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simple factsWhat is it: Lupus 3 (GN 16.05.2 and Bernes 149) Molecular CloudLocation: Located in the constellation Scorpius, about 500 light years away.Share date: January 26, 2026A placid cloud of gas and dust may not sound like much to get excited about, but it’s where one of the most fundamental phenomena in astronomy takes place: star formation.This is star-forming region Lupus 3, a nebula where bright, hot stars are born from a dense molecular cloud. Our own star, the Sun, likely formed in a region exactly like our star more than 4 billion years ago.Look closely at this hauntingly beautiful…
Around 8000 BC, canoes carved from a single pine log arrived in what is now the Netherlands. The boat, approximately 3 meters long, was not discovered until 1955, when it was excavated from a peat bog near the village of Pesse by road workers. This artifact, now known as the Pesce Canoe, is the world’s oldest physical example of a boat.However, there is significant indirect evidence that humans have been using boats for much longer than 10,000 years. So when did humans invent ships?It is widely accepted that humans have been using boats at least since Homo sapiens arrived in…
January has been such a long month that five new European unicorns have already been born. From Belgium to Ukraine, several technology startups have raised funding at valuations exceeding $1 billion. But before we take a closer look at who has joined the club, there are two caveats. First: This number includes startups that may have been incorporated elsewhere, but whose roots or team are largely in Europe. This division will remain common until a pan-European corporate structure (often referred to as an “EU Inc”) exists. And we decided to give it a miss. For example, Lovable is incorporated in…
Waymo has nearly completed a new $16 billion funding round that values the robotaxi company at $110 billion, according to the Financial Times. More than three-quarters of that funding will reportedly come from a familiar source: Alphabet, of which Waymo is a subsidiary. (The company was founded as part of Alphabet’s “Moonshot Factory” X.) As reported by FT, Waymo has welcomed new investors Dragoneer, Sequoia Capital and DST Global, with existing backers Andreessen Horowitz and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala also participating in the round. In response to an inquiry from TechCrunch, a company spokesperson said in a statement:…
SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission to launch a constellation of up to 1 million solar-powered satellites to serve as data centers for artificial intelligence. The company’s application lays out a grand vision, not only describing its planned satellites as “the most efficient way to meet the accelerating demand for AI computing power,” but also framing them as a step toward “a Kardashev II-level civilization, one that can harness the full power of the sun,” while simultaneously “securing humanity’s multiplanetary future among the stars.” The Verge argued that 1 million satellites was unlikely to be fully approved and was…
About 50% of a person’s lifespan is determined by genetics, a new study suggests, more than doubling previous estimates of the heritability of longevity.The new study, published in the journal Science on January 29, used a carefully designed mathematical model to reach this conclusion. Using this model, the research team was able to account for external causes of death, such as accidents and infections, allowing them to exclude these environmental factors from their heritability estimates.The heritability of various human traits is typically determined using twin studies. This allows scientists to compare individuals who share nearly 100% or 50% of their…
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Saturday that recent reports about friction between the company and OpenAI are “nonsense.” Huang’s comments came after the Wall Street Journal published an article late Friday claiming that Nvidia was looking to scale back its investment in OpenAI. The companies announced in September that NVIDIA plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and build 10 gigawatts of computing infrastructure for the AI company. But the Journal reported that Huang has begun to stress that the deal is not binding, and has also privately criticized OpenAI’s business strategy and expressed concerns about competitors such…
A few years ago, Selina Tobaccowala’s daughter started leaving sticky notes around the house telling people to “turn off the lights.” Tobaccowala had just sold his last startup, Gixo, to OpenFit and was looking for a new challenge. “I looked at my kids and thought, ‘Let’s see if there’s something there in terms of sustainability and climate change,'” she told TechCrunch. “I needed something more than just turning off the lights.” Without a background in climate science or hardware engineering, she didn’t know where to start. So Tobaccowara turned to a survey he was familiar with. “We surveyed a ton…
Two incredibly rare supernovae that exploded billions of years ago offer a unique opportunity to explain one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology: how fast the universe is expanding.But there’s a twist. Astronomers have already observed these exploding stars, but we have to wait up to 60 years for their light to reach us again.A phenomenon called gravitational lensing splits the light from these extinct stars into multiple images, each taking a different path through space and time to reach us. As a result, researchers may one day be able to measure the delay between these ghostly images and provide…
Researchers have found that new species may have evolved surprisingly quickly after the asteroid impact that wiped out the Nonabia dinosaur.New species of plankton may have emerged less than 2,000 years after the Chicxulub impact, which occurred about 66 million years ago, further fueling debate about how quickly new species emerged after the impact. This suggests that life recovered much more quickly than scientists previously thought, researchers report in a study published in the journal Geology on January 21.”This is an incredible rate,” study co-author Chris Lowery, a paleoceanographer at the University of Texas Geophysical Institute, said in a statement.…