Cozy Games Free & Open-Source Godot Add-Ons / News, Resources / May 31, 2025 / Add-On, Godot The folks over at Cozy Cube Games have provided a GitHub repository that offers a fantastic collection of tools to enhance your Godot game development workflow. Here’s a look at 14 of the add-ons you can find there, all of which are available under the MIT open-source license and implemented using 100% GDScript. The repository consists of the following free add-ons for the Godot game engine: area_lights: Enhances lighting capabilities within your scenes. control_proxies: doodle_texture:  Create textures directly in Godot by doodling or sketching, perfect for prototyping and “sticky notes”. editor_relays: This add-on allows you to manage the Godot Editor from your application at run-time. gizmo_presets: Gain precise control over the visibility of Gizmos in Godot. Show/hide them all, or create and toggle your own custom presets. light_shafts: Add breathtaking volumetric light scattering effects, often known as “god rays,” to your scenes. lines_and_trails_3d: Easily create and manage dynamic 3D lines and trail effects for projectiles, movement paths, and more. manual_multimesh: Optimize your scenes by gaining more direct control over MultiMeshInstances, perfect for rendering many similar meshes efficiently. nine_patch_mesh: Create scalable 3D nine-patch meshes, ideal for flexible UI elements or environment pieces with repeating borders and centers. parallel_scene_views: Boost your productivity by viewing and interacting with multiple scene views simultaneously within the editor. preview_2d: Seamlessly integrate 2D and 3D workflows by adding a button to preview your 2D viewport directly from a 3D scene. procedural_texture_baker: Generate and bake unique procedural textures directly within Godot, saving time and adding variety. tile_path_3d: Effortlessly instance 3D objects along a spline path. Perfect for creating paths, roads, fences, and other repeating environmental details. transform_clusters: Once again, not really sure the use case on this one Key Links Cozy Cube Games Godot Add-Ons GitHub Repository Cozy Cube Games Homepage You can learn more about the Cozy Cube Games add-ons for the Godot game engine as well as see many of them in action in the video below.

By Ellyn Lapointe Published May 31, 2025 | Comments (0) | Researchers recovered this face-shaped rock from the San Lázaro rock-shelter in central Spain in 2022 © Álvarez-Alonso et al While digging inside a cave in the Spanish city of Segovia, archaeologists uncovered an unusual rock. The hand-sized stone naturally resembled an elongated face, and featured a spot of red pigment made from ochre right on the tip of what may be considered its nose.  “We were all thinking the same thing and looking at each other because of its shape: we were all thinking, ‘This looks like a face,’” David Álvarez Alonso, an archaeologist at Complutense University in Madrid who was part of the dig, told The Guardian. Álvarez Alonso and his colleagues spent the next three years studying this bizarre rock. The researchers posit that 43,000 years ago, a Neanderthal dipped their finger in ochre and pressed it onto the stone’s central ridge—leaving behind what is now considered to be the world’s oldest complete human fingerprint. It’s an intriguing finding that could have significant implications, but some experts would like to see more evidence to support this hypothesis.  The team published its findings in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on Saturday, May 24. In the paper, the archaeologists state that the “strategic position” of the dot suggests it is evidence of Neanderthals’ “symbolic behavior.” In other words, it’s a piece of art that “could represent one of the earliest human face symbolizations in prehistory.” “The fact that the [rock] was selected because of its appearance and then marked with ochre shows that there was a human mind capable of symbolizing, imagining, idealizing and projecting his or her thoughts on an object,” the researchers write.  Whether Neanderthals were capable of making art is a subject of ongoing debate, co-author María de Andrés-Herrero, a professor of prehistory at Complutense University, told the BBC. But over the past decade, a growing body of evidence has led many experts to believe that artistic expression emerged earlier in human evolution than previously thought.  The authors of this new study think their stone adds to this evidence. To reach this conclusion, they first needed more data to support the idea that this ancient artist had actually experienced pareidolia: seeing a face in an inanimate object. To that end, they generated a 3D model of the stone’s surface and measured the distances between its features, finding that the red dot—or nose—was placed such that it accurately resembled an actual nose on a human face.  Then, the researchers enlisted the help of geologists to characterize the red dot, confirming that it was made with ochre. Forensic police experts then used multispectral analysis—a technique that can reveal details invisible to the naked eye—to confirm that the red dot had been applied with a fingertip. Their analysis uncovered a fingerprint that could have belonged to an adult male Neanderthal inside the dot.  “Once we had that and all the other pieces, context and information, we advanced the theory that this could be a pareidolia, which then led to a human intervention in the form of the red dot,” Álvarez Alonso told The Guardian. “Without that red dot, you can’t make any claims about the object.” But Gilliane Monnier, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota who studies Neanderthal behavior, is not totally convinced by the researchers’ findings. “The fact that there are these natural depressions—and that we can measure the distance between them and argue that it’s a face—that’s all well and good,” Monnier, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Gizmodo. “But that doesn’t give us any indication that the Neanderthals who [occupied this cave] saw a face in that [rock].”  What’s more, she is skeptical of the researchers’ claim that the red dot was actually made with a human fingertip. It’s possible, she said, that the coloring and fingerprint-like ridges formed naturally. “I would be interested in seeing an explanation by a geologist—someone trained in geology—saying the likelihood of this forming by natural, geological or geomicrobial processes is a very low likelihood,” Monnier said.  The researchers, too, acknowledge that “it is unlikely that all doubts surrounding this hypothesis can be fully dispelled,” and state that the pareidolia hypothesis should not be seen as a definitive claim, but rather a possible explanation for this object based on the evidence. So it’s hard to say whether this study clarifies or complicates our understanding of how the human mind evolved the ability to create art. The face-shaped rock is an intriguing piece of the puzzle, but more research is needed to figure out where it fits. Daily Newsletter You May Also Like By Margherita Bassi Published May 28, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published May 27, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published May 25, 2025 By Natalia Mesa Published May 13, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published May 8, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published April 23, 2025

The iPad is unquestionably a strong product. It rakes in around 10% of Apple’s overall revenue and has more than twice the market share of Samsung, its closest competitor. However, the market it helped create has shifted dramatically these last few years, and Apple hasn’t kept up. Not a Kindle Part of the iPad’s original spiel was that it was a general-purpose device that, while far superior to Amazon’s dinky Kindle for reading, also sat between the iPhone and the Mac for general consumption and productivity. You love your iPhone, you love your Mac, so… yeah. iPad. Go! As the iPad lineup expanded outward and upward with its many variants and generations, combined with multiple iterations and combinations of accessories, it set itself even further apart from the dinky Kindle and every other basic tablet out there. The thing is, as the gap between them widened, a new product category quietly moved in. Once niche and clunky, the e-ink tablet has matured into something that Apple shouldn’t be ignoring anymore. Not an iPad It is very true that when they first came out, e-ink tablets were awful, especially the color e-ink ones, which soon followed. Color precision sucked. Color depth sucked. Image quality sucked. The list went on. Photo: Andrew Liszewski/Gizmodo And it didn’t help that the hardware usually looked cheap, coming from Chinese companies that most people probably had never heard of. And they were expensive. Which is to say, they cost pretty much the same as an iPad. But that’s no longer the case. I mean, devices like the reMarkable Paper Pro, the BOOX Note, the XPPen Magic Note Pad and many others are still expensive, but they have stopped being purported as bizarro iPads and have turned into their own, proper product category. Ironically, this has made them quite appealing for iPad users who feel caught in the paradox of having to fight a system that needs to get more capable just so that they can accomplish simpler tasks. In the end, this comes down to the fact that there is a reason why products like the reMarkable tablets keep making waves and many of us keep hearing about them. If you had never heard about them, suffice it to say that people are interested in them. Not all people, by any means. But perhaps more than, say… the iPad mini? If you haven’t seen Michael Burkhardt’s excellent comparison between the iPad Air and the reMarkable Paper Pro, you really should. And here’s the twist: some of these new devices don’t even use e-ink at all (which, for all intents and purposes, is a proprietary technology by E Ink). There’s a growing class of tablets that use traditional displays, but offer modes that mimic the visual and functional constraints of e-ink. In other words, they behave like e-ink tablets without being held back by e-ink’s shortcomings, while still being conceptually different from what it would mean for Apple to just slap an “ink mode” onto the iPad. No one’s buying a reMarkable to run Final Cut Pro. That much is obvious. But that is also kind of the point. These devices don’t pretend to be alternative full-blown computers. They lean into being focused, distraction-free, and delightfully single-purpose. Meanwhile, the iPad keeps bolting on Mac-but-not-quite features like Stage Manager, but every step in that direction also highlights how stiff it still is. Are there people who live by the iPad and have absolutely no idea or earthly way to possibly comprehend what I am babbling on about? Yes. But even they have to agree that they are an increasingly rarer breed. That’s where the iPad Ink comes in. Not an e-ink notepad. Not a souped-up e-reader. Not an iPad clone with fewer apps. An actual, proper new product category, much like the one Apple is reportedly developing for the home. A purpose-built, ultra-low-distraction device with stylus support, thought from the ground up with productivity in mind. And perhaps featuring an on-device small language model to help out with productivity tasks. That’d be neat. Is Apple ever going to make one of those? Probably not. But while it keeps side-engineering the iPad around its idea of what work should look like, more and more people seem to be turning to the ever-growing list of reMarkable-like products for, you know, work. Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

What happens right before two arcs of lightning smash into each other? An invisible blast of radiation a million times more energetic than a lightning discharge is unleashed in the form of gamma rays, before disappearing almost as quickly as it came.Yes, astronomy-minded friends, this is a gamma ray burst, almost like the cosmic explosions we see in deep space produced when stars go supernova — except right here on Earth (and thankfully, a lot less deadly).For the first time, a team of researchers in Japan have witnessed one of these earthly gamma ray blasts, known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, being produced by a lightning discharge, after two of them collided. The findings, published in a new study in the journal Science Advances, mark a major step forward in understanding how gamma rays are produced in the storm clouds that lourThunderclouds, on top of heaving with rain and crackling with arcs of electricity, are also brimming with gamma rays. But though this was discovered nearly three decades ago, the exact mechanism behind the phenomenon has eluded scientists, who until now have never tied a gamma ray flash, sometimes called "dark lightning," to a specific lightning strike. So far, the best theory is that thunderclouds act as natural particle accelerators that whip electrons to speeds approaching the speed of light, before colliding with air molecules to unleash gamma rays — and in some cases, even antimatter.Observing this in the wild, however, has been enormously challenging. Take the difficulty of predicting where visible lightning will strike and multiply it by a thousand, because that's how many discharges occur, approximately, before just a single gamma flash is produced. The flashes themselves last less than a millisecond, because the gamma rays instantly dissipate in the atmosphere."Most TGFs have been detected by satellites, but spaceborne observations can provide limited information," lead author Yuuki Wada, a researcher at the University of Osaka, told Gizmodo. "In this research, we performed a ground-based observation to see TGFs in detail."To pull off the feat of capturing dark lightning in a bottle, the researchers deployed a multi-sensor system to gather optical, radio frequency, and high-energy measurements coming from lightning storms. Their focus was on TV transmission towers, likely targets for a smiting from the heavens.Eventually, the moment came. A lightning strike split into two arcs, fated to meet. One arc, called a leader, struck downwards towards a tower, while the other leader rose up to meet it from the tip of the structure. Right then, the system detected a gamma flash just 31 microseconds before their collision, which occurred some 2,600 feet in the air. The ensuing gamma ray burst lasted all but 20 microseconds afterwards. But it was enough to synchronize, for the first time, lightning and dark lightning using ground-based observations."The multi-sensor observations performed here are a world-first; although some mysteries remain, this technique has brought us closer to understanding the mechanism of these fascinating radiation bursts," study senior author Harufumi Tsuchiya said in a statement about the work.More on lightning: Scientists Stumped by Mysterious Flashes of Light on VenusShare This Article

Headset maker Turtle Beach has dug deep to deliver some new accessories for the Nintendo Switch console including wallet-friendly headsets and controllers for kid gamersTech15:26, 25 May 2025Updated 15:32, 25 May 2025Rematch Invincible MarioHeadset maker Turtle Beach has debuted a host of new Switch gizmos.They’re well known for their amazing audio cans but the accessory chiefs have stretched their legs and gone into controllers too for this batch of lower-priced offerings.‌The best of the gear is arguably the new Rematch controllers approved by Nintendo for their handheld.‌They are wireless and sync effortlessly to your console so you can avoid that dreaded Joy-Con drift and get gaming like a pro from as far as 30ft away.They’re a little plasticky in the feel, but have a lovely Xbox controller-style look and design to them, fitting comfortably in the grip.We tried the Mario star themed one and it’s great for kids who want a nice colourful joypad that also glows in the dark at night time after having been exposed to light.Article continues belowThe battery lasts a whopping 40-odd hours and is rechargeable via USB-C.The Rematch has a 40 hour battery lifeREAD MORE: Daily Star's newsletter brings you the biggest and best stories – sign up todayREAD MORE: Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition review: Cult classic gets new life on SwitchYou also have two programmable buttons on the back of the device to enhance in-game actions.‌And there’s motion control built-in too, so you can do your Wii-style bowling or tennis play with this controller just like a Joy-Con.Not bad for £49.99.Kids will also love the colourful Airlite Fit wired gaming headset for the handheld console.‌They cost £20 and for that you do get a somewhat compromised version of that famous Turtle Beach gaming sound, finely tuned audio through 40mm speakers.Again, officially licensed by Nintendo, they come in three different colours, including white and black and a neon purple.The Airlite Fit costs just £20 and has a wired connection‌We tried the classic red and blue mixed headset, one side red the other blue, that replicates the look of a classic Switch machine.Article continues belowThey’ve got soft padding under the hard plastic black headband, giving gamers a bit of comfort during long sessions at the screen.And the ear cups themselves are firmly padded, which is great for young ears.You have a flip-up-to-mute microphone built in that is flexible for positioning in front of the mouth and a 3.5mm cable connection for hard-wired audio.‌‌‌

Feno, the “smart electric toothbrush,” promised to take a two-minute toothbrushing routine and bring it down to 30 or even 20 seconds by swabbing each of my teeth at once. The Feno Smartbrush makes brushing faster, but in exchange it requires you to shove an entire mouthpiece in your piehole twice a day just to cut down on a total of three minutes of brushing time. If there is one thing to take away from this review, it’s that even if tech works, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better than what we already have. The “toothbrush” has been at the side of my bathroom sink for more than three weeks. It has technically saved me time. I would even go as far as to say it may do the job of a regular toothbrush with less time to get there. Still, given the choice, I would rather reach for my non-motorized, dentist-recommended toothbrush—if only because I know it works. After consulting with the companies and non-affiliated dentists, I’m more bemused that the Feno exists at all. This is a device that costs $300 for the “Founder’s Edition” bundle. The company recently said it would increase the price to $400, blaming tariffs for the rising cost. As the time of this publishing, that new price hasn’t yet materialized. The box comes with three canisters of brand-specific Feno Foam toothpaste. After you run out, you’ll need to spend $30 to get an extra three canisters. Feno also recommends replacing the mouthpiece every three months, costing another $30. Feno Smartbrush It may brush all your teeth for quicker cleans, but its too much of an unknown to recommend. Pros Cons My dentist gave me my last manual toothbrush for free. A tube of toothpaste was $5. Despite the price, the company behind the smart toothbrush has one compelling pitch. If people were honest with themselves, most folks do not do the recommended amount of brushing. I fit into that camp for most of my life, until the point I went to my dentist and found I needed to have multiple caps on my molars, requiring I spend a hefty chunk of change for the privilege of having my teeth ground down to nubs. Since then, I’ve become very sensitive to the state of my pearly whites. I try to do the full two minutes of brushing and floss every day, but the Feno is supposed to help by shortening the brushing time and helpfully counting you down with an on-screen timer. My dentist was skeptical about the device’s claims, especially whether it was offering proper back-and-forth brushing technique. The American Dental Association has a Seal of Acceptance tested by the organization for products that are recommended by dentists. Neither Feno’s brush nor special toothpaste are on that list of products with the ADA seal. All I have to go on is Feno’s own claim that it’s doing what it needs to do to clean my teeth and remove plaque. For cleaning, the device makes use of pressure sensors alongside the mouthpiece’s 18,000 bristles, which Feno claims can hit 250 strokes per tooth in 20 seconds. It’s using a sweeping motion along the teeth, which dentists recommend when brushing, but there’s no published science to say the Feno is particularly better than other, similar devices. Feno told me the company has scientific research pertaining to how effective the device is, but it’s pending scientific review and won’t be available until some unknown date. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo Feno revels in Silicon Valley startups’ worst habits. Every time you turn it on, the smart toothbrush bombards you with a QR code to download an app for all its controls, rather than including those on-device. The Feno toothbrush can incite the same gag reflex you know if you’ve ever played a contact sport requiring a mouth guard. The device is big enough that you have to open wide to fit the whole thing in at once. Brushing with the Feno is not an entirely passive experience, either. Feno’s founder, Dr. Kenny Brown, told me his company recommends moving the brush side to side while the mouthpiece actuates. On its highest settings, the Feno rattled my jaw and made my entire head shake like a marionette piloted by a mad puppeteer. With those speeds, I could feel the mouthpiece rubbing the inner cheek raw. At normal speeds, the Feno was uncomfortable but still usable without any pain. Feno also advises some gums may bleed if you haven’t been doing proper brushing technique for too long, but I didn’t find the bristles were any more abrasive to my gums than a regular toothbrush. The device running on default settings for 30 seconds seems engineered for most mouths. The company claims its device works with regular toothpaste, but when I plastered some gel to the bristles and stuck it in my mouth, it resulted in a sludgy mess at the bottom of the mouthpiece that took far longer to clean than the typical quick rinse. The foam toothpaste doesn’t leave your mouth full of the typical minty taste of fluoride and baking soda you normally associate with the feel of a clean mouth. As a point in favor of the Feno, that minty-fresh taste in your mouth isn’t actually indicative of clean teeth, according to Dr. Edmond Hewlett, a professor at UCLA’s School of Dentistry and a consumer advisor for the American Dental Association. Brown told me the company plans for updated toothpaste that adds a lingering minty taste in the mouth, as apparently I wasn’t the only one who spoke up on that lack of “clean” feeling. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo Knowing my dentist appointments are near for even more fillings, the Feno would not only need to be good, but even better at cleaning my teeth than the typical electric brush. Even if I felt it may be hitting all my teeth, the device didn’t leave me feeling clean, not least because I had no control over it. Even if the Feno full-mouth toothbrush wasn’t uncomfortable, wasn’t expensive, didn’t require an app, and worked well with regular toothpaste, it would still be hard to make any claim it results in better cleaning than your regular $7 toothbrush you buy from any local pharmacist. Using the smart toothbrush, you can’t tell what’s happening to your teeth. You can’t tell if it’s hitting all the nooks and crannies. That’s going to be a concern when everybody’s set of teeth is different. The Feno is supposedly designed so that all its bristles hit all different kinds of teeth at the correct 45-degree angle to the gums, but what really matters is if it adds anything to your brushing routine. “The critical question of any device like this is if it’s better than a toothbrush,” Hewlett told me. “It’s clear that using a toothbrush properly is one of the most effective things a person can do themselves to preserve their teeth.”

The bare walls of my bedroom—bedecked as they are with sporadic small prints but devoid of lights—demand I add some flair to my usually nerdy living space. The Govee Gaming Pixel Light seemed to fit the bill a little too well when I saw it back at CES 2025. The specialized display doesn’t support enough colors to show all my favorite 8- or 16-bit artwork at their best quality, and it won’t produce strong enough audio for anything more complicated than classic chiptunes. If the digital art and speaker for my desk didn’t sport cringey decals and a frame that would make visitors assume I chugged Mountain Dew Game Fuel for breakfast, it would be the perfect antidote to my dull apartment. Govee sent me a pair of pre-release Gaming Pixel Lights long before the company finally made them available on May 19. It sat on my desk for ages, showing me a 32-pixel version of Samus from Super Metroid. Her staunch, visored visage helped me get through the hectic days. Both the $120 32×32 and $140 52×32 pixel frames don’t take much effort to set up, though the digital wall or desk art lacks a battery and needs to be plugged into an outlet. Once it’s connected through the Govee Home app, you’ll have a wide variety of default and user-made effects to add to the screen. Yes, you can stick a static image on the screen, but the real fun comes from displaying GIFs of scenes from your favorite 8-, 16-, or perhaps a few 32-bit retro games. Govee Gaming Pixel Light It does what it needs to do, but limited colors limits what it can show. Pros Cons Depending on how complicated your image is, the pixel light may have a harder time displaying every pixel with perfect color accuracy. The smaller device contains 1,024 lights, while the 52×32 version sports 1,664. The $155 Divoom Pixoo-64—a competing pixel light with a 64×64 pixel field—supports 4,096. Considering the limited lights, a 32×32 pixel image of ET might look great on the smaller Pixel Light, but a fan-made 8-bit portrait of Arielle from The Little Mermaid that appears fine on my phone lacked the color definition necessary to show fine features on her nose or hair. The more stark the colors, the better each image or GIF will appear. The screen is bright enough on its highest settings, but you can set it to dim or turn off on a timer if you want to sleep without a rainbow of pixelated light shining at you. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo Images look marginally better on the larger display thanks to its wider range of colors, but you’ll still need to try out various images until you find one that fits your style. You can also upload your own artwork to the Govee app, though any of your photos you take from your phone will turn out splotchy and incoherent on the Pixel Light. You may find that uploading your own pixel art could produce mixed results. I had to try several different versions of Samus before I found a Metroid image that didn’t look half bad. The GIFs play at 30 fps, which made a GIF of Sonic’s classic spinning leg running animation look extra smooth. Divoom’s similar offering runs at 24 fps. The device includes a rear 3W DSP speaker made for pairing your favorite chiptunes with this artwork. The built-in speakers aren’t enough to fill a room with sound, but even without much bass, it’s just enough to offer a retro feel, as if I was listening to a game on the age-old mono Game Boy speaker. The device itself has a single button for controlling volume and no physical mute button, which means you’re forced to load into the app just to adjust your sound. All this meant I was more likely to eschew music entirely. After all, if you’re planning to use your Govee Pixel Light to spruce up your gaming room, you’ll end up listening to the game you’re playing anyway. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo If you’re the type to pick up a brush, you could create your own art and animated GIFs with the sketch mode. It’s certainly easier to use with a stylus, but I don’t have the time, patience, or ability to sketch something that will look any nicer than the artists who do pixel art for a living. The device has almost too many modes, from a clock feature to a stock ticker. There’s even a counter to tell you the current price of bitcoin, as if you really need to pay attention to crypto prices on your fun, cute pixel monitor. The Pixel Light seems to think gamers want a very specific aesthetic, one full of cyberpunk-esque hard-edged contours with decals reading “loading” and “game.” A black frame is all I really need. The art is the reason you buy Govee’s first real gamer product. But damn me if I enjoy it blaring the Magmar Caverns theme from my desktop, as if my bedroom had any more need for even more Metroid artwork.

As two distant galaxies trade blows in an ancient duel billions of years old, one belligerent has clearly proven itself more ruthless than the other.Each time the galaxies conclude their posturing and charge in for a clash, one of them impales its opponent with a powerful beam of radiation, crippling its ability to form new stars. In cosmic terms, it's the definition of a below the belt blow — and a massive one at that.This lopsided showdown was reported in a new study set to be published in the journal Nature, marking the first observation of a galaxy blasting its neighbor with radiation, and furthers our understanding of the huge galactic meat grinders known as quasars."We hence call this system the 'cosmic joust'," said study co-lead author Pasquier Noterdaeme, a researcher at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, in a statement about the work.The light we're seeing from this joust is over 11 billion years old, dating it to when the universe was less than one-fifth of its current age. Bloodsport, it seems, is a time-honored tradition.Using observations made with the Very Large Telescope and the ALMA telescope in Chile, the astronomers determined that the galaxies are veering towards each other at astounding speeds exceeding 311 miles per second. After crossing paths, they circle back, then wind up to hurtle towards each other yet again.One galaxy, it appears, is fairly typical. But the other is dominated by a quasar, a luminous region at the center of the galaxy where a supermassive black hole churns through billions of stars' worth of dust and gases. As the doomed material swirls into the black hole, they become so hot that they produce light capable of outshining entire galaxies, including the Milky Way."We discovered a quasar — likely triggered by the merging of two galaxies — that is actively transforming the gas structure in its companion galaxy," Noterdaeme told Gizmodo. "The idea that galaxy mergers give rise to quasars has long been proposed, mainly supported by statistical studies of host galaxy morphologies.""In our case,' Noterdaeme added, "we caught the two galaxies in the act."When they looked closer, the researchers found that when the quasar-powered galaxy skewered its opponent, the invading beam of radiation disrupted the clouds of gas and dust it penetrated, taking out stellar nurseries that are prime regions for forming stars.For the one wielding the weapon, this had an added effect. Like blood running down a blade, some of the gases from the impaled galaxy trickled back to the attacker, feeding even more material into the quasar's voracious black hole.It's not a spectacle for the faint of heart. But if you count yourself among the coliseum mob cheering on the gladiatorial carnage, there's good news. Noterdaeme said that the next generation of observatories, namely the under-construction Extremely Large Telescope, will allow astronomers to "better understand the evolution of quasars and their effect on host and nearby galaxies" — delivering you all the gory details in bouts like these.More on astronomy: Scientists Intrigued by Bridge of Dark Matter Inside Huge Galaxy ClusterShare This Article

Back in my day, the phrase used to be “there’s an app for that,” and that’s still the case, though with one major amendment: now, it’s “there’s an AI app for that.” In fact, there’s even an AI app for making apps—buckle up, kiddos, things are about to get meta. Let me explain: Rork, which I stumbled across while scrolling X, is—if we are to drink the Kool-Aid—the app to end all apps. The font from which all other apps may flow. The cold fusion of coding. Alright, I’m exaggerating, but it’s exactly what I alluded to: an app that makes apps, which is like a hat on a hat if the first hat actually made the second hat. To make things even more meta, Rork used an AI ad with Google’s new Veo 3 video generator to promote its tool. Is your head spinning yet? Mine kind of is. When I say Rork makes apps, I mean it really makes the damn thing (at least I think it does since I wouldn’t know a functional piece of code if it sat on my chest and suffocated me like a sleep paralysis demon). But on the surface, it does the whole thing. I went to the web version of Rork to try it out (there’s no mobile app that I’m aware of), and it seemingly took my text prompt, “I want to make an app that matches me with similar-sized people in my area to fight. Like Tinder but for fisticuffs,” and ran with it. Once I punched the prompt in (pun intended), Rork got to work (thinking for a while as AI does) and then used its corresponding large language model (Anthropic’s Claude 4 model) to start drawing everything up. And I mean everything—colors, features, parameters, basically every aspect of an app that you might need to launch. And the conjuring doesn’t stop there. Once everything is devised, Rork’s interface splits everything off into packages if you want to look at the code (that is, if you’re capable of reading it, unlike me), and then it does my favorite part—it generates a usable preview that you can test on your phone or another device. After the AI had coded everything, I was able to scan a QR code and generate a preview using ExpoGo, a tool that lets you deploy code in a preview mode. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: FightMatch, Tinder for kicking ass. © Rork / Screenshot by Gizmodo It’s worth noting that I tried to make this even more meta by prompting Rork to make an app that uses generative AI to make images or video—an AI app that generates AI—but it ran into some issues that I wasn’t able to fully wrap my head around. Per Rork, they were “critical errors,” and even when I clicked the “fix” button, it wouldn’t budge. No AI app inception today, folks, sorry. On one hand, as someone with no coding experience, I’m impressed. Rork, as promised, was able to take my very simple text prompt (Tinder for fighting) and write up all the code to make it happen in about a minute or so. Again, a coder I am not, but that feels pretty extraordinary from a sheer idea to preview perspective. I’m fairly certain whatever Rork and Claude generated wouldn’t be enough to push to an app store right away, both from a technical and aesthetic perspective, but as a first draft, it’s at least serviceable, if very far from perfect. Also, if I’m being honest, I was looking for more of a Fight Club-type app over MMA, but I suppose Claude played this one safe. There’s obviously vast potential here to expedite app creation, but just like with every generative tool like this, there’s also potential for something less exciting—slop. Like I wrote earlier this week, tools like Google’s Veo 3 and Flow are impressive technical feats, but they also feel primed to further bloat an already overwhelming bucket of AI slop. There’s always that question: do we need more apps or do we need better apps? I’m a proponent of the latter philosophy, but if there’s one thing I’ve come to expect in the tech world, it’s more. But hey, if I get rich quick with FightMatch, I can’t really complain, can I? And if you disagree, swipe right, and let’s settle this the old-fashioned way.