TMEHpodcast

Congratulations! You’ve successfully avoided YouTube Shorts.

It is a well-known fact that the moment YouTube goes down, the collective productivity of Earth increases by approximately 4,000%, which is immediately squandered by everyone going to Hacker News to read comments about YouTube being down. I myself have taken to podcasts… an ancient medium in which people simply talk at you for ninety minutes without a single sponsorship for a mobile game, and this is considered a failure

This is really lovely work! Simple to use, surprisingly solid, and just a pleasure to poke around with. The fact it runs in the browser is a bit of magic on its own.

One idea for later might be a few preset systems, such as Alpha Centauri or other known three-body systems. It would give people a quick way to drop into something real before they start making chaos of their own.

Anyway, cracking project.

Initially read the headline and thinking it would be about a certain TV show about Silicon Valley. Not disappointed

The detection of a potential giant planet in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A is compelling, not because we could live on the planet (likely a gas giant), but because it could host moons with the right conditions for life. If even one of those moons is Earth-sized and water-rich, it might be our nearest shot at finding another habitable world.

Still, getting there with something like David Kipping’s proposed TARS propulsion system (a solar-powered launcher that can fling tiny probes at ~40 km/s) we’d be looking at 30,000+ years to reach the star system. It’s a step forward, but for now, our best hope is to keep watching. Until someone develops fusion propulsion…

What you’re describing is Bayesian inference in action. Given how rare big interstellar comets should be, and how common small ones should be, the lack of detections makes the big-comet hypothesis incredibly unlikely. So we update our beliefs: it’s probably small. Space statistics at work

Cutting 20% from NASA isn’t just a loss of jobs, it’s a loss of momentum, morale, and institutional knowledge built over decades. We need more long-term vision, not less. NASA’s not just about space, it’s about pushing boundaries, educating future generations, and reminding us what’s possible when we aim higher together.

The ISS is set to be decommissioned in 2030 with a controlled descent into the Pacific Ocean. But with NASA’s recent budget cuts slashing science funding and crew size, the transition plan feels more like wishful thinking than a roadmap. Without proper support, America risks losing the foothold in low Earth orbit.

Summary: NASA’s Hubble and Chandra telescopes have identified a rare intermediate-mass black hole in galaxy NGC 6099, bridging the gap between stellar and supermassive black holes. These elusive objects are a missing link in our understanding of how black holes grow and evolve. By combining X-ray and optical data, astronomers found evidence of a dense star cluster and high-energy emissions, pointing to a black hole that helps complete the black hole family tree.

I’m a space enthusiast, and from what I’ve learned here’s the breakdown: solar systems take millions of years to form. It all starts in a nebula where gas collapses and coalesces into a star and surrounding material. The process is long and complex (and not fully understood), but we know it eventually produces rocky planets, gas giants, and smaller debris.

This new paper reports something exciting, they’ve spotted a moment that signals the beginning of rocky planet formation. In the system HOPS-315, gas has cooled enough for solids to condense, which is when planet formation kicks off. This happens about twice as far from its baby star as Earth is from the Sun.

And of course, ALMA, the telescope that made the discovery, is fantastic at catching solar systems in the act of forming. It was only a matter of time before this stage was observed.

To be launched in 2031 and positioned at Lagrange Point 5. Vigil will spot solar storms before they hit Earth.

No matter how chaotic the merger looks, the event horizon must asymptotically become either spherical (Schwarzschild) or oblate (Kerr). The mass distribution inside doesn’t change this, general relativity doesn’t allow static “lumpy” horizons.

It’s wild how much happens in those milliseconds though. Numerical relativity papers like the one you shared from arxiv.org show the horizon “sloshing” before it stabilizes.

Keep an eye on whether the final FY 2026 appropriations bill keeps LIGO at two sites. Until then, it’s a real risk, but salvageable.

Also in July 1962, the United States detonated a high-altitude nuclear bomb known as Starfish Prime 400 km above the Pacific Ocean. The blast pumped the Earth’s magnetic field full of radiation, creating artificial belts of charged particles around the planet.

Unfortunately, this newly electrified environment was bad news for satellites. Telstar 1, launched just a day later, became an unintended casualty. As it passed through the radiation-charged Van Allen Belts, its delicate electronics began to degrade. By November 1962, Telstar was faltering, and by February 1963, it fell silent.

Amazing slice of science history.