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Explanation: Blasting into the predawn sky on Tuesday, October 13, a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft are headed for low Earth orbit in this stunning timelapse video captured from Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. Starting with a launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Falcon and Dragon are chasing the International Space Station on NASA's 35th Commercial Resupply Services mission. On cue, the space station itself enters the frame from the top. Almost 8 seconds into the 30 second timelapse. the bright streak of the ISS appears heading "down" toward the horizon. The first and...

A complete Roman pottery workshop laid out on a grid has been discovered in northern France by archaeologists led by Louis Florin of the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), according to a report in La Brújula Verde. The five-acre site was occupied between the first century B.C. and the third century A.D. It includes some 50 clay extraction pits, areas for preparing clay and shaping pots with wheels, and 21 kilns. The workshop was situated on the Agrippa Road, one of a network of Roman roads that made the transport of finished pots possible. The excavation also...

According to a statement released by the Leibniz Center for Archaeology (LEIZA), Aleksandr Diachenko of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Detlef Gronenborn of LEIZA and Johannes Gutenberg University evaluated the roles of population size, production capacity, and information exchange in societal changes through pottery. "We developed a mathematical model to describe how the organization and intensity of pottery production can influence the number of decoration styles," said Diachenko. "Additionally, the model reveals how pottery styles evolve through human information exchange and population growth," he explained. The study examined 7,000-year-old pottery from the Linear Pottery culture unearthed in...

“I can literally still see that video in my head,” Stratton recalls in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. In the clip, he says, was what looked like a black triangular craft with orange, white and yellow lights glowing on each corner. It moved silently before seeming to defy the laws of physics by accelerating faster than the eye could follow — and was gone. “That,” says Stratton, “was the moment that changed my world.”

Explanation: The city lights outshine the stars in the City That Never Sleeps. Who would have thought that the Milky Way could be visible in this sky? This image was taken with a filter that blocks most visible light, capturing instead only light in the near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum (with lower energy than visible light). The astrophotographer's clever setup blocks most of the light pollution from the city: old incandescent light bulbs and some neon lights are still bright in the near-infrared, but fluorescent and LED light bulbs are not. Of course, stars are also bright in the...

As AI development rapidly expands, people are replicating paid-for desktop and mobile apps with free apps, potentially changing the future of legacy software. Last week, a Reddit user named Brandon Thomas shared a project called “ArtCraft” – essentially a free rebuild of the Adobe Creative Suite, which includes programmes such as Photoshop and Adobe PDF. The recreated services have been named PhotoCraft and PdfCraft. This software package usually costs individuals $779.99 per year if paid upfront or $69.99 per month on an annual contract. Earlier this week, ArtCraft also released copies of the Microsoft Office suite. As with the Adobe...

"What if we tweaked the Constitution, amended the Second Amendment, and instead of the right to bear arms, we change it to the right to have healthcare?" That is not a college activist. That is Abdul El-Sayed — the Democratic nominee for United States Senate in Michigan — talking into his own camera, on his own channel. And it is one of many videos that he quietly made private from his channel once he decided he wanted a seat in the world’s most powerful legislative body. A U.S. Senate nominee from one of the two major national parties, who has...

A successful bodybuilder mom has died just two weeks after competing in the female division of Mr. Olympia. Marianne von Gierke, 40, died on Wednesday, Chile’s bodybuilding federation announced, without revealing the cause of death. She leaves behind an 11-year-old son. The pro bodybuilder’s death came just two weeks after she finished in 13th place in the Mr. Olympia women’s physique category. It was her second time in the top event, coming 16th in 2024. Von Gierke, who turned pro in 2021 and also worked as a trainer, was active on social media in the days before her death, with...

Mourners living in Cyprus some 3,400 years ago may have burned bouquets of whole plants during burial ceremonies, according to the Greek Reporter. Charred plant remains were found in four tombs at Hala Sultan Tekke, the site of an ancient harbor city on the island's southeastern coast. Teresa Bürge of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and her colleagues detected burnt plant remains in two ceramic jugs recovered from one of the tombs. Analysis of the residues determined that one of the vessels held barley, several varieties of wheat, figs, lentils, marigold, chrysanthemum, mallow, and viola. A Mycenaean-style jar in another...

World's oldest shipwreck found off coast of Turkey - 14/Oct/2026 | 3:47 Mark 1333 | 62.8K subscribers | 2,989 views | October 14, 2026

Explanation: What a cosmic coincidence! In today’s image, Mars joins the Beehive cluster (M44 or Praesepe) below an auroral curtain and above a horizon of happy little trees near Lansjärv, Sweden. An eruption off the Sun reached Earth on October 10th, 2026 causing strong disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field. Energetic particles from the eruption collide with and energize the molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, which release that extra energy as the colorful aurora captured here. Auroras, or guovssahasat in North Sámi, is traditionally viewed with respect by the Sámi people indigenous to Sweden and other Arctic regions. Coincidentally, Mars appeared closest...

Two powerful earthquakes have struck in the Atlantic Ocean, prompting one expert to warn of a possible seismic 'chain reaction' that could affect the US. The US Geological Survey (USGS) detected a magnitude 6.9 earthquake along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Africa and South America at 8.23am ET. A magnitude 6.7 quake struck less than seven hours earlier at 1.44am, just 50 miles north along the same seafloor fault line where the bottom of the ocean is slowly splitting apart. However, geophysicist Stefan Burns told the Daily Mail that the double earthquake was not only historic in size, but is likely...

For more than a century, the prevailing fear, dating back to English economist Thomas Malthus who lived between 1766 to 1834, was of a booming population outrunning its food supply. Famine would ensue. But Von Foerster broke from that view. He assumed (correctly, as it turns out) that human ingenuity would keep the world mostly fed. The problem, he argued, was that the population would keep accelerating, toward “infinity.” In a now infamous quote, [University of Illinois physicist Heinz]von Foerster predicted, “Our great—great—grandchildren will not starve to death,” von Foerster and his co-authors wrote. “They will be squeezed to death.”...

Filmed inside the British Museum, this episode features renowned Assyriologist Irving Finkel, exploring the Library of Ashurbanipal -- the earliest known library in human history. Built in the 7th century BCE in Nineveh, this extraordinary library preserved thousands of clay tablets covering law, science, medicine, astronomy, religion, and literature -- including the Epic of Gilgamesh. Without Ashurbanipal’s vision, much of ancient Mesopotamian knowledge would have been lost forever. King Ashurbanipal, one of the few ancient rulers who could read and write, gathered the knowledge of the known world and created humanity’s first true archive -- laying foundations for modern civilisation....

Holly Burns and about a dozen other girls walked away from a cross-country race in Washington on Tuesday. They refused to compete against a male athlete who had started the season racing on the boys’ team. When the race began, half of the girls competing, and the male athlete, took off running. Burns and the other half of the girls slowly walked forward past the starting line, and then into the nearby tree line, sacrificing one of their high school competitions. Footage of the protest has since gone viral across social media, igniting widespread awareness for one of the trans...

We finally had our first hurricane this season in the North Atlantic region: Isaias. Isaias formed on October 7 as a tropical storm in the Gulf of America, and made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on October 10 near Destin, Florida. Paul Homewood of Not a Lot of People Know That collects the relevant data in a post from October 11. Homewood notes that Isaias represents the latest ever first hurricane for the North Atlantic, at least since the satellite era (1966) has provided full data: Isaiah was the first Atlantic hurricane of the season, the latest on record....

Explanation: This stairway in Chile brings you only a little bit closer to heaven. But ooh, the sky above it makes you wonder. For example, you may wonder about the dark lane of our own Milky Way galaxy rising behind the expansive Atacama Desert in Chile, the band of zodiacal light on the upper left, the green and red airglow just above the horizon, the star Spica in the zodiacal light stripe, and, at the very top on the right, the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy. The Desert Staircase sculpture is in the foreground, and this image was timed to catch...

While we often picture ancient Athens as a quintessentially Greek city, it was actually a bustling, diverse hub deeply connected to the broader Mediterranean. This video explores the fascinating lives of Phoenician immigrants who lived, worked, and died in the Greek world. From the introduction of the alphabet and the Orientalizing period of Greek art to bilingual tombstones and the founding of Stoicism by Zeno of Citium, discover how the Phoenicians didn't just trade with the Greeks -- they integrated into their communities, permanently shaping the culture, religion, and philosophy of the classical world. The Hidden Phoenicians of Ancient Athens...

Did you know that the birthplace of democracy relied on foreign nomads to keep its citizens in line? In this video, we explore the fascinating and peculiar history of the Scythian archers in ancient Athens. Discover who these fierce warriors from the Eurasian steppe were, how they became the city's primary force for crowd control, and why Athens entrusted such a critical role to complete outsiders who had no political stake in the city at all. Scythians in Athens: The Steppe Archers Who Enforced Democracy | 12:32 History with Cy | 303K subscribers | 4,296 views | October 13, 2026

Science in Norway reports that a rescue excavation on southeastern Norway’s Svinesund Plateau, which was led by Carine Rosenvinge of the Museum of Cultural History Oslo, has uncovered a Neolithic gallery grave lined with stone slabs. The bottom of the grave was paved with smaller stones. The structure has been dated to about 4,000 years ago, when early farmers moved into the region. Flint daggers and arrowheads are usually found in such graves and attributed to warriors, Rosenvinge explained. This grave, however, only contained one arrowhead and no daggers. An amber bead, a pottery fragment, and evidence of burning were...