Weather predictions here on Earth are more accurate than they’ve ever been; trying to predict the behavior of our wild and wacky Sun is a little more tricky.

Case in point: according to official predictions, the current cycle of solar activity should be mild. But the gap between the prediction and what’s actually happening is pretty significant – and it’s getting wider. Sunspot counts, used as a measure for solar activity, are way higher than the predicted values calculated by the NOAA, NASA, and the International Space Environmental Service.

In fact, sunspot counts have been consistently higher than predicted levels since September 2020. This could mean that, in contrast to predictions, the Sun is in the swing of an unusually strong activity cycle.

This discovery supports a long-debated theory for how planets like Jupiter form, called “disk instability.”

A powerful radio-wave laser, called a “megamaser”, has been observed by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa. The record-breaking find is the most distant megamaser of its kind ever detected, at about five billion light years from Earth.

The light from the megamaser has traveled 58 thousand billion billion (58 followed by 21 zeros) kilometers to Earth. The discovery was made by an international team of astronomers led by Dr. Marcin Glowacki, who previously worked at the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy and the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.

Dr. Glowacki, who is now based at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia, said megamasers are usually created when two galaxies violently collide in the Universe.

The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter took an incredibly detailed image of the Sun as it passed with 50 million kilometers.

What could possibly go wrong?

If only the American Indians had let Europe know of all their free land, and natural resources sooner…

Calling all beings.

NASA is experimenting with making lenses with liquid in space, which could lead to giant space telescopes 100x the size of the James Webb.