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In the coming months, the world is set to witness an extraordinary celestial event as a massive explosion in the T Coronae Borealis star system is poised to create a “new star” in the night sky. This rare astronomical event, expected to occur between now and September 2024, is not the birth of a star but rather an extraordinary nova outburst from T Coronae Borealis (T CrB), situated 3,000 light-years away in the constellation of Corona Borealis. NASA described the anticipated nova outburst as a “once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity” as T Coronae Borealis is predicted to become as bright as the...

Republican Alabama Sen. Katie Britt pulled no punches as she delivered her party's rebuttal to President Biden's State of the Union address Thursday night, ripping him for his "despicable" job handling the border crisis, as well as his promotion of "Bidenomics" amid the rising consumer costs plaguing American families. A rising star within the GOP, the 42-year-old Britt's selection to deliver the rebuttal last week was met with widespread praise — even from some Democrats — as she continues to build a national profile despite never holding elected office prior to her election in the 2022 midterms. Britt began her...

The Orion: A molecular cloud shows cosmic filamentary structures where stars are being born. Image: ESA / Herschel / Ph. André, D Polychroni, A. Roy, V Könyves, N Schneider for the Gould Belt survey Key Program ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the first part of this series, we saw that electromagnetic processes in plasmas – electrically conducting gases – could, over trillions of years, produce the giant filaments that we see today as the largest structures in the universe. This happened without a Big Bang, without dark energy or dark matter, based on processes that we observe here on Earth in the laboratory...

A petition to remove Donald Trump’s star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame has received thousands of signatures, but the decision on whether to remove the star is just as controversial as the man whose name is on it. Trump’s star, which he received in 2007, has been destroyed and replaced several times, but no star has ever been permanently removed from the Walk of Fame despite several celebrities’ fall from grace. The man who started the petition to get rid of Trump’s star for good, Andrew Rudick, says that while he has garnered more than 3,800 signatures for his...

The mayor of Westbrook says he will not run for another term and, in fact, will never run for public office again. Michael Foley, who was just elected last year, tells Maine's Total Coverage he has been harassed, including receiving threatening emails and phone calls related to a recent holiday lights controversy. Earlier this month, the city removed a Star of David from its Riverwalk light display and replaced it with a dreidel. The star is a historic religious symbol in Judaism. Foley says it was removed based on legal requirements that prevent government entities from appearing to endorse a...

Tiny spheres of once-molten metal magnetically dredged from the seafloor could be pieces from IM1, a potential interstellar meteor that struck Earth in 2014 Over the past two weeks, I have circumnavigated the globe by land, air and sea. The reason? A kitchen sink–sized chunk of interstellar material that my colleagues and I believe collided with the Earth at 100,000 miles per hour nearly a decade ago. After years of effort, we may have finally found pieces of this elusive object on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, about a mile beneath the waves. The story began In April 2019,...

Bridgerton actress Adjoa Andoh left her ITV co-stars stunned yesterday when she referred to the Buckingham Palace balcony as being 'terribly white' during their live Coronation coverage. The star, whose father was of Ghanaian origin, was commentating for the network on their programme hosted by Tom Bradby and Julie Etchingham when she said of the event: 'We have gone from the rich diversity of the Abbey to a terribly white balcony. 'I am very struck by that. 'I am also looking at those younger generations and thinking: "What are the nuances that they will inhabit when they grow?" Ms Andoh,...

For all that the Sun is a ubiquitous and vital part of our lives, a lot about it remains baffling. And now it's done something decidedly peculiar. Material from a filament of plasma erupting from the Sun's surface broke away and appeared to form a crown-like vortex over the solar north pole. Further analysis will be required to determine whether or not this is what actually occurred. For now, scientists are saying that they've not quite seen anything like it – and the footage itself is undoubtedly spectacular. olar shenanigans are not entirely unexpected currently. Our star is ramping up...

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1, Episode 16 - "Preludes"Admiral Edward Jellico (Ronny Cox) is generally hated, but in Star Trek: Prodigy, Jellico also happens to be right. Jellico is currently overseeing Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway's (Kate Mulgrew) mission to find Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran) and the USS Protostar in the Delta Quadrant. Jellico ordered Janeway not to enter the Romulan Neutral Zone to chase after the Protostar. It may be an unpopular decision, but Jellico is making the right call by forbidding Janeway to take action.

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume said Monday on FNC’s “Special Report” that former President Donald Trump was losing his influence on the Republican Party. When asked about Trump losing his grip on the GOP, Hume said, “Well, I have thought for some time – and there’s polling on this that reflects this – that while he maintains real influence within the Republican Party, no two ways about that, but it has begun to fade. It started fading, really, I think, after his antics post-election in 2020, that a great many people with him perhaps up until then began...

An illustration depicting GRB21106A. The event itself is seen as a white jet in the center of the frame, stemming from the merger seen as a pale blue lighted disk on the bottom left, and the shockwave afterglow is seen as a larger, semi-circular lit-up region toward the middle right. This artist's conception shows the merger between a neutron star and another star (disk, lower left) which caused an explosion resulting in GRB 211106A (white jet, middle), and left behind one of the most luminous afterglows on record (semispherical shock wave midright). ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), M. Weiss (NRAO/AUI/NSF) ************************************************************************************** Astronomers presented...

I didn't post the actual comic, in case it's a trademark issue. (I don't think it is, but just to be safe).Heard from my mother today that still gets the KC Star that they didn't have Dilbert in the paper today and that it would "return soon." A quick look online shows that the left is having a bit of a fit, because the storyline is a black engineer that is identifying as white, throwing a wrench into the company's diversity stats. It started yesterday, but she just saw it today.Just a little FYI that the censorship is a little...

Closeup of the region on the sky, 1/250 of a degree across, where the gravity of a foreground cluster of galaxies magnifies the distant background star—nicknamed Earendil—thousands of times. With a fortuitous lineup of a massive cluster of galaxies, astronomers discovered a single star across most of the entire observable Universe. This is the farthest detection of a single star ever. The star may be up to 500 times more massive than the Sun. The discovery has been published today in the journal Nature. Gazing at the night sky, all the stars that you see lie within our own galaxy,...

William Shatner, legendary ‘The Twilight Zone’ and ‘Star Trek’ actor, turns 91 on March 22, 2022

RUSSIA’S CZECHOSLOVAK LEGION of World War One was an army without a country. The 60,000-man unit, raised between 1915 and 1917, was made up of Czech and Slovak patriots keen to free their ancestral homeland from Austrian rule. By taking up arms in the name of the Russian Tsar, the men of the unit hoped that after the war the great powers would reward them with statehood. But when in 1917, the Bolsheviks rose to power following the collapse of Russia’s Romanov dynasty and then made a separate peace with the Central Powers, the Czechoslovak Legion suddenly found itself trapped...

One of the most interesting stories from the early days leading up to the American Revolution involves the events surrounding the Boston Massacre. On March 5th, 1770 the Stamp Act had just been repealed but British Soldiers were ever present in Boston as a show of force against the “rowdy” colonists. The British government, in order to save face, implemented the Townshend Acts instead as a means to continue taxing the colonies (without representation, of course). Anger was growing in the streets. The presence of the Red Coats in the city added to the public fury and protests were sparked....

Astronomers have used a planet-hunting satellite to see a white dwarf abruptly switching on and off for the first time. The researchers led by Durham University, UK, used NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to observe the unique phenomenon. White dwarfs are what most stars become after they have burned off the hydrogen that fuels them. They are approximately the size of the Earth, but have a mass closer to that of the Sun. The white dwarf observed by the team is known to be accreting, or feeding, from an orbiting companion star. With the new observations astronomers saw it...

Thank you Marcia for coming out and saying what so many people feel about the disney craptacular sequels to Star Wars and the horrible betratal treatment the original characters had in their terrible storylines. Just remember folks, she deserves the credit for Star Wars being the movie it is. We wouldn't have the final death star ending and fighting if she wasn't the editor of that movie, it would have suffered greatly. She also edited Taxi Driver. She's got extreme credibility.

About 2,000 light-years away from Earth, there is a star catapulting toward the edge of the Milky Way. This particular star, known as LP 40−365, is one of a unique breed of fast-moving stars—remnant pieces of massive white dwarf stars—that have survived in chunks after a gigantic stellar explosion. “This star is moving so fast that it’s almost certainly leaving the galaxy…[it’s] moving almost two million miles an hour,” says JJ Hermes, Boston University College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of astronomy. But why is this flying object speeding out of the Milky Way? Because it’s a piece of...

“Fast Facts” About Star Systems Close to Earth Posted on Aug 3, 2021 in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Science The closest stars to the Earth are also some of the best studied celestial objects. In Astrophysics, distance makes all the difference. The closer an object is, the more light we will be able to glean from it. Stars come in different types (masses, chemical compositions, ages), but the closest example of each type will be a critical object to study. In this article we review five fast facts about the closest systems to the Earth and what they mean for astrophysical...