Around midday, depending on your time zone, the moon passed directly in front of the sun. This phenomenon brought about four minutes of darkness and spectacular light effects in the path of totality, which stretched from Mexico to the northeastern United States. Whether you watched it onsite with eclipse glasses or livestreamed it from somewhere else in the world, it was an amazing sight to see.

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As WIRED notes, theories include thinking CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) is using its particle accelerator to create a black hole or a portal. That’s … obviously not true (the accelerator has been operating so it isn’t about to start doing anything) but that’s just one of the more tame ideas. Others have chosen to believe that NASA is launching rockets during the eclipse (also not true) or that the U.S. government was planning to capitalize on mass chaos and instill martial law (ditto).

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Well, you will have some sort of blindness, and none of it sounds very fun. According to School Health NY, staring directly into the beauty of a solar eclipse can definitely make your eyes suffer for it: “Exposing your eyes to the sun without proper eye protection during a solar eclipse can cause ‘eclipse blindness’ or retinal burns, also known as solar retinopathy. This exposure to the light can cause damage or even destroy cells in the retina (the back of the eye) that transmit what you see to the brain.”

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On cold and wintry nights, sometimes it looks like the Moon is surrounded by a shimmering halo! How magic! We don’t know exactly why these haloes happen, but scientists have done what scientists do best and made an “educated guess.”

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Red lightning … Mother Nature’s villain power

I hate to break it to you, but so far we’ve never seen red lightning in the most cracking-through-the-sky lightning-looking sense. It’s not like those big, jagged streaks of electricity that strike the earth in thunderstorms are somehow dyed crimson. (Yes, that photo above is a lie.)

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Betelgeuse? Isn’t that a Tim Burton movie?

Yes! Sort of. You’re thinking of Beetlejuice, but “Betelgeuse” is pronounced in the exact same way. Betelgeuse is not the byproduct of milking a bug or saying a ghost’s name. Betelgeuse is a star. Specifically a star in Orion’s Belt. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Sure you do! Orion’s Belt is one of the easiest constellations to find. Honestly easier than the Big Dipper.

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With this being the last total eclipse for most of the United States for the next 20 years, it is an exciting time for science fans. But you want to make sure you’re ready to watch the eclipse and not end up like Donald Trump when he just stared … directly at it—something you very much are not supposed to do, for the good of your own eyes. So let’s talk about some fun ways you can make your own eclipse glasses to enjoy it!

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Voyager 1, recognizable in photos and artistic renderings by its iconic radio dish and long antennae, was launched in 1977 to study the solar system and interstellar space. On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 exited the solar system’s heliosphere—the region around the sun where its solar winds are strongest—and officially left the solar system to begin its voyage in interstellar space. According to NASA, the probe is currently over 162 astronomical units (AU), or 15 billion miles, from Earth, making it the most distant human-made object ever launched.

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Between America’s slow descent into Gilead and the pressure of having/raising children while maintaining a career, being a woman is wiping us out. And on most days, it’s all we can do to remain upright and functional.

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Appreciating this breakthrough requires some knowledge about just what we mean by the idea of a “cosmic web.” In 1996, scientist Richard Bond of the University of Toronto first expounded the theory of the cosmic web, coining that term. Bond proposed that the vastness of space is not disorganized, but that a network of dark matter holds it all in place. This cosmic web gives energy and shape to the universe. Just like a spider’s web is made of both strands and open spaces, the cosmic web holds both galaxies and dark matter. That super-dense dark matter purportedly makes up some 80% of the universe, and its density is critical in holding the structure of the universe together. It performs this essential task despite it being transparent and invisible to human eyes.

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The event also stirs up memories of what might be the single funniest of Donald Trump’s presidency. (Or at least the funniest moment involving him personally, just because I don’t think anything will ever top Rudy Giuliani’s “Four Seasons Total Landscaping” press conference.)

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Originally reported by The New York Times, the U.S. space agency has said that they plan to send a 3D printer to the Moon and use the surface’s fine dust to manufacture concrete, even though the dust is highly toxic. Scientists think they can make it safe, as there are materials we sometimes use here on Earth that aren’t always the safest either unless properly utilized.

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So, are there definitely aliens on Earth now? Is that just definitely a thing? Maybe. But It’s not completely convincing that Maussan’s supposed unearthly specimens are it. Let’s unpack. 

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People across India tuned in as the spacecraft landed, with many watching live on TVs across the nation and at least seven million streaming the landing on YouTube. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “Chandrayaan-3’s triumph mirrors the aspirations and capabilities of 1.4 billion Indians,” adding that it was “the moment for new, developing India.” The mission will boost India’s standing internationally as a space power, a title that has really only been held by the United States, Russia, and China. In turn, this will boost the pride of Indian scientists and encourage more of the country’s youth to study STEM.

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Most of the internet has seen bits and pieces of Congress’s UFO hearing, heard before the House Oversight Committee’s national security subcommittee. The hearing took place on July 26, 2023, with the juiciest clips already making the rounds on social media. The most circulated portion of the hearing is the acknowledgment by former military intelligence officer, David Grusch, that the United States government has been withholding information regarding “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” a science-y version of the more popular term: UFOs.

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Nope. Relax. It’s probably just Mercury Retrograde.

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The truth is that “planetary alignment” is an optical illusion because Astrology nerds can’t have anything. But, just because it’s an illusion doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful. Look at contouring.

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The UAP study, which was first announced in June 2022, is tasked with gathering data about UAP and figuring out how NASA can use that data to understand what’s going on in the skies. The team consists of 16 members, including astronaut Scott Kelly, several astrophysicists and engineers, one SETI Institute researcher, a science journalist, and other experts. According to study coordinator Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, “NASA has brought together some of the world’s leading scientists, data and artificial intelligence practitioners, aerospace safety experts, all with a specific charge, which is to tell us how to apply the full focus of science and data to UAP.”

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In a new post, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope gave us a close-up look at them. Described on the website as “new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust,” hence the name, they look like solid rock formations despite … not being that, and it is amazing to know that in this great wide universe that we live in, something can be so breathtaking.

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DART began in about 2015 as a way of putting us one step closer to an actual contingency plan if an asteroid were hurtling towards Earth, which there’s not really much we could do about at this point. Though the country usually seems reactive to problems (see public health and crime policies), NASA has always, at least in part, been about an investment in the future. This future includes the possibility of absolute destruction or rapid ice age by way of rocks flying at us with incredible speed.

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