Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A once-in-a-lifetime crater has appeared on the Moon! A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a humpback whale (approximately 10-20 meters, 30-60 feet) crashed into the Moon sometime between April and May of 2024. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), with its monthly monitoring of the Moon, captured today’s images of the lunar surface before and after the event. The resulting crater, named after Apollo-era lunar scientist McGetchin, is two soccer fields across. Craters of this size are only expected once every 132 years! Follow up thermal imaging revealed a large cold spot that surrounds the warm crater. Surface impacts will puff up the loose lunar sediment, or regolith, making it less dense and harder to retain heat. This event affected an area much larger than the visible crater, which will inform humanity’s understanding of surface impacts and the evolution of the Moon’s surface. It also reminds us all to be thankful for Earth's atmosphere.

Photo by NASA/GSFC/Intuitive Machines

Paraskevi of Iconium church in Kwiatoń, Southern Poland.

Piter329c, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Did You Know? | Kudos365 Curiosity Series

1. A single day-night cycle on Mercury lasts two Mercury years.
Mercury races around the Sun in only 88 Earth days, but its combination of slow rotation and rapid orbit produces a solar day—the time from one sunrise to the next—lasting about 176 Earth days. So two complete Mercury years pass during one Mercury day.

2. Wombats produce cube-shaped droppings.
The Australian wombat is famous for something genuinely unusual: its droppings form into small cubes. Researchers found that regions of differing elasticity in the animal's intestine help create the distinctive shape during digestion. The cubes may also be useful for territorial marking because they are less likely to roll away.

3. Lightning can heat the surrounding air to around 50,000°F.A lightning discharge can heat the air in its channel to roughly five times the temperature of the Sun's surface. That sudden, extreme heating makes the surrounding air expand explosively, producing the shock wave we hear as thunder.

4. About 97 percent of Earth's water is in the oceans.
Our planet may have rivers, lakes, glaciers, groundwater, clouds, and enormous ice sheets, but together they account for only a small fraction of Earth's total water. Approximately 97 percent is contained in the oceans—which also means that most of Earth's water is salty.

5. Some rocks in the Grand Canyon are nearly two billion years old—but the canyon is much younger.
The oldest rocks exposed deep within the Grand Canyon are about 1.8 billion years old. Yet the canyon itself was largely carved during only the past five to six million years. Even the youngest major rock layer along the canyon rims is about 270 million years old—older than the dinosaurs.

6. Hummingbirds can genuinely fly backward.
Hummingbirds aren't simply drifting backward after visiting a flower. Their unusual wing motion allows powered flight in several directions, including backward. Their remarkable maneuverability also lets them hover almost motionless in the air while feeding.

7. Antarctica is a desert.
We usually picture deserts as hot, sandy places, but a desert is defined largely by how little precipitation it receives. Antarctica is the driest continent on Earth, and much of its interior receives extremely little moisture. Its enormous expanse of snow and ice therefore includes a polar desert.

8. The Eiffel Tower changes size with the temperature.
The iron in the Eiffel Tower expands when heated and contracts when cooled. During warm weather the structure can become slightly taller; in cold weather it contracts again. Uneven heating from sunlight can even cause the top of the tower to shift slightly away from the Sun.

Sometimes the familiar world becomes much more interesting when we look a little closer: Explore. Discover. Learn.

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JOSEPH SMITH (1805–1844) | KUDOS365 HISTORY SERIES

Joseph Smith was an American religious leader and the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, one of the most influential religious traditions to emerge from the United States. To his followers, he was a prophet called by God to restore the original Christian church. To his critics, he was a controversial and often authoritarian figure whose claims, financial ventures, secret plural marriages, and accumulation of political power generated repeated conflict. His brief life reshaped American religion and produced a movement that continued to grow and diversify long after his death.

Smith was born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont, to Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. His family experienced recurring financial difficulties and eventually settled near Palmyra, New York. The region was then undergoing intense religious revivalism, with competing churches and traveling preachers seeking converts. Smith later said that this atmosphere left him uncertain about which church, if any, possessed religious truth.

According to the account Smith developed and shared with his followers, he experienced a vision in 1820 in which God and Jesus Christ appeared to him and instructed him not to join the existing churches. He later reported that on September 21, 1823, an angel named Moroni directed him to buried golden plates containing an ancient sacred record. Believers accept these events as divine revelations, while historians generally treat them as religious claims that cannot be independently verified.

In 1827, Smith married Emma Hale, who became an important participant in the early movement. Smith said that he translated the inscriptions on the plates through divine assistance. Scribes, including Emma and Oliver Cowdery, recorded the words he dictated. The resulting text, the Book of Mormon, was published in 1830. It presented an account of ancient peoples in the Americas and described the resurrected Jesus Christ appearing among them. The book became the foundational scripture of the new movement.

On April 6, 1830, Smith and several followers formally organized the Church of Christ, later named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Smith taught that Christianity had fallen into a state of apostasy and that God had authorized him to restore priesthood authority, continuing revelation, and the original church. Converts were drawn to the movement’s confidence, communal purpose, and promise that ordinary people could receive spiritual gifts and participate in sacred history.

Hostility followed the growing church from New York to Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. Some opposition arose from religious prejudice and fear of an unfamiliar faith. Other conflicts developed over the movement’s concentrated voting power, economic practices, land purchases, and Smith’s expanding religious and civic authority. Latter-day Saints faced harassment, destruction of property, armed attacks, and forced removal.

In Kirtland, Ohio, Smith supervised the construction of the movement’s first temple and introduced new teachings and ceremonies. He also helped establish a financial institution that failed during the economic crisis of 1837. The collapse cost many participants their savings and damaged confidence in his leadership. Dissent increased, and Smith left Ohio for Missouri.

Conflict in Missouri escalated into armed confrontation during 1838. Both Latter-day Saints and their opponents committed acts of violence, though the Saints suffered the greater collective punishment. Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued an order declaring that the Mormons must be driven from the state or “exterminated.” Smith was imprisoned for several months without being brought to trial before escaping custody in 1839. Thousands of displaced church members sought refuge in Illinois.

There, Smith and his followers established Nauvoo, which rapidly became one of Illinois’s largest communities. Smith served as the city’s mayor, chief judge, church president, and commander of the Nauvoo Legion, a large local militia. These overlapping positions enabled the Saints to defend themselves after years of persecution, but they also alarmed neighbors who believed Smith exercised excessive religious, political, and military power.

Smith’s theology continued to evolve. He introduced baptism on behalf of the dead, temple rituals, an expanded understanding of humanity’s relationship with God, and teachings about eternal families. He also secretly practiced plural marriage and authorized selected followers to do the same. Historical evidence establishes that Smith entered into numerous plural unions, although their precise number and the nature of every relationship remain debated. Some women were already civilly married, and at least one was fourteen years old. Emma Smith’s knowledge and acceptance of these relationships varied, and the practice caused deep personal and institutional conflict. The church publicly denied allegations of polygamy during Smith’s lifetime.

Smith also became increasingly involved in politics. After government officials failed to provide adequate compensation or protection for the Saints’ losses in Missouri, he announced his candidacy for president of the United States in 1844. His platform included a stronger federal role in protecting individual rights, prison reform, territorial expansion, and the gradual end of slavery through compensated emancipation. At the same time, he organized a private governing body known as the Council of Fifty, which reflected his expansive vision of religious and political authority.

The final crisis began when former associates published the Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper criticizing Smith’s power and exposing plural marriage. Smith and the Nauvoo City Council declared the newspaper a public nuisance and ordered its press destroyed. The action intensified existing opposition and led to charges against Smith. After briefly leaving Nauvoo, he returned and surrendered to authorities. He and his brother Hyrum were held in the jail at Carthage, Illinois, while awaiting legal proceedings.

On June 27, 1844, an armed mob stormed the jail. Smith used a pistol that had been given to him to defend himself, but both brothers were shot and killed. Joseph Smith was thirty-eight years old. His murder was the culmination of years of religious persecution, political conflict, mutual fear, and escalating violence; it was also an unlawful act that denied him the judicial process he was awaiting.

Smith’s death produced a succession crisis that divided the movement. Most followers eventually accepted Brigham Young’s leadership and migrated west to the Great Salt Lake Valley. Other groups followed different leaders, including Smith’s son Joseph Smith III, who later headed the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now known as Community of Christ.

Joseph Smith remains both revered and disputed. His followers view him as a prophet who restored sacred authority and revealed new scripture. Critics emphasize his secrecy, plural marriages, failed financial ventures, and concentration of power. Whatever judgment is made about his religious claims, his historical importance is unmistakable. From modest beginnings in rural New York, he created a durable religious movement, produced an extensive body of scripture and teachings, founded communities, and altered the course of American religious history.

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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This shot captured an unexpected silhouette. Which is it? It isn't the sunspots, the small dark regions caused by concentrated magnetic fields visible around the Sun's bright disk. Sunspots typically last for weeks and were expected, since these spots were seen previously. It isn’t the International Space Station (ISS), the small dark structure on the middle left. This is because the featured picture was planned with sub-second timing to record the iconic structure passing before the Sun. It is the airplane. Just as this exposure was taking place in June, from Prasek in the Czech Republic, an airplane began its own miniature partial eclipse. The result is this triply aligned image of our Sun. The photographer estimates that the chance of any random Sun image containing silhouettes of both a space station and an airplane, from that location, is about 30 million to one.

Photo by Petr Horalek / Inst. Physics Opava

Beach of Cape Fiolent during the storm at sea. Cape Fiolent in Crimea is of ancient Jurassic origin. Upper Miocene lava and carbonate intrusions on heavily eroded Jurassic foundation.

Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

There are only two moments each year when the Sun lies directly above Earth’s equator. These moments are the equinoxes, when, at any location, the lengths of day and night are roughly equal. The March equinox happens sometime between March 19 and 21. The September equinox occurs sometime between September 21 and 24.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the March equinox marks the beginning of Spring and the September equinox the beginning of Fall. The reverse takes place in the Southern Hemisphere.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

When does a nebula look like a comet? In this crowded starfield covering over two degrees within the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus), the eye is drawn to the Cocoon Nebula. A compact star forming region, the cosmic Cocoon punctuates a nebula bright in emission and reflection on the lower right, with a long trail of interstellar dust clouds to the left, making the entire complex appear a bit like a comet. Cataloged as IC 5146, the central bright head of the nebula spans about 10 light years, while the dark dusty tail spans nearly 100 light years. Both are located about 2,500 light years away. A bright star near the colorful nebula's center likely supplies power and helps clear out a cavity. The long dusty filaments of the tail, although dark in this visible light image, hide stars in the process of formation. The featured image was captured in July from Death Valley, California, USA.

Photo by Piotr Czerski