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You may know King Harold II for one thing: losing the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But is this Harold's whole story? In 2023 a remarkable coin hoard was discovered in Yorkshire, England, that shows Harold in a different light. This is the first recorded hoard of coins which can definitely be dated to the year 1066. Containing only coins struck during Harold’s brief reign of 282 days, the hoard reveals a king whose authority was recognised across England, and whose government could produce new coins with great speed. Join Elina Screen, Curator of Medieval and Modern Coin Collections at...

Explanation: How was the Saturn system imaged so clearly? Astrophotographer Tom Williams captured such exquisite details due to one night of exceptional atmospheric conditions above the United Kingdom. This means more than a cloudless sky. Pockets of air at different temperatures and densities move around and bend light as it travels through Earth’s atmosphere, distorting astronomy images. This is called “seeing.” Less atmospheric turbulence means clearer images. The astrophotographer reduced the impact of seeing with the lucky imaging technique: thousands of short-exposure images are taken very quickly with a high-speed camera and the clearest images are added up. Which object...

AI firms say simulations are being used to identify which pharmaceutical programs are worth moving forward and to assess the value of acquisition targets. As AI tools get better at flagging clinical risks, they say unexpected trial failures may become less frequent. Novartis' experimental del-desiran for a rare type of muscular dystrophy was expected to be a winner, with the Swiss company's CEO predicting annual peak sales of $5 billion. When a late-stage trial missed its goal last month, shares fell 11%, erasing $30 billion in market value. AI start-up BioinvestGPT was not surprised. In July, it ran a simulated...

xplanation: "Happy New Year!" No, wait, this is not a fireworks display. This image shows Nebula Pa 30, observed with the Gemini North Telescope in Hawai'i. It is likely the remnant of an old supernova explosion: separate historical records by Chinese, Japanese and Arabic astronomers tell of a "guest star" that appeared in the sky for 185 days in the year 1181. It is believed that this bright new point of light came from the supernova that caused the fireworks in Pa 30. Astronomers don't know exactly what happened in this unusual explosion, classified as a Type Iax supernova, but...

Human beings tend to be anthropocentric. That is, we often see ourselves as evolution's magnum opus despite the fact that, as biomass goes, we're insignificant compared to plants and other animals. For instance, scientists estimate that there are more than three trillion trees on Earth—a number that even dwarfs the amount of stars in our galaxy. And when you add the populations of the more than 380,000 other plant species, the total becomes mind-boggling. Nonetheless, many of us assume that we're the smartest, most conscious beings on Earth. But what if consciousness isn't a feature limited solely to humans—and what...

Augustus, ancient Rome's first emperor, placed a gilded monument called the Milliarium Aureum, or Golden Milestone, in the Roman Forum in 20 BC to mark the symbolic starting point for all roads in the sprawling empire. These roads indeed were the backbone of the world's first continental-scale transportation system. Now, researchers ‌have conducted a detailed structural analysis of the empire's road network, spanning roughly 190,000 miles (300,000 km) of routes crisscrossing Europe, the Middle East and North Africa... The researchers also documented a correlation in many regions between the old Roman roads and modern highways... Some roads were very ⁠durable,...

Explanation: Have you ever seen a complete auroral oval? You can't see one from the ground because it makes too large a circle around one of Earth's magnetic poles. But spacecraft high above the Earth can see them. The featured video from ESA and CAS's robotic SMILE spacecraft shows not only a full auroral oval, but using ultraviolet light, one that occurred during the day. The time-lapse covers about an hour in late July and shows visually how variable and turbulent auroras really are. The points of light on the sides are distant stars that appear to move only because...

In central Libya, the endless flat desert of the Sahara gives way to something unexpected: a jet-black ocean of frozen rock. Covering more than 40,000 square kilometers, Al Haruj is one of the largest volcanic fields in Africa, shaped over millions of years by repeated eruptions. Hundreds of extinct cinder cones and ancient fissure vents rise from its sun-baked plateau, where dark basalt flows meet the shifting sands. In this documentary, we explore the volcanic history of this remote landscape and how vast lava flows reshaped the Sahara, leaving behind one of North Africa's most desolate and striking geological monuments....

Explanation: A deep image of the Sombrero galaxy reveals surprises. M104 is named the Sombrero galaxy because, on shorter exposures, it looks like a hat. A key defining feature of this huge galaxy is a dark brim of dust that circles the disk galaxy's center. A much longer exposure, however, brings up a hairy past where a bright, hazy halo is revealed that extends well past the central disk and contains many unresolved stars. Surprisingly, in this stellar haze, structures can be seen that include a diagonal ring. These structures and tidal streams provide fresh evidence that M104 had a...

A Moscow drone slammed into Kyiv’s key Northern Bridge on Sunday, leading to a fiery explosion during a visit from Germany’s top official — as Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly preparing a mass military mobilization. Dramatic footage from the Ukrainian capital showed a Russian drone crashing into the busy span during morning traffic, with a large fireball erupting from the explosion. Cars could be seen rushing through the blast area to get to the other side as fire and black smoke overtook one side of the bridge. Miraculously, only two people were injured in the incident, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy...

Boulder, Colorado, has spent decades wearing a nickname most towns would take as an insult: “The People's Republic of Boulder.” It’s a college town of roughly 100,000 people, where the politics climb about as high as … the elevation. But now Boulder wants to export its “Rocky Mountain High,” and it’s headed to the Supreme Court. At stake before SCOTUS is whether that town gets to set energy policy for the rest of America. That’s the real question in Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, no matter how carefully supporters dress it up. In 2018, the City...

The fortified hilltop settlement of Spišský Štvrtok is one of the most significant sites of the earlier prehistory of central Europe. It dates to the transitional period between the Early and the Middle Bronze Age with a cultural affiliation to the Otomani-Füzesabony culture, c. 1700–1500 b.c. The village of Spišský Štvrtok (located in an area called Spišská Nová Ves, which is also a town) is situated on an oblong hill adjacent to a valley in the undulated country of eastern Slovakia at Myšia Hôrka in the Carpathian Basin. The hill rises very steeply on the western side and more gradually...

['Civ sez: I call this one the ADHD house sleuth video.] Man Finds Secret Passage In His 500 Year Old Home's Library | 5:01 Zenger | 19.7K subscribers | 2,164,200 views | October 28, 2021

Explanation: Yes, but can your rainbow do this? After the remnants of Hurricane Florence passed over the Jersey Shore, New Jersey, USA in 2018, the Sun came out in one direction but something quite unusual appeared in the opposite direction: a hall of rainbows. Over the course of the next half hour, to the delight of the photographer and his daughter, vibrant supernumerary rainbows faded in and out, with at least five captured in this featured single shot. Supernumerary rainbows only form when falling water droplets are all nearly the same size and typically less than a millimeter across. Then,...

Pubs are fertile ground for tall tales, with many claiming to be the oldest pub in England. What Is the Oldest Pub in England? | 7:58 | Historic England | 30.9K subscribers | 203,944 views | October 1, 2026

The ancient city of Phaselis, a short distance from Antalya, is picturesquely poised between the Mediterranean and the hills of Lycia. Phaselis: Between Mountains and Sea | 7:11 Scenic Routes to the Past | 62.5K subscribers | 21,635 views | September 18, 2026 Chapters 0:00 Introduction 1:07 Central Harbor 2:04 Main street and agoras 4:47 Theater 6:26 Gate of Hadrian

Explanation: On sol 1943 of its journey of exploration across the surface of Mars, the Curiosity Rover recorded this selfie at the south rim of Vera Rubin Ridge. Of course a sol is a Martian solar day, about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. Curiosity's sol 1943 corresponds to Earth date January 23, 2018. Also composed as an interactive 360 degree VR, the mosaicked panorama combines 61 exposures taken by the small car-sized rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Frames containing the imager's arm have been edited out while the extended background used was taken by the rover's Mastcam...

Chinese AI company Moonshot AI has launched an internal investigation after a researcher found that one of its models could be manipulated into providing instructions for developing biological weapons and carrying out assassinations, Fox News senior foreign policy correspondent Gillian Turner reported Thursday. Researcher Peter Garrigan told Fox News Moonshot AI's Kimi model could also be manipulated to provide information on planning terrorist attacks using real-time data, creating sarin gas, developing malware and taking down aircraft. "What we found is quite damaging and worrying," Garrigan said. The findings are raising broader concerns about advanced AI models concealing capabilities or behaving...

Explanation: What does it take to image hundreds of nebulas? Today’s image contains the entire Sharpless Catalog of H II Regions, totaling 313 objects. Zoom in and explore! You may spot fan favorites like the Eagle (Sh2-49), Heart (Sh2-190), and Orion (Sh2-281) Nebulas. Despite its name, this catalog contains more than the glow of ionized hydrogen that makes up H II regions. There are planetary nebulas (the Medusa Nebula, Sh2-274) and supernova remnants (the Spaghetti Nebula, Sh2-240) as well. Astrophotographer Bing Xin traversed the dark skies of Eastern China and Inner Mongolia to catch them all. Narrowband filters that primarily...

The laws already on the books cover a lot of harmful conduct involving AI, but they do not cover everything cleanly. As of October 2026, the U.S. still does not have one comprehensive federal AI law. Instead, AI is governed through a mixture of existing laws, agency authority, executive policy, and state laws.