Delta_V

...In the new study, the researchers also found signs in the same set of samples of an extended fungal bloom tens of thousands of years before the asteroid impact. This coincides with intense volcanic activity in what is now India and supports the idea that volcanism was a factor in the mass extinctions in that period.

Fungal surges are presumably due to the availability of dead plants and animals as food sources following disasters and disruptions...

“If you ask most people what killed the dinosaurs, they’ll say it was that asteroid, but our fungal microfossil-based results suggest that the world already had been undergoing a cataclysm when the asteroid struck,”...

...The key to the new system is a special propellant that can power both chemical and electrical thrusters...

...a type of “green monopropellant” originally developed by the U.S. Air Force for use in chemical propulsion in space can also effectively power tiny “electrospray” thrusters. Electrospray thrusters are dime-sized rockets that use electric fields to charge up a liquid propellant’s particles, which are then shot into space as a thrust-generating spray...

The Justice Department’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which would pay out public money in compensation for alleged overreach in federal prosecutions, including for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has been accurately described as one of the most nakedly corrupt actions in American history. It would give a tacit endorsement from every American taxpayer to the notion that the Capitol Riot’s only transgression, for example, came from those who tried to punish its perpetrators for attempting to halt the outcome of an election...

...if a judge can be convinced that this fund, established with no transparency and no congressional or judicial oversight, which emerged from a lawsuit between a sitting president and his own government, and is arguably contrary to the purpose of the Judgment Fund from which it derives authority, is an unconstitutional scheme to defraud the government by its very structure, then anyone can sue to recoup the money, and then some, under the False Claims Act of 1863...

...Anyone found guilty of a false claim must not only pay back the ill-gotten funds, but three times the amount in damages. That means that anti-weaponization fund recipients would risk having to pay much more back in the future, while going through years of litigation. Debts incurred by FCA violations are not even dischargeable in bankruptcy...

...That something has been named Phoebe. And working out what it actually is turns out to be one of the most intriguing puzzles in modern astronomy. The phenomenon at the heart of the story is called gravitational microlensing and it’s one of the most elegant predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity. When a massive compact object passes between us and a distant star, its gravity acts like a lens, briefly magnifying the star's light in a very characteristic way. The shape of the brightening is distinctive and entirely unlike anything produced by a variable star, a flare, or an asteroid...

The team calculated the probability of the lensing object belonging to each possible population — Milky Way stars, Large Magellanic Cloud stars, or the dark matter halo between and around them. The dark matter halo wins by a factor of 100,000. Phoebe is five orders of magnitude more likely to be a dark matter object than anything associated with normal stellar matter...

Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress and four other members of the House of Representatives have asked the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General to investigate why a federal probe into a prison drugs-for-votes scheme was abandoned after the 2024 elections...

Their request follows a ProPublica investigation that published earlier this month detailing how prosecutors had uncovered a drugs-for-votes scheme being run by a violent gang in Puerto Rican prisons and were deep into looking at whether now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón or her campaign were involved. In the days following President Donald Trump’s election in 2024, as prosecutors prepared the indictment, they were told by supervisors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico to exclude the voting-related charges against inmates and prison staff, four sources with knowledge of the investigation told ProPublica. Then, once Trump took office, they were told to abandon the probe into potential political ties entirely, the sources said.

In their letter, the members of Congress urged the inspector general to examine the Justice Department’s decision to not pursue charges related to election fraud “despite reported findings and evidence.” They added that the failure to further investigate contradicts the Trump administration’s “repeated emphasis on prioritizing election integrity and election security as federal enforcement priorities,” in addition to deeming drug traffickers threats to public safety and democratic institutions...

...While conventional LED‑based visible light communication (VLC) systems typically operate over only a few meters, the novel photonic engine can move data over 1.2 kilometers...

...“This work also provides compelling experimental support for the application of laser lighting in scenarios such as drone logistics and low‑altitude air travel,” said Xia...

...Scientists revealed that previously researchers have faced barriers to developing 6G technology, including the need for ultra-dense base stations with high energy and infrastructure costs, as well as challenges in combining high-performance lighting materials and high-speed photodetectors into compact devices that can be mass-produced at low cost...

...6G networks built into future smartphones and other objects such as streetlamps would not only allow information to move through networks an order of magnitude faster–they would be able to “see,” “hear,” and “think,” detecting people and objects and their subtle movements...

When people think about the Strait of Hormuz, they think about oil tankers, LNG carriers, naval escorts, insurance premiums, and the price of gasoline. They generally do not think about yellow piles of sulfur beside gas plants, phosphate fertilizer complexes, or the acid circuits that keep copper and nickel processing running. They should. The current sulfur price spike is not just another commodity-market twitch. It is a preview of a future in which the cheap sulfur system created by oil and gas cleanup is much smaller, while much of the demand for sulfur remains...

For roughly fifty years, sulfur has been cheap for a strange reason. Oil refineries and sour gas plants had to remove it anyway. Sulfur in fuels is a pollution problem. Regulations forced the oil and gas industry to take sulfur out of refined products and gas streams, and the industry recovered it as elemental sulfur. The sulfur was not the main product. It was the cleaned-up contaminant. That is a very different cost structure from opening a mine, building a roaster, managing residues, and producing sulfur deliberately...

The old low-price regime put sulfur in the $50 to $150 per ton range for long stretches. That world was built on fossil byproduct abundance. A managed transition world might put sulfur in the $250 to $350 per ton range. A structurally tighter oil and gas-light world could easily live in the $400 to $600 per ton range. Regional crises, shipping disruptions, export restrictions, or sudden HPAL nickel demand can push sulfur into the $800 to $1,200 per ton range. The point is not that every future year looks like a crisis. The point is that the old fossil byproduct floor is unlikely to be the future floor...

The logistics problem is the part that deserves more attention. Today’s model works because elemental sulfur moves better than sulfuric acid. A fertilizer producer can import sulfur, burn it on site, integrate the acid plant . . . and ship finished fertilizer...

That means the future sulfur constraint is geographical as much as chemical. The winners are likely to be integrated hubs with two or three of the required pieces in the same place. Phosphate rock plus sulfur access plus port logistics is powerful. Smelter acid plus local mining demand is powerful. Pyrite waste plus acid demand plus permits can be powerful. A lonely inland fertilizer plant that depends on imported acid is not powerful. It is exposed...

Policy makers should be paying attention because sulfur sits in the awkward space between agriculture, mining, trade, and decarbonization. Countries should map sulfur and sulfuric acid dependency. They should identify where smelter acid, pyrite, tailings recovery, phosphate fertilizer, and mineral processing can be linked in real industrial hubs. They should stress-test fertilizer and critical-mineral projects against sulfur prices far above the old fossil byproduct norm...

...Modern agriculture and mining were built in part on cheap sulfur from oil and gas. As the world moves away from oil and gas, sulfur does not disappear, but the cheap arrangement does. The future price of sulfur is unlikely to be the old $50 to $150 per ton world. It is more likely to sit structurally closer to today’s stressed market than most fertilizer, mining, and policy models assumed a few years ago. The sooner that is treated as a supply-chain design problem instead of a temporary commodity spike, the less painful the adjustment will be.

...Trump also suggested during the high-level meeting with Xi Jinping that the US, China and Russia should join forces to challenge the International Criminal Court, noting that their interests align.

The question of why the U.S. government began a war with Iran is unsettled. The ostensible reasons, blocking Iran from developing nuclear weapons and protecting Iranians’ human rights, are not enough. Iran’s agreement not to build a nuclear arms program was in force...

...a U.S. government that so easily tolerates human rights abuses within the United States and in certain allied nations would seemingly have little zeal to fight Iran on that account, unless there were other inducements.

Strategic considerations as to U.S. economic sustainability and U.S. economic and political power in the world very likely impelled nervous U.S. decision-makers to start a war...

...The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz might not be a strategic “mistake,” but rather a deliberate feature of the conflict...

...The argument is that the blockade of the straits is a deliberate move by Washington to choke off China’s energy “lifeline” and, in doing so, halt its geopolitical rise...

...“Because oil was and is so fundamental to nearly every industry, the ‘petrodollar’ became ubiquitous, and the dollar became the cornerstone of the global economy.” To preserve the petrodollar arrangement and predictability of the dollar’s value becomes a principal objective of this war...

...Star Catcher says its customer base spans commercial space operators and U.S. Government stakeholders...

...If Star Catcher can prove the system works in orbit, satellite operators may no longer have to treat the power budget they launched with as the ceiling on what a spacecraft can do...

...its first space-based optical power-beaming demonstration is planned for later this year...

...In its announcement, Star Catcher said its Series A would fund deeper engagement with U.S. national security customers...

...“Persistent surveillance, resilient communications, and unhindered maneuverability are all constrained today by power,”...

...Beam pointing has to be precise across long distances. Beam intensity must be controlled so the system does not damage the solar arrays it is meant to help...

...Ford Energy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford Motor Company. We will provide United States-assembled battery energy storage systems (BESS) for utilities, data centers and large industrial and commercial customers in the United States...

Our flagship product – the Ford Energy DC block – is a standardized 20-foot containerized battery energy storage system designed around 512 Ah LFP prismatic cells. We offer two configurations: the FE-250 (two-hour system) and the FE-450 (a four-hour system). Both integrate advanced LFP prismatic battery technology, liquid-cooled thermal management and battery management system.

...We are repurposing existing U. S. battery manufacturing capacity in Glendale, Kentucky...

...Research published in the journal Nature Astronomy shows how WOH G64, a giant binary star system in the Large Magellanic Cloud, has recently undergone a striking transformation...

...researchers say they've examined more than 30 years of brightness measurements and found that the star, long classified as a cold, red supergiant, has become markedly hotter – by over 1,000°C – and now appears yellow rather than red...