Everyone Who Whines About Tax Dollars Going To NASA Should See This

Solar Flare Almost Ended Modern Life As We Know It

For all of the end times prognostication that occurred in 2012, it turns out that modern life actually was almost completely destroyed that year, thanks to an "extreme solar storm" that sent plasma clouds hurtling from the sun at a rate of 3,000 km/s. Described as a "Carrington event", named after English astronomer Richard Carrington who observed a similar storm in 1859, the storm would have hit Earth had it happened only a week sooner, frying all electronics across the globe and leaving an impact that we would still be feeling today. NASA estimates the destruction would have cost $2 trillion.

The soothsayers and doom prophets would have been utterly insufferable.

A Librarian Tried To Have A Genius Little Boy Arrested. The Cops Reacted The Same Way You Would.

Ronald McNair grew up in Lake City, S.C. He grew up to become an astronaut. He was on the Challenger mission, which tragically exploded seconds after takeoff on Jan. 28, 1986. This is the actually funny story of how he started his journey in a time of great racial strife, as told by his brother to StoryCorps. And despite the tragedy, there's a little bit of a happy ending.

Newly Discovered Pink Exoplanet on the Lighter Side

There is a pink exoplanet circling a star very much like our own, 57 light-years away from Earth. But its origins are a mystery.

In a new study announcing the magenta gas giant, researchers were able to directly image this exoplanet using the Subaru telescope on Hawaii. The color of this blushing body indicates it has less cloud cover than other observed exoplanets, meaning researchers can peer even deeper into its atmosphere to divine its components. (Related: "For First Time, Astronomers Read Exoplanet's Color.")

"If we could travel to this giant planet, we would see a world still glowing from the heat of its formation with a color reminiscent of a dark cherry blossom, a dull magenta," said Michael McElwain, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Facility in Maryland and a study co-author, in a statement.

It's one of only five or six exoplanets whose presence has been directly imaged by a telescope, rather than inferred from observing stars, said Markus Janson, an astrophysicist at Princeton University and a co-author of the new study.

Other planets that have been directly imaged orbit much more massive stars, he added. "In that sense, [the pink planet] feels a bit closer to home."

At about 460°F (237°C), this gas giant probably wouldn't be a very pleasant place to visit. But researchers are still interested in this lightweight—it's one of the lowest-mass exoplanets found around a sun-like star using direct detection methods.