Illustration: white dwarf draws material from red giant star
The nearby T Coronae Borealis system could still explode any day now, but calculations suggest the next best chance for fireworks is later this year.
‘Sky watchers were disappointed last night when a binary star system didn’t erupt in a nova explosion that was predicted to take place on Thursday. But fear not, the famous blaze star is still due for its recurring nova to erupt any day now.…’ Passant Rabie via Gizmodo
A red giant star and white dwarf orbit each other in this animation of a nova similar to T Coronae Borealis.
‘Astronomers have been watching a small constellation in the night sky, waiting for a nearby binary star system to explode. The wait may finally be over: A numerical estimate predicts the rare nova eruption could happen on Thursday, March 27.
T Coronae Borealis (T CrB), also known as the Blaze Star, is a binary star system located 3,000 light-years from Earth. It periodically explodes in a recurring nova every 79 years or so, and it’s due for an impending eruption.
The Blaze Star has spent the past decade behaving much like it did in the lead-up to its last visible eruption nearly 80 years ago, according to NASA. The current window for the rare astronomical event opened in February 2024 and remains open. Astronomy enthusiasts have been keeping a close eye on the skies since last year, waiting for that stellar boom. A paper published last year in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society estimated that the star is likely to explode on Thursday, March 27—so get ready to look up…
The nova will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere in the Corona Borealis constellation, which forms an arc shape in the night skies. You can spot the stellar explosion without a telescope for several days after it happens. The star system will then begin to dim and won’t brighten again for roughly another 80 years, so make sure you catch this rare celestial event…’
‘Two days after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer took to the air waves. Before his radio broad cast was cut off, he warned his countrymen that their führer could well be a verführer, or misleader. Bonhoeffer ’s anti-Nazism lasted until the end of his life in 1945, when he was executed by the regime for association with the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Even while imprisoned, he kept thinking about the origins of the political mania that had overtaken Germany. The force of central importance to Hitler’s rise was not evil, he concluded, but stupidity.
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than mal ice,” Bon ho ef fer wrote in a letter to his co-conspirators on the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship. “One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.” When provoked, “the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.”…’
‘On Wednesday, it was reported a French scientist was denied entry to Houston after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers found messages criticizing President Donald Trump’s cuts to science funding. Photos on another visa holder’s phone allegedly showing support for Hezbollah saw her denied reentry into the U.S.
Immigration attorneys have also reported increased scrutiny of visa holders’ messages and social media accounts at official ports of entry, including airports.
“I’ve told my clients to be very careful about their use of electronic devices and bringing electronic devices like phones and laptops through the border, to make sure they haven’t unintentionally saved photos to their phone that might be controversial, even though they don’t think they are,” Elissa Taub, a partner at immigration law firm Siskind Susser in Tennessee, told Newsweek.…’
Trump bashes Dem Gov. Polis over “bad” portrait of himself — even though Republicans commissioned it
‘A rabid Donald Tr*mp unleashed his fury at Colorado Gov. Jared Polis last night for allowing a “bad picture” of himself to hang in the state Capitol — even though the portrait was commissioned by Republicans in 2018, before the governor took office.…’
Pete Hegseth accidentally texts U.S. war plans to Atlantic editor, says new report
‘On March 15, the U.S. bombed Houthi rebels in Yemen — but Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg knew specific details about its “secret” war plans hours beforehand, thanks to an extremely careless text he received by controversial Trump-pick Pete Hegseth.
“The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming,” Goldberg explained today.
“The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing,” he said.
And it wasn’t just the incompetence of Hegseth — a former Fox News host before Donald Trump thought him worthy enough to become U.S. Secretary of Defense — that led to the security breach. It was more of a group effort, that started with Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.…’
‘Assuming that the judge — Judge Boasberg or any other judge for that matter — eventually concludes that the government deliberately violated a court order, what are the judge’s options?
I can tell you that every former judge I know has been asked this question by somebody in the media, including me. I think the only real option is civil contempt.
The reason why it cannot be criminal contempt is generally that would be referred to the Justice Department to prosecute. So you might have a lawyer, a witness that you direct to answer [a question], they refuse, and/or they lie. If you want to charge them with criminal contempt, you have to get the U.S. Attorney’s office or Main Justice to prosecute, and clearly the Tr*mp Justice Department, or the Bondi Justice Department, is not going to prosecute.
Then you get that question, which was raised in the Eric Adams case, could you appoint a special prosecutor? That’s tricky because of separation of powers, so I think criminal contempt is off the table.
I think civil contempt, however, is something that could be done if the facts are fairly straightforward. The remedy in civil contempt, believe it or not, can include incarceration.
Usually it’s fines. If it was a lawyer, you might file a grievance against the lawyer. That could be done if these lawyers either lie to the court or personally violate the order — you might want to bring a grievance before the grievance committee of the local bar where they’re admitted, something like that.
So it could be fines, could be a grievance, but in theory, it could also be jailing somebody. I did that only once in my time on the bench. In a civil contempt case, I actually put somebody in jail because he was so defiant, and then … he did what he was told to do.
You could also sanction the person, and that’s always interesting, because you could have fines that double every day, so it can get serious fast. I don’t know how good at math you are, but a $1,000 fine doubling every day can quickly add up to real money — not for the United States government, but for an individual. If somebody was individually sanctioned, that adds up.
How would incarceration work in civil contempt? Wouldn’t you still need the involvement of the executive branch?
Well, you need the person taken away by the U.S. Marshal. That’s the problem, right?
When I held someone in civil contempt, I had to say, “Marshal, take this person across the street to the jail.”
That is part of the executive branch — just the U.S. Marshal escorting the person over to the federal facility. So it still has that problem, but you don’t need a prosecutor.…’
(Ankush Khardori, a former federal prosecutor, interviewing former federal judge Shira Scheindlin via POLITICO)
New data suggests the unknown, unobservable force responsible for the universe’s expansion may be weakening.
A visualization of a 3D map of the universe, with Earth at the center and every dot representing a galaxy.
‘Observable matter–everything from the coffee cup on your desk, to distant planets, to the largest and most ancient galaxies—makes up just 5% of the cosmos, meaning that dark energy is responsible for a whopping 68% of everything we think exists in the universe.
The notion of dark energy as a constant—which is to say, it manifested the same way 10 billion years ago as it does today, and as it will 10 billion years from now—is “baked into” the predominant model of the universe, Lambda-CDM, according to Rossana Ruggeri, a physicist at the University of Queensland who was involved in the DESI analysis.
“Results from the first batch of data gave a hint that dark energy might not behave like a simple cosmological constant—but it wasn’t strong enough to draw firm conclusions,” Ruggeri said in The Conversation. “Now, the second batch of data has made this evidence stronger.”
Though the data does not yet meet the statistical threshold physicists require to firmly declare a bona fide new discovery, the data strengthen physicists’ resolve that something is going on that will mean the model needs to be revised. “If dark energy is changing over time, it could have profound implications for the ultimate fate of the universe,” Ruggeri wrote.…’
— they probably won’t magically catalyze a mass movement against Tr*mp but are still wildly important
‘I wrote this for people who, like me, have spent much of the past few weeks hoping that somebody else would do something bolder in this political movement. We are downtrodden because we’re full of rage and heartbreak, but the polls tell us that our neighbors don’t share those feelings. We realize we’re seeing something that so many aren’t, but we’re not sure how to bridge the gap. We have wished (appropriately) for bravery from our media, from elected Democrats, from public officials in general. However fair those wishes are, they come with a risk: that we miss the opportunity to be the lonely voice for justice in our own community, the person who makes it a little easier for a second and third and fourth lonely voice to start perking up by our side.
I don’t pretend that all it takes for a social movement to succeed is a bunch of individuals throwing the activist equivalent of spaghetti at so many isolated walls. Nothing I offer here will be enough. And yet, so many of us are waiting for something we can join, which presents a true opportunity to be the first person in your circle welcoming fellow travelers into halting, shaky, earnest action.…’
‘From 1942 to 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers were instrumental in every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
They were critical to securing America’s victory at Iwo Jima.
Axios identified at least 10 articles mentioning the Code Talkers that had disappeared from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday.
The Defense department’s URLs were amended with the letters DEI, suggesting they were removed following Tr*mp’s executive order ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives….’
‘New research this month shows that the experimental antiviral obeldesivir prevented up to 100% of deaths in monkeys infected with the deadliest species of Ebola.…’
Leader of the Youngbloods, and then an enduring prolific solo singer-songwriter career
‘Jesse Colin Young, whose sincere tenor vocals for the Youngbloods graced one of the most loving anthems of the hippie era, “Get Together,” a Top Five hit in 1969, before he went on to pursue a solo career that lasted more than five decades, died on Sunday at his home in Aiken, S.C. He was 83.
His death was announced by his publicist, Michael Jensen, who did not specify a cause.…’
‘Again and again, audiences have been spoon-fed the same story: a character can only be explained by a past trauma, tantalisingly revealed in the last episode. Has the trope reached a tipping point?…’
‘…[I]t’s worth noting for context that there is another prominent international figure who routinely references an “artificial” line between his country and his neighbor: Vladimir Putin has used the same rhetoric in recent years when describing the border between Russia and Ukraine.…’
Write negative coverage about Dictator Tr*mp, and you’re breaking the law.
‘At least that’s what the highly sensitive MAGA man said when speaking to reporters today.
“I believe that CNN and MSDNC [sic], who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party,” Trump said, seeming to forget the name of MSNBC. “And in my opinion, they are really corrupt and they are illegal. What they do is illegal.” (See video here, posted by Aaron Rupar.)
“And it has to stop,” he added, via The Hill, after comparing television news outlets to political operatives. “It has to be illegal. It’s influencing judges and it’s really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other.”…’
‘Dr. Emily Zarka of the PBS series Monstrum looks at the phenomenon of seeing a shadowy man wearing a wide brim hat appearing during terrifying episodes of sleep paralysis. This so called “Hat Man” is so prevalent that restless sleepers have seen this or other frightening images just before they fall asleep. Zarka also examines the physiology behind these frightening episodes…’
‘Elon M*sk is many things—the richest man in the world, an internet-addled conspiracy theorist, the controller of six companies, perhaps even the shadow president of the United States—but most importantly, he is an idea. The value of M*sk may be tied more to his image than his actual performance. He’s a human meme stock….’ (Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic)
‘Known more formally as osteo-odonto keratoprosthesis (OOKP), the surgery has been performed successfully in a handful of countries over the last five decades…
Developed in Italy in the 1960s, tooth-in-eye surgery is a multi-step process that starts with extracting one of a patient’s canine teeth. Surgeons then shape the tooth into a rectangle, drill a hole into it and glue a plastic optical lens inside the hole. They then surgically embed the tooth into the patient’s cheek so that a layer of tissue can grow around it. During the same procedure, they also cut a flap of skin from inside the patient’s cheek and surgically attach the skin to the front of the patient’s eyeball.
Then, they wait. Three months later, if all goes to plan, they embark on the second phase of the operation. They pull back the flap of skin from the eye, then remove any previously damaged tissue, like the lens and the iris. Next, they remove the tooth from the patient’s cheek and surgically embed it into the eyeball. They then lay the flap of skin back over the eyeball and cut a small hole for the patient to see out of.
When the multi-step procedure is complete, patients have a pink tissue with a black dot in the middle where their eye used to be. “It won’t look like a normal eye… The eye will look pink with a small dark circle in the middle.”
The patient’s vision usually comes back within a month of the second phase of the surgery…. Afterward, patients can’t see perfectly—they have a narrower field of vision, similar to peering through a porthole—but they can usually resume some of the activities they had to stop when they went blind. One woman in Australia started skiing again, reports CBC Radio’s Sheena Goodyear.
Surgeons use teeth because of their strength and durability. Teeth are made of dentin, which is one of the hardest substances in the body. And, since they are part of the patient’s own body to begin with, teeth are not typically rejected after the surgery.
“We are trying to really just replace a clear window on the front of the eye… The tooth is the perfect structure to hold a focusing piece of plastic or a telescope for the patient to see through…’ (Sarah Kuta *via Smithsonian *)
‘The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of cost-cutting measures directed by President Donald Tr*mp and carried out by billionaire Elon M*sk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste….’ (via AP News)
The contest for the worst opening sentence in literature is being shut down. Fortunately, access to their archive will be preserved. (via Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest)
‘Firefly’s first mission to the Moon touched down on the lunar surface on Sunday at 3:34 a.m. ET. The Texas-based company released a clip of Blue Ghost’s descent toward the Moon followed by a smooth landing. The footage is a masterclass in lunar landings, capturing striking views of the lander emerging from a cloud of dust, its shadow stretching across the Moon’s surface in a superhero-like stance….’ (via Gizmodo)
‘A review of Steve Benen, “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past” (Harper Collins, 2024) and Jason Stanley, “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future” (Simon & Schuster, 2024)….’ (Abby Smith Rumsey via Lawfare)
‘What started as musings at a dinner party evolved into a radical takeover of the federal bureaucracy. It was driven with a frenetic focus by Mr. M*sk, who channeled his libertarian impulses and resentment of regulatory oversight of his vast business holdings into a singular position of influence….’ (via The New York Times)
In a way, M*sk’s 2022 takeover of Twitter was practice, or an opening gambit in a meticulously planned coup.
‘Dr. Emily Zarka of the PBS series Monstrum looks at the phenomenon of seeing a shadowy man wearing a wide brim hat appearing during terrifying episodes of sleep paralysis. This so called “Hat Man” is so prevalent that restless sleepers have seen this or other frightening images just before they fall asleep. Zarka also examines the physiology behind these frightening episodes…’
‘The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of cost-cutting measures directed by President Donald Tr*mp and carried out by billionaire Elon M*sk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste….’ (via AP News)
