Anthurium houseplants produce long-lasting, colorful spathes in shades of red, pink, white, and coral that can persist for weeks or months. These tropical plants require less maintenance than most flowering houseplants and adapt well to indoor conditions. Learn how to grow and care for anthuriums in this guide. Read more.

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For the first time, scientists have made a clear X-ray detection of chlorine and potassium in the wreckage of a star using data from the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) spacecraft.

The Resolve instrument aboard XRISM, pronounced “crism,” discovered these elements in a supernova remnant called Cassiopeia A or Cas A, for short. The expanding cloud of debris is located about 11,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Cassiopeia.

“This discovery helps illustrate how the deaths of stars and life on Earth are fundamentally linked,” said Toshiki Sato, an astrophysicist at Meiji University in Tokyo. “Stars appear to shimmer quietly in the night sky, but they actively forge materials that form planets and enable life as we know it. Now, thanks to XRISM, we have a better idea of when and how stars might make crucial, yet harder-to-find, elements.”

A paper about the result published Dec. 4 in Nature Astronomy. Sato led the study with Kai Matsunaga and Hiroyuki Uchida, both at Kyoto University in Japan. JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) leads XRISM in collaboration with NASA, along with contributions from ESA (European Space Agency). NASA and JAXA also codeveloped the Resolve instrument.

Stars produce almost all the elements in the universe heavier than hydrogen and helium through nuclear reactions. Heat and pressure fuse lighter ones, like carbon, into progressively heavier ones, like neon, creating onion-like layers of materials in stellar interiors.

Nuclear reactions also take place during explosive events like supernovae, which occur when stars run out of fuel, collapse, and explode. Elemental abundances and locations in the wreckage can, respectively, tell scientists about the star and its explosion, even after hundreds or thousands of years.

Some elements — like oxygen, carbon, and neon — are more common than others and are easier to detect and trace back to a particular part of the star’s life.

Other elements — like chlorine and potassium — are more elusive. Since scientists have less data about them, it’s more difficult to model where in the star they formed. These rarer elements still play important roles in life on Earth. Potassium, for example, helps the cells and muscles in our bodies function, so astronomers are interested in tracing its cosmic origins.

The roughly circular Cas A supernova remnant spans about 10 light-years, is over 340 years old, and has a superdense neutron star at its center — the remains of the original star’s core. Scientists using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory had previously identified signatures of iron, silicon, sulfur, and other elements within Cas A.

In the hunt for other elements, the team used the Resolve instrument aboard XRISM to look at the remnant twice in December 2023. The researchers were able to pick out the signatures for chlorine and potassium, determining that the remnant contains ratios much higher than expected. Resolve also detected a possible indication of phosphorous, which was previously discovered in Cas A by infrared missions.

“Resolve’s high resolution and sensitivity make these kinds of measurements possible,” said Brian Williams, the XRISM project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Combining XRISM’s capabilities with those of other missions allows scientists to detect and measure these rare elements that are so critical to the formation of life in the universe.”

The astronomers think stellar activity could have disrupted the layers of nuclear fusion inside the star before it exploded. That kind of upheaval might have led to persistent, large-scale churning of material inside the star that created conditions where chlorine and potassium formed in abundance.

The scientists also mapped the Resolve observations onto an image of Cas A captured by Chandra and showed that the elements were concentrated in the southeast and northern parts of the remnant.

This lopsided distribution may mean that the star itself had underlying asymmetries before it exploded, which Chandra data indicated earlier this year in a study Sato led.

“Being able to make measurements with good statistical precision of these rarer elements really helps us understand the nuclear fusion that goes on in stars before and during supernovae,” said co-author Paul Plucinsky, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “We suspected a key part might be asymmetry, and now we have more evidence that’s the case. But there’s still a lot we just don’t understand about how stars explode and distribute all these elements across the cosmos.”

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

From red to pink to green to yellow, poinsettias are available in a wide array of vibrant hues and a dazzling choice of intriguing patterns. We’ve made a list of 35 of our favorite poinsettia varieties including those in traditional holiday colors, and others that offer unique alternatives. Read more now.

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Lucky bamboo is not a true bamboo, but a type of dracaena in the asparagus family. From its native Africa, it made its way to ancient Asia, where it became a symbol of good fortune and a facilitator of the harmonious practice of feng shui. Read on to learn all about lucky bamboo and how you can grow your own indoors.

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The shoe is most certainly on the other foot. On Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly declared a “code red” at the company to improve ChatGPT, delaying advertising plans and other products in the process,  The Information reported based on a leaked internal memo. The move follows Google’s release of its Gemini 3 model last month, which has outperformed ChatGPT on some industry benchmark tests and sparked high-profile praise on social media.

In the memo, Altman wrote, “We are at a critical time for ChatGPT.” The company will push back work on advertising integration, AI agents for health and shopping, and a personal assistant feature called Pulse. Altman encouraged temporary team transfers and established daily calls for employees responsible for enhancing the chatbot.

The directive creates an odd symmetry with events from December 2022, when Google management declared its own “code red” internal emergency after ChatGPT launched and rapidly gained in popularity. At the time, Google CEO Sundar Pichai reassigned teams across the company to develop AI prototypes and products to compete with OpenAI’s chatbot. Now, three years later, the AI industry is in a very different place.

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Zamioculcas zamiifolia is an incredibly resilient houseplant that requires very little water, light, or maintenance. If you are new to houseplants or simply too busy to devote a lot of time to gardening, this is the plant for you. Continue reading for an in-depth guide to growing and caring for ZZ plants indoors.

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We’ve all been there. You’ve found a beautiful piece of older hardware at the thrift store, and bought it for a song. You rush it home, eager to tinker, but you soon find it’s just not working. You open it up to attempt a repair, but you could really use some information on what you’re looking at and how to enter service mode. Only… a Google search turns up nothing but dodgy websites offering blurry PDFs for entirely the wrong model, and you’re out of luck.

These days, when you buy an appliance, the best documentation you can expect is a Quick Start guide and a warranty card you’ll never use. Manufacturers simply don’t want to give you real information, because they think the average consumer will get scared and confused. I think they can do better. I’m demanding a new two-tier documentation system—the basics for the normies, and real manuals for the tech heads out there.

Give Us The Goods

Once upon a time, appliances came with real manuals and real documentation. You could buy a radio that came with a full list of valves that were used inside, while telephones used to come with printed circuit diagrams right inside the case. But then the world changed, and a new phrase became a common sight on consumer goods—”NO USER SERVICABLE PARTS INSIDE.” No more was the end user considered qualified or able to peek within the case of the hardware they’d bought. They were fools who could barely be trusted to turn the thing on and work it properly, let alone intervene in the event something needed attention.

This attitude has only grown over the years. As our devices have become ever more complex, the documentation delivered with them has shrunk to almost non-existent proportions. Where a Sony television manual from the 1980s contained a complete schematic of the whole set, a modern smartphone might only include a QR code linking to basic setup instructions on a website online. It’s all part of an effort by companies to protect the consumer from themselves, because they surely can’t be trusted with the arcane knowledge of what goes on inside a modern device.

This Sony tv manual from 1985 contained the complete electrical schematics for the set.
byu/a_seventh_knot inmildlyinteresting

This sort of intensely technical documentation was the norm just a few decades ago.

It’s understandable, to a degree. When a non-technical person buys a television, they really just need to know how to plug it in and hook it up to an aerial. With the ongoing decline in literacy rates, it’s perhaps a smart move by companies to not include any further information than that. Long words and technical information would just make it harder for these customers to figure out how to use the TV in the first place, and they might instead choose a brand that offers simpler documentation.

This doesn’t feel fair for the power user set. There are many of us who want to know how to change our television’s color mode, how to tinker with the motion smoothing settings, and how to enter deeper service modes when something seems awry. And yet, that information is kept from us quite intentionally. Often, it’s only accessible in service manuals that are only made available through obscure channels to selected people authorised by OEMs.

Two Tiers, Please

I don’t think it has to be this way. I think it’s perfectly fine for manufacturers to include simple, easy-to-follow instructions with consumer goods. However, I don’t think that should preclude them from also offering detailed technical manuals for those users that want and need them. I think, in fact, that these should be readily available as a matter of course.

Call it a “superuser manual,” and have it only available via a QR code in the back of the basic, regular documentation. Call it an “Advanced Technical Supplement” or a “Calibration And Maintenance Appendix.” Whatever jargon scares off the normies so they don’t accidentally come across it and then complain to tech support that they don’t know why their user interface is now only displaying garbled arcane runes. It can be a little hard to find, but at the end of the day, it should be a simple PDF that can be downloaded without a lot of hurdles or paywalls.

I’m not expecting manufacturers to go back to giving us full schematics for everything. It would be nice, but realistically it’s probably overkill. You can just imagine what that would like for a modern smartphone or even just a garden variety automobile in 2025. However, I think it’s pretty reasonable to expect something better than the bare basics of how to interact with the software and such. The techier manuals should, at a minimum, indicate how to do things like execute a full reset, enter any service modes, and indicate how the device is  to be safely assembled and disassembled should one wish to execute repairs.

Of course, this won’t help those of us repairing older gear from the 90s and beyond. If you want to fix that old S-VHS camcorder from 1995, you’re still going to have to go to some weird website and risk your credit card details over a $30 charge for a service manual that might cover your problem. But it would be a great help for any new gear moving forward. Forums died years ago, so we can no longer Google for a post from some old retired tech who remembers the secret key combination to enter the service menu. We need that stuff hosted on manufacturer websites so we can get it in five minutes instead of five hours of strenuous research.

Will any manufacturers actually listen to this demand? Probably, no. This sort of change needs to happen at a higher level. Perhaps the right to repair movement and some boisterous EU legislation could make it happen. After all, there is an increasing clamour for users to have more rights over the hardware and appliances they pay for. If and when it happens, I will be cheering when the first manuals for techies become available. Heaven knows we deserve them!

Aluminum plants, aka watermelon pilea, are tropical perennials with abundant clumping green foliage that is richly textured and accented by streaks of silver. Ideal for growing indoors in bright, indirect light, this foliage plant requires moderate maintenance and is an elegant addition to the home or office. Read more.

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It’s that time of year when we eat perhaps a little too much food, and have maybe just a few too many sips of red wine. But it’s also when we think about what we’ve been grateful for over the past year. And here at Hackaday, that’s you all: the people out there making the crazy projects that we get the pleasure of writing about, and those of you just reading along. After all, we’re just the hackers in the middle. You are all Hackaday.

And it’s also the time of year, at least in this hemisphere, when the days get far too short for their own good and the weather gets frankly less than pleasant. That means more time indoors, and if we play our cards right, more time in the lab. Supercon is over and Hackaday Europe is still far enough in the future. Time for a good project along with all of the festive duties.

So here we sit, while the weather outside is frightful, wishing you all a pleasant start to the holiday season. May your parts bin overflow and your projects-to-do-list never empty!

'Gollum' jade is a cultivar of Crassula ovata with tubular leaves that flare into suction-cup-like tips, often tinged with red. Also known as finger jade, Shrek’s ears, and E.T. fingers, it’s compact, slow-growing, and ideal for growing indoors. Learn how to grow and care for 'Gollum' in this guide. Read more now.

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Gloxinia is a flowering perennial from Brazil related to the African violet. It is suited to outdoor cultivation in Zones 11 to 12 and also makes an outstanding houseplant. Showy funnel-shaped flowers in purple, red, or white hues bloom above a rosette of fuzzy foliage. Learn how to grow gloxinia indoors in this guide.

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If there was one plant that embodied the spirit of Christmas, poinsettias would be at the top of ... Read More

The post Get to Know Poinsettias: History, Growing, and Reblooming appeared first on Garden Therapy.

An easy-care perennial, Solomon’s seal has elegant arching stems, pretty foliage, and sweetly scented bell-like flowers in spring. The cold-hardy rhizomes spread slowly into attractive colonies that are ideal for moist or dry shade gardens and woodland settings. Learn how to plant and grow Polygonatum in this guide.

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If you grow Christmas cactus, the time may come when it needs repotting, and that means you’ll need an appropriate potting mix. There are many products available for cacti, but the ingredients vary. Learn what essential elements are required for healthy growth, and how to make your own perfect potting mix. Read more now.

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One of our newer writers, [Tyler August], recently wrote a love letter to plasma TV technology. Sitting between the ubiquitous LCD and the vanishing CRT, the plasma TV had its moment in the sun, but never became quite as popular as either of the other display techs, for all sorts of reasons. By all means, go read his article if you’re interested in the details. I’ll freely admit that it had me thinking that I needed a plasma TV.

I don’t, of course. But why do I, and probably a bunch of you out there, like old and/or odd tech? Take [Tyler]’s plasma fetish, for instance, or many people’s love for VFD or nixie tube displays. At Supercon, a number of people had hit up Apex Electronics, a local surplus store, and came away with some sweet old LED character displays. And I’ll admit to having two handfuls of these displays in my to-hack-on drawer that I bought surplus a decade ago because they’re so cute.

It’s not nostalgia. [Tyler] never had a plasma growing up, and those LED displays were already obsolete before the gang of folks who had bought them were even born. And it’s not simply that it’s old junk – the objects of our desire were mostly all reasonably fancy tech back in their day. And I think that’s part of the key.

My theory is that, as time and tech progresses, we see these truly amazing new developments become commonplace, and get forgotten by virtue of their ever-presence. For a while, having a glowing character display in your car stereo would have been truly futuristic, and then when the VFD went mainstream, it kind of faded into our ambient technological background noise. But now that we all have high-res entertainment consoles in our cars, which are frankly basically just a cheap tablet computer (see what I did there?), the VFD becomes an object of wonder again because it’s rare.

Which is not to say that LCD displays are anything short of amazing. Count up the rows and columns of pixels, and multiply by three for RGB, and that’s how many nanoscale ITO traces there are on the screen of even the cheapest display these days. But we take it for granted because we are surrounded by cheap screens.

I think we like older, odder tech because we see it more easily for the wonder that it is because it’s no longer commonplace. But that doesn’t mean that our current “boring” tech is any less impressive. Maybe the moral of the story is to try to approach and appreciate what we’ve got now with new eyes. Pretend you’re coming in from the future and finding this “old” gear. Maybe try to figure out how it must have worked.