Astronomers found 52 binaries of main-sequence stars and white dwarfs in open clusters using AI and Gaia data. These systems reveal the common-envelope phase, crucial for studying stellar evolution, supernovae, and gravitational waves.
Historians believe the earliest version of tennis was invented by the ancient Egyptians, but they didn’t use rackets. Instead, they struck the ball with the palm of their hand (called the “rahat”), which was said to have been the origin of the word
A War Was Fought Over a Bucket
Fact: The War of the Oaken Bucket (1325) was between the Italian city-states of Modena and Bologna. It started when Modena stole a wooden bucket from Bologna!
A proposed array of 200 small telescopes could detect Planet Nine by observing stellar occultations. Spaced across 1,000 km, they’d map Trans-Neptunian Objects and potentially confirm a planet or primordial black hole in the solar system’s outer reac