About five years ago, Netflix revamped its streaming apps and rolled out the worst feature it’s ever developed. Even if you like it, you know which one I’m talking about — bringing video playback “forward” to make things more like cable TV. At first, pulling up a show or movie and pausing for a moment too long would cause it to start playing. Then, simply highlighting a selection while scrolling meant it would start playing the trailer, or worse, playing a section of the movie backed by some random stock music Netflix pulled from somewhere.
It made casually browsing the service’s catalog a nightmare, but for whatever reason — I assume there was some analytical data showing it increased viewing — Netflix refused to change it. Since then, competitors like Disney+ and HBO Max have highlighted the “feature” as something they chose not to copy, and now, at long last, Netflix is providing a way to turn it off. You’ll need to pull up the Manage Settings page in your browser and disable AutoPlay Preview, but by pressing that one button, things can go back to the way they should’ve been all along. Was that really so hard, Netflix?
After 328 days in space, NASA astronaut Christina Koch is back on Earth. She returns holding the record for the longest stay in space by a woman, and she has earned bragging rights for another major milestone: She and fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir completed the first all-female spacewalk during Koch’s extended stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
CNET put the new Motorola Razr to the test by folding it repeatedly thousands of times using a machine called Foldbot. The result? Its hinge started acting wonky (making noises and showing resistance) by around 27,000 folds.
To bolster road safety, Ford came up with a way to help cyclists communicate: a jacket that displays emoji. The prototype has an LED display on the rear, which is linked to a wireless remote attached to the handlebars. Cyclists might use it to display turn signals, a hazard symbol or just their current mood.
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Buenos Aires, Reuters: Paleontologists on Thursday heralded the discovery of a previously unknown small armored dinosaur in southern Argentina, a creature that likely walked upright on its back legs roaming a then-steamy landscape about 100 million years ago.
The Cretaceous Period dinosaur, named Jakapil kaniukura, would have been well-protected with rows of bony disk-shaped armor along its neck and back and down to its tail, they said. It measured about 5 feet (1.5 meters) long and weighed only 9 to 15 pounds (4-7 kg), similar to an average house cat.
Its fossilized remains were dug up over the past decade near a dam in Patagonia in Rio Negro province’s La Buitrera paleontological zone. The scientists described Jakapil in a study published in the journal Scientific Reports (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-15535-6.pdf.)
The scientists said Jakapil marks a first-of-its-kind discovery of an armored dinosaur from the Cretaceous in South America. It is part of the thyreophoran dinosaur group that includes the likes of Stegosaurus, known for its bony back plates and spiky tail, and tank-like Ankylosaurus, covered in armor and wielding a club-like tail.
Lead paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguia and his colleagues found a partial skeleton of Jakapil along with 15 tooth fragments featuring a leaf-like shape, similar to iguana teeth.
Jakapil resembles a primitive form of thyreophoran that lived much earlier, making it a surprise that it dated from the Cretaceous. Apesteguia said never before has such a thyreophoran been dug up anywhere in the southern hemisphere.
(Reporting by Miguel Lo Bianco; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Will Dunham for Reuters)
The Perseid meteor shower of the 2022 reached its peak this weekend and while the bright full moon may have washed out the best of the “shooting stars” display this year, that doesn’t mean skywatchers were left completely in the dark.
Stargazers around the world captured some dazzling views of the Perseid meteor shower as it peaked overnight Friday and Saturday (Aug. 12-13) and they shared the photos to prove it. Some observers took to Twitter to share their meteor views while other astrophotographers snapped truly stunning photos for Getty Images.
“Perseid fireball I saw last night from Oxfordshire,” skywatcher Mary McIntyre of Oxfordhire in the United Kingdom wrote (opens in new tab) on Twitter, adding that she captured the Perseid photos with a meteor camera. “The ionization trail was awesome.”
The Perseid meteor shower is typically one of the best meteor displays of the year, but its peak in 2022 came just one day after the Sturgeon supermoon (August’s full moon) on Aug. 11. Since dark skies are vital for meteor watching, even bright moonlight can dim a stargazers prospects.
Photographer Wu Zhengjie for the photo service VCG and Getty Images still managed to capture stunning views of the Perseids from the Eboliang Yardang landform in Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province of China. The images show brilliant Perseid meteors over a striking landscape.
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Another view of the Perseid meteor shower over the Eboliang Yardang landform on Aug. 12, 2022 in Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province of China. (Image credit: Wu Zhengjie/VCG via Getty Images)
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The Perseid meteor shower illuminates the night sky over the Eboliang Yardang landform on Aug. 12, 2022 in Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province of China. (Image credit: Wu Zhengjie/VCG via Getty Images)
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Another photographer, Veysel Altun of the Anadalou Agency and Getty Images, managed to capture a Perseid meteor streak over a campsite in Samsun, Turkey.
A Perseid meteor streaks across the night sky over Atakum district of Samsun, Turkey on Aug. 13, 2022. (Image credit: Veysel Altun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Photographer Ercin Ertuk, also of the Anadalou Agency and Getty Images, snapped a photo of a Perseid as it streaked across the sky over trees in Ankara, Turkey.
A view of the Perseid meteor shower over Ankara, Turkey on August 13, 2022. (Image credit: Ercin Erturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Still more stargazers managed to catch views of the Perseids with either their own cameras or meteor cameras that constantly watch the sky to record fireballs. Here’s a look at some of our favorites spotted on Twitter.
This pebble came an awful long way before giving me a neat little show last week. Luckily, there were lots of meteors during the #perseid build up, because during the peak tonight it will be tough to see all but the brightest with the full moon in the sky @BBCStargazing pic.twitter.com/n2iFVBi0p0August 12, 2022
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#Perseid peak night. It’s something, I guess. The full Moon made this bright, and we were lucky to get any clear skies being under a cutoff low in any case. Fireballs avoided most of my cameras, but I got them with the 8 mm fisheye. Two -4 mag, one -3 mag Perseids. @ThePhotoHour pic.twitter.com/rbU45Npm5QAugust 13, 2022
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Mag -4.8 #Perseid #fireball I saw last night from #Oxfordshire It was detected on our NW #meteorcamera The ionization trail was awesome (I’ll share next!) Canon 1100D + 18-55mm lens 8sec ISO-800 f/3.5 #PerseidMeteorShower #Meteors #Perseids2022 pic.twitter.com/lv2cbkcDsMAugust 13, 2022
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Another #Perseid #IonizationTrail this time at 23:54 BST 11th Aug 2022. Taken from #Oxfordshire UK with Canon 1100D #PerseidMeteorShower #Meteors #Perseids2022 pic.twitter.com/m1ruM4kSTKAugust 12, 2022
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Two #Perseid #Meteors on 2 different DSLRs, both just before 22:30 BST 11th Aug ’22. This is 2 of the 6 #Perseids I got on camera last night #Perseids2022 #PerseidMeteorShower pic.twitter.com/L1CB0IM31vAugust 12, 2022
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A wider approach last night #perseid #meteors with the 2nd 📷Good field of view albeit less detail.2 Cameras planned tonight, wide & not so 👌EM-1 mk3, 8mm pro F1.8, ISO320, 15s x 5hrs live composite mode@VirtualAstro @OMSYSTEMcameras pic.twitter.com/4hiJh6iS6MAugust 12, 2022
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Related stories:
The Perseid meteor shower occurs each year in mid-August when the Earth passes through the dusty trail of the Comet Swift-Tuttle. When those comet bits slam into Earth’s atmosphere, they can spawn bright trails as the streak across the sky. They appear to radiate out from the constellation Perseus, hence their name.
The next major meteor shower of 2022 will be the Orionid meteor shower in October. That shower will peak on Oct. 20 and 21, but its activity period runs from Sept. 26 to Nov. 22. It is caused by the remnants of Halley’s Comet as the Earth passes through that trail.
Check out our guide for the best meteor showers of the year to prepare for your next stargazing experience.
Editor’s note: If you snap an amazing photo of a Perseid meteor or any other night-sky sight and you’d like to share it with Space.com for a story or image gallery, send images, comments and location information to spacephotos@space.com.
On clear summer nights, poet Donna Kane sleeps on the front deck of her farmhouse in Rolla, B.C., in an old-fashioned bed under a blue quilt printed with crescent moons.
The writer draws inspiration from looking at the sky in this northern part of the province, more than 750 kilometres distant from Vancouver.
“I feel connected. I feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself, and I feel comforted by that. You’re looking at the origins of light when you’re lying there, looking up at the stars,” Kane said.
Kane’s musings about star light in the night sky inspired her to write a poem that blends scientific principles and the human experience of light’s reflection — a poem that now appears in a respected U.S. science magazine.
The poem, On Visible Light, was published in the July edition of Scientific American magazine, alongside more traditional scholarly research on the thermodynamic limit, momentum computing and interstellar space.
For Kane, the inclusion of her poem is proof that literature and science are more closely connected than many people believe.
“I’ve always thought science and art are very, very similar, trying to discover the mysteries of the world and the universe. They both have that urge,” Kane told CBC News.
“Poetry explores. Ideas can emerge from really good poems that maybe scientists hadn’t really thought of in that same way.”
‘Science and art are very, very similar because both disciplines are trying to explore the mysteries of the world and the universe,’ poet Donna Kane said. (Submitted/Donna Kane)
Kane’s poem is a villanelle, a structured type of poem with refrains and a strict rhyming pattern, a form that dates back hundreds of years. She weaves together science and imagery with lines like “Just a slice of electromagnetic/ wavelength and sight is ours, a blindness gone/ at the end of travelling through our nights.”
Its appearance in the pages of Scientific American, which has more than eight million online readers worldwide each month, has brought Kane stratospheric exposure.
“I’m pretty sure I’m never going to get a bigger audience than that,” said Kane. “Usually the reach of poetry is very small.”
Kane’s poem features in the July issue of Scientific American. The magazine has an online readership of around eight million each month. (Submitted/Scientific American)
The editor of Scientific American’s poetry column, Dava Sobel, told CBC News that Kane’s poem is “gorgeous.”
“It’s emotionally evocative and yet scientifically informative. And it adheres to a very strict poetic form. So it’s a difficult thing to achieve. But she’s really done it,” said Sobel, a former science writer for the New York Times who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Sobel, who had astronaut Neil Armstrong write the forward to one of her books and also has an asteroid named after her, believes that poetry can illuminate science.
“Creativity flows smoothly between those two,” she said.
Dava Sobel, poetry editor of Scientific American, has previously published poetry written by Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and physics. (Submitted/Glen Allsop)
Sobel said Scientific American published poetry in its very first issue in 1845 but only featured rarely since, until she launched a monthly science poetry column in the magazine in 2020.
Since then, in addition to Kane’s villanelle, she’s included poems written by Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and physics.
“Poetry should not be off limits to anybody, nor should science,” she said.
Even though it’s an imaginative work, Kane’s poem still had to meet the bar for accuracy and was rigorously fact checked by Scientific American before it was published.
“They’re pretty serious that … what you’ve written is accurate. You can do playful things, but the poem has to stand up to the actual science,” said Kane.
Donna Kane’s face is reflected in a prototype of the Pioneer 10 space craft during a visit to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. The B.C. poet is drawn to writing about science and space. (Submitted/Donna Kane)
The poet said she’s always loved science and has written other works about space.
Her 2020 book, Orrery: Poems, featured a number of pieces about Pioneer 10, a space probe launched to study Jupiter’s moons. It was a finalist for a Governor General’s Award for English-language poetry.
One of her space-themed poems will be included in a forthcoming anthology published by Cambridge University Press.
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