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UFOs are back in the news this week with the release of a long-awaited Pentagon report that was designed to address public interest in the topic. What Should Fans Take Away from Imaginary?UFOs (or, rather, UAP, as they’re now known), were injected back into public consciousness last year thanks largely to a former high-ranking intelligence official, David Grusch, who, after quitting his post at a prominent defense agency, went public with a variety of weird claims about aliens and spacecraft. Specifically, Grusch claimed…

Photo: NASA“It may have been one small step for Neil,” McCandless quipped in reference to Armstrong’s famous words, “but it’s a heck of a big leap for me.” As The New York Times reported at the time, “Free of any lifeline and propelled into the dark void by tiny jets, they became, in effect, the first human satellites.”The MMUs were powered by two dozen gaseous nitrogen thrusters stored in tanks on the astronaut’s backpack, enabling free movement in space. Control was achieved through hand controllers, allowing…

A team of physicists in Germany managed to create a time crystal that demonstrably lasts 40 minutes—10 million times longer than other known crystals—and could persist for even longer.Alex Winter on Innovative Horror Movies Ordinary crystals, by which I mean crystals in macro-scale space, are solids whose atoms are arranged in a highly organized pattern. Diamonds, snowflakes, and table salts are all crystalline. Time crystals are structures whose lowest-energy states have highly ordered patterns (periodicity) in space and…

Hidden amid its trademark satire of average American life, The Simpsons is riddled with mathematical Easter eggs. The show’s writing staff has boasted an impressive pedigree of Ivy League mathheads who couldn’t resist infusing America’s longest-running sitcom with inside jokes, scattered about like sprinkles on Homer’s doughnuts.The Hunger Games Director Francis Lawrence on Adapting a PrequelAs early as the opening shot of the show’s second episode, the perpetually one-year old baby, Maggie, stacks her alphabet blocks to…

About 340 years ago, a brilliant light appeared in Earth’s night sky—a distant star had died in an enormous explosion. That light, which we now know is from the supernova Cassiopeia A, has just been captured in never-before-seen detail by the Webb Space Telescope.Webb Telescope Images the Pillars of CreationWhen compared with images of the nova taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004, it’s clear how much more detail Webb can capture—and how significantly the spectral range of an observatory influences the way we see …

The final countdown has begun for leap seconds. A global group of scientists and government officials voted (almost unanimously) Friday to axe the small time adjustment method, in a change scheduled to take place by 2035.Leap seconds have been used since 1972, and over the past 50 years have caused big headaches for the tech industry. Now, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures has formally agreed with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, that it’s time for the practice to end. In a resolution at the bureau’s 27th…

Ötzi, a 5,300-year-old mummy discovered in 1991.Photo: Andrea Solero/AFP (Getty Images)In 1991, a pair of climbers encountered a human body sticking out of the ice high in the Italian alps. Though its skin was preserved—complete with tattoos—the body turned out to be 5,300-year-old remains, mummified by the frigid, dry conditions in which the man died. Now known as Ötzi, the famously well-preserved mummy has given researchers a remarkable look into the life of a Stone Age person.Watch an Exclusive Clip From the Finale of…

Different stages of the lunar eclipse above Tokyo, Japan combined into one image.Image: Richard A. Brooks (Getty Images)This morning, the Sun, Earth, and Moon aligned in such a way that our planet’s shadow completely enveloped the Moon in a lunar eclipse. During the fleeting event, the Moon took on a blood-red hue across many parts of the world.The eclipse’s totality—when the Moon was entirely within Earth’s shadow—began at 10:17 UTC (5:17 a.m. ET) and ended at 11:42 UTC (6:42 a.m. ET). If you missed it, you’ll have to…

The totality of the eclipse is set to occur at 10:59 UTC (5:59 a.m. EST) on November 8, 2022. Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization StudioLunar eclipses may be more common that solar eclipses, but they’re still incredible sights to behold. On Tuesday, some parts of the world will get an early morning view of a total lunar eclipse, in which the full Moon will steadily darken and appear to turn red under Earth’s shadow.How can I watch the total lunar eclipse?This week’s lunar eclipse will occur…

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