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Good News! The Sun Might Not Eat Earth After All, According to New Simulations.

Good news, everyone! If, like me, you were worried that your plans to live forever were eventually going to be interrupted by Earth being swallowed by the Sun in about 5 billion years, as astronomers have long predicted, you may be able to cross that worry off your list. According to a new study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics , Earth might actually avoid being engulfed by our dying star after all. The old prediction was that when the Sun exhausts the hydrogen fueling its core, it will swell into a red giant large enough to consume Mercury, Venus, and eventually Earth. But new computer simulations suggest we might not get burned away like the dry leaf that lands in a hot grill. The outcome will come down to a kind of cosmic tug-of-war. As the sun grows, its increasing gravitational pull will gradually pull the Earth toward it. But, at the same time, this old star will be shedding huge amounts of mass through powerful stellar winds. Losing mass weakens the sun’s grav...

Jay White’s AEW Return Just Got a Massive Pop

Jay White made a surprise return at AEW’s Forbidden Door pay-per-view on Sunday. The ‘Switchblade’ has been out of action for over a year due to injury. White had to undergo several surgeries because of a broken hand and accompanying shoulder injury. His long absence had fans questioning his contract status. In January, Fightful Select noted that his long-term deal with the company was “nowhere” near up, instead, he’d likely have time added on by AEW because of the injuries. AEW World Tag Team Champions Cope and Christian defended their first tag titles in over 20 years against The Dogs , Clark Connors and David Finlay. At one point, the referee was knocked down, leading the challengers to use cheap tactics to try and win the belts. White wasn’t going to let that slide. The lights went out and appeared the Bang Bang Gang. Shortly after, White’s trademarked knife sound echoed, and he appeared in the ring behind Finlay. He hit the Blade Runner on the former leader of the Bullet Cl...

Dating Apps May Be Rewiring What You Find Attractive, Psychologists Say

At some point between your first smartphone and your fifth dating app , something changed about what you found attractive. The preferences got more specific. The list got longer. And somehow, the person sitting across from you at a perfectly decent first date started feeling like a disappointment before they’d even finished their drink. There’s a psychological explanation for how that happened, and it predates Instagram by about 50 years. In 1968, psychologist Robert Zajonc documented what’s now known as the mere exposure effect —the finding that repeated exposure to something makes it progressively more appealing. It’s why the coworker you barely noticed at the start of a job becomes someone you can’t stop noticing six months in. Familiarity, at a neurological level, reads as safety. Safety reads as attraction. The brain doesn’t reliably distinguish between the two. Social media didn’t invent this process. It just got there first. Acco...

Weekly Horoscope: June 28-July 4

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There’s a lot happening this week, stargazer, and the temptation is to try to move fast through all of it. Resist that. Mercury going retrograde Monday is the sky’s way of asking everyone to slow down and mean what they say — communications get tangled, plans shift, and anything you rush is liable to need redoing. Jupiter entering Leo on Tuesday brings a surge of boldness and desire for life that makes the slowdown feel almost cruel in its timing. The Full Moon Monday sets an emotionally charged tone right from the start, and Saturn squaring the Sun all week keeps the pressure structural — this isn’t a week for shortcuts or half-measures. By Saturday, Uranus, conjuncting Mars, brings everything to a head: electric, unpredictable, demanding that you show up for what you’ve been building toward. The fireworks aren’t just in the sky this weekend. They’re in the choices you make getting there. How will your sign fare this week? Aries: Mar...

Depressed Gen Z Are Chasing the ‘Perfect’ Bodies, But Most Are Still Miserable

With the rise of influencer culture and the popularity of highly sexualized, often shallow reality TV dating shows, it’s easy to see how younger generations might fall into body image issues. We as a society place so much importance on our appearance that certain body types are actually trending . Not to mention, about one in eight adults say that they are currently taking a GLP-1 drug, according to a KFF Health Tracking Poll . Of course, some people use the drug to manage diabetes, heart disease, or other conditions; but many use it strictly for non-health-related weight loss.  Naturally, this impacts how younger generations like Gen Z view themselves and their bodies. A recent survey from NeuroKaire and Prosper Insights & Analytics found that, despite doing everything “right” for their health, depressed Gen Zers still don’t believe it’s enough. In fact, 65% still aren’t happy with their health and are 114% more likely to identify as overweight. There seems to be a c...

Scientists Want to Build a Moon Quarantine to Stop Alien Germs From Reaching Earth

For as long as we’ve been sending people to space, there has been the worry of bringing back some kind of as-yet-undiscovered pathogen from beyond Earth. So far, thankfully, nothing has come of the fear. But according to a new paper published in the journal Ambio , researchers argue that NASA’s long-term plans for a permanent lunar colony should include a quarantine facility for space germs on the Moon. The proposal comes via Frederick Moxley, a former Pentagon adviser and biodefense specialist, and Anthony Ricciardi, an invasive-species expert at McGill University. The pair argues that since we are going to be bringing so many samples from the moon and Mars back to Earth, along with potentially other worlds down the line, and since we currently have no way to guarantee that there aren’t any potentially unknown microorganisms all over them, we should probably keep them as far away from Earth as possible just in case. They think a lunar bio-containment facility is th...

This Throwback Metallica Commercial Promoting Their Most Divisive Album Feels Like a Fever Dream Now

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Back in 2003, Metallica released what is maybe one of the most divisive metal albums of all time: St. Anger . Adding to the record’s already considerable lore is that the band promoted it by doing a collab commercial with AOL Internet. In what feels like a fever dream now, the ad plays out a very bizarre AOL Instant Messenger conversation between Metallica’s frontman, James Hetfield, and drummer, Lars Ulrich. “I’m madly in love with you,” Hetfield types, using the AIM username James56821. Ulrich receives the message and, under the handle LU9442, replies, “I’m madly in lust with you.” The back-and-forth messages are actually lyrics from the album’s title track, “ St. Anger “. Eventually, Hetfield calls Ulrich using AOL’s voice service because “anger works better rhythmically.” The ad ends with Hetfield picking up his guitar and playing the song. You can watch the whole thing below. Cur...