AmbiguousProps

Scientists at the world’s largest atom smasher have released a blueprint for a much bigger successor that could help solve remaining enigmas of physics.

The plans for the Future Circular Collider — a nearly 91-kilometer (56.5-mile) loop along the French-Swiss border and even below Lake Geneva — published late on Monday put the finishing details on a project roughly a decade in the making at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Scientists have debunked the belief that using tools is unique to mammals and birds, after documenting tropical fish that smash shellfish against rocks to open and eat the meat, in a fascinating new study published in the journal Coral Reefs on 26 March 2025.

Dr. Juliette Tariel-Adam from the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University led a project tracking tool use in multiple species of wrasses—a colorful reef fish.

The study logs fish deliberately picking up hard-shelled prey like crabs and mollusks, smashing them against hard surfaces like rocks to access the meal inside.

People often think about archaeology happening deep in jungles or inside ancient pyramids. However, a team of astronomers has shown that they can use stars and the remains they leave behind to conduct a special kind of archaeology in space.

Mining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the team of astronomers studied the relics that one star left behind after it exploded. This "supernova archaeology" uncovered important clues about a star that self-destructed—probably more than a million years ago.

Today, the system called GRO J1655-40 contains a black hole with nearly seven times the mass of the sun and a star with about half as much mass. However, this was not always the case.

Originally GRO J1655-40 had two shining stars. The more massive of the two stars, however, burned through all of its nuclear fuel and then exploded in what astronomers call a supernova. The debris from the destroyed star then rained onto the companion star in orbit around it, as shown in the artist's concept.

Originally GRO J1655-40 had two shining stars. The more massive of the two stars, however, burned through all of its nuclear fuel and then exploded in what astronomers call a supernova. The debris from the destroyed star then rained onto the companion star in orbit around it, as shown in the artist's concept. With its outer layers expelled, including some striking its neighbor, the rest of the exploded star collapsed onto itself and formed the black hole that exists today. The separation between the black hole and its companion would have shrunk over time because of energy being lost from the system, mainly through the production of gravitational waves.

When the separation became small enough, the black hole, with its strong gravitational pull, began pulling matter from its companion, wrenching back some of the material its exploded parent star originally deposited. While most of this material sank into the black hole, a small amount of it fell into a disk that orbits around the black hole. Through the effects of powerful magnetic fields and friction in the disk, material is being sent out into interstellar space in the form of powerful winds.

This is where the X-ray archaeological hunt enters the story. Astronomers used Chandra to observe the GRO J1655-40 system in 2005 when it was particularly bright in X-rays. Chandra detected signatures of individual elements found in the black hole's winds by getting detailed spectra—giving X-ray brightness at different wavelengths—embedded in the X-ray light. Some of these elements are highlighted in the spectrum shown in the inset. The team of astronomers digging through the Chandra data were able to reconstruct key physical characteristics of the star that exploded from the clues imprinted in the X-ray light by comparing the spectra with computer models of stars that explode as supernovae.

They discovered that, based on the amounts of 18 different elements in the wind, the long-gone star destroyed in the supernova was about 25 times the mass of the sun, and was much richer in elements heavier than helium in comparison with the sun.

A paper describing these results titled "Supernova Archaeology with X-Ray Binary Winds: The Case of GRO J1655−40" was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

This analysis paves the way for more supernova archaeology studies using other outbursts of double star systems.

Once installed and launched, the app requests permission to Android's accessibility services, after which contact is established with a remote server to receive further instructions, the list of financial applications to be targeted, and the HTML overlays to be used to steal credentials. Crocodilus is also capable of targeting cryptocurrency wallets with an overlay that, instead of serving a fake login page to capture login information, shows an alert message urging victims to backup their seed phrases within 12, or else risk losing access to their wallets.

Archive link: https://archive.is/idZEc

• Lucid plans to start delivering the Gravity SUV to regular customers next month, the company said on Friday.
• Since the start of production in December, it's been making Gravity SUVs for internal use and for a limited number of customers close to the company.
• The Gravity is the EV startup's second model and is key to its future.

Archive link: https://archive.is/6OfsL

Protesters gathered at Tesla dealerships throughout Washington and dozens of other locations across the U.S. on Saturday in a coordinated protest against CEO Elon Musk’s involvement in the federal government. At the Tesla showroom in University Village, hundreds of people were chanting shortly after 10 a.m. Police had blocked vehicle traffic near the showroom, which is in the popular outdoor shopping mall.

Archive link: https://archive.is/8bY9k

A cascade of actions from the Trump administration represents a “grave threat” to health care, social, educational and other critical services in Indian Country, including for Native American communities in the Northwest, tribal leaders say.

In early March, the Trump administration announced the cancellation of leases for at least 12 Indian Health Service facilities and 25 Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, representing nearly 30% of all agency locations, including one each in Toppenish, Washington, and Lapwai, Idaho, as part of an effort to decrease federal office space.

Additionally, IHS employees were included in a buyout offer from the Trump administration, alarming tribal officials and Indigenous community leaders who fear that any employees leaving the understaffed, underfunded agency will force the shutdown of critical health services.

Archive link: https://archive.is/NQF4j

A cascade of actions from the Trump administration represents a “grave threat” to health care, social, educational and other critical services in Indian Country, including for Native American communities in the Northwest, tribal leaders say.

In early March, the Trump administration announced the cancellation of leases for at least 12 Indian Health Service facilities and 25 Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, representing nearly 30% of all agency locations, including one each in Toppenish, Washington, and Lapwai, Idaho, as part of an effort to decrease federal office space.

Additionally, IHS employees were included in a buyout offer from the Trump administration, alarming tribal officials and Indigenous community leaders who fear that any employees leaving the understaffed, underfunded agency will force the shutdown of critical health services.

Archive link: https://archive.is/NQF4j

First off, if you aren't currently treating for termites with a soil treatment and/or bait system, start now. It will save you thousands in the long run, and you won't have constant fears of termites like I now do.

Anyway, about two years ago, I was sitting with my partner, watching TV in our basement. My partner got up to do something, and noticed that at the bottom of our basement bathroom door frame, there was what looked like dirt. A closer inspection revealed that it wasn't dirt, much worse. This was termite frass, further confirmed by the termites visible in the frass.

I quickly did research and bought termidor foam (It should be noted that Termidor foam only lasts 6ish weeks, and is meant to be applied directly to areas with active termite activity), dominon, and boracare off of domyown.com.

I applied the foam, dug trenches around the house to treat soil with dominion, and waited about three months before fully demoing the bathroom. Inside of the wall closest to where my partner noticed the frass, there was a huge mud tube that seemed to have multiple chambers inside of it. This tube chamber was probably about 4 inches by 5 inches. This tube stopped about 4 and a half feet up the wall, and did not appear to go into the upstairs area. The sheetrock's paper between the paint and gypsum had been eaten away into tunnels as well.

(Slight side note, at this point, I was confused as to what type of termite I was dealing with. I knew that usually, subterranean termites don't create frass as they use that to build their tubes. I now know that they can actually create frass piles when they accidentally break through the wood. This can cause the frass to spill out. If this hadn't happened, we probably wouldn't have figured out that we had termites until it was too late.)

I could not identify any damage to the studs, and they seemed very sturdy. Boracare was applied. We sheetrocked and fixed up the bathroom over the next little while. I'm unsure about their entry point. During the repairs, I found a relatively large crack in the slab, right underneath the wall for the bathroom. I'm guessing this is how they got in, but can't be sure. I pumped it full of concrete silicone, used at least 3 tubes worth.

Maybe about a month later, I found more evidence of termite damage, this time behind my furnace which is in the center of my basement, maybe about 10 feet away from where I found the original tube. There was frass along parts of the very old, 1940's baseboard. I have no idea how they got there, and still am not sure how long they had been there. Nonetheless, once I noticed the frass, I immediately got my extra can of termidor foam and filled the void between the wall and the baseboard. Since doing that, there has been no new visible frass, and we haven't found any swarmers. I'm honestly too scared to cut a hole into the wall to assess the damage, and might ultimately have an inspector come out and check it for us.

I'm increasingly paranoid about them. I constantly think that every squeak in the floorboards upstairs is caused by termites. Any dip in the flooring, no matter how slight, sends me into another bout of paranoid reading about how termites are eating away at my home. Maybe about an hour ago, after another one of these spirals, I bought a pack of 10 bait & monitor systems which I plan on putting around the soil outside.

I guess, to sum up, you should be treating your soil for termites, even if you have never seen signs of an infestation. If you live in an area with a lot of subterranean termites, buy baiting systems so you can monitor if your property is having any termite activity, on top of the soil treatment. If you're not comfortable doing it yourself, hire a pro. It's worth it to treat for termites as if an attack is inevitable.

I hope that one day, I feel confident that I got them. Unfortunately, without tearing out all of my walls and floors, I can never be sure at this point. It's a horrible feeling, and don't want anyone else to experience it. I've lost countless hours of sleep.

If so, which model, and do you like it?

The top court in the battleground state of Georgia ruled on Monday that Cobb County cannot extend the deadline for counting about 3,000 absentee ballots that were sent out shortly before Election Day, handing a victory to the Republican National Committee and presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/W4Kws