"This is what depression looks like"

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one. - Marcus Aurelius

Bertrand Russell.

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. - T. S. Eliot

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

NEW 🚨: The world's most powerful solar telescope just captured the highest resolution images of the Sun's surface ever taken

If we become even slightly more violent, short-sighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.

A breathtaking glimpse of "Mystic Mountain," a region within the Carina Nebula. (Credit: NASA, ESA and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team/STScI)

There are no forbidden questions. Arguments from authority are worthless. Claims must be demonstrated.

Part of a real photo I took using a backyard telescope. Space is amazing This is a small crop from new work I’m releasing this week! A 65-hour exposure of a supernova shockwave 😱 I’ll be sending it to email subscribers first with more info about how it was captured 👀

Sparkly, Swirly, and Surprisingly Explosive! Meet Messier 83 — the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy — a breathtaking spiral beauty located about 15 million light-years away. But NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory just revealed it’s hiding some wild cosmic fireworks that no one saw coming. Over 20 supernova remnants (the glowing wreckage left behind by massive star explosions) are behaving like unpredictable strobe lights. These debris clouds are dramatically brightening and dimming in X-rays over just a few years — something astronomers never expected.Normally, supernova remnants fade slowly and steadily in X-rays, like dying embers. Instead, roughly half of these 22 remnants in M83 are flickering wildly, as if fresh explosions or hidden energy sources are keeping the party going!Using 14 years of Chandra observations (from 2000 to 2014), scientists caught this unexpected light show in action. It’s rewriting what we thought we knew about how these stellar corpses evolve. This sparkly spiral isn’t just pretty — it’s a dynamic laboratory of cosmic violence and surprises! Composite image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURAThe Universe keeps reminding us: even “old” explosions can still throw surprise parties.

OH MY GOD!!!! A BEAUTIFUL NEW JWST IMAGE DROPPED!!!

No amount of money, oil or gold is worth more than the bees, trees and clean water.

Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot. - Richard Feynman

Planetaey Nebulae

“Tyrants and autocrats have always understood that literacy, learning, books and newspapers are potentially dangerous. They can inspire independent thought and even rebellion.” — Carl Sagan

A perfect ~30,000 km-wide hexagon on Saturn's north pole, spinning counterclockwise, finishing one revolution every 10h 40m… and it’s been there for more than 40 years

This striking view of the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) is a cosmic masterpiece! By blending powerful X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with stunning optical observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, XMM-Newton, and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have created one of the most detailed portraits of this majestic spiral galaxy.Located about 21 million light-years from Earth, the Pinwheel Galaxy stretches an impressive 170,000 light-years across — nearly twice the size of our own Milky Way. Its graceful, sweeping arms are bursting with young stars, glowing gas, and glowing regions of intense star formation, while Chandra reveals the high-energy secrets hidden within: supernova remnants, black holes, and neutron stars lighting up in X-rays.A true giant among nearby galaxies, M101 offers us a breathtaking window into the dynamic life of a massive spiral galaxy.

The majestic Sombrero galaxy captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is instantly recognizable by its brilliant white core encircled by thick dust lanes. 📸: NASA/STScI/AURA

Imagine a planet bigger than Earth, with no land in sight—just endless waves and water stretching from pole to pole, an unbroken global ocean possibly hundreds of kilometers deep.That is TOI-1452 b, a fascinating super-Earth exoplanet located about 100 light-years away in the constellation Draco. Discovered in 2022 using NASA’s TESS satellite and confirmed with ground-based observations, this world is roughly 1.67 times Earth’s radius (about 70% larger in diameter) and nearly 5 times more massive. Its density is similar to Earth’s, but the numbers tell a very different story: models suggest water could make up as much as 20–30% of its total mass—compared to less than 1% for Earth. It orbits a small, cool red dwarf star (TOI-1452) every 11 days at a distance that places it in the habitable zone, where temperatures allow liquid water to exist on the surface (receiving about 1.8 times the stellar radiation Earth gets, with an estimated equilibrium temperature around 53°C / 326 K). No continents, no islands—just a vast, deep ocean covering everything, potentially with exotic high-pressure ice forms far below the surface.TOI-1452 b stands out as one of the strongest candidates yet for a true ocean world (or “water world”), more akin to some icy moons in our solar system than to rocky planets like ours. While we can’t see its surface directly, the combination of its size, mass, and lower-than-expected density for a purely rocky body strongly points to a thick water layer dominating its composition. Scientists are excited because worlds like this could offer new insights into planetary formation, the chemistry of oceans, and even the potential for life in environments very different from Earth’s. Future observations (possibly with telescopes like JWST) may help reveal more about its atmosphere and confirm just how watery this distant blue marble truly is.In short: TOI-1452 b isn’t just a bigger Earth—it’s a planet where the sea has won completely, painting a mesmerizing picture of what “habitable” might look like elsewhere in the cosmos.

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.