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The teeth of dolphins and other toothed whales are connected to a uniquely thick bundle of nerve fibres, which might play a role in sound detection

In place of the readers’ wildlife photos, we’re having a series of readers’ domestic wildlife, aka kitties. Yesterday I asked readers to send in one picture of their cat having a Christmas theme. I will post more if they arrive today, but here’s what we have.  Readers’ descriptions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Send ’em in until noon Chicago time!

From Bob Randall:

Fred would rather attack the low hanging ornaments on our regular tree. This small tree only has one wooden ornament, and he didn’t bother with it.  When the presents were finally opened this morning, he was all into the wrapping paper and opened boxes.  Fred just showed up one afternoon, and despite our attempts to find his former owner, he adopted us. Fred was named to go along with his best friend and sometime nemesis, Barney, as in the Flintstones. From Publilius: Here’s my twelve-year-old cat Violet. A co-worker’s daughter brought her home as a kitten.  year later, the daughter moved to California, leaving the cat behind. No one else in the family wanted a cat, so I offered to adopt her. She’s been a great cat.

From Robert Wooley, of Asheville, NC:

This is Lucy (now 13 years old), on 2/24/19, in her Santa hat and scarf. This is a historically rare photo, because they were only on her for about 5 seconds before she ripped them off, and she has never allowed me to tarnish her dignity with them again. Lucy is the best cat I’ve ever had: soft, cuddly, playful, easy to take care of, non-destructive, clean, funny.

From Ursula: “Edith guarding the stocking”:

From George Scott in Colorado:

A few years ago we had two sweet (usually) black cats, Christopher and Samantha. They passed away at the ages of 18 and 19, We miss having them around, but don’t miss some of the duties of being cat staff, so we replaced them with these two black plastic cats. Not as cuddly, but far easier to take care of.

From Reese Vaughan:

It’s Woodford Reserve again; his litter was named for liquor.  He lives in Texas.  Every year he takes a great interest in the Christmas tree. Here, he appears to be sniffing the lights, but the granddaughter says he bit them.

From JC McLoughlin:

Inkling oozes around the table leg in silent preparation for an assault on Ghrelin. NOT a pretty sight.

From Darrel E.:

This is one of our three, Princess Leia, making herself at home in the Christmas village under our tree. She is about 5 years old now.

We found Leia at our local humane society when she was about 3 months old. She was a feral that they had trapped with two other litter mates. They were not having any luck trying to habituate her to humans and were beginning to think they may not be able to adopt her out. We took her and had her out of her shell in a week, though she still has her quirks. She is the sweetest soul I have ever encountered.

From Shoshana:

I’m attaching picture of my Christmas cats. Yoda and Mendel are half brothers (same father) born six months apart. Both have mutations in KRT71, the same gene that causes curls in poodles and near hairlessness in the Canadian Sphynx. (Though visible in their truncated whiskers and wavy fur, I confirmed through Basepaws that they have the rexoid mutations. Other than that, they are moggies with a little bit of a lot of breeds—everything from Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest Cat to British and American Shorthair and Bengal, etc.)

From Bruce Cochrane:

Here are two of ours – Mothra and Rommel. Both are purebred Burmese, bred. By the late Delores Kennedy of Louisville. Rommel is 10, at more than lives up to his name. Mothra is 4 and did a lot to get us through COVID.

PS – we are up to N=8.

From Kevin Henderson of Los Alamos, New Mexico:

Jules (2) Lyra (15, black), and Opera (9, named after the Santa Fe Opera).  The lamb behind Lyra is g-2.  A physicist will get that reference.

From Brooke O’Neill in Atlanta

This is a picture of Peppermint – sadly now departed – on the Christmas day when she was gifted to my then- 7 yo daughter as a wee kitten. My daughter very aptly named her Peppermint since it was Christmas day and since the kitten had red (orange, really) and white stripes.

One of the first things my daughter did was tuck the kitten into the pink hat (don’t worry – the kitty was very cozy and content).

From Elizabeth Leahey-Martinez:

This is our rescue cat Lilah on her favorite blanket in front of what she considers her Christmas tree. Our vet believes Lilah is part Egyptian Mau, which is quite an interesting breed to read up on, as they have a unique skin fold under their belly that allows them to be more agile and jump very high, along with some other unique characteristics. Her mother was found pregnant wandering the streets of Fullerton, California. My vet and two sisters who run a rescue took her mother in and we adopted her about 5 years ago.

From Steven Eakman:

Here is our elder statesman, Nigel, addressing the assembly from his Pillow of Purrfect Pronouncements.

From Naama Pat-El:

Attached are pics of Mulan (fluffy grey and white) and Maryam with the tree. Our two other cats are less interested…

From Susan Harrison:

Here are Natasha (foreground), Boris, and their stuffed sibling — a.k.a.  Spirit Cat — enjoying the holidays.

From Dennis Howard Schneider:

Here is Bootz, a Hili lookalike. She was left on my porch 13 years ago around Christmas. She is one tough cookie:

From Linda Taylor (no cat name given), titled “Waiting for guests for Christmas Eve Dinner”:

From Steven Psycho:

Bif was found living in a tree at about 1 yr old. She just celebrated her 1 yr anniversary when she was found with her paws frozen to the driveway.

My daughter and her husband poured warm water on her feet to free her.  They brought Bif inside ” just until she recovers”. Bif has been a housecat ever since.

From Natalie in Berlin:

Stupsi is a 3 year old cat of Polish descent that welcomed me and my family into the new house we moved to this summer. She is a scepticat as you can see here – albeit a total sweetheart with the children whom she teaches good manners for long lasting happy relationships with their new cat master.

I asked her if she would put on a Santa hat to send as a Christmas greetings to your readers. Her answer I interpreted as “You must be joking.” The Christmas candle was more successful. The newly planted Christmas tree is pleasantly accepted as an opportunity for hide and seek games, pretending she is not there, and then jumping out from behind it to the surprised delighted giggles of our daughter Murielle (4). Really for atheists there is no better companion than a sweet Stupsi like her.

From reader Divy in Florida we have a Christmas-y Jango:

From Laurie:

Here is your niece, Miss Octavia Sadle, listening to her favourite xmas music!!!

Screenshot

And your namesake niece, Miss Alcestis Jerry, in her mummy’s lap!

From Sue Smalldon:

In the spirit of Christmas, spreading love and understanding, I wanted to share a heartwarming moment that happened this morning – Christmas morning. For the first time ever, my dog ‘Homer’ let one of my cats ‘Fearless Pussycat’ clean his ears! To understand this milestone, I should add that Homer doesn’t even let me clean his ears, so it was an absolutely thrilling WOW moment. Homer and Fearless Pussycat have always had a unique relationship. Fearless Pussycat, true to her name, is always bold and adventurous, while Homer is more reserved and protective. This special interaction between them was wonderful. Oh btw it reached 39.4 degrees Celsius today so that’s about 103 degrees Fahrenheit. Hence the fan  in the photo, although I’ve ended with both fans and the air conditioner on.

 

From Katey Keffalinos, we have a Christmas mouse:

Not a moggy, but a mousey! You were so good to post Cricket as a (rein)deer mouse a few years ago, so I was hoping you might share him as Santa (Crick Kringle, if you will). Cricket died shortly into the new year, and I miss the sweet little guy. He lived a long time for a deer mouse; 4 years, 7 months, and became very bonded with me, as he was not releasable due to neurological impairment. He was a champion nest builder, intrepid sofa climber (with my assistance and spotting), world class snuggler and brave cooperative patient at the vet for his regular nail trims, as well as tolerating silly hats and holiday photo shoots. He was very special. 

From Kevin Elsken of Springdale, Arizona.

I could not quite get the cats in a true Christmas pose, and actually we decided not to put up a tree with two 8 month old very active kittens running around! I include a photo of the kids: JB (flabby tabby), Misty (grey) and Sam (tuxedo). They are doing their best Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Other Cats imitation…

 

From Terence McLean in Edmonton, Alberta:

Here is Ruby in the tree again this year. She gets the zoomies and ends up in the tree for a break. Have a fantastic 2025.

Also from Stephen P., “Some cat figures and pics which are ubiquitous in Chiang Mai, Thailand.”  They must love their cats there

The James Webb Space Telescope was designed and built to study the early universe, and hopefully revolutionary our understanding of cosmology. Two years after its launch, it’s doing just that.

One of the first things that astronomers noticed with the James Webb was galaxies that were brighter and larger than our models of galaxy formation suggested they should be. They were like seeing teenagers in a kindergarten classroom, challenging our assumptions of cosmology. But while there were some breathless claims that the Big Bang was broken, those statements were a little overblown.

But still, big, bright, mature galaxies in the early universe are forcing us to reconsider how galaxy formation is supposed to proceed. Whatever nature is telling us through the James Webb, it seems to be that galaxies form far faster than we thought before.

Related to that, for several years cosmologists have recognized a certain tension in their measurements of the present-day expansion rate of the universe, called the Hubble rate. Appropriately called the Hubble tension, the difference comes when comparing measurements of the distant, early universe with measurements of the later, nearby universe.

There’s definitely something funky going on here, but cosmologists can’t figure out exactly what. It might have something to do with our measurements of the deep universe, or it might be because of our lack of understanding of dark matter and dark energy. Either way, the James Webb didn’t help anything by confirming that the tension is very, very real.

No matter what comes out of the Hubble tension problem, the James Webb is delivering spectacular results in other areas. One of its primary missions was to find evidence for Population III stars, the first generation of stars to appear in the universe. There are no such stars left in the modern-day cosmos, as they all apparently died off billions of years ago. So our only hope to detect them is to use super-telescopes like the James Webb.

This year a team reported the first tentative detections of a galaxy in the young universe that just might contain Population III stars. The detection is not confirmed, but hopefully upcoming observation campaigns will tell us if we’re on the right track.

No matter what, we know we have a lot left to learn about the universe, and that the James Webb will continue delivering results – and hopefully a few surprises – for years to come.

The post James Webb’s Big Year for Cosmology appeared first on Universe Today.

Titan is one of the solar system’s most fascinating worlds for several reasons. It has something akin to a hydrological cycle, though powered by methane. It is the solar system’s second-largest moonMooner our own. It is the only other body with liquid lakes on its surface. That’s part of the reason it has attracted so much attention, including an upcoming mission known as Dragonfly that hopes to use its thick atmosphere to power a small helicopter. But some of the most interesting features on Titan are its lakes, and Dragonfly, given its means of locomotion, can’t do much with those other than look at them from afar. So another mission, initially conceived by James McKevitt, then an undergraduate at Loughborough University but now a PhD student at University College London would take a look at both their surface and underneath.

The mission, which has undergone several iterations, was initially designed to mimic the hunting motion of a gannet. This seabird famously dives under the water to search for fish and then floats back up to the top before setting off again. In the original paper describing the mission concept, Mr. McKevitt focused on the hydrodynamics of how such a mission would be possible on Titan, including the physics of diving into a lake of liquid methane without breaking the probe.

Luckily, the most fascinating lakes on Titan are all clustered around the north pole, so it would be theoretically possible to hop between one lake and another, given there was enough thrust/power. However, as time went on, the original mission concept seemed less and less feasible – especially given the most required to both take off from a resting position on top of a lake and dive down deeply enough into the next lake to make a meaningful difference in the environment.

Fraser discusses the importance of a mission to Titan.

Of particular concern was the power system – RTGs, the only current system that would feasibly power such a probe on Titan’s fully enveloped surface, would be too heavy for such a mission architecture. So, Mr. McKevitt changed tact and created something entirely different.

During COVID-19, he created an organization known as Conex Research to explore complex missions in a collaborative think-tank format. He then adapted Astraeus, as the mission was known, to a more achievable format, which was then described on Conex’s website. In a press release from August of 2022, the mission had morphed into a four-part system.

First is a “Main Orbital Spacecraft,” which would orbit the Moon Moondeploy two smaller vehicles – Mayfly and Manta. As their names suggest, Mayfly would flit about as an aerial observation platform, while Manta would dive into the lakes that were so intriguing in the original mission architecture. A series of 2U Cubesats, called “Mites,” would also join them and measure different parts of Titan’s atmosphere during a slow descent period after being released from the MOS.

Fraser discusses the Dragonfly mission planned to visit Titan’s surface.

That sounds like a pretty hefty lift, especially for a group of volunteer contributors, even if there are almost 30 of them. Lately, the group hasn’t had much of an update since they presented the mission format at the International Astronautical Conference in 2022. But if they are still making progress on the mission, there is a chance it might one day make it all the way to the bottom of one of Titan’s lakes.

Learn More:
James McKevitt – ASTrAEUS: An Aerial-Aquatic Titan Mission Profile
Conex Research – The Astraeus Mission to Titan
UT – Scientists Construct a Global Map of Titan’s Geology
UT – Titan May Have a Methane Crust 10 Km Thick

Lead Image:
Surface of Titan (left) with modeling mockups of the Mayfly (middle) and Manta (right).
Credit – Conex Research

The post A Mission to Dive Titan’s Lakes – and Soar Between Them appeared first on Universe Today.

I’m sort of late this year, but if you can send me a photo of your cat in a Christmas theme, and also a few words about the cat (including its name), I’ll try to put these up tomorrow.

I just realized that Chanukah and Christmas and Coynezaa all begin on the same day this year. The latter two are by definition, but the coincidence of Chanukah and Christmas occurs only rarely.

If you don’t know where to send them, look at the left hand sidebar and click on “How to send me wildlife photos.”

NOTE:  I can use only one photo per contributor, so please send just one.

It’s not surprising to me that a mainstream liberal newspaper, the New York Times, would publish an op-ed on Christmas Eve that assumes the reality of Jesus as the son of God. There are of course endless lessons one can draw from this myth, and the NYT has always been soft on religion. Remember the op-ed column by Anglican minister Tish Harrison Warren, in which we were subject to a weekly dose of anodyne pap? (The paper apparently ditched her after a while.)

But today we get an essay from Peter Wehner that, to me, seems arrantly stupid in its very thesis. For that thesis is that IF you believe in Jesus’s genealogy, and IF you think that one’s genealogy beyond one’s parents could be a source of shame, THEN you could draw lessons from the story of Jesus as told in the Bible.  Every one of these links is weak, and yet the paper published the essay anyway. I’ll give a few quotes below (click below to read the article, or find it archived here, but don’t bother):

Wehner was impressed by a semon her heard at a Baptist Church, and simply draws on its content to show that Jesus was amazing in overcoming his lineage:

One of the forgotten facts of the story of Jesus’ life is that he came from a profoundly dysfunctional family.

I was reminded of this while listening to a sermon this month at Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va. Chris Davis, the pastor of the church, took as his text the first 17 verses of the Gospel of Matthew, known as the genealogy of Jesus. Those verses, a long list of names that ties one generation to another, are often skipped over in favor of the story of Jesus’ birth. To the degree that they have any meaning at all, it’s usually because for Christians it establishes Jesus as the heir to the promises God made to Abraham and David.

But as the pastor pointed out, Jesus came down to us through broken families: “one generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation.” There were murderers, adulterers, prostitutes and people who committed incest, liars, schemers and idolaters.

Now I’ve forgotten my New Testament (yes, I read it), but I’m not sure how broken Jesus’s fictional ancestry was. But let’s assume it was pretty screwed up. From that Wehner ()and Davis) draw the following conclusions, all based on assuming the truth of the New Testament). I’ve indented the quotes; bolding is mine:

1.) The disreputable lineage of Jesus reminds us of something else as well: Past is not prologue. If Jesus himself came from a line of murderers, adulterers, cheats and frauds, the Rev. Scott Dudley, senior pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., told me, “then there is hope for all of us. He’s a cycle-breaker showing that generations of dysfunction don’t have to be predictive of future events.

The next lesson is pretty much the same:

2.) A Jesus who showed up from nowhere, fully grown and without ancestry, might have too. The actual Jesus, though, shows us something different. We are not our bloodlines or our family histories.

And the lesson in wokeness:

3.) But Jesus’ awareness of broken lives wasn’t restricted to his family tree; it defined his ministry. He identified with the least and the lowliest, not just those in his lineage but those in his life.

4.) The genealogy of Jesus is also a story of radical inclusion. Several of the women listed in the first chapter of Matthew are Gentiles [non Jews]. This incorporation has significance, according to Craig Barnes, a former president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

And that’s about it. Is there anything new here except to draw lessons from a work of fiction? Those lessons, in fact, are purely made up, and the last two are simply wrong. Yes, you could couch Jesus as a Social Justice Warrior, who included everyone in his great love, except for the fact that he stated that he himself was the only way to get to heaven. Remember John 14:6 in the King James Bible?

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

That alone should dispel the idea that Jesus’s teachings were inclusive, for what about all those nonbelievers outside of the Middle East who had no opportunity to accept Jesus. Further, Christian theology tells us that these were tainted by Original Sin, and, as unrepentant sinners, were doomed to fry for eternity in Hell.

Yes, what we have here is a believer cherry-picking Scripture to tell us something that everybody knows (if some of your ancestors—but not your parents!—were dysfunctional, you can overcome that); as well as telling us something that isn’t true (Jesus’s love extended to everyone), But yes, it’s the Christmas season, and it’s grinch-y to even say that Jesus might not really have been the wonder-working Son of God.

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

Well, of course the MSM has always been soft on religion, adhering, even if atheistic, to “belief in belief”. What bothers me is that one aspect of my own ideology, which is opposition to the performative and ineffectual forms of wokeness, is also getting soft on religion. I’m not referring to right-wing media like Fox News, which of course won’t go after religion, but to the liberal form of anti-wokeness. Like this article that just appeared in the Free Press (click to read). In some ways this one is worse than above, for it demonstrates the regret of a mother (the author) for not having imbued her children with more of the Jesus-y aspects of Christianity. And that despite the fact that author Larissa Phillips (founder of the Volunteer Literacy Project) and her husband are atheists. (This article isn’t fully archived.)

The thesis here is that yes, Christmas is a great time to get together with family, celebrate in traditional ways by opening presents, having a big feed, and socializing with others.  But this still leaves a God-shaped hole in one’s persona.  Now a mother with kids in her twenties, Phillips regrets not having injected more traditional religion into her kids’ upbringing. And remember, she and her partner are atheists. What gives?

Of all the treasures that came out of the cardboard box of Christmas decorations every December of my childhood, the nativity set was the best. Joseph, Mary, the kings, the shepherds: Our tiny figures were made of clay with a white glaze that looked like icing. I treated them like delicate, special dolls, rearranging them and moving them around the living room, from the coffee table to the stereo console, to the mantle. I might add a blanket for the baby, sometimes a scarf for Mary, cut from scraps of velvet or felt.

These are experiences that my own children, who are now 21 and 25, never had. Their father and I are atheists who, without debate, raised them entirely without religion. At Christmas, we still did the tree and the lights and the presents—all the secular parts of the holiday—and my kids knew the Christmas story, the way they knew about Greek myths. But there were no religious symbols in our home, and no going to church. In recent years, I’ve begun to regret this.

Apparently problems arise if you bring up your kids without Jesus. One of those problems is the Santa myth:

But right away, there were problems with secular Christmas, and they got worse every year.

Santa Claus, for example. If you’ve decided to raise your children without God because you are into truth and reason and rationality, are you going to tell them that Santa Claus is real? And refuse to budge even when your kids become stout little rationalists demanding answers? I thought it was bizarre to lie to your children, but by the time they started asking difficult questions, we were committed to Christmas. We went half in on the Santa delusion, referring to Santa with a wink.

Yes, but kids stop believing in Santa after a while, and you don’t see Santa-believers doing bad stuff to others. This isn’t always the case with Christians.  And then there is the Present Problem:

The problem with presents was worse and ever-worsening. I love presents. I love buying gifts and wrapping them and hiding them in secret places. I love the sight of a Christmas tree surrounded by presents. I love Christmas morning, sitting around in pajamas opening all the gifts. And when the kids were still little it was simple: Fill a stocking with a few chocolates and trinkets and wrap up some presents. Preschoolers are easy to impress. They like boxes more than anything else. (“Mom!” my 4-year-old daughter stage-whispered to me one Christmas morning, having peeked under the tree. “He brought clementines!”) But older kids always want more. By middle school my daughter had graduated to texting me an extensive shopping list with links. She once told me that her friends’ parents spend $1000 on each child. It made me wonder whether I should give up on presents completely.

Seriously? I know families whose present-giving is minimal, and I doubt that Amish or Orthodox Jewish families engage in this sort of wholesale gift-giving.

But the biggest problem is that God-shaped hole:

Maybe we didn’t have to reject every aspect of the religious traditions.

I’m sure my kids would have had complaints about church on Christmas Eve. I’m sure I would have too. I can imagine sitting in a pew silently grumbling about the minister’s call for obedience. My husband might have sighed pointedly when the man behind us sang too loudly. It wouldn’t have been perfect. But lately I can’t get those services at my grandmother’s church out of my mind. Even as a teenager it was impossible not to be moved by the sight of the familiar building at night, dressed up in garlands and ribbons, the stained glass windows in dark shadows, the altar flickering with candlelight, everyone in velvet dresses or ties or even suits. I remember the voices of the choir vibrating in my chest and the feeling of something very big and old and special.

My generation had the best of both worlds. We played in the crumbling remains of Christian traditions without realizing how much structure and beauty they gave us. I’m still an atheist, but I’ve come to believe that taking religion out of my children’s Christmas was a mistake. They never really witnessed the celebration of a miracle that goes back two thousand years. They didn’t have a nativity set, even though I loved mine, because when you scrub God from your holiday celebration, it’s strange to give your kids a tiny baby Jesus to play with. Isn’t it?

I’m not sure anymore. I couldn’t pass on to my kids a faith in God, but I could have shared the traditions that have always shaped and enchanted childhoods in this part of the world. The remnants were still there, and they were good. To today’s young atheist families building their annual rituals, I offer this advice: It’s okay if you don’t believe in God. Go to the Christmas Eve service anyway. Learn the carols, even the religious ones. Get the nativity set.

Yes, you have to let your kids see that celebration of a delusion.  But what Phillips is mourning here is not really the lack of traditional religious beliefs. She’s mourning what Richard Dawkins likes about Church: the ceremony, the incense, and the singing. What she’s talking about is not a god-shaped hole but a hymn-shaped hole.  The problem with this article is just that: it confects a problem that really doesn’t exist. Does atheist Phillips want her children simply to know more about religion? If so, give them a Bible? Or, if she wants her kids to hear hymns and sniff incense, well, that’s simply ceremony.  Yes, I went to midnight mass at Notre Dame when I lived in Paris, and it was quite the spectacle, with the swinging censers, the music, and the beautiful cathedral. But not for a minute did I believe what they were celebrating, and I could get the same feeling by going to a concert of Tagore songs.

Of course Bari Weiss, the founder of the Free Press, seems to be religiously Jewish; as far as I can see, there are aspects of Judaism that she believes in. But she’s not explicit about it, and so I can’t be sure that she’s not a secular Jew like me.  I’d like to ask her exactly what supernatural stuff she believes in, and what about this article merited its publication.

UPDATE: This just came up: an interview of Tom Holland by Bari Weiss:

An excerpt. Bolding is mine:

Whether you believe in the story of the virgin birth and resurrection, or you believe that those miracles are myths, one thing is beyond dispute: The story of Jesus and the message of Christianity is among the stickiest ideas the world has ever seen.

Within four centuries of Jesus’s death, Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. It had 30 million followers—which amounted to half the empire. Today, two millennia later, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world, with more than 2 billion adherents.

How did the radical message of Christianity catch on? How did it change the world? And how does it shape all our lives today?

These questions motivate the latest episode of Honestly. My guest is the incredible historian Tom Holland, one of the most gifted storytellers in the world. His podcast, The Rest Is History, is among the most popular out there. Each week, he and his co-host, Dominic Sandbrook, charm their way through history’s most interesting characters and sagas. I can’t recommend it more highly.

I also recommend Tom’s book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. In it, he argues that Christianity is the reason we have America, that it was the inspiration behind our revolution. He also argues that Christianity is the backbone of both “wokeness,” as an ideology, and liberalism, which so often sees itself as secular.

Oy vey! Something is going on at the Free Press. I guess it’s the claim that Christianity is the backbone not just of wokeness, but of liberalism.

As I noted yesterday, Biden has commuted the sentences of all but three federal prisoners on death row; they’ll now be serving life behind bars without parole instead. I insisted that this was an excellent decision, as I have never seen the sense of the government killing a prisoner.  Here are the pros and cons of capital punishment as I see them.

Pro:  People feel that somebody who does a bad crime deserves to be killed for it. The idea is that because the criminal made the victims suffer, he, too, should suffer as retribution for what was inflicted on his victims. It’s retribution, Jake!

Cons:  Because of litigation fees and the length of time before execution, as well as execution costs, it actually costs more to execute a prisoner than to keep him in prison until he dies.

If exculpating evidence surfaces, you can retry or free a living prisoner, but not one who’s been executed.

Evidence shows that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.

Capital punishment is purely retributive and, in the end, seems selfish as it satisfies the wishes of people to see other people dead.

The state should not be in the business of killing people. That is reserved for one’s opponents in wartime.

Prisoners sentenced to death have no opportunity to be rehabilitated. And surely some of them could be released eventually and become productive citizens, and enjoy the rest of their lives in freedom.

To a determinist, prisoners who commit capital crimes had no choice in the matter, and you don’t execute people for “making the wrong choice” if they didn’t have one.

Anyone who wants retribution should be able to find it in the idea that someone will spend the rest of his life in prison, which is a harsh punishment in itself.

Note that the cons heavily outweigh the pros. And that is surely why the U.S, is the only Western country to have the death penalty (Japan also has it, though it’s not really “Western”).

My question: is there ANY benefit to society in having the death penalty? It seems to hang around because it to afford a ghoulish kind of closure to those who feel strongly about what should happen to someone who commits a horrible crime. One of the most barbaric things I have seen is the crowd of people massed outside a prison on the eve of an execution, baying for blood.

Catching the best sky watching events for the coming year 2025.

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS captured over the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona. Credit: Robert Sparks

How about that eclipse in 2024? Certainly, the Great North American Eclipse of April 8th 2024 was one for the ages, instilling the eclipse-chasing bug in many a new skywatching fan. Now, for the bad news: 2025 is a rare, totality free year, featuring only a pair of remote partial solar eclipses. The good news is, there’s lots more in store to see in the sky in 2025, with a pair of fine total lunar eclipses, Mars at its best, and lunar occultations galore. And hey, the Sun is still mighty active, and the cosmos does still owe us another fine comet.

2024: The Year in Brief

To be sure, the April eclipse was spectacular… but 2024 was almost more notable for the unpredictable. First, the Sun unleashed two epic solar storms, sending amazing aurora displays southward towards latitudes and populations of skywatchers that rarely see them. Then, Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS survived perihelion in late September, and went on to put on a fine show for northern hemisphere watchers at dusk in October. All of this transpired against a record number of rocket launches worldwide, as SpaceX and its competitors race to fill the sky with Starlink and its ilk.

Will artificial stars outnumber real ones in the coming generation? We’re differently witness to an evolving sky, as the clockwork gears unfold in the drama of the heavens above us.

The Rules

First up, some ground rules. We think of this list as a ‘best of the best’ for the year, distilled down to top events, with a little strangeness thrown in to make things unique. Think conjunctions closer than a degree, comets brighter than +6th magnitude, etc. as a sort of ‘101 Top Astronomy Events for the Year.’

The Top 12 Events for 2025

Such is astronomy and skywatching in 2025. First, here’s a quick subjective rundown of the dozen very best skywatching events to look forward to in the coming year:

-The peak for Solar Cycle 25 continues

-Mars at opposition in January

-Venus rules the dusk sky at the start of the year, and transitions to the dawn sky

-A once a generation Major Lunar Standstill sees the Moon swinging wide north-to-south

-Saturn’s rings are edge on as seen from our Earthly vantage point

-Comet G3 ATLAS ‘may’ break negative magnitudes in January

-Two total lunar eclipses for the year worldwide

-Lunar occultations worldwide for the stars Spica, Regulus and Antares

-A rare ‘triple year’ for lunar-stellar occultations

-The Moon meets up with Saturn and Mars multiple times in 2025

-A rare, ‘smiling emoticon’ triple conjunction involving the Moon, Regulus and Venus on September 19th

-The Moon occults sections of Messier 45 (The Pleiades) on every pass for 2025

Aurorae light up the sky over Ottawa, Canada. Credit: Andrew Symes The Sun, the Seasons and the Solar Cycle in 2025

We’re just coming off of the historic solar maximum in 2024 for Solar Cycle Number 25, and the wild ride is far from over. On an 11-year period from one maxima to the next, the Sun doubtless has more in store for 2025 in terms of space weather and aurora. We’re now on a long, slow downslide towards solar minimum in 2029-2030.

Earth reaches perihelion on January 4th at 0.98333 AU in 2025, and aphelion on July 3rd at 1.01664 AU from the Sun.

Seasons in 2025 start on:

March 20th (northward equinox)

June 20th (northward solstice)

September 22nd (southward equinox)

December 21st (southward solstice)

The Moon in 2025

2025 is a ‘hilly’ year for the path of the Moon, as we cross what’s known as a Major Lunar Standstill. The actual node crossing for the event occurs on January 29th. The Moon’s orbit is inclined a little over five degrees relative to the ecliptic plane. The entire orbit of our Moon is also dragged (mainly by the Sun) one revolution every 18.6-years, in what’s known as lunar nodal precession. All this means that once every 18.6 years, the Moon ‘swings wide’ in the sky, as the tilt of its orbit is applied to the Earth’s versus the ecliptic plane.

A rare ‘Lunar Standstill’, seen down the Sistine Axis in Rome, Italy in late 2024. Credit: Gianluca Masi. A ‘Hilly Year’

We just had the northernmost Full Moon the decade on December 15th, 2024, and we’re due for the southernmost Full Moon on June 11th.

Major and Minor Lunar Standstills for the first half of the 21st century. Credit: Dave Dickinson

The year is also rare in that a Black Moon (in the old-timey sense as the third New Moon in an astronomical season with four) occurs on August 23rd, and the Harvest Moon nearest to the September Equinox occurs in October, on the 7th.

Moon Phases for 2025 (in Universal Time)Closest Perigee–May 26 1:53 UT (357,309 km)Most Distant Apogee-Oct 24 15:31 UT (405,614 km)New MoonBrown LunationFull MoonNotesDec 30 – 22:28 UT (2024)1262Jan 13 – 22:28 UT1st Full Moon of 2025Jan 29 – 12:37 UT1263Feb 12 – 13:54 UT
Feb 28 – 00:47 UT1264Mar 14 – 6:56 UTTotal Lunar Eclipse (Mar14)Mar 29 – 11:00 UT1265Apr 13– 00:24 UTPartial Solar Eclipse (March 29)Apr 27 – 19:33 UT1266May 12 – 16:58 UT
May 27 – 3:04 UT1267Jun 11 – 7:46 UTClosest Full Moon of the year, Southernmost Full Moon of 2025Jun 25 – 10:34 UT1268Jul 10 – 20:39 UT
Jul 24 – 19:12 UT1269Aug 9 – 7:57 UT
Aug 23 – 6:07 UT1271Sep 7 – 18:11 UTTotal Lunar Eclipse (Sep 7) 3rd New (Black) Moon in SeasonSep 21 -19:55 UT1272Oct 7 – 3:49 UTOctober Harvest Moon Partial Solar Eclipse (Sep 21)Oct 21 – 12:26 UT1273Nov 5 -13:20 UT
Nov 20 – 6:48 UT1274Dec 4 – 23:15 UTLong Night’s Full Moon Most distant Moon of the yearDec 20 – 1:44 UT1275Jan 3 – 10:04 UT1st Full Moon of 2026 Eclipses in 2025 Totality! As seen on May 16th, 2022. Credit: Andrew Symes.

As mentioned previous, 2025 features 4 eclipses—the minimum number than can occur in a calendar year. These are 2 total lunar and 2 partial solar eclipses, bookending two eclipse seasons in 2025:

Circumstances for the total lunar eclipse on the night of March 13-14th. Credit: Fred Espenak/GSFC/NASA

-A total lunar eclipse on the night of March 13-14th for the Americas;

-A partial solar eclipse for March 29th spanning the North Atlantic;

-A total lunar eclipse on the night of September 7-8th centered on Central Asia;

-A partial solar eclipse on September 21st for New Zealand and the South Pacific.

An animation of the March 29th partial solar eclipse. Note that the umbral shadow of the Moon juuuust misses the Earth (!) Credit: NASA/GSFC/A.T. Sinclair. The Inner Planets in 2025

Fleeting Mercury reaches greatest elongation six times in 2025 (3 in the dawn and 3 in the dusk) marking the best time to spy the elusive world:

-March 8th – Mercury is 18º east (dusk)

-April 21st – Mercury is 27º west (dawn, best for 2025)

-July 4th -Mercury is 26º east (dusk)

-August 19th – Mercury is 18º west (dawn)

-October 29th – Mercury is 24º east (dusk)

-December 8th – Mercury is 21º west (dawn)

Meanwhile, Venus is busy in 2025. The brilliant world starts off dominating the evening sky, reaching greatest elongation 47 degrees east of the Sun on January 10th and shining at magnitude -4.5. This is the best apparition of Venus since 2017. Venus then takes the plunge towards the Sun, passing less than nine degrees north of the Sun on March 21st-22nd. This is a good time to try the challenging feat of seeing Venus near inferior conjunction… just make sure that the Sun is physically blocked from view.

Venus near inferior conjunction in 2020. Credit: Shahrin Ahmad.

Venus then goes on to a fine dawn appearance for the remainder of 2025, reaching greatest elongation 46 degrees west of the Sun on June 25th.

The Outer Planets in 2025

The big ticket planetary event kicks off 2025, when Mars reaches opposition on January 16th. To be sure, this opposition is part of an unfavorable cycle as the Red Planet is currently moving away from us towards aphelion on April 16th, 2025, but noteworthy as it marks the biannual Mars observing season. At its best, Mars shines at -1.5 magnitude and presents a disk 15” across.

Mars from 2020. Credit: Andrew Symes.

Beyond opposition, Mars spends most of the rest of 2025 in the evening sky, and reaches solar conjunction on January 9th, 2026.

Jupiter in 2025

Jupiter reached opposition on December 7th, 2024, skips in 2025, and heads to opposition next on January 10th, 2026. Jupiter last performed such a bypass in 2013. Callisto (the only major moon that can ‘miss’ Jove) starts shadow-casting and passing back into Jupiter’s shadow on May 11th. This is a prelude to another bidecadal mutual eclipse season for Jupiter’s moons starting in 2026.

We have three double shadow transit seasons to watch for in 2025:

(Thanks to John Flannery and the late John O’Neill who edited the ‘Sky-High’ publication for the Irish Astronomical Society for years for calculating and passing this info on).

-February 25th (Ganymede-Europa)

-October 13th (Ganymede-Io)

-October 29th (Io-Europa)

-November 5th (Io-Europa)

-November 21st (Callisto-Io)

Also watch for a unique event, when only Callisto is visible on October 6th. Jupiter reaches solar conjunction on June 24th, transitioning from the dusk to dawn sky.

Saturn in 2025

Saturn starts off 2025 in the evening sky, and passes behind the Sun and into the dawn sky on March 12th. Saturn reaches opposition once on September 21st, marking the best time to spy the ringed world.

The changing tilt of Saturn’s rings. Credit: Shahrin Ahmad.

Saturn’s rings are edge on on March 23rd, 2025, providing us a twice every 29-year view of an apparently ‘ring-less’ Saturn… just think how bland the solar system would be, if Saturn always appeared thus?

Ring plane-crossing also means it’s time to see Saturn’s moons transiting across its disk. These are tougher to spot versus the Galilean moons of Jupiter, though shadow transits of 0.8” Titan are in the range of backyard telescopes. Use the IMCCE’s site to generate shadow transits for Titan in 2025.

Looking outward, Uranus reaches opposition on November 21st in the constellation Taurus, Neptune passes opposition on September 23rd in Pisces, and distant Pluto hits opposition on July 25th in Capricornus.

The Best Conjunctions and Groupings in 2025

2025 is an intriguing year for lunar-planetary meetups. First off, you have a rare chance to see all of the naked eye planets (from Mercury to Saturn) in the evening sky at once in mid-March, as Mercury briefly completes the scene.

The sky scene looking eastward on the morning of April 25th.

The best planet-versus-planet pairing occurs on August 12th with Jupiter and Venus just 54’ apart, 36 degrees from the Sun at dawn. The best planet-versus-bright star conjunction for the year happens when Venus passes 30’ north of Regulus on September 19th, also at dawn. Incidentally, a remote region in the Siberian Arctic will actually see the 5% illuminated waning crescent Moon cover the pair simultaneously, while the rest of us will see a skewed, ‘smiley face’ emoticon grouping hanging in the dawn sky, demonstrating that perhaps the Universe does indeed have a sly sense of humor.

Venus vs. Regulus on September 19th. Credit: Dave Dickinson

A triple conjunction grouping of this sort won’t grace the skies of our fair planet again until February 13th, 2056, when the Moon, Mars and Mercury meet up.

Looking eastward on the morning of August 20th. Credit: Stellarium Bright Planets vs. Clusters

Three planets that transit the Beehive Cluster (Messier 44) in 2025:

-May 4th Mars vs. M44 (83º from the Sun at dusk)

-July 2nd Mercury vs. M44 (25º from the Sun at dusk)

-August 31st Venus vs. M44 (31º from the Sun at dawn)

The Moon occults Saturn in 2014. Credit: Paul Stewart

Planets Occulted by the Moon in 2025

The Moon occults 4 naked eye planets (all except Jupiter) a total of 7 times in 2025:

DatePlanetMoon PhaseRegionNotesJan 4Saturn+25%Europe
Jan 14Mars+99%N. America/Africa
Feb 1Saturn+13%Alaskan Arctic
Feb 9Mars+91%N. Europe/Asia
Mar 1Mercury+2%Central Pacific
Jun 30Mars+24%S. America
Sep 19Venus-6%NW N. AmericaSee Venus (daytime) The visibility footprint for the January 14th occultation of Mars by the Moon. Bright Stars Occulted by the Moon in 2025

2025 is also rare in that the Moon will occult three of the four +1st magnitude stars that it can occult: Spica (11 times), Antares (12 times) and Regulus (6 times). Only Aldebaran sits this one out. Spica occultations are on their way out and headed towards the Antarctic region in 2025, while Regulus events are just sliding on to the scene to the north from the Arctic. Meanwhile, Spica occultations are still ongoing in 2025, and run out in November.

DateStarMoon PhaseRegionNotesJan 21Spica-51%W. Africa/Atlantic
Jan 25Antares-16%Indian Ocean
Feb 17Spica-77%South Pacific
Feb 21Antares-41%S. South America
Mar 16Spica-95%E. Africa/Indian Ocean
Mar 20Antares-67%Australia/New Zealand
Apr 13Spica-99%S. America/S. Atlantic
Apr 16Antares-88%S. Africa
May 10Spica+97%South Pacific
May 14Antares-96%S. Africa
Jun 6Spica+83%Antarctica
Jun 10Antares+99%Australia/New Zealand
Jul 3Spica+60%Antarctica
Jul 7Antares+91%S. Africa/SW Australia
Jul 26Regulus+5%Arctic1st of cycleJul 31Spica+44%Antarctica
Aug 4Antares+80%Antarctica/S. South America
Aug 23Regulus+0.5%ArcticNear NewAug 27Spica+20%Antarctica
Aug 31Antares+56%New Zealand/Antarctica
Sep 19Regulus-4%Arctic
Sep 23Spica+3%Antarctica
Sep 27Antares+28%Antarctica
Oct 16Regulus-22%NE North America
Oct 21Spica+0.5%AntarcticaNear NewOct 25Antares+15%S. South America
Nov 13Regulus-37%N. Europe
Nov 17Spica-7%AntarcticaFinal of cycleNov 21Antares+2%Southern Indian OceanDaytimeDec 10Regulus-64%N. North America
Dec 18Antares-3%Southern AtlanticDaytime Occultations of the Pleiades by the Moon in 2025

The Moon occults the Pleiades 14 times worldwide in 2025, in a series of ongoing occultations running all the way out to 2029:

DateLocation favoredMoon phaseNotesJanuary 10thNorth America/W. Europe/NW Africa+82%
February 6thWestern North America+69%
March 5thNE Asia+43%
April 1stEurope+17%
April 29thN. Pacific+4%
May 26thNorth America<1%Daytime, unobservableJune 23rdNE Africa-8%
July 20thNorth America-24%
August 16thNE Asia-45%
September 12thEurope-67%
October 10thW. North America-87%
November 6thN. Asia-98%
December 4thNW North America-99%
December 31stN. Asia+89%
Bright Comets to Watch for in 2025

Right now, there’s only one comet with real potential to reach naked eye visibility in 2025: Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS. This comet reaches perihelion 0.094 AU from the Sun on January 13th, and ‘may’ top -1st magnitude or brighter. At magnitude +7 as of writing this in late December 2024, Comet G3 ATLAS could become a fine object low in the dawn sky for southern hemisphere observers… but only if it holds together and performs as expected.

A bright Geminid meteor over southern Arizona from 2024. Credit: Eliot Herman Meteor Showers to Watch For in 2025

Here are prospects for annual meteor showers in 2025:

Quadrantids – Peak at a Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR) of 80 on January 4th versus a +27% illuminated, waxing crescent Moon.

Lyrids – Peak on April 22nd with an ZHR of 18, versus a -32% illuminated, waning crescent Moon.

Eta Aquariids – Peak on May 5th with a ZHR of 50, versus a +64% illuminated, waxing gibbous Moon.

Southern Delta Aquariids – Peak on July 31st, with a ZHR of 25, versus a +44% illuminated, waxing crescent Moon.

Perseids – Peak on August 12th, with an expected ZHR of 100, versus a -87% illuminated, waning gibbous Moon.

Orionids – Peak on October 21st with an expected ZHR of 20, versus a New Moon.

Leonids – Peak on November 17th, with a ZHR of 10, versus a -5% illuminated, thin waning crescent Moon.

Geminids – Peak on December 14th, with a ZHR of 150, versus a -23% illuminated, waning crescent Moon.

Ursids – Peak on December 22nd, with a ZHR of 10, versus a 7% illuminated, waxing crescent Moon.

My money is on the Geminids for the best expected meteor shower of 2025.

Weirdness and More

Well, we’re now officially a quarter of the way into the 21st century. For fans and users of stellar cartography, 2050.0 coordinates will now slowly start to come into vogue versus 2000.0, as we inch ever closer to mid-century. It’s a strange thought, for those of us who still remember 1950.0 coordinates on star maps (and star maps in general!). Looking out of the solar system, we’re still waiting for the reclusive (and now overdue) recurrent nova T Coronae Borealis to finally pop.

Also, the white dwarf star Sirius b is now at apastron 11.5” from its brilliant primary, making this an excellent time to cross it off of your life-list… the +4 and +6 magnitude double star 70 Ophiuchus also reaches maximum separation of 6.7” in 2025. Finally, will the defunct Soviet Kosmos 482 Venus mission reenter in 2025? Should we alert the Six Million Dollar Man to stand-by to fight the ‘Venus Death Probe?’

…And a Teaser for 2026

The sky just keeps turning into 2026. Watch for mutual eclipse season for the major moons of Jupiter, as the moons pass one in front of the other. Also, the ongoing solar cycle is also still expected to be active into 2026, producing sunspots, space weather and more. And (finally!) we’ll see the return of total solar eclipses on August 12th, as the umbral shadow of the Moon crosses Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain.

Don’t miss all of these great sky-watching events and more, coming to a sky near you.

Credits: It has been a wild year, on the Earth and in the sky above. We always like to say that our sky watching almanac for the coming year is the one post that takes us six months to write, and this year’s is no exception. Lots of research goes into these, and we’ve picked the brains of lots of knowledgeable observers in the process. Thanks to John Flannery at the Irish Astronomical Society, Bob King, Robert Sparks, Andrew Symes, Paul Stewart, Eliot Herman, Guy Ottewell and everyone who contributed over the past year. Additionally, thanks go out to Universe Today Publisher Fraser Cain for hosting these looks at astronomy for the coming year, for going on over a decade now.

It’s going to be another great year for skywatching in 2025… and who knows? If the interest is out there, 2026 might see this half-a-year project grow into something bigger.

The post Top Astronomy Events for 2025 appeared first on Universe Today.

Some quantum fields that extend throughout all of space-time could be a rich resource of quantum entanglement that can be extracted forever

A scorpion discovered in South America can spray venom out of its stinger and hit targets up to 35 centimetres away

Two separate theoretical studies published this year argued that time itself is bound up in the odd quantum property of entanglement, but deep mysteries remain

These schools combine an atypical education with a New Age spirituality called anthroposophy.

For decades cosmologists have wondered if the large-scale structure of the universe is a fractal: if it looks the same no matter the scale. And the answer is: no, not really. But in some ways, yes. Look, it’s complicated.

Our universe is unimaginably vast and contains somewhere around two trillion galaxies. These galaxies aren’t scattered around randomly, but are assembled into a series of ever-larger structures. There are the groups, containing at most a dozen galaxies are so. Then there are the clusters, which are home to a thousand galaxies and more. Above them are the superclusters, which twist and wind for millions of light-years.

Is this the end of the story?

In the mid 20th century Benoit Mandelbrot brought the concept of fractals into the mainstream. Mandelbrot didn’t invent the concept of fractals – mathematicians had been studying self-similar patterns for ages – but he did coin the word and usher in our modern study of the concept. The basic idea of a fractal is that you can use a single mathematical formula to define a structure at all scales. In other words, you can zoom in and out of a fractal and it still maintains the same shape.

Fractals appear everywhere in nature, from the branches of a tree to the edges of a snowflake. And Mandelbrot himself wondered if the universe is a fractal. If as we zoom out we will see the same kinds of structures appearing again and again.

And in a way, that’s what we see: a hierarchy of structures at ever-larger scales in the universe. But that hierarchy does come to an end. At a certain scale, roughly 300 million lightyears across, the cosmos becomes homogenous, meaning that there are no larger structures and the universe is (at that scale) roughly the same from place to place.

The universe is definitely not a fractal, but parts of the cosmic web still have interesting fractal-like properties. For example, clumps of dark matter called “halos”, which host galaxies and their clusters, form nested structures and sub-structures, with halos holding sub-haloes, and sub-sub-halos inside those.

Conversely, the voids of our universe aren’t entirely empty. They do contain a few, faint dwarf galaxies…and those few galaxies are arranged in a subtle, faint version of the cosmic web. In computer simulations, the sub-voids within that structure contain their own effervescent cosmic webs too.

So while the universe as a whole isn’t a fractal, and Mandelbrot’s idea didn’t hold up, we can still find fractals almost everywhere we look.

The post Is the Universe a Fractal? appeared first on Universe Today.

At the Berlin synchrotron radiation source BESSY II, the largest magnetic anisotropy of a single molecule ever measured experimentally has been determined. The larger this anisotropy is, the better a molecule is suited as a molecular nanomagnet. Such nanomagnets have a wide range of potential applications, for example, in energy-efficient data storage.

Even highly realistic androids can cause unease when their facial expressions lack emotional consistency. Traditionally, a 'patchwork method' has been used for facial movements, but it comes with practical limitations. A team developed a new technology using 'waveform movements' to create real-time, complex expressions without unnatural transitions. This system reflects internal states, enhancing emotional communication between robots and humans, potentially making androids feel more humanlike.

Even highly realistic androids can cause unease when their facial expressions lack emotional consistency. Traditionally, a 'patchwork method' has been used for facial movements, but it comes with practical limitations. A team developed a new technology using 'waveform movements' to create real-time, complex expressions without unnatural transitions. This system reflects internal states, enhancing emotional communication between robots and humans, potentially making androids feel more humanlike.

Researchers have developed nanodiamond sensors with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers, offering exceptional brightness and spin properties for quantum sensing and bioimaging. These nanodiamonds outperform commercial options, requiring 20 times less energy and maintaining quantum states 11 times longer. Enhanced sensitivity to magnetic fields and temperature enables precise applications, including disease detection, battery analysis, and thermal management of electronics, marking a significant advancement in nanotechnology-driven quantum sensing for biological and industrial innovations.

Researchers have created a platform, called SIMPL2, that revolutionizes the study of protein-protein interactions by simplifying detection while improving measurement accuracy. While protein-protein interactions have previously been considered 'undruggable' using small molecules, the platform addresses this challenge by facilitating the measurement of these interactions -- improving our understanding of the types of molecules needed to control them.

Bright, twisted light can be produced with technology similar to an Edison light bulb, researchers have shown. The finding adds nuance to fundamental physics while offering a new avenue for robotic vision systems and other applications for light that traces out a helix in space.

Electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft are on track to start commercial passenger carrying services in 2025, but can they stand out from conventional helicopters?