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The early universe was crammed with stars 10,000 times the size of our sun, new study suggests

The early universe was crammed with stars 10,000 times the size of our sun, new study suggests

Space.com reports: The first stars in the cosmos may have topped out at over 10,000 times the mass of the sun, roughly 1,000 times bigger than the biggest stars alive today, a new study has found. Nowadays, the biggest stars are 100 solar masses. But the early universe was a far more exotic place, filled with mega-giant stars that lived fast and died very, very young, the researchers found. And once these doomed giants died out, conditions were never right…

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Defeating Russian imperialism will allow the world to then focus on climate action

Defeating Russian imperialism will allow the world to then focus on climate action

George Soros writes: Putin is desperate for a ceasefire, but he does not want to admit it. Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the same boat. But US President Joe Biden is unlikely to jump at this seeming opportunity to negotiate a ceasefire, because he has pledged that the US will not negotiate behind Zelensky’s back. The countries of the former Soviet empire, eager to assert their independence, can hardly wait for the Russian army to be crushed in Ukraine….

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Putin visits Russian-occupied Mariupol: ‘The criminal always returns to the crime scene’

Putin visits Russian-occupied Mariupol: ‘The criminal always returns to the crime scene’

The criminal always returns to the crime scene. As the civilized world announces the arrest of the "war director" (VV Putin) in case of crossing its borders, the murderer of thousands of Mariupol families came to admire the ruins of the city & graves. Cynicism & lack of remorse. — Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) March 19, 2023 Reuters reports: A day after being accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, President Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to the…

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‘Everything living is dying’: Environmental ruin in modern Iraq

‘Everything living is dying’: Environmental ruin in modern Iraq

Lynzy Billing writes: It’s 6PM and the pink-tinged skies turn black above Agolan, a village on the outskirts of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Thick plumes of smoke have begun to billow out of dozens of flaring towers, part of an oil refinery owned by an Iraqi energy company called the KAR Group. The towers are just about 150 feet from where 60-year-old Kamila Rashid stands on the front porch of her house. She looks squarely at…

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Iraq is a freer place, but not a hopeful one, 20 years after the U.S. invasion

Iraq is a freer place, but not a hopeful one, 20 years after the U.S. invasion

Alissa J. Rubin writes: A couple of streets away from the new buildings and noisy main road of the desert city of Falluja, there was once a sports stadium. The goal posts are long gone, the stands rotted years ago. Now, every inch is covered with gravestones. “This is the martyrs’ graveyard,” said Kamil Jassim Mohammed, 70, the cemetery’s custodian, who has looked after it since 2004, when graves were first dug for those killed as U.S. troops battled Iraqi…

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Manhattan grand jury may hear new witness on Monday; won’t vote on Trump indictment until it’s over

Manhattan grand jury may hear new witness on Monday; won’t vote on Trump indictment until it’s over

Insider reports: The surprise final witness provides an updated clue to the timing of a possible indictment of Trump and of any co-defendants. The grand jury, which meets in secret in a lower Manhattan office building, only gathers to hear testimony during three-hour afternoon sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Its members — anywhere from 16 to 23 in number — could conceivably reach a vote by the end of Monday’s three-hour session. But that would be unlikely. Experts who…

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Sandy Hook families are fighting Alex Jones and the bankruptcy system itself

Sandy Hook families are fighting Alex Jones and the bankruptcy system itself

The New York Times reports: The Infowars conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones, who faces more than $1.4 billion in legal damages for defaming the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, has devised a new way to taunt them: wriggling out of paying them the money they are owed. Mr. Jones, who has an estimated net worth as high as $270 million, declared both business and personal bankruptcy last year as the families won historic verdicts in two lawsuits over his…

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The ChatGPT debate: Are we intelligent enough to understand ‘intelligence’?

The ChatGPT debate: Are we intelligent enough to understand ‘intelligence’?

Gabriel A. Silva writes: In the 2016 science fiction drama Arrival about first contact with aliens, the movie’s two protagonists, a linguist and a physicist, meet in a military helicopter on their way to attempt to decipher and understand why the aliens came to earth and what they want. The physicist, Ian Donnelly, introduces himself to the linguist, Louise Banks, by quoting from a book she published: ‘Language is the cornerstone of civilization. It is the glue that holds a…

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Landmines and explosive remnants of war in Ukraine will take decades to clear

Landmines and explosive remnants of war in Ukraine will take decades to clear

Steve Brown writes: In his Dec. 8 address to the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Michael Tirre, the Europe Program Manager for the U.S. State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal, said: “The humanitarian impact of landmines and unexploded ordnance was already severe in eastern Ukraine following the 2014 invasions and, tragically, this has been magnified exponentially by Russia’s [2022] full-scale invasion.” Tirre estimated that the area of Ukraine severely impacted by ERW was at least 160,000 square…

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The disarming of Iraq: What went wrong and what went right

The disarming of Iraq: What went wrong and what went right

Henrietta Wilson writes: On the night of Sept. 25, 1991, Chief Inspector David Kay and his deputy, Robert Galluci, had a strange request for a group of Iraqis who were stopping them from leaving a carpark. If you’re going to beat anyone up, they asked, will you make sure it’s us? It was three days into a week-long standoff involving a team of unarmed inspectors mandated by the U.N. Security Council and their armed Iraqi inspection hosts. The issue at…

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Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate

Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate

The Associated Press reports: Soon after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals in Ohio last month, anonymous pro-Russian accounts started spreading misleading claims and anti-American propaganda about it on Twitter, using Elon Musk’s new verification system to expand their reach while creating the illusion of credibility. The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill. The accounts spread fearmongering posts that…

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A four-decade secret: One man’s story of sabotaging Jimmy Carter’s re-election

A four-decade secret: One man’s story of sabotaging Jimmy Carter’s re-election

The New York Times reports: It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran…

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The toxic threat in thawing permafrost

The toxic threat in thawing permafrost

Christian Elliott writes: Covering nearly the same area as Norway, the Hudson Bay Lowlands in northern Ontario and Manitoba is home to the southernmost continuous expanse of permafrost in North America. Compared with many marine waterways this far south, Hudson Bay stays frozen late into the summer, its ice-covered surface reflecting sunlight and keeping the surrounding area cold. The influence of Hudson Bay on the weather is crazy, says Adam Kirkwood, a graduate student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario….

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Shadows in the Big Bang afterglow reveal invisible cosmic structures

Shadows in the Big Bang afterglow reveal invisible cosmic structures

Zack Savitsky writes: Nearly 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the primordial plasma of the infant universe cooled enough for the first atoms to coalesce, making space for the embedded radiation to soar free. That light — the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — continues to stream through the sky in all directions, broadcasting a snapshot of the early universe that’s picked up by dedicated telescopes and even revealed in the static on old cathode-ray televisions. After scientists discovered the CMB…

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