The Kobra Go from ANYCUBIC is on sale for $199.99, 38% down from its regular $319.99 price. Leveling only takes five minutes, and removing models from the platform is easy. Smart sensors detect when the filament has run out or an unexpected power off to make printing seamless. The Kobra Go prints fast at 100 millimeters per second max and can create something as large as a regulation-size soccer ball or a miniature version of the World Cup trophy....

But planetary scientists say there could be a class of rocky exoplanets covered in thick blankets of hydrogen and helium gases. If those layers insulate the planets’ cores from the harsh chill of space, their surfaces might be just the right temperature to host liquid water. And, if that’s the case, it’s possible that these worlds are habitable. About a decade ago, scientists proposed that such worlds might be able to support life....

It’s a little counterintuitive that safety razors don’t automatically come with blades, but that’s one of their selling points: you can choose the blades that work best for you and your budget, and they are generally much cheaper than cartridge blades. This stainless steel double edge safety razor (or DE as it’s known in shaving parlance) is a good choice for beginners learning to guide the blade for the first time....

Researchers first spotted 2018 VG18 on November 10, using the Japanese Subaru 8-meter telescope located atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. “We immediately knew it had to be very distant to have such slow motion across the sky,” says Scott Sheppard, an astronomer based at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, part of a trio of North American scientists who made the discovery. The object was re-observed just this month, using the Magellan telescope at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile....

Except for one thing: to use any of those apps, you have to have an Xbox Live Gold account, which currently costs $40 for a 12-month subscription. Xbox Live Gold gives you access to the multiplayer gaming side of Xbox Live, which is fine. But you also have to buy it if you want to use any of the video apps. That’s in addition to the apps you’re already paying for, just to get access to them....

MDMA—found in molly and ecstasy—earned a bad rap in the 1990s as ravers’ drug of choice. But psychotherapists are coming to value the way it increases empathy while decreasing fear and defensiveness. “MDMA gives people the ability to revisit an event that’s still painful without being overwhelmed,” says psychiatrist Michael Mithoefer. Following a recent MDMA trial, 83 percent of his treatment-resistant participants no longer showed symptoms of PTSD. In one study, Mithoefer worked with a New York City firefighter post-9/11....

The company, which is conducting the trial in partnership with the nonprofit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), hopes the trial will confirm whether the vaccine can deliver HIV-specific antigens to the body and induce an immune response. Researchers will study 56 HIV-negative adults for six months. Forty-eight of the volunteers will receive at least one dose of the primary vaccine, 32 of whom will also receive the booster. The remaining eight will receive the booster vaccine alone....

In June, scientists proved it’s a thing. (As if we needed proof.) Body of Data Researchers at Northwestern University analyzed data on the body mass index (a weight-to-height ratio) of more than 10,000 American men over the course of 20 years. After controlling for factors such as age, race, and income, they figured out who put on the pounds. Body of Proof Dads who live with their children showed a BMI boost of 2....

Artemis will send astronauts to the moon aboard the Orion spacecraft using its new Space Launch System—a rocket that NASA claims is its most powerful of all time. It will propel Orion to at least 24,500 miles per hour, the minimum speed needed to exit low-Earth orbit and travel to the Moon. Since the 1960s, NASA has selected and trained 350 astronaut candidates—though not all have made it through the rigorous two-year preparation, which includes mastering the complex hardware and communication controls aboard International Space Station, flight readiness training, and much more....

The leaks at the Naval facility, dire as they are, are just one of Oahu’s water woes. The island’s geographical history has been dictated by various commercial interests like the sugar plantation industry, real estate developers, and tourist attractions, which have diverted and sapped its public water supply for private gain. Water is so integral to the island that Shelley Muneoka, a social work specialist and Native Hawaiian board member of KAHEA, a community organization that protects the state’s natural and cultural resources, invokes the phrase Ola I Ka Wai, which roughly translates to “water is life” or “life is because of water....

As Brian Fung noted at the Washington Post, this means that a least one odd part of the prequels (and, before that, Star Wars novels) is returning to the big screen: a lightsaber-resistant eletrostaff. We are exactly this excited about it: Finn can also be seen briefly manning the Millennium Falcon’s gun turret. Watch the full spot below:

Claimed to be China’s most powerful laser weapon in the public domain (there are reports of more powerful but classified anti-satellite lasers), the LAG II is built by the Chinese Academy of Physics Engineering and Jiuyuan High Tech Equipment Corporation. Similar in size to the U.S. Marines’ Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy On-The-Move, it is mounted on a wheeled, towed carriage that carries its turret, power components, which can be pulled by a light truck....

The updated formulas, which will become the standard booster for almost everyone in the US, were developed by Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna in the 10 months since Omicron first emerged. Although the boosters are almost identical to the original shots, they’re bivalent, which means they can induce an immune response to both the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, as well as the BA.4/BA.5 Omicron strains that currently cause about 90 percent of the country’s COVID cases....

HIV and AIDS are usually treated through a cocktail of antiretroviral drugs that essentially attack the viruses at various phases of their replication processes. Because the lifecycle of HIV/AIDS is so short (just a few days, if that) it can mutate quickly as it replicates, so this kind of therapy usually involves a complex combination of drugs–many of which carry undesirable side effects. This new gene therapy attempts to choke off HIV replication at the point the virus tries to infiltrate a healthy T cell, keeping that T cell healthy and denying the virus its chance to replicate–at least via that particular T cell....

Based on a new radiocarbon analysis, animal bones found in that deepest layer are between 28,000 and 31,000 years old. Currently, the most popular theory is that humans first arrived in the Americas around 14,000 years ago, walking over a now-drowned continent that connected Alaska and Siberia. If further studies bear out, the findings will help reshape the human history of North America. “We weren’t trying to find these really old dates at all,” says Andrew Somerville, the lead author on the research....

Produce selection is one of those valuable life lessons most people never get. And honestly, a lot of folks don’t even know what they’re missing. If you didn’t grow up eating fresh summer corn picked that morning, peaches plucked right off the tree, or strawberries you harvested yourself, you probably don’t know how great fruit can taste. Lots of grocery store stock won’t ever taste as good as the haul you’ll get from a farmer’s market (or, better yet, at the farm itself), but a little know-how can help you find the best of the lot—and understand when to skip out....

Fast-growing exotic species like radiata pine, acacia, and eucalyptus are commonly used in forestry and carbon sequestration efforts. Indeed, tree-planting may be an important part of combating the worst effects of climate change. But a new study in Science documenting the complex interactions between invasive species and their environment shows why some of those efforts might not sow the carbon storage they intend. Plants, soil organisms, and herbivores all influence the carbon cycle—how carbon moves between different “pools” within living matter, soil, the oceans, and the atmosphere....

Yesterday, at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences meeting, researchers announced that those mountains, Wright Mons and Piccard Mons had the distinctive shape of a volcano. “These are big mountains with a large hole in their summit, and on Earth that generally means one thing–a volcano,” Oliver White, New Horizons postdoctoral researcher said in a statement. “If they are volcanic, then the summit depression would likely have formed via collapse as material is erupted from underneath....

The Polaroid Snap is a beautifully designed digital camera that spits out instant-film prints just like the SX-70, and it even has the iconic rainbow stripe. Since this is a digital camera, there’s a little more flexibility than the one-button SX-70 camera. A 3.5-inch touchscreen LCD on the back of the Snap lets users line up shots or even select photos to print at any time.

Risk implies a true and real potential for peril. Free climbing, sword swallowing, darting across the six lanes of the West Side Highway against the light: These are all things for which the question isn’t if something bad is going to happen, but when. They are also nonstarters for a generally cautious person like me. When we were recording the episode of the PopSci podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week that accompanies this issue, Executive Editor Rachel Feltman resurfaced a quote that, for years, has had me second-guessing my second guesses: “Running into a pole is a drag, but never being allowed to run into a pole is a disaster....