First spotted  in 2018, scientists are now learning more about an orbiting rock that is the furthest known object in our solar system. (True, Voyager 1 is further out, but it’s man-made and not in orbit) This rock is so far out of the neighborhood that it’s been nicknamed FarFarOut.

It's about 400 kilometres (250 miles) across, which is on the low end of the dwarf planet scale, and initial observations suggest it has an average orbital distance of 101 astronomical units - that's 101 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Since Pluto has an average orbital distance of around 39 astronomical units, FarFarOut is very, well, far out indeed. It has been given the provisional designation 2018 AG37, and its proper name, in accordance with International Astronomical Union guidelines, is still pending.

That orbit, however, isn't an even circle around the Sun, but a really lopsided oval. After careful observation, scientists have calculated its orbit; FarFarOut swings out as far as 175 astronomical units, and comes in as close as 27 astronomical units, inside the orbit of Neptune.

So, FarFarOut is only the most distant object in the solar system part of the time. That’s one weird rock. Read more about FarFarOut, including how it got that name, at ScienceAlert. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Tomruen)

Ashley Graham is one of the most hated characters in the Resident Evil franchise. She appears as the character that Leon Kennedy has to rescue in Resident Evil 4, and she is very much disliked for her annoying plea (“Leon, help!”), her bad AI, and her uselessness as a partner. But she also has her share of positive and adorable moments in the game like in this one, where she does a little fist pump when you kill an enemy.

(Image Credit: u/Lekakeny/ Reddit)

The answer is... of course they can!

Just don’t expect that these candies were made with love. After all, they are emotionless machines. Do not expect that they made good-looking candy hearts, either; they don’t have a conceptual idea of one.

So what can you expect from AI-generated candies, you ask? Well, expect that they’ll be interesting. VERY interesting.

Rather than go the passé Sweethearts route, Janelle Shane, a research scientist who writes about the ways AI can get weird, used machine learning to create candy hearts of her own. The resulting images aren’t a treat you’d want to give anyone. Instead, most look like they’re created by someone who doesn’t know what the compound word “candy heart” is, but knows the confectionery “candy” and the human organ “heart” and combined them. “The task of generating anything a human can ask for is a really broad problem, and AI usually does best on very narrow problems,” explains Shane. Basically, the attempt at a candy heart shows you can’t just get “close enough” and have it look right.

Check out the results of Shane’s experiment over at Fast Company.

(Image Credit: Janelle Shane/ Fast Company)

The year was 1851. Gold was discovered in the city of Ballarat in the state of Victoria, Australia. Within just a few days, the sudden discovery immediately led to a gold rush which would last many years. This event would be known as the Victorian Gold Rush.

Aside from the city of Ballarat, gold was also discovered in the other cities in Victoria, such as in Beechworth, the city where many Chinese nationals would settle.

As the population in Beechworth grew, so [too] did the need for specialized services to cater to the cultural needs of the Chinese miners.

This was the reason why the burning towers, which were found in the northern section of the Beechworth cemetery, were built.

This site is complete with burning towers, altars, and footstones. The towers were constructed in 1857 and the altar in 1984. Mourners used the towers to burn offerings of paper prayers and gifts for the afterlife. 

It’s estimated around 2,000 Chinese gold-seekers and settlers are buried in this section of the cemetery.

(Image Credit: Gavin/ Atlas Obscura)

We produce tons of plastic waste annually. With this being the case, it is only normal for us to see plastic everywhere, and it is only normal that we feel the negative environmental effects that it causes. Fortunately, there are those who try their best to mitigate these effects, like Fernando Llanos and architect Oscar Mendez, the creators of Conceptos Plásticos (Plastic Concepts).

[Conceptos Plásticos] is based on the transformation of plastic residues and rubber in pieces like blocks, which are used for housing construction.

‘The objective of plastic concepts is to answer to different problematic that affect the community nowadays, contributing at the same time with the reduction of the pollution that plastic residues have on the environment and his incident on the global warming,’ said Ricardo Rico, business manager, Conceptos Plásticos.

Conceptos Plásticos empowers communities of recyclers around the world, starting in Colombia all the way to Africa. To create the LEGO-like building blocks, they use plastics that not everyone recycles and others that are difficult to dispose of. Each type of plastic gives the bricks a different property, so they are mixed in different ways to obtain the desired product. The resulting bricks are easy to assemble, durable and inexpensive. They are also stronger than traditional construction materials; are thermo-acoustic, meaning they can be used in both hot and cold weather; they are also anti-seismic; and do not spread flames.

Learn more about their project over at DesignBoom.

Awesome!

(Image Credit: Conceptos Plásticos/ DesignBoom)

It’s the winter break at the National Sun Yat-sen University, which means that there are very few to no people in the campus. And because the university is pretty much empty at the moment, one macaque took that opportunity and snuck inside to work on something (you and I will probably never know what).

… Chang Morgan decided to drop by an empty office on campus the other day — only to discover, to his surprise, that it wasn't quite empty after all.

There, sitting behind a desk, was a wild macaque. The monkey, apparently having gained entrance to the building somehow, now looked to be focused on some challenging task, his little brow furrowed as if in deep concentration.

As random as the monkey's presence may seem there, it's actually not unheard of. According to school officials, the campus is located near a macaque habitat, and the animals are known to explore the school, both inside and out.

What do you think was the monkey doing?

(Image Credit: Chang Morgan/ Facebook)

Christoph Niemann shows us in these illustrations that everything, even random objects around us can be a source of artistic inspiration. A bulldozer truck and a street light could turn into the arms of a determined woman, and a colored pencil could turn into a megaphone. We just need to have a creative mind.

Although Niemann usually lives in New York for part of the year, he’s been working from his studio in Berlin since the onset of the pandemic. “I’m spending a lot of time just drawing—cityscapes, animals I saw at the zoo (one of the few places that are still open to visit), and turning these drawings into silkscreens and linocuts,” he tells Colossal.

Prior to lockdown, he was visiting cities like London and Tallin creating visual essays, and although he misses travel, he’s enjoyed the increased focus and routine of recent months. “Since March last year, I’ve been at my drawing desk almost every single day. The things I do depend on input and inspiration. But craft, attention to detail, and routine are hugely important, as well. These latter aspects benefit a lot from having such a plain and steady schedule,” he says.

See some of Niemann’s illustrations over at Colossal.

Clever!

(Image Credit: Christoph Niemann/ Colossal)

In which “artwork” becomes “fartwork.” Moni Powers has a series of movie posters starring butts in place of movie stars, with reworked titles that give farts and butts center stage. Sure, it’s juvenile, but it’s a bit of fun on a cold February day.





See Powers’ extensive collection of movie posters at Instagram. Don't miss Bum and Bummer, Angels in the Outhouse, or Top Bun. -via Metafilter

I went for a walk and ran into a little free art gallery with tiny people! It has a take a tiny painting or leave a tiny painting policy! pic.twitter.com/qHWMerE2Kp

— Siel Ju (@sielju) February 7, 2021

Have you ever seen a little free library? This is a movement to make books available to people. Usually, these libraries are boxes where you can donate or borrow books.

That movement has inspired people to make little free art galleries. Inside these dollhouse-sized boxes are small works of art. Would you like to have a piece of art? Or, even better, would you like to donate your own art? That's what these lending art museums are for.

Stacy Milrany operates one in Seattle. The Seattle Times describes her project:

When Milrany started the gallery at First Avenue North and Garfield Street, she didn’t know it would become such a huge part of her routine. A working artist for five years who makes charmingly mordant paintings and mixed-media pieces, she’d been drawn to small-scale art, like an art-on-a-postcard project she started for her mother during a series of cancer treatments, and postcard-sized paintings she’d make using a small watercolor set while traveling. But as state restrictions settled in to contain the coronavirus outbreak, traditional avenues for showing and seeing art were no longer as accessible as they’d once been. “Museums and galleries were shut so it seemed like a good idea,” says Milrany, who saw an opening to do something different. 

This sounds like fun! I'd like to start a little art gallery in my neighborhood.

-via Super Punch

YouTuber Linus Sebastian tests how fast the connection of Starlink is. You may remember last year from leaks that the download speeds of Starlink ranged from 11 to 60 Mbps. Now, it has doubled. However, it still is much slower than a fiber connection, but it is already a pretty decent speed. Linus even tries a few CS Go games using the Starlink connection, and finds out that it’s not that bad of an experience.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Linus Tech Tips/ YouTube)

Whether it is in the platonic or romantic setting, first impressions are important in making friendships and in building on a romantic relationship. Previous studies have already shown that we can make accurate impressions of new acquaintances, but is it the same in the romantic setting, where the stakes are higher? The answer, according to researchers, is yes.

To find answers, they invited 372 participants to partake in speed-dating events in Montreal in 2017 and 2018. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire assessing their personality and well-being. A close friend or family member also completed a questionnaire on the participant’s personality. Participants then had a series of brief, three-minute first dates; after each interaction, they rated their date’s personality.

On average, people did see their dates’ personalities accurately, but some dates were easier to read than others. “Some people are open books whose distinctive personalities can be accurately perceived after a brief interaction, whereas others are harder to read,” says co-author Lauren Gazzard Kerr, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at McGill University under the supervision of Professor Lauren Human. “Strikingly, people who report higher well-being, self-esteem, and satisfaction with life tend to make the task easier,” she says.

More about this study over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

The year was 1937. During a fete in Woodbridge in Suffolk, England, landowner Edith May Pretty talked to Vincent B. Redstone about the possibility of opening the peculiar mounds on her estate to see their contents. Redstone then called Guy Maynard, the curator of the Ipswich Corporation Museum, for a meeting with Pretty later that year, and then Maynard offered the services of Basil Brown, a self-taught archaeologist, as excavator. These events would then lead to the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

The cemetery contains multiple burials, although many have been heavily robbed. The most famous burial, and one that robbers missed, is known as the "great ship burial" and contains the remains of a 88.6-foot-long (27 meters) ship that has a burial chamber filled with 263 artifacts.

These artifacts include an intricate gold belt buckle that depicts a mix of snakes, beasts and birds of prey. They also include silverware and coins from the Byzantine Empire, a sword that has a hilt made of jewels and gold dress accessories that have garnet minerals from Sri Lanka. 

With this many artifacts in the burial chamber, one would be curious as to who was buried there. Archaeologists seem to have an idea of the identity of the man buried at the site: Raedwald of East Anglia.

Archaeologists point to Raedwald because the date of the coins and other artifacts matches well with the time of his reign and because the burial does not seem to be fully Christian — something that jibes with what historical records say about him. Sutton Hoo's location in East Anglia and the richness of its artifacts link it to the East Anglian royal dynasty. 

Learn more about Sutton Hoo and King Raedwald over at Live Science.

(Image Credit: Michel Wal/ Wikimedia Commons)

With this loaf, Seattle-based baker Doughy Tribbiani wished his readers a "Happy Challa-ween". It's a beautiful bread that illustrates what amazing sculptures can be made with challah dough. He colored it with activated charcoal.

Something around Alpha Centauri, the closest star in our Solar System, has caught the eyes of astronomers. They think that it could be a planet similar to Neptune but warmer, which is not “particularly remarkable”; what’s remarkable is the planet’s distance from its star.

… Even though it would be shrouded in gas and essentially bereft of any surface to stand on, its distance from its star would place it in the so-called “habitable zone” where liquid water could exist. No other planet has been directly seen in this starlight-drenched region around any other star, because of the associated glare.

[...]

The new findings were reported Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications. They come from an international consortium of planet hunters called Breakthrough Watch, via the inaugural science run of a one-of-a-kind “direct imaging” instrument called NEAR (New Earths in the AlphaCen Region), which operates on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. The effort is named for its chief funding organization, Breakthrough Initiatives—the brainchild of the Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner, who also sponsors related projects to search the heavens for signs of alien civilizations and to send pint-sized interstellar probes to the Alpha Centauri system.

Learn more about this potential discovery over at Scientific American.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Skatebiker/ Wikimedia Commons)

NASA’s fifth Mars rover Perseverance launched in July of 2020, and is scheduled to land on Mars on Thursday, February 18th. The purpose of the rover is to look for signs of previous life on the red planet. You can follow along with NASA’s streaming coverage beginning at 2:15 PM Eastern time, which will be as “live” as possible.  

After six months of travel, the actual process of entry, descent and landing happens in just seven minutes. But because Mars is so far away from Earth, radio signals from Perseverance take about 11 minutes and 22 seconds to travel back to mission control. So, by the time mission control receives the signal that the rover has reached the top of Mars’ atmosphere, Perseverance will have already landed—or crashed.

Scientists call that tense entry, descent and landing period the “seven minutes of terror.” Not only is that period the riskiest part of the entire mission, but the delay in communication between Earth and Mars means that Perseverance has to land itself completely autonomously. “There’s no joysticking that we can do,” [guidance, navigation and controls operations lead Swati] Mohan says.

But before you watch the signals from Mars, and the response of the crew holding their collective breath on Earth, a bit of background will help you understand the rover and its mission. Smithsonian catches us up on what will happen, what could go wrong, where the landing will take place and why, and what to expect from the event.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)