Author: aliakhan00901

An ancient and “nearly naked” black hole that astronomers believe may have been created in the first fraction of a second after the big bang has been spotted by the James Webb space telescope.If confirmed as a so-called primordial black hole, a theoretical class of object predicted to exist by Stephen Hawking but never before seen, the discovery would upend prevailing theories of the universe.Until now, the mainstream view has been that stars and galaxies appeared first and that black holes were created only when the earliest stars ran out of fuel and collapsed under their own gravity.But the latest…

The first official day of fall is only weeks away, meaning it’s time to prepare for your leaf peeping adventures to come. And SmokyMountains.com is back with its detailed foliage map to help you do just that.  In late August, the website put out its map and its coming predictions using what it calls a “refined data model that depends on a combination of factors, including historical temperature and precipitation, forecast temperature and precipitation, the type of tree known to be prominent in that geographic region, the historical trends in that area,” along with something extra: user data. In 2022,…

An area is damaged following a landslide that destroyed the Tersin village, in the Marra Mountains area of Sudan Sep. 1, 2025. Sudan Liberation Movement/Army/Handout via Reuters hide caption toggle caption Sudan Liberation Movement/Army/Handout via Reuters LAGOS, Nigeria — A massive landslide in western Sudan has destroyed the village of Tarseen in Darfur and killed as many as 1,000 people, according to local groups. Many of the victims were displaced and starving, having fled more than two years of intense fighting in Sudan’s civil war. The landslide struck Sunday in the mountainous Jebel Marra region, an area controlled by the…

China is drilling for oil and gas inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a move that analysts believe is likely part of Beijing’s unilateral grab for disputed territory that could also aid a future invasion of Taiwan.During July and August at least 12 oil and gas vessels and permanent structures were detected inside Taiwan’s EEZ – including one within 50km of the restricted-waters border of the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands – as well as several steel supports for fixed offshore drilling platforms, called jackets. Their presence inside Taiwan’s EEZ have not been previously reported.Experts said the activity fit the pattern of…

Hooked on LinkedIn’s Queens? Gotta extend your Wordle streak in the New York Times games app before you start your day? You’re in good company on today’s Vergecast episode. Allison Johnson is joined by Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe, world-class puzzle champs and hosts of the delightful Cracking the Cryptic, a YouTube channel where they solve a puzzle on camera every single day.They specialize in sudoku — and not just the classic number games you might be familiar with. Simon and Mark tackle mind-bending, seemingly impossible puzzles, working through it all in real time, sometimes over the course of several…

Variously described as an “architect, painter, novelist, communist and convicted fraudster”, Fernand Pouillon’s life was punctuated by abrupt reversals of fortune that might have sprung from the pages of Dickens or Dumas. Throughout an eventful career, he ricocheted from intoxicating success, to financial scandal, prison, exile and eventual rehabilitation.In 1985, when Pouillon was in his early 70s, he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by President François Mitterrand. Yet just over 20 years earlier, Pouillon found himself in custody awaiting trial on charges of corruption. As a prolific architect-developer who had designed gargantuan housing schemes in France and Algeria, he was…

September 2, 20252 min readIs Consciousness the Hallmark of Life?As AI grows more fluent in mimicking human empathy, language and memory, we’re left asking: If a machine can fake awareness so well, what exactly is the real thing?By Andrea Gawrylewski More than half a billion people around the world have downloaded artificial-intelligence chatbot companion apps such as Xiaoice and Replika. These virtual confidantes can provide empathy, support and, sometimes, deep relationships. Chatbots, of course, aren’t conscious—they just feel that way to users, who often become emotionally attached to them. As AI grows more fluent in mimicking human empathy, language and…

An aircraft’s end-of-life journey is rarely immediate. For commercial jets, retirement starts with storage, often at a parking slot in a dry desert airfield where engineers can keep the systems in “preservation mode” for months or even years. If market demand changes, a stored plane might be returned to service. If not, it enters the decommissioning phase. Sensitive avionics are removed, the engines and landing gear are stripped, and any reusable components are tagged, inspected, and re-certified.According to the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association (AFRA), more than 12,000 aircraft will reach the end of their operational lives over the next two…

I write this from Paris, a city wrapped in blue and yellow. All around me, Ukrainian flags hang like moral badges pinned to French facades.I arrived in this city just a few weeks ago as a survivor of the genocide in Gaza, leaving my country burning behind me. I had the privilege to be evacuated by the French government as a student admitted to a French university.What first struck me about Paris, this so-called city of liberty, was its curated grief, sanctioned empathy, and decorated silence.France mourns Ukraine loudly. Gaza, on the other hand, must be whispered. The Palestinian flag…

The Summer I Turned PrettyAmazon Amazon Prime Video must be happy that they managed to create a cultural phenomenon the past few years that was not tied to violent superheroes. That would be The Summer I Turned Pretty, which is one episode away from its grand series finale at the end of season 3. However, a new show has shot up Amazon Prime Video’s Top 10 list to #1 in the form of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, the Terminal List prequel that was concocted because Chris Pratt’s incredibly busy schedule will delay the original Terminal List to the point…