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Artistic rendition of the exoplanet WASP-107b and its star, WASP-107. Some of the star's light streams through the exoplanet's extended gas layer. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, M. Kornmesser. ======================================================== The core mass of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b is much lower than what was thought necessary to build up the immense gas envelope surrounding giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers at Université de Montréal have found. This intriguing discovery by Ph.D. student Caroline Piaulet of UdeM's Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) suggests that gas-giant planets form a lot more easily than previously believed. Piaulet is part of the groundbreaking research...

Engineers are racing to fix a failed piece of equipment on NASA’s future deep-space crew capsule Orion ahead of its first flight to space. It may require months of work to replace and fix. Right now, engineers at NASA and Orion’s primary contractor, Lockheed Martin, are trying to figure out the best way to fix the component and how much time the repairs are going to take. In early November, engineers at Lockheed Martin working on Orion noticed that a power component inside the vehicle had failed, according to an internal email and an internal PowerPoint presentation seen by The...

If stupidity were a virtue this guy would become the first man to be declared a saint while still alive.

The autumn equinox is upon us. On Saturday (Sept. 22), the sun will shine directly on the Earth's equator, autumn will officially begin in the northern hemisphere, and the length of day and night will be nearly equal across the globe ... or, "across the disc," if you're a flat-Earther. For flat-Earthers — the vocal online community of folks who believe the world is actually flat and science is a conspiracy — the equinox can be tricky to explain. Without axial tilt, the phenomenon in which the rotating, spherical Earth angles its poles toward or away from the sun, how...

The idea that the U.S. is going to expand its might beyond the globe is a problem for people who believe we live on a disc. President Donald Trump wants a Space Force to expand U.S. military power beyond the globe. That’s a problem for flat earthers who incorrectly believe the world is a flat disc floating through space. On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence announced plans to launch “Space Force,” a sixth branch of the U.S. military by 2020. The proposed branch would be reserved specifically for outer space operations. Military experts say the Air Force currently carries out...

Google has been on a roll with new features for its Maps service this week, from matching users to restaurants that they might like to adding battery percentage to location sharing. Rather than settle for two though, Google decided to end the week with one last surprise (which might irritate some flat-earthers). As of today, Google Maps will now change its perspective from a flat view of the planet to 3D Globe Mode (as Google calls it), giving you a more accurate view of Earth. On the previous flat map, Greenland looked to be about the same size as Africa,...

There's a growing number of people who seem to think the world is, in fact, flat. But it gets better. They also insist that Australia is actually just one big hoax. According to a viral Facebook rant, the entire country (and presumably the 24 million people that live there) is completely FAKE. The idea resurfaced at a recent gathering of so-called Flat Earthers in Birmingham recently where over 200 people came together to confirm to each other that the Earth is nothing more than a giant pancake. The origin of the "fake Australia" post started on Reddit back in 2017...

Link only due to copyright issues: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/i-watched-an-entire-flat-earth-convention-for-my-research-heres-what-i-learned/

More than 200 flat-Earth enthusiasts descended on West Midlands, England, this past weekend to "engage freely in deep and meaningful discussions," according to the Flat Earth Convention UK. The Earth's glorious globular-ness was proved more than 2,000 years ago by the ancient Greeks, but there's a small subset of people who think the planet is a disk despite enjoying the downward pull of gravity that could only result from living on a sphere. At this conference, they were presenting their scientific evidence for such a disk. One of the more interesting pieces of evidence came from speaker Darren Nesbit, who...

One of the most viewed videos on this channel is a debate about the Flat Earth Conspiracy - and the surprising popularity of the video has prompted a examination of the proposed theory.

The rocketeer launched himself about 1,875 feet into the air on Saturday, March 24, aboard his Liberty One rocket before he landed in the Mojave Desert. Hughes sustained some bruises and had a minor back injury from the hard landing. His steam-powered rocket was also damaged but he came down in one piece. It was also finally mission accomplished after two failed attempts. "I'm tired of people saying I chickened out and didn't build a rocket," he said. I manned up and did it."

Rejecting the entire scientific community and more than 2,000 years of facts and research, people from all of the world will gather in August 2018 to discuss the theory that the Earth is flat. Created by Robbie Davidson, the Flat Earth International Conference Canada will take place in Edmonton, Alberta, this summer. In the fall, Davidson will host a second conference in Denver, Colorado. Davidson, who produces documentaries on YouTube exposing what he believes are false scientific claims, started the conference last year. The inaugural gathering was held in Raleigh, North Carolina. He told Newsweek that about 600 people attended...

The former Jets and Giants quarterback wants to know whether you think the Earth is roundA short time after Geno Smith retweeted this Saturday from televangelist Joel Osteen -- "Your time is too valuable, your destiny is too great, your assignment too important to get baited into battles that don't matter." -- the former Jets and Giants quarterback posed this question: Geno ✔ @GenoSmith3 I been studying this whole flat earth vs globe thing... and I think I may be with Kyrie on this... b4 you judge do some HW but what do you guys think? 9:23 AM - Feb...

Yesterday's successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket also sent an unusual payload into space: a cherry-red Tesla Roadster "manned" by a dummy named Starman and equipped with cameras that provided gorgeous views of Earth against the backdrop of space. But flat-Earthers aren't buying it. "People who believe that the Earth is a globe because 'they saw a car in space on the Internet' must be the new incarnation of 'It's true, I saw it on TV!' It's a poor argument," tweeted The Flat Earth Society, an organization dedicated to spreading the (incorrect) notion that the Earth is not round....

Mad Mike Hughes CANCELLATION of Rocket Launch Statement. Flat Earth Update 02/04/2018 | "Actually, it was the actuator" - Michael J Hughes. Mike explains why the rocket launch failed. Has Mike just run out of steam? "I'm a 61 year old man. I'm tired" Mike quoted as saying upon exiting

When last we heard of “Mad Mike” Hughes, the 61-year-old limo driver and stuntman who planned on launching a $20,000 steam-fueled rocket with “RESEARCH FLAT EARTH” painted on the side some 1,800 feet into the air at 500 miles per hour, the gosh darn government had intervened to tell him he couldn’t conduct any such launch on public lands. But Hughes has not been deterred, and in a number of posts on his Facebook page he claims to have a real launch planned for February 3rd. This one will be a vertical rather than horizontal launch, which Hughes believes will...

What explains all of these flat Earth believer stories which keep popping up in the media? Bear with me here, because this may be a bit on the “meta” side as the kids like to say these days. I’m not talking about the phenomenon itself, where people supposedly claim that the planet is shaped like a pancake and the government, no doubt in league with Big Globe, is trying to bury the truth for some nefarious reason. The question I was pondering this week is why the media keeps paying so much attention to it. And I’ve got a theory...

In the stew of false information and conspiracy theories that swirls online, perhaps no idea is as flummoxing as the belief in a flat Earth. Flat-Earthers believe that the Earth is a flat disc ringed by an ice wall. All those elegant models of a round Earth that perfectly explain seasons, eclipses, sunrises and sunsets? Lies and cover-ups, they say. Pictures of the round Earth from space? Government conspiracies. The fact that you can see ships disappearing hull-first over the curve of the horizon with your own eyes? Well, flat-Earthers claim to see something different. It's been a big publicity...

Kyrie Irving appears to seriously believe the world is flat. Or if he doesn’t, he takes some sort of twisted joy in pretending that he does. And now he has Nike on board, spreading ignorance to impressionable youth. First, Nike gave him a flat-Earth cameo in this Christmas day commercial promoting his new kicks. Now there’s this monstrosity on display at Boston’s “Sneakeasy” sneaker event. That is a Kyrie 4 hovering over some sort of Nike-sanctioned display purportedly explaining Irving’s nonsense theory. Feel free to reach your own interpretation. Surely, Nike sees this as all fun and games and...

Support for the Flat Earth movement has been exploding in popularity, with millions believing NASA is trying to dupe us about the shape of our planet. Google Trends data reveals searches for “flat earth” in the past two years have tripled, with a 90 percent surge in interest in the cranky conspiracy theory. High-profile celebrity endorsements have helped grow a community of people who reject “globehead” thinking and insist that the world is in fact flat. Those coming out about their belief include NBA player Kyrie Irving, who said in a podcast that he believed the Earth is not the...