A real-life deluminator for spotting exoplanets by reflected starlight

Perhaps you remember the opening scene of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” that took place on Privet Drive. A bearded man pulled a mysterious device, called a deluminator, from his dark robe and one by one the lights from the street lamps flew into it. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-12-real-life-deluminator-exoplanets-starlight.html…

NASA’s treasure map for water ice on Mars

NASA has big plans for returning astronauts to the Moon in 2024, a stepping stone on the path to sending humans to Mars. But where should the first people on the Red Planet land? Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-12-nasa-treasure-ice-mars.html…

How Russian Trolls Spread Propaganda Using Uplifting Tweets

Two associate professors of communication at Clemson spent two years studying online propaganda and state-affiliated disinformation campaigns on social media. This week in Rolling Stone they explain how professional trolls share uplifting “Trojan horse” tweets meant to gain hundreds of thousands of followers, and then “use that following to spread messages promoting division, distrust, and doubt.” Professional disinformation isn’t spread by…

No, That Mac Factory in Texas Is Not New

President Trump on Wednesday toured a Texas plant that makes high-end Apple computers, chatting with Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, and accepting a plate with the words “Assembled in USA.” From a report: It was a pretty typical publicity event, until the end. Mr. Trump walked in front of the news cameras and took credit for the plant, suggesting it…

Stone Age artists were obsessed with horses and we don’t know why

Stone Age artists loved drawing horses. One possible explanation is that this was because they believed horses were the most important of all the animals Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2223567-stone-age-artists-were-obsessed-with-horses-and-we-dont-know-why/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Voyager 2 sends back insights on interstellar space

Voyager 2 left the realm of the sun’s influence a year ago today, becoming the 2nd craft ever to do so. This week, the journal Nature Astronomy published 5 new papers describing what Voyager 2 has been seeing on its journey into the unknown. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/voyager-2-new-published-papers-boundary-interstellar-space…

What’s the birthstone for November?

Happy birthday November babies!  Your birthstone, the topaz, can be blue, pale green, yellow, pink, red, purple, brown and even black. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/november-birthstone-topaz…