Schrodinger's Galaxy?

 No, it's not a galaxy that may or may not exist.

It's a galaxy that may or may not be a very long way away (which also means a long time ago).

The culprit is CEERS-1749. We may be seeing it as it was around 220 million years after the big bang, based off of red shift.

Except it may be in a cluster with two galaxies that are about 12.5 billion years ago...much, much younger. Meaning the red shift is some kind of illusion, likely caused by a lot of dust or being what we call "redshift quiescent" - that is that star formation ceased early in development.

The universe keeps getting weirder.

Mammoth steaks?

 Personally, no. But there's talk about bringing back mammoths (which, by the way I don't actually agree with).

And, of course, talk about eating them.

I have a line I draw, and that is that if it passes the mirror test or demonstrates abstract thought, no. Cows, while fairly smart, do not have this capability. Neither do horses, although I prefer not to eat horse as it feels like I'm breaking an agreement with the ones I ride.

Elephants, however, do. If mammoths are as smart as elephants...then no, I won't eat them.

(By the way, the tl;dr on why I don't like it is because we need elephant mothers to birth elephants, not mammoths, and any mammoths we make will be culturally...elephants...there will be differences. Mules are culturally horses, but still show cognitive differences. But...we can't actually bring back mammoths because we can't restore their culture).

We've seen this movie...

 Scientists have inserted human genes into yeast. Ack! Yeast monster!

Actually, yeast cells operate remarkably like human cells, which is probably part of why food fermented with yeast is so important to us.

In this case, it's human muscle genes.

This is something that's being worked on, and it allows us to analyze a single process. The most recent one involves a mechanism that is involved in some cancers, so we could use it to study tumor processes safely.

But I can't help but think of the sourdough starter familiar from Kingfisher's A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking.

Top Scientist Pranks the World

 A French scientist released a close up of a slice of chorizo and claimed it was a JWST image of Proxima Centauri. It was, of course, a prank. He posted it to see who would notice and to make a point about not believing anything you see in the galaxy.

I didn't see it at the time, but I would like to think I would have noticed. Mmm...chorizo.

Why are some meteors green?

 A green meteor burned up in the sky over New Zealand. This might sound weird, but it's actually fairly common.

If a meteor is traveling fast enough, it can get so hot that the iron and nickel in it glow green. And if you are close to the poles, green meteor tails can also be caused by the same magnetic phenomenon that creates auroras.

Which is why New Zealand gets more of them.

No aliens. Sadly.

So many pretty pictures...

 

Image from NASA.

That is the Cartwheel Galaxy. It is 500 million light years away.

It's a composite from the JWST's two infrared cameras. The red light is from MIRI and the blue from NIRCam. (Most of these kinds of astronomical images are false color).

Those thin spokes are dust. Lots and lots of dust. This galaxy formed in a merger, so...

The data associated with this image will tell us more about how stars form.

Why is the Earth in Such a Hurry?

 June 29th was the shortest day since we invented atomic clocks in the 1960s. In general, the Earth is slowing down, so why did this happen?

The answer appears to be related to the Chandler wobble, which is the typical small irregular movement of the geographical poles. From 2017 to 2020 it stopped, for reasons that presumably have to do with shifts deep in the Earth's core.

If it speeds up further we may have to institute a negative leap second to keep civic time with solar time. Let's hope not...because I can hear every IT professional groaning from here.