A New Mayan City Is Found In Mexican Jungle

A graduate student who was closely looking at the publicly available drone data in Mexico unexpectedly stumbled across a huge ancient Mayan city buried beneath dense jungle.

For centuries, the city lay hidden amid jungle canopy in the state of Campeche, on the Gulf of Mexico. New research published last 29 October in the journal Antiquity reveals sites that in total cover area about one-and-a-half times the size of Washington, D.C.

Other researchers worked their way towards the densely packed area containing 6,674 structures, including pyramids resembling those at Chichén Itzá in the Mexican state of Yucatan, and Tikal, an ancient citadel in the rainforests of northern Guatemala.

Luke Auld-Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, "stumbled across the discovery" while browsing on the internet, according to Marcello Canuto, an anthropology professor at Tulane University.

The data, gathered by a research group studying land-use patterns, came to light using modern drone mapping technology known as LiDAR — light detection and ranging equipment.

LiDAR maps are used by a wide range of researchers to collect data for archeological and nonarchaeological purposes, but Auld-Thomas took the data and analyzed the maps with methods used by archaeologists.

A research team then went on to discover a huge ancient city that they named "Valeriana" after a nearby freshwater lagoon.

The researchers say Valeriana, which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak, probably collapsed between 800 A.D. and 1,000 A.D., for a complex set of reasons, including climate change. "The growing consensus is that climate variability was a major factor causing stresses, adaptations and reactions, leading to more systemic unrest," Canuto told NBC News.

It was partly because they were so densely populated and gradually, over a few generations, could not survive climate problems.

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The Real Capt. Kirk Commands The Most Advance Destroyer

It seems that the name James Kirk is synonymous to being a captain of high-tech vessels. In the movies, Starfleet Capt. James Tiberius Kirk of the United Federation of Planets and Star Trek fame steers the helm of USS Enterprise. In real life, U.S. Navy Capt. James A. Kirk commands a sophisticated ship known as USS Zumwalt.

Defense contractor General Dynamics formally handed over the keys for the first of the service's newest class of destroyers last 20 May at the firm’s Bath Iron Works subsidiary in Maine.

"Zumwalt's crew has diligently trained for months in preparation of this day and they are ready and excited to take charge of this ship on behalf of the U.S. Navy," Kirk said in a press release. "These are 143 of our nation's finest men and women who continue to honor Admiral Zumwalt's namesake with their dedication to bringing this ship to life."

The Navy originally wanted to build 32 of the cutting-edge vessels but ballooning costs prompted the service to cut the order to just three ships. The total cost of the three ships is around US$ 22.5 billion, with roughly US$ 10 billion spent on development and US$ 4 billion for each ship.

The other Zumwalt-class ships - the Michael Monsoor and Lyndon B. Johnson - are under construction in Maine. The Monsoor is expected to be christened as soon as next month.

The 610-foot-long warship weighs in at almost 16,000 tons, but its angular shape makes it more difficult to detect on radar, according to General Dynamics. The vessel is powered by turbines similar to those on a Boeing 777 jet.

As for armaments, the Zumwalt comes with guns that can fire projectiles at targets over 60 miles away, along with an assortment of Tomahawk, Sea Sparrow and Standard missiles and anti-submarine rockets.

Now that the Navy has accepted delivery of the destroyer, it will be commissioned in Baltimore in October before going on to San Diego where it will undergo "mission systems activation." All of the warship’s combat and mission systems will be installed and activated during the roughly yearlong process.

The Zumwalt is not expected to reach initial operational capability, the point at which it can deploy, until fiscal year 2019, according to the latest Pentagon estimates.

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Can The Air Umbrella Hold Water?

Since 3,000 years ago, not a lot has changed in the umbrella's basic design - it's still some kind of ribbed cage covered in some kind of fabric. The new Air Umbrella now making a run on Kickstarter, however, does away with this design in favor of a cone of jetted air that promises to keep the rain away.

That might sound unlikely, but there is a demonstration video that would make you think the gizmo really could work - at least for rainstorms that fall shy of monsoon strength.

This isn't the first time we've seen this concept. Back in 2010 it was reported by cnet.com that there was such an air umbrella concept from a Korean designer, but it seems like that was never actually produced. The new Air Umbrella on Kickstarter from designers in Nanjing, China, may meet the same fate; at this point, it's only raised about US$ 4,000 of its US$ 10,000 goal with 11 days left to the campaign.

Still, if the project gets funded, it could be a nifty device. For one, it would eliminate that annoying inside-out thing normal umbrellas do in high winds. It would also keep you from poking out someone's eye with those dagger-like tips that hang out from the edges of traditional brollies.

Air Umbrella says there are going to be three versions of the device. Version A measures 30 centimeters (about a foot) long and, for some reason, is intended for women. Version B is 50 centimeters (about 20 inches) long. And version C is scalable, growing from 50 centimeters to 80 centimeters (about 31 inches). The battery life on the umbrellas isn't the most impressive. Version A gets 15 minutes while B and C get 30 minutes, so they should be good for short darts here and there, but not for long romantic strolls in the rain.

Right now you can still get in on the early bird deals. Version A is priced at US$ 88, B is going for US$ 98 and C is US$ 108. The pledge and pricing structure is a bit confusing on the Kickstarter page, but it looks like full retail pricing will range from US$ 128 to US$ 148. The makers are promising delivery in December 2015, so you'd better hold on to your traditional umbrella for the next round of April showers.

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Cloaking Device Against Shockwaves

Technology was supposed to make our lives better and protect us from harm. However, not much was reported about how it could make warfare more effective and efficient until a researcher at the defense company Boeing has filed a patent for a sci-fi-esque cloaking device that would protect soldiers from intense shock waves generated by explosions.

The just-issued patent (No. 8,981,261) to Boeing envisions stopping shock waves using a veil of heated, ionized air. Such a "shield" would damp the force of explosions. It doesn't build an invisible wall of force, but rather makes shock waves bend around objects, just as some high-tech materials bend light and make things invisible.

Brian J. Tillotson, a senior research fellow at Boeing, said the idea occurred to him after noticing the kinds of injuries suffered by soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We were doing a much better job of stopping shrapnel," Tillotson told Live Science. "But they were coming home with brain injuries."

Though the armor plating on a military vehicle might stop the debris from a roadside bomb from injuring a soldier, it can't shield against the shock waves generated by such explosions. The blast wave goes right through a human body and causes massive trauma. (This is why the action-movie scenes where the hero runs ahead of an explosion and escapes harm are pure fiction.)

Tillotson's invention is a device that would heat the air in front of the spot where the bomb goes off. In one version, a detector "sees" an explosion before the shock wave hits. The detector is connected to an arc generator, basically two ends of a circuit connected to a large power source. When the system generates enough current, an arc of electricity jumps between the two ends of the circuit, like a bolt of lightning. [Science Fact or Fiction? The Plausibility of 10 Sci-Fi Concepts]

That arc heats and ionizes, or charges, particles of air. The heated air would work as a shield by changing the speed at which shock waves travel, and therefore bending them around a protected soldier, Tillotson said.

Sound waves (and other wave types) propagate faster in hot air, Tillotson said. For that reason, the shock wave would speed up when it hits the heated air around the electrical discharge. As the shock wave speeds up, it would change direction slightly, or refract, away from the person or object behind the arc. That bending occurs because of the change in speed of the wave, and the shape of the area of hot air the shock wave hits determines the exact direction.

The process resembles the way lenses bend light, Tillotson said.

"With a convex lens you focus the light," he said. "A concave lens spreads it out." Light waves move slower in glass, so when light hits a glass surface it bends. The lens must be concave to spread out that light. Because shock waves move faster in hotter air, a spherical or cylindrical area of hot air will cause the shock wave to bend, this time spreading out just like the light through a concave lens, becoming weaker. In doing so that hot-air shield could deflect shock waves.

Arc generators aren't the only way to ionize air. Lasers would also work, Tillotson said. A laser fired across the path of an explosion would ionize and heat the air around the beam, creating the lensing effect.

In another method, a strip of some metal could be placed on the side of a truck, for example. "Put a couple of kilo-amps [thousands of amperes] through a strip of metal, and it will vaporize," he said. The vaporized metal once again heats the surrounding air.

One issue for all of these methods of damping shock waves is the amount of power required. But Tillotson noted a lot of research in this area shows promise in decreasing that power suck. In addition, even a high-powered laser doesn't have to be on for long, perhaps a fraction of a second, to heat the air sufficiently. "It's basically a solved problem," he said of the power supply.

This isn't the only technology patent for Tillotson; he has at least a half-dozen others in areas such as aerodynamics and beamed power sources, and even other methods of damping shock waves. Whether this particular technology becomes a reality will depend, as many do, on future interest (and funding) from government and the private sector.

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Robots Will Start Patrolling Jails

The police force in Georgia has a new employee that everyone is eager to see. It is not even human, but it generated enough buzz to atract the interest in this small town.

Last 23 October, the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office announced that it will be launching a 90-day pilot program to improve security at an adult detention center, a press release details.

The DEKA Sentry Robots, which were created by DEKA Research & Development Corporation, will be part of the patrol force in the 10-acre property, and it will conduct security rounds in select dormitories as another layer of security, the release said.

"As security challenges evolve, law enforcement must move at the speed of innovation," Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens said in a statement. "We are committed to working smarter and are excited to bring robotics into our facility to improve our operations and support the overall safety of our detainees and staff."

Authorities will start with a fleet of three Sentry robots during the pilot phase, according to the release, and could potentially add more depending on how the program goes.

These robots were created to enhance security and eliminate "the risks associated with human intervention in dangerous situations," the release added.

"Autonomous systems and robotics are transforming every industry and security is no exception," Dean Kamen, founder, and president of DEKA, said in a statement. "What we have created with Sentry is a highly advanced system − and force multiplier − for correctional facility officers that sets a new standard for safety and operational efficiency."

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In 2016, China Built A Massive Telescope

Everything is being built big in China. After an Olympic stadium, commercial malls and massive office buildings, China has put the final piece of what is set to be the world's largest radio telescope in place.

State media reported that a "Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope", or FAST, is the size of 30 football fields. The large structure has been hewn out of a mountain in the southwestern province of Guizhou.

"The project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life," Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which built the telescope, said last 3 July 2016. A number of trials will follow the hoisting of the final piece.

The US$ 180 M radio telescope would be a global leader for the next one to two decades, Xiaonian was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

The telescope, which took about five years to build, is expected to begin operations in September 2016.

China's space program has been a priority, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power.

Beijing's ambitions include putting a man on the Moon by 2036 and building a space station - work on which has already begun.

China insists its program is for peaceful purposes, but the US defense department has highlighted Beijing's increasing space capabilities, saying it is pursuing activities aimed to prevent adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis.

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Designing the Concorde Replacement

Now that the Concorde is gone. luxury air travelers are clamoring for the industry to revive the supersonic option.

It looks like they may once again be jetting around the world in record time thanks to the Aerion AS2. This supersonic jet can make the trip from London to New York in just 4 hours and 20 minutes.

It’s a joint partnership between Aerion and Airbus who are working together on this aircraft. Although currently a design concept, Airbus chairman Allan McArtor told Flying that they intend to see things through to a production plane.

Unlike the Concorde which was a commercial airplane, the Aerion AS2 will be a private plane with a top speed of Mach 1.6, which works out to a little over 1,200 mph. Cruising speed will be a more modest Mach 1.1 or Mach 1.2 to abide by laws where supersonic flight and the accompanying sonic boom is prohibited due to noise regulation.

The interior of the plane will be just as impressive as its speeds, with seating for 11 passengers in a 30-foot cabin that includes a separate dining room, stateroom, and shower so you can freshen up before you land. All this can be yours for around US$ 100 million. Don’t worry, you have plenty of time to save the cash. It’s not expected to take to the skies until 2021.

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Lego-Like Bricks Can Be The Future Of Construction

According to Interesting Engineering, some scientists were able to create a "multilayered glass bricks similar to figure eights," designed to seamlessly interlock, which will expedite the assembly process.

The groundbreaking bricks are actually made from melted glass and soda bottles layered in patterns to create bricks. The soda-lime glass is similar to that found in glass-blowing studios, and the bricks feature round studs, similar to Legos, allowing them to interlock.

Material can be placed between the bricks during construction to avoid scratching or breaking, and when a structure needs to be taken down, the bricks can easily be melted and reshaped, making them fully recyclable.

"Glass is a highly recyclable material," Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, said. "We're taking glass and turning it into masonry that, at the end of a structure's life, can be disassembled and reassembled into a new structure, or can be stuck back into the printer and turned into a completely different shape. All this builds into our idea of a sustainable, circular building material."

On top of that, structural tests of the material revealed that the glass could withstand similar pressures to concrete blocks, meaning they could easily replace the material in construction.

A company recently unveiled bricks made from recycled plastic and wood byproducts, stronger than cinder blocks, for use in disaster relief. Researchers in London have created a form of concrete from sugarcane byproducts, further pushing the green envelope.

For their part, Becker and Michael Stern, a former MIT graduate student who founded Evenline, the company helping to produce the bricks, think they could become a regular part of construction soon.

"We have more understanding of what the material's limits are and how to scale," Stern said in the press release. "We're thinking of stepping stones to buildings and want to start with something like a pavilion — a temporary structure that humans can interact with, and that you could then reconfigure into a second design. And you could imagine that these blocks could go through a lot of lives."

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Will This Become Our New Outdoor Suit?

The coronavirus pandemic has slowly changed everyone's normal to create a new normal. One industry that may emerge from the shelter-in-place orders and evolved drastically is live entertainment industry.

Major music events — including Bonnaroo and Coachella — have been rescheduled, and dozens of artists, from Shania Twain to Justin Bieber, have postponed their tours. Given these changes, it may seem like the days of packing into a venue for a show are behind us.

But Production Club, a Los Angeles-based "multidisciplinary creative studio" known for working with EDM stars like Skrillex, hopes to change that.

In an Instagram post last 6 May, the company shared a futuristic-looking "air-tight top suit" dubbed the Micrashell. Production Club describes it as an "offshoot of a Hazmat suit" and "a personal protective suit" that "allows you to safely socialize in times of pandemic."

Made of "high-performance cut-resistant fabric" and "lightweight film composite" the suit contains two lithium-ion batteries for charging a phone, as well as a "supply system" with disposable canisters that allow users to vape or drink.

The company states that the design is a "socially responsible solution" that uses an "air filtration and breathing system based on worldwide standard regulations using N95 filters." Among Micrashell’s other features are a built-in camera, built-in speaker, external voice system and multicolored LED lighting that wearers can use to communicate their mood.

While the suit has earned attention from the tech world, epidemiologists tell Yahoo Life they aren't so convinced of its potential.

"It looks like something out of a space movie," says William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. "Obviously an extraordinary amount of thought has gone into this, but I can't imagine that hoards of concertgoers will want to get into one of these contraptions. They don't look very comfortable."

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Are HUVr Boards Real?

For those who are hoping that the hottest gadget in their favourite 80’s movie, "Back to the Future" will finally become real, then they would easily welcome a news report that says "the future has arrived” with the hover-board.

The awesome extreme boards were featured in 1989 during the second part of the three-part movie and are now the focus of everyone’s attention after a YouTube video showing Tony Hawk cruising around in a flying skateboard. The video is making rounds online and has already generated about 1.6 million views.

A company known as HUVr released the video purporting to be a "completely real" demonstration of celebrities such as Hawk, Moby, Terrelle Owens, Schoolboy Q, and Agnes Bruckner riding HUVr Boards around downtown Los Angeles. The alleged “complete real” demonstration was quickly picked up by several sites and tech blogs which raised the question: Are these HUVr Boards actually real?

We wanted it to be real, but we just can't have everything that we wanted, can we? A closer look at the legal section of HUVr's website says, "the inclusion of any products or services on this website at a particular time does not imply or warrant that these products or services will be available at any time."

The disclaimer will offer a shroud of doubt, but when you add the evidence offered by the video itself, that shroud could easily become a dark cloud hanging over the facts of the case. At 2:10 mark of the video, it is clear that wires attached to a harness are the real cause of Terrelle Owens lifting into the air.

Also, HUVr’s website says that the HUVr Board demonstration is a marketing scheme to attract investors, saying that the team and investors are "marketing this exciting consumer product in order to fund ongoing R&D."

The good thing is that even if the video of the hoverboard is not true, it fuelled enough discussion to make some investors reconsider their future options and to revisit the "Back to the Future" movie to find out what makes it interesting in today’s generation.

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CyberDogs Can Sniff Out Ant Hives

There is a new robot dog developed by scientists not for playing , but for sniffing out invasive fire ants.

According to a writeup by the Society of Chemical Industry in TechXplore, a research team that is spread across Brazil and China, trained the cyberpup to identify red imported fire ants, which are wreaking havoc in environments across the globe. Using artificial intelligence, the robot dogs identify three times more nests with greater precision compared to human inspectors.

The red imported fire ant came from central South America, but it has migrated to the United States and Australia, and it has been reported in other parts of the world, like Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Trinidad and Tobago, per the University of Florida.

As invasive organisms, they have caused extensive environmental and economic damage, according to the Tech Xplore post. In the U.S. alone, the species is responsible for an estimated US$ 6 billion in economic losses annually through impacts like reduced crop yields and damage to farm equipment, as reported in an article in the journal Ecosphere.

Red imported fire ants also expand their range rapidly, displacing local flora and fauna, as Eduardo Fox — one of the robot dog scientists — explained in TechXplore. For instance, in China, they have been a problem since at least 2003, decreasing the abundance of native ant species.

However, the new ant-identifying robots can help to more effectively scout for nests so that the trouble-making ants can be eradicated, thereby reducing their impacts on people and the environment.

This is one of many attempts by scientists to control troublesome invasive species. For instance, an aggressive "stomp them" stance by state governments regarding spotted lanternflies seems to be yielding successful results in eradicating the pests, according to one study.

Animals and bugs aren't the only type of invasives, though. Plants can also outcompete native greenery for moisture, sunlight, nutrients, and space, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Park officials and volunteers in California are fighting back against an invasive succulent known as the ice plant by scouring the coast and picking it on sight.

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How Did Rasputin Died?

The renowned Rasputin is an esteemed Russian mystic and faith healer, but he died in a way that would befit a scene from a "John Wick movie.

Despite his reputation as a charlatan, Rasputin won favor with Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra after demonstrating his ability to stop their son Alexei's bleeding, which was due to his hemophilia. Alexandra became convinced that Rasputin did, indeed, possess mystical powers, and his influence within both the ill-fated Romanov family and the Russian government grew. Several years later, when the Czar left to lead the Russian forces during World War I, it is said that the healer effectively ruled the country by using Alexandra as a mouthpiece for his own agenda.

This is where Prince Felix Yussupov, the richest man in Russia, and Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, the Czar's own first cousin, enter the story. The two cooked up what they believed to be the perfect plot to assassinate the powerful mystic.

On the night of 29 December 1916, the murderous duo lured Rasputin to Moika Palace in St. Petersburg. It was there that they offered him cyanide-laced cakes and wine — which, at first, he refused to eat. After some time, he began to eat the poisoned cakes, and then, to Yussupov's surprise, the seemingly unaffected healer asked for 3 glasses of the laced wine.

Growing tired of his inability to be poisoned, Yussupov decided to take matters into his own hands by shooting Rasputin at close range and leaving him for dead. This plan didn't work either, as Rasputin revived and attempted to flee the palace grounds. This time, however, proved to be his last chance at escape, as he was then shot, bound, and thrown into the frigid Neva River.

Several days later, his body washed ashore, and it was determined that he died by drowning.

Yussupov wrote in his 1928 memoir, Lost Splendour and the Death of Rasputin, "This devil who was dying of poison, who had a bullet in his heart, must have been raised from the dead by the powers of evil. There was something appalling and monstrous in his diabolical refusal to die."

After the assassination of Rasputin, the prince reinvented himself as a patriot. He believed that Rasputin's death would lead the Czar to heed the advice of other nobility and save the monarchy. However, no major effects were seen on Nicholas II's policies, leading to the Russian Revolution the following year.

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Millions of "Shadeballs" Dropped In Reservoir

Modern advancement has put a stressful pressure on the environment and could possibly endanger both human and animal lives. However, innovations are also the reason why this planet continues to strive in giving life and sustenance to its natural and unnatural dwellers.

One of these environmental innovations is called 'shadeballs' which can be seen covering the surface of the Los Angeles Reservoir.

On 10 August 2015, the last 20,000 of a total of 96 million 'shadeballs' were rolled into a reservoir in Los Angeles, NPR reports.

The black plastic balls are used as a cheaper alternative to tarps, which would normally be used to accomplish two main goals: 1. keep algae out, and 2. keep the water in.

The balls also help block the formation of cancer-causing agents called carcinogens, which can develop when sunlight reacts with certain chemicals in the water.

The covering of the reservoir's surface is expected to save about 300 million gallons of water every year, according to NPR, and is part of California's latest attempt to avoid worsening its ongoing four-year drought.

The total cost for the deployment of the shadeballs amounts to US$ 34.5 million.

According to Bloomberg, the four-inch-wide shadeballs are coated with a UV-light blocking chemical.

They're hollow and filled with water to keep them from flying away. Each one costs around US$0.36 to make.

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Spacecraft Hera Dispatch To Investigate Asteroid Remains

The European Space Agency (ESA) already launched its spaceraft to explore what remains of the asteroid Dimorphos, the cosmic body that NASA successfully destroyed last year during its pioneering planetary defense test in 2022.

The "crash scene" surveillance team includes the spacecraft Hera as well as two tiny cubesats, which was launched on 8 Octiber onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Hera was successfully deployed by the rocket around 76 minutes after takeoff.

The mission forms part of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), an effort that involved smashing an asteroid system with a sacrificial spacecraft to see if humanity could meaningfully alter the course of a potentially dangerous asteroid.

The DART mission was deemed a full success. However, there are still questions about what exactly went down during the intentional cosmic collision and the full extent of the aftermath — and that's where Hera comes in.

The Hera mission has been described by ESA scientists as a "crash scene investigation," with the mission's principal investigator Patrick Michel telling CNN that "Hera will close the loop by providing us in detail the final outcome of the DART impact."

Instead of targeting a single asteroid, the DART mission targeted a binary asteroid system, which comprises two distinct celestial bodies: a larger asteroid named Didymos, and its smaller companion, Dimorphos. Dimorphos, which is considered a moonlet to Didymos, is what NASA actually intended to destrot in order to push Didymos off course.

If things go to plan, Hera will reach the crash site by October 2026. Armed with 11 instruments, it'll spend six weeks analyzing the scene before sending its shoebox-sized cubesats named Juventas and Milani in to do some specialty work. Juventas will use radar to spy beneath the asteroids' surface, while Milani will eye the rocks with a special imager designed to deduce their mineral compositions.

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How Big is the Internet?

The map above from the Oxford Internet Institute shows where the world's internet users live.

The cartogram is a map in which the area of each country is proportional to its online population, based on 2011 data. So countries with large land areas but small populations — like Canada and Russia — appear shrunken, while dense, well-connected areas like South Korea and Belgium appear larger than life.

The distortion in the map paints a revealing picture about human activity on the Internet. China is now home to the world’s largest Internet population at over half a billion. The United States, India, and Japan then follow as the next most populous nations of Internet users.

Looking at the largest Internet countries, there are two important trends that stood out.

First, the rise of Asia as the main contributor to the world’s Internet population; 42 percent of the world’s Internet users live in Asia, and China, India, and Japan alone host more Internet users than Europe and North America combined.

Second, few of the world’s largest Internet countries fall into the top category (>80 percent) of Internet penetration (and indeed India falls into the lowest category, at (20 percent penetration). In other words, in all of the world’s largest Internet nations, there is still substantial room for growth.

We also see an interesting geographic pattern of Internet penetration. All but four of the countries with an Internet penetration rate of over 80 percent are in Europe (Canada, New Zealand, Qatar, and South Korea being the exceptions).

The map also reveals interesting patterns in some of the world’s poorest countries. Most Latin American countries now can count over 40 percent of their citizens as Internet users. Because of this, Latin America as a whole now hosts almost as many Internet users as the United States.

Some African countries have seen staggering growth, whereas other have seen little change since we last mapped Internet use globally in 2008. In the last three years, almost all North African countries doubled their population of Internet users (Algeria being a notable exception). Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, also saw massive growth. However, it remains that over half of Sub-Saharan African countries have an Internet penetration of less than 10 percent, and have seen very little grow in recent years.

It is therefore important to remember that despite the massive impacts that the Internet has on everyday life for many people, most people on our planet remain entirely disconnected. Only one third of the world’s population has access to the Internet.

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What is the Internet?

Have you ever wondered what really is the internet? Who created it?

The internet is the world’s most popular computer network. It began as an academic research project in 1969, and became a global commercial network in the 1990s. Today it is used by more than 2 billion people around the world.

The internet is notable for its decentralization. No one owns the internet or controls who can connect to it. Instead, thousands of different organizations operate their own networks and negotiate voluntary interconnection agreements.

Most people access internet content using a web browser. Indeed, the web has become so popular that many people incorrectly treat the internet and the web as synonymous. But in reality, the web is just one of many internet applications. Other popular Internet applications include email and BitTorrent.

The internet began as ARPANET, an academic research network that was funded by the military’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now DARPA). The project was led by Bob Taylor, an ARPA administrator, and the network was built by the consulting firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman. It began operations in 1969.

In 1973, software engineers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn began work on the next generation of networking standards for the ARPANET. These standards, known as TCP/IP, became the foundation of the modern internet. ARPANET switched to using TCP/IP on 1 January 1983.

During the 1980s, funding for the internet shifted from the military to the National Science Foundation. The NSF funded the long-distance networks that served as the internet’s backbone from 1981 until 1994. In 1994, the Clinton Administration turned control over the internet backbone to the private sector. It has been privately operated and funded ever since.

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Who Invented The Bra?

Even during the ancient times, there are already clothing that help cover up and support breasts. There was even a Roman mosaic from the 4th century depicting women wearing bandeau-style bras called strophium. An Indian play from the same period mentions its heroine wearing something strikingly similar.

"No one person invented the corset or the bra," says Valerie Steele, Director of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, as reported by History Channel. "They were developed in different places and many people took out patents over the years improving or changing their design."

As fashion changed, undergarments changed with it. "Bras are a steward of fashion," says Cheree Berry, author of Hoorah for the Bra. Sometimes, a flatter bosom was in style — as in Ming Dynasty China (1368-1644), when women achieved the courtly fashion of flattening their chests with a dudou, or in America and Europe in the Roaring Twenties, when bandage-inspired bras helped flappers achieve boyish-straight figures. Other times, curves were en vogue—enter the bust-enhancing bullet bra and Wonderbra of the 1950s and '60s.

"There was a bra product for all fashion needs… Poses for backless dresses, strapless bras for strapless dresses, Lycra for bras that allowed us to stretch, move, get fit - [bras] became fashion unto themselves," says Berry.

Here are some moments in history worth noting:

1. The Corset (1500- 1900)
   The corset reigned supreme for centuries, especially in Europe. During the Middle Ages, both genders wore waist-minimizing garments, though the corset as we think of it today evolved to be worn mainly by women.
   By the 1500s, it took more or less the form it would take for the next 500 years: Fabric reinforced by solid strips, or 'stays,' made of hard materials like horn, whalebone, or wood (later replaced by metal and synthetics), laced tight.
2. Corselet Gorge (1869)
   The year the Eiffel Tower rose over Paris, another convention-defying structure was being formed: The first modern bra. French inventor Herminie Cadolle, fed up with uncomfortable corsets, cut one into two pieces: An upper part supporting the breasts with shoulder straps, and a second, lower part to support the waist.
   She presented her invention at the World Expo of 1900 in Paris under the name "bien-être," or "well-being," and by 1905, was selling the upper half separately as a "soutien-gorge" — the term still in use to describe bras in French today.
3. Brassiere Patent (1914)
   American socialite Mary "Polly" Phelps Jacob’s invention was inspired by a wardrobe malfunction: When her corset poked through her dress before a ball, she and her maid replaced the stiff undergarment with something more flexible: two handkerchiefs sewn together and tied with pink ribbons. It caused a sensation in her influential social circle, and she patented her "backless brassiere" under the pseudonym "Caresse Crosby" in 1914.
4. The Padded Bra (1947)
   In the wake of World War II, American fashion in bras began to overtake Europe for two reasons: the popularity of Hollywood films and America’s quicker recovery from the deprivations of war. In her 1953 work "Muffs and Morals," author Pearl Binder wrote: "In the hungry post-1939 world - the female breast is the obvious symbol of nourishment."
   Hungarian-American tailor Frederick Mellinger, the founder of Frederick’s of Hollywood, returned from his Army service inspired by the pin-up girl posters of his fellow soldiers. In 1947, he invented the padded bra. While using pads to enhance breast size was not a new concept, they became mass-produced in this era. There was even a pneumatic option women could inflate to their desired fullness.

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The 2021 Electronic Weapon That Caused "Havana Syndrome"

In 2021, a mysterious affliction called "Havana Syndrome" that has brought severe headaches, nausea and possible brain damage to US diplomats has many officials convinced they are under sustained attack using electronic weapons.

Even the trip of US Vice President Kamala Harris to Vietnam last 24 August 2021 was delayed for several hours after the US embassy in Hanoi reported a possible case involving "acoustic incidents" there, raising concern she could be a target.

Ultimately Harris did go to Hanoi, and the State Department said it was investigating a case of what the US government officially dubs an "anomalous health incident" or AHI.

It was the most recent of dozens of such cases reported by US diplomats and intelligence officers since 2016, first in Cuba, then in China, Germany, Australia, Taiwan and in Washington itself.

In July, the New Yorker magazine reported there have been dozens of cases among US officials in Vienna, Austria since the beginning of 2021.

Amid concerns a powerful rival, possibly Russia, is mounting the attacks, the State Department has warned its thousands of diplomats of the threat while also carrying out extensive medical checks on those heading abroad so as to better measure any effects of future attacks.

"We take each report we receive extremely seriously and are working to ensure that affected employees get the care and support they need," a department spokesperson said.

The number of reported incidents among US officials has been kept under wraps.

After the Hanoi incident, former CIA operative Marc Polymeropoulos, himself a victim in Moscow in 2017, said the volume of attacks appeared to be mounting.

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The Early Years Of Walt Disney

The creator of the famous mouse, Mickey Mouse, and founder of Disneyland and Walt Disney World was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 5 December 1901. His father, Elias Disney, was an Irish-Canadian. His mother, Flora Call Disney, was of German-American descent. Walt was one of five children, four boys and a girl.

Raised on a farm near Marceline, Missouri, Walt Disney became interested in drawing in his early life, selling his first sketches to neighbors when he was only seven years old. At McKinley High School in Chicago, Disney divided his attention between drawing and photography, contributing both to the school paper. At night he attended the Academy of Fine Arts.

During the fall of 1918, Disney attempted to enlist for military service. Rejected because he was only 16 years of age, Walt joined the Red Cross and was sent overseas, where he spent a year driving an ambulance and chauffeuring Red Cross officials. His ambulance was covered from stem to stern, not with stock camouflage, but with drawings and cartoons.

After the war, Walt returned to Kansas City, where he began his career as an advertising cartoonist. Here, in 1920, he created and marketed his first original animated cartoons, and later perfected a new method for combining live-action and animation.

In August of 1923, Walt Disney left Kansas City for Hollywood with nothing but a few drawing materials, US$ 40 in his pocket and a completed animated and live-action film. Walt’s brother Roy O. Disney was already in California, with an immense amount of sympathy and encouragement, and US$ 250.

Pooling their resources, they borrowed an additional US$ 500 and constructed a camera stand in their uncle’s garage. Soon, they received an order from New York for the first "Alice Comedy" short, and the brothers began their production operation in the rear of a Hollywood real estate office two blocks away.

On 13 July 1925, Walt married one of his first employees, Lillian Bounds, in Lewiston, Idaho. They were blessed with two daughters — Diane, married to Ron Miller, former president and chief executive officer of Walt Disney Productions; and Sharon Disney Lund, formerly a member of Disney’s Board of Directors. The Millers have seven children and Mrs. Lund had three. Mrs. Lund passed away in 1993.

Mickey Mouse was created in 1928, and his talents were first used in a silent cartoon entitled Plane Crazy. However, before the cartoon could be released, sound burst upon the motion picture screen. Thus Mickey made his screen debut in Steamboat Willie, the world’s first fully synchronized sound cartoon, which premiered at the Colony Theatre in New York on 18 November 1928.

Walt’s drive to perfect the art of animation was endless. Technicolor® was introduced to animation during the production of his "Silly Symphonies." In 1932, the film entitled Flowers and Trees won Walt the first of his 32 personal Academy Awards®. In 1937, he released "The Old Mill", the first short subject to utilize the multiplane camera technique.

On 21 December of that same year, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", the first full-length animated musical feature, premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Produced at the unheard of cost of US$ 1,499,000 during the depths of the Great Depression, the film is still accounted as one of the great feats and imperishable monuments of the motion picture industry. During the next five years, Walt completed such other full-length animated classics as "Pinocchio", "Fantasia", "Dumbo" and "Bambi".

In 1940, construction was completed on Disney’s Burbank studio, and the staff swelled to more than 1,000 artists, animators, story men and technicians.

During World War II, 94 percent of the Disney facilities were engaged in special government work including the production of training and propaganda films for the armed services, as well as health films which are still shown throughout the world by the U.S. State Department. The remainder of his efforts were devoted to the production of comedy short subjects, deemed highly essential to civilian and military morale.

Disney’s 1945 feature, the musical "The Three Caballeros", combined live action with the cartoon medium, a process he used successfully in such other features as "Song of the South" and the highly acclaimed "Mary Poppins". In all, 81 features were released by the studio during his lifetime.

These are all just the beginning. Walt Disney embarked on several more pioneering projects after 1945 until his death on 15 December 1966.

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New Theory Suggests That Earth Stole The Moon

Until now, nobody can really unequivocally stake their lives and say how the Earth and its Moon were formed. Other planets either have multiple moons, or none at all, but the mass ratio of our world and its hefty satellite is quite unique.

The question of our unusual moon's origin, therefore, is one of planetary evolution, figuring out the pathways for various planet-moon configurations. Right now, the leading theory is that the Moon is either Earth's child or its sibling – born of the same material in the same region of the Solar System.

However, a new research is posing a challenge to that notion, suggesting that the Moon could instead be adopted, born elsewhere in the Solar System only to be later embraced by the power of Earth's gravity.

Astronomers Darren Williams and Michael Zugger of Pennsylvania State University have crunched some numbers and found that the gravitational capture of moons is possible for terrestrial planets like Earth, and therefore a possible origin for the observed Earth-Moon system we have today.

In schools, we were taught and given a lot of evidence that Earth and its Moon are made out of the same basic material. The mineral composition of both bodies is as close to identical, which gives credence to the belief that there were formed from the same stuff.

The Giant Impact Hypothesis is the prevailing explanation for this similarity: Something large smacked into Earth and the resulting debris coalesced back into a planet and the Moon.

There are other ways that the two bodies could have wound up with the same composition. It may have formed in the cloud of a vaporized planet, known as a synestia, or perhaps it simultaneously formed from the same cloud of dust orbiting the Sun as Earth.

But there's more than one way to acquire a moon, as some may have surmised about in the Solar System. If two bodies pass each other at the correct angle and the velocity, they can become gravitationally bound together and end up in a stable, long-term orbit.

The particular scenario that might be relevant to Earth and the Moon is known as binary capture. In this scenario, two bodies that are already gravitationally bound together pass a third body. This third body snares a member of the binary pair, separating them and keeping the binary companion for itself.

Basic science assumes that there are lots of binary objects out there in the Solar System; we keep finding binary and even trinary asteroids, for example. There's even evidence that this three-body gravitational interaction has produced a binary capture, with Neptunian moon Triton. Triton orbits Neptune in the opposite direction from the rest of Neptune's moons, and at a different angle, suggesting it was yoinked out of the Kuiper Belt and into a wonky Neptune orbit.

The Moon, Williams and Zugger say, has an orbit around Earth that isn't as neatly aligned with the equator as you might expect from the debris cloud origin. So, they performed a bunch of mathematical modeling to determine whether something the size of the Moon could be captured by something the size of Earth.

According to their calculations, Earth could have captured something even bigger – a Mercury- or even Mars-sized object – although the orbit would not have been stable. But something the size of the Moon could have ended up in an elliptical orbit that became more circular over time, and eventually began to drift away at the same rate the Moon is receding now, at about 3.8 centimeters (1.5 inches) per year.

So, it's possible. But is it probable? There are still other properties – such as the mineral and isotope similarities – that are more consistent with a closer relationship between the two bodies than the capture scenario would allow for.

But it gives us an avenue for exploration and study that could help us understand not just our own planet, but how such systems can form in orbit around other stars, elsewhere. Since the Moon is thought to have played an important role in life's evolution on Earth, this may help us find habitable worlds elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy.

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Is NASA's HALO Ready For Launching?

Faced with daunting pressure from its sponsors and investors, NASA was compeleld to announced recently that its forthcoming Gateway lunar space station — an outpost designed to house astronauts in the Moon's orbit — just passed a critical milestone.

According to the agency, Gateway's Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) successfully passed a grueling round of "static load testing," defined by NASA as a "rigorous stress test of how well the structure responds to the forces encountered in deep space."

With this announncement, does it mean HALO won't crumble or crack under the extreme conditions it'll face in lunar orbit? NASA is confident that it will.

"Static load testing is one of the major environmental stress tests HALO will undergo," the statement continued, adding that HALO, which is currently in Italy, will be transferred to Arizona "once all phases of testing are complete." There, NASA contractor Northrop Grumman will add HALO's finishing touches.

HALO is one of "four pressurized Gateway modules where astronauts will live, conduct science, and prepare for missions to the lunar South Pole region," per NASA's announcement.

It's an exciting mile marker for Gateway, which stands to mark the first sustained human presence on and around our Moon — one of the core goals of NASA's ongoing Artemis program, and perhaps a stepping stone in humanity's efforts to send humans to Mars.

Despite passing the stress test, the Gateway mission is still a ways off from lift-off or from being considered operational.

The outpost will launch in pieces, and the first components to take flight — HALO and the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) — are slated for launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in December 2027 at the earliest. By conservative estimates, Gateway is not expected to be inhabited until 2028.

It's an ambitious plan and there's always a chance of delays. In the meantime, it is still heartening to see NASA's Gateway, piece by piece, move forward.

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The True Story Of "The 300 Spartans"

During the time of the Ancient Greece, the country was made up of several hundred city-states, of which Athens and Leonidas’ Sparta were the largest and most powerful. Although these many city-states vied with one another for control of land and resources, they also banded together to defend themselves from foreign invasion.

Twice at the beginning of the fifth century B.C., Persia attempted such an invasion. In 490 B.C. the Persian king Darius I (550-486 B.C.) instigated the initial such attempt as part of the First Persian War, but a combined Greek force turned back the Persian army at the Battle of Marathon. Ten years later, during the Second Persian War, one of Darius’ sons, Xerxes I (c. 519-465 B.C.), again launched an invasion against Greece.

Under Xerxes I, the Persian army moved south through Greece on the eastern coast, accompanied by the Persian navy moving parallel to the shore. To reach its destination at Attica, the region controlled by the city-state of Athens, the Persians needed to go through the coastal pass of Thermopylae (or the "Hot Gates," so known because of nearby sulfur springs).

When the Spartans learned that the Persians were coming and they needed to battle at Thermopylae, it was during a major religious festival called "Carnea." This festival lasted for eight days and no conflict was allowed, much like was the case during the Ancient Olympic Games.

So, Leonidas, one of the two kings of the Spartans, was sent to lead the Greeks in delaying the Persians until the whole Spartan army could join them. The other king of Sparta stayed at home to manage politics in the capital and to protect the city.

In the late summer of 480 B.C., Leonidas led an army of 5,900 Peloponnesians from the surrounding area – mainly Arcadians, Corinthians, Tegeans, Mantineans, Philians and Myceneans. Combined with the 300 Spartans, there were about 6,200 men in the army, plus another 900 if the three slaves for each Spartan warrior is included.

Leonidas, who is about 60-years old at that time, established his army at Thermopylae, expecting that the narrow pass would funnel the Persian army toward his own force.

For two days, the Greeks withstood the determined attacks of their far more numerous enemy. Leonidas’ plan worked well at first, but he did not know that there was a route over the mountains to the west of Thermopylae that would allow the enemy to bypass his fortified position along the coast. A local Greek told Xerxes about this other route and led the Persian army across it, enabling them to surround the Greeks.

Much of the Greek force retreated rather than face the Persian army. An army of Spartans, Thespians and Thebans remained to fight the Persians. Leonidas and the 300 Spartans with him were all killed, along with most of their remaining allies. The Persians found and beheaded Leonidas’ corpse–an act that was considered to be a grave insult.

Leonidas’ sacrifice, along with that of his Spartan hoplites, did not prevent the Persians from moving down the Greek coast into Boeotia. In September 480 B.C., however, the Athenian navy defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis, after which the Persians returned home. Nonetheless, Leonidas’ action demonstrated Sparta’s willingness to sacrifice itself for the protection of the Greek region.

Leonidas achieved lasting fame for his personal sacrifice. Hero cults were an established custom in ancient Greece from the eighth century B.C. onward. Dead heroes were worshipped, usually near their burial site, as intermediaries to the gods.

Forty years after the battle, Sparta retrieved Leonidas’ remains (or what were believed to be his remains) and a shrine was built in his honor.

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Credible Theory About The Great Sphinx Of Giza

The iconic Great Sphinx of Giza is a monument that has been around for thousands of years and is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world. However, nobody can really say, what it was about, how it was built and for what purpose.

Located in Egypt, the Sphinx of Giza is an impressive structure that has captivated travelers for centuries and spunned numerous theories, both scientific and magical.

After decades of research, American archaeologist Mark Lehner may have some answers about the mysteries of the Egyptian colossus.

Recognized today as one of the world’s leading Egyptologists and Sphinx authorities, Lehner has conducted field research at Giza during most of the 37 years since his first visit. (Hawass, his friend and frequent collaborator, is the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and controls access to the Sphinx, the pyramids and other government-owned sites and artifacts.)

Applying his archaeological sleuthing to the surrounding two-square-mile Giza plateau with its pyramids, temples, quarries and thousands of tombs, Lehner helped confirm what others had speculated—that some parts of the Giza complex, the Sphinx included, make up a vast sacred machine designed to harness the power of the sun to sustain the earthly and divine order. And while he long ago gave up on the fabled library of Atlantis, it’s curious, in light of his early wanderings, that he finally did discover a Lost City.

The Sphinx was not assembled piece by piece but was carved from a single mass of limestone exposed when workers dug a horseshoe-shaped quarry in the Giza plateau. Approximately 66 feet tall and 240 feet long, it is one of the largest and oldest monolithic statues in the world.

Nobody knows its original name. Sphinx is the human-headed lion in ancient Greek mythology; the term likely came into use some 2,000 years after the statue was built. There are hundreds of tombs at Giza with hieroglyphic inscriptions dating back some 4,500 years, but not one mentions the statue.

"The Egyptians didn’t write history," says James Allen, an Egyptologist at Brown University, "so we have no solid evidence for what its builders thought the Sphinx was....Certainly something divine, presumably the image of a king, but beyond that is anyone’s guess." Likewise, the statue’s symbolism is unclear, though inscriptions from the era refer to Ruti, a double lion god that sat at the entrance to the underworld and guarded the horizon where the sun rose and set.

The face, though better preserved than most of the statue, has been battered by centuries of weathering and vandalism. In 1402, an Arab historian reported that a Sufi zealot had disfigured it "to remedy some religious errors."

Yet there are clues to what the face looked like in its prime. Archaeological excavations in the early 19th century found pieces of its carved stone beard and a royal cobra emblem from its headdress. Residues of red pigment are still visible on the face, leading researchers to conclude that at some point, the Sphinx’s entire visage was painted red. Traces of blue and yellow paint elsewhere suggest to Lehner that the Sphinx was once decked out in gaudy comic book colors.

The question of who built the Sphinx has long vexed Egyptologists and archaeologists. Lehner, Hawass and others agree it was Pharaoh Khafre, who ruled Egypt during the Old Kingdom, which began around 2,600 B.C. and lasted some 500 years before giving way to civil war and famine.

It’s known from hieroglyphic texts that Khafre’s father, Khufu, built the 481-foot-tall Great Pyramid, a quarter mile from where the Sphinx would later be built. Khafre, following a tough act, constructed his own pyramid, ten feet shorter than his father’s, also a quarter of a mile behind the Sphinx.

But who carried out the backbreaking work of creating the Sphinx? In 1990, an American tourist was riding in the desert half a mile south of the Sphinx when she was thrown from her horse after it stumbled on a low mud-brick wall. Hawass investigated and discovered an Old Kingdom cemetery. Some 600 people were buried there, with tombs belonging to overseers—identified by inscriptions recording their names and titles—surrounded by the humbler tombs of ordinary laborers.

Near the cemetery, nine years later, Lehner discovered his Lost City. He and Hawass had been aware since the mid-1980s that there were buildings at that site. But it wasn’t until they excavated and mapped the area that they realized it was a settlement bigger than ten football fields and dating to Khafre’s reign.

If Lehner is right, Khafre’s architects arranged for solar events to link the pyramid, Sphinx and temple. Collectively, Lehner describes the complex as a cosmic engine, intended to harness the power of the sun and other gods to resurrect the soul of the pharaoh. This transformation not only guaranteed eternal life for the dead ruler but also sustained the universal natural order, including the passing of the seasons, the annual flooding of the Nile and the daily lives of the people. In this sacred cycle of death and revival, the Sphinx may have stood for many things: as an image of Khafre the dead king, as the sun god incarnated in the living ruler and as guardian of the underworld and the Giza tombs.

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NASA Caught Icy Comet On A Footage

Space has been an interesting and mysterious area that is beyond our grasp for now. It is, hence, not surprising that scientists are anxious whenever there is a report of an space visitor flying through the inner solar system and an icy one is coming.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, also called Comet C/2023 A3, was spotted and was observed to has grown brighter as it approached the sun, allowing astronauts aboard the International Space Station to capture vivid footage of this ancient ball of ice, rock, and dust. NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick recently posted a view of the comet rising beyond Earth as the station zipped through its orbit at some 17,500 mph.

"Comet rises above the horizon just before orbital sunrise amongst aurora and swirling satellites," the space agency's flight engineer posted online. The comet makes its appearance at the bottom of the view at about 12 seconds into the short clip.

In this view from 29 September, the comet is some 75 million miles from Earth, and 38 million miles from the sun (Earth is 93 million miles from our star). As comets approach the sun, they heat up and eject dust and gas into space, leaving long wakes of millions-of-miles-long material, as you can see below. Comet C/2023 A3 just made its closest approach to the sun on Sept. 27, and is now en route to the profoundly frigid realms of the deep solar system.

Comets have a lot of material to burn, as they're typically miles long to tens of miles long. "When frozen, they are the size of a small town," NASA explained. One particular comet, discovered in 2021, is a whopping 85 miles wide.

Although Dominick captured the comet with a camera, he did note that it's visible to the naked eye from the space station, too. And down on Earth, it might be visible to skygazers. The "best show," as the comet zooms between Earth and the sun, is likely to happen in mid-October.

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Carbon Dioxide Detected In Charon, Pluto's Largest Moon

Scientists just discovered possible signs that carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide are present on the surface of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. This could offer some clues about the origins of the space rock and other celestial objects in the distant solar system.

Using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope's near-infrared spectrograph instrument, astronomers at the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in Boulder, Colorado, gathered new details about Charon's composition. Previous exploration at NASA brought basic information to light about the icy mass, including the fact that it was composed mainly of crystalline water ice, ammonia and several other organic materials.

The latest findings are considered critical since they "highlight insights into the chemical diversity and evolutionary processes on Charon," wrote the team of researchers at SWRI in the results of their study. Those results were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Technically the largest of Pluto's five moons, Charon is actually half the size of its parent planet at about 754 miles wide. The relationship between their relatively similar sizes is unusual, according to NASA, so Pluto and Charon together are sometimes referred to as a double dwarf planet system.

he New Horizons spacecraft has studied the distant moon before, collecting images of Charon in 2015 as it approached a point in its orbit nearest Pluto. Those images revealed a vast tectonic belt stretched across the equator, hinting at a water-ice ocean present long ago, and, notably, a red-toned region at the massive moon's northern pole.

But other fundamental components of Charon's surface evaded detection, as New Horizons could not capture a spectrum of light wavelengths broad enough to tell the space rock's full story.

Learning more about the composition of Pluto's moon could potentially provide insight into Charon's neighbors in the Kuiper Belt, the researchers said. The belt region encompasses the other rings of the solar system, beyond Neptune's orbit, and is home to icy objects like dwarf planets as well as some comets.

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"Ring Of Fire" Will Appear In The Next Solar Eclipse

Scientists at NASA beieved that a solar eclipse event will create a "ring of fire" in the skies over parts of South America on 2 October.

Annular solar eclipses occur when the moon passes between Earth and the sun when the moon is near or at the farthest point in its orbit from Earth, so it can’t completely block the sun as it does during a total solar eclipse. Instead, the sun’s fiery light surrounds the moon’s shadow, creating the so-called ring of fire.

The path of Wednesday’s annular eclipse event will track over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and Antarctica, but those in the remote southeastern Pacific territory of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, and parts of Argentina and Chile should be able to see the ring of fire phenomenon if skies are clear.

Meanwhile, a crescent-shaped partial solar eclipse will be visible in Hawaii, American Samoa, Brazil, Fiji, French Polynesia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Pitcairn Islands, Kiribati, Tonga, Uruguay, South Georgia, the Falkland Islands and many other locations.

If you’re in the path of the partial or annular eclipse and plan to observe either celestial spectacle, make sure you have a pair of certified eclipse glasses or a handheld solar viewer. The sun’s harmful rays will never be completely out of view, and watching these events could damage your eyes if you look directly at the sun.

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Inspiring Message From A 4Ps Beneficiary

After he topped his Grade 9 class in 2015 at Bal-ason National High School, Gingoog City, Misamis Oriental, 15-year old Jachor McCollins Calvo Opaon, a Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) beneficiary, cited the big role of the program in his academic success. He also urged his fellow grantees to study hard and not waste the opportunity given by the government, the Department of Social Welfare Department (DSWD) said.

"What we are enjoying now is a gift that must be used properly. Once we waste this gift, there is no way to bring the past back. It is sad to look back on the opportunities wasted and linger on the what-ifs," Jachor emphasized in his message for his fellow beneficiaries during the school recognition ceremony.

Jachor expressed his gratitude to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for promoting and implementing the program. He said that Pantawid Pamilya has helped him and his family pay for their basic needs.

"The meager income of my mother, a Barangay Nutrition Scholar, and my father, a farmer, is not enough to respond to all the needs of my family," Jachor disclosed. "Now, with the cash grants, we have a budget for our education."

Jachor said that he used the P500 monthly education grant he received for his school projects and daily allowance.

He also thanked his parents for pushing him to be the best that he could be, and for always reminding him of the importance of education.

Pantawid Pamilya is a human development program that invests in the health and education of poor families, primarily those with children aged 0-18. It provides cash grants to partner-beneficiaries who comply with the conditions of sending their children to school, bringing them to health centers for checkups, and attending the monthly Family Development Sessions (FDS).

In 2013, the DSWD expanded the coverage of Pantawid Pamilya to include the 15-18 age bracket to ensure that the children-beneficiaries will graduate from high school, and have a higher rate of employability.

Aside from leading his class, Jachor was also awarded Best in English, Best in Science, Best in Filipino, Best in MAPEH, and Best in Arts.

The city government of Gingoog through Mayor Marie Guingona also recognized him as an outstanding Grade 9 student of the city.

Jachor was also active in extra-curricular activities. He participated in the Regional Press Conference as editorial writer, and became a quiz bee finalist. He also placed third in a Mathematics challenge organized by the Mathematics Teachers Association of the Philippines.

Reiterating the message of Jachor to his fellow student-grantees, DSWD Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman said, “I agree with Jachor. The grants should be used wisely for their education. We know that the amount is quite small but if used the right way, it is a big help nonetheless.”

She added that DSWD continues to partner with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and the private sector to provide additional opportunities to student-beneficiaries, especially those who have graduated from high school.

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