The closest black hole that you can see it even with “naked eye” has been discovered

Well, of course, you cannot see a black hole – but the newly discovered one has two stars orbiting it, and you can see these companion stars even with the naked eye from Earth. The triple system is named HR 6819. Named QV Tel Ab, the inner component of the system is the closest black hole to Earth.

The system appears as a variable star that is dimly visible to the naked eye.

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Mister Fred Rogers reading some of Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden’s space poems

The American television personality, musician, puppeteer, writer, and producer “Mister” Fred Rogers (Fred McFeely Rogers, March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003) reads some of Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden’s space poems at his TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”, which ran from 1968 to 2001.

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Will humans go extinct? For all the existential threats, we’ll likely be here for a very long time

Will our species go extinct? The short answer is yes. The fossil record shows everything goes extinct, eventually. Almost all species that ever lived, over 99.9%, are extinct.

Some left descendants. Most – plesiosaurs, trilobites, Brontosaurus – didn’t. That’s also true of other human species. Neanderthals, Denisovans, H. erectus all vanished, leaving just H. sapiens. Humans are inevitably heading for extinction. The question isn’t whether we go extinct, but when.

Nick Longrich, University of Bath

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The Science Behind the Things That Kill Us (And How to Conquer Them)

Whether it’s gorging on junk food, smoking cigarettes, or binge-watching Netflix in lieu of exercise, bad habits are just part of the human experience. But what is it about negative behaviors, products, and lifestyle choices that make them so attractive? And why are they so addicting?

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The Sun is less active than sibling stars, study shows – here’s what that could mean

All stars emit varying amounts of light over time – and the Sun is no exception. Such changes in starlight can help us understand how habitable any planets around other stars are – a very active star may bombard its planets with harmful radiation. Now a new study, published in Science, shows that the Sun is significantly less active than other, similar stars.

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Here’s how NASA sends probes and rovers to Mars

Robert Frost, a NASA employee, has shut down a conspiracy theorist on the popular question-answer site Quora. He perfectly explained how NASA sends probes and rovers to Mars. I wanted to share it here because his answer is so informative and enlightening.

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Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell’s MIT speech

Last week was Apollo 13’s 50th anniversary – the most “successful failure” in the history of space exploration. On April 27, 2016, former NASA astronaut and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell made a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and told the story of the legendary Apollo 13 flight. Here’s the full video of that speech below.

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