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Explanation: Jupiter, the Solar System's ruling gas giant, is the brightest celestial beacon at the center of this composite night skyscape. The scene was constructed by selecting the 40 exposures containing meteors from about 500 exposures made on the nights of December 13 and 14, near peak activity for this year's annual Geminid meteor shower. With each selected exposure registered in the night sky above Alentejo, Portugal, planet Earth, it does look like the meteors are streaming away from Jupiter. But the apparent radiant of the Geminid meteors is actually closer to bright star Castor, in the shower's eponymous constellation...

Explanation: What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage. Pictured here, the gravity of a massive elliptical galaxy (luminous red galaxy: LRG) has gravitationally distorted the light from a much more distant blue galaxy. More typically, such light bending results in two discernible images of the distant galaxy, but here the lens alignment is so precise that the background galaxy is distorted into a horseshoe -- a nearly complete ring: an Einstein ring. Although LRG 3-757 was discovered in 2007 in data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the image shown...

Close-up shot of a leafhopper. (© ddt - stock.adobe.com) =================================================================== Leafhopper-Inspired Nanoparticles Achieve 96% Glare Reduction in Lab Tests In A Nutshell * Nature’s inspiration: Leafhoppers coat themselves with microscopic soccer ball-shaped particles that cut reflective glare by 80-96%, making them harder for predators to spot * Manufacturing breakthrough: Penn State researchers created synthetic versions using microfluidics, producing 100,000+ particles per second, faster than traditional nanofabrication * Precise control: By tweaking polymer chemistry, scientists can dial in exact particle shapes and hole patterns to match five different natural designs * Future applications: Could lead to better anti-glare coatings, energy device...

Breaking NEWS: HHS has terminated multiple federal grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), totaling around $18-20 million and for good reason. Consider their recent track record. They have presided over the greatest decline to the health of our children that America has ever seen. The AAP has recommended that pediatricians provide gender-affirming care for children. Since summer 2021, the AAP has also recommended that all students and school staff aged 2 and older wear masks in schools, even though there is no evidence that mask use would stop transmission. These masks harm children's development because speech, language learning,...

When was the last time you cut yourself while cooking or got bruised during a hike? How long did it take for the wound to stop bothering you? Typically, when considering healing time, we think about the depth of the cut or which organs were affected. However, a study published in December 2023 conducted by professor Ellen Langer from Harvard University found another significant factor that seems to influence healing speed, altering the picture we once had. In a unique experiment, Ms. Langer and her colleagues used cupping therapy, a technique using glass cups that has been used for thousands...

Photo by Jordan Benton from Pexels ************************************************************************ How is it December already? What happened to 2025? And how did we suddenly jump from eating Easter eggs to putting up Christmas trees? To understand why our perception of time seems to bend and warp, we need to dig into how our brains tell time in the first place. The term “time perception” is actually a bit of a misnomer, because time itself isn’t “out there” to be perceived. When we perceive a color, a sound, a flavor or a touch, specialized sensory organs detect something in the environment: the wavelength of...

Explanation: Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia, whom Greek mythology credits as the vain wife of a King who long ago ruled lands surrounding the upper Nile river. Also known as Westerhout 5 (W5), the Soul Nebula houses several open clusters of stars, ridges and pillars darkened by cosmic dust, and huge evacuated bubbles formed by the winds of young massive stars. Located about 6,500 light years away, the Soul Nebula spans about 100...

Explanation: The lovely Pleiades star cluster shines in Earth's night sky, a compact group of stars some 400 light-years distant toward the constellation Taurus and the Orion Arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Recognized since ancient times, the remarkable celestial gathering is visible to the unaided eye. The Pleiades cluster is also well-placed for viewing from both northern and southern hemispheres, and over the centuries has become connected to many cultural traditions and celebrations, including the cross-quarter day celebration Halloween. In Greek myth, the Pleiades were seven daughters of the astronomical titan Atlas and sea-nymph Pleione. Galileo first sketched the...

In an extraordinary—and ominously underreported—announcement, the Department of Defense’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has openly revealed a biological research effort that could fundamentally redefine life itself. The program, called Generative Optogenetics (GO), is not science fiction. According to DARPA’s own descriptions, it aims to use light to directly write DNA and RNA sequences inside living cells, effectively turning biology into something programmable at the molecular level. This is concerning, and if it’s not obvious why then pay close attention. DARPA has publicly acknowledged the goal of directing the synthesis of DNA and RNA within living...

Explanation: What’s happening over that tree? Two very different things. On the left is the Andromeda galaxy, an object that is older than humanity and will last billions of years into the future. Andromeda (M31) is similar in size and shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy. On the right is a red sprite, a type of lightning that lasts a fraction of a second and occurs above violent thunderstorms. Red sprites were verified as real atmospheric phenomena only about 35 years ago. The tree in the center is a boab, which may live for as long as a thousand...

A new review of more than 120 studies concluded that there is little evidence supporting the use of medical cannabis for a variety of conditions, including insomnia.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved cannabinoids, a chemical compound extracted from cannabis, for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and seizures, among other conditions. Many patients use cannabinoids or other medical cannabis for other conditions, such as anorexia, insomnia, and chronic pain, either through off-label prescriptions or through state availability. A look at research published from January 2010 through September, though, showed that for many conditions, “evidence is insufficient,” researchers with the University...

Explanation: Halloween is an astronomy holiday and spooky shapes always seem to lurk in planet Earth's night skies. In fact, near the center of this telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia these swept-back interstellar clouds IC 59 (left) and IC 63 look ghostly on a cosmic scale. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren't actually ghosts. They are slowly disappearing though, under the influence of energetic radiation from hot, luminous star gamma Cas. The brightest bluish star in the frame, Gamma Cas is physically located only 3 to 4 light-years from the nebulae. Slightly closer to gamma Cas, IC 63...

The Obamas were supposed to meet with director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, the night they were allegedly killed by their son, Nick Reiner, in their home in Los Angeles. “We were supposed to be seeing them that night — last night — and we got the news,” Michelle Obama said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Monday night, when host Jimmy Kimmel asked how she was coping with the news of her friends’ murders. The former first lady said she and her husband were devastated when they learned that the legendary filmmaker and his wife, with whom they had been...

A human heart macrophage assembloid is shown using immunofluorescent microscopy imaging. The red color marks the heart muscle cells, the green color marks the macrophages and the blue color marks all cells. The scale bar in the bottom right corner of the image is 200 micrometers, or 0.2 mm, in length. Graphic courtesy of the Aguirre lab at Michigan State University. ================================================================ These tiny hearts may help develop new AFib treatments without any human (or animal) patients In a Nutshell * Researchers added immune cells called macrophages to lab-grown mini-hearts, creating a more realistic model of human heart tissue that...

Explanation: Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Gemini. That is why the major meteor shower in December is known as the Geminids -- because shower meteors all appear to come from a radiant toward Gemini. Three dimensionally, however, sand-sized debris expelled from the unusual asteroid 3200 Phaethon follows a well-defined orbit about our Sun, and the part of the orbit that approaches Earth is superposed in front of the constellation of Gemini. Therefore, when Earth crosses this orbit, the radiant point of falling debris...

Professor Benjamin Pohl, a historian at the University of Bristol, claims the masterpiece was hung on the walls at St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, Kent.It was originally designed to provide mealtime reading for medieval monks at the abbey's new refectory, Professor Pohl claims.'Just as today, in the Middle Ages mealtimes were always an important occasion for social gathering, collective reflection, hospitality and entertainment, and the celebration of communal identities,' he said.'In this context, the Bayeux Tapestry would have found a perfect setting.'While the Bayeux Tapestry is widely regarded as one of the world's most important cultural treasures, very little is...

After decades of climate panic, the left quietly abandoned the weather—proof its causes shift not with science or facts, but with whatever outrage best sustains power, protest, and cultural revolt. “Stand with Ukraine! Free Palestine! No one is illegal!” Did I forget any other empty slogans? For the last eight years, the basement-dwelling interlocutors of the left have screamed and yelled for revolution, bearing their signs, blocking the streets, and bawling in front of politicians’ homes. Conservatives and the general public have endured these mantras blasted all over social media and the airwaves. These empty epithets have dominated college campuses,...

Explanation: Sure, Halloween is an astronomy holiday. But astronomers always enjoy scanning the heavens for spook-tacular galaxies, stars, and nebulae. This favorite is item number 43 from the Beverly Lynds 1962 Catalog of Dark Nebulae, fondly known as the Cosmic Bat nebula. While its visage looks alarmingly like a scary flying mammal, Lynds Dark Nebula 43 is over 12 light-years across. Glowing with eerie light, stars are forming within the dusty interstellar molecular cloud that is dense enough to appear in silhouette against a luminous background of Milky Way stars. Watch out. This Cosmic Bat nebula is a mere 400...

Some of the most ordinary words in English have origins that no one can explain. Among them: "dog", "big", "bird", "donkey", "boy", "girl" and "puzzle". In this episode, let's trace their earliest appearances, explore the theories behind them, and unravel why these everyday words became some of our language's greatest mysteries. The English words nobody can explain | 23:24 RobWords | 887K subscribers | 478,352 views | December 6, 2025 YouTube transcript (below) reformatted at textformatter.ai

I have been writing here for about a decade that wind and solar would inevitably prove to be far more expensive for producing useful electricity than other methods like fossil fuels, nuclear, or hydro. The reasons are not difficult to understand. Wind and solar, due to intermittency, are not capable of powering a full-time electrical grid on their own. To make the grid capable of fulfilling customer demand 24/7/365, wind and solar require large amounts of additional capital infrastructure — dispatchable back-up generation, energy storage, additional transmission capacity, and more. If wind and solar prove insufficient to eliminate dispatchable back-up...