The Washington Post reports that after months of polar darkness, the extent of sea ice blanketing the Arctic this winter "fell to the lowest level on record, researchers announced this week... the smallest maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

"Since then, the ice has already begun to melt again." "Sea ice is acting like the old canary in the coal mine," Dartmouth University geophysicist Don Perovich said. "It's saying loud and clear that warming is occurring...."

In the summer, when the sun's radiation shines down on the Arctic for 24 hours a day, the ice acts as a shield, reflecting more than half of the light that hits it back into space.... With so little sea ice in the Arctic this year, more sunlight will be able to reach the open ocean, which absorbs more than 90 percent of the radiation that hits it. This will further warm the region, accelerating ice melt and exposing even more water to the light. This feedback loop helps explain the rapid warming of the Arctic, and it is expected to lead to a complete lack of summer sea ice in the region within decades, [said explained Melinda Webster, a sea ice scientist at the University of Washington]. The consequences would be dire for seals, polar bears and other wildlife, which depend on a stable sea ice platform to birth their young and hunt for food. It would also expose miles of coastline to pounding ocean waves, accelerating the erosion that threatens to tip some communities into the sea.

But the effects will also be felt in places far from the poles, Perovich said. Studies suggest that a complete loss of Arctic sea ice would raise global temperatures as much as adding a trillion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Changes in the Arctic could also affect the jet stream, the river of winds that flows through the upper atmosphere, contributing to more extreme weather around the globe.

"What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic," Perovich said.
Earlier this year sea ice also fell 30% below the amount typical in the Antarctic prior to 2010, the researchers report. The total amount of sea ice on earth has now reached an all-time low, declining by more than a million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers) below the pre-2010 average.

"Altogether, Earth is missing an area of sea ice large enough to cover the entire continental United States east of the Mississippi."

RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) writes: A recent paper on ArXiv reports a novel idea about the central regions of "our" galaxy.

Remember the hoopla a few years ago about radio-astronomical observations producing an "image" of our central black hole — or rather, an image of the accretion disc around the black hole — long designated by astronomers as "Sagittarius A*" (or SGR-A*)? If you remember the image published then, one thing should be striking — it's not very symmetrical. If you think about viewing a spinning object, then you'd expect to see something with a "mirror" symmetry plane where we would see the rotation axis (if someone had marked it). If anything, that published image has three bright spots on a fainter ring. And the spots are not even approximately the same brightness.

This paper suggests that the image we see is the result of the light (radio waves) from SGR-A* being "lensed" by another black hole, near (but not quite on) the line of sight between SGR-A* and us. By various modelling approaches, they then refine this idea to a "best-fit" of a black hole with mass around 1000 times the Sun, orbiting between the distance of the closest-observed star to SGR-A* ("S2" — most imaginative name, ever!), and around 10 times that distance. That's far enough to make a strong interaction with "S2" unlikely within the lifetime of S2 before it's accretion onto SGR-A*.)

The region around SGR-A* is crowded. Within 25 parsecs (~80 light years, the distance to Regulus [in the constellation Leo] or Merak [in the Great Bear]) there is around 4 times more mass in several millions of "normal" stars than in the SGR-A* black hole. Finding a large (not "super massive") black hole in such a concentration of matter shouldn't surprise anyone.

This proposed black hole is larger than anything which has been detected by gravitational waves (yet) ; but not immensely larger — only a factor of 15 or so. (The authors also anticipate the "what about these big black holes spiralling together?" question : quote "and the amplitude of gravitational waves generated by the binary black holes is negligible.")

Being so close to SGR-A*, the proposed black hole is likely to be moving rapidly across our line of sight. At the distance of "S2" it's orbital period would be around 26 years (but the "new" black hole is probably further out than than that). Which might be an explanation for some of the variability and "flickering" reported for SGR-A* ever since it's discovery.

As always, more observations are needed. Which, for SGR-A* are frequently being taken, so improving (or ruling out) this explanation should happen fairly quickly. But it's a very interesting, and fun, idea.

Slashdot reader Required Snark shared this article from Phys.org: In the realm of science fiction, [sun-energy capturing] Dyson spheres and ringworlds have been staples for decades. But it is well known that the simplest designs are unstable against gravitational forces and would thus be torn apart. Now a scientist from Scotland, UK has shown that certain configurations of these objects near a two-mass system can be stable against such fractures...

[A] rigid ring around a star or planet, as in Larry Niven's "Ringworld" series of novels, is also unstable, as it would drift under any slight gravitational differences and collide with the star. So [engineering science professor Colin] McInnes considered a restricted three-body problem where two equal masses orbit each other circularly with a uniform ring of infinitesimal mass rotating in their orbital plane. The ring could enclose both masses, just one or none... McInnes also investigated a shell-restricted three-body problem with the shell also of infinitesimal mass, again with the shell enclosing two masses, one or none.

For the restricted ring, McInnes found that there are seven equilibrium points in the orbital plane of the dual masses, on which, if the ring's center were placed, it would stay and not experience stresses, akin to the three stable Lagrange points where a small mass can reside permanently for the two-body problem... McInnes restricted this research to a planar ring (in the plane of the circularly orbiting masses) but says it can be shown that a vertical ring, normal to the plane, can also generate equilibria...

These results can aid the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, McInnes said, "If we can understand when such structures can be stable, then this could potentially help direct future SETI surveys." An important technosignature would be one bright star orbiting in tandem with an object showing a strong infrared excess. Shells around a sun-exoplanet pair or an exoplanet-exoplanet pair could also be possible. A nested set of Dyson spheres is also a feasible geometry.
In 2003 Ringworld author Larry Niven answered questions from Slashdot readers...

Astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope have discovered 128 new moons around Saturn, bringing its total to 274 -- more than all the other planets combined. CBC News reports: Jupiter and Saturn have been locked in a battle for the most moons for years -- with Saturn stealing the crown from Jupiter only two years ago when the same group of researchers found 64 additional moons orbiting it. But scientists say this discovery likely settles the score once and for all. [...] He and the other scientists working on the project made the discovery using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, a 3.6-meter optical telescope on the summit of the dormant volcano Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Scientists have been capturing pictures of the moons using the telescope since 2019. The researchers aligned and layered 44 of those images on top of one another in order to enhance the appearance of the moons and determine what they were. These moons are nothing like Earth's very own, however. Sara Mazrouei, a planetary scientist and educational developer at Humber Polytechnic, says that while we tend to think of a spherical shape when we hear the word moon, anything that orbits a planet, or another body in space that is not a sun, is considered a moon. Mazrouei says many of the moons surrounding other planets in our solar system -- including the ones observed here -- are in fact only a few kilometers across in size and oddly shaped, like an asteroid.

NPR reports on "a monster black hole that's been lurking unseen in the galaxy next door." This appears to be the closest supermassive black hole outside our Milky Way galaxy, according to a report that's appearing in The Astrophysical Journal... "Now that there is strong evidence that it should be there, you can rest assured that we are very excitedly following up," says Jesse Han of the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, who led the study...

Han and his colleagues realized that this black hole must exist when they were studying so-called hypervelocity stars... [T]hey started out as normal stars that were part of a binary system, or two stars orbiting each other. When that kind of pair ventures too close to a supermassive black hole, says Han, "what can happen is one of the stars can get captured by the black hole. It is basically ripped apart from its companion." The bereft companion star, meanwhile, gets flung away, going at ridiculously high speeds. It's as if the black hole basically hurled it out of the galaxy.
And that explains some of what's happening in our own galaxy, writes Space.com: Tracing the trajectory of these super-speed stars using the European Space Agency's star-tracking Gaia satellite, the researchers discovered that around half of them were accelerated by the Milky Way's own supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. The other half, the team believes, likely fled to the outskirts of the Milky Way after a gravitational encounter with a supermassive black hole at the heart of the LMC separated these stars from their stellar binary partners.

"It is astounding to realize that we have another supermassive black hole just down the block, cosmically speaking," team leader Jesse Han of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) said in a statement. "Black holes are so stealthy that this one has been practically under our noses this whole time."
"Their calculations suggest that the Large Magellanic Cloud must be harboring a black hole that's about 600,000 times the mass of our Sun," adds NPR. "That's smaller than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which is about 4 million times more massive than the Sun." Astronomers had previously thought the Large Magellanic Cloud should have a big black hole, but until now there's been no evidence of it, says Han... Now, though, astronomers have a better sense of where to hunt for any X-ray, radio, or visible-light signatures that are the telltale signs of an invisible black hole that's devouring everything nearby. "It is within the realm of possibilities that it is already detectable in radio and X-ray and optical," says Han. "We just haven't looked at the right place."

NASA's SPHEREx observatory (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) is set to launch this week to map 450 million galaxies in infrared, providing insights into galaxy formation, the origins of water, and testing theories about the universe's rapid expansion following the Big Bang. The two-year mission will repeatedly survey the entire sky and help scientists understand fundamental cosmic processes. NBC News reports: The launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California is scheduled to occur Friday, during a window that opens at 10:09 p.m. ET. Liftoff was initially planned for Feb. 27, but NASA rescheduled it several times, first to "complete vehicle processing and prelaunch checkouts," and because of availability at the California launch site.

The cone-shaped spacecraft -- along with four suitcase-sized satellites that NASA will deploy at the same time on a separate mission to study the sun -- will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The $488 million SPHEREx mission, which has been in development for about a decade, is designed to map the celestial sky in 102 infrared colors -- more than any other mission before it, according to NASA.

The Athena lunar lander from Intuitive Machines has prematurely ended its mission after tipping onto its side shortly after touching down near the moon's south pole, failing to fully accomplish its planned water-searching objectives. From a report: Athena was expected to operate for about 10 days before powering down as lunar night fell over the spacecraft's landing site at Mons Mouton, a plateau that lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole. But photographs delivered by the lander before it powered down confirmed the vehicle is lying on its side. "With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge," the company said in a statement. "The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission."

Intuitive Machines, however, highlighted that, although Athena did not operate as intended, the lander was able to briefly operate and transmit data after touchdown. That made the mission the "southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved." Intuitive Machines also said that Athena was "able to accelerate several program and payload milestones, including NASA's PRIME-1 suite, before the lander's batteries depleted." PRIME-1, which includes a drill that was expected to dig into the lunar surface to hunt for water, was able to move, according to a statement from NASA that states the device "demonstrated the hardware's full range of motion in the harsh environment of space."

AmiMoJo shares a report: Europe's biggest battery storage project has entered commercial operation in Scotland [alternative source], promising to soak up surplus wind power and prevent turbines being paid to switch off.

Zenobe said the first phase of its project at Blackhillock, between Inverness and Aberdeen, was now live with capacity to store enough power to supply 200 megawatts of electricity for two hours. It is due to be expanded to 300 megawatts by next year, enough to supply 3.1 million homes, more than every household in Scotland.

The government's Clean Power 2030 action plan sets a target capacity of up to 27 gigawatts of batteries by 2030, a sixfold increase from the 4.5 gigawatts installed today. This huge expansion is seen as critical as Britain builds more renewable wind and solar power, since batteries can store surplus generation for use when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander successfully touched down on the moon, making it the first private company to achieve a stable lunar landing without crashing. The craft is carrying various NASA-funded experiments, including a "vacuum to suck up moon dirt for analysis and a drill to measure temperature as deep as 10 feet (3 meters) below the surface," reports the Associated Press. There's also "a device for eliminating abrasive lunar dust -- a scourge for NASA's long-ago Apollo moonwalkers, who got it caked all over their spacesuits and equipment." From the report: A half hour after landing, Blue Ghost started to send back pictures from the surface, the first one a selfie somewhat obscured by the sun's glare. The second shot included the home planet, a blue dot glimmering in the blackness of space. Blue Ghost -- named after a rare U.S. species of fireflies -- had its size and shape going for it. The squat four-legged lander stands 6-foot-6 (2 meters) tall and 11 feet (3.5 meters) wide, providing extra stability, according to the company.

Launched in mid-January from Florida, the lander carried 10 experiments to the moon for NASA. The space agency paid $101 million for the delivery, plus $44 million for the science and tech on board. It's the third mission under NASA's commercial lunar delivery program, intended to ignite a lunar economy of competing private businesses while scouting around before astronauts show up later this decade.

Firefly's Ray Allensworth said the lander skipped over hazards including boulders to land safely. Allensworth said the team continued to analyze the data to figure out the lander's exact position, but all indications suggest it landed within the 328-foot (100-meter) target zone in Mare Crisium. The demos should get two weeks of run time, before lunar daytime ends and the lander shuts down.

NASA used specialized Schlieren photography to capture an image of Boom Supersonic's XB-1 demonstrator aircraft breaking the sound barrier on February 10, 2025 and producing shock waves as it exceeded Mach 1. The flight produced no audible sonic boom, marking progress toward the goal of quiet supersonic travel. CNN reports: "This image makes the invisible visible," said Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, in a press release. In order to capture the Schlieren images, Boom chief test pilot Tristan "Geppetto" Brandenburg positioned XB-1 at an exact time in a precise location over the Mojave Desert.

As the aircraft flew in front of the sun, NASA's team documented the changing air speeds as speeds over Mach 1, the speed of sound (761.23 miles per hour or 1,225.1 kilometers per hour). The images were captured during ground telescopes with special filters that detect air distortions. You can view the photo here.

China aims to commercialize nuclear fusion technology for use in emissions-free power generation by 2050, according to the country's state-owned atomic company. From a report: China National Nuclear Corp., which runs an experimental device dubbed the 'artificial sun,' could start commercial operation of its first power generation project about five years after a demonstration phase starting around 2045, it said in a media briefing on Friday.

The Asian nation has recently stepped up its ambitions in achieving nuclear fusion, a process by which the sun and other stars generate energy and that is considered a near-infinite form of clean energy. It is notoriously difficult to carry out in a sustained and usable manner and only a handful of countries like the US, Russia and South Korea have managed to crack the basics.

Magnus Carlsen "announced this week that he is auctioning off the Italian luxury brand jeans that started a dress code dispute at December's World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships," reports the Associated Press. ("Condition: Pre-owned," says the listing on eBay, where by Friday night bidding on the charitable auction was up to $14,100.)

But Carlsen drew more attention on The Joe Rogan Experience last week — partly by saying "I have no chance against my phone." (Although he'd also described beating a fan's computer program, according to Firstpost, by playing "some kind of anti-computer chess, where I just closed up the position as much as possible and gave it as few possibilities as possible to out-calculate me.") Carlsen admitted that he rarely plays against chess engines due to their overwhelming strength, but acknowledged their value as training tools. "I rarely play against engines at all because they just make me feel so stupid and useless. So, I think of them more as a tool than anything else."
And this led Carlsen to add "If I started cheating, you would never know," reports Indian Express: It's not just a throwaway line about cheating either. On a two-hour-long podcast, where he touches on mostly everything under the sun, Carlsen fixates on cheating in chess. He also details how a player of his calibre would need very little to cheat in chess. "I would just get a move here and there (from an aide). Or maybe if I am playing in a tournament I just find a system where I get somebody to signal to me when there's a critical moment: a certain moment where a certain move is much better than the others. That's really all I would need to go from being the best to being practically unbeatable. There's so little you need in chess (to cheat). It really is a scary situation," Carlsen said before pointing out how in 2010 the captain of the French chess team was helping a teammate decide his next move at the Olympiad just by standing in specific spots around the table...

"If you're not cheating in a dumb way, there rarely is going to be a smoking gun. And without that smoking gun it is going to be really hard to catch people," Carlsen admits on the podcast... "As long as there are monetary incentives for people to cheat, there will be cheating in chess," says Carlsen on the podcast.
The article adds that Carlsen does not believe Hans Niemann used anal beads to cheat — and that he thinks Niemann has become a much better chess player since the incident. But... "Top level chess has been based on trust a lot. I don't trust Niemann. Other top players still don't trust him and he doesn't trust me," says Carlsen. "There is still something off about him now. We played an over-the-board tournament in Paris last year where there was increased security and he didn't play at nearly the same level there."

France has upped the ante in the quest for fusion power by maintaining a plasma reaction for over 22 minutes -- a new record. From a report: The milestone was reached on February 12 at the Commissariat a lenergie atomique et aux energies alternatives (CEA) WEST Tokamak reactor.

Achieving the dream of commercial fusion power is the Holy Grail of engineering and has been for 80 years. With a single gram of hydrogen isotopes yielding the energy equivalent of 11 tonnes of coal, a practical fusion reactor would hold the promise of unlimited, clean energy for humanity until the end of time.

Small wonder that billions have been invested by both government and industry in the quest to make fusion power a reality. However, while fusion is relatively easy to achieve in the heart of the sun or in a hydrogen bomb, creating a practical reactor that produces more energy than is put into it is another matter entirely.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: A new startup PIN AI (not to be confused with the poorly reviewed hardware device the AI Pin by Humane) has emerged from stealth to launch its first mobile app, which lets a user select an underlying open-source AI model that runs directly on their smartphone (iOS/Apple iPhone and Google Android supported) and remains private and totally customized to their preferences. Built with a decentralized infrastructure that prioritizes privacy, PIN AI aims to challenge big tech's dominance over user data by ensuring that personal AI serves individuals -- not corporate interests. Founded by AI and blockchain experts from Columbia, MIT and Stanford, PIN AI is led by Davide Crapis, Ben Wu and Bill Sun, who bring deep experience in AI research, large-scale data infrastructure and blockchain security. [...]

PIN AI introduces an alternative to centralized AI models that collect and monetize user data. Unlike cloud-based AI controlled by large tech firms, PIN AI's personal AI runs locally on user devices, allowing for secure, customized AI experiences without third-party surveillance. At the heart of PIN AI is a user-controlled data bank, which enables individuals to store and manage their personal information while allowing developers access to anonymized, multi-category insights -- ranging from shopping habits to investment strategies. This approach ensures that AI-powered services can benefit from high-quality contextual data without compromising user privacy. [...] The new mobile app launched in the U.S. and multiple regions also includes key features such as:

- The "God model" (guardian of data): Helps users track how well their AI understands them, ensuring it aligns with their preferences.
- Ask PIN AI: A personalized AI assistant capable of handling tasks like financial planning, travel coordination and product recommendations.
- Open-source integrations: Users can connect apps like Gmail, social media platforms and financial services to their personal AI, training it to better serve them without exposing data to third parties.
- "With our app, you have a personal AI that is your model," Crapis added. "You own the weights, and it's completely private, with privacy-preserving fine-tuning." Davide Crapis, co-founder of PIN AI, told VentureBeat that the app currently supports several open-source AI models, including small versions of DeepSeek and Meta's Llama. "With our app, you have a personal AI that is your model," Crapis added. "You own the weights, and it's completely private, with privacy-preserving fine-tuning."

You can sign up for early access to the PIN AI app here.

In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evolved into data-collecting billboards, prioritizing advertising and user tracking over user experience and privacy. Features like convenient input buttons are sacrificed for pushing ads and webOS apps. "This is all likely to get worse as TV companies target software, tracking, and ad sales as ways to monetize customers after their TV purchases -- even at the cost of customer convenience and privacy," writes Scharon Harding. "When budget brands like Roku are selling TV sets at a loss, you know something's up."

Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer."

Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG."

Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed."

Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger.

Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it."

Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer."

Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is "dead." A new analysis by Hansen and colleagues concludes that both the impact of recent cuts in sun-blocking shipping pollution, which has raised temperatures, and the sensitivity of the climate to increasing fossil fuels emissions are greater than thought. The group's results are at the high end of estimates from mainstream climate science but cannot be ruled out, independent experts said. If correct, they mean even worse extreme weather will come sooner and there is a greater risk of passing global tipping points, such as the collapse of the critical Atlantic ocean currents.

Hansen, at Columbia University in the US, sounded the alarm to the general public about climate breakdown in testimony he gave to a UN congressional committee in 1988. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) defined a scenario which gives a 50% chance to keep warming under 2C -- that scenario is now impossible," he said. "The 2C target is dead, because the global energy use is rising, and it will continue to rise." The new analysis said global heating is likely to reach 2C by 2045, unless solar geoengineering is deployed. [...] In the new study, published in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, Hansen's team said: "Failure to be realistic in climate assessment and failure to call out the fecklessness of current policies to stem global warming is not helpful to young people."

[...] Hansen said the point of no return could be avoided, based on the growing conviction of young people that they should follow the science. He called for a carbon fee and dividend policy, where all fossil fuels are taxed and the revenue returned to the public. "The basic problem is that the waste products of fossil fuels are still dumped in the air free of charge," he said. He also backed the rapid development of nuclear power. Hansen also supported research on cooling the Earth using controversial geoengineering techniques to block sunlight, which he prefers to call "purposeful global cooling." He said: "We do not recommend implementing climate interventions, but we suggest that young people not be prohibited from having knowledge of the potential and limitations of purposeful global cooling in their toolbox." Political change is needed to achieve all these measures, Hansen said: "Special interests have assumed far too much power in our political systems. In democratic countries the power should be with the voter, not with the people who have the money. That requires fixing some of our democracies, including the US."

"Sometimes, government makes a bad bet..." writes the Los Angeles Times. Opening in 2014, the Ivanpah concentrated solar plant "quickly became known as an expensive, bird-killing eyesore." Assuming that state officials sign off — which they most likely will, because the deal will lead to lower bills for PG&E customers — two of the three towers will shut down come 2026. Ivanpah's owners haven't paid off the project's $1.6-billion federal loan, and it's unclear whether they'll be able to do so. Houston-based NRG Energy, which operates Ivanpah and is a co-owner with Kelvin Energy and Google, said that federal officials took part in the negotiations to close PG&E's towers and that the closure agreement will allow the federal government "to maximize the recovery of its loans." It's possible Ivanpah's third and final tower will close, too. An Edison spokesperson told me the utility is in "ongoing discussions" with the project's owners and the federal government over ending the utility's contract.

It might be tempting to conclude government should stop placing bets and just let the market decide. But if it weren't for taxpayers dollars, large-scale solar farms, which in 2023 produced 17% of California's power, might never have matured into low-cost, reliable electricity sources capable of displacing planet-warming fossil fuels. More than a decade ago, federal loans helped finance some of the nation's first big solar-panel farms.

Not every government investment will be a winner. Renewable energy critics still raise the specter of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2011 after receiving a $535-million federal loan. But on the whole, clean power investments have worked out. The U.S. Department of Energy reported that as of Dec. 31, it had disbursed $40.5 billion in loans. Of that amount, $15.2 billion had already been repaid. The federal government was on the hook for $1.03 billion in estimated losses but had reaped $5.6 billion in interest.
The article notes recent U.S. energy-related loans to a lithium mine in Nevada (close to $1 billion) and $15 billion to expand hydropower, upgrade power lines, and add batteries. Some of the loans won't get paid back "If federal officials are doing their jobs well," the article adds. "That's the risk inherent to betting on early-stage technologies." About the Ivanpah solar towers, they write "Maybe they never should have been built. They're too expensive, they don't work right, they kill too many birds... It's good that their time is coming to an end. But we should take inspiration from them, too: Don't get complacent. Keep trying new things."

PG&E says their objective at the time was partly to "support new technologies," with one senior director of commercial procurement noting "It's not clear in the early stages what technologies will work best and be most affordable for customers. Solar photovoltaic panels and battery energy storage were once unaffordable at large scale." But today they've calculated that ending their power agreements with Ivanpah would cost customers "substantially less." And once deactivated, Ivanpah's units "will be decommissioned, providing an opportunity for the site to potentially be repurposed for renewable PV energy production," NRG said in a statement.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal notes that instead the 3,500-acre, 386-megawatt concentrated thermal power plant used a much older technology, "a system of mirrors to reflect sunlight and generate thermal energy, which is then concentrated to power a steam engine." Throughout the day, 350,000 computer-controlled mirrors track the sunlight and reflect it onto boilers atop 459-foot towers to generate AC. Nowadays, photovoltaic solar has surpassed concentrated solar power and become the dominant choice for renewable, clean energy, being more cost effective and flexible... So many birds have been victims of the plant's concentrated sun rays that workers referred to them as "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. When federal wildlife investigators visited the plant around 10 years ago, they reported an average of one "streamer" every two minutes.
"Meanwhile, environmentalists continue to blame the Mojave Desert plant for killing thousands of birds and tortoises," reports the Associated Press. And a Sierra Club campaign organizer also says several rare plant species were destroyed during the plant's construction. "While the Sierra Club strongly supports innovative clean energy solutions and recognizes the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, Ivanpah demonstrated that not all renewable technologies are created equal."

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has released the largest ever photomosaic featuring over 200 million stars -- all of which are bright than our own Sun. It consists of over 600 overlapping Hubble images and 2.5 billion pixels. "That is a huge number, yet only a fraction of the estimated one trillion stars in the Andromeda galaxy," reports TechSpot. "Many of Andromeda's less massive stars are beyond Hubble's sensitivity limit and thus, are not represented in the imaged."

"NASA has multiple sizes of the panoramic available for download, including the full-size 203 MB image (42,208 x 9,870) and a more user friendly 9 MB variant (10,552 x 2,468)."

Longtime Slashdot readers smooth wombat and AmiMoJo shares a fusion energy breakthrough from China. Charming Science reports: China's "artificial sun," officially known as the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), has achieved a groundbreaking milestone in fusion energy research. According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), EAST recently sustained high-confinement plasma operation for an unprecedented 1,066 seconds, shattering the previous world record of 403 seconds, also set by EAST in 2023. [...] The 1,000-second mark is considered a critical threshold in fusion research. Sustaining plasma for such extended durations is essential for demonstrating the feasibility of operating fusion reactors. This breakthrough, accomplished by the Institute of Plasma Physics under the CAS, signifies a major leap towards realizing the potential of fusion energy. [...] The success of EAST's recent experiment can be attributed to several key advancements. Researchers have made significant strides in improving the stability of the heating system, enhancing the accuracy of the control system, and refining the precision of the diagnostic systems. Warning: the source originates from China Daily, an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. It's rated "questionable" by Media Bias/Fact Check because of its association with the CCP.

Scientists have detected cosmic "chorus waves" resembling bird chirps over 62,000 miles from Earth, a region where such waves have never been observed. "Scientists still aren't sure how the perturbations happen, but they think Earth's magnetic field may have something to do with it," reports the Associated Press. From the report: The chorus has been picked up on radio antennas for decades, including receivers at an Antarctica research station in the 1960s. And twin spacecraft -- NASA's Van Allen Probes -- heard the chirps from Earth's radiation belts at a closer distance than the newest detection. The latest notes were picked up by NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale satellites, launched in 2015 to explore the Earth and sun's magnetic fields. The new research was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Chorus waves have also been spotted near other planets including Jupiter and Saturn. They can even produce high-energy electrons capable of scrambling satellite communications. "They are one of the strongest and most significant waves in space," said study author Chengming Liu from Beihang University in an email. The newfound chorus waves were detected in a region where Earth's magnetic field is stretched out, which scientists didn't expect. That raises fresh questions about how these chirping waves form. "It's very captivating, very compelling," Jaynes said. "We definitely need to find more of these events."