd expect. It's not that these experts live in fear. Most will tell you that all food carries some risk, and the real skill is deciding which risks are worth taking. Frank Yiannas, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s former deputy commissioner for food policy and response, says he doesn't think of foods as simply "good" or "bad." Instead, "I approach everything with what I would say is a quantitative risk assessment," he says. "I'm calculated." Still, after...

Explanation: The Seas of Tranquility and Serenity are calm today. They're calm most every day though, since they are actually lunar maria, ancient lava flows filling in large impact basins on the Moon. Also known by Latin names Mare Tranquillitatis (right) and Mare Serenitatis, the smooth dark lunar "seas" are in stark contrast to the bright cratered lunar highlands surrounding them in this telescopic view. Of course their names are based on the historical, pre-telescopic designations of lunar maria. Easily visible to the unaided eye, the broad features on the Moon's near side were imagined to be like the expansive...

Nearly 2,000 years after it was first built, we're discovering just how ingenious Roman central heating really was. For eight days, a team of volunteers heated our reconstructed Roman hypocaust continuously. This was an experiment to find out what temperatures can be achieved, how long does the system take to get up to temperature and how long does the system retain the temperature once the fire has been extinguished. Our hypocaust is based on archaeological evidence from the remarkable Sparsholt Roman Villa, located around 6 km NW of Winchester, England. The excavation was one of the earliest Roman villas in...

In my own professional life, I was not a scientist, and therefore I never much paid attention to the kinds of rewards and honors that practicing scientists pass out to each other. But at some point I became aware that there was something called the National Academy of Sciences, and that among scientists it was considered a big deal to get selected to become a member. This membership is one of those things that you cannot apply for; rather, one day you get “tapped” by some committee of super-elite gurus who invite you to come learn the secret handshake. Here’s...

Explanation: In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a new star in the Nanmen asterism. That part of the sky is identified with part of the southern constellation Centaurus on modern star charts. In fact, the new star was reported to be visible to the naked eye for months before it faded from view, and is now thought to be the earliest recorded supernova. In this 21st century telescopic image, the wispy outlines of a faint emission nebula recognized as the remnant of that historical stellar explosion can be traced against a starry background. The ragged but roughly...

In the heart of the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan, a city over 5,000 years old lay dormant beneath the sands. Thanks to excavations led by an international team, this ancient city is about to be reborn in the light of the present. Led for over ten years by Italian archaeologist Gabriele Rossi Osmida, this research has revealed the existence of a mysterious culture: the Oasis Civilization. These cities, spread along an ancient trade route between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, bear witness to a refined and organized people, connected to the other great cultures of the time: Mesopotamia, Elam, and the Indus...

Explanation: Have you ever seen another galaxy with your own eyes? The featured image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the closest neighbors of our Milky Way. If you are anywhere south of latitude 20° N (but the further south, the better), you can see it with the unaided eye if you go to a dark sky location, away from big cities and light polution. It is a dwarf irregular galaxy about 163,000 light-years away, and a member of our Local Group of galaxies. Despite being small, with a total mass approximately equivalent to 10% - 20% of...

Explanation: The Southern Crown (Corona Australis) dazzles with young and ancient celestial jewels. The Corona Australis Cloud is a collage of reflection and emission nebulae on the left of today’s image. At 430 light years away, this cloud is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth. It contains gas cool enough (-260 Celsius or -440 Fahrenheit) to collapse into protostars. Recently formed stars paint blue hues across the cloud as their light reflects off surrounding material. The waltz of the R Coronae Australis binary system stirs up the nebula NGC 6729. The younger of the pair ionizes nearby gas...

On February 13 this year, the federal EPA rescinded one of its regulatory actions known as the “Endangerment Finding.” (EF). The EF, originally adopted in 2009 early in the Obama administration, was likely the single most costly and destructive regulatory action ever to spring forth from the administrative state. The EF became the fundamental underpinning for all the subsequent regulations that sought to restrict and ultimately ban use of fossil fuels in the economy — everything from regulations seeking to force closure of power plants, to efforts to mandate only electric cars, to restrictions on drilling and pipelines, and much,...

Hunter Biden is on a media blitz campaign, using far-right influencers with millions of social media followers to promote his brand and hawk his new collection of art work — which is going for eye-popping sums, sources told The Post. According to the operations manager of the “Hunter Biden Studio,” Biden is selling a 36-by-36-inch canvas, “Watchers,” for $54,000 — “and every sale includes a private video call with Hunter, in which he speaks personally about the painting.” And sources say he has recently appeared on the podcasts of extremists like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens not as some great...

Narrated by Dan Aykroyd, World War II: Saving the Reality tells the story of Kenneth W. Rendell, an individual who owns the largest private collection of World War II artifacts in the world. Dan Aykroyd Reveals One Man's Incredible WWII Collection World War II: Saving the Reality | 55:10 Stash - War & Military | Free Movies 14.4K subscribers | 351,107 views | May 22, 2026

Explanation: Is this a fossilized turtle on Mars? No. Although resembling a large Earth tortoise, this is a layered rock outcrop on Mars that is estimated to span about 15 meters, making it much larger than turtles on Earth. NASA’s robotic Curiosity rover came across this unusual mound, dubbed Miraflores, last month during its 4922nd Martian day exploring Mars. The small butte may survive because it was somehow more resistant to erosion than surrounding rock. More recent wind has now covered its top with orange Martian sand. Below the top shell, many layers of stratified rock are visible, possibly indicating...

A prominent black Big Apple politician compared Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s cronies in the Democratic Socialists of America to white supremacists as a bitter rift among Democrats spilled out onto social media. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards went in on the DSA’s longstanding complaint among minority lawmakers of ignoring race in its crusade to grow its ranks and dismantle capitalism. “White supremacy comes in all forms,” Richards posted on social media late Sunday. The slap erupted from an debate online after a report in the New York Times that highlighted how the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party focuses on...

Explanation: What's happening in the Statue of Liberty nebula? Bright stars and interesting molecules are forming and being liberated. The complex nebula resides in the star forming region called RCW 57, and besides the iconic monument, to some looks like a flying superhero or a weeping angel. This re-assigned color image showcases dense knots of dark interstellar dust, fields of glowing hydrogen gas ionized by these stars, and great loops of gas expelled by dying stars. A detailed study of NGC 3576, also known as NGC 3582 and NGC 3584, uncovered at least 33 massive stars in the end stages...

Amongst Americans, there's a common view that river monsters live elsewhere – in deep, wide rivers zig-zagging across foreign, untamed lands. Think vast Eurasia. And it's true, the supercontinent is home to some seriously ginormous freshwater fish. Beluga sturgeons, which live primarily in the Caspian and Black Seas but sometimes swim up their adjoining rivers, can extend over twenty feet in length and weigh more than 2,000 pounds! The species rivals the great white shark for the title of largest actively predatory fish. Further south and east, the Mekong River is home to stingrays and catfish that regularly tip the...

Explanation: A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters. The year was 2004, and no space aliens were involved. The saucer, pictured here, was the Genesis sample return capsule, part of a human-made robot Genesis spaceship launched in 2001 by NASA itself to study the Sun. The unexpectedly hard landing at over 300 kilometers per hour occurred because the parachutes did not open as planned. The Genesis mission had been orbiting the Sun collecting solar wind particles that are usually deflected away by Earth's magnetic field. Despite the...