A new study conducted by researchers at the SETI Institute suggests that space weather conditions around stars could be hindering the detection of radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.
Wildfire Smoke Can Attack Almost Every Part of Your Body Not Just Your Lungs
A wildfire, bushfire, wild land fire or rural fire is an unplanned,
unwanted, uncontrolled fire in an area of combustible vegetation
starting in rural areas and urban areas. Depending on the type of
vegetation present, a wildfire can also be classified more specifically
as a forest fire, brush fire, bushfire (in Australia), desert fire,
grass fire, hill fire, peat fire, prairie fire, vegetation fire, or veld
fire. Many organizations consider wildfire to mean an unplanned and
unwanted fire, while wild land-fire is a broader term that includes
prescribed fire as well as wildland fire use (WFU; these are also called
monitored response fires).
Wildfires can be characterized in terms of the cause of ignition, their physical properties, the combustible material present, and the effect of weather on the fire. Wildfires can cause damage to property and human life, although naturally occurring wildfires may have beneficial effects on native vegetation, animals, and ecosystems that have evolved with fire. Wildfire behavior and severity result from a combination of factors such as available fuels, physical setting, and weather. Read more
Wildfire Smoke Can Attack Almost Every Part of Your Body Not Just Your Lungs Science Alert - July 20, 2026
This past week, a child stood on the observation deck of Toronto's CN Tower and looked out at a city skyline blurred by haze. Hundreds of miles away, National Guard troops patrolled a smoke-dimmed National Mall in Washington, and commuters pulled on masks. Smoke drifting south from Canada's wildfires has become an almost annual visitor to American skies. None of these scenes look that unusual these days.
Parasites - again?
Ireland - A deadly disease first takes finches’ songs – and then their lives
Event category
Biological origin - Epidemic (animal) Ireland
A devastating disease is spreading among
Irish songbirds. It is caused by a single-cell parasite that gums up the
throats of infected songbirds until they can no longer feed or drink.
Sick birds in gardens look puffed up and may not fly away when
approached.
Hardest hit has been the greenfinch, a species once
widespread in Ireland but now rarely seen or heard in parts of the
country. Its numbers halved since about 2006, when the parasite landed
in Ireland, likely from the UK. There are signs now that the disease is
spreading to other songsters such as goldfinches, bullfinches and
chaffinches.
In response, BirdWatch Ireland took the difficult
decision to ask people not to feed garden birds from May until October.
This is because of how the protozoan parasite spreads. Infected birds
have difficulty swallowing and breathing due to the presence of the
parasite. Eventually lesions in their mouth and throat make it
impossible for them to feed, and they regurgitate seeds that can infect
healthy birds.
Saliva from sick birds is contagious, and parent birds
can also infect their young when feeding them. Drooling and
regurgitation of food means they may have wetting of feathers around
their face.
“The birds look unwell and they are basically starving,”
says Niall Hatch at BirdWatch Ireland. “The poor birds try to feed up
until death, so people are finding them keeled over on their patio or
garden furniture or bird table, which is unusual.” He says the disease
was initially concentrated in a few places, like Dublin and Wexford, but
is everywhere now.
The parasite is a microscopic protozoa,
Trichomonas gallinae, that was known to infect pigeon species. It cannot
infect people. Some time in about 2005, it seems that a single strain
of the parasite jumped from pigeons to greenfinches, which are unrelated
types of bird.
“It started off in the West Midlands [of England] and
then spread to Wales and other parts of southern and central England.
It is now everywhere in the UK and has spread into mainland Europe,”
says Dr Will Peach, a conservation scientist at the Royal Society for
the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
This year the society – which has
more than 1 million members – also changed its advice about feeding
garden birds and says people should especially avoid putting out seeds
and peanuts, which attract finches.
Risks of transmitting the
parasite are heightened around popular bird feeders, where lots of birds
congregate. This stokes the risk of a sick bird joining the feeding
flock and spreading the parasite to others. When temperatures are mild,
the parasite can survive for up to five days outside a bird’s body.
“All
it takes is for an infected bird to go to a bird feeder and then there
is a ticking time bomb there for other birds,” says Hatch.
Approved - OH NO
😲
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Did you vote for this? I did not. WTF?
OMG!
THIS SOUNDS LIKE A BAD IDEA: Since SpaceX began launching Starlink satellites in 2019, astronomers have grown increasingly alarmed. It's almost impossible now to take a deep-sky image without satellite streaks. The megaconstellation numbers nearly 11,000 functioning satellites, and SpaceX launched another 1,589 during the first half of 2026 alone.
Soon, Starlink may be the least of their worries.
Last week, the FCC authorized Reflect Orbital Inc. to launch a huge space mirror named “Eärendil-1.” From an orbit about 625 km high, it will cast a moving, 5-km-wide patch of light onto the Earth about as bright as a full Moon. This first mirror is just a test. Reflect Orbital wants to launch 50,000 more by 2035, selling sunlight-on-demand to solar farms, construction sites and search-and-rescue teams.
If Reflect Orbital's plan is realized, it could be a calamity not only for astronomy but also for the natural world as a whole. Nocturnal animals and night-blooming plants, tuned by evolution to the rhythm of day and night, would suddenly find their darkness interrupted by moving pools of redirected sunlight. Small favors? Reflect Orbital says the light will not be bright enough to start fires.
The
FCC itself acknowledged some of these concerns, but said optical
astronomy and the environment lie largely outside its jurisdiction. They
can only regulate the project's use of radio signals. For now, no US
agency regulates how bright a satellite may shine.
The company's FCC application attracted more than 1,800 public comments, most of them sharply critical. Nevertheless, the launch of Eärendil-1 is now expected before the end of the year.
Stay tuned for too much sunlight.
What the hell happened?
What the Monks Saw: A Medieval Mystery
Just to show that life is full of unexpected turns, on June 18, 1178, a group of medieval English monks threw a fine puzzle in the laps of astronomers that lingers to this day.
On that day, shortly after sunset, five monks at the abbey of the Christ Church of Canterbury (on the site of Canterbury Cathedral,) noticed that something very odd was happening in the sky. Gervase, who was Canterbury’s chronicler, provided the eyewitness record:
“The upper horn of the Moon split in two. From the midpoint of the division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the Moon which was below writhed, as it were in anxiety, and to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw it with their own eyes, the Moon throbbed like a wounded snake. Afterwards it resumed its proper state. This phenomenon was repeated a dozen times or more, the flame assuming various twisting shapes at random and then returning to normal. Then, after these transformations, the Moon from horn to horn, that is along its whole length, took on a blackish appearance.”
I am sure you are about to bring up the obvious question: What the hell happened? Go ahead and ask, but the answer you are likely to get from scientists is “Dunno.” In 1976, geologist Jack Hartung suggested that the monks observed a meteor impact on the Moon so massive that it caused molten matter (the “flaming torch”) to rise into space. Hartung pointed out that the Moon has a crater (named after Giordano Bruno,) that is possibly relatively young--perhaps young enough to date from June 18, 1178.
Alas for this delightfully brief and tidy answer, it is far from universally accepted. Other scientists have pointed out that an impact that huge would have had dramatic and impossible to ignore effects on Earth. It likely would have caused one of the biggest meteor showers in human history, observable all over the world for days afterwards. As far as we know, such spectacular showers were not recorded by the Canterbury monks, or anyone else on our planet for that matter. Additionally, in 2008 high-resolution images obtained by a Japanese satellite were used to give the Giordano Bruno crater an age of about 4 to 6 million years, which would obviously negate Hartung’s theory.
In 2001, a University of Arizona student named Paul Withers came up with a more elaborate scenario. He proposed that if, on that June night in 1178, a meteor came down to Earth and exploded right in front of the rising Moon, it could conceivably have appeared to the Canterbury witnesses that the Moon itself was erupting. This would be a rather remarkable astronomical coincidence, but not an impossible one. Unfortunately, this hypothesis can neither be proved or disproved.
So, what did those Canterbury monks observe? We’ll likely never know for sure, which is what charms me about our little historical footnote.
News is the Most Perfected Form of Fiction
Aug 5, 2025, 12:03 PM | ||||
Late 1960s British Television Episode, The News Benders, Donald Pleasance: "The news is the most perfected form of fiction"
A Game of Shadows, movie
EV DISASTER: We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Electric Cars
AS WE EXPECTED... a electric car in Florida in a garage caught fire when the salt water hit it during the hurricane
Debunking Elon Musk: Driving Electric Car Fake Environmentalism
Mark Keenan
In Sweden there exists an electrified road for Electric Vehicles (EVs) to charge while driving[1]. The 2 km stretch of road is the world’s first of its kind, and an expansion of a further 3,000 km of electric road by 2045 is planned. It all sounds rather cool and futuristic, and I am reminded of a song lyric from the 1980s, the singer Eddie Grant sang “we’re gonna rock onto Electric Avenue”.
However, let us consider whether these expensive EVs are actually environmentally friendly or are yet mega-corporate marketing scam?
This article demonstrates that the latter is the case. The reality is that the misled environmentalists buying these cars are suckers for mega-corporate advertising, ignorantly proud of their so-called low-carbon eco-cars.
de-banked?
Debanking the truckers was exactly what Christyia Freeland,Trudeau's finance minister- did to break their demonstration against nonsensical covid restrictions
SETI on space weather
Something in Interstellar Space Could Be Altering Extraterrestrial Intelligence Signals Before They Reach Us
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airlinepilotguy.com PIGS CAN FLY? From best friend to therapist: Research on emotional support animals It turns out pigs can fly. And turtle...
