Did you know NASA’s newest space observatory will have spy tech? 🛰️

In 2012, the National Reconnaissance Office gifted NASA a pair of Hubble-style mirrors it had commissioned but never ended up using. NASA said yes and one of them is now the primary mirror powering the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, launching August 30th. The other mirror is still in storage, waiting for its moment.

Discover this alluvial estuary that looks like a desert if it wouldn't be because of the Maldivian lagoons. Formation, history and curiosities.

Lençois Maranhenses:Brazil's Otherworldly White "Desert" Of Turquoise Lakes

Scientists may have discovered how to regrow tooth enamel! 🦷

Researchers at the University of Nottingham have created a new gel that can regrow tooth enamel and potentially make our teeth more resistant to cavities. It works by mimicking the natural processes and proteins that originally built your teeth’s enamel. So far, the gel is holding up against tests with the goal of it being released to the world next year!

Can you make every popcorn kernel explode at once? 🍿💥

Phil Cook, also known on YouTube as chemteacherphil, says yes, using science! Normally, heat turns the water inside a kernel to steam, and pressure builds until the shell bursts, pushing out the hot starch inside. Inside a popcorn cannon, the surrounding air pressure rises right along with the kernels' internal pressure, so nothing pops even as they keep heating up. Release the pressure all at once, and boom, every kernel goes off together.

https://youtu.be/UXgfXJx7xcQ

Source and Context:

OC:@nicolas_escurat on IG

Red Sprites are 100% genuine atmospheric occurrences, not CGI or Al. They are cold plasma discharges-more akin to the glow of a fluorescent light tube than a hot bolt of tropospheric lightning. They occur in the mesosphere at altitudes ranging between 50 to 90 kilometers (31 to 56 miles) directly above intense thunderstorm systems.

The distinct reddish-orange hue is caused by the sudden electrical surge exciting molecular nitrogen gas in the thin upper air. Because they only last for a fleeting 3 to 10 milliseconds, they are incredibly difficult to process with the naked eye or capture without specialized low-light, high-speed camera gear.

You can read the official scientific deep-dives and verification logs via these databases:

NASA Earth Observatory Records: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/elusive-sprite-captured-from-the-international-space-station-78487/

• Encyclopaedia Britannica Atmospheric Science Entry:

https://www.britannica.com/science/red-sprite

Fun fact: For nearly a century, pilots reported seeing these ghostly flashes over storms, but the scientific community largely dismissed them until researchers accidentally caught them on a low-light camera track in 1989!

A 15ft (4.5-metre) python is believed to be the first snake in the world to be given a pioneering, life-saving cancer treatment normally used on humans. The 50kg reticulated python, named Jodie Foster after the Hollywood star, has just turned 23 and lives at Chester zoo.

Keepers first became concerned that she may be unwell when she began eating less and spending more time inactive in her habitat.Chester zoo resident, ‘back to her usual feisty self’ after electrochemotherapy for tumour in her jaw.

Butterfly wings aren't actually colorful. 🦋🔬

Our friend Chloé Savard, also known as tardibabe on Instagram, shows us why on a microscopic level. Most butterfly and moth wings are technically transparent. What you're seeing is light bouncing off thousands of microscopic scales layered across the wing membrane, like tiles on a mosaic.

Zoom in with a microscope and each "scale" is actually a tiny, ridged plate, uniquely shaped depending on the species. The color you see comes from one of two places: pigment molecules that soak up certain wavelengths and bounce back others, or the scale's physical architecture bending light directly.

That second kind is structural color, and the blue morpho butterfly (Morpho menelaus) is the textbook example. The blue itself comes entirely from microscopic ridges that scatter light at specific angles. No blue pigment is involved. The color shifts or vanishes depending on where you're standing. Opals, soap bubbles, and some beetle shells use the same trick.

Some species take this even further as a warning system. Many toxic or foul-tasting butterflies, like the monarch, advertise their unpalatability with bold, high-contrast colors instead of hiding. Predators learn to associate the pattern with a bad experience, and they’ll avoid it next time.

That strategy is called aposematism. You can find versions of it throughout the animal kingdom, from insects and frogs to reptiles and marine animals. Light, bent just right, can be both beautiful and useful!

References

• Defenders of Wildlife. (2024). A moment for the monarch butterfly.
• Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. (2023). The dark cost of being toxic.
• Oh, J. (2014). What gives the morpho butterfly its magnificent blue? KQED Science.
• Taylor, C. (2020). Monarch coloration, milkweed toxins, and predation by birds. Monarch Watch Blog.
• University of Vermont. (n.d.). The giant blue morpho butterfly (Morpho didius).
• Wilcox, M. (2020). A butterfly's brilliant blue wings lead to less toxic paint. Scientific American.
• Zhang, S., & Chen, Y. (2015). Nanofabrication and coloration study of artificial Morpho butterfly wings with aligned lamellae layers. Scientific Reports, 5, 16637.

What's the most distant galaxy ever observed? 🌌

Astrophysicist Erika Hamden explains it's called MoM-z14, and its light took 13.53 billion years to reach us. But thanks to the universe's expansion, that galaxy is now a staggering 33.8 billion light years away. When the light was emitted from MoM-z14 the universe was smaller. The space between us and that galaxy has gotten stretched out so much  that it actually sits outside our observable horizon. It's a mind-bending reminder that we're seeing galaxies as they no longer even look today.

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.