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The joint U.S.-European Solar Orbiter spacecraft had an appointment with Venus this morning (Dec. 27), the first in a series of planetary flybys to hone the probe's orbit on its journey to the sun. Solar Orbiter reached its closest approach to Venus at 7:39 a.m. EST (1239 GMT), when the spacecraft was about 4,700 miles (7,500 kilometers) from the top of the planet's cloud tops. The probe, a partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in February, bound to spend seven years studying our sun. But to get as close to our star as scientists want to,...

For Christmas Eve:Apollo 8's Christmas Eve Message

Like all stars, our Sun is powered by the fusion of hydrogen into heavier elements. Nuclear fusion is not only what makes stars shine, it is also a primary source of the chemical elements that make the world around us. Much of our understanding of stellar fusion comes from theoretical models of atomic nuclei, but for our closest star, we also have another source: neutrinos created in the Sun’s core.Whenever atomic nuclei undergo fusion, they produce not only high energy gamma rays but also neutrinos. While the gamma rays heat the Sun’s interior over thousands of years, neutrinos zip out...

Theory was first postulated in 1930s. Scientists this week announced the landmark detection of elusive particles generated from the fusion of hydrogen in the Sun, confirming a nearly-100-year-old theory about the ways in which many stars generate energy. In a paper published in Nature, a team of researchers called the Borexino Collaboration reported detecting the presence of neutrinos produced during the carbon–nitrogen–oxygen cycle of fusion deep within the Sun. The scientists stated that the energy produced in the CNO cycle represents just a small fraction of the total energy output of our Sun, but “in massive stars, this is the...

The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research(KSTAR), a superconducting fusion device also known as the Korean artificial sun, set the new world record as it succeeded in maintaining the high temperature plasma for 20 seconds with an ion temperature over 100 million degrees. To re-create fusion reactions that occur in the sun on Earth, hydrogen isotopes must be placed inside a fusion device like KSTAR to create a plasma state where ions and electrons are separated, and ions must be heated and maintained at high temperatures. So far, there have been other fusion devices that have briefly managed plasma at temperatures...

Explanation: Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 1055 is a dominant member of a small galaxy group a mere 60 million light-years away toward the aquatically intimidating constellation Cetus. Seen edge-on, the island universe spans over 100,000 light-years, a little larger than our own Milky Way galaxy. The colorful, spiky stars decorating this cosmic portrait of NGC 1055 are in the foreground, well within the Milky Way. But the telltale pinkish star forming regions are scattered through winding dust lanes along the distant galaxy's thin disk. With a smattering of even more distant background galaxies, the deep image also reveals a...

The sun has begun a new 11-year cycle, and scientists have very different ideas on just how much energy will be available to fuel its eruptions. The consensus view of an international panel of 12 scientists calls for the new cycle, Solar Cycle 25, to be small to average, much like its predecessor, Solar Cycle 24. Scott McIntosh, foresees the sun going gangbusters. The cycle is already off to a fast start, coinciding with the recent publication of McIntosh's paper in Solar Physics. The study, with contributions from several of his colleagues, forecasts the nascent sunspot cycle to become one...

As astronomers peering into Earth’s interior, there is no way for them to “feel” the true nature of the core. ... Scientists have long been on this quest, sometimes with fatal consequences. Explorers of old perished trying to set up monitoring stations in far-flung locales, like the doomed English explorer Sir John Franklin, whose expedition to take magnetic observations of the North Pole in 1845 ended with 129 men dead and two ships lost. As soon as long-lasting ground observatories sprung up around the world, scientists noticed strange deviations in the field, including for example, that our magnetic North and...

Explanation: It was time for their close-up. Two days ago Jupiter and Saturn passed a tenth of a degree from each other in what is known a Great Conjunction. Although the two planets pass each other on the sky every 20 years, this was the closest pass in nearly four centuries. Taken early in day of the Great Conjunction, the featured multiple-exposure combination captures not only both giant planets in a single frame, but also Jupiter's four largest moons (left to right) Callisto, Ganymede, Io, and Europa -- and Saturn's largest moon Titan. If you look very closely, the clear...

The Bible tells us very little about the magi. Their story appears but once, in the Gospel of Matthew (2:1-12), where they are described as mysterious visitors "from the east" who come to Jerusalem looking for the child whose star they observed "at its rising." After meeting with King Herod, who feigns an intention to worship the child but actually plans to destroy him, the magi follow the same star to Bethlehem. There, upon seeing the baby Jesus and his mother Mary, the magi kneel down and worship him, presenting him with their three famous gifts -- gold, frankincense and...

1.Q: Why did the cloud date the fog? A: He was so down to earth. 2.Q: Why are chemists so good at solving problems? A: They’re always working with solutions. 3.Q: What did one tectonic plate say when he bumped into another? A: Sorry! My Fault. 4.Q: What did the infectious disease say when the bartender refused him service? A: Well, you’re not a very good host. 5.Q: How did the thermometer insult the graduated cylinder? A: She said, “You may have graduated, but I have more degrees.” 6.Q: What will never go viral no matter how popular they get?...

The press scoffed at Trump's vaccine timeline. They said it would take a 'miracle.' The miracle came, and the press just shrugged.The Food and Drug Administration approved a COVID-19 vaccine this week from Moderna, the second one to be approved after a vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech SE was authorized last week. This past Monday, the first COVID vaccination took place in Queens, New York. As of this writing, the Pfizer vaccine is being administered to health-care workers all over the country. The Moderna vaccine, which in addition to protecting individuals from infection might help curb transmission of the virus,...

Embrace the flow, says a duo of mechanical engineers at North Carolina State University—the flow of energy, that is. The mantra you might normally hear from your yoga instructor could be an entirely new way of looking at the universe. 🌌The universe is badass. Let's explore it together. The two theorists, Larry Silverberg and Jeffrey Eischen, suggest that fragments of energy, rather than waves or particles, may be the fundamental building blocks of the universe. The bedrock of their theory is the foundational idea that energy is always flowing through space and time. The authors suggest thinking of energy as...

Most people today regard America’s experiment with alcohol prohibition as a national embarrassment, rightly repealed in 1933. So it will be with the closures and lockdowns of 2020, someday. In 1920, however, to be for the repeal of the prohibition that was passed took courage. You were arguing against prevailing opinion backed by celebratory scientists and exalted social thinkers. What you were saying flew in the face of “expert consensus.” There is an obvious analogy to Lockdowns 2020. My first inkling of this prohibition history came in reading transcripts of the then-famous Radio Priest James Gillis from the 1920s. He...

There are three principal reasons why the 4 B.C. date has prevailed over 1 B.C. These reasons were articulated by Emil Schürer in A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, also published in the 19th century. First, Josephus informs us that Herod died shortly before a Passover (Antiquities 17.9.3, The Jewish War 2.1.3), making a lunar eclipse in March (the time of the 4 B.C. eclipse) much more likely than one in December. Second, Josephus writes that Herod reigned for 37 years from the time of his appointment in 40 B.C. and 34 years from...

Dan Crenshaw crushes Madame Speaker on House floor...

Americans have a 1-in-1,000 chance of dying of COVID-19 in the next six months, a Stanford University health expert said Thursday at a Food and Drug Administration hearing. Dr. Steven Goodman, an associate dean at Stanford’s School of Medicine, based that probability off recent statistics showing roughly 285,000 deaths in the country over the last seven months and about 1,000 deaths a day. “A randomly chosen US citizen has an average risk of dying from COVID in the next 6 months, that is by the end of May, of roughly 1 in 1,000 and the risk of hospitalization of roughly...

One of the most important lessons of the past nine months is that epidemiological models are predicated on assumptions and that statistical data can be manipulated to conform to a variety of desired outcomes. They are therefore an alluring target for political exploitation. It was therefore noteworthy when a November 22 study published by Johns Hopkins University was subsequently deleted by the university because an official stated that it "was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic." The study, titled "A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19," was conducted by Dr....

Explanation: Sixty million light-years away toward the southerly constellation Corvus, these two large galaxies are colliding. The cosmic train wreck captured in stunning detail in this Hubble Space Telescope snapshot takes hundreds of millions of years to play out. Cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, the galaxies' individual stars don't often collide though. Their large clouds of molecular gas and dust do, triggering furious episodes of star formation near the center of the wreckage. New star clusters and interstellar matter are jumbled and flung far from the scene of the accident by gravitational forces. This Hubble close-up frame is...

CHICAGO, Ill. (WTVO) — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker pushed back against notions that his coronavirus mitigations were designed to strip individual freedoms away from residents at his daily briefing on Thursday. “People may have the notion that we’re taking their freedoms away, but there are laws on the books that say the job of government…is to step in and try to reduce the disaster and save as many lives as we can,” he said. “We’ve put the science and facts out there throughout this…why those mitigations are in place. There are people who don’t want to believe them and say...