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Well, this is the last batch of photos I have, and it’s very sad that the tank is empty. Please send some in if you have them. Don’t make me beg!

Today we have photos of ducks—or rather, one female duck— rom Aussie reader Keira McKenzie in Perth. Keira’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

Here is a series of photos I took of a lone Pacific Black Duck [Anas superciliosis] from this afternoon [Feb. 11] at the park. Since the islands in the ponds have been completely cleared of all vegetation (the western island) and all the undergrowth cleared from the eastern island (this is because of the devastation throughout Perth’s trees from the polyphagous shothole borer), moat of the waterbirds have left for areas where they can roost & nest. 

The photos are taken in Hyde Park, Perth, Western Australia, on a hot humid afternoon.

I am very fond of them. I rescued one when it flew into the electric wires on the other side of the road one night. I carried it back across the road and into the park, putting it near the water’s edge. It was a pond-smelling little bundle, seemed uninjured and was very calm, and waddled off into the water and sailed into the night.

What a beautiful hen! It makes me eager for Duck Season to arrive at Botany Pond. Keira also sent a picture of her cat:

I shall sign off with a pic of my little Baba (currently zooming around the place for no apparent reason) slothing in the armchair in the heat with one of her favourite toys (the other is a wombat).

The universe is a big place, and tracking down some of the more interesting parts of it is tricky. Some of the most interesting parts of it, at least from a physics perspective, are merging black holes, so scientists spend a lot of time trying to track those down. One of the most recent attempts to do so was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration. While they didn’t find any clear-cut evidence of continuous gravitational waves from merging black hole systems, they did manage to point out plenty of false alarms, and even disprove some myths about ones we thought actually existed.

Eclipse season is nigh. The first of two eclipse seasons for 2026 kicks off next week on Tuesday, February 17th, with an annular solar eclipse. And while solar eclipses often inspire viewers to journey to the ends of the Earth in order to stand in the shadow of the Moon, this one occurs over a truly remote stretch of the world, in Antarctica.

A dazzling new Hubble image peels back the layers of the mysterious Egg Nebula, a rare and fleeting phase in a Sun-like star’s death just 1,000 light-years away. Hidden inside a dense cocoon of dust, the dying star blasts twin beams of light through a polar opening, carving glowing lobes and delicate ripples into the surrounding cloud. These striking, symmetrical arcs hint that unseen companion stars may be shaping the spectacle from within.

As data keeps exploding worldwide, scientists are racing to pack more information into smaller and smaller spaces — and a team at the University of Stuttgart may have just unlocked a powerful new trick. By slightly twisting ultra-thin layers of a magnetic material called chromium iodide, researchers created an entirely new magnetic state that hosts tiny, stable structures known as skyrmions — some of the smallest and toughest information carriers ever observed.

As data keeps exploding worldwide, scientists are racing to pack more information into smaller and smaller spaces — and a team at the University of Stuttgart may have just unlocked a powerful new trick. By slightly twisting ultra-thin layers of a magnetic material called chromium iodide, researchers created an entirely new magnetic state that hosts tiny, stable structures known as skyrmions — some of the smallest and toughest information carriers ever observed.

Immune cells in the brain that go rogue contribute to the death of neurons, so getting rid of them may slow the progression of neurodegenerative conditions like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Ancient trees hold secrets about the most violent storms our Sun has ever unleashed, catastrophic bursts of radiation that dwarf anything modern civilisation has experienced. Scientists have discovered radioactive carbon signatures frozen in tree rings from solar storms so powerful they could cripple our satellite networks and power grids today.

"Vaccines are radioactive now."

The post The FDA:  Promoting Quack Nostrums Based on “Incredible Stories” While Rejecting Vaccines Despite Successful RCTs first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A growing body of psychological research shows that the best relationships – romantic or otherwise – come with a feeling of personal growth. Columnist David Robson explores the evidence-backed ways to broaden our horizons and connect more deeply with our loves, our friends and ourselves

Scientists at HKUST have unveiled a major leap forward in calcium-ion battery technology, potentially opening the door to safer, more sustainable energy storage for everything from renewable power grids to electric vehicles. By designing a novel quasi-solid-state electrolyte made from redox-active covalent organic frameworks, the team solved long-standing issues that have held calcium batteries back—namely poor ion transport and limited stability.

Dust from asteroid Bennu is revealing a surprising origin story for life’s building blocks. New research suggests some amino acids formed in frozen ice exposed to radiation, not warm liquid water as scientists long believed. Isotopic clues show Bennu’s chemistry differs sharply from well-studied meteorites, pointing to multiple pathways for creating life’s ingredients.

Scientists have uncovered evidence of a massive underground lava tube hidden beneath the surface of Venus, revealing a new layer of the planet’s volcanic history. By reexamining radar data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, researchers identified what appears to be a huge empty conduit near the volcanic region Nyx Mons. The structure could be nearly a kilometer wide and extend for dozens of kilometers below the surface.

Every so often (in geologic time) Earth's magnetic field does a flip. The north and south magnetic poles gradually trade places in a phenomenon called a geomagnetic reversal. Scientists long thought this happened every ten thousand years or so. However, new evidence from deep ocean cores show that at least two ancient reversals didn't follow that script. One took about 18,000 years to flip and the other took 70,000 years. Such lengthy time lapses could have seriously affected Earth's atmospheric chemistry, climate, and evolution of life forms during the Eocene period of geologic history.

In a new study, researchers say that non-biological sources they considered could not fully account for the abundance of organic compounds in a sample collected on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover.

Several years ago, an automated sky survey spotted a distant supermassive black hole that tore apart a star. The star that got too close, and the resulting tidal disruption event released a lot of energy. But the SMBH is exhibiting a strong case of cosmic indigestion, and has been burping out the remains of the star for four years. And it keeps getting brighter and brighter.

Life may have begun when RNA molecules began to replicate themselves, and now we’ve finally found an RNA molecule that is very close to being able to do this

The planets around a nearby star seem to be in the wrong order, hinting that they formed through a different mechanism than the familiar one by which most systems grow

Yep, here I go again pointing out the decline in the quality of rock and pop music. But this time I’m joined by the music maven Rick Beato, who has always had the same opinion.  In this video he compares music from 1984 vs. 2026, juxtaposing the Grammy nominees for Song of the Year from both years. Save for one song, he finds the 2026 nominees lame, so there’s no contest. Music, he argues implictly, has gone downhill in the past four decades.

I’ll list the nominees and make some comments below. The winner for both years is is at the top. My own comments are flush left.

1984

Song of the Year

• “Every Breath You Take” – The Police
  • Sting (songwriter)
• “All Night Long (All Night)” – Lionel Richie
  • Lionel Richie (songwriter)
• “Beat It” – Michael Jackson
  • Michael Jackson (songwriter)
• “Billie Jean” – Michael Jackson
  • Michael Jackson (songwriter)
• “Maniac” – Michael Sembello
  • Michael Sembello & Dennis Matkosky (songwriters)

Had I voted, there would be no hesitation in my dubbing “Billie Jean” as Song of the Year, but all of these songs, as Beato agrees, are good and memorable. They will last, and will still be popular years from now (they’re still listened to 42 years later!).

*******************

2026 (winner was announced on Feb. 1)

Song of the Year

• “Wildflower“
  • Billie Eilish O’Connell & Finneas O’Connell, songwriters (Billie Eilish)
• “Abracadabra”
  • Henry Walter, Lady Gaga & Andrew Watt, songwriters (Lady Gaga)
• “Anxiety”
  • Jaylah Hickmon, songwriter (Doechii)
• “APT.”
  • Amy Allen, Christopher Brody Brown, Rogét Chahayed, Henry Walter, Omer Fedi, Philip Lawrence, Bruno Mars, Chae Young Park & Theron Thomas, songwriters (Rosé & Bruno Mars)
• “DTMF”
  • Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, Scott Dittrich, Benjamin Falik, Roberto José Rosado Torres, Marco Daniel Borrero, Hugo René Sención Sanabria & Tyler Spry, songwriters (Bad Bunny)
• “Golden” (from KPop Demon Hunters)
  • Park Hong Jun, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo, Ejae & Mark Sonnenblick, songwriters (Huntrix: Ejae, Audrey Nuna & Rei Ami)
• “Luther”
  • Jack Antonoff, Roshwita Larisha Bacha, Matthew Bernard, Ink, Scott Bridgeway, Sam Dew, Kendrick Lamar, Mark Anthony Spears, Solána Rowe & Kamasi Washington, songwriters (Kendrick Lamar and SZA)
• “Manchild”
  • Amy Allen, Jack Antonoff & Sabrina Carpenter, songwriters (Sabrina Carpenter)

Beato finds “Wildflower” the best for this year; it is, he says, a “great song”. (This is Eilish’s tenth Grammy.)  While I don’t think it’s great, it is very good, and miles above all the other nominees. And it won. I’ll put it below. He simply dismisses the other seven songs, though a few have some merit, like being “well produced.”

The reasons Beato finds this year’s songs worse are that they are in general lame, derivative, often include many songwriters (too many writers spoil the song), and sometimes include sampling from older songs.

In contrast, only one of the 1984 songs has more than one writer, and all include the singer as a composer.  (Note that one is by Bad Bunny, and Beato can’t understand the words!)  Beato’s takeaway is that nobody will remember songs written by so many people, and nobody will remember these latest songs more than three years from now.

Beato:

Here is “Wildflower,” live with Billie Eilish (the official release is here, and the lyrics are here). The only accompaniments are a guitar, bass, two sets of drums, and three backup singers.

The activity of certain neurons may influence our endurance for exercise, and these could be targeted to help us run faster for longer