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Looking through these three windows on history reminds us that while the tools of civilization evolve, the human story continues to be driven by many of the same hopes, challenges, and ambitions that have shaped every generation. Continue reading

Photographic art based on the multicolored columns in the portal hall in Freiburg Minster, Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Within our own Milky Way galaxy, two bright, spiky stars stand like sentinels in the foreground of this cosmic snapshot. Far beyond them are the galaxies of the Hydra Cluster. In fact, while the spiky foreground stars are hundreds of light-years distant, the Hydra Cluster galaxies are well over 100 million light-years away. Three large galaxies near the cluster center, two yellow ellipticals (NGC 3311, NGC 3309) and one prominent blue spiral (NGC 3312), are the dominant galaxies, each about 150,000 light-years in diameter. An intriguing overlapping galaxy pair cataloged as NGC 3314 lies above and left of NGC 3312. Also known as Abell 1060, the Hydra galaxy cluster is one of three large galaxy clusters within 200 million light-years of the Milky Way. In the nearby universe, galaxies are gravitationally bound into clusters which themselves are loosely bound into superclusters. Superclusters in turn are seen to align over even larger scales.

Photo by Rafael Sampaio

A view of the choir of St. Bonifatius Church (Wiesbaden, Germany). Today is the feast of St. Boniface.

DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Ralph Waldo Emerson ~ (1803 –1882) American poet, philosopher, essayist and abolitionist.  His first two collections of "Essays" First Series (1841) and  Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include  "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet",  "Experience" and "Nature". His work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him. , He wrote: "In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man" More

David Klaasen on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What is happening inside this unusual nebula? Planetary nebula Tc 1, captured here in exquisite detail by the James Webb Space Telescope, is the celestial site where buckyballs were first identified in 2010. Buckminsterfullerene — as buckyballs are officially called — is a molecule with 60 carbon atoms (C60) arranged in the shape of a soccer ball. The molecule is named for architect Buckminster Fuller because of its resemblance to the geodesic dome he helped popularize. Webb’s new data reveal where the C60 molecules live in this nebula, and the geometry is striking: they populate a thin spherical shell around the central star, visible here as the bright edge of the nebula’s glowing orange central region. Look closely near the nebula’s heart and a more perplexing feature emerges: a delicate structure shaped uncannily like an upside-down question mark, fitting punctuation for the many questions this nebula still poses.

Malabar pied hornbill (Anthracoceros coronatus) female in Yala National Park, Sri Lanka. Like all hornbills, the bird has a large casque; the male's casque is even larger.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.