Outer

“At Pixar, we do sequels only when we come up with a great idea.” So said former Pixar head John Lasseter. And for a while, give or take Cars 2, the company adhered to this ethos, delivering remarkably consistent quality in their franchises. But there’s something precision-tooled and soulless about Lightyear, an aggressively adequate film which gives the sense that Pixar are, for once, just going through the motions. The film links back to the very first Toy Story, which starts with Andy thrilled to receive a Buzz…

The scariest person is often in the mirror During today’s PC Gaming Show, Shiro Games dropped a teaser trailer for an incredibly sinister-looking psychological horror, Decarnation, which is currently in development for PC. While little detail pertaining to the adventure’s narrative was revealed, the short montage depicted what seemed to be a young woman who finds her days and nights invaded by her own inner turmoil made flesh. Combining body horror, nightmarish imagery, and the type of horrors that can only be…

Artist’s conception of a neutron star with an ultra-strong magnetic field, called a magnetar, emitting radio waves (red). Magnetars are a leading candidate for what generates Fast Radio Bursts. Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSFIn radio astronomy, a fast radio burst (FRB) is a transient radio pulse of length ranging from a fraction of a millisecond to a few milliseconds, caused by some mysterious high-energy astrophysical process that has not yet been discovered. Astronomers estimate the average FRB releases as much energy…

Outer space is getting crowded, with both commercial endeavors and secretive military projects. And it's going to be up to the newest United States military branch, the Space Force, to protect American interests there.Space launches in the U.S. have been on the rise, and participation by private companies has increased over the last decade. What's more, satellite imaging in the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia has underscored the importance of space-based assets, both commercial and military."We've been…

A US medical team said Thursday they had reconstructed a human ear using the patient's own tissue to create a 3D bioimplant, a pioneering procedure they hope can be used to treat people with a rare birth defect.  The surgery was performed as part of an early-stage clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the implant for people with microtia, in which the external ear is small and not formed properly.AuriNovo, as the implant is called, was developed by the company 3DBio Therapeutics while the surgery was led…

Using information from ESA’s Swarm satellite mission, scientists have discovered a completely new type of magnetic wave that sweeps across the outermost part of Earth’s outer core every seven years. This fascinating finding opens a new window into a world we can never see. This mysterious wave oscillates every seven years and propagates westward at up to 1500 kilometers (900 miles) a year. Credit: ESA/Planetary VisionsWhile volcanic eruptions and earthquakes serve as immediate reminders that Earth’s interior is anything…

| Lasting 73 issues from January 1940 to Winter 1953, Planet Comics is the most important science fiction title in American comic book history.  It's a fascinating series from start to finish, but Planet Comics #69 is interesting for reasons that are a little different than most.  This issue was discussed at length in the book Parade of Pleasure: A Study of Popular Iconography in the USA, which was a counterpart of sorts to the more infamous Seduction of the Innocent, and published first in the UK.  Part of the mid-1950s…

Credit: SLAC National Accelerator LaboratoryThe new facility, LCLS-II, will soon sharpen our view of how nature works on ultrasmall, ultrafast scales, impacting everything from quantum devices to clean energy.Nestled 30 feet underground in Menlo Park, California, a half-mile-long stretch of tunnel is now colder than most of the universe. It houses a new superconducting particle accelerator, part of an upgrade project to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy (DOE)’s…

Scientists suspect that a “fifth force” may be at work in space. This force, which they believe is mediated by a hypothetical particle called a symmetron is responsible for creating invisible walls in space. The walls aren’t necessarily like the walls of a room. Instead, they are more like barriers. And, they could help explain an intriguing part of space that has left astronomers scratching their heads for quite a while. New study could explain “invisible walls in space” that have perplexed astronomers for…

Hearing loss is usually irreversible because there's no way to grow back the necessary outer and inner ear sensory cells once they've been killed off. But we may have started on the path to change, thanks to new research in mice.  Scientists have discovered a single master gene that's able to regulate whether ear hair cells into the outer or inner types required to restore hearing. That's a significant step forward in being able to actually carry this out in the lab.The master gene is called TBX2. Through experiments on…