It’s been a while since we’ve had a new, big God of War game, and it looks the new one has been worth the wait. God of War is the first new entry on PS4. There’s no number attached to it, but it stars the same Kratos we know from the older games. Kratos has moved to Midgard (Scandinavia), leaving behind his former life as he starts a new family and learns to control his anger. For most of the game, Kratos will be accompanied by his son, Atreus, who will help him take out enemies and learn from him along the way. Unlike earlier iterations, the new God of War will play out from the behind-the-back perspective for the entirety of the game, with no cuts for pre-rendered scenes or anything else. God of War features four difficulty settings, and will allow you to customise the HUD to turn off unnecessary icons. Take a look at the reviews so far below. As always, these scores are out of ten except where noted. The VG247 review – One of the best games of the generation Game Informer – 9.8 Polygon – 10 Destructoid – 10 Metro – 9 GamesRadar+ – 5/5 IGN – 10 EGM – 9.5 Gamesbeat – 90/100 Gamespot – 9 God of War is out April 20 on PS4.

Rainbow Six Siege is celebrating a major milestone. Ubisoft has announced that the game has surpassed 30 million registered players across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The game is currently in its Year 3 of content, with the major update Chimera and subsequent patch kicking off a new round of game updates in March. Ubisoft is also celebrating its success with the game in esports, saying a record 321,000 concurrent viewers tuned into the 2018 Six Invitational. "Over the last three years we have endeavored to create a solid community built on transparency as we grow and evolve the ever-expanding world of Rainbow Six Siege," said Alexandre Remy, Rainbow Six Siege's brand director. "We are so tremendously honored to achieve this milestone, and we will continue to do everything we can to earn each and every new person that decides to play." Ubisoft is making some major commitments to Siege players, too, promising to bring a total 100 operators to the game in the coming years. It has also revealed a new plan to tackle "toxicity" in the game. The company is now tracking negative player behaviors, like racial or homophobic slurs, and punishing offending players with temporary or even permanent bans. There are also plans to better track and punish team-killing in the future, and more efforts to "encourage positive behavior." Rainbow Six Siege has developed a huge following, as evidenced by the huge number of registered players, and Ubisoft is showing a deep commitment is keeping the game alive years after its release. Check out our feature on how Rainbow Six Siege went from rocky start to massive success by GameSpot's Oscar Dayus. And, whether you're one of Siege's millions of devoted fans or really more of an Overwatch person, you'll want to check out the debut episode of Versus in the video above, where Oscar fiercely defends Siege against Overwatch as the greatest multiplayer shooter.206980

Nintendo Switch owners looking for something to play now have a lot of new options to choose from. A load of new titles are now available on the Eshop. This week sees 18 games arrive on the digital storefront, along with a pair of demos and a new Eshop sale that's underway for a limited time. Headlining this week's releases is the acclaimed survival game Don't Starve. The title puts players in the role of Wilson, a gentlemanly scientist trapped in the wilderness by a demon. Players will have to guide Wilson around the hostile world, gathering resources and food in order to stave off starvation. The Switch version also includes the Reign of Giants and Shipwrecked DLC expansions. In addition to Don't Starve, this week sees the release of the charming adventure game Burly Men at Sea. The title follows the story of three big, bearded fisherman, who "step away from the ordinary to seek adventure." The game features multiple branching pathways depending on your choices which will take the fishermen through "a series of encounters with creatures from folklore." Other new Switch releases this week include the latest classic Neo Geo game, Gururin; the voxel adventure game Eternal Edge; the humorous brawler Super Daryl Deluxe; the tactical RPG Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs; and the Bomberman-like game Bombslinger. You can find the full list of this week's new Switch games below. On top of this week's new releases, a number of games are currently on sale in the Eshop. For a limited time, Switch owners can pick up Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+, Oxenfree, Xeodrifter, and more at a nice discount. This Week's New Switch Eshop Releases April 9 The Bunker April 10 Masters of Anima Super Daryl Deluxe April 11 Bombslinger Deep Ones April 12 ACA Neo Geo: Gururin Asdivine Hearts Breakforcist Battle Burly Men at Sea Don't Starve Drone Fight Eternal Edge Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs Rogue Aces Skies of Fury DX Streets of Red: Devil's Dare Deluxe Squareboy vs. Bullies: Arena Edition (Demo) Twin Robots: Ultimate Edition (Demo) Zotrix: Solar Division April 13 Pirates: All Aboard

Bethesda Softworks may be subtly teasing an upcoming Doom 2 announcement at E3 2018 this June, judging by recent comments from a studio executive. Since 1993, Doom has immersed player’s in the violent world of first-person shooters, with the original game being held as one of the pioneering titles in the genre. After several decades of games with varying quality, as well as a maligned live-action Doom movie, the franchise hit the reset button in 2016 with the imaginatively titled Doom. With hopes of a sequel since then, it looks like Bethesda is finally ready to unleash a whole new wave of horror onto PC and consoles. Speaking to Dualshockers, Bethesda Softworks’ Senior Vice President of Marketing Pete Hines discussed what the company will be bringing to E3 2018. One comment, in particular, stuck out from the rest, especially for Doom fans: “I couldn’t give you any guesses as to what we’re going to announce and when those games will be out. But I will say, we have a lot of new stuff to talk about at E3. Whether or not folks realize it, this is the Hell on Earth time for us with E3. We are in the midst of so much planning and work for all of that content but I’m really excited.” For anyone who doesn’t know the significance of Hines’ comments, the focus should be on the “Hell on Earth.” mention. Back in the ’90s, DOOM II: Hell On Earth was the title of the second game, which took series protagonist Doomguy back to Earth, only to discover billions had been killed by the attacking forces of evil. Released on the MS-DOS, Hell on Earth refined everything that made the first game so great and went on to be the third-best-selling computer game between 1993 and 1999. Here’s hoping that if Bethesda is referring to a new game, it can do just as well as – if not better – than the first Hell on Earth. The 2016 Doom reboot wiped the slate clean and went onto critical and commercial success for the series, so news of a sequel shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Given the overwhelming success of the reboot, the timing for an E3 announcement could easily match with the news if Bethesda made a sequel a priority. At the moment, they don’t have anything big releasing this year, but that could change at E3. Remember, Bethesda announced both Wolfenstein II and The Evil Within 2 at E3 2017. And they released both games by the end of the year, so players know it can be done for Doom 2 as well. That being said, the second half of 2018 is looking a little stuffed with big names like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, so is there really room for Doom 2 alongside all the rest? Perhaps, but there’s no denying that Doom has a strong, undying fan base that goes back more than two decades. While Hines’ words could just be a big coincidence, there’s still enough evidence to support a Doom sequel releasing in the near future, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens this summer.

Microsoft promises that it will shift focus towards first-party games as the Xbox One tries to play catch up to its competitors: PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. While consoles can make money sharing big titles like Fallout, Grand Theft Auto, and Tomb Raider, the lifeblood of any gaming company relies heavily on its first-party titles. Sadly, while the Xbox brand certainly has Forza, Halo, and State of Decay in its catalog, the lack of substantial releases as well as content in recent games such as Sea of Thieves still places them behind Sony and Nintendo winners like The Last of Us and Zelda. Thankfully, it sounds like the tide may finally be turning. Xbox boss Phil Spencer responded to an IGN editor’s query on Twitter regarding Microsoft’s first-party titles – specifically games that can rival Sony releases such as the upcoming God of War – by saying that it took time for them to build the proper hardware (e.g. Xbox One X) and it’s going to take time for them to deliver top-quality first-party titles, but they are working towards doing just that. Take a look: Ryan McCaffrey @DMC_Ryan 13 Apr Xbox fans are DYING to celebrate a masterpiece-level exclusive like God of War. Thing is, though, it took Sony 10 years to get to this point where their 1st party is firing on all cylinders. This work started in PS3 era. Xbox can/might get there but it's going to take a long time Phil Spencer @XboxP3 Our hardware took time, our service/platform/BC took time and continuing to grow our 1P will take time. A high quality and diverse 1P (yes, with SP) built the right way is our goal and what our customers deserve. We can have similar results to what we've seen in hw and platform. 1:54 PM - Apr 13, 2018 Sunset Overdrive, Super Lucky’s Tale, and Cuphead represent some of the companies newer first-party entries, but there’s no denying that Xbox offerings are trailing behind the rest. With a reliance on multiplayer mayhem thanks to Sea of Thieves and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, at least Spencer’s words promise that the renewed focus on first-party games will also include a bigger emphasis on single player. The issue of first-party gaming has once again reared its head with God of War. Sony has managed to reboot the ailing franchise and send the gaming world into overdrive with the latest adventure. Looking ahead, Insomniac’s Spider-Man and The Last of Us Part 2 round out two more major releases, meaning that Sony will most likely take the crown this year. Elsewhere, Nintendo still has some major unannounced games arriving in 2018, thus leaving Microsoft out in the cold with its upcoming releases – at least based on what’s been revealed. It obviously takes time to bring these games together, but some fans are seeing Spencer’s words as a case of too little, too late. It has been a rocky road for Microsoft since the Xbox One’s lackluster reveal back in 2013; however, the gaming giant has managed to claw its way back thanks in large part to Spencer’s leadership. They’ve once again gained credibility with the release of the Xbox One X, establishment of Xbox Play Anywhere, and the recently launched Xbox Backwards Compatibility program (which extends to the original Xbox). It all sounds very promising and might enough to get players behind Microsoft’s promised future. Spencer has been promising big, new things for this year’s E3 after all. So, hopefully, they can bring a lineup of exclusive games to the table that will pique players’ interest.

There are at least two European nations who remember that when it gets cold in the winter, there is one country they call to provide the natural gas they need for heating. One of them is Germany, which realizing that any strike on Syria would further jeopardize its relationship with the Kremlin, said that it will not join any military strikes against Syria in response to the alleged chemical gas attack on an opposition enclave which Russia claims was a "white helmet" false flag, but all too diplomatically supports Western efforts to show the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, Chancellor Angela Merkel said. "Germany will not take part in possible - there have not been any decisions yet, I want to stress that - military action," Merkel said according to Reuters after meeting Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen in Berlin. "But we support everything that is being done to show that the use of chemical weapons is not acceptable," she added. Of course, Merkel could have simply said "we are happy to do anything except whatever puts us on Putin's black list: the rest of you can do that." Meanwhile in Dublin, Germany's new Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Germany expects to be consulted before any Western allies conduct an attack on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces as the allies must be united on the matter. Earlier, Merkel spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron about the suspected gas attack and expressed her concern that the international community's ability to ban chemical weapons was eroding, her spokesman said. Norbert Roettgen, chairman of the German parliamentary foreign affairs committee and an ally of Merkel's, said: "Shamefully, there is still no policy from the EU - or even individual EU states - for the Middle (East) countries. "If it came to military strikes with the participation of France and Britain, that is still not a policy." Amusingly, instead of focusing on the nature of the schism between Germany and its allies, Europe's most powerful nation deflect to the lack of a coherent European policy on the matter: an easy excuse in a continent in which there is virtually no cohesion on any matter: Roettgen urged the European Union to develop a policy for the Middle East as a whole, adding: "Germany should work together with others for a Middle East peace conference. We have various diplomatic options to not let the topic rest." He called for a "step-by-step approach", which could start with humanitarian access in Syria. "The situation is so burdened with multiple conflicts that one can only proceed gradually." Asked about such a conference, Merkel told reporters: "We know a lot of things are linked in the Middle East, no question, but now we must urgently deal with a situation where there is a lot of evidence that the Syrian regime again used chemical weapons." Another option floated by Germany would be to use what oil-importing leverage Europe has over Iran to pressure Syria. Roettgen said Europe could talk to Iran in connection with its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which Trump has criticised as "the worst deal ever negotiated". Iran needed to understand that its economic prospects would be constrained if it "pursues a permanent bellicose expansion of power," he said, adding Turkey should be told "there cannot be a warrant for warfare in Syria." In other words, Europe would stop importing Iranian oil (for Euros) if Tehran refused to betray its Syrian friends. "But there is no country - neither the U.S. nor a European country - that is taking the initiative. That's the shameful thing about Western politics," Roettgen said. * * * The other country, which moments after Germany said would not participate any Syrian strikes, said it took would refuse to participate in any military action against Russia Assad, was Italy: ITALY WILL NOT TAKE PART IN ANY MILITARY ACTION IN SYRIA However, just like Germany... ITALY WOULD PROVIDE LOGISTICAL SUPPORT TO ALLIES -PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE Which means that the two nations that will lead the attack on Syria when it inevitable comes - whether with or without the US - will be the UK, whose subs are already on location off the coast of Syria, and most likely France.

Last week’s shooting at YouTube’s California headquarters is certain to add momentum to the push for more gun control. Even before the shooting, YouTube was working to undermine gun rights by banning videos promoting firearms, including videos teaching safe gun usage. As is usually the case, this latest shooting took place in a state with restrictive gun laws. In fact, California’s gun laws may be the nation’s most onerous. California not only registers all firearm purchases, but California residents must obtain permission from their local police before they can legally concealed carry guns. Among the things a Californian must do to obtain permission to legally concealed carry a gun is show “good cause” why the government should allow him to concealed carry. California’s Mulford Act prohibits lawful gun owners from openly carrying legal firearms. This law was passed in the late 1960s and signed into law by then-Governor Ronald Reagan. The impetus for the law was the Black Panthers’ armed patrols aimed at protecting the residents of African-American neighborhoods from police brutality. The Mulford Act is hardly the only example of a gun control law motivated at least in part by racial animus. As Tiffany Ware of the Brown Girls Project, an initiative that teaches African-American women responsible firearms ownership and usage, says, “Throughout much of American history gun control was a method for keeping blacks and Hispanics, 'in their place.'” One of the earliest examples of gun control was laws prohibiting slaves from owning guns. After slavery was ended, Jim Crow laws denied African-Americans respect for their Second Amendment rights. While the modern gun control movement is not explicitly racist, it is still likely that new gun control laws will disproportionately harm African-Americans and other minorities. Concerns about this are increased by cases like that of 32-year-old Philando Castile. A police officer who had stopped Castile’s car shot Castile after Castile told the officer he had a firearm in his car. Those behind the new gun control push ignore how gun control has been used against African-Americans in the past and how new gun control laws will disproportionately harm racial minorities. This may seem ironic since many gun control supporters are progressives or cultural Marxists who specialize in finding racism in every aspect of American politics and culture. However, considering that may other policies favored by progressives — such as minimum wage laws that limit job opportunities and occupational licensing that makes it impossible for many to start their own businesses — negatively impact minorities and lower-income Americans, perhaps progressive support for gun control is not so ironic. What is indisputably ironic is that many of those working to give the Trump Administration new authority to ban guns are the same people who regularly and vigorously oppose President Trump. These so-called “never Trumpers” no doubt cheered when President Trump endorsed taking an individual’s guns away without due process. These “never-Trumpers” also cheered when Attorney General Jeff Sessions banned bump stocks. A bump stock increases the speed at which a rifle fires. By banning bump stocks, Sessions is taking an action President Obama’s anti-gun rights Attorney General Eric Holder said he refused to take without explicit congressional authorization. History, including American history, shows that the right to keep and bear arms can be especially valuable to racial and other minorities. Therefore, progressives who are sincerely concerned about protecting minorities from oppressive government should join libertarians and constitutional conservatives in defending the Second Amendment.

It’s the first time chemists have manipulated two atoms to create a compound GETTING TOGETHER For the first time, researchers have picked out two specific atoms and smashed them into each other (as suggested in this artist's conception) to form a single molecule. For the first time, researchers have played matchmaker between two specific atoms, joining them together to form a molecule. Typically, chemists make molecules by mixing up many constituent atoms, some of which stick to each other to form the desired compounds. In the new, supercontrolled chemical reaction, researchers trapped a single sodium atom in one optical tweezer — a device that snares small particles in a laser beam — and a cesium atom in another tweezer. Both atoms were cooled to less than one ten-thousandth of a degree above absolute zero. The researchers moved these tweezers closer together until the laser beams overlapped, allowing the sodium and cesium atoms to collide. A third laser shot a pulse of light at the atoms to provide a boost of energy that helped the atoms bond into a sodium cesium molecule, researchers report online April 12 in Science. Fashioning individual molecules atom by atom could allow researchers to study atomic collisions in the most controlled environment possible, as well as to observe how molecules behave in isolation. Researchers could also use optical tweezers to construct molecules with specific quantum properties, says study coauthor Kang-Kuen Ni, a chemist at Harvard University. These designer molecules could store qubits of data in future quantum computers, she says

CONSTANT QUANTIFED A team of physicists, including Weicheng Zhong of the University of California, Berkeley (pictured) has performed the most precise measurement yet of the fine-structure constant, which governs the strength of electromagnetic interactions. An ultraprecise new measurement has given some weird particle physics theories a black eye. By measuring one of nature’s most fundamental constants more precisely than before, scientists have tested proposed tweaks to the standard model, the theory governing fundamental particles. The result, reported April 13 in Science, casts doubt on hypothetical particles called dark photons and other potential oddities. The quantity in question is the fine-structure constant, a number that governs the strength of electromagnetic interactions (SN: 11/12/16, p. 24), such as those that confine electrons within atoms. Previously, the most precise measurement of the constant was indirect, relying on a measurement of the electron’s magnetic properties and using complex theoretical calculations to infer the constant’s value. Now, physicist Holger Müller of the University of California, Berkeley and colleagues have measured the constant more directly. The team fired lasers at cesium atoms to create a quantum superposition — a bizarre state in which each atom is in two places at once — and watched how the atoms interfered with themselves as they recombined. This interference reveals how fast the atom moved when hit by the laser, which scientists then used to calculate the fine-structure constant. The answer: The fine-structure constant is approximately 1/137.035999046. If the new measurement disagreed with the earlier one, that might be an indication of new particles. But the two agree reasonably well, which confirms that the electron is probably not composed of smaller particles and disfavors the possibility of dark photons. These hypothetical particles are similar to run-of-the-mill photons, or particles of light, but unlike normal photons would have mass and interact very weakly with known particles. But while close, the two measurements didn’t match perfectly, a result which leaves some wiggle room for physicists to think up other types of strange new particles.

Science fiction writer Douglas Adams said it best — “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.” Getting from one point to another takes a very, very long time, especially with our present technology. Right now, the closest neighboring star system is roughly 4.24 light years away. With our current spacecraft, it would take more than 81,000 years to reach it! Unfortunately, NASA doesn’t currently have a solution for shortening that journey in any meaningful way, but the space agency might just have a way to power an interstellar mission. What is the Kilopower Project, and what could it mean for the future of spaceflight? Power Problems and Spacecraft Design Powering a spacecraft once you get a few million miles from the nearest electrical outlet can be tricky — fuel runs out, batteries discharge, and with no backup, you're left drifting in the cold emptiness of space, without power, oxygen, or heat. Even solar power, which has been used to charge up probes as far away as Jupiter and Saturn, gets less and less useful the farther you get from the sun. Nuclear power has been touted as an option, especially for long space voyages, but it has its problems — most glaringly the fact that we've mostly run out of the specific type of plutonium that powers traditional nuclear reactors in space. Still, NASA has been researching safe, efficient ways to utilize nuclear power for decades. Older spacecraft, like the two Voyager probes, use a form of thermoelectric generator that converts heat from decaying plutonium. Even the Curiosity Rover, which is roaming the surface of Mars, is equipped with a thermoelectric generator, as well as some solar panels to supplement its power needs. Curiosity doesn't need much power, though — it only uses about 200 watts. Modern spacecraft ferrying earthly explorers will require much more. That’s where the Kilopower Project comes in. Introducing the Kilopower Project A reliable power source is essential to survival in space — or on any currently uninhabited planet. The Kilopower project utilizes nuclear fission, with small portable reactors that can handle any rough or unfriendly environment. Prototypes are currently being tested, and if they are successful, they will be able to handle everything from the cold vacuum of space to the dust storms of Mars. Rather than using plutonium, like previous spacecraft reactors, the Kilopower devices run on uranium. Each unit is designed to create about 10 kilowatts (10,000 watts) of power, and if more is needed, multiple Kilopower reactors can be daisy-chained together. For comparison, the average home in the United States uses roughly 10,700-kilowatt hours a year, roughly equivalent to using one Kilopower reactor for about 42 days. Power needs for human habitats on other planets would be higher, due to the need to produce things like oxygen, heat and water, but many Kilopower reactors could efficiently meet the needs of a human colony on the Moon or Mars. This is a much more efficient energy source than any solar panels, especially on planets like Mars, where dust storms can last for months at a time, completely blotting out the sun. It’s not a perfect solution — there are risks. The most consequential are present during launch, ascent, and when the vehicle enters orbit. That said, those are the riskiest points for any space vehicle launch, no matter its power source. The biggest concerns with getting these nuclear-powered reactors into orbit are what would happen if the vehicle exploded in transit — would there be radioactive material raining down on the populace? It has already happened once. A satellite carrying the SNAP-9A plutonium system failed during launch in 1964. The satellite burned up during re-entry, releasing plutonium that hung in the air, approximately 120,000 feet above sea level, for many months afterward. NASA isn't unaware of these risks. When the Curiosity probe was launched in 2011, they estimated the cost of a nuclear decontamination if the plutonium that powers the probe were to fall to earth during launch. Cleaning farmland would cost more than $250 million per square mile, while cleaning up a spill in urban areas would cost upwards of $1.5 billion per square mile. The Future of Space Travel So, what does this new portable nuclear reactor mean for the future of space travel? If the prototypes work, it could become the power source that supports habitats on the Moon, Mars, and other bodies in our solar system. It could also fuel long-range spacecraft, both manned and unmanned, to help us explore our solar system and make our way further out into the galaxy. Even if they don’t fuel the spacecraft themselves, these reactors are designed to be stored in transit and assembled once they reach their location. One of the best parts of the Kilopower design is its intended purpose of using local resources once it reaches its destination. Initially, it will be equipped with a dense core of Uranium-235 about the size of a roll of paper towels. This is estimated to provide power for roughly 10 years. Because this element is relatively abundant on the inner planets and may also exist in the asteroid belt, the Kilopower reactor could be resupplied, allowing a colony to fully self-sustain. This way, once the initial set up is complete, we don't have to worry about sending additional supplies or fuel from Earth. Right now, traveling even to our closest interstellar neighbor is out of reach, but as technology continues to develop it's entirely possible that Kilopower reactors will fuel our first interstellar trips. We just have to keep reaching for the stars, and it won't be long before we're actually among them.

NASA will likely launch its first astronauts into deep space since the Apollo program on a less powerful version of its Space Launch System rocket than originally planned. Although it has not been officially announced, in recent weeks mission planners at the space agency have begun designing "Exploration Mission 2" to be launched on the Block 1 version of the SLS rocket, which has the capability to lift 70 tons to low Earth orbit. Acting agency administrator Robert Lightfoot confirmed during a Congressional hearing on Thursday that NASA is seriously considering launching humans to the Moon on the Block 1 SLS. "We'll change the mission profile if we fly humans and we use the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), because we can't do what we could do if we have the Exploration Upper Stage," Lightfoot said. The key difference between the original configuration of the SLS rocket—which NASA has spent more than $10 billion developing since 2011—and its successor is the upper stage that sits atop the booster. Under current plans, the weaker upper stage, known as the ICPS, was to fly only once—on the maiden flight of the SLS rocket in 2020. Then, NASA was to switch to a new, much more powerful second stage that would increase the SLS rocket's overall performance by about 50 percent. Now, NASA will probably fly the SLS rocket in its Block 1 configuration at least two or even three times before it debuts the more powerful variant of the booster. By doing so, it may get humans into deep space faster. The current launch date of 2023 for the deep space Exploration Mission 2 could move forward, a NASA spokeswoman confirmed. "The earliest possible launch date is being assessed, with a formal decision expected in the coming months," she added. However, this decision also suggests the agency remains far from developing the powerful Exploration Upper Stage, which NASA says it needs to carry out an ambitious program of lunar exploration. This may well delay meaningful exploration in and near the Moon into the mid- and late-2020s, at the earliest. Mobile launcher Until a couple of weeks ago, NASA didn't have the option of flying crew on an ICPS upper stage. Thanks to Congress, however, the agency can now consider flying the Block 1 version of the SLS rocket multiple times. Last month, as part of the fiscal year 2018 budget deal, Congress appropriated $350 million for a new piece of hardware—a mobile launch tower to be built at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA already has one of these massive towers, which supports the testing and servicing of the SLS rocket, as well as moving it to the launchpad and providing a platform from which it will launch. After the first flight of the SLS rocket, NASA had planned to spend 33 months rebuilding the tower to handle the larger, more powerful version of the SLS with the Exploration Upper Stage. With the additional Congressional funding, it can now start building that second tower and continue to use the existing mobile launch tower for Block 1 SLS launches. Lightfoot said Thursday that the agency was only beginning to process how best to use this Congressional largesse, which had not been sought in the White House budget. "You're going to have to give us a little time—it was just a couple of weeks ago that we found out we were getting that—to be able to understand the flow," Lightfoot said. Upper-stage delays NASA's consideration of flying the first crewed mission into deep space on an SLS rocket with the ICPS upper-stage buttresses the notion that the space agency is struggling with development of the Exploration Upper Stage. Sources have told Ars that the cost of this program has grown beyond expectations. Originally, this 18-meter-tall stage was to be powered by four RL-10 rocket engines. However, in a solicitation late last year, NASA indicated it was looking for lower-cost engines to power the stage. NASA has issued other solicitations to industry, too, that suggest it is concerned about the cost of the upper stage. During an interview this week, former space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale, who is a member of NASA's Advisory Council, said it will probably take four or five years for development and construction of the Exploration Upper Stage from this point onward. “You're building an entirely new rocket,” Hale said. "It's not just a tank with some engines bolted onto it. It has to be aerodynamic. It has to be able to take the shock and vibration of launch. It's got to be started pretty much from scratch. So yeah, it's complicated." Trade-offs Launching at least one crewed mission or more with the basic, Block 1 rocket buys NASA time for development of the new upper stage, without the embarrassment of long gaps between flights of the SLS rocket. But the decision does not come without its challenges, either. No astronauts have ever flown on a rocket with the ICPS, so it would have to undergo a time-consuming and costly process of "human-rating" the hardware. With the ICPS, the flight profile for Exploration Mission 2 would still include a crewed checkout of Orion’s systems in high-Earth orbit, a lunar flyby, and free return trajectory back to Earth. However, flying this mission on a Block 1 SLS would preclude a co-manifested payload that had been planned. NASA had not yet specified this payload for the first crewed flight, but it could have had a mass of up to nine tons. Without the Exploration Upper Stage, NASA will not be able to fly, in a single flight, crew members and pieces of a deep space gateway it hopes to build near the Moon in the 2020s. Additionally, by continuing to fly the SLS rocket in its Block 1 configuration, NASA opens itself up to the criticism that its own heavy-lift rocket is not that much more powerful than commercial options available now or within a few years. Both SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket and Blue Origin's New Glenn have a lift capability of about 50 tons to low Earth orbit. However, they cost only a tiny fraction of what the SLS will require to build and fly.

We’ve all heard of sweating bullets, but this is something else entirely. A medical case report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal from Italian researchers last year details a 21-year-old patient who began mysteriously sweating blood from her face and palms. The condition had been ongoing for about three years, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports, when she decided to check herself into a hospital — needless to say, the doctors were perplexed. Bloody, But Fine Strangely, the young woman was otherwise totally fine. She wasn’t sick, hadn’t been injured recently, and had no history of medical problems. She just happened to have blood coming out of her skin. Though the patient was understandably distressed about her condition, doctors were able to treat her with propranolol, a heart and blood pressure medication, which helped to reduce the bleeding, though it didn’t stop it entirely. Though the condition sounds almost biblical, researchers from the University of Florence say it’s actually a known phenomenon. In a paper published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Roberto Maglie and Marzia Caproni, say that the patient seems to have been experiencing hematohidrosis, a mysterious condition characterized by bwith sweat. Though rare, a 1996 review (titled “Blood, Sweat and Fear”) turned up 76 cases on the condition in the medical literature. A separate review by Canadian medical historian historian Jacalyn Duffin found 18 reports published just since 2000, the CBC says. Hematohidrosis isn’t entirely understood, but a 2013 paper suggests that it’s related to stress. Tangles of blood vessels surround the sweat glands in our faces, and during periods of intense stress, hormones cause these vessels to constrict. When the stress passes, they open up again, and in some cases, the process could happen quickly enough to cause some of the vessels to burst. The leaking blood mixes with sweat and oozes out through our pores. Interestingly, both the 2013 paper, which documented a 12-year-old girl from India who was sweating blood, and this latest report don’t mention stress as a corollary to the condition. Other proposed causes include vicarious menstruation, excessive exertion, psychogenic factors and systemic diseases, lood commingling with sweat. Though rare, a 1996 review (titled “Blood, Sweat and Fear”) turned up 76 cases on the condition in the medical literature. A separate review by Canadian medical historian historian Jacalyn Duffin found 18 reports published just since 2000, the CBC says. Hematohidrosis isn’t entirely understood, but a 2013 paper suggests that it’s related to stress. Tangles of blood vessels surround the sweat glands in our faces, and during periods of intense stress, hormones cause these vessels to constrict. When the stress passes, they open up again, and in some cases, the process could happen quickly enough to cause some of the vessels to burst. The leaking blood mixes with sweat and oozes out through our pores. Interestingly, both the 2013 paper, which documented a 12-year-old girl from India who was sweating blood, and this latest report don’t mention stress as a corollary to the condition. Other proposed causes include vicarious menstruation, excessive exertion, psychogenic factors and systemic diseases, though there’s really no consensus at the moment. Reports of bloody sweat go back to the time of Aristotle, according to medical historian Duffin, though it can often be difficult to separate mentions of religious tales like the crucifixion of Christ from actual case reports. It’s most commonly reported in people experiencing extraordinarily stressful events, such as men condemned to execution, a soldier before battle and a passenger aboard a storm-tossed ship. Though sweating blood in and of itself sounds stressful enough, if you’re staring down imminent death it may be the least of your worries.

Our solar system only has eight planets (sorry, Pluto), but countless others orbit other stars in the Milky Way. So far, astronomers have not been able to scrutinize them in great detail—including searching them for signs of life—but that is about to change. The hunt for alien worlds is set to take another leap forward Monday with the launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The satellite, known as TESS, will search for new planets around nearby bright stars, with a goal of finding planets similar to Earth in size and makeup. It is set to launch Monday night at 6:32 p.m. Eastern from Kennedy Space Center. TESS begins its mission as its predecessor, the vaunted Kepler Space Telescope, is running out of fuel and nearing its end. Kepler revolutionized the search for planets around stars other than our own, finding some 5,000 planets and planet candidates. Thanks to Kepler, astronomers now believe that most stars come with planets. But if Kepler was a census mission, TESS will serve as an in-depth demographer, taking the measure of specific star and planet types. It is looking specifically for planets around nearby, bright stars, which other telescopes on the ground or in space can study more readily. “A lot of the stars that Kepler found exoplanets around were extremely faint and really far away, which made them really difficult to follow up on from the ground. So TESS came about to be even more useful to the broader astronomical community,” says Natalia Guerrero, deputy manager of the TESS Objects of Interest project. Much like Kepler, TESS will find exoplanets by looking for telltale blips in a star’s brightness that indicate a planet passing in front of it. Astronomers can use these transits to tell a planet’s size. To figure out a planet’s mass, astronomers need to take its spectrum, but TESS won’t be able to do this. Follow-up measurements are therefore key to its overall mission. “By doing those measurements, we hope to actually identify all the worlds we’ve been dreaming about,” MIT astronomer Sara Seager, TESS’ deputy director of science, said in a news conference about the launch. That includes “hot super-Earths that may have liquid lava lakes. Or water worlds that may be 50 percent or more by mass water, like scaled-up versions of Jupiter’s icy moons. Or rocky worlds, of all different kinds and even maybe ones that have thin atmospheres reminiscent of Earth’s.” Using its four cameras, the refrigerator-sized TESS will build a map of 85 percent of the sky, a field of vision 350 times that of Kepler’s. TESS’s search will include 200,000 of the brightest nearby stars, and it is expected to find some 20,000 new worlds during its two-year main mission. Its observational sweet spot is for red dwarf stars, which are about half the size of our sun. Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the solar system, is one such star and it has at least one exoplanet. While looking for exoplanets, TESS will also see other unrelated phenomena, like possible supernovae or other fast-changing objects. Guerrero says the TESS team is working on ways to share those findings quickly and publicly. Unlike many major science missions, TESS won’t have any proprietary data; everything it collects will stream into a data archive that any scientist can use right away. “When TESS was being built, one of its taglines was ‘it’s the people’s telescope,’ ” Guerrero says. “We’re trying really hard to stay true to that goal.” Once Guerrero’s Objects of Interest team figures out which stars to follow up, other observatories will look at them in more detail. For instance, the James Webb Space Telescope, now scheduled for launch in 2020, will scrutinize some of TESS’s planets to look for signs of life. Determining where to point JWST is one of the main goals for TESS, said MIT astronomer George Ricker, TESS principal investigator. Monday’s launch marks the first time NASA has used the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a science mission. After the launch, TESS will refine its orbit for two months before it starts collecting data. It will sail around Earth every 13.7 days, in a highly elliptical orbit that maximizes the amount of sky it can see and equals half the orbital period of the moon. The moon’s gravity will stabilize TESS without needing extra fuel, which could prolong the mission’s life. Kepler changed the field of exoplanets, and TESS could usher in another sea change, Guerrero says. “The headlines have changed over the past couple of years, from ‘Exoplanet Found,’ to ‘Multiple Exoplanets Found.’ We think it’s going to change again now, to ‘New Thing About Exoplanets Has Been Found,’ ” she says.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS giant Optus has become embroiled in a racism row after a store on Sydney's affluent lower north shore advertised for "Anglo Saxon" retail assistants. An ad posted on Seek on Thursday stated the Neutral Bay outlet was looking for a casual retail consultant and noted it would prefer "candidates who are Anglo Saxon". The ad, taken down on Friday morning, has been widely condemned by unions, politicians and social media users. "Optus proudly supports diversity and employs staff representing more than 70 nationalities," Optus human resources vice president Vaughan Paul said in a statement on Friday. "This error is completely unacceptable and a clear breach of our advertising standards and commitment to equal opportunity employment." Mr Paul said Optus would be looking to take "disciplinary action" against those involved. The union representing Optus workers slammed the "blatantly racist" ad and called for an investigation into the company's hiring policies. "How did this racist requirement end up in an ad at all?" CEPU national secretary Greg Rayner said in a statement. "This is extremely concerning and we have to get to the bottom of how this happened." State Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi posted the ad on Facebook noting "Optus Neutral Bay prefers Anglo Saxon applicants".

BLACK SMOKER A new international agreement places a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from international cargo ships. A new, hard-fought international deal will set limits on greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping for the first time. Delegates to the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization, or IMO, met for a week in London to hash out the details of the plan. On April 13, more than 170 states agreed to the new road map, which aims to reduce shipping emissions at least 50 percent below 2008 levels by 2050. Currently, international shipping emissions make up about 2 to 3 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. That’s roughly on par with Germany’s annual emissions. And a 2014 IMO report calculated that international shipping emissions were on track to increase 50 to 250 percent by 2050. These emissions were not included in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the international pact to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (SN: 1/9/16, p. 6). Every year, tens of thousands of cargo ships crisscross the ocean, hauling everything from cars to coffee. Such ships largely rely on heavy fuel oil, which both contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and is a public health hazard, containing as much as 1,800 times the sulfur of diesel fuel, says James Corbett, an expert in global shipping at the University of Delaware in Newark. The new agreement focuses on the carbon emissions. It lays out an initial strategy to reduce emissions by encouraging shipping companies to make their ship designs more energy efficient, use alternative fuels or energy sources and streamline operations so that they consume less energy. The deal is an important milestone, Corbett says. “Clearly the IMO is moving into the 21st century,” he says. “The main issue that the IMO will continue to have to wrestle with is timing.” The organization, he adds, will need to walk a line between allowing the shipping industry time to adopt and prove new ship technologies — but not allow the industry to delay too long to meet environmental targets. Shipping industry groups have hailed the new agreement as a landmark deal. Peter Hinchliffe of the International Chamber of Shipping in London called the deal “a Paris Agreement for shipping” in a statement released April 13. Climate activists, who had hoped for more stringent regulations, had a more muted reaction. Veronica Frank, a Greenpeace International political adviser, told Reuters that the plan was “far from perfect, but the direction is now clear — a phaseout of carbon emissions.” The plan also falls short of some nations’ hopes. Island nations threatened by sea level rise, such as the Marshall Islands in the western Pacific, have for years urged the IMO to push for a 100 percent emissions reduction by 2050 as the only strategy consistent with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels. Other nations, including members of the European Union, had proposed at least 70 percent reduction in emissions by 2050. “What is on the table is the bare minimum, and it’s not good enough,” Netherlands delegate to the IMO meeting Bas Eickhout told reporters on April 10, after the draft plan was revealed. After the April 13 vote, the EU issued a statement calling the 50 percent reduction “a good starting point.”

A federal court in Virginia has granted Megaupload's request to place the cases filed by the RIAA and MPAA on hold for another six months. The lawsuits have been frozen for years now, as the parties are waiting for progress in the criminal case against the defunct file-sharing service. Well over six years have passed since Megaupload was shutdown, but there is still little progress in the criminal proceedings against its founders. The United States wants New Zealand to extradite the men but have thus far failed to achieve that goal. Dotcom and his former colleagues are using all legal means to prevent this eventuality and a final conclusion has yet to be reached. While all parties await the outcome, the criminal case in the United States remains pending. The same goes for the lawsuits filed by the MPAA and RIAA in 2014. Since the civil cases may influence the criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously managed to put these cases on hold, and last week another extension was granted. Previous extensions didn’t always go this easy. Last year there were concerns that the long delays could result in the destruction of evidence, as some of Megaupload’s hard drives were starting to fail. However, after the parties agreed on a solution to back-up and restore the files, this is no longer an issue. “With the preservation order in place, and there being no other objection, Defendant Megaupload hereby moves the Court to enter the attached proposed order, continuing the stay in this case for an additional six months,” Megaupload’s legal team recently informed the court. Without any objections from the MPAA and RIAA, U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady swiftly granted Megaupload’s request to stay both lawsuits until October this year. While the US Government hopes to have Dotcom in custody by that time, the entrepreneur has different plans. Following a win at the Human Rights Tribunal in New Zealand, he hopes to put the criminal case behind him soon. If that indeed happens, the MPAA and RIAA might have their turn.

TRL Snacket King Shawn Mendes has been tirelessly working away at his third studio album, and while we still don't have any official details about it, the Canadian heartthrob was kind enough to spill some secrets in a recent interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1. During the discussion, Shawn revealed some of the biggest influences for the project and opened up about his relationships with artists like Camilla Cabello, John Mayer and Ed Sheeran. He also reflected on this current stage of his career and how he wants to continue to grow as an artist. Since it's a very long chat, I took the liberty of listening to the entire thing and pulled out the most relevant bits of information on your behalf (thank me later). You can also watch the entire conversation unfold in the video below. SHAWN WORKED ON THE ALBUM WITH A SMALL, TIGHT-KNIT CREW To be more specific, Teddy Geiger, Scott Harris, Geoff Warburton and George Seara. KINGS OF LEON WAS THE ULTIMATE SONIC INSPIRATION According to Shawn, he wanted it to go in a more rock direction and have a "stadium type of feel." The first song that he wrote for it was the single “In My Blood.” THERE'S SOME ORGAN ON THE ALBUM Shawn refers to it as the "glue" of the record." Apparently, he used the same organ as Coldplay's Chris Martin. THE ALBUM WAS RECORDED AT STUDIOS IN OREGON AND JAMAICA All work and no play, am I right?! HE CONSTANTLY REFERS TO A SPECIAL LADY IN HIS LIFE AS "QUEEN" In his own words, "It just depends on who your queen is. But that’s the thing and sometimes I'm about to say her name, then I go like we'd be writing a song and the lyric pops in my head that is all of a sudden if I say this lyric, this is very clear who this song is about."

Mercury may be in retrograde, but that's not going to hinder Dua Lipa from hitting us with... well, hits. Her Calvin Harris-produced single "One Kiss" is finally out and not only was it 100% worth the wait, it lives up to all the hype after days of teasing. "One kiss is all it takes/ Falling in love with me/ Possibilities/ I look like all you need," Dua repeats in the chorus. Her delivery comes out like a long exhale while an intoxicating arrangement of succulent beats rise and fall in the background. It's the '90s house music banger that we didn't know we needed; I'm not sure what Calvin is up to, but my body is ready for some more Funk Wav Bounces if he's got another volume in the vault. Apparently, the producer has been a fan of Dua's since “Be The One” came out and they hit it off once they met IRL. "I just want to make dance music again, it seemed like a good opportunity to make a house-sounding record with her," he said in an interview with Zane Low. Bump this bop in all its delicious glory below.

SERENADE ME Male Costa’s hummingbirds will twist their tail sideways to direct the sound of fluttering tail feathers toward a female when diving past her in courtship. There’s more subtlety than humans have realized in dropping out of the sky so fast your tail feathers sing. Male Costa’s hummingbirds in western North America are masters of the tail-screaming courtship plunge. Acoustic cameras recorded these repeated stunts and revealed that, as the male whooshes down, he twists half of his tail sideways, says ornithologist Christopher J. Clark of the University of California, Riverside. That twist aims the prolonged feather whistle toward the female he’s swooping by, Clark and his colleague Emily Mistick of the University of British Colombia in Vancouver report April 12 in Current Biology. The recordings, which use microphone arrays to localize a sound on video, shed light on another quirk of Calypte costae’s performance. While male hummingbirds of other species swoop over the female during courtship dives, the shimmery purple-faced Costa’s zoom by on the side. Extra distance in the side flyby minimizes the Doppler effect on the feather sound. That effect may be familiar from the EEEEEEooooo of an ambulance’s siren that sounds high-pitched as the vehicle approaches and then seems to lower after it passes. Masking the Doppler effect could make it harder for a female to pick out the fastest divers, although researchers haven’t shown how these females perceive speed or whether it matters much to them. The diving sounds, made from the flutter of the outermost tail feather, also seem similar to the males’ vocalizations, Clark says. So he wonders if females find something in both especially seductive.

LOOK CLOSER NASA’s next exoplanet hunting telescope, TESS (shown in this artist’s illustration), will seek out worlds orbiting the nearest and brightest stars. NASA is stepping up its search for planets outside our solar system. Its next exoplanet hunting telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is due to launch from Cape Canaveral on the evening of April 16. Following the Kepler space telescope’s discovery of more than 5,000 possible exoplanets since 2009, TESS will continue the galactic census — flagging more planetary candidates for further study. Astronomers expect TESS to find about 20,000 planets in its first two years in operation, focusing on nearby, bright stars that will be easy for other telescopes to investigate later. About 500 of those expected exoplanets would be less than twice the size of Earth — and therefore may be good places to look for life. NASA’s next exoplanet hunting telescope, TESS SMALL BUT MIGHTY NASA’s next exoplanet hunting telescope, TESS, is only 1.5 meters tall (shown here with engineers). Its size is partly due to the fact that it was designed to launch on NASA’s small Taurus rocket, but will instead launch on a larger SpaceX Falcon 9 on April 16. The TESS mission is “a whole new opening for exoplanet studies,” MIT astronomer Sara Seager, TESS’ deputy science director, said during a news conference describing the upcoming launch. TESS will be the first NASA science mission launched on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Once in orbit, the spacecraft will trace an unusual, elliptical path between Earth and the moon that will enable it to observe at least 85 percent of the sky — 350 times as much sky as Kepler saw. Most of the planets found by Kepler orbit stars 1,000 light-years away or farther. TESS will focus on 200,000 stars that are a few hundred light-years away at most, and shine between 30 to 100 times brighter on average than Kepler’s. The brighter the star, the easier it is to determine its planet’s characteristics, such as its mass and whether it has an atmosphere, Seager says. “Photons are our currency — the more, the better,” she says. That follow-up will help TESS avoid some of Kepler’s pitfalls. Because Kepler’s stars were so far and so dim, some of its planet candidates were confirmed as actual planets only by statistics rather than by other telescopes. And not all those confirmations may stick. A recent paper posted at arXiv.org showed that Kepler 452b, an Earth-sized planet that orbits a sunlike star at the same distance Earth orbits the sun, may be a mirage Many of TESS’ planets won’t face the same uncertainty. But the way TESS will search for exoplanets is the same as Kepler: The satellite will watch stars for signs of dimming, which can indicate that a planet is transiting, or crossing in front of, the star. Measuring how much starlight is blocked can tell astronomers the size of the planet. Once TESS finds a planet, astronomers will need more information to understand its qualities, such as whether it’s rocky or gassy. For that, other telescopes will follow up. Ground-based telescopes will measure the gravitational tug of a planet on its host star to learn the planet’s density, which is a clue to its composition. Astronomers plan to measure masses for at least 50 TESS planets that are smaller than Neptune in the hopes that many of them will have rocky, and therefore potentially habitable, surfaces. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, now scheduled to launch in 2020, will then check some of those planets for signs of life. “This is one of the major questions that TESS is intended to answer: Where will we be pointing Webb?” said the mission’s principal investigator, MIT astronomer George Ricker, at the press conference. Webb will peer at the starlight filtering through planetary atmospheres to try to detect molecules that could be produced by something living on the surface. It will take a few months for TESS to swing into its regular orbit before it begins collecting data. At that point, it will be able to use the moon’s gravity to stabilize itself for decades in orbit without using extra fuel. The mission is set to last two years, but could continue taking data almost indefinitely. “TESS is not going to be limited by any expendable or other aspects,” Ricker said. “It will be basically limited by how long NASA has the patience to fund the mission.”

New fossils reveal the structure of the ancient insects’ light-scattering scales ANCIENT COLOR Scientists found microscopic texturing on the scales of moths from the Jurassic Period that resembles what’s seen today in Micropterix aruncella (shown). Those structures give the insects their iridescent colors. Tiny light-scattering structures that give today’s butterflies and moths their brilliant hues date back to the days of the dinosaurs. Fossilized mothlike insects from the Jurassic Period bear textured scales on their forewings that could display iridescent colors, researchers report April 11 in Science Advances. The fossils are the earliest known examples of insects displaying structural color — that is, color produced by light bending around microscopic structures, rather than light being absorbed and reflected as with a pigment or a dye. Structural color is common in bird feathers and butterfly wings today, but finding such features in the fossil record can be tricky. Scientists know very little about what the scales of ancient butterflies and moths looked like because that level of detail is preserved in very few fossils, says Conrad Labandeira, a paleoentomologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who wasn’t part of the work. PATTERN PLAY The microscopic structural details on the wing of an ancient moth from the early Jurassic (left) can scatter light in a way that would have made the wings appear colorful, new research shows. Similar patterns are found on the wings of Micropterix aruncella (right), a moth that lives today. For the study, paleobiologist Bo Wang and his colleagues spent three years examining more than 500 fossilized specimens from now-extinct lepidopterans. Most weren’t preserved well enough to still have scale remnants, says Wang, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing. But six Jurassic-era fossils did, the oldest of which was nearly 200 million years old. The researchers examined the microscale wing structures of these specimens under a scanning electron microscope, then used a computer program to figure out what color the wings would have appeared. The ancient moths’ wings have small scales covered by larger scales, which bear a series of parallel V-shaped ridges that create a herringbone pattern. Similar features are seen in today’s Micropterigidae, a primitive family of moths, Wang says. The size and arrangement of the structures would have allowed the moth wings to scatter light to display a range of iridescent colors, he and his team concluded from the computer analyses. Modern moth and butterfly wings have even finer-grain structures than what’s seen in these fossil insects, says Pete Vukusic, a biophysicist at the University of Exeter in England who wasn’t part of the study. But wings are so fragile that it’s possible the ancient lepidopterans also had smaller scale structures that weren’t preserved in the fossil record, he says. WINGED THING The wing of a fossilized mothlike insect from the early Jurassic Period (top) bears some similarity to the wings seen on Micropterix aruncella, a modern species of moth.

With US President Donald Trump meeting with officials to discuss the US response to the alleged Syrian government chemical attack in Douma, one source tells CNBC that there are eight possible targets that the US is eyeing. According to the report, the US might be considering using some "nice and new" missiles on eight targets which may include two Syrian airfields, a research center and a chemical weapons facility. Though it's still unclear how the US will proceed, Trump is expected to meet with Defense Secretary James Mattis and General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday to decide the next move. "We're looking very, very seriously, very closely at that whole situation and we'll see what happens folks," Trump told a group of reporters Thursday The report follows Trump's Wednesday warning to Russia and Syria to "get ready" for a missile strike. As the US brainstorms it's next steps, British Prime Minister Theresa May and her top-level advisers agreed Thursday "on the need to take action to alleviate humanitarian distress and to deter the further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime." "Following a discussion in which every member present made a contribution, cabinet agreed it was vital that the use of chemical weapons did not go unchallenged," a statement released from Downing Street added. The UK ordered the British Royal Navy to move its submarines within missile range of Syria on Wednesday.

Hello , welcome aboard!

Hello , welcome aboard!

Although it is only speculation at this point, there are a lot of rumors flying around about the upcoming PlayStation 5 and the next generation of video game consoles. If one new rumor proves true, though, the specs for the PS5 are highly impressive. The rumor comes via a site called SemiAccurate, which has some credibility, thanks to previously correct leaked information about the Nintendo Switch and the PS4. The site claims that Sony will continue working with AMD products, with the PS5 using AMD Navi for graphics and the AMC Zen for its CPU. It also confirmed rumors that Sony has already released devkits to some developers, which could mean that the new console will arrive sooner than anyone ever imagined. Although 2019 is the release year most might consider, the site does not rule out a 2018 release based on just how many devkits are now out there in the wild. The PS5 could also have “VR Goodies” offered as part of its features, meaning that it would work seamlessly with PlayStation VR. According to PlayStation Universe, SemiAccurate is not a site that just makes things up and puts it on the Internet. The site has leaked information about consoles before and that information proved true later on. It also seems to further confirm the previous rumors that surfaced about a month ago about devkits going out. Those rumors came from Marcus Sellars, another reliable source of leaked information. Sony also recently applied for a patent for backwards technology compatibility, which would likely be for a new console, rather than for an existing one. However, Sony still consistently states that gamers should not expect an announcement about the PS5 anytime soon. So what gives? Gaming consoles are hot commodities right now, with the current generation being the fastest selling in history. Both the Xbox One and the PS4 released in 2013, with Sony following that up with PlayStation VR and the upgraded PS4 Pro in 2016. The company also recently dropped the price of PlayStation VR to $300: was this in anticipation of getting more VR units out the door and ready for the next generation of PS consoles? With these new leak specs and more buzz out there about the PS5, only one question remains: are video gamers and developers ready for the next generation of consoles? Consoles are not cheap and the current generation has just recently found its niche. Also, video game developers still seem slowed down in creating games for this generation of machines, with many games getting delayed, while others get released with multiple glitches and bugs. Sure, the PS5 might arrive soon, but does anyone really want it to?