HAMISH MCRAE: Cash is not king for savers as shares offer better return
My feeling is that we are in the early stages of a revival of equity culture, driven in part by the market boom but equally by the apps that make it easy to invest.
Could a Faint Glow in the Milky Way Be Dark Matter?
"A nearby galaxy once thought to be dominated by dark matter seems to have a surprise supermassive black hole at its centre," reports New Scientist.
Yet scientists "are convinced dark matter is out there," writes Space.com. "The quest to detect it arguably remains both one of the most frustrating and most exhilarating challenges in modern physics."
And now they report that the century-old mystery of dark matter — the invisible glue thought to hold galaxies together — "just got a modern clue."
Scientists say they may be one step closer to confirming the existence of this elusive material, thanks to new simulations suggesting that a faint glow at the center of the Milky Way could be dark matter's long-sought signature. "It's very hard to actually prove, but it does seem likely," Moorits Muru of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany, who led the new study, told Space.com...
The findings, show that dark matter near the Milky Way's center might not form a perfect sphere as scientists long thought. Instead, it appears flattened, almost egg-shaped, and that shape closely mirrors the pattern of mysterious gamma rays observed by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope... Using powerful supercomputers, [the researchers] recreated how the Milky Way formed, including billions of years of violent collisions and mergers with smaller galaxies. Those violent events, the researchers found, left deep "fingerprints" on the way dark matter is distributed in the galactic core.... matching the pattern of gamma-ray emission Fermi has observed, the new study reports...
If the excess truly arises from dark matter collisions, it would mark the first indirect evidence that weakly interacting massive particles [WIMPs], a leading dark matter candidate, really exist...
"We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS," notes
Phys.org, in an article titled "The Empty Search for Dark Matter."
We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS — dark matter particles in this particular mass range. And they're not all the same kind of experiments. There are also the scintillators, which use a giant vat of liquefied noble gas, like several tons of xenon. They wait for a dark matter particle to strike the xenon and cause it to scintillate, which is a fancy science word for "sparkle." We see the sparkle; we detect dark matter...
They're just one example of a broader class of dark matter candidates, with delightful names like Q-balls, WIMPzillas, and sterile neutrinos. We've tuned our different experiments to capture different mass ranges or interaction strengths to cover as much of that wide dark matter spectrum as possible. We've even tried to manufacture various kinds of dark matter in our particle collider experiments.
And we've found nothing.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Chilling diaries of teens who wrote the exact same haunting three words over and over right before they died... despite never meeting
Juliana Peralta and Sewell Setzer III took their own lives months apart on opposite sides of the country. Before they died both of them wrote the same thing in their journals over and over.
I won £110k on The Wheel - my celebrity partner refused to help me in crucial moment so intense I've blocked it from memory
Lollipop lady Sally, who appeared on the BBC One programme earlier this month, decided to apply to be a contestant on the show after battling lung cancer, and took home £110,000.
Employees Are the New Hackers: 1Password Warns AI Use Is Breaking Corporate Security
Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Password manager 1Password's 2025 Annual Report: The Access-Trust Gap exposes how everyday employees are becoming accidental hackers in the AI era. The company's data shows that 73% of workers are encouraged to use AI tools, yet more than a third admit they do not always follow corporate policies. Many employees are feeding sensitive information into large language models or using unapproved AI apps to get work done, creating what 1Password calls "Shadow AI." At the same time, traditional defenses like single sign-on (SSO) and mobile device management (MDM) are failing to keep pace, leaving gaps in visibility and control. The report warns that corporate security is being undermined from within. More than half of employees have installed software without IT approval, two-thirds still use weak passwords, and 38% have accessed accounts at previous employers. Despite rising enthusiasm for passkeys and passwordless authentication, 1Password says most organizations still depend on outdated systems that were never built for cloud-native, AI-driven work. The result is a growing "Access-Trust Gap" that could allow AI chaos and employee shortcuts to dismantle enterprise security from the inside.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tess Daly 'stepped down from Strictly Come Dancing to prioritise spending more time with her family'
Strictly Come Dancing's Tess Daly stepped down from her presenting role to 'spend more time with family' amid her marriage woes to husband Vernon Kay .
The islands under siege from cruise ships full of anti-social tourists who take over buses, clog roads... and use neolithic landmarks as toilets
Locals on a windswept Scottish island claim they are under siege from thousands of anti-social tourists every year with the situation so stark that visitors who are caught short are now defecating.
Teenage nursery worker is convicted of raping and sexually abusing children as young as three
Thomas Waller, 18, who was newly-qualified to work with children, preyed on his young victims in the toilets.
Three arrests as trans rights activists clash with women's rights groups marking 199 days since Supreme Court's transgender ruling
Three people have been arrested after women's rights groups and trans rights activists clashed 199 days after the Supreme Court's transgender ruling.
Justin and Hailey Bieber's son Jack is his dad's twin as he channels pop star in throwback Halloween costume
Justin and Hailey Bieber's son Jack is already stealing the spotlight at just 1 year old, and his Halloween costume this year was nothing short of iconic.
Taxi firm offers veterans free 400-mile round trips to visit the Cenotaph in London on Remembrance Sunday
British war heroes will be able to travel from Hull to the war memorial in London and back for the annual commemoration.
Terrifying moment yobs launch fireworks at packed double-decker bus: Nine people arrested after Birmingham was turned into a 'warzone'
Nine people have been arrested after England's second city descended into a 'war zone' as unruly yobs launched fireworks at a packed double-decker bus.
Roy-Isle trendsetter! Did Kate's love for Fair Isles jumpers make them the hottest catwalk item?
They have been keeping fishermen warm for hundreds of years - but Fair Isle jumpers have now become this winter's hottest trend.
PETER HITCHENS: What Charles' humiliation of Andrew REALLY means for the future of the monarchy - and our country
My guess is that the British monarchy is now finished. The end is only a matter of time. This may possibly have been the case before Thursday. But it became certain that evening.
NASA Seeks Backup Plan for Carrying Astronauts to the Moon
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:
[C]iting delays in Starship's development and competitive pressure from China, NASA asked SpaceX and Blue Origin — which holds a separate lunar lander contract with the space agency — to submit plans to expedite development of their respective spacecraft by October 29. Both companies have responded. But the space agency is also asking the broader commercial space industry to detail how they might get the job done more quickly, hinting that NASA leadership is prepared to sideline its current partners. CNN spoke with half a dozen companies about how they plan to respond to NASA's call to action, which the agency will formally issue once the government shutdown ends, according to a source familiar with the matter.
One possibility is Lockheed Martin...
Notably, as a legacy NASA contractor, the company built the $20.4 billion Orion spacecraft that astronauts will ride when they take off from Earth... Now, Lockheed says it can piece together a two-stage lunar lander that uses spare parts harvested from Orion. The company would make use of Space Shuttle-era OMS-E engines — which are also used on Orion — to serve as the propulsion for an "ascent stage" of the lunar lander, providing the thrust for the vehicle to lift off the moon after a mission is completed. But the vehicle also needs a descent stage to get down to the lunar surface in the first place...
Other commercial space companies contacted by CNN — including Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman — said simply that they were "ready to support" NASA in its endeavor to find a faster way to complete the Artemis III mission. They did not confirm whether they would formally respond to the space agency's anticipated request for companies to submit proposals.
The more important goal, argue some experts, is to pave the way for a permanent lunar base where astronauts can live and work...
[P]erhaps the true winner will be the country that is able to build lasting infrastructure, experts say.
"It makes great press fodder to frame this as competition," said one space policy source, who was among several that spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity to discuss controversial issues. "But this is about the long game and the sustainability."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Alan Carr's Celebrity Traitors 'genius game plan' revealed by dumped co-star Kate Garraway ahead of finale
Alan Carr's 'genius game plan' has been revealed by his dumped co-star Kate Garraway.
Harry Potter's Jessie Cave says money woes and tough acting world led her to OnlyFans - but insists the work is 'not easy money' and she says no to 90% of requests
Harry Potter star Jessie Cave has detailed how her OnlyFans career came to be after she struggled to get by as an actress and writer.
Much-loved mom fell overboard on Taylor Swift-themed cruise and was never seen again... as family say they know who's to blame
Dulcie White, 66, fell overboard and died on October 22, 2024 while on Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas Taylor Swift-themed cruise.
HARRIET GREEN: I was drinking 10 coffees a day. My sleep was terrible and this one side-effect was driving my husband crazy. This is how I'm taking control over my caffeine addiction - and you can too
Harriet Green searches for ways to ditch her lifelong caffeine addiction and is surprised by what she discovers
Britain's cruellest teacher... she was struck off after she faked terminal cancer, a wedding and her own death
A teacher has been struck off after falsely claiming to have cancer as part of an extraordinary web of lies that ended with her faking her own death.