Free Republic

The XA103 is being built under the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program to improve fuel efficiency, thermal management, and power output. Pratt & Whitney clears major XA103 milestone. Pratt & Whitney Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of RTX, has completed a fully digital assembly-readiness review for its XA103 adaptive engine. This breakthrough is a key step in the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program. With this milestone, the company can now begin ordering hardware and prepare to assemble the first physical test engine later this decade. This review signifies the end of an important design...

Explanation: Today’s composite image features something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue! Comet R3 PanSTARRS, streaking across the right of the image, likely originated from the Oort Cloud, meaning it is an old Solar System relic from billions of years ago. It’s bright extended ion tail glows blue as the gas escaping the comet’s core is ionized by sunlight. Astronomers are fascinated by comets for all sorts of reasons: comet compositions are untouched time capsules containing the building blocks of Solar System planets; comets may have delivered water to the young Earth; the behavior of cometary tails shed...

San Francisco public school officials’ sneaky new plan for massive school closures was hidden even from the district’s furious school board, according to a new report. The San Francisco Unified School District plans to close an unidentified number of schools by 2030 to deal with some 14,000 empty seats in the rapidly shrinking district, according to a memo sent to parents last month. Like other urban districts in California and across the country, the City by the Bay has seen years of enrollment declines in public schools which reflect declining birth rates and other demographic changes blamed on rising prices,...

The Nahal Mishmar Hoard is an archaeological discovery of more than 400 copper objects from the Chalcolithic period, found in the Judean Desert in 1961 by Pessah Bar-Adon, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in a cave at Nahal Mishmar, west of the Dead Sea. It was found by chance during an expedition searching for more of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.The findings from Nahal Mishmar represent one of the most important hoards of ancient metal objects ever discovered and provide scholars with valuable insight into Copper Age metallurgy and society in the Levant. The objects, mostly made...

Researchers led by Elena Klenina and Andrzej B. Biernacki of Adam Mickiewicz University and their colleagues identified intestinal parasites in residues taken from four chamber pots recovered from two archaeological sites in the Roman province of Moesia Inferior, which is located in what is now Bulgaria, according to a La Brújula Verde report. Three of the pots in the study were found in a villa located near the Legio I Italica army camp, where high-ranking officials likely stayed when they visited the region. Cryptosporidium, a protozoan that can cause severe diarrhea, was one of the parasites detected in the second-century...

He’s being placeholder-ed in an awkward position. Mayor Zohran Mamdani could be forced to release his executive budget Tuesday with “placeholder” estimates on key sources of revenue, after he tried to rely on dysfunction-riddled Albany to reach a deal on its own spending plan and bail out the Big Apple, insiders revealed. The potential fill-in-the-blanks city budget plan is exactly what Mamdani tried to avert when he delayed its release from May 1 in hopes that Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers would reach a deal on its own long-delayed budget and give the city a windfall of new tax...

Remarkable footage captured some of the recent gang battles that unleashed 182 bullets in the middle of Brooklyn streets — with one brazen thug firing minutes after a court-ordered meeting, officials said Monday. “It’s unnerving,” admitted borough District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, who picked up a gun used in one of the crimes to show reporters at the briefing but said he wouldn’t handle another — because it still had blood on it. The chilling videos “give you a sense of the brutal war that is being waged on some of our streets,” he said. The horrific caught-on-camera gun violence included...

A powerful M5.7 solar flare erupted from the sun on May 10, unleashing an impressive coronal mass ejection (CME) that could deliver Earth a glancing blow later this week and potentially spark northern lights displays at high latitudes. The eruption peaked at 9:39 a.m. EDT (1339 GMT) from sunspot region AR4436, now rotating into Earth's "strike zone" on the sun's northeastern limb. As the active region swings further into view over the next few days, any major flares or CMEs it produces will have a greater chance of being directed toward Earth. While most of the recently launched CME appears...

A Vietnamese factory worker was killed after falling into a giant industrial shredder, with a horrific video showing the moment he was sucked into the machine. Ro Mah J, 34, was standing inside a large container feeding material into the machine just after 6 a.m. Thursday when his tool suddenly got stuck, local outlet Dan Tri reported. He frantically tried to yank his tool out of the shredder before being dragged into the machine at the Chanh Tay Gia Lai Joint Stock Company plant, disappearing out of shot. Seconds later, a spurt of water shot out of the container.

Explanation: These people are not in danger. What is coming down from the left is just the Moon, far in the distance. Luna appears so large here because she is being photographed through a telescopic lens. What is moving is mostly the Earth, whose spin causes the Moon to slowly disappear behind Mount Teide, a volcano in the Canary Islands of Spain off the northwest coast of Africa. The people pictured are 16 kilometers away and many are facing the camera because they are watching the Sun rise behind the photographer. It is not a coincidence that a full moon...

Fearing mass firings, scientists made a desperate choice that could have lasting repercussionsIt takes a village to preserve the world’s most endangered species, and last year, the team tasked with protecting the Devils Hole pupfish — a critically endangered fish found only in a single pool called Devils Hole in Death Valley National Park — faced an agonizing decision. That March, the number of pupfish had cratered to just 20 individuals, such that the species was facing imminent extinction. At the same time, staff at federal agencies were being laid off en masse by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency...

Just as it faces an annual hurricane season and tornado season, North America is also experiencing an annual "fireball season," according to NASA."From February through April, the appearance rate of these very bright meteors can increase by as much as 10 percent to 30 percent, especially around the weeks of the March equinox," NASA explained in a statement in late March. "Exactly why is not known. Some astronomers think the Earth passes through more large debris at this time of year, causing an uptick in fireball sightings."...The American Meteor Society, which has gathered professional and amateur meteor reports since 1911,...

The hantavirus cruise continues to stay on everyone’s mind as many of us prepare for the possibility of experts enforcing mask mandates and quarantine protocols. I don’t think it will come to that, but those who disembarked from a cruise ship that left Argentina last April are being monitored for exposure to a rare strain of the pathogen, which can be transmitted from person to person. Hantavirus “Patient Zero” has been identified as Leo Schilperoord, a 70-year-old Dutch ornithologist who visited a landfill in Argentina, containing rodents potentially carrying the Andes virus strain. pic.twitter.com/6EHWy2RH5u— Interesting AF (@interesting_aIl) May 9, 2026Usually,...

Summary: Scientists at the University of Rochester pulled off a remarkable experiment: they transferred a longevity-related gene from the famously long-lived naked mole rat into mice, and the mice ended up healthier and lived longer. The special gene boosts production of a substance called high molecular weight hyaluronic acid, which appears to protect against cancer, reduce inflammation, and support healthier aging. The modified mice showed stronger resistance to tumors, healthier guts, and lower levels of age-related inflammation.

The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Service (CAL OES) is working with local agencies after an earthquake swarm struck near Brawley in Imperial County over the weekend, with the strongest earthquake reported as a magnitude 4.7. As of 12 p.m. Sunday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) had recorded 354 earthquakes that struck in Imperial County, which started at 5:40 p.m. on Friday with several microearthquakes. Hundreds of earthquakes cause light to no damage Saturday night into Sunday morning in Imperial County in Southern California (USGS)Residents near Brawley reported feeling strong shaking from the 4.7 magnitude earthquake that struck at...

Explanation: Orion never had a sword like this. As Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) heads out of the inner Solar System, it is putting on quite a show for long exposure cameras. Currently seen toward the constellation of Orion the Hunter, the distant Orion Nebula is visible on the upper right. Comet R3 PanSTARRS is now showing two distinct tails: a short dust tail pointing toward the top of the image and a long and wavy ion tail trailing off toward the upper left. The ion tail points away from the Sun and glows blue from excited carbon monoxide. Large particles...

In a strange way—or in fact a not-so-strange way—conservative Christians who deny the importance of what’s happening to men today on a biological level mirror the attitudes and rhetoric of left-wingers, radical feminists, and men-haters, who label testosterone a poison or “toxin” we should be glad is disappearing. For the radical misandrists, a group that includes many men too, the suffering and plight of men today is a necessary evil on the road to a fairer, more equal society. And not even a form of evil, because many of them enjoy seeing men suffer. It’s a punishment for hundreds of...

Miners in Myanmar have discovered a rare ruby of enormous size, considered to be the second-largest by weight ever found in the conflict-battered Southeast Asian nation, state media reported Friday. The ruby, measuring 11,000 carats (2.2 kilograms, or 4.8 pounds), was unearthed near the town of Mogok, in the upper Mandalay region, the heartland of the lucrative gem-mining industry that has recently experienced intense fighting in the country’s wide-ranging civil war. According to a report from the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar, the newly found rough ruby was discovered in mid-April, just after the traditional New Year festival. While...

The Los Angeles City Council voted 14-0 to advance restrictions on police traffic stops rooted in one dangerous idea: That cops enforcing traffic laws are somehow the real threat on the streets of LA. Not the drunk driver. Not the gang member carrying an illegal gun. Not the reckless driver blowing through intersections at 90 miles per hour. The cops. Only in LA could elected officials look at street disorder and decide the problem is still too much policing. Read the motion that passed and the message is obvious: Los Angeles is now governed by people who start with suspicion...

A wearable gas sensor called “Smart Underwear” attached to the inside of people’s underwear monitors hydrogen gas emissions to track digestive health in real time. Image credit:© iStock.com, Nadezhda Kurbatova Just one bite of ice cream or a sip of a milkshake can’t hurt too much, right? Anyone with lactose intolerance knows that this bargaining usually results in some uncomfortable gut sensations and stinky side effects about 30 minutes to a couple of hours later. People with lactose intolerance cannot breakdown lactose, the natural sugar in dairy products. When gut microbes encounter this unabsorbed lactose, they ferment it and release...