The Astronomy Picture of the Day for September 9th was taken in July by astronaut Nichole Ayers from the International Space Station. The plume of plasma rising from the clouds over earth is a Transient Luminous Event, or TLE. There are several kinds of TLEs, including jets, sprites, elves, trolls, ghosts, gnomes, and pixies. 

This particular type of TLE was later confirmed to be a gigantic jet, which is pretty rare. It's rarer still to catch it in a photograph, since the longest of them only last a couple of seconds. According to NASA, a gigantic jet is a huge electrical discharge going from the top of a high thunderstorm (around 20 kilometers) upward toward the upper atmosphere (around 100 kilometers). In other words, atmospheric storms produce a lot more electricity than we see on earth, but not all of that power makes its way down to us. Nice to know.  -via TYWKIWDBI 

(Image credit: NASA/Nichole Ayers) 

Astronomy, mathematics, physics.

The evolution in our thoughts and models: Heliocentrism and Geocentrism.

By Malin Christersson, source: https://t.co/0T2N21Uiro (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) pic.twitter.com/nDQkEEUmq9

— Cliff Pickover (@pickover) August 31, 2025

Ancient people assumed that the sun moved as it rose in the east and set in the west. Stars and planets did the same. This is geocentrism, the theory that the earth is the static center of the universe. It made sense because nothing is as human as people thinking the world revolves around them. But as scientists and philosophers observed the orbits of planets and the relative movements of stars, the idea of heliocentrism arose. That's the theory that earth and other planets revolve around the sun. The illustration above shows how each of those theories work from a distance, and which one makes more sense.  

Malin Christersson has an enhanced interactive version of the illustration at his website, along with a timeline of scientists and philosophers who advocated one theory or the other. Notably, the war between the two theories lasted up through the 17th century, mainly because geocentrism was considered to be Biblical, but also because Tycho Brahe misinterpreted an observation. -via Memo of the Air 

Jason Kottke posed a question on his blog this morning: What is the longest monosyllabic English word you can think of? It's a curious question, since we think of words with one syllable as being all the same length. To be exact, he was thinking of monosyllabic words with a lot of letters. The first thing that popped into my head was "queue." It's only five letters long, but the four vowels are redundant. You need to think of words with many consonants. The comments he got were enlightening. The actual longest monosyllabic English words are recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records, and they feature long strings of consonants. 

One commenter suggested "squirreled," which has ten letters in American English and eleven in British English. What? That's two syllables! But he argues it rhymes with "world," which only has one vowel. Language is a funny thing. Syllables are not a function of a word's spelling, but of its pronunciation. There are plenty of English words that can have varying numbers of syllables, depending on the dialect, that we can still easily understand. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Peter Trimming) 

Warning: this video will produce involuntary butt-clenching and possible vertigo. 

The 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships are being held right now in the Valais canton in Switzerland. Canadian cyclist Jackson Goldstone won the Downhill World Championship in the elite category, even though at age 21 he's still technically eligible to compete in the junior category. The race down the Alpine track in Champéry was incredible, and we get to watch from Goldstone's POV angle. This is a track I would be hesitant to walk down unless it was a life or death matter. Goldstone takes it flat out in three minutes of terror as he rounds tight corners and sudden turns, all while the crowd yells and blows whistles. If the above video is too much for you, we also have a non-POV video with commentary.



Goldstone made Canada proud, as you can see in coverage of the celebration. He makes the rest of us nervous. -via kottke 

We all know how Beethoven went deaf later in his life, yet kept composing. Lesser known is the story of Johann Sebastian Bach's sight, which was always weak but he eventually went blind before he died. Bach underwent cataract surgery twice. 

In the 18th century, those who suffered from cataracts, or cloudy lenses, had only one surgical treatment available. It involved "couching," or separating the lens from the front of the eye, which could restore some vision. Replacement was not possible at the time. Bach, at age 65, turned to famous eye surgeon John Taylor, who called himself an "ophthalmiater." Taylor was famous in some places for his skill at eye surgery and in others for the disastrous results of his eye surgery. A look into his techniques would make any modern patient shudder. Taylor performed cataract couching on Bach twice. We don't know if those involved a surgery on each eye, or an attempt at repair after a failure, but we know they led to Bach's blindness and death within a few months. Read about Taylor and what he did to Bach (and later composer George Frideric Handel) at Amusing Planet. 

The Breakfast Club came out in 1985, so it was not all that meaningful to me at the time, but meant a lot to Gen X. I saw it as an oversimplified cast of five student stereotypes who all needed a hug and a wakeup call. They were changed by opening up and interacting with each other on a long detention day, which they never would have done otherwise. That's the sad part. Maybe it did inspire Gen X to reach out to each other and open up about their family problems and desire to fit in somewhere. Or more likely, they just related to the one character who was like them and carried on as usual. 

Does The Breakfast Club hold up forty years later? It seems pretty simplistic when you consider the struggles of today's students, who have always existed in a much greater variety. A remake might involve students glued to their phones and avoiding eye contact with each other until they suddenly go viral while still in detention. Screen Junkies takes us back to that one day that school detention was both funny and poignant.

A bruise is when you suffer an injury that damages blood capillaries, but doesn't break the skin, or at least the skin directly over them. Spilled blood under the skin has to be cleaned up, which involves a complicated timeline in which various body processes break down the blood cells into smaller components that can be washed away eventually. Bruises can be red, blue, purple, black, green, yellow, and even other shades as they heal. But the timeline and the appearance of a healing bruise can vary widely, depending on factors like the depth of the injury, the amount of fat under the skin, and the color of the skin. Most research on bruises has been done on caucasian skin, which is less white than it is transparent. Bruises can seem to move away from the injury as the remains of the bleeding are cleared away. They can vary within the same person, too. When I was temporarily taking a blood thinner, my everyday activities made me look like a beating victim. Read about the colors of bruises and what causes them to look that way at TheScientist. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Famartin) 

What you think of Darth Vader may well depend on when you jumped into the Star Wars movies. Was it in 1977 when he was introduced as the big bad villain with no qualms about murdering anyone who stood in his way? Or was it in 1999, when he was introduced as an underprivileged but bright young child? Or maybe you developed in interest in the character when Hayden Christensen portrayed the character as dreamy and dumb. The story of Anakin Skywalker covered six movies, and made appearances in a few more, plus the TV shows, so there's a lot to unpack. And a lot of questions.      

Was Anakin Skywalker destined from birth to become the evil Darth Vader, or was it his moral choices that led him to the dark side? Or was he a pawn of the corrupt forces around him? Can he really be "redeemed" after so many murders? Does he mirror other tragic literary characters? Are we supposed to hate him or relate to him? Andrew at The Art of Storytelling manages to cover it all. 

KFC is known for fried chicken, and also for some really weird promotional stunts like chicken-themed prom corsages, nail polish, a Lifetime movie, and a dating simulator. And their food stunts are just as strange, like that time they offered a breadless sandwich made of cheese and bacon between two chicken breasts. They aren't stopping anytime soon. The latest publicity stunt from KFC is jelly beans.

In a partnership with Frankford Candy, KFC will be offering jelly beans in the flavors of fried chicken, sweet corn, and gravy. Will they really taste like gravy, or will they be sugar-based with a hint of gravy? I'm sure you can't wait to try them. Alas, KFC jelly beans will not be available until 2026, when they will drop in plenty of time before Easter. So why announce it now? Because when you hear about it, you may laugh and then think about chicken for dinner tonight. -via Mental Floss 

(Image credit: KFC/Frankford Candy) 

LEGO has unveiled their most expensive build kit ever. Some sites call it the first $1,000 LEGO kit, but it's officially only $999.99 in the US. However, there's no doubt that some will shell out that money to build the LEGO Death Star™ 75419. It has 9,023 pieces, and comes with 38 Star Wars minifigs. It has the most important settings from the original trilogy, like the landing port, the trash compactor (that compacts), Leia's interrogation chamber, the conference room, the Emperor's throne room, and the laser port. It even comes with an imperial shuttle vehicle.  

The set will be available October 4 for Christmas shopping. But wait before you hand over a grand. Be aware that this is no sphere, but a slice through the middle of the Death Star that more resembles a doll house than a space station. The Brothers Brick goes through the build process in their review, and finds both the process and the finished product underwhelming. Your mileage may vary, but it will cost you to find out.  -via Boing Boing 

More than 40,000 people spent this past weekend at the EY Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, for Ottawa Comiccon- and many of them were dressed to draw attention to their favorite characters from movies, comic books, TV, video games, and folklore. Leading up to spooky season, we have the Victorian werewolf above and his steampunk potential victim. Geeks Are Sexy was there, of course, to document the best cosplay of the con. I was gobsmacked at the costumes, and particularly the intricately -detailed props. Behold out this Swamp Trooper, or mudtrooper, on his speeder bike. 

And check out the axe this character from the game Monster Hunter World carries!  

But don't miss the cosplayer inhabiting the body of Han Solo on a full size tauntaun from The Empire Strikes Back. You can see a gallery of the best costumes from all parts of the galaxy and all different universes at Geeks Are Sexy, plus a video. 

Barney Curley was on track to become a priest when he was sidetracked by tuberculosis and had to find another way to make a living. He became a smuggler, a pub owner, a horse trainer, a band manager, a bookie, and dabbled in a few other activities, but kept being drawn back to his father's profession, which was gambling. 

What made Curley a hero in his native Ireland was a daring scheme in 1975 involving a carefully selected horse race, a network of associates, a talented jockey, an unremarkable horse, and a telephone booth. In a rather complex and secretive manipulation of odds, Curley managed to turn a £15,300 stake into £300,000⁠ in just a few minutes. That was, of course, after a long and convoluted plan was put into place. And it was all legal. 

Read how Barney Curley pulled that off and became a legend in Irish horse racing and a real hero in his later years at Damn Interesting. 

(Image credit: Jonathan Billinger) 

You might think your parents were cheap, but they'd prefer to be called thrifty. That may be all well and good for everyday people who have to live on a budget, but the rich are not like you and me. Once someone decides that acquiring money is their goal, they tend to not want to let any of it get away. Some very rich people in history turned this desire into an obsession, even to the detriment of their own health and well-being. Since money is power, it also worked to the detriment of their families, employees, tenants, and everyone around them. Weird History tells us about ten of these rich misers who wasted their lives hoarding money as if their lives depended on it. Money is no good if you don't use it in some way, and you can't take it with you when you die, so we can assume that these folks were mentally ill. Luckily, this obsession is an illness that most of us easily avoid by not being rich. 

In 2009, the book Star Wars, the Essential Atlas was released. It was full of maps, but the galaxy far, far away was much bigger than anything that could be printed in a book. Eventually, a map of the entire galaxy was posted as an online supplement to the atlas. The internet allows us to zoom in on the galaxy map containing hundreds of planets so that we can actually read their names. You have to wonder how many nights Lucas stayed up late thinking of planet names, but he probably had plenty of help from associates and hardcore fans. 

I found Exegol first, then eventually Alderaan, Coruscant, Kashyyyk, and Jakku, but I had to refer to the index to find Tatootine. I also found a planet named Klatooine. Each square on the grid is supposed to represent 5,000 light years, which is mind-blowing when you think of all the characters who traveled from planet to planet in the same vehicles they used to travel between locations on a planet. Still not nearly as mind-blowing as twins separated at birth running into each other far, far away from their home planets. -via Nag on the Lake 

Maru, the Japanese cat who loved boxes, has gone to the Rainbow Bridge. 

Maru was born in 2007, and soon became internet famous for his antics. He was a chunky cat with an inscrutable expression who tried to fit into any box, no matter how small. Here is our first posted video of Maru. People loved to watch Maru whatever he was doing, from discovering new toys to walking through the grass. Maru was certified by Guinness World Records for having the most views for an animal on YouTube in 2017. The video above is a compilation of Maru's earliest videos from 2008. Maru celebrated his 18th birthday in May of this year. He was diagnosed with lung cancer and died this week.   


You can see the videos we've posted of Maru in our archives. Our hearts go out to Maru's human, known only as mugumogu, and his fellow cats Hana and Miri. 

-via Metafilter