Kalakshar US

Astronomers have found a planet they believe is blanketed by active volcanoes. In a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature, a multi-national team of scientists said they discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet they believe may have water on part of its surface. The boringly named LP 791-18 d (sadly, no one thought to call it Mustafar) is located about 90 light-years from Earth in the Crater constellation. LP 791-18 d orbits a red dwarf it is tidally locked to, meaning the planet doesn’t have a day and night cycle like Earth. Instead, one part of LP 791-18 d is constantly scorched by sunlight, while the other is always in darkness.

“The day side would probably be too hot for liquid water to exist on the surface. But the amount of volcanic activity we suspect occurs all over the planet could sustain an atmosphere, which may allow water to condense on the night side,” Björn Benneke, one of the astronomers who studied the planet, told NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The LP 791-18 system contains at least two other planets, called LP 791-18 b and c. The latter is two-and-a-half times larger than Earth and more than seven times its mass. It also affects the orbit of LP 791-18 d, making it travel along an elliptical path around the system’s sun. That path means LP 791-18 d is deformed every time it completes an orbit. “These deformations can create enough internal friction to substantially heat the planet’s interior and produce volcanic activity at its surface,” according to NASA.

“A big question in astrobiology, the field that broadly studies the origins of life on Earth and beyond, is if tectonic or volcanic activity is necessary for life,” study co-author Jessie Christiansen said. “In addition to potentially providing an atmosphere, these processes could churn up materials that would otherwise sink down and get trapped in the crust, including those we think are important for life, like carbon.”

NASA, ESA and CSA already plan to turn the James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared imaging instruments on LP 791-18 c. The team that discovered LP 791-18 d thinks the exoplanet would make for an “exceptional candidate for atmospheric studies by the mission.” Notably, the retired Spitzer Space Telescope helped spot LP 791-18 d before NASA decommissioned it in 2020. This week, the US Space Force awarded a $250,000 grant to explore the feasibility of bringing the telescope out of retirement.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/astronomers-identify-volcano-covered-planet-that-could-have-water-on-its-surface-185050937.html?src=rss 

Electric cars have certainly gone mainstream over the past decade or so, with many auto manufacturers shifting at least some of their production over to battery-powered cars. But going from gas to electric in other forms of transportation hasn’t really taken off in quite the same way.

BMW is looking to change that – sort of. In collaboration with TYDE, which typically builds luxury yachts, the duo has come up with a fully-electric boat. The company used its yacht racing technology (yep, you read that right!) to build this boat. However, this is not a yacht – it’s a single-deck boat that appears to seat maybe a dozen people. The boat has a top speed of 30 knots, or about 34 miles per hour. In comparison, Jaguar’s gas–powered boat that set the speed record back in 2018 clocked 77 knots or about 88 miles per hour.

To add another oddity into the mix, Hans Zimmer (known for composing the score for The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean and many others), developed the onboard soundtrack for the boat. It does make you wonder if the sound system is capable of playing anything but Hans Zimmer scores, but sadly the press release doesn’t say. According to that press release, the onboard sound system supports Dolby Atmos, to deliver “superb sound quality,” though that likely won’t matter with the amount of environmental noise that typically accompanies you when on water (especially with the boat’s semi-open design).

But at the end of the day, even though it’s an odd partnership all around, it’s good news that one more vehicle isn’t burning gasoline and is instead being powered by renewable energy. Whether or not this will make an impact on the broader boating industry? That’s a whole other can of worms.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bmws-all-electric-luxury-boat-comes-with-a-custom-hans-zimmer-soundtrack-191052673.html?src=rss 

We’re starting to get a clearer picture of how Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has changed the platform. According to new data from Pew Research, a “majority” of US Twitter users have “taken a break” from the platform over the last year, and many of the site’s “most active” users are tweeting less often than they used to.

“Six-in-ten Americans who have used Twitter in the past 12 months say they have taken a break from the platform for a period of several weeks or more during that span,” Pew writes in a report based on a survey of 10,701 Twitter users. In a separate report, Pew also studied the “actual behavior” of 1,002 of Twitter’s “most active” users and found “a noticeable posting decline in the months after” Musk’s acquisition. “These users’ average number of tweets per month declined by around 25% following the acquisition,” Pew noted.

Together, these stats suggest that engagement on Twitter has declined since Musk’s takeover, at least among formerly active users. That’s particularly notable because, as Pew notes, the vast majority of Twitter users are lurkers, not posters. Twenty percent of Twitter users send 98 percent of all tweets.

At the same time, it seems many of Twitter’s most active users haven’t given up on the platform entirely. According to Pew, only 25 percent of “highly active” users said they are “not very or not at all likely to be on Twitter a year from now.”

Pew didn’t poll Twitter users on the reasons for their pullback from Twitter, or if Musk’s actions were directly responsible for the shift. It also doesn’t take into account how many new users may have joined Twitter in the last year. But the new numbers offer new insight into the growing ranks of Twitter quitters who may be spending more time on alternative platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky since Musk’s takeover,

Unsurprisingly, Pew also found that Musk himself has become even more of a main character on Twitter over the last year. “On average, adult Twitter users in the U.S. mentioned Musk in a tweet just once between Jan. 1 and April 13, 2022, before he announced his intention to acquire the platform,” the report says. “Since then, however, references to Musk have become much more common on the site. These users tweeted about him an average of three times between April 14 and Oct. 26, 2022 – while Musk was in the process of acquiring the platform – and an average of six times in the months after the sale was finalized.”

The reports come as Musk has named a new CEO in former NBCU executive Linda Yaccarino. Yaccarino, who is slated to start in the coming weeks, is expected to draw on her ad industry experience to try to win back advertisers, many of whom have fled following controversial policy changes by Musk. Whether she’ll be able to win back the much sought-after “highly active tweeters,” though, is unclear. With Musk remaining as CTO and executive chairman, he’s likely to continue to be Twitter’s most influential — and controversial — user for the foreseeable future.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-adults-are-spending-less-time-on-twitter-since-elon-musk-took-over-192939586.html?src=rss 

Nicolas Cage will soon appear in Dead by Daylight. The actor will bring his delightful eccentricity and Billy Mays-style beard to the multiplayer survival game, developer Behavior Interactive announced on Twitter. “There is nothing more powerful than imagination,” Cage says in the appropriately campy teaser. “It can shape the fabric of reality, transforming everything you may think you know.”

Cage will play himself in the role of a Survivor, according toEurogamer. “After countless awards and over one hundred movies shot across the globe, Nicolas Cage had seen it all and done it all — or so he thought,” a brief announcement reads. “While on set filming the role of a lifetime, his performance summoned The Entity, a malevolent being of incomprehensible power. The actor soon found himself cast in otherworldly Fog, forced to Survive a host of terrifying Killers deadlier than even the most scathing film critic.”

It’s the latest quirky / campy addition to the popular horror game, following a K-Pop star, Freddy Kreuger, Leatherface, Evil Dead’s Ash Williams and a pro-surveillance tech executive. (It even has a dating-sim add-on for some reason.) The game’s developers, who describe Cage’s appearance as “the performance of a lifetime,” say we’ll hear more about the Oscar winner’s contribution on July 5th.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nicolas-cage-is-coming-to-dead-by-daylight-174623542.html?src=rss