All posts tagged: clouds

Iran’s foreign minister back in Pakistan, but uncertainty clouds peace talks

Iran’s foreign minister back in Pakistan, but uncertainty clouds peace talks

Published by Sam Flores

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi returned to Islamabad on Sunday night, rejoining mediation efforts just hours after he left Pakistan and U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly scrapped a planned trip by American envoys to revive peace talks with Tehran. Iranian state media confirmed Araghchi’s return on Sunday, reporting he had arrived back in the Pakistani capital “to continue consultations on ending the war with the United States” after a brief stop in Oman. The minister had left Islamabad late Saturday, triggering confusion over whether talks would proceed, before reversing course and returning ahead of a planned trip to Moscow. His return came after Trump cited “infighting and confusion” among Iran’s leadership in scuppering a planned visit Saturday on by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to Pakistan for negotiations. “I just canceled the trip of my representatives going to Islamabad,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Saturday. “If they want to talk, all they have to do is call,” he said. Araghchi’s talks on Saturday in Islamabad were with …

Astronomers find thick water-ice clouds on Jupiter-like exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab

Astronomers find thick water-ice clouds on Jupiter-like exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab

Published by Jenni Sidey

A giant planet circling a nearby star has given astronomers a rare look at what a colder, more Jupiter-like world can be like, and the picture is already messier than many models expected. The planet, called Epsilon Indi Ab, sits far enough from its star to avoid the blistering heat seen on many giant exoplanets studied so far. That alone makes it unusual. Most worlds whose atmospheres have been examined in detail orbit much closer to their stars, which makes them easier to detect but also much hotter than Jupiter. Epsilon Indi Ab is different: cold, massive, and dim, with a temperature estimated at roughly 200 to 300 Kelvin, or about minus 70 to plus 20 degrees Celsius. That places it much closer to the kind of giant planet astronomers have long wanted to study. It is not a twin of Jupiter, but it is one of the nearest things yet to a true analogue. The new observations suggest that its atmosphere may contain thick, patchy water-ice clouds, a finding that helps explain why the …

Sam Levinson on Keeping Angus Cloud’s Character Alive in Euphoria

Sam Levinson on Keeping Angus Cloud’s Character Alive in Euphoria

Published by Daniella Wilson

After a four-year hiatus Euphoria is back, and quite different than where it left off. Most notably there’s the time jump, which finds the show’s troubled cast of characters no longer in high school but now pursuing their own paths in the real world. At the season three premiere in Los Angeles on Tuesday, creator Sam Levinson noted, “I liked the idea of sort of the wild west of adulthood and this frontier feeling where anything is possible. That was sort of the backdrop that interested me, is who had these characters become and what are the consequences to those actions?” As can be seen in the show’s trailers, the season picks up with Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) and Nate (Jacob Elordi) getting married, Lexi (Maude Apatow) and Maddy (Alexa Demie) working in Hollywood and Zendaya‘s Rue still trying to navigate her way out of some drug-related complications. Another major change comes following Angus Cloud‘s death in July 2023, and how to handle the storyline around his character Fezco. “I loved Angus very deeply and I …

They’re in clouds, electric sockets and even on toast. Why do humans see faces in everyday objects? | Psychology

They’re in clouds, electric sockets and even on toast. Why do humans see faces in everyday objects? | Psychology

Published by Sam Flores

Faces: we see them in clouds, electrical outlets and even a $28,000 toasted sandwich said to look like the Virgin Mary. Known as face pareidolia, seeing faces in inanimate objects or patterns of light and shadow is a common phenomenon. So primed are our brains to detect facial features that we even see faces in meaningless visual noise, especially when the images are symmetrical, new research suggests. In a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers showed participants everyday objects that resembled faces, as well as abstract images of visual noise that had no inherent meaning. The vast majority of participants – 90% – reported seeing a face in at least one of the noise images. Study co-author Prof Branka Spehar of the University of New South Wales said researchers wanted to investigate whether images more minimal than objects with face-like features, with “two round things which could be eyes … and a horizontal thing which could be a mouth”, would elicit similar visual responses. People saw faces more frequently in the images …

New discovery reinvents how lightning is formed

New discovery reinvents how lightning is formed

Published by Jenni Sidey

In a small lab at Penn State University, lightning may be happening on a scale smaller than a deck of cards. Victor Pasko, a professor of electrical engineering, and his team have shown that under certain conditions, everyday solid materials like acrylic, quartz, and bismuth germanate can host lightning-like electrical discharges. The discovery challenges long-standing ideas that lightning only forms in massive storm clouds and opens the door to studying extreme electrical phenomena in a tabletop setting. “Using a high-powered electron source, lightning can be triggered in everyday insulating materials,” Pasko explained. The study applies models traditionally used to study thunderstorms to much denser, compact materials. The result is what the researchers describe as “mini-lightning,” a rapid, intense electrical discharge inside solids. Electrons accelerated to relativistic speeds in a dielectric material can produce bursts of x rays, similar to a phenomenon found in thunderstorms. (CREDIT: APS) Shrinking a Storm Thunderstorms produce electric potentials of about 100 million volts across kilometers of cloud. In contrast, the Penn State team found that blocks of acrylic, quartz, and …

Sentiment improves among Japan’s big firms, but Iran war clouds outlook

Sentiment improves among Japan’s big firms, but Iran war clouds outlook

Published by Sam Flores

TOKYO, April 1 : Business sentiment among large Japanese manufacturers improved in the three months to March, according to a closely watched survey released on Wednesday, a sign that increasing economic uncertainty from the Middle East conflict has yet to hit morale. But firms expect conditions to worsen in the next three months, the survey showed, as soaring fuel costs and supply disruptions from the Iran war cloud the global outlook and threaten to squeeze margins. The headline index measuring big manufacturers’ business confidence stood at +17 in March, the BOJ’s “tankan” survey showed, up from +16 in December. That compared with a median market forecast for a reading of +16. An index gauging sentiment among large non-manufacturers stood at +36 in March, unchanged from December. It compared with a median market forecast for +33. The survey was conducted between February 26 and March 31. Markets have been rattled since the Iran war effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about a fifth of global oil and gas flows, driving up crude oil …

Is your startup’s check engine light on? Google Cloud’s VP explains what to do

Is your startup’s check engine light on? Google Cloud’s VP explains what to do

Published by skeptic

Startup founders are being pushed to move faster than ever, using AI while facing tighter funding, rising infrastructure costs, and more pressure to show real traction early. Cloud credits, access to GPUs, and foundation models have made it easier to get started, but those early infrastructure choices can have unforeseen consequences once startups move beyond free credits and into real cloud bills.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Darren Mowry, Google Cloud’s vice president of global startups who is right at the center of those tradeoffs. Watch as they discuss what Mowry’s seeing across the startup ecosystem, how Google Cloud is competing for AI startups, and what founders should be thinking about as they scale.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Source link

There’s Something Hiding Under Jupiter’s Clouds, Scientists Find

There’s Something Hiding Under Jupiter’s Clouds, Scientists Find

Published by José Betancourt

The enormous storms of impenetrable clouds covering Jupiter’s surface make it nearly impossible for us to get a glimpse of what lies below. Any spacecraft attempting to get a closer look would be vaporized, melted, or crushed if it attempted to sail through. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, for instance, went dark almost immediately when it intentionally plunged into Jupiter’s atmosphere back in 2003. While Jupiter — a giant ball of swirling gases and liquids — isn’t believed to have a true surface, scientists have been trying to get a better sense of its layers. Now, using data from NASA’s Juno and Galileo missions, a team of scientists at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Chicago have created a highly detailed computational model of Jupiter’s atmosphere. And as detailed in a new paper, published in The Planetary Science Journal last month, they found something surprising down there: Jupiter appears to contain one-and-a-half times as much oxygen as the Sun — far more than previous estimates, which suggested it was only a third as …

Researchers find Jupiter holds 1.5x more oxygen than the Sun

Researchers find Jupiter holds 1.5x more oxygen than the Sun

Published by Jenni Sidey

Thick, swirling clouds cover Jupiter from pole to pole. They hold water like Earth’s clouds, but at far greater density. For decades, those clouds have blocked a clear view of what lies beneath. Now, researchers from the University of Chicago and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory say they have built the most complete picture yet of Jupiter’s deep atmosphere. The new study, published in The Planetary Science Journal, combines advanced chemistry with realistic atmospheric motion. The work helps settle a long-running debate about how much oxygen Jupiter contains and offers new clues about how the solar system formed. “This is a long-standing debate in planetary studies,” said Jeehyun Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago and the study’s first author. “It’s a testament to how the latest generation of computational models can transform our understanding of other planets.” Early telescope users recorded what is now known as the Great Red Spot, a vast storm twice Earth’s size that still rages today. (CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill) A Planet Shaped by Storms Astronomers have watched Jupiter’s …

Scientists finally explain how lightning forms inside storm clouds

Scientists finally explain how lightning forms inside storm clouds

Published by Jenni Sidey

For as long as people have watched storms roll across the sky, lightning has inspired awe and fear. You can see the flash and hear the thunder, but the true beginning of a lightning bolt has remained hidden deep inside clouds. Scientists have known for decades how lightning travels once it forms, but the exact trigger inside a thundercloud stayed uncertain. A new study now offers the clearest explanation yet for how lightning truly begins. The research was led by Victor Pasko, a professor of electrical engineering in the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His team combined advanced mathematical modeling with real-world observations to explain a powerful chain reaction inside storm clouds. This reaction links strong electric fields, high-energy electrons, X-rays, and gamma rays into a single process that starts lightning. “Our findings provide the first precise, quantitative explanation for how lightning initiates in nature,” Pasko said. “It connects the dots between X-rays, electric fields and the physics of electron avalanches.” This work does more than solve a scientific puzzle. It …