2025-06-25 19:00:47
In recent years, a curious hypothetical particle called the axion, invented to address challenging problems with the strong nuclear force, has emerged as a leading candidate to explain dark matter. Although the potential for axions to explain dark matter has been around for decades, cosmologists have only recently begun to seriously search for them. Not only might they be able to resolve some issues with older hypotheses about dark matter, but they also offer a dizzying array of promising avenues for finding them.
But before digging into what the axion could be and why it’s so useful, we have to explore why the vast majority of physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists accept the evidence that dark matter exists and that it’s some new kind of particle. While it’s easy to dismiss the dark matter hypothesis as some sort of modern-day epicycle, the reality is much more complex (to be fair to epicycles, it was an excellent idea that fit the data extremely well for many centuries).
The short version is that nothing in the Universe adds up.
2025-06-25 04:17:11
Back in 2022, we reported on the Australian National Maritime Museum's (ANMM) announcement that its researchers had confirmed that a shipwreck proposed as a likely candidate in 2018 is indeed the remains of the HMS Endeavour. However, the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP)—the museum's research partner in the project—promptly released a statement calling the announcement premature. RIMAP insisted that more evidence was needed.
The final report is now available, and both RIMAP and ANMM say they have confirmed that the wreck is indeed the Endeavour. (You can read the full report here.) “The timbers are British timbers. The size of all the timber scantlings are almost identical to Endeavour, and I’m talking within millimeters—not inches, but millimeters," Kieran Hosty, an ANMM archaeologist who co-wrote the report, told The Independent. “The stem scarf is identical, absolutely identical. This stem scarf is also a very unique feature—we’ve gone through a whole bunch of 18th-century ships' plans, and we can’t find anything else like it.”
As previously reported, Endeavour Captain James Cook's first voyage (1768–1771) was, in part, a mission to observe and record the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. The observation was part of a combined global effort to determine the distance of the Earth from the Sun. Those observations proved less conclusive than had been hoped, but during the rest of the voyage, Cook was able to map the coastland of New Zealand before sailing west to the southeastern coast of Australia—the first record of Europeans on the continent's Eastern coastline.
2025-06-25 04:07:34
Philips is upping the prices of its popular and already-expensive Hue series of smart lighting products starting July 1. The company is blaming tariffs for the changes and has suggested that prices could go up even higher after the initial bump in July.
Philips started informing its customers via an email marketing message earlier this month that prices would go up and urged people to buy Hue lighting sooner rather than later.
In a statement to the Hueblog website, Philips’ parent company, Signify, explained why people in the US will pay more for Hue products soon:
2025-06-25 03:56:58
Artificial intelligence companies don't need permission from authors to train their large language models (LLMs) on legally acquired books, US District Judge William Alsup ruled Monday.
The first-of-its-kind ruling that condones AI training as fair use will likely be viewed as a big win for AI companies, but it also notably put on notice all the AI companies that expect the same reasoning will apply to training on pirated copies of books—a question that remains unsettled.
In the specific case that Alsup is weighing—which pits book authors against Anthropic—Alsup found that "the purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train LLMs to generate new text was quintessentially transformative" and "necessary" to build world-class AI models.
2025-06-25 03:45:25
Last fall, Microsoft announced that individuals who wanted to keep using Windows 10 past its official end-of-support date could do so by opting into the company's Extended Security Update (ESU) program at a cost of $30 per PC. That payment would get users a single year of additional security updates. Today, less than four months before that October 14, 2025, cutoff, Microsoft is announcing additional options for people who can't or don't want to pay that fee.
Individuals who want to pay $30 for the additional year of updates will still be able to do so. But Microsoft will also extend a year of additional Windows 10 security updates to any users who opt into Windows Backup, a relatively recent Windows 10 and Windows 11 app that backs up some settings and files using a Microsoft account. Users can also opt into ESU updates by spending 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, which are handed out for everything from making purchases with your Microsoft account to doing Bing searches.
These offers don't formally extend the end-of-support date for Windows 10. But for users who don't want to move to Windows 11 or who can't do so because their PC doesn't meet the requirements, they do effectively offer an additional year of free updates for the OS that's still installed on a slim majority of the world’s Windows PCs, according to Statcounter data.
2025-06-25 02:15:34
Media Matters for America sued the Federal Trade Commission yesterday, alleging that the FTC's ongoing investigation into the group "has violated Media Matters' First Amendment rights by retaliating against the organization for its reporting on Elon Musk and X."
"The investigation is the latest effort by Elon Musk and his allies in the Trump administration to retaliate against Media Matters for its reporting on X, the social media site Musk controls, and it's another example of the Trump administration weaponizing government authorities to target political opponents," Media Matters said in a press release. The group said it has suffered financially because of "the cascade of litigation launched by Musk and his allies."
The FTC's investigative demand "makes no secret of its connection to Musk's vindictive lawsuits," and "probes Media Matters' finances, editorial process, newsgathering activities, and affiliations with likeminded entities that monitor extremist content and other third parties," Media Matters said in the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia.
