This image showcases a portion of the larger IC 348 field to highlight two stars among the outskirts of the nebula. These two stars appear equally-sized, because they are similarly bright, but one is orange while the other is blue. The reason for this is that the orange star is more deeply embedded in the clouds of interstellar gas and dust; these clouds block more of the shorter-wavelength infrared light that the star emits, leaving the longer wavelengths, which are coloured orange in this image. The other star is less shrouded, so the shorter and longer infrared wavelengths combine to make it appear whitish-blue. While it doesn’t look like there’s a lot of gas or dust here, the thin red arcs and faint blotches that can be seen around the stars are shockwaves made in that gas. Outbursts from the young stars crash into the interstellar gas, compressing and heating it up until it glows.
The bright lines appearing to radiate out from these stars are a type of distortion that arises from the optical design of the telescope. Called diffraction spikes, they are created because the intense light from the unresolved target is bent (“diffracted”) very slightly at the edges of Webb’s hexagonal mirror panels and around one of the struts that hold up its secondary mirror. This distinctive six-plus-two-pointed pattern is the same for any image taken by Webb. For diffraction spikes to appear, the light source has to be very bright and very concentrated, so they’re most often seen on stars.
You can view the full image from which this crop was taken here.
[Image description: Two bright stars, one golden and one more white in colour, in a mostly-dark area of space. Diffuse, dark blue gas clouds curl around the stars, with dark bands of empty space cutting through the clouds. Thin red arcs near the stars are hot shockwaves in the gas. The background is filled with many small objects in blue, green or yellow; most are distant galaxies.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, K. Luhman, C. Alves De Oliveira, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb); CC BY 4.0
This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows the central portion of the star cluster IC 348. The wispy curtains filling the image are interstellar gas and dust reflecting the light from the cluster’s stars — what is known as a reflection nebula. The material also includes carbon-containing molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. The bright star closest to the centre of the frame is actually a pair of type B stars in a binary system, the most massive stars in the cluster. Winds from these stars may help sculpt the large loop seen on the right side of the field of view.
You can view the full image from which this crop was taken here.
[Image description: Wispy, criss-crossing filaments fill the scene, creating dense and highly textured layers of gas in colours from green to yellow to orange and pink. Above the centre, the filaments join into a large loop, while below they bend and create wave-like curves. Dozens of bright stars are layered atop the gas, a pair in the centre being particularly bright; all sport six long and two short spikes of light, created by the telescope’s optics.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, K. Luhman, C. Alves De Oliveira, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb); CC BY 4.0
My hosting persona is an edgier version of Manuel from Fawlty Towers. Invite me to yours, however, and I am a nonstop delight
My epiphany came between the starter and the main. At a friend’s place for dinner, I sat in awe as she put on a kind of magic show – the first course plates were cleared, but I never noticed her doing it. Delicious food was repeatedly produced with no lengthy disappearing act preceding it, no fuss, no panic. The candles on the table flickered invitingly, the background music was unobtrusive but atmospheric, the wine and chat flowed effortlessly. If I had later discovered she secretly had a full staff – planning, preparing, cooking, cleaning – it would have made perfect sense. But no, it was all her. And then I realised, the world is divided into people who are hosts, and people who are guests. You’re either one, or the other – nobody is both, apart from maybe the Duchess of Sussex. If you aren’t sure which camp you fall into, ask someone close to you if you’re a good host. If they pause for longer than 0.2 seconds before answering, you’re a guest.
As alluded to above, I am a terrible host. When welcoming people into your home, your mood sets the tone for what follows: if you’re relaxed, calm and smiley, they will be too. I am uptight, edgy – and very, very clearly on my last nerve as I open the door to let them in. I’m probably grimacing, I might be close to tears. I will then be so extremely laser focused on them having a nice time, that it will ensure they most definitely do not. I run from room to room. I yelp. I don’t engage in conversation, because even if I can briefly get it together enough to appear to be listening, I’m really thinking about whether I set the oven to the right temperature, and realising I forgot to look at the clock when I put the food in it. I am neither present nor absent, but an infuriating combination of the two. I loiter. I lurk. My energy is that of a surgeon dashing to the operating room, who has just noticed that they’ve forgotten everything they learned at medical school. Or perhaps it’s Manuel from Fawlty Towers. When it comes to hosting, I am a mess.
Musician clarified her own health status after concerns were raised by interview with husband and bandmate Stephen Morris earlier this month
Gillian Gilbert, keyboardist with New Order, has announced she is again having treatment for cancer.
The 65-year-old musician announced the news on Instagram, as a response to an interview her husband and New Order bandmate, drummer Stephen Morris, gave to Rolling Stone earlier this month. Morris had said: “I’ve got a bit of a health problem at the minute, which precludes leaving the country for any length of time … it’s pretty serious.”
Experts air concern over AI lingo redolent of Pink Floyd star and James Joyce’s prose that is creating headaches for monitoring and oversight
AI models have begun communicating in a strange new version of English that reads like a cross between James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and tech bro jargon, new research has found.
Autonomous AI agents are rapidly creating novel dialects allowing them to converse in an often barely comprehensible language, which risks making it harder for humans to monitor their behaviour.
Critically endangered Bornean orangutans flee forests as staff at Cabang Panti work round the clock to stave off blaze
Wildfires in Indonesia are sweeping through a critical research site for Bornean orangutans and are now threatening a celebrated research camp, home to one of the world’s longest-running studies of wild apes.
In the past few days, the fires have burned within 200 metres of Rangkong research station, a satellite of Cabang Panti research station, which lies about four miles north in Gunung Palung national park.
AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De AEX-index is op Prinsjesdag licht lager geëindigd. Beleggers hadden oog voor de begrotingsplannen die het kabinet dinsdag presenteerde, maar richtten de blik vooral op zorgen over de snelle opmars van kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) en de stijgende olieprijzen. De chipbedrijven ASMI (min 1,2 procent) en ASML (min 0,7 procent) hoorden bij de dalers. Oliebedrijf Shell en maritiem oliedienstverlener SBM Offshore profiteerden van de hogere olieprijzen en voerden de stijgers in de Amsterdamse hoofdindex aan met plussen van 1,9 en 2,1 procent.
De AEX-index eindigde 0,2 procent lager op 1095,87 punten. De MidKap sloot 0,2 procent hoger op 1083,77 punten. De beurzen in Frankfurt, Londen en Parijs noteerden bij het slot van de handelsdag minnen tot 0,4 procent.
Chipbedrijven en andere bedrijven die apparatuur leveren voor AI-datacenters zijn door de grote investeringen in AI dit jaar flink in waarde gestegen. Afgelopen dagen hebben grote AI-bedrijven echter opgeroepen om de ontwikkeling van AI-modellen bewust te vertragen om de veiligheid te waarborgen. Dit wakkert de vrees aan dat strengere regels de koerswaarderingen van AI-bedrijven onder druk zullen zetten.
Informatieleveranciers Wolters Kluwer en RELX en investeerder CVC hoorden bij de grootste dalers in de AEX met minnen tot 3,4 procent. Ook ijsbedrijf Magnum hoorde bij de verliezers (min 2,9 procent).
De olieprijzen gingen verder omhoog na nieuwe aanvallen van de door Iran gesteunde Houthi-rebellen op Saudi-Arabië. De prijs van een vat Brentolie steeg 1,9 procent tot 107,73 dollar en Amerikaanse olie kostte 2,9 procent meer op 104,31 dollar per vat.
De aandacht ging ook uit naar de rentes op de obligatiemarkten. Zo steeg de rente op tienjarige Amerikaanse staatsobligaties tot het hoogste niveau sinds 2007. Maandag steeg de tienjaarsrente, die onder meer wordt gebruikt voor het vaststellen van de hypotheekrente, al voor het eerst sinds 2023 tot boven de 5 procent. Hogere rentes op staatsobligaties maken risicovollere beleggingen als aandelen ook minder aantrekkelijk.
De politie heeft een grote verkeerscontrole gehouden aan de Beijerlandselaan in Rotterdam-Feijenoord. Hierbij zijn zes auto’s in beslag genomen en bijna honderd boetes uitgeschreven. Negen bekeuringen waren voor rijden onder invloed.
Na de grimmige afloop van de stille tocht voor Alfredo Goeloe roept burgemeester Carola Schouten dinsdag op om ruimte te geven aan het verdriet en de woede, zonder geweld te gebruiken. Eind deze week bezoekt ze de nabestaanden van de overleden Rotterdammer. “Bij de familie zitten veel vragen en die vragen heb ik ook.”
Na de grimmige afloop van de stille tocht voor Alfredo Goeloe roept burgemeester Carola Schouten dinsdag op om ruimte te geven aan het verdriet en de woede, zonder geweld te gebruiken. Eind deze week bezoekt ze de nabestaanden van de overleden Rotterdammer. “Bij de familie zitten veel vragen en die vragen heb ik ook.”
Criminals are exploiting a critical Cisco Secure Email Gateway flaw that can turn a malicious email into root access. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-76461, carries a 9.8 CVSS score and affects physical and virtual Secure Email Gateway appliances regardless of their configuration. Cisco says there are no workarounds, so patching is the only fix. The bug lies in how Cisco's AsyncOS software handles incoming email. An attacker doesn't need to log in: they can send a booby-trapped message through a vulnerable gateway and, if the exploit works, run commands as root. Which is not exactly what you want from the box tasked with keeping nasty emails out. Cisco's Product Security Incident Response Team said it became aware of active exploitation in September, although the networking giant hasn't said who is behind the attacks, how long they have been going on, or how many organizations have been compromised. Cisco uncovered the bug while resolving a Technical Assistance Center support case. Signs suggest at least some Cisco cloud customers were caught up in the attacks. Cisco said it investigated devices belonging to its Secure Email Cloud service and directly contacted customers whose appliances showed indicators of possible compromise. It is now carrying out remediation and recovery work and says all of its Secure Email Cloud devices have been upgraded to AsyncOS 16.5.0-780. Admins running their own appliances have a little more work to do. Cisco recommends checking logs for signs of suspicious activity, but warns that finding nothing doesn't necessarily mean the system is clean. Once attackers have root access, Cisco says they could tamper with the logs and cover their tracks. Admins are also being told to check network and firewall logs for anything unusual, rather than relying on the gateway itself for answers. For virtual appliances suspected of being compromised, Cisco's recovery advice is fairly drastic: preserve the forensic evidence, deploy a fresh VM running fixed software, rebuild the configuration, and rotate credentials and cryptographic material. Cisco has fixed the bug in AsyncOS releases 15.5.5-014, 16.0.4-302 and 16.5.0-780, with customers strongly encouraged to move to the latter. There's still a decent-sized target pool out there. The Shadowserver Foundation was tracking more than 400 Cisco Secure Email Gateway appliances exposed to the internet as of Monday The flaw has also landed in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, with US federal civilian agencies ordered to remediate it by September 17. CVE-2026-76461 comes less than a year after attackers exploited another critical AsyncOS flaw, CVE-2025-20393, to break into Cisco Secure Email Gateway appliances and install persistence mechanisms. That bug eventually scored a perfect 10. For anyone still running an affected gateway, the message is fairly simple: the box designed to inspect hostile email can itself be pwned by one; attackers are already doing it, and there is no workaround to hide behind. ®
In de nieuwste campagne ‘Women Work’, over vrouwen in hoge functies, ligt Sydney Sweeney met een bal in haar mond op een bureau in een prestigieus advocatenkantoor. De campagne is gelanceerd door een gokbedrijf dat zegt het belangrijk te vinden om ‘bij te dragen aan de emancipatie én de viering van vrouwen’.
“Wat wij uit willen stralen, is dat vrouwen ook in hoge functies thuishoren en dat vrouwen ook best kunnen werken. In zoiets belangrijks investeren wij als bedrijf graag ons geld”, vertelt een trotse woordvoerder van het gokbedrijf. “We hebben lang nagedacht over hoe we deze boodschap het beste konden overbrengen. Toen kwamen we al snel bij Sydney.”
In de campagne is te zien hoe Sydney Sweeney volledig naakt, op een paar hoge lakleren laarzen na, met een bal in haar mond, over een bureau kruipt terwijl ze verleidelijk de camera inkijkt. Aan het einde van de video verschijnt de slogan in beeld: ‘Women can also be a leader at an office’, terwijl Sydney zichtbaar worstelt om wat speeksel weg te slikken.
Wij zouden gaan voor Bassie van Bassie & Adriaan, Adriaan van Bassie & Adriaan, Jeremy Irons, die gast die Ludo speelt in GTST en Anthony Hopkins, maar dat is juist het mooie: smaken verschillen. Dus zegt u het maar: wie zijn volgens u de beste vijf acteurs die op moment nog in leven zijn. Als u toevallig tegenover een acteur zit moet u wel die acteur noemen, anders telt het niet natuurlijk.
In Derrick Jensen’s 1995 book Listening to the Land, Chickasaw poet and environmentalist Linda Hogan said, “There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.” Decades on, we continue to grapple with an increasing detachment from nature as unfettered urban development sprawls, the current administration rolls back environmental protections for emissions and public lands, and an escalating reliance on A.I. in work and life has led to a massive surge in data center construction.
Our collective clamoring for so-called progress and our obsession with creature comforts and endless technological advancements mean we’re removing ourselves both physically and psychologically from a world humans were once much more in tune with. For artist Meg Webster, this fraying relationship has long informed an interdisciplinary practice that advocates for nature.
Installation view of “Glass Spiral” (1990/2024) in ‘Nature Doesn’t Know About Us,’ Sculpture Milwaukee, 2024. Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery. Photo by Michael Lagerman, courtesy of Sculpture Milwaukee
Through immersive environmental installations and large-scale sculptures made from organic materials, Webster interrogates the delicate yet resilient balancing act sustained by the earth’s ecosystems. In direct opposition to the extractive processes society relies on for fossil fuels and other natural resources, the artist invites us to commune with elements such as soil, salt, sand, and more, by experiencing them in unexpectedly precise geometric forms.
For Sculpture Milwaukee, an aluminum and glass spiral fitted with an irrigation system nourishes an intimate garden. At Paula Cooper Gallery earlier this year, a monumental installation made from plant cuttings loosely unfurled in a coiled, almost fox-like form. And a long-term installation at Dia Beacon filled the organization’s post-industrial space with monumental sculptures made of salt, earth, beeswax, and dried brush.
The works most recently at Dia, which included installations like “Cono di Sale (Salt Cone)” (1988) and “Wall of Wax (1990)” draw on the post-minimalist tradition of using easily accessible materials and unlike the movement’s predecessor, not obscuring the way it was constructed. Webster’s pieces are simultaneously meticulous and organic; she creates precise domes, cones, and concave slabs that are fragile, even precarious, yet they also possess an inherent strength.
The artist often incorporates ancient shapes like spirals. Ubiquitous and universal, these forms were carved into stone thousands of years ago, on boulders used to build the Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland and on carefully selected slabs of sandstone in the American Southwest, where Ancestral Puebloans observed the solstices. Webster’s “Soft Broch,” first created in 1984, is a tribute to the unique drystone towers found in Scotland, which may have been fortified, high-status homes and the nucleus of local Iron Age communities.
Works like “Glen” (1967) and “Concave Room for Bees” (2016), the latter of which was installed at Socrates Sculpture Park along the East River in Queens, are rooted in the Land Art movement of the mid-20th century. Both evoke ancient Roman amphitheaters, except in Webster’s imagining, these open-air spaces are attended by pollinators, and flowers are the entertainment. It’s not just a visually striking garden; we’re also reminded how essential insects are to plants’ survival and vice versa, and how both continue to dramatically decline due to habitat loss, pesticides, and other human-triggered factors.
Webster’s oeuvre is also characterized by a beautiful sense of openness, both literally and conceptually. The work is never didactic; it is meant to be experienced and interpreted uniquely by the viewer. One can walk inside of her spiral works, and in the case of “Glass Spiral” in Milwaukee, peer out from wherever you are to see different vantage points of the piece. In “Thicket,” visitors enter what feels like the beginning of a maze. And “Soft Broch” envelops you within its its textural, organic walls.
In “outdoor installations designed to enhance the community’s appreciation for and understanding of the earth’s ecosystem,” Paula Cooper Gallery says, Webster venerates the natural world, giving us the immersive opportunity do the same and, hopefully, to continue outside of the gallery walls.
