Elder millennials were technically alive the last time Halley’s Comet came around, though most of us were still learning to walk. And it won’t officially be back until 2061.
But there’s a way to see pieces of it this week. NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke suggested something for anyone who doesn’t want to wait another 35 years. “For those who haven’t seen Comet Halley, if you don’t want to wait for its return, you can at least go out and see the Orionids,” he told CNN. This year’s Orionid meteor shower peaks tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 21, into Thursday morning.
Every October, Earth passes through a trail of dust and rock left behind by Halley’s Comet. Those particles burn up in our atmosphere, giving us the Orionids. The same comet debris also produces the Eta Aquariids meteor shower in May. Meanwhile, Halley’s Comet is out near Neptune’s orbit, absolutely nowhere near us.
And these things freaking move. Orionid meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere at around 41 miles per second, making them some of the fastest meteors we can see. They can produce bright streaks, the occasional fireball, and glowing trails that hang around for a few seconds afterward.
A Meteor Shower Made From Halley’s Comet Is Peaking Tonight. Here’s When to Look Up.
Unfortunately, the moon isn’t doing anyone any favors this year. A bright waxing gibbous moon will wash out many fainter meteors on Wednesday night. According to NASA, your best chance comes after it sets around 3 a.m. local time. Under ideal conditions, the Orionids can produce 10 to 20 meteors per hour, although people in suburban areas will probably see closer to three to six.
If you’re going to watch, find somewhere away from city lights and give your eyes time to adjust. Bring a blanket and something comfy to sit on, especially if you’ll be out there a while. You won’t need a telescope, and there’s no reason to stare directly at Orion. The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky.
Fun fact: Mark Twain had an interesting connection to Halley’s Comet. He was born in 1835, the year it passed, and predicted he’d die when it returned. In 1909, he wrote, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.” He died on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet reached its closest point to the Sun.
If you’re willing to get out of bed at 3 a.m., you might catch a few pieces of the same comet. At least you won’t have to wait another 35 years.
Earth’s core is leaking, and it has been for a long time.
Earth’s core, frankly, sounds insane. It’s a molten ball covered in a lava ocean that spews lethal gases and occasionally ejects some of itself through volcanoes. It used to be so wild that the planet was uninhabitable, but it eventually settled down enough for humans to exist on it.
According to a study in Science Advances by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China, that core is constantly oozing chemical leftovers from the birth of our Solar System. For years, scientists have debated whether these weird deep-Earth ingredients get trapped in the mantle when the planet first cooled, or whether Earth’s core is slowly leaking material into the outer layers.
The Center of Earth Is Leaking Ancient Material, and Scientists Are Trying to Understand Why
To figure it out, scientists used computer simulations to model how hydrogen moves. Like sodas or cigarettes, hydrogen comes in a “light” version and a “heavy” version. The heavy one is called deuterium. If early Earth froze, the heavy and light versions would be mixed pretty evenly everywhere. But when scientists look at lava from volcanic hotspots in Iceland and Baffin Island, they find way more of the superlight version of hydrogen.
This means that the original cooling process couldn’t have caused this current setup. Instead, light hydrogen trapped in the planet’s metal core billions of years ago, when the Sun was forming, is actively leaking into the mantle like air from a punctured tire.
This light hydrogen, along with ancient helium and tungsten, rides hot lava streams to the planet’s surface, meaning that for the past several billion years ancient gases trapped in Earth’s core have been slowly burping their way out.
Tesla and SpaceX have formed special committees to discuss a possible merger, Elon Musk said during the latter's third quarter earnings call Tuesday.
Musk, who serves as CEO of both companies, said the special committees were formed at the request of shareholders and consist of independent directors (though he did not name them). He also noted that he is not a member of either committee, nor involved in any of the discussions.
"Because I'm a conflicted party, I can't actually be in the discussions of the special committees," Musk said. "So it's an odd kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can't be in the conversation. …
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company would attempt to catch Starship and its booster next month, with the goal of recovering the entire orbital launch system for the first time. If successful, Musk said, the attempt would mark the first time in history an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered.
But he also allowed for the possibility of a failure. "Success is not guaranteed on these first flights, but I'd say it's more likely than not that this succeeds next flight," Musk sa …
SpaceX announced revenues of $14.6 billion in its Q3 earnings on Tuesday, which it says was a growth of 161 percent year-over-year "fueled by our Super Intelligence (SI) segment and accelerated growth in Connectivity." While its Space division posted a $7 million loss in income from operations, its Connectivity group posted income from operations $2.4 billion and its SI group posted $431 million.
The company's so-called "SI" business saw revenues of $7.6 billion, which were up 830 percent year-over-year, "primarily driven" by "the activation of new cloud services agreements, the acquisition of Cursor, and increased Grok adoption across ente …
Instead of measuring how fast or far a user went during a run or bike ride, or metrics like calories burned, Cardio Effort measures how hard their cardiovascular system was working during exercise …
Trying to pull up information for certain peptides on TikTok is now returning a "no results found" page when searching for terms like semaglutide, BPC-157, retratutide, and others. That hasn't entirely erased visibility on TikTok for peptides, which are combinations of amino acids that include substances like insulin and GLP-1. The problem is peptides also include unregulated, unapproved substances that proponents like RFK Jr. say can assist with everything from weight loss to wound healing, despite a lack of clinical data supporting such claims.
As a result, on social media platforms like TikTok, an army of influencer proponents are happy …
Other than having a living plesiosaur in front of you, you probably won’t get much closer to the creature than by finding some of its bones, but maybe some of its bodily excretions would help you learn what was going on in its now-missing digestive tract. But how do you even come across the, let’s say, puke of a creature that’s been dead for tens of millions of years?
According to new research published in Geological Magazine by geologist Dirk Knaust, oil crews drilling off the Norwegian coast accidentally hauled up 160-million-year-old plesiosaur puke from deep underwater rock cores dating to the Jurassic period.
Samples range from walnut-sized to mango-sized, just in case you never want to look at those foods in the same way again.
160-Million-Year-Old Vomit Could Reveal How Prehistoric Sea Monsters Ate
Plesiosaurs were long-necked aquatic sea monsters that measured 13 to 26 feet long and looked almost exactly like you’d imagine the Loch Ness monster. When the researchers found the fossilized vomit, I didn’t immediately assume it belonged to a Jurassic creature. It could’ve been fossilized poop or maybe storm debris. Maybe it belonged to a fish or squid? But no, because they can’t cough up chunks this big.
If it was a prehistoric shark or a crocodile, they probably would’ve found some fish in there. With all other possibilities ruled out, Cryptoclididae plesiosaurs were the last possibility remaining.
These massive reptiles moved along the deep seafloor using their long necks like vacuum cleaners to scoop up bottom-dwelling invertebrates. Their teeth weren’t strong enough to grind shells, so their stomachs compacted the indigestible stuff into gross pellets they later vomited up.
But what I find most interesting is that plesiosaurs didn’t just puke wherever they swam. Scientists found the items they barfed up in what used to be shallow ancient river deltas. So, like fur seals or marine crocodiles after a big meal, these ancient aquatic beasts probably swam into safe coastal waters to chill out for a bit, eventually puking their meals into the mud before napping and heading back out to sea.
In 1873, an Argentine sailor named Luis Piedra Buena loaded a crew onto a ship called the Espora and headed toward the Strait of Le Maire, a rough stretch of ocean near Patagonia known for tearing hulls to smithereens. He risked his crew’s lives for the noble quest of murdering a bunch of penguins to harvest their grease for oil.
Somewhere along the way, the ship wrecked near Isla de los Estados. Piedra Buena and his crew suddenly became castaways, struggling to survive on unfamiliar shores. The Penguins, having no idea they came this close to being scooped up and turned into lamp oil or whatever, still don’t care about humanity’s plight.
Eventually, the crew slapped together a makeshift sailboat and made it to Chile. The penguins kept on doing their thing.
Archaeologists May Have Found the Lost Shipwreck of 19th-Century Penguin Hunters
Now, according to a study published in the journal Antiquity and reported by IFLScience, archaeologists searching around Franklin Bay have uncovered the ruined wooden ribs of a 19th-century ship, along with a crude castaway camp on a nearby hillside.
The researchers dug up salvaged ship parts, including whole timbers and a deck prism, and found a smattering of distinctly human clutter—glass bottles, buttons, beads, and tools. While this belongs to Piedra Buena and his crew, the most logical explanation, the researchers aren’t claiming that just yet, just to be safe.
There’s more testing to be done, but it’s hard to deny that the location and all the artifacts combined heavily suggest that there may have been a bunch of stranded penguin hunters who may have ripped their ship to shreds to fashion it into an improvised boat that could possibly,maybe, get them to Chile.
President Donald Trump announced this afternoon that Elon Musk's SpaceX shares for children will be given through Trump Accounts. Musk said earlier today that he would give one of his SpaceX shares to "every kid in America" sometime next year. Musk had thanked Trump Account booster Brad Gerstner for "helping enable this," and Trump appeared to confirm the plan in a post on Truth Social.
Given the value of SpaceX's stock on Friday, 72 million shares would be worth approximately $10.5 billion, according to CNBC. "This will be the first of many," Musk said.
Michael and Susan Dell, Ray and Barbara Dalio, Gerstner, and SpaceX president Gwynne …
The US is building more fossil fuel infrastructure than it has in a decade while renewable energy growth slows down, a new report shows.
Electricity demand is also climbing faster than it has in more than a decade with more data centers, factories, and electric vehicles plugging into the grid. Despite those growing demands, the Trump administration has sought to hobble the wind and solar industries in favor of fossil fuels.
America's energy landscape is already shifting as a result, according to the report published last week by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund and research firm Atlas Public Policy. If all the gas projects in the d …
JAXA is leading an international mission to reach Mars’ Phobos moon and bring soil back to Earth. If successful, it could unlock new clues about the history of the solar system.
It’ll be several years before the facility is complete, but this digital rendering gives us some idea of what it’ll look like. | Image: Amazon
Amazon has signed an agreement with X-energy and American Electric Power (AEP) to fund the building of a new nuclear energy facility in Indiana. The proposed plant, which would replace the now defunct coal-fueled Breed Generating Station in Fairbanks, Sullivan County, aims to provide up to 960 megawatts of carbon-free energy for both the regional power grid and Amazon's data centers.
No timeline for construction or operation has been announced for the facility, which Amazon says "could" create 1,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent roles. The facility in Indiana is targeting to build 12 Xe-100 SMR's, an advanced (but unproven) reactor th …
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, and Vodafone signed a letter of intent saying they're considering a joint bid for spectrum that would support European direct-to-device satellite competition for SpaceX's Starlink. The four telecom companies say they would handle the ground infrastructure while a separate, unannounced satellite partner provides the satellite constellation:
The joint initiative by Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone has a clear ambition: to meet customer demand for universal coverage in underserved areas, strengthen the resilience of public networks, protect critical communications, and support the develop …
Elon Musk says he plans to give one of his SpaceX shares to every child in the US starting next year. With around 72 million children in the US as of July 2025, Musk would be giving away about $10.5 billion worth of shares, according to a report from CNBC.
Musk, who runs SpaceX and Tesla, appears to be giving away the shares through Trump Accounts, the tax-advantaged investment accounts for American children. Musk responded to a post from Brad Gerstner, who helped launch Trump Accounts, saying "Thanks for helping enable this." Musk adds that this giveaway "will be the first of many."
The move comes just months after SpaceX president Gwynne …
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