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Astronomers have spotted a bizarre cosmic explosion that refuses to play by the rules—and it’s leaving scientists scrambling for answers. GRB 250702B, detected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and a global network of observatories, lasted an astonishing seven hours—far longer than typical gamma-ray bursts, which usually fade in under a minute.

A blazing supermassive black hole can influence far more than its own galaxy. Scientists found that quasars emit radiation strong enough to shut down star formation in nearby galaxies millions of light-years away. This could explain why some galaxies near early quasars appear faint or missing. The finding suggests galaxies grow and evolve together, not in isolation.

It’s amazing how much one movie can act as a cultural touchpoint for an entire topic - even a topic as serious as defense of a planet. Popular media consistently use the 1998 movie Armageddon as a reference when talking about how we would destroy a civilization-ending asteroid. That’s despite the movie’s glaring scientific flaws, not the last of which is the likely size of the rogue comet that threatens the Earth. Planetary defense researchers at MIT were recently interviewed by the university’s media department as part of their “3 Questions” series. One of the most important takeaways is that the size of any likely planetary impactor in our lifetime is going to be much smaller than the kilometer-sized behemoth that did in Bruce Willis’ character - but we could face a threat from a handful of them before the end of the century.

Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, said to have wrapped Jesus's body, further complicating the question of the cloth's true origin

Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, said to have wrapped Jesus's body, further complicating the question of the cloth's true origin

Every green leaf on Earth does something remarkable, it absorbs visible light for photosynthesis but reflects near-infrared light back into space, creating a distinctive spectral signature that could in principle be spotted from across the Galaxy. It's called the vegetation red edge, and it may be our best hope of detecting life on distant worlds. Now a new study has tackled one of the biggest obstacles to using it, the messy, patchy reality of real planets with real clouds.

Mars today is a frozen, barren world where liquid water can briefly appear on its surface but evaporates almost instantly in the thin atmosphere, unable to persist in any meaningful quantity. But a handful of pale, bleached rocks spotted by NASA's Perseverance rover are telling a very different story about the planet's past, one of tropical downpours, sodden landscapes, and conditions that might once have been hospitable to life.

Experiments on different kinds of milk have revealed that many plant-based milks are non-Newtonian fluids

An accounting of all the water that should have been and gone on Mars’s surface has come up with a discrepancy that shows just how little we understand the Red Planet’s hydrological history

ICAN attorney and antivaxxer Aaron Siri recently petitioned HHS to add 300 "injuries" to the Vaccine Injury Table for the Vaccine Injury Compensation System. It's all part or the plan to undermine and destroy the system, thus driving vaccine manufacturers out of the market.

The post RFK Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines (part 10): An RFK Jr. ally tells us what’s coming next first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Making babies in space may be more complicated than expected, as new research shows sperm struggle to navigate in microgravity. Scientists found that while sperm can still swim normally, they lose their sense of direction without gravity, making it harder to reach and fertilize an egg. In lab experiments simulating space conditions, far fewer sperm successfully made it through a maze designed to mimic the reproductive tract, and fertilization rates in mice dropped by about 30%.

In his blockbuster 1982 novel "Space", the writer James A. Michener wove a gripping tale of astronauts trapped on the Moon during a major solar storm. Warnings from Earth didn't come soon enough to save them from death by radiation sickness. To avoid such a tragedy happening with the Artemis crews (as with the Apollo crews of the past), NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will monitor the Sun. If it acts up, the teams will be able to send warnings and instructions to the Artemis crews to pro tect them.

Finding life beyond our solar system goes beyond measuring an exoplanet’s size, as rocky, Earth-sized worlds might not have the conditions for life as we know it. While exoplanets can be directly imaged by blocking their star’s glare, these images are fuzzy and lack resolution to provide enough details about the habitability. Therefore, astronomers are limited to studying an exoplanet’s atmosphere, and this has proven to be quite beneficial in teaching scientists about an exoplanet’s formation and evolution, and whether it contains the necessary ingredients for life as we know it.

I didn’t realize how popular Bill Maher is on YouTube: this clip, a fragment of his “Real Time” show on HBO, has garnered over 520,000 views since it was posted on Friday night.  At any rate, this week he takes on the recent conspiracy theories that alien spacecraft are appearing regularly, and that some of their spaceships and even their bodies are in possession of companies or the government.

Maher notes that the UFO believers are no longer nutjobs but reputable people: politicians and “people with buzzcuts.”  Steven Spielberg even has a movie coming out this summer about UFOs; it’s called “Disclosure Day.”

He then addresses the aliens directly, asking them not to kill us even though they could, and apologizes for America’s once firing a missile at a UFO. He even offers minerals to the aliens and then pleads for them to destroy our nuclear weapons, and to “get us off oil–and our phones.” In the end, he tells the aliens “you should think of the human race as Britney Spears. It would be nice if we needed a conservatorship, but in reality we really do.”

It’s clear that Maher, like me, doesn’t believe that these aliens and their craft really exist. He’s just using the notion to criticize what’s wrong with America.  If craft and aliens did exist, and we possess crashed ships and alien bodies, then somehow there has been a massive conspiracy to hide it by both Democratic and Republican governments—as well as by the press— to cover up the greatest news story in the history of humanity.

The panel guests for this show were Laura Coates, CNN chief legal analyst, and Stephen A. Smith, host of Straight Shooter.

Here’s a teaser for “DIsclosure Day”. There are aliens in animal bodies, and it even buys into the discredited idea that aliens make crop circles.

The Free Press has a long article on Calla Walsh, a 21 year old American woman who became radicalized at about 16 and now lives in the Middle East, making propaganda for Hezbollah and Iran.

Here’s a mugshot of Walsh from an earlier arrest in the U.S. for vandalism and trespassing on the grounds of an Israeli-owned company said to be involved with “genocide.”  She served two months in prison.

Merrimack, Massachusetts Police Department, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Here she is all growed up (see link below). I’ve put a recent Instagram post at the bottom.

Walsh was the definition of “privileged” when young:  the scion of two academics from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one who attended two fancy prep schools before dropping out of Canada’s McGill University after one semester.  She started off advocating against climate change and writing about the Democratic Socialists of America for Teen Vogue (thank goodness that rag went belly-up!), and campaigned for the successful re-election of Senator Ed Markey, as well as other Democrats (see an admiring profile of Calla in a 2021 Boston Magazine ). She then went on to oppose the “genocide” committed by Israel in the Gaza war, visited Cuba, and after that she went full Monty—or should I say full Mamdani? She traveled to Iran and has apparently settled in Beirut.

The Free Press details what happened to her and where she is now. Click below to read; the article cannot be archived.  If you want a shorter account, read her Wikipedia bio, which includes the following:

Walsh’s political ideology has shifted over time. In the 2010s, she was a member and activist in the Democratic Party, as well as an environmental activist. In 2021, NPR described her as a “progressive organizer and activist based in Massachusetts”. Later in 2021, she identified as a Democratic Socialist and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. In 2023, she described herself as a communist and anti-imperialist.

Following the October 7 attacks, Walsh tweeted that “defending their homeland from illegal occupation and genocide isn’t ‘ugly Palestinian retaliation'”. Later that day, Walsh posted a map of the attack sites with the message, “This is what decolonization looks like”. In April, Walsh added, “We will never forget who called Palestinian freedom fighters ‘terrorists’ after October 7 and then turned around and claimed to support Palestine”. On October 12, Walsh tweeted that those living in the US have “an obligation to take direct action against murderous companies like Elbit”.

For the 2024 presidential election in the United States, Walsh filled in the name of Yahya Sinwar as a write-in candidate. Walsh has expressed support for Tyler Robinson, Elias Rodriguez, and Mohamed Sabry Soliman.

In December 2025, Walsh was nominated by the pro-Israel group StopAntisemitism for “Antisemite of the Year”.

In February and March 2026, following the 2026 Iran conflict, Walsh wrote a series of posts on X social network calling for the use of global violence against Israeli and American officials.  Following the start of the 2026 Iran massacres, Walsh was one of several media personalities that promoted the Iranian state’s claim that the protests had been stoked by the CIA and Mossad.

She’s clearly a hater of both Jews and America, and given what she’s done, she’ll never be allowed back in the U.S., or, if she is, she’ll have to spend a long time behind bars.

A couple of long excerpts of a very long article:

In the weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched their joint assault on Iran, perhaps no American has more aggressively and publicly rallied behind the Islamic Republic than Calla Walsh. From her new base in Lebanon, the 21-year-old Cambridge-raised activist has taken to social media and left-wing podcasts to incite her fellow countrymen and women to sabotage U.S. and Israeli defense contractors wherever they can find them. On March 3, she mocked four American soldiers killed in an Iranian drone strike, posting: “They all died fighting for fascism, genocide, pedophilia, and cannibalism.” She attached pictures of the dead Americans. In recent days she reposted a list of missile-production sites inside the U.S.

“We have a duty to escalate,” Walsh told her host on the Psychic Militancy podcast last Saturday from Beirut, noting that “lockdowns” of weapons factories and vandalism alone are “not sufficient at this point.”

She added: “And as the genocide and these wars of aggression continue to escalate, much more is demanded of people in the West.”

Walsh looks every part the art-school hipster, with her thick-rimmed glasses and a mop of curly hair. But she’s a chameleon of terror. Five years earlier, as a 16-year-old, Walsh was fawned over by The New York Times for being a young, social media-savvy activist who was helping to shake up the Democratic Party in Massachusetts. But as a monthslong investigation by The Free Press shows, she’s thrown her allegiance squarely behind the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Axis of Resistance, which includes the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The U.S. government has placed her on a suspicious persons watch list for her expansive dealings with the governments of Cuba and Iran, U.S. officials told me, as well as a spiderweb of U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

Over the past few years, Walsh’s radicalization has played out in real time on X and Instagram. She quickly moved from political organizing for the Democrats to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to conducting guerrilla-style raids on Israeli defense companies in New England, for which she received jail time in 2024. She has regularly called for the assassinations of Israeli officials and their allies in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In October, she formally relocated to Beirut, The Free Press learned, where she has established herself as a regular contributor to Iranian state media, particularly the English-language site of Tehran’s Press TV on which Washington has imposed sanctions. She is actively engaging in propaganda and information-warfare operations on behalf of the Iranian regime and Hezbollah, which is fighting Israeli forces in south Lebanon.

She’s too far gone, I think, to ever return to the U.S., and perhaps she doesn’t want to. But those who ally themselves with American enemies in this way are rarely either allowed back to where they were born or, when do they are jailed. I suspect that Walsh will be in Lebanon for good. A bit more:

According to U.S. counterterrorism officials I spoke with, any financial or operational ties Walsh has established with blacklisted organizations—whether in Iran, Cuba, or Lebanon—means she could be indicted for providing material support to proscribed groups. Walsh’s latest trip to Tehran places her in even greater legal jeopardy if she ever returns home.

“I’ve never seen someone who’s done jail time so publicly integrate herself into terrorist infrastructure,” a senior national security official told me. “She’s totally exposed now.”

More:

. . . . Walsh’s new role as Tehran’s Gen Z propagandist has her regularly appearing on Iranian state media with other outcasts from Europe and North America. In December, Walsh was a guest on a Press TV show called Palestine Declassified, with two Britons who have been banished from UK politics and academia in recent years for antisemitism. She set up a camera from her Beirut apartment to tape the show and extol the military prowess of the late Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, whom the U.S. assassinated in a 2020 drone strike.

And this, near the end, show how ideologically captured she is, so much so that she blames Mossad for massacring Iranian civilians:

In February, when Walsh returned to Iran, she provided an American face to spread the message that it was the CIA and the Israeli spy service, Mossad—not the Iranian government—that massacred thousands of Iranians during the prior month’s uprising. (The United Nation’s special rapporteur on Iran estimated the number could be over 20,000.) “The fact of the matter is police in Iran are defending the revolution and are defending their government from U.S. and Zionist-backed regime change,” she said on Press TV.

. . Experts in extremism tell me they’re deeply worried that the American is now too far gone. In recent weeks, she’s crisscrossed the Middle East in support of the Axis of Resistance, placing her in the range of American and Israeli bombs and fighter jets, whether in Tehran or south Lebanon.

“She’s a true believer. It’s over after that, because you’ll do anything for your cause,” said Mubin Shaikh. He was a jihadist in Pakistan and Syria before going through a deradicalization program in Canada and emerging as one of his country’s top counterterrorism experts. “Martyrdom? Don’t think that’s off the table.”

You can imagine how dicombobulated her parents are. They are quoted as saying, “We love Calla deeply and absolutely. . . . And we have serious, fundamental political disagreements with her.”

Here’s a recent Instagram post. Click screenshot to see a video interview from presstvchannel, an Iranian-controlled state media site. Note that she uses “anti-Zionist” instead of “antisemitic”.  This euphemistic ploy disgusts me.

Botany Pond now harbors (temporarily, I think) a pair of the most beautiful American ducks:  wood ducks (Aix sponsa), in the same genus as mallards. At first I mistook them for mallards on the duckcam, but when I went down to investigate, it was clear that they were a bonded pair of woodies.

I love these ducks, but one or two show up at Botany Pond only every couple of years, and they do not breed here. We had a post-breeding pair, Frisky and Ruth, a few years ago, but although they hung around a while, it was after they had bred, and they were probably headed south. My photos from that era have disappeared from this site, but here is Frisky nuzzling Ruth. It’s one of my favorite duck photos (I like to imagine that wood ducks are very romantic!):

Frisky was so named because although the mallards chased him, he was very quick and adept at sneaking among them at feeding time to get pellets. After he filled his belly, he’d get quite rotund and then perch on a knob of the bald cypress that used to be in the pond. He used that knob so often we called it The Sacred Knob.  Here he is having a postprandial rest. Look at those colors!

Males have satanic red eyes. Here’s a closeup of Frisky’s head. Their bills are short compared to those of mallards.

They’re called “wood ducks” because they nest in treeholes and perch on trees—nearly the only species of duck to do so. Sure enough, when I first saw them a few days ago, they were both up in trees next to the pond. I thought they left, but, sure enough, they were back three days ago and haven’t left since.

Some photos of our new pair.  Feel free to suggest names, but they should be fitting for these glorious birds.

The new male:

. . . and the new female. The shots aren’t great as I took them in the early morning when it was light, and the shutter speed was slow:

Wikipedia describes them like this:

The adult male has stunning multicolored iridescent plumage and red eyes, with a distinctive white flare down the neck. The female, less colorful, has a white eye-ring and a whitish throat. Both adults have crested heads. The speculum is iridescent blue-green with a white border on the trailing edge.

Besotted with each other, the ducks are always together. Here are two videos of our new pair swimming together:

In this next video, the male gives her a little kiss 6 seconds in. He then chirps at her (they don’t quack).

The loving couple. Look at that sexual dimorphism!  These ducks are in full breeding plumage:

Vashti is nesting nearby, and Armon is always in the pond waiting for her to drop in for a quick snack, a drink, and a preen before she hurries back to her nest.  There are seven lovely green eggs in Vashti’s nest, and I anticipate ducklings will hatch around April 20 (a bit early in the season) if all goes well.

Armon chases the woodies, but only in a desultory manner, and they manage to sneak some of the food I give him.  At other times he allows them to rest next to him on the rocks.

Here’s Armon halfheartedly chasing the female.  He never gets near either of them as they swim faster than he, and they can simply jump out of the pond when they’re tired of being chased.

Ducks on the rocks (a good name for a drink). You can see that Armon doesn’t mind them being nearby so long as it’s not feeding time. The size difference between mallards and woodies is clear:

The male is like a feathered jewel!  Here is the range of Aix sponsa from Wikipedia. As you see, Chicago is in their year-round range.

Cephas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

You might be able to see them on the DuckCam if you look now, but keep looking from time to time.  In the meantime, feel free to suggest woody names, and get ready for mallard ducklings in a few weeks.

I think the woodies will soon depart to breed in a place where there are trees with holes.

I’ll add a Smithsonian video of a large clutch of hatched woodies jumping about 50 feet down to the water as mother calls them:

Scientists have finally found a hidden “critical point” in supercooled water that explains why it behaves so strangely. At this point, two different liquid forms of water merge, triggering powerful fluctuations that affect water even at normal temperatures. The breakthrough was made possible by ultra-fast X-ray lasers that captured water before it froze. This discovery could reshape our understanding of water’s role in nature—and possibly even life itself.

Abby Thompson of UC Davis has sent in some pictures of California tidepool organisms, as well as a video. Abby’s captions are indented and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

Late January-early March tidepools, plus an octopus.

Bryozoans:

Lepas anatifera (pelagic gooseneck barnacle).   Usually found clinging to something drifting around in the open ocean (the “pelagic” part of their name), these were on a large log washed up on shore:

Intertidal zones, illustrated.    A well-placed vertical rock face, like this one, exhibits the idea of the different intertidal “zones”, each of which has its own specific collection of inhabitants.  You can see mussels and barnacles clustered at the top (in the “high intertidal”), exposed to the air as soon as the tide goes out even a little. There are smaller colonial anemones next, beneath them the orange and purple ochre stars, and below those, arriving at the low intertidal level, some giant green anemones.   If you peer into the water under the open giant green anemone, you’ll see a crab, probably a rock crab.   There’s some back and forth- there are a few giant green anemones pretty high up in this photo- but the general idea holds.

This reflects each animal’s differing tolerance for specific conditions- time out of the water as the tide goes out, harshness of wave actions, etc.      The nudibranchs (next few pictures) are usually in the very low intertidal:

Orienthella piunca (nudibranch):

Hermissenda opalescens (nudibranch):

Doto amyra (nudibranch).  Visible through the translucent skin on its back are lobules of the “ovotestis” (thanks inaturalist expert! ).   From google AI: “Ovotestes in nudibranchs are specialized, hermaphroditic reproductive glands that produce both male (sperm) and female (oocytes/eggs) gametes simultaneously”:

More eggs, this time from a snail in the genus Amphissa. I like the pointy egg casings, like wizards’ hats:

And here’s an adult of the genus- almost certainly Amphissa versicolor, but it’s an unusual color (they’re usually shades of orange or brown/tan):

In honor of Ghost the octopus, and also because I’ve finally figured out how to include videos, below is a clip from 2021 of an East Pacific red octopus (Octopus rubescens), cruising around the rocks (out of the water!) at low tide.  I’ve only seen one twice, probably because they’re too cleverly camouflaged (possibly just too clever) for me to spot.    This guy was about the size of a human hand, a miniature compared to the 50 pound Ghost.

Point Reyes peninsula at sunset:

Camera: Olympus TG-7.

A team of physicists set out to test some of the most exciting claims in quantum computing—and found a very different story. Instead of confirming breakthroughs, their careful replication studies revealed that signals once hailed as major advances could actually be explained in simpler ways. Despite the importance of these findings, their work initially struggled to get published, highlighting a deeper issue in science.

For decades, astronomers thought they knew that pulsars broadcast their signatight beams of radio waves fired from near the surface, close to the magnetic poles. A new study of nearly 200 of the fastest spinning pulsars in the universe has just turned that idea on its head. It turns out these extraordinary objects are broadcasting from two completely separate locations at once, and one of them lies right at the outer edge of their magnetic grip on space itself.