The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered that the centaur called 2060 Chiron is an oddball. The object, which is a minor body that orbits the sun in the expanse between Jupiter and Neptune, has a mixture of ices and gases that make it stand out from other objects in the distant outer solar system. … Read more
It’s been a busy year on the sun, as it officially entered the peak of its roughly 11-year cycle of activity, known as solar maximum. In 2024, the sun launched over 50 X-class solar flares — the most powerful type of solar flare — at Earth. Solar flares are categorized by the level of X-rays … Read more
NASA’s first two crewed Artemis moon missions have been pushed back to 2026 and 2027, respectively, and the move could have big ramifications for the agency’s Artemis program and competition with China for leadership in space. Artemis 2, which will send a crew of three Americans and a Canadian astronaut around the moon, was due … Read more
Life in Silos 17 and 18 isn’t getting any easier as we enter the sixth episode of Apple TV+’s “Silo” titled “Barricades.” And this is an apt name for this chapter as all the traumatized denizens of the bunkers suffer restrictions from barricades, both physical and emotional, as their unnatural subterranean life seems to be … Read more
Superman isn’t the only one with X-ray vision. Plenty of exploding stars are also adept at blasting outbursts of this high-energy light. Now, thanks to a chance discovery, scientists are aware of an entirely new explosive stellar source of X-ray radiation. These outbursts’ light output didn’t resemble any previous cosmic explosion. Meet the “millinovas,” a … Read more
There’s this running debate among astronomers about whether our moon deserves a proper name. After all, it is the way of our solar system. Other moons each have monikers, like Phobos and Deimos, and there is certainly no planet named “planet” nor asteroid named “asteroid.” Even worlds beyond our cosmic neighborhood have names, albeit often … Read more
The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius Patchen Barss Basic (2024) In the early days of a book project that would span six years, writer Patchen Barss had the best stroke of luck a biographer can hope for. His subject, the Nobel prizewinning mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, brought him a bundle of … Read more
Weight-loss wonder drugs Following the runaway success of ‘miracle’ drug Wegovy (semaglutide) and other GLP-1 agonists, 2025 is likely to bring results and approvals for a new wave of treatments targeting obesity. The pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, Indiana, will wrap up a phase III trial for its oral pill orforglipron, evaluating its long-term … Read more
In our analysis of the expansion-induced hyperfine entanglement of the hydrogen atom, we use the standard Hamiltonian for the hyperfine structure of the ground-state atomic hydrogen. This involves introducing the electron spin operator \(\hat{S}\) and the proton spin operator \(\hat{I}\). Therefore, the effective Hamiltonian for the ground-state hyperfine structure can be expressed as \({H}_{HF}=A\hat{S}\cdot \hat{I}\). … Read more
A NASA spacecraft is about to give astronomers an epic early Christmas present with the closest ever flyby of the sun on Dec. 24, but if you’re wondering exactly when the ambitious solar encounter will occur, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. The NASA spacecraft, called the Parker Solar Probe, is on course for what … Read more