Space Lava Drives Jupiter’s Powerful Aurora Lights

  • Jupiter’s aurora lights, the most powerful in the solar system, are partly driven by moon volcanoes.
  • Volcanic eruptions on Jupiter’s moon Io send electrically charged lava plasma toward the planet’s poles.
  • The Hubble Space Telescope helped researchers track electric currents driving the aurora.

Jupiter’s auroras — the lights that dance around its poles — are the most distinct in our solar system and over a thousand times brighter than Earth’s aurora. Now, a new study confirms that these otherworldly polar lights come from a unique source: space lava.

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system. Its more than 400 active volcanoes regularly shoot lava dozens of miles high, where it falls into Jupiter’s orbit and becomes plasma — “a soup of electrically charged material,” astronomer James O’Donoghue told Insider.

io moon of jupiter with swirling colors from lava flows and an erupting volcano on the horizon

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft captured this image of Io with a volcanic

Read more
Former Marine Tracking Trump’s Base Online Helps Jan. 6 Committee Investigation

  • A criminal-defense attorney began tracking Donald Trump’s base online before the 2020 election.
  • He has turned over information to a committee investigating the January 6 siege on the US Capitol.
  • His monitoring has made him concerned about the safety of school board members, he told Insider.

Ron Filipkowski, a criminal-defense attorney in Sarasota, Florida, who has been monitoring right-wing extremists online says he’s now helping the House Committee investigating the January 6 attacks on the US Capitol.

Filipkowski, a former longtime Republican, on Friday tweeted that he and his team have compiled “hundreds of very obscure interviews and podcasts from the planners, leaders and participants” of the siege on the US Capitol, most of which they’ve never posted.

“At their request, today we turned over all of them to the J6 Select Committee, catalogued and organized,” he wrote.

 

Filipkowski told

Read more
Sarah Palin Lawyer Urges Jurors to Find New York Times Guilty of Defamation

  • Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times kicked off Thursday.
  • It was delayed after Palin tested positive for COVID-19 last week.
  • The trial could offer the Supreme Court an opportunity to revisit the “actual malice” standard of defamation law.

A lawyer for Sarah Palin asked jurors Thursday to find the New York Times liable for defamation for a “horrific” 2017 editorial, kicking off a trial that could reshape the way media outlets are permitted to write about public figures.

In a Manhattan federal court, Palin’s attorney Shane Vogt gave opening statements on behalf of the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate. He said a 2017 editorial that linked her political rhetoric to a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona reflected a “history of bias” and “narrative” against Palin.

“There was no link established between Governor Palin and that shooting,” Vogt said. “There was no

Read more
192 Spines on Poles Found in Peru, Maybe Linked to Pillaged Graves

  • Researchers discovered 192 examples of spines threaded onto reeds in a remote part of Peru.
  • It took place some 500 years ago, when Europeans were opening native tombs to seek gold and silver.
  • The practice may have been a ritual response to graves being pillaged, an expert told Insider. 

People in the Chincha valley of Peru threaded the spines of the dead onto wooden rods around 500 years ago, a mostly-unknown practice only recently documented by archaeologists.

It may have been an attempt to restore the bodies of the dead during the European colonization, according to a study by the researchers who unearthed 192 examples of such spines. They include the remains of children.

“Our findings suggest that vertebrae-on-posts represent a direct, ritualized, and Indigenous response to European colonialism,” Jacob L. Bongers, lead author of the study and archaeologist from the University of East Anglia, UK,

Read more
Thousands Urge Biden to Acknowledge Tesla’s EV Leadership

  • Tesla fans are asking President Biden to acknowledge the company’s accomplishments. 
  • They say Biden has snubbed Tesla while praising GM and Ford for their electric-car efforts. 
  • Elon Musk has lashed out at Biden for not mentioning Tesla and excluding the firm from events. 

Frustrated that the Biden administration has “snubbed Tesla” in public comments and at events promoting electric cars, Tesla’s hordes of loyal fans are speaking up. 

A Change.org petition launched on Saturday calling for Biden to acknowledge Tesla’s leadership in electric vehicles racked up more than 38,000 signatures by Tuesday morning. The petition alleges that Biden has unfairly praised Ford and General Motors for their electric accomplishments, while sidelining the Texas-based automaker.

The petitioners say that the White House has ignored Tesla because it is a non-union company, unlike other US automakers. 

“The White House and the Biden Administration have intentionally been trying to

Read more