Cosmic clouds have a heartbeat? Apparently so! Just not like the heartbeat we humans have, though. Scientists have discovered a gamma-ray ‘heartbeat’ that is beating in rhythm with a black hole consuming a nearby star. The heartbeat, dubbed SS 433, is called a microquasar, as Nerdist details: 

The miniature black hole-star pair apparently powering the heartbeat—dubbed SS 433—is referred to as a microquasar. A microquasar arises when a stellar-mass black hole accretes (or sucks in) matter from a partner star. Subsequently, this accretion disk becomes so hot from friction that it begins to emit gamma rays.

“This material accumulates in an accretion disc before falling into the black hole, like water in the whirl above the drain of a bath tub,” Li said in a DESY press release that comes via Gizmodo. “However, a part of that matter does not fall down the drain but shoots out at high speed in two narrow jets in opposite directions above and below the rotating accretion disk.”

SS 433’s accretion disk does not lie in the orbital plane of the black hole and its partner star, however. The accretion disk sways, or precesses, spinning like a top on a slanted table. “As a consequence, the two jets spiral into the surrounding space, rather than just forming a straight line,” Torres added in the press release.

Image via Nerdist 

Yemen’s ancient city of Shibam, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has a big chance of collapse. The ancient city, also called the ‘Manhattan of the desert,’ faces collapse from disrepair. If continued to be left unrepaired, the city’s hundreds of sun-dried mud-brick towers that are almost seven stories high may be gone forever, as Barrons detailed: 

"The city looks like it was hit by a disaster -- without precedent," said Abdulwahab Jaber, a local official in the town, 480 kilometres (300 miles) east of the capital Sanaa.

Jaber said at least four towers have been completely destroyed and 15 others damaged in recent floods, which have killed scores of people across Yemen.

Hassan Aidid, head of the General Organisation for the Preservation of Historic Cities in Yemen, said that the roofs and the exterior of the mud towers had sustained the most damage.

"Residents of the city have been unable to restore them because of the war and the difficult situation in which they live," Aidid told AFP.

Yemen is gripped by a war between Iran-backed Huthi rebels -- who control the capital -- and a beleaguered government supported by a Saudi-led military coalition.

Shibam is controlled by the internationally-recognised government, but while it has largely been spared direct conflict, it has not escaped the effects of the war.

The fighting has almost completely halted public spending.

The city, with its densely-packed tower houses and alleyways often too narrow for cars, was put on the UNESCO heritage list in 1982 -- but in 2015 it was also added to the "List of World Heritage in Danger

Image via Barrons 

If my parents made me such a cool playhouse as a child - wait, scratch that. If someone builds me such an epic game-inspired playhouse or a small hut for my own shenanigans, I’ll probably admire them for the rest of time. Watch Once Upon A Workbench as he builds a playhouse inspired from the 2017 Nintendo Switch game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The playhouse looks exactly like the house you can buy in Hateno Village! 

Designers never stop making new innovations, huh! On the latest edition of appliances trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, here’s the Sauberair FLAT purifier, an air purifier that’s designed not only as  a functional home appliance, but also a great addition to one’s home decor. The purifier has a thickness of 3 ½ inches, which makes it possible to be disguised as wall decor, as Yanko Design details: 

By serving a more defined aesthetic purpose instead of just looking decor-friendly, Sauberair FLAT’s approach to tech is similar to the one found in Samsung’s TVs with their Ambient Modes, that displayed the pattern on the wall behind it, to cloak its appearance instead of looking like a massive black square when switched-off.

The sleek air-filters come in three variants. A ‘LITE’ version that requires you to manually switch it on, a ‘PLUS’ IoT-enabled version that uses automatic air-sensors to detect and filter air when it senses a quality-drop, and perhaps my favorite, the ‘BT PLUS’, which not only runs automatically, but even comes with integrated Bluetooth speaker, making it perhaps the only air purifier to be able to pump out fresh air as well as fresh beats! All variants rely on the same format, and fit into the same 3½ inch framework. Designed to be sleek enough to mount on the wall, the purifier’s intakes and exhausts are built around the sides, keeping the front-face intact for your art. The purifier hangs directly on your wall, although you can choose a standing version too. The art sits within a wooden frame (available in three colors – brown, white, and black) and can easily be removed to reveal the purifier beneath.

Image via Yanko Design 

Hey, the mom just wanted to help out her kids who wanted to bring their iPhones in the shower. If her kids’ iPhones get broken,that would be expensive. Facebook users however, called her innocent shower hack ‘x-rated’ for the other purposes the hack might also have, as Daily Mail details: 

Mum-of-three Kelly explained her sons had always taken their phones into the shower with them to play music so she decided to install a car phone holder onto the wall to make it easier. 

'I was forever telling them they were going to drop it and I wasn't getting them a new one. Until I came up with this fab idea,' Kelly wrote. 

But some were concerned the new addition could be used for less innocent activities.   

'Have you questioned why they need to take their phones in the shower?' one person asked.'

'Easy way to take nudes, thanks mum,' another added.

Kelly was disgusted with the online 'backlash' she received and said: 'I didn't put this up for backlash and not all kids do that. Geez.'

Image via Daily Mail 

Beauty is subjective, of course. You might look at Romanesco, a vegetable that looks like the prettier cousin of broccoli and cauliflower with its geometric patterns. Romanesco, also known as Roman cauliflower, has a flowering head that grows in a naturally occurring fractal, as 10Best details: 

For those of you who slept through that week of math class, fractals are geometric figures or curves that repeat themselves at progressively smaller and smaller scale, even as each piece maintains the same form as the whole. If you can’t quite wrap your rusty mind around that high school concept, just take a peek at the twisty, spiny protrusions of a Romanesco, which spin off into logarithmic Fibonacci spirals.

Romanesco’s season in the sun is quite brief. Because it's grown in a few key parts of the world – namely Italy and part of the eastern United States – a select, lucky few are treated to multiple Romanesco seasons.

And speaking of enjoyment, you might be wondering what it tastes like. Romanesco is described as possessing a somewhat earthy taste that meshes elegantly with other flavors like garlic, white wine and even chili peppers. Like broccoli, Romanesco can be eaten raw, but also holds up well under various cooking methods like stir frying or roasting in an oven. As the florets heat up, they can become surprisingly sweet, making Romanesco a perfect addition to curries and other spicy dishes.

Image via 10Best 

Spooky season might be over, but that doesn’t mean we can no longer engage in spooky activities! There’s no harm in playing a thriller or a horror game or two. Unless you easily get spooked, and the blazing eyes of the moving animatronics in Five Nights At Freddy’s keeps  you awake at night, then, maybe not all horror games. Maybe some games inspired by fictional creatures are right up your alley. If you’re looking for a good discussion of different horror games, if you’re looking for a new game to play, or if you’re just interested about spooky games in general, check out IGN’s Game Spook podcast here. 

Image via IGN

If you haven’t seen all the videos, articles, and tweets about the new free-to-play RPG called Genshin Impact, consider yourself saved. I’m kidding. If you like playing open world games, maybe this game is right up your alley. Here’s a warning though : this game has gacha (a system where the player needs the in-game currency to get a chance to roll for an in-game character). Gacha gets addictive the more time, money, and prayers you’ve given it just to get your favorite character. This YouTuber spent a whopping $2,000 to get the game’s new character named Klee. But that was just a start of a long discussion and commentary concerning Genshin Impact’s gacha system: 

Not long after spending those thousands of dollars, the Canadian YouTuber uploaded another video stating he regretted all of it and, adding salt to the wound, he now believed the character “sucks.”

The thumbnails, while provocative when lined up to one another, didn’t tell the whole story. You can’t get the entire tale from watching the videos now, either, because he’s deleted some of them following backlash from viewers. Speaking to Polygon over Discord, Tash says that the money had all come from his YouTube earnings from covering Genshin Impact. It was, in other words, a business expense that did not reflect on how deeply the gacha game cut into his wallet.

But this series of events sparked heated discourse over Genshin Impact, its business practices, and how exploitative a gacha game can be when there’s less than a 1% chance of winning any given powerful character. In follow-up videos, Tash claimed that viewers warned him that he may have a gambling addiction, though he denied to Polygon that this was the case. Instead, Tash says he felt the game was “scummy” from the start, though he failed to reconcile during our conversation why he chose to move forward with the game anyway.

Image via Polygon 

With the arrival of next-generation consoles such as the PS5, people will always seek features that can make gaming more accessible for all types of gamers. Sony has revealed their next gen console’s accessibility features, including old features from the PS4 such as  text to speech, inverting colors, and enabling custom button configurations. New features include one of the new console’s biggest innovations, speech to text, as NME details: 

Users will be able to use speech to conjure messages on screen with the DualSense’s built-in microphone, negating the need to use the controller to manually type.

For those who are visually impaired, a screen reader is said to provide “blind and low vision users with options to hear on-screen text”, whilst also ensuring that “deaf and hard of hearing users can type text messages, which will be spoken out loud to other party members”. Both of these functions will support a range of languages.

With the custom button configurations and closed caption features of the PS4 making a return, the PS5 will now also be able to support colour correction, which Sony has said will give owners the ability “to adjust colour, and in supported games, game presets will allow users to customize their common settings in advance.”

Image via NME 

Uh, surprise? Imagine the shock the owner of this Ford Mustang felt when he opened the hood of his car and found a new addition to his car’s interior: a massive Burmese python! Thankfully, no one was hurt from the surprise encounter, as officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission responded quickly to remove the 10-foot-long reptile, as KTLA details: 

Pythons are an invasive species in Florida and are found largely in south Florida and in the Everglades. Burmese pythons are native to Asia, from eastern India through Vietnam and southern China.

The Burmese python population in the state is believed to have been created in part by escaped or released pets.

FWC officials say the snakes are a threat to native wildlife as predators and also competition for food. A 2012 study found that the most severe decline in native species happened in the southernmost region of the Everglades National Park, where marsh rabbits, cottontail rabbits and foxes “effectively disappeared,” according to the USGS. The raccoon population fell by 99.3%, the opossum population by 98.9% and the bobcat population by 87.5%.

Image via KTLA

I’m sure the anonymous mason would have wanted his peers to find out about his masterpiece sooner than 900 years after, but hey, people found it! A portrait carved in the early 12th century at Santiago de Compostela has been discovered by a British art scholar who claims that it was never meant to be part of the cathedral’s decorations, as the Guardian details: 

“You find this in medieval buildings,” Dr Jennifer Alexander told the Observer. “They’re usually in dark corners where only another stonemason would find them. This one is in a bit of the building where you’d have to be a stonemason to be up there to see it. It’s tucked away in among a whole set of capitals [the top of a column] that are otherwise plain.

“It’s just such a charming connection between us and the person that carved it. It’s almost as if it was designed just for us to see it by those people working on the building. Of course, this stonemason probably had no idea that he’d have to wait so long to be spotted.”

Despite the supreme talent of such craftsmen, they were completely anonymous, their names lost to history. This is the closest the mason got to signing his work.

Image via the Guardian ‘

This massive sculpture of a hand carved from a tree stump was made using a chainsaw. The sculpture, called the Giant Hand of Vyrnwy, was made by Simon O’Rourke. O'Rourke was commissioned by the Natural Resource Wales after the tallest tree in Wales was damaged by a storm, as My Modern Met details: 

“I was really excited at the prospect of carving this giant and creating a memorial for such a well-known landmark,” O’Rourke explains. “I began researching the area and found the area of woodland that contained the tree was known as the Giants of Vyrnwy. This got me thinking and I decided on a giant hand, symbolizing the giants, and the tree’s last attempt to reach for the sky!”

To craft such an impressive piece required the right tools and a strong work ethic. “A scaffold was needed to make it safe to work on, and the terrain was such a difficult one that it took two days to erect the scaffold,” the artist recalls. “Six days of intense work followed using chainsaws and grinders. I needed to add two pieces for the thumb and little finger, as the tree wasn’t wide enough to form the whole hand.” Once complete, O’Rourke coated the sculpture in tung oil, which is a natural plant-based oil that’s safe for the environment.

Aside from being an incredible work of art, the process was a valuable reminder for O’Rourke. “I loved working on the hand sculpture, it reminded me just how small we are compared to some of the living organisms on this planet,” he says. “All in all, a humbling experience!”

Image via My Modern Met 

It seems that Apple wants to replace Google on their devices. Or something along those lines. Financial Times claims that the company has begun to ramp up its efforts to build a search engine for its devices. Google is reportedly using illegal tactics to protect its place in Apple devices, as Mashable details: 

The New York Times reported that the Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, with prosecutors saying that the search giant is using illegal tactics to protect its monopoly in search. The report also unveiled that Google pays Apple an estimated $8 to $12 billion per year to get its search engine built into Apple products.

The DoJ lawsuit might mean that the exclusive agreement between Google and Apple is going away, giving Apple a new incentive to focus on building its own search product. For a company that loves to control most aspects of its products, it sounds like a no-brainer, especially given Apple's vast resources. But copying a successful Google product isn't easy, as Apple learned from its initial Apple Maps launch. This especially goes for search, which Google has ruled for two decades with very few competitors making a dent in its market share.

Image via Mashable

Astronomers believe they’ve detected a free-floating planet roughly the mass of the Earth roaming through the gut of the Milky Way. Out of the billions of possible ‘rogue’ planets in the galaxy, only a few have been spotted. The discovery could help prove a long-standing theory, as Live Science details: 

According to the study authors, this little world could be the first real evidence that free-floating, Earth-sized planets may be some of the most common objects in the galaxy.

"The odds of detecting such a low-mass object are extremely low," lead study author Przemek Mroz, a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, told Live Science in an email. "Either we were very lucky, or such objects are very common in the Milky Way. They may be as common as stars."

Image via Live Science

The Gifu Prefecture in Japan is home to Shirakawa-go, a historic community recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The village is composed of Gassho-style homes, unique structures with thatched roofs that can withstand heavy snowfall. To protect the village, a biannual event called the Water Hose Festival is held to test the site’s ability to respond to fire, as Colossal details: 

The flammable and historic nature of the structures spurred caretakers to install massive sprinklers and hoses to prevent extensive damage. Each year in December and May, they test the lines and douse the homes, according to the video above that shows a similar process occurring at a site in Miyama. The systems are concealed inside structures that mimic the original architecture, and the new buildings open from the center allowing water to erupt into the air, a spectacular and almost comical process. 

Image via  Colossal