TIL People are betting on the outcomes of the next StarShip launch, and folks aren't optimistic about Starship successfully splashing down.

I mean... I expect another RUD... but I am not an optimistic person.

https://kalshi.com/markets/kxstarshiplaunch/starship-launch-events

To anyone trying to grow kale, broccoli, cauliflower, or related crops in the Great Plains region...

The small white butterflies are now your enemy. Your job is to make sure they never ever ever can touch your vegetables (murder at will - they're invasives)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieris_rapae

Everything I learned about planets when I was 5 was a lie.

Consider Venus: New analysis finds evidence of ongoing volcanism and tectonics! This is not the geologically dead acid-trip of a world we were taught about. It is alive and needs new radar maps ASAP.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-magellan-mission-reveals-possible-tectonic-activity-on-venus/

Letting no job opening go unshared:

https://explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/535584/director-astraeus-space-institute,

U-Florida (Gainsville), Director, Astraeus Space Institute

They're looking for an experienced PhD (or equivalent) who can be cleared for KSC access without escort, and work cross-disciplinary within Space Science.

Have an orange cat? (Does it have the shared braincell today?)

Scientists have proven they are mutants (which we already knew).

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-strange-mutation-explains-the-mystifying-color-of-orange-cats/

Tomorrow, Ally & I stream what happens behind the scenes @cosmoquestx & try to convince folks to join our Patreon.

I hate hate hate asking for money, but we're about $5k behind where we should be this time of year.

Patreon: patreon.com/CosmoQuestX
Donate: bit.ly/CQX-FY25

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN transmuted lead into gold as a byproduct (Not On Purpose!) of colliding lead atoms together. According to a paper on this, they created 2.9x10^-11 grams of gold, which is 100 billion atoms!

Given operating costs, this didn't earn them money, but it is still cool.

Here is the paper.
Acharya, S., Agarwal, A., Aglieri Rinella, G., Aglietta, L., Agnello, M., Agrawal, N., ... & Calvo Villar, E. (2025). Proton emission in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at s NN= 5.02 TeV. Physical Review C, 111(5), 054906. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.111.054906

This research paper by Richard Stanton is a delight. While conducting high-speed photometry of main-sequence stars to look for technosignatures, he found some extremely unusual pulses. He compared them to birds, meteors, & more with lightcurves... including lightcurves of birds! (Edge diffraction looks likely).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576525002449?via%3Dihub#bib10