Bampot

If Planet Nine Exists, We’ll Find It Soon

Brown and Batygin ruminated on six ETNOs and noticed something weird was going on. Unlike the eight known planets, whose orbits are approximately circular and are oriented along the same flat plane, known as the ecliptic, these six objects—including Sedna—had elliptical orbits and were tilted about 20 degrees with respect to the ecliptic. The six also made their closest approaches to the sun in the same region of space. They were all too far out to be within Neptune’s gravitational reach, but something appeared to have crafted their orbits.

Brown and Batygin’s computer models suggested the only reasonable possibility was a hidden planet with a mass five to 10 times that of Earth orbiting as far as 700 AU away. This world, perhaps one exiled from the warmer confines of the solar system during its chaotic earlier years, managed to cling to the sun’s gravitational ropes. And as it whirled through the distant darkness, it wielded its own gravitational influence on those passing six orbs, herding them into similar, strange new orbits.

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Weeks of reported drone sightings in the skies above New Jersey and several other US states has led to speculation and misinformation.

BBC Verify investigates some of the most viral false claims. Presented by Jake Horton

This problem goes beyond the simple child's game of stacking objects; it is a scientific challenge with major implications. From the construction of dry masonry walls to the optimization of automated storage systems, understanding the probabilistic nature of these collapses can improve safety and efficiency in a variety of fields.

"As blocks are added, random misalignments gradually modify the stack's center of gravity. When this exceeds a critical limit, the stack collapses."

This approach revealed two main areas of vulnerability: the base of the stack, where cumulative errors become unsustainable, and an intermediate zone, where hidden instabilities accumulate insidiously.

The maximum height of a pile before it collapses is inversely proportional to the square of the amplitude of the positioning errors. Thus, small errors allow much greater heights to be reached, while larger errors lead to rapid collapse. Monte Carlo simulations, used to validate the theoretical model, were used to visualize the behavior of the piles. These simulations confirmed the bimodal nature of the failure points, for a given drop height, and highlighted the distribution of weak interfaces within the piles.

The winter solstice is Saturday, bringing the shortest day and longest night of the year to the Northern Hemisphere—ideal conditions for holiday lights and warm blankets.

For those who would rather have more sunlight, you can try to make your way to the Southern Hemisphere, where it is summer. Or be patient: Starting Sunday, days will get a little bit longer in the Northern Hemisphere every single day until late June.

These annual changes in sunlight as the Earth revolves around the sun have been well known to humans for centuries. Monuments such as Stonehenge in England and the Torreon at Peru's Machu Picchu were designed in part to align with solstices.

The discovery is exceptional, not only because of the number of fossil remains found, but also because it is the oldest known gorgonopsian on the planet, the lineage of saber-toothed predators that would eventually give rise to mammals

Firefighters have more PFAS in their blood than the average person. It isn't clear why, but one theory is that it comes from the protective equipment they wear during a fire—called turnout gear.

Our latest study showed that PFAS are present not only in the jacket and pants worn by firefighters, but also in many of the smaller protective garments.

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This is a wonderful film about Glasgow and its architecture. Well worth an hour of your time.

Slains Castle today is a slightly unsettling place. It comes as little surprise to discover that Bram Stoker used it as inspiration for his story of Dracula. Earlier distinguished visitors included Samuel Johnson and James Boswell on their tour of the Highlands and Islands in August 1773. You can read Johnson's description here, and Boswell's here.

The front of the castle lies close to the edge of the cliffs, while its rear, beyond what were once its gardens, is protected from unwanted guests by a deep cleft that cuts into the cliffs as far as the main access road. Internally, the castle is a collection of mostly brick-built intersecting corridors wrapped around rooms now deeply carpeted in nettles. In the heart of the castle is the courtyard, though it takes some time to work out which were outside areas in the original design and which were inside.

Slain's general air of creepiness is not helped by the vaulted room accessed down a muddy slide that was probably once a kitchen store or wine cellar complete with large stone storage bins all the way around the walls.

In a remarkable discovery, a Hispano-Egyptian archaeological team has uncovered extraordinary human remains, including 13 tongues and golden nails, within tombs dating back to the Ptolemaic period in the historic region of Al-Bahnasa, located in Egypt’s Minia Governorate.

In ancient Egypt, the placement of golden tongues on mummies carried profound symbolic and ritual significance. It was believed that these golden tongues enabled the deceased to communicate with the gods in the afterlife.

Gold, revered as a divine and imperishable material, symbolized eternity and purity. Similarly, the golden nails may have been intended to preserve the deceased’s appearance in its most idealized form, ensuring their dignity and readiness for the afterlife.

When Chinese flying tree frogs (Polypedates dennysi) leap through the forests of China and Southeast Asia, a single missed connection could send them plummeting to a slimy end. Fortunately, they’ve evolved a few lifesaving contortions to grab hold of vertical branches and trunks.

Why It’s a Bad Idea to Shoot at New Jersey ‘Mystery Drones’

Surging reports of strange drones in the skies over New Jersey and other parts of the northeast U.S. have spurred calls to shoot down the unidentified objects. But that’s a very bad idea

Many of these “drones” aren’t drones at all

While some number of the sightings are almost certainly real drones being operated by unknown parties for unclear reasons, according to the FBI, most of the thousands of New Jersey drone reports are consistent with witnesses misidentifying crewed aircraft. “In overlaying the visual sightings reported to the FBI with approach patterns for Newark-Liberty, JFK, and LaGuardia airports, the density of reported sightings matches the approach patterns of these very busy airports, with flights coming in throughout the night,” FBI officials noted in a White House media briefing Saturday. “This modeling is indicative of manned aviation being quite often mistaken for unmanned aviation or UAS [uncrewed aerial systems].”

Roughly the size of an iPad, the basalt tablet features just 39 different characters in 60 inscriptions written left to right across seven lines. Each carved symbol began as a series of holes made with a cone-shaped drill, connected into flowing lines with a smooth, round tool.

Although new to researchers, the 'letters' are similar enough to scripts from the Middle East and undeciphered symbols from pre-Christian Georgia to make forgery by non-scholars a relatively unlikely explanation for the finding.

The region's written records date back to a list of clergy taking part in a council in the early 6th century, coinciding with the spread of Christianity through the region. Prior to that, archeology provides evidence of settlement and metalworking dating back thousands of years, with fossils of early human relatives reaching further through time.

Beyond the Dmanisi region, Georgia's ancient territories were a melting pot of cultures that left their mark in a variety of scripts. Epigraphs written in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Middle Persian have been uncovered in the ancient capital of Mtskheta, 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) north of the country's current capital, Tbilisi.