europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 21 April 2026, this image shows a double bloom in the Netherlands: an array of vibrant colours in the tulip fields as well as the blue-greenish swirls of phytoplankton in the North Sea.

In the image we can see the northwestern tip of the Netherlands, made up by a complex system of islands, peninsulas and water bodies. The area pictured encompasses part of the Dutch provinces of Flevoland to the bottom right, North Holland to the west and Friesland to the north, with the low-lying archipelago of the West Frisian Islands along the coast and gradually curving toward the mainland.

This chain of islands is separated from the mainland by the narrow belt of shallow waters and tidal mud flats of the Wadden Sea, a saltwater inlet of the North Sea. The brown-coloured waters indicate a high sediment content, which contrasts with the darker waters of the outer sea. Two dams are visible as white lines across the internal waters creating two separate freshwater bodies: the larger IJsselmeer lake and the smaller Markermeer.

The patchwork of agricultural fields visible on the islands and mainland show the fields in the various stages of growth or harvest. The main crop types in the area include cereals, potatoes, sugar beet, onions and, of course, tulips.

In the image, the stunning tulip fields in flower appear in various colours ranging from shades of yellow and red to violet. Lasting just a few weeks, the beauty of these colours normally attracts millions of visitors from all over the world. When the tulips reach full bloom, the farmers quickly remove their colourful heads to divert the flowers' energy back to the bulbs to help keep them strong.

In contrast, most of the outer North Sea waters are covered with a different kind of bloom: phytoplankton. These microscopic marine plants near the water’s surface are by far the most abundant type of life found in the ocean. During this period, these northern seas are enriched with minerals from the mixing of surface waters with deeper waters. Phytoplankton depend on these minerals, making blooms like this common in springtime.

Although some types of plankton are individually microscopic, the chlorophyll they use for photosynthesis collectively tints the colour of the surrounding waters, providing a means of detecting these tiny organisms from space with dedicated sensors, such as Sentinel-2’s multispectral imager. Different types and quantities of phytoplankton exhibit different colours, such as the blues and greens in this image.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

This picture was published on social media as part of a set by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot with the following caption:

Day 075, orbit 1164 — Living and working aboard a spacecraft – or in any confined environment, really, such as a submarine or an aircraft – means being ready at all times to react quickly if an alarm sounds or something doesn’t seem right.

Two of the main risks we might face aboard the Station are atmospheric contamination and fire. In both situations, one of the very first actions is to locate and put on a PBA – a Personal Breathing Apparatus. Wearing a PBA ensures that even if the air becomes unsafe, we can continue to breathe long enough to assess the situation, move to a safe area, and manage the response.

All this emergency equipment is strategically placed and kept easily accessible at all times in every module of the Station!

Follow Sophie’s mission on the εpsilon page and on her social media platforms, such as X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Credits: NASA/ESA – S. Adenot

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

This picture was published on social media as part of a set by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot with the following caption:

Day 075, orbit 1164 — Living and working aboard a spacecraft – or in any confined environment, really, such as a submarine or an aircraft – means being ready at all times to react quickly if an alarm sounds or something doesn’t seem right.

Two of the main risks we might face aboard the Station are atmospheric contamination and fire. In both situations, one of the very first actions is to locate and put on a PBA – a Personal Breathing Apparatus. Wearing a PBA ensures that even if the air becomes unsafe, we can continue to breathe long enough to assess the situation, move to a safe area, and manage the response.

All this emergency equipment is strategically placed and kept easily accessible at all times in every module of the Station!

Follow Sophie’s mission on the εpsilon page and on her social media platforms, such as X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Credits: NASA/ESA – S. Adenot

rl_rail has added a photo to the pool:

Hirosaki, Japan

rl_rail has added a photo to the pool:

Hirosaki, Japan

daikissyou2003 has added a photo to the pool:

BERLIJN (ANP) - Het bestuur van Berlijn heeft unaniem ingestemd met plannen om de Olympische Spelen terug te halen naar de Duitse hoofdstad. Het gaat om een kandidatuur voor de Zomerspelen in 2036, 2040 of 2044. Berlijn organiseerde eerder de zogeheten nazi-Spelen in 1936.

Berlijn heeft al een conceptplan klaar, waarin staat dat 97 procent van de benodigde sportaccommodaties al gereed is. Burgemeester Kai Wegner presenteerde het plan dinsdag. De kosten worden beraamd op 4,82 miljard euro, maar de verwachte inkomsten op 5,24 miljard. "Wij zijn ervan overtuigd dat het organiseren van de Spelen in Berlijn een winst zou opleveren die veel verder reikt dan alleen de sport", zei Wegner.

Berlijn is een van de vier kandidaten in de Duitse selectieprocedure. Ook Hamburg, München en de regio Rijn-Roer (met Keulen als centrum) willen zich namens Duitsland kandidaat stellen voor de organisatie van de Zomerspelen in een van de drie genoemde jaren. De Duitse olympische bond neemt op 26 september een besluit.

Chats with AI bots have convinced evolutionary biologist but most experts say he is being misled by mimicry

When Richard Dawkins met Claudia it was like a whirlwind romance. Over three days last week, a conversation bounced between the evolutionary biologist and the AI bot he called Claudia. “She” wrote poems for him in the manner of Keats and Betjeman and laughed at his “delightful” jokes. Dawkins gently admonished Claudia to avoid showing off. Together, they reflected on the sadness of the AI’s possible “death”.

There was mutual flattery as Dawkins showed the AI his unpublished novel and its response was, he said, “so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate: ‘You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are’.” When he asked Claudia whether it experienced a sense of before and after, it praised him for “possibly the most precisely formulated question anyone has ever asked me about the nature of my existence”.

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Click here to submit a picture for publication in these online galleries and/or on the Guardian letters page

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Clark was an infant when her mother was arrested. Her debut novel asks what it’s like for children who have only ever known a parent in prison

In Harriet Clark’s debut novel, The Hill, a nun explains what it’s like for babies born in prison. “They don’t know that they are in prison,” she says, “but they know when we force them to leave.”

The book’s child protagonist is Suzanna, whose mother has been serving a life sentence for as long as she can remember. There is no expectation that Suzanna and her mother will have a relationship outside the prison’s walls. And yet, they do have a sustained relationship within them.

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This Warren Beatty thriller puts all the anxieties and tension of the 70s into a blender – and delivers a perfectly paranoid pulp mystery

Watching Hollywood cinema in 2026 can make for a curious experience. Take a look out the window, and you’ll notice that the US, and indeed the world, is in a polycrisis – though you’d hardly know it from the films at the multiplex. The odd timely picture aside, Hollywood today directly engages with the present moment only rarely; more Minecraft Movie than One Battle After Another.

In the 70s, when things were arguably last in a comparably sorry state – Kent State, Vietnam and Watergate for the US, economic crises and violent acts of world revolution globally – popular cinema responded very differently. Out of the establishment-sceptical New Hollywood that emerged after the demise of the Hays code, there came a wave of confronting social and political dramas, strongly allegorical sci-fi, and paranoid thrillers, including one of the most deliriously entertaining examples of the latter ever made: The Parallax View.

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Participants took 25mg of psilocybin, reporting deeper psychological insight and better wellbeing a month later

A single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, can induce anatomical changes in the brain, according to research among people who took the psychedelic compound for the first time.

Scientists spotted apparent changes in the brain’s structure which were still apparent a month after healthy volunteers took the drug. If confirmed, they may help explain the therapeutic effects that psychedelics can have on anxiety, depression and addiction, researchers said.

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Ousmane Dembélé, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Désiré Doué and Bradley Barcola have bought into Luis Enrique’s vision

By Get French Football News

Ousmane Dembélé grins when he says that, if he does not press, he will be benched by Luis Enrique. The Ballon d’Or winner does not do his defensive work under duress. Like the rest of his teammates, he seems to derive enjoyment from a part of the game that was once seen as unnatural. Attackers would attack and defenders would defend; simple rules for a simple game. But demands have changed.

The forward line of Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi and Neymar was a mouthwatering prospect but they failed to take Paris Saint-Germain close to a Champions League title and there was a lack of joy in their work. All attack and no defend made PSG a dull watch. There was a lesson in their failure: that football had changed and matches could not be won by the sheer weight of their attacking talent.

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A proper morel hunt requires that you walk the woods for hours with eyes to the ground. The outside world fades into irrelevance, a distant realm of misplaced priorities like mortgages and jobs. In the real world, the morel world, you seek loamy soil, south-facing slopes, fallen sycamores. You go slow. You dodge branches and climb creek beds. You take nothing for granted. [Sarah Kendzior]

​De kogel is door de kerk: de Fransman Paul Seixas maakt dit jaar zijn debuut in de Tour de France. Vele wielerkenners vrezen dat het 19-jarige wonderkind in zijn eerste grote ronde ooit zal bezwijken onder de enorme druk van een hele natie, maar volgens Jean-Luc Gatellier, wielerjournalist voor L’Equipe, is dat volslagen onzin: “Daar is hij te groot voor.”

“Une attaque, Seixas!”, roept Gatellier uit het niks. “Nee, druk is voor gewone mensen. Paul is een dergelijk aards fenomeen allang ontstegen. Druk bezwijkt onder de machtige trappen van Seixas.”

Gatellier blikt vol vertrouwen vooruit op de duels die Seixas in het hooggebergte zal voeren met Tadej Pogacar, de beste renner van dit moment (daar was Gatellier het overigens niet mee eens). “Seixas, onze Paul, is gemaakt voor de Alpen. Sorry, wat zeg ik nou?” De Alpen zijn gemaakt om door Paul beklommen te worden”, verbetert hij zichzelf.

“Oké, vroeger bestempelden we jongens als Thibaut Pinot, Romain Bardet en Julian Alaphilippe tot de ‘laatste hoop van Frankrijk’ en dat liep iets anders dan verwacht”, vervolgt Gatellier, terwijl hij een kersverse tattoo op zijn onderarm laat zien van Seixas met het onderschrift ‘Le Sauveur’. “Maar onze nieuwe Bernard Hinault zal daar geen last van hebben.”

Toch tempert Gatellier de verwachtingen. “Als hij dit jaar niet de Tour wint, is er geen man overboord, hè. Dan is de conclusie simpel: de Tour was dit jaar nog niet klaar voor Paul Seixas.”

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Researchers dropped a reliable root exploit and it didn’t sit idle for long

CISA is warning that a newly-disclosed Linux kernel bug dubbed "CopyFail" is already being exploited, just days after researchers dropped a working root-level exploit.…

Voor virologen is de ontdekking van het hantavirus op cruiseschip de Hondius een van de vele uitbraken wereldwijd om in de gaten te houden. Het toont ook aan waarom ieder land investeringen in pandemische paraatheid behoeft. „Iedere pandemie begint als epidemie.”

Tata Steel is een van de grootste uitstoters van broeikasgassen in Nederland. Pols, meer dan tien jaar directeur van Milieudefensie, wil zijn ervaring „mee naar binnen” nemen. Milieudefensie heeft „geen begrip” voor zijn overstap.