午夜福利1000集合

PE5P96 Close up of two purple socks with yellow lemon detail, pegged to a washing line with two yellow clothes pegs, shot from below against a clear blue sky

This week鈥檚 new questions

Why have all but my yellow plastic clothes pegs disintegrated in the sun, and when and why did our prehistoric ancestors start to sing?

Comment

Is this new Lego model a nod to the terrifying idea of mirror life?

10. Regalia presented to Ashurbanipal

Humans

Ancient clay tablets offer vivid portrait of Mesopotamian life

Environment

How cloud-seeding could help us predict when it will snow

Tom Gauld on the correct way to refer to space junk

Twisteddoodles on lab books as literary genres

The events surrounding the Big Bang were so cataclysmic that they left an indelible imprint on the fabric of the cosmos. We can detect these scars today by observing the oldest light in the Universe. As it was created nearly 14 billion years ago, this light ???????? which exists now as weak microwave radiation and is thus named the cosmic microwave background (CMB) ???????? has now expanded to permeate the entire cosmos, filling it with detectable photons. The CMB can be used to probe the cosmos via something known as the Sunyaev-Zel????????dovich (SZ) effect, which was first observed over 30 years ago. We detect the CMB here on Earth when its constituent microwave photons travel to us through space. On their journey to us, they can pass through galaxy clusters that contain high-energy electrons. These electrons give the photons a tiny boost of energy. Detecting these boosted photons through our telescopes is challenging but important ???????? they can help astronomers to understand some of the fundamental properties of the Universe, such as the location and distribution of dense galaxy clusters. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed one of most massive known galaxy clusters, RX J1347.5????????1145, seen in this Picture of the Week, as part of the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). This observation of the cluster, 5 billion light-years from Earth, helped the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to study the cosmic microwave background using the thermal Sunyaev-Zel????????dovich effect. The observations made with ALMA are visible as the blue-purple hues. Links ESO Picture of the Week RX J1347.5????????1145 seen by Hubble only

We know how matter took shape, but how was space formed?

Mass Product of Beer Bottles, Rows of glass production alcohol on industrial conveyor belt, top view.; Shutterstock ID 2416496749; purchase_order: -; job: -; client: -; other: -

Is the volume of gas at top of a beer bottle the same for all beers?

P2H56B Weasel standing upright, Mustela nivalis, Germany

This week鈥檚 new questions

Nuke Image Round

Physics

Hypnotic art has its roots in the terrifying reality of nuclear bombs

In his Atomic series, artist James Stanford showcases "the spectacle and the horror" of growing up near a nuclear bomb testing site

Mathematics

How breaking the rules of tic-tac-toe makes it way more fun

Comment

Is this the most glorious retraction notice a journal has ever made?

Tom Gauld on a Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory

Twisteddoodles leans into Tolkien