Confounds

January 1, 20242min readA newly spotted world is just perplexingly denseBy Allison Gasparini Credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi (composite); ESO/Serge Brunier (background)A bizarrely dense exoplanet located more than 500 light-years from Earth is challenging scientists' understanding of how planets form. This astronomical body, recently described in Nature, is the size of the ice giant Neptune but nearly 10 times heavier—meaning it is denser than steel.“It's impossible for a planet like this to have formed by classical…

2D map of deformation derived from interferometric synthetic aperture radar data in the Central Valley of California, USA, for the time period 1 January 2015 to 19 September 2019. Credit: Geophysical Research Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2023GL103222 Billions of tons of snow piled atop the Sierra Nevada Mountains can cause parts of the Central Valley, just west of the range, to sink—muddling groundwater assessments that take…

The first trailer for the Super Mario Bros movie was released Thursday (6 October), revealing Chris Pratt’s voice for the world-famous Italian plumber.Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri previously promised that Pratt’s role as the video game character would not offend Italians, after his casting faced criticism.Pratt also assured fans himself, saying that his voice for the character was “updated and unlike anything you’ve heard in the Mario world before.”“I worked really closely with the directors and trying…

Three years after her husband took his life, Sara Scribner wants to talk. She knows it won’t be easy, but the time is right. Suicide and mental illness have long been the subject of whisper campaigns and conjecture, but the pandemic, she believes, has changed that.“Scott’s suicide has been the background noise every minute of my life,” she said, “but whenever I bring up his name in conversation, people get uncomfortable.” In the age of COVID, however, the language of loss and vulnerability has become…

Russia pumps almost as much oil into the global market as it did before its invasion of Ukraine. With oil prices up, Moscow is also making more money.Demand from some of the world’s largest economies has given Russian President Vladimir Putin the upper hand in the energy battle that shadows the war in Ukraine, and has confounded the West’s bid to cripple Russia’s economy with sanctions. Sales are booming in Russia’s export market, the world’s largest in crude and refined…

via Vertigo Releasing It was inevitable that Vivarium was going to split opinion down the middle when it was released for mass consumption in March 2020, with the first reactions emanating from the premiere at the previous year’s Cannes Film Festival hinting that the surrealist sci-fi psychological horror wasn’t going to be for everyone. Sure enough, that discord has been reflected in the reactions from critics and audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, Vivarium holds a stellar 72 percent score, but users have…