Just released first images from the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope reveal unprecedented detail of the Sun's surface and preview the world-class products to come from this preeminent 4-meter solar telescope. NSF's Inouye Solar Telescope, on the summit of Haleakala, Maui, in Hawai'i, will enable a new era of solar science and a leap forward in understanding the Sun and its impacts on our planet.

Activity on the Sun, known as space weather, can affect systems on Earth. Magnetic eruptions on the Sun can impact air travel, disrupt satellite communications and bring down power grids, causing long-lasting blackouts and disabling technologies such as GPS.


The first images from NSF's Inouye Solar Telescope show a close-up view of the Sun's surface, which can provide important detail for scientists. The images show a pattern of turbulent "boiling" plasma that covers the entire Sun. The cell-like structures — each about the size of Texas — are the signature of violent motions that transport heat from the inside of the Sun to its surface. That hot solar plasma rises in the bright centers of "cells," cools off and then sinks below the surface in dark lanes in a process known as convection. (See video available with this news release.)

"Since NSF began work on this ground-based telescope, we have eagerly awaited the first images," said France Córdova, NSF director. "We can now share these images and videos, which are the most detailed of our Sun to date. NSF's Inouye Solar Telescope will be able to map the magnetic fields within the Sun's corona, where solar eruptions occur that can impact life on Earth. This telescope will improve our understanding of what drives space weather and ultimately help forecasters better predict solar storms."

The documented flora and fauna on Earth is truly astounding, having evolved from minuscule cells over millennia into the plants and animals we have today, estimated by biologists to be over 8.7 million species.

Although approximately 1 million new species are discovered every year, it is likely that millions more remain undiscovered. In the circle of life Mother Nature created, each found the perfect place to evolve and thrive and contribute to the wellbeing of the whole — resulting in a diversity of species that boggles the mind.

Unfortunately, the evolution of Homo sapiens was too successful, resulting in the continuous extinction of many species and putting many more at risk with the destruction of natural habitat, over fishing, hunting, and pollution.

The sky provides. This winter, the fading of Betelgeuse caught us all by surprise. Now, as January wraps up, we can add a new comet discovery and a supernova bright enough to see in a 6-inch telescope to an ever-growing list of seasonal sky wonders.

As astronomers turned their spectrographs toward Betelgeuse, skywatchers from beginners to seasoned amateurs thrilled to see the red supergiant fade before their eyes. With a little help from Aldebaran and Bellatrix, which served as comparison stars, Betelgeuse made hundreds if not thousands of new variable star observers.

I spoke with Elizabeth O. Waagen, senior technical assistant at the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), and while she didn't have an exact number at her fingertips, she confirmed that Betelgeuse inspired new observers to contribute their magnitude estimates.

Although hypersonic weapons might seem like relative newcomers, known advantages of these weapons are both self-evident and multi-faceted as they can be fired from much greater stand-off ranges while having vastly increased ability to defeat, circumvent or simply destroy enemy air and ballistic missile defenses.

USAF Research Laboratory is working round-the-clock on hypersonic weapons designed to come in the next 10-15 years, in order to "expand USAF's mission options" in the next decades, as an increasingly contested airspace is emerging, limiting US strike capabilities.

The Pentagon has been aggressively pushing for hypersonic weapons development, especially after Russian advances in this field have left the US trailing behind. Given the implications associated with firing weapons able to travel at over five-times the speed of sound, a number of programs have been underway (reportedly, there are up to 8 US hypersonic programs currently underway).

Right now, the most optimistic estimate is that an initial set of more primitive US hypersonic weapons will be operational by the mid-2020s. In late June 2019, USAF conducted its first prototype hypersonic missile flight test, with a B-52 bomber launching a sensor-only prototype of the AGM-183A ARRW (Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon).

Given the size of the oil and gas industries therein, it comes as little surprise to learn that the Middle East churns out a shedload of greenhouse gases.

In a surprise discovery, however, researchers led by Efstratios Bourtsoukidis from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry have identified a second, natural source in the region - so large that it easily matches the anthropogenic output of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait or Oman.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, Bourtsoukidis and colleagues reveal significant differences between standard model predictions for emissions of non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs) such as ethane and propane across the Middle East and the actual results.

The discrepancy was important not only because of its size - the researchers describe it as "a strong underprediction" - but because NMHCs are significant pollutants.

Oxidation of propane and ethane in the atmosphere produces tropospheric ozone and a class of chemicals known as peroxyacetyl nitrates, which are components of photochemical smog and known to be harmful to plants and humans.

NMHCs are produced by human and natural sources. Human production is tightly linked to fossil fuel production and use - and has shown an overall drop since late last century as many countries increased their use of renewable energy. (The US is a notable exception.)

A collision would create a debris belt that would endanger spacecraft worldwide.

Two defunct satellites will zip past each other at 32,800 mph (14.7 kilometers per second) in the sky over Pittsburgh on Wednesday evening (Jan. 29). If the two satellites were to collide, the debris could endanger spacecraft around the planet.

It will be a near miss: LeoLabs, the satellite-tracking company that made the prediction, said they should pass between 50 feet and 100 feet apart (15 to 30 meters) at 6:39:35 p.m. local time.

One is called the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). Launched in 1983, it was the first infrared space telescope and operated for less than a year, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The other is called the Gravity Gradient Stabilization Experiment (GGSE-4), and was a U.S. Air Force experiment launched in 1967 to test spacecraft design principles, according to NASA. The two satellites are unlikely to actually slam into each other, said LeoLabs CEO Dan Ceperley. But predictions of the precise movements of fairly small, fast objects over vast distances is a challenge, Ceperley told Live Science. (LeoLabs' business model is selling improvements on those predictions.)

Maybe it's the year-end double punch of consumerism and self-reflection — what holiday meals are we making, what are we buying for people, what have I even done with my life — but December triggers a cavalcade of questions about how a person who wears things and eats things and likes to go outside (this is me, but, hey, it could be you, too) is tied into the whole dang system of consumption.

And in that blitz, an unlikely subject has come up. Not reproductive choices, not carbon offsets, not even Greta Thunberg. No, it's regenerative agriculture, a soil-focused farming practice. Whole Foods says it's the number-one food trend of next year. Patagonia has made it a centerpiece of its activism and will be rolling out products made using the practice early next year. General Mills announced this spring that it will employ regenerative agriculture on one million acres — about a quarter of the land it uses in North America. And this spring will see the creation of a new Regenerative Organic certification.

That's a huge deal, environmentally, because the agriculture sector is responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse emissions. Ag creates food and fiber and jobs. And when it's done right, it can act as a carbon sink. Healthy soil, with intact root systems, can hold huge amounts of carbon. According to the International Panel on Climate Change, agriculture is unique in its ability to both reduce emissions, through sustainable farming practices, and capture them, through carbon sequestration.

That's where regenerative agriculture comes in. There are 7.5 billion living organisms in a teaspoon of soil — more than there are people living on earth — and regenerative ag supports those organisms, helping them hold nutrients, fighting erosion, and negating the need for chemicals. Estimates from Ohio State's Carbon Management and Sequestration Center say carbon sequestration through regenerative practices could offset fossil fuel emission by up to 15 percent. Loftier assumptions from the United Nations say it could offset total global emissions by 10 percent.

It is no secret that Monsanto has no conscience when it comes to their pesticides. Their genetically modified products contain chemicals like glyphosate that is known to cause cancer and other harmful diseases such as liver disease. These chemicals have been contaminating other farms and crops as well, some may even be in the food you ate today.

They even make it hard for "mom and pop" farms to succeed as drift from Monsanto crops is dangerous to their farms. It contains a chemical called "dicamba" and will kill crops that aren't genetically modified to withstand it. One peach farmer in Missouri lost millions because of this, and he wasn't the only one who has. These chemically charged pesticides are doing more harm than good. Clearly, there needs to be a more natural and less invasive alternative to pest control, this is where Paul Stamets comes in.

Paul Stamets and his Amazing Fungi

Paul Stamets has been a mycologist or a fungi biologist for over 40 years. During his years of research and has won awards such as the National Geographic's Adventure Magazine's Geen-Novator. Conservation of fungi and the environment is very important to him, on his website he explains, "At the current rates of extinction, this last refuge of the mushroom genome should be at the top of the list of priorities for mycologists, environmentalists, and government. If I can help advance this knowledge, I will have done my part to protect life on this planet." (1)

Editor's note: We are delighted today to offer a new book from Discovery Institute Press, The Mystery of Life's Origin: The Continuing Controversy, a greatly expanded and updated version of the book that, in 1984, launched the intelligent design movement. The following is excerpted from Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer's historical introduction to the work. Other brand new chapters on the "continuing controversy" about the origin of life are by chemist James Tour, physicist Brian Miller, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, biologist Jonathan Wells, and philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer.

How does life emerge from that which is not alive? This mystery exercises a peculiar fascination, with the power to elicit remarkable feats of imagination. As the novelist Mary Shelley recalled, her invention of the story of Frankenstein traced back to conversations she witnessed between Lord Byron and her husband Percy Shelley. Holidaying in Switzerland in the summer of 1816, they spoke late into the night, past the "witching hour," about "the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated." Up for discussion was gossip about "experiments of Dr. Darwin" (Erasmus, the grandfather of Charles) who "by some extraordinary means" produced "voluntary motion" in a length of spaghetti. The poets alluded to "galvanism," electrical experiments by Luigi Galvani, spurring thoughts that "a corpse would be reanimated."¹ Later, sleepless in her bed, Mrs. Shelley would experience a vision, receiving the seed for one of the great horror novels.

Less horrific but hardly less imaginative are scenarios of unguided "chemical evolution," or abiogenesis, featured in high school and college biology textbooks, taken as gospel by the media and preached as such by a range of authoritative popular and scholarly figures in the culture. Simple experimental work by Louis Pasteur in the early 1860s demonstrated that life does not spontaneously generate itself, not from spaghetti, not from anything. Instead, life comes from life. How then may science explain the origin of the very first life?

One wasp species has evolved the ability to recognize individual faces among their peers — something that most other insects cannot do — signaling an evolution in how they have learned to work together.

A team led by Cornell University researchers used population genomics to study the evolution of cognition in the Northern paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus. The research suggests the wasps' increasing intelligence provided an evolutionary advantage and sheds light on how intelligence evolves in general, which has implications for many other species — including humans.

"The really surprising conclusion here is that the most intense selection pressures in the recent history of these wasps has not been dealing with climate, catching food or parasites but getting better at dealing with each other," said Michael Sheehan, professor of neurobiology and behavior, and senior author on the paper. "That's pretty profound."