Interest continues to grow in inaugural poet Amanda Gorman
Eric and Tess from Pasadena, Calif., enter the Skylight Book store, decorated with a poster of American poet Amanda Gorman, in Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles Monday, Jan. 25, 2021. Public health officials said Monday that the state will return to a system of county-by-county restrictions intended to stem the spread of the virus. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)NEW YORK โ Within hours of Amanda Gorman's reading of the inaugural poem last week, bookstores were hearing from their customers. Gorman, who at 17 became the country's National Youth Poet Laureate, is a longtime Los Angeles resident who credits poetry with helping her work on a speech impediment. Gorman is by far the youngest of the poets to read at presidential inaugurations since Robert Frost was invited to John F. Kennedy's in 1961.
California reveals data used to lift stay-at-home order
Last week, state health officials told The Associated Press they were keeping all the data secret because it is complicated and might mislead the public. Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and infectious-diseases control expert at University of California, San Francisco, was among the critics. Gavin Newsom announced a new stay-at-home order that was based on ICU capacity in each of five regions. At a news conference with Newsom, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly promised to reveal some of the information behind the projections. But itโs currently stuck at 9.9% โ virtually the same level it was two weeks ago when state officials abruptly lifted the stay-at-home order there.
Black hole shredded a star
In order to find exoplanets, TESS is surveying stars -- and that's how it found the aftermath of a violent encounter. As part of that mission, and for the first time, TESS stumbled upon a star being shredded by a supermassive black hole. When stars wander too close to a black hole, they can't escape the black hole's gravity and get pulled apart. The rest makes a tasty meal for the black hole, which pulls the material into its hot, glowing accretion disk made of gas. These events cause black holes to release flashes of brightness, illuminating the process for astronomers trying to understand the different processes of black holes.
Study: Exoplanets could have better conditions for life than Earth
Researchers used NASA-developed software called ROCKE-3D to simulate ocean circulation and climates on different types of exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. Oceanic life on Earth depends on an upward flow, or upwelling, which moves nutrients from the dark depths to sunlit portions where photosynthetic life thrives. "It shows us that conditions on some exoplanets with favorable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth." "There will always be limitations to our technology, so life is almost certainly more common than 'detectable' life," Olson said. This finding continues the interesting work being done around ocean worlds.