‘Every episode this season feels like it could be a season finale’ boasts ‘Invincible’ creator as Season 3 debuts (interview)

Continuing the evolution of Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) as the budding superhero named Invincible, a teen trying to strike out and create his own identity while steering away from the violent legacy of his father, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), Prime Video’s adult-aimed animated series “Invincible” Season 3 launched on Feb. 6 in a three-episode debut with … Read more

What brand of golf ball did Alan Shepard hit off the moon? The world may never know

Carlos Villagomez owns a golf ball that he believes was flown to the moon. If indeed it was, he may also hold the answer to a more than 50-year-old bit of trivia that otherwise may be forever lost to time. Villagomez was gifted the ball by Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to fly into … Read more

Temperamental stars could be ruining our view of thousands of exoplanets, Hubble Telescope finds

A new study has revealed that temperamental stars that brighten and dim over the course of just a few hours could be distorting astronomers’ views of thousands of planets beyond the solar system. The team behind this research reached this conclusion by studying 20 extrasolar planets or “exoplanets” as they crossed, or “transited,” the faces … Read more

Discovering fully semantic representations via centroid- and orientation-aware feature learning

CODAE architecture Translation- and rotation-equivariant encoder CODAE uses a translation- and rotation-equivariant encoder, denoted by EĎ•, that utilizes group-equivariant convolutional layers. These layers apply convolutions with stacks of rotated kernels at equally spaced orientations, enabling the encoder to capture both translational and rotational equivariance in a manner that is analogous to the continuous operation described … Read more

The moon will be unusually high in the sky Feb. 7. Here’s why

Even to a casual viewer, the waxing gibbous moon of Friday, Feb. 7 will appear unusual. As it crosses the meridian shortly after 8 p.m. local standard time, it will climb so very high in the sky that from central Florida and southern Texas it will be seen overhead. For watchers in Miami or Brownsville, … Read more

Giant planet or ‘failed star?’ Newfound mystery world blurs the lines

One of the largest exoplanets to be found orbiting a relatively low-mass star has been discovered, thanks to the way the planet’s gravity drags its star around on its journey through space. The planet is the fourth world to be spotted in data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which was designed to map … Read more

New ‘Star Wars: The Mask of Fear’ novel stars Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Saw Gerrera (interview)

Galavanting through the galaxy far, far away with seemingly effortless literary ease, prolific “Star Wars” author, Alexander Freed has been catapulted to the top tier of sci-fi writers. He is confidently able to navigate far off alien worlds and complex plotlines via their imposing storytelling skills, engaging characters, and vivid descriptions. Freed accumulated an impressive … Read more

NASA’s launching a satellite constellation this month to study the solar wind in 3D

The sun, for all its glitz, tends to hide behind a veil of mystery. For instance, its outer atmosphere, the corona, appears to be hotter than its surface — like, way hotter — and scientists aren’t sure why. There’s also a big puzzle concerning how the solar wind, which is a stream of charged particles … Read more

When is an asteroid not an asteroid? When it’s Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster

The discovery of a new asteroid this month has turned out to be anything but. In fact, it isn’t even a natural object. The wannabe asteroid, announced on Jan. 2 as 2018 CN41, is actually a Tesla Roadster launched into space years ago by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The company sent the car (with a … Read more

How to see Venus snuggle up to a thin crescent moon tonight

To date it has been a superb winter for viewing the queen of the planets, Venus. February marks the pinnacle of the evening visibility of Venus as it stands like a sequined showgirl nearly halfway up in the western sky at sunset. Currently shining at its greatest brilliance for this current apparition, this dazzling evening … Read more