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By Ashley Strickland, CNN There is a slumbering giant at the heart of our galaxy and occasionally, it wakes up and has an outburst. Astronomers have found evidence of this activity from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. The black hole, which is 4 million times the mass of our

By Ashley Strickland, CNN There is a new comet in town, and December is your only chance to see it before disappears forever. Astronomers say that Comet Leonard is our best and brightest comet to see in 2021. The comet was first discovered in January of this year by astronomer Greg Leonard. Leonard, a senior

CNN Editorial Research Here is a look at the life of Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX. Personal Birth date: June 28, 1971 Birth place: Pretoria, South Africa Birth name: Elon Reeve Musk Father: Errol Musk, engineer Mother: Maye (Haldeman) Musk, nutritionist and model Marriages: Talulah Riley (2013-2016, divorced for the second

By Sherry Liang, CNN The calendar of annual meteor showers saves one of its best for last. The Geminids will light up the night sky Monday night into Tuesday morning, and NASA calls this shower “one of the best and most reliable” for its bright, fast and abundant meteors. At its peak at 2 a.m,

By Megan Marples, CNN This dinosaur could sprint at speeds as swift as the world’s fastest human. Theropods were carnivorous dinosaurs that ran on two legs. Their feet had three toes with sharp claws, similar to some dinosaurs like velociraptors that are depicted in movies. Using fossilized footprints left in dirt in La Rioja, Spain,

By Amy Woodyatt, CNN Archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is the first example of a crucifixion in northern Europe. The skeleton of a man with a nail through his heel was discovered in Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire, east England, by experts from Albion Archaeology, it was revealed Wednesday. The archaeological team made the discovery while excavating

By Megan Marples, CNN The bones of an extinct reptile tell a story of how this ancient creature took an 8-foot leap of faith in the air to take flight, new research has revealed. The pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus, the largest known flying animal that ever lived, boasted a 40-foot (12-meter) wingspan that would allow it to

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at Christmas, a popular Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Facts Celebrated December 25th in the United States and other countries. In 2022, December 25th falls on a Sunday. Christmas is celebrated on January 7 in some Eastern Orthodox countries, such as Russia. The real date of

By Ashley Strickland, CNN A planet has been found orbiting in a double-star system that is so hot and massive that some astronomers didn’t think a planet could exist around it. The giant exoplanet, or planet located outside of our solar system, was discovered orbiting b Centauri, a stellar pair located 325 light-years from Earth

By Pierre Bairin, Anaelle Jonah, Hamdi Alkhshali and Mostafa Salem, CNN French authorities have released a Saudi man detained on Tuesday, after mistaking him for one of the killers of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The 33-year-old was detained at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport before his flight to Riyadh at 9:30 a.m. local time, and was

CNN Editorial Research Here is some background information about the Jewish holiday Hanukkah. In 2023, Hanukkah will start on December 7 at sunset and will end December 15, at sunset. In 2022, Hanukkah will start on December 18 at sunset and will end December 26, at sunset. Facts Hanukkah begins on the eve of the

By Joseph Ataman, Pierre Bairin and Gul Tuysuz, CNN A Saudi man detained in Paris has “nothing to do” with the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi authorities said Tuesday, responding to local media reports. The 33-year-old was detained at Charles de Gaulle Airport before his flight at 9:30 a.m. local time, and was traveling

By Ashley Strickland, CNN There is a new comet in town, and December is your only chance to see it before disappears forever. Astronomers say that Comet Leonard is our best and brightest comet to see in 2021. The comet was first discovered in January by astronomer Greg Leonard. The celestial object has likely spent

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN Every time new climate research is published, news headlines are posted or tweets are shared, a giant steel box perched on a granite plain in the Australian state of Tasmania will be recording it all. With its thick steel walls, battery storage and solar panels, the developers of “Earth’s Black Box”

By Ashley Strickland, CNN Whenever we’re confronted with aspects of science fiction becoming scientific reality, philosophical questions arise. This week, many were asking this one: What is a robot, really? Films and TV shows have offered us myriad archetypes of what robots could be like — as varied as the terrifyingly clever Cylons of “Battlestar

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a selected list of commercial airplane crashes caused by military acts or by terrorism. June 14, 1940 – Soviet bombers shoot down the Kaleva, a Finnish commercial plane traveling from Estonia to Finland, killing all nine on board. One passenger was Henry W. Antheil Jr., an American diplomat who was carrying

By Rhea Mogul, Adam Renton and Tara John, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Ashley Strickland, CNN If you think there aren’t enough hours in the day on Earth, this newly discovered planet will make your head spin. On an exoplanet called GJ 367 b that’s orbiting a star 31 light-years away from our sun, a year only lasts for about eight hours. The discovery could shed light

By Rob Picheta, CNN The United States Supreme Court appears poised to pare down, or even entirely overturn, nearly five decades of constitutional protection of abortion — a move that would have reverberations not just in America, but around the world. Oral arguments began on Wednesday in a landmark Mississippi case that threatens the existence

By Tim Lister and David McKenzie, CNN In the early days of November, laboratory technicians at Lancet Laboratories in Pretoria, South Africa, found unusual features in samples they were testing for the coronavirus. Essentially, a gene was missing in what would be a normal genome profile of the virus. PCR tests weren’t detecting one of

By Rhea Mogul, Adam Renton, Sheena McKenzie & Ed Upright, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Katie Hunt, CNN A new species of armored dinosaur discovered in Chile had a weaponized tail not seen before in any other dinosaur. Roughly 2 meters (6.5 feet) in size, the small armored dinosaur called an ankylosaur dates from the late Cretaceous period, around 71.7 million to 74.9 million years ago. Its largely complete

By Tara John, CNN When South African officials sounded the alarm on the new Omicron variant last Thursday, stocks around the world tumbled and up to 70 countries, including the United States, imposed travel bans and restrictions to southern African countries. The knee-jerk response followed the news that the variant had an unusually high number

By Adam Renton, Brad Lendon, Sheena McKenzie, Ed Upright, Meg Wagner, Melissa Macaya and Melissa Mahtani, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Adrienne Vogt, Ben Westcott, Adam Renton, Sheena McKenzie and Ed Upright, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Aditi Sangal, Helen Regan, Meg Wagner, Melissa Macaya, Brad Lendon, Rob Picheta and Ed Upright, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Martin Goillandeau and Ivana Kottasová, CNN The world is in a “race against time” with the Omicron coronavirus variant, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday, warning during a visit to Latvia that scientists and manufacturers will need weeks to fully understand the new variant. As more cases are identified and

By Ivana Kottasová, CNN Many of the world’s richest countries have spent the past year hoarding coronavirus vaccines, buying up enough doses to vaccinate their populations several times over and consistently failing to deliver on their promises to share doses with the developing world. The World Health Organization said the approach was “self-defeating” and “immoral.”

By Ashley Strickland, CNN Focusing on gratitude has helped me through this year. And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I wanted to say that I’m so thankful for all of you in this feel-good edition of Wonder Theory. Thank you for joining us on our exploratory adventures through the wonders of space and science. Thank

By Melissa Mahtani, Aditi Sangal Adrienne Vogt and Fernando Alfonso, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Kara Fox, Krystina Shveda, Natalie Croker and Marco Chacon, CNN Monterey Park. Atlanta. Orlando. Las Vegas. Newtown. Parkland. San Bernardino. Uvalde. Ubiquitous gun violence in the United States has left few places unscathed over the decades. Still, many Americans hold their right to bear arms, enshrined in the US Constitution, as sacrosanct. But critics

By Katie Hunt, CNN The first fossil evidence of a pine cone sprouting seeds has been preserved in 40 million-year-old amber. Seed germination typically occurs in the ground after a seed has fallen, but several embryonic stems were captured emerging from the ancient pine cone in a rare botanical feat known as precocious germination, or

By David McKenzie and Ghazi Balkiz, CNN South Africa’s health minister announced Thursday the discovery of a new coronavirus variant that appears to be spreading rapidly in parts of the country. “Initially it looked like some cluster outbreaks, but from yesterday, the indication came from our scientists from the Network of Genomic Surveillance that they

By Angela Dewan and Isabelle Jani-Friend, CNN There were few memorable moments at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow earlier this month, but a video address by the foreign minister of Tuvalu, speaking in a suit while knee-deep in tropical waters, is a hard one to forget. It was simple but strong message — while

By Ashley Strickland, CNN The holidays still happen in space, they just look a little bit different. But the sentiments are the same. “I’m going to do whatever I can to show how thankful I am for my crewmates,” said NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei in a NASA video shared from the International Space Station

By Sherry Liang, CNN The first tracings of dinosaurs in Missouri were found in the 1940s on the Chronister family’s property when they were digging a well. In October, nearly 60 years later, another set of fossils from the same species were uncovered about 50 feet (15 meters) away. After comparing and matching the tail

By Rob Picheta and Isabelle Jani-Friend, CNN Europe could suffer another 700,000 Covid-19 deaths by March, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said. It’s the latest in a series of dire warnings for the region, which is in the grip of a devastating fourth wave of cases that has plunged several countries back into lockdown.

By Ashley Strickland, CNN A NASA spacecraft that will deliberately crash into an asteroid has successfully launched. The DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, lifted off at 10:21 p.m. PT on November 23 (1:21 a.m. ET November 24) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Live coverage

By Ashley Strickland, CNN A NASA spacecraft that will deliberately crash into an asteroid is preparing to launch this week. The DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, will lift off at 10:20 p.m. PT (1:20 a.m. ET) on November 23 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

By Ashley Strickland, CNN This year, we’ve watched the story of a little chopper unfold on another planet. And much like the joy brought by the successful landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars in February, the journey of its Ingenuity helicopter sidekick is just what we needed in 2021. From millions of miles away,

By Ashley Strickland, CNN Since the first exoplanets were discovered in the 1990s, many have wondered if we might find another Earth out there, a place called Planet B. Natalie Batalha, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has watched the field of exoplanet science grow and change since those

By Ashley Strickland, CNN When the James Webb Space Telescope launches in December, astronomers around the world are expecting to find the unexpected, said Sara Seager, astrophysicist and planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The space observatory will be able to look into the distant universe as well as observe objects in our

By Janelle Davis, CNN The most powerful telescope ever built is expected to launch on December 25. The James Webb Space Telescope will peer into the atmospheres of exoplanets, some of which are potentially habitable, and look deeper into the universe than we’ve ever been able to before. This mission has been decades in the

By Sheena McKenzie, CNN Days after world powers wrapped up a monumental climate summit in Glasgow, another environmental emergency was unfolding — this time in space. On Monday, Russia fired a missile at one of its own satellites as a test, generating thousands of pieces of debris that sent crew members on the International Space

By Eliza Anyangwe, Editor of As Equals In 2020, the global skin whitening market was reportedly valued at $8.6bn. It is projected to grow to $13.7bn by 2025. If we live in a culture where market size is synonymous with societal importance, then why aren’t we talking about skin whitening? In the aftermath of the