Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Who episode “Wish World”. In the penultimate episode of this season, John Smith and his loving wife Belinda live a picture-perfect life in suburbia with their very real daughter Poppy. Conrad Clark promises beautiful weather and tells light-hearted, very not-portentous stories on the TV, giant bone creatures stride across London, and everything is very normal. But Ruby Sunday is having doubts… How many ideas are too many? It’s a question that has nagged while watching this season of Doctor Who. While it’s arguably indecorous to snipe at previous eras of the show, it did sometimes feel like the Chibnall administration struggled to rustle up one killer idea per episode. That’s not been the problem with the second Russell T Davies epoch – quite the opposite, in fact. Granted, complaining about Doctor Who taking big swings is kind of like complaining about water being wet, but I’m not sure you can build a TV show on big swings alone. There are tons of ideas at play, and energy to spare (something the Chibnall era also often lacked), but the connective tissue isn’t always there to tie it all together. “Wish World”so much going on in this episode – we have to get to grips with an entirely new alternate reality, and our familiar characters’ new roles within it. We have the two Ranis, another new member of the Pantheon (a “terrifying” mystical baby with the power to grant wishes), Shirley’s ragtag crew of dispossessed freedom fighters, shots at reactionary conservatism, ableism, homophobia and tradwife aesthetics. The Seal of Rassilon is there. And then the climactic revelation that all this is merely a means to an end, as the Rani’s (Ranis’?) true objective becomes clear – to burrow beneath the surface of reality and find Omega, an all-powerful figure from ancient Time Lord history. It would be overstating it to say that the episode falls apart round about the time that Rani Prime (Archie Panjabi, having great fun chewing the appropriate quantity of scenery) starts monologuing to a confused Doctor about her dastardly scheme, but it’s where the cracks really start to show. It’s not the most elegant exposition that Davies has ever written, even if he does hang a cheeky lampshade on it by having the Rani explicitly refer to it as such, and making it part of her scheme. Steven Moffat tended to excel at these sorts of whirling expository scenes where everything falls into place, whereas here it very much feels like a rushed info dump connecting a bunch of disparate elements that haven’t all been adequately set up. It’s also here that the structure of ‘lots of ideas carried along with manic energy and high production values’ really creaks. Spending time in the wish world is great fun, with all the joys of mirror universe style stories, seeing everybody forced into perversely inappropriate roles and trying to work out exactly how this world works – or doesn’t work, as the case may be. There are lots of little grace notes, like Colonel Ibrahim’s horrified reaction when the Doctor unthinkingly reassures him that he’s “a beautiful man”, or the fascinating scene between Conrad and Mrs Flood, showing us the strain that keeping the wish alive is having on Conrad, and his uneasy relationship with the creepily chuckling god baby. But then the Rani starts monologuing, and it’s revealed that all of this – two years of Mrs Flood hints, the Pantheon, Conrad, the vindicators, the destruction of Earth, the wish world – is in service of reaching back into the dim and distant past of Gallifrey and finding an ancient Time Lord. A character who, if memory serves, hasn’t appeared on TV since the 1980s, apart from a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in 2020’s “The Timeless Children”. It’s impossible to properly judge this reveal until we’ve seen next week’s “The Reality War”, but based on first impressions, it’s hard to feel terribly excited about the return of Omega. For an episode that’s generally so weird and spiky, and full of wonderfully unsettling imagery (like the baby’s mother gently collapsing into a pile of flowers), finding out that it’s all building towards the reveal of a figure who really belongs in the Wilderness Years does feel a tad anticlimactic. More than that, it feels fundamentally backwards-looking, which is a bizarre thing to be saying in a review of an episode that features a giggling god baby who grants wishes. Terrifying god babies that grant wishes are not something we’ve explored much in Doctor Who, whereas ancient Time Lord history really feels like it’s been done to death. Of course, it could all be a feint. Perhaps the twist will be that it was about the terrifying god baby all along, and Omega will remain in the dustbin of history. But, as with last season’s reveal of Sutekh, it almost feels as though Russell T Davies – who was so careful with how he rationed out classic series characters and references during his first run – is making up for lost time by playing with as much Doctor Who lore as he can get his hands on while he has the budget to visualise it, whether it’s the most dramatically compelling choice or not. And it contributes to the uneasy feeling that, while there are plenty of new ideas being introduced in this era, the inexorable gravity of Doctor Who’s mythos is always going to overpower them, so even something as bananas as a wish-granting god baby ultimately plays second fiddle. Admittedly, fans do like to see stuff they recognise. I am a fan. I like to see stuff I recognise. But we should not be indulged! Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! As underwhelming as the Omega reveal is, it doesn’t scupper the episode, which is full of great little moments. Belinda rushing off into the countryside to scream is chilling – Varada Sethu is brilliant throughout, convincingly embodying a different character while still being recognisable, and her gradual horrified realisations are very well played. Ncuti Gatwa is arguably the version of the Doctor who looks the most ill at ease wearing a boring suit and doing normal domestic stuff, so that’s all compellingly off-kilter – even if it would be nice if he woke up from the illusion a bit earlier. Conrad’s sneering and the Rani’s monologuing don’t have quite the same dramatic impact when triumphantly directed at a guy who barely knows who or where he is. The dynamic between Mrs Flood and Rani Prime is also a lot of fun, and the design of Wish World is brilliant, from the Tim Burton-esque identikit suburbia, the bone creatures and the weird cyber-bondage drone things, down to Connor’s sharp white suit. As ever, in terms of production design and visuals, the show is firing on all cylinders. And while Davies is far from subtle when writing about social issues (did we really need two instances of Ruby being clumsily steered into making ableist microaggressions just so the others could chastise her for them?), the idea of the ignored and dispossessed rising up to save a society that has forsaken them is the kind of radical undercurrent that feels appropriately Doctor Who. But will they stick the landing? Will the Doctor escape the mother of all cliffhangers? Will we find out what’s going on with Poppy? Will we see more of Rogue? Where is Susan? And will Conrad get to finish his sandwich? Reservations aside, I’m excited to find out. Doctor Who series 15 concludes with “The Reality War” on Saturday May 31 on BBC One in the UK and Disney+ around the world.

May belongs to Vince Vaughn and the grandmothers. Nonnas, which premiered on May 9, has become a hit on Netflix and remains in the top 10 most popular movies list. From the kitchen to the football field, Untold: The Fall of Favre is a fascinating look into two notorious scandals involving Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre. Nonnas and The Fall of Favre will remain on the streamer when the calendar changes from May to June. Unfortunately, these five movies are departing the service. One of them is Batman Begins, the first movie in the spectacular Dark Knight trilogy. Check out the rest of the picks below. Recommended Videos We also have guides to the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+. Batman Begins (2005) Warner Bros. Pictures In 2025, Christopher Nolan is the top filmmaker in Hollywood concerning power, notoriety, and recognition. 20 years ago, Nolan did not have the same juice he has now. However, Batman Begins is arguably the movie that changed his career. The previous Batman movies treated Bruce Wayne like a comic book character. Nolan crafted a more grounded and nuanced version of the character, starting with a gritty origin story in Batman Begins. After years of training and traveling globally, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) returns to Gotham City and becomes Batman, the masked vigilante intent on ridding the city of crime. Batman’s foes include his former mentor, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), and Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), two men who believe Gotham isn’t worth saving. After watching Batman Begins, stream The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, which also leave at the end of the month. Stream Batman Begins on Netflix. Den of Thieves (2018) STXfilms What a comeback year it’s been for Den of Thieves. The cult classic’s popularity led to a sequel, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, which premiered in January. Plus, a third movie is now in the works. However, these sequels would not have been possible without the original from 2018. Written and directed by Christian Gudegast, Den of Thieves is a heist film set in Los Angeles that pits the cops against the robbers. The lines are blurred as neither side is good nor evil. The police are led by Big Nick O’Brien (Gerard Butler), a renegade cop who frequently breaks the law to apprehend the enemy. The outlaws’ leader is Ray Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber), a former Marine and mastermind of a heist crew. Merrimen’s group plans to hit the Federal Reserve Bank, and Big Nick plans to stop it. It’s going to get loud, violent, and chaotic once these two sides battle. Stream Den of Thieves on Netflix. Pride & Prejudice (2005) Universal Pictures “You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love you.” Jane Austen fans will recognize that iconic line from Joe Wright’s terrific adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. In the English countryside live the five Bennet sisters: Jane (Rosamund Pike), Elizabeth (Kiera Knightley), Mary (Talulah Riley), Kitty (Carey Mulligan), and Lydia (Jena Malone). The girls have been pressured by their father to find a suitable husband, particularly a wealthy one. The free-spirited Elizabeth has no plans to marry for money and will hold out for love. Could that man be Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen)? Good luck not falling in love with the will-they-won’t-they dilemma between Elizabeth and Darcy. Stream Pride & Prejudice on Netflix. GoodFellas (1990) Warner Bros. Pictures Martin Scorsese’s greatest movie is about to leave Netflix, which is a crime against humanity. The late Ray Liotta plays Henry Hill, a Brooklyn teenager who advances within the ranks of the Mafia to become one of its top lieutenants. While working for the mafia, Henry becomes closely associated with Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), an Irish-American gangster, and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), a fiery criminal. The trio reaps the rewards of being in the mafia — money, drugs, and power. These items also lead to their demise. The brilliance of Goodfellas is how Scorsese divides the story into two halves. The first half glamorizes the mafia lifestyle, while the second half explores the dark consequences of being a gangster. Describing Goodfellas as a masterpiece does not do it justice. Stream Goodfellas on Netflix. Two Weeks Notice (2002) Warner Bros. Pictures Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant starring in Two Weeks Notice is equivalent to Captain America and Iron Man joining the Avengers. Bullock and Grant became two of the ’90s biggest names, especially in rom-coms. The stars aligned in Two Weeks Notice, Marc Lawrence’s take on the opposites attract trope. Lawyer Lucy Kelson (Sandra Bullock) will do whatever it takes to protect the environment. Billionaire George Wade (Hugh Grant) only cares about himself and his money. Lucy works for George after he promises to save a community center. At first, oil and water are a better mix than Lucy and George. Over time, the duo come to appreciate one another’s company and gain feelings. Even with a predictable ending, Two Weeks Notice will satisfy anyone who loves on-screen chemistry between the leads. Stream Two Weeks Notice on Netflix.

Bare Root Creation in the UK has reimagined small-space living by converting a worn 1940s railway car into a practical and affordable tiny house for two. Located in Cornwall, England, this unique dwelling sits on a double-axle trailer and measures 18 feet (5.5 meters) in length. It features a sturdy corrugated metal roof and is clad in larch, giving it a rustic yet inviting appearance. While built on wheels, its design is intended for semi-permanent placement on land rather than frequent towing. This creative transformation makes it ideal as a cozy vacation retreat or a guest house, blending vintage character with functional modern living. Designer: Bare Root Creation The tiny house offers 144 square feet (13.4 square meters) of interior space, finished with reclaimed wood sourced from old railway cars, preserving its historical character. Entry is through large wooden double doors that lead straight into the living area. This space features an L-shaped seating arrangement with built-in storage and a nearby window for natural light. The adjacent kitchen is simple but practical, equipped with a sink featuring a cutting board insert, a small fridge, a microwave, and a few cabinets for storage. The use of reclaimed materials and efficient layout gives the home both a sense of warmth and functionality, making it comfortable for short stays or as a guest retreat. The bedroom in this tiny house takes a creative approach, though it’s not ideal for those with limited mobility. To enter, you climb through a circular porthole-style opening that connects the living room to the sleeping area. Inside, you’ll find a cozy double bed nestled within the reclaimed wood walls, creating a private and unique retreat. This setup adds a touch of adventure and novelty, making the bedroom feel separate from the main living space while maximizing the use of limited square footage. On the opposite end of the house, you’ll find the bathroom, which is compact but practical. It includes a small sink, a shower, and a standard flushing toilet, providing all the essentials for comfortable daily living in a small footprint. Currently, the tiny house is listed for sale on Tiny House Listings at £35,000 (about US$44,000). Buyers can also opt for upgrades such as a wood-burning stove for extra warmth, a water heating system for added comfort, or authentic train-style steel carriage wheels to enhance its vintage charm and mobility. This blend of history, practicality, and customization makes the tiny house a standout choice for anyone seeking a unique getaway or guest accommodation. The post Vintage 1940s Railway Car Was Transformed Into A Cozy Tiny House In Cornwall first appeared on Yanko Design.

Through the looking glass: Astronomers have uncovered a planetary system that challenges long-held beliefs about where planets can exist. This discovery suggests the universe may hold far more surprising and diverse worlds than previously thought. As observational technology improves, more of these extraordinary systems could soon come to light. Astronomers have discovered a remarkable planetary system that challenges long-held assumptions about where planets can survive. Known as ν (nu) Octantis, the system hosts a giant planet locked in a gravitational tug-of-war between two stars – a configuration once deemed nearly impossible. The story of ν Octantis began more than two decades ago when astronomers detected a repeating signal from the binary star system. For years, debate swirled – was it a planet or merely a quirk of stellar activity? The truth, it turns out, is more intriguing than anyone expected. Researchers utilized the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher at the European Southern Observatory (HARPS) to confirm the presence of a planet roughly twice the mass of Jupiter. What makes this world especially intriguing is its orbit: it moves in reverse, tracing a retrograde path around the larger star, while the smaller companion – a faint white dwarf – moves in the opposite direction. European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory is home to HARPS. This behavior is rare and poses an unusual puzzle for planetary scientists. Most planets in binary systems orbit far from both stars or just one when the pair is widely separated. Here, the planet's orbit threads the needle between the two stars in a way that defies conventional planetary formation and survival models. // Related Stories The stability of this planet's orbit adds to the cosmic wonder. Its signal has stayed steady for over twenty years, suggesting the unusual retrograde motion stabilizes it by minimizing disruptive gravitational forces from the white dwarf companion. Researchers are considering how this unique system formed. They propose two main theories. The first suggests the planet formed from material shed by the white dwarf during its red giant phase. The second posits that it originally orbited both stars before migrating inward as the system evolved. Computer simulations show only a narrow range of orbital configurations can keep a planet stable for millions of years, as this system has.

Forward-looking: Antimatter consists of particles with properties opposite to those of regular particles. It plays a central role in modern physics research and forms naturally through cosmic collisions or radioactive decay. However, studying it is difficult, as contact with normal matter results in instant annihilation. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, is one of the few places on Earth capable of routinely producing antimatter from high-energy collisions with particle accelerators. Researchers there have now developed a novel method to transport small quantities of antimatter to external laboratories. This world-first achievement could enable more precise studies of the elusive antiparticles described in the Standard Model of particle physics. CERN researchers developed a two-meter containment device capable of temporarily trapping antimatter particles. They even trucked the device around the facility for four kilometers before returning it to the lab, where they confirmed the antiparticles were still intact. The brief trip required no external power source, proving that antiparticles can theoretically travel far beyond a few kilometers. It also demonstrated that antimatter can be safely transported to distant laboratories using nothing more than a standard vehicle and Europe's public road network. CERN facilities lie near Geneva, on the France – Switzerland border. Judging by the truck's route carrying the experimental containment device, the researchers likely crossed the border from France into Switzerland and back. Physicists have explained the practical application of antimatter transport in a recent study, which revealed limits to precision measurements using low-energy protons produced exclusively at CERN's Antimatter Factory. Magnetic field fluctuations from the facility's decelerators interfere with experiments, while dedicated off-site laboratories could enable more accurate results. // Related Stories Now that CERN has proven it can safely transport antiparticles beyond its grounds, it is preparing the next phase of its antimatter project. A new, state-of-the-art facility at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany will soon receive the first batch of antimatter cargo. The particles will travel nearly 800 kilometers to reach their destination.

Here's what we looked at this week:The quest to optimize existing objects: The EDJY features an unusual single-blade fingernail clipper design that allegedly delivers better results. Apple's "Vehicle Motion Cues" are an on-screen anti-motion-sickness trick.From Australia, magnetic and custom-fit sun shades for your car.The Otemon splice: A crazy Japanese technique for splicing the bottom of a rotted column.Image and work: Chris Hall Stunning Frank Lloyd Wright art tiles by Motawi Tileworks.A glow-in-the-dark substitute for EDC gear: These Isotope Tritium Fobs rely on actual radioactive isotopes.Philips' Fixables initiative will offer free downloadable files to 3d print replacement parts for their products.Dutch researchers develop "countersnapping," the opposite of a push-to-open mechanism. An industrial design classic: The Brionvega Algol TV, by Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper.Good or bad? The Trace camera system records entire sporting matches, but highlights just your child.From Latvia, Kanttari's bronze bar cabinet. This Solo Windchill 47 Cooler has a built-in air conditioner. Because heaven forbid you break a sweat outside.The Loki cleaning robot, here to end janitors.A new umbrella shape from Japan (for an entirely frivolous purpose). Growl: An AR punching bag for training and gaming.Design solutions for beachside umbrella-wind wars, and one man vs. nature.Form follows function: Dyson's new approach yields the super slim PencilVac. An industrial design case study from Germany: Fluid Design updates Beurer's grooming devices.

Keke Palmer is the latest Black Hollywood star to speak out about how race and gender can affect pay. Lionel Hahn/Getty Images 2025-05-23T14:02:01Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Keke Palmer has been acting since she was 10, but told BI she didn't feel adequately paid until 2022. She said that she doesn't compare herself to others in Hollywood because she feels she's not on an even playing field. Palmer said that's why she's diversified her income sources. Keke Palmer has worked in Hollywood since she was 10 — but when asked by Business Insider when she felt adequately paid, the 31-year-old said: "'Nope,' that was probably the first time."Palmer played Emerald Haywood in Jordan Peele's 2022 horror movie, in which she and Daniel Kaluuya play siblings who try to get a photo of a murderous UFO to sell the image for money.Before "Nope," Palmer led the Nickelodeon series "True Jackson, VP," which ran from 2008 until 2011, starred in the 2015 slasher comedy "Scream Queens" created by Ryan Murphy, and voiced the mammoth Peaches in multiple "Ice Age" movies. Palmer's first prominent movie role was at the age of 12 in 2006's "Akeelah and the Bee," in which she starred opposite Queen Latifah.Palmer, who is also a singer, TV host, author, and podcaster, said that gender and racial inequalities are very real in Hollywood, but she doesn't dwell on them."I don't compare — especially as a Black person, a Black woman — because it's not a fair thing to do to myself," Palmer continued. "I don't think that comparing oneself makes sense in any regard, because you're not at the same vantage point, beginning or otherwise, as someone else."She added that "if you are getting your needs met, that has to be at the forefront of your mind. That doesn't mean that everything is fair, but it's an important thing to think about and have a particular perspective about." Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer at the UK premiere of "Nope" in July 2022. Dave J Hogan/Getty Images Palmer encourages other actors in Hollywood to diversy their income streamsPalmer said it's one of the reasons she's diversified her income streams, including owning multiple production companies, and has encouraged others to do the same. "It's essentially why I turned my brand into a holdings company with subsidiaries. You have to diversify," Palmer said.It's increasingly common for A-listers to launch multiple businesses to increase career longevity. Rihanna has Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty. Kim Kardashian launched Skims, and Reese Witherspoon's media company, Hello Sunshine, is among the most successful in Hollywood.In recent years, Black actors, including Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis, Mo'Nique, and Taraji P. Henson, have spoken out about not being paid fairly on account of their race and gender.In a 2023 SiriusXM interview, Henson confirmed rumors that she considered quitting Hollywood over pay inequality."I'm just tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do [and] getting paid a fraction of the cost," she said tearfully. "I'm tired of hearing my sisters say the same thing over and over. You get tired. I hear people go, 'You work a lot.' Well, I have to."

How'd that get there? New data confirms: There really is a planet squeezed in between two stars The planet may have formed from material transferred between the stars. John Timmer – May 22, 2025 2:24 pm | 5 Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more While our Sun prefers to go solo, many other stars are parts of binary systems, with a pair of stars gravitationally bound to each other. In some cases, the stars are far enough apart that planets can form around each of them. But there are also plenty of tight binary systems, where the stars orbit each other at a radius that would place them both comfortably inside our Solar System. In these systems, exoplanets tend to be found at greater distances, in orbits that have them circling both stars. On Wednesday, scientists described a system that seems to be neither of the above. It is a tight binary system, with a heavy central star that's orbited by a white dwarf at a distance two to three times larger than Earth's orbit. The lone planet confirmed to be in the system is squeezed in between the two, orbiting at a distance similar to Earth's distance from the Sun. And, as an added bonus, the planet is orbiting backward relative to the white dwarf. Orbiting ν Octantis The exosolar system is termed ν Octantis (or Nu Octantis), and its primary star is just a bit heavier than our Sun (1.6 solar masses). It's orbited by a far dimmer companion that's roughly half of our Sun's mass, but which hasn't been characterized in detail until now. The companion's orbit relative to the central star is a bit lopsided, ranging from about two astronomical units (AU, the typical Earth-Sun distance) at its closest approach to roughly three AU at its farthest. And, until yesterday, the exact nature of the companion star was not clear. The latter question was relatively easy to answer. Detailed imaging of the system in the near infrared should be able to resolve the two stars but was unable to pick up a second object with sufficient brightness. That eliminates any main sequence stars, leaving a white dwarf as the only likely answer. But that's not the only thing that's orbiting the central star of ν Octantis. Earlier studies of the system had suggested that there was also an exoplanet present in the system. But the properties of its orbit made little sense, in that nobody could seem to figure out a stable orbit that would be consistent with the observations. The only thing that was clear was that the most stable orbits appeared to require that the planet have a retrograde motion, meaning orbiting in the opposite direction to the companion star. ν Octantis definitely fell into the vast category of "more data is needed" questions. And more data is exactly what a small international team of scientists got, with nearly two years of additional observations using the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) instrument in Chile. The data clearly confirmed the existence of a planet in a retrograde orbit and suggested that the plane of its orbit was 17° off from the plane formed by the orbits of the two stars. Unfortunately, modeling variations on this orbit through time indicated that 98 percent of them were unstable within 50 million years. So, the researchers tested a range of orbital properties that would keep everything in a single plane. This provided a solution where modeling variations on it led to 75 percent of the orbits being stable out past 50 million years. So, the researchers settle on this as the most likely description of the system. These orbits do have the planet in ν Octantis in a retrograde orbit, meaning it's moving in the opposite direction from the smaller star in the system. The orbit is roughly one AU, meaning its typical distance to the central star is similar to that of the Earth's distance to the Sun. But the orbit is somewhat squished, with one half of the orbit being significantly closer to the central star than the other. And, critically, the entire orbit is within the orbit of the smaller companion star. The gravitational forces of a tight binary should prevent any planets from forming within this space early in the system's history. So, how did the planet end up in such an unusual configuration? A confused past The fact that one of the stars present in ν Octantis is a white dwarf suggests some possible explanations. White dwarfs are formed by Sun-like stars that have advanced through a late helium-burning period that causes them to swell considerably, leaving the outer surface of the star weakly bound to the rest of its mass. At the distances within ν Octantis, that would allow considerable material to be drawn off the outer companion and pulled onto the surface of what's now the central star. The net result is a considerable mass transfer. This could have done one of two things to place a planet in the interior of the system. One is that the transferred material isn't likely to make an immediate dive onto the surface of the nearby star. If the process is slow enough, it could have produced a planet-forming disk for a brief period—long enough to produce a planet on the interior of the system. Alternatively, if there were planets orbiting exterior to both stars, the change in the mass distribution of the system could have potentially destabilized their orbits. That might be enough to cause interactions among the planets to send one of them spiraling inward, where it was eventually captured in the stable retrograde orbit we now find it. Either case, the authors emphasize, should be pretty rare, meaning we're unlikely to have imaged many other systems like this at this stage of our study of exoplanets. They do point to another tight binary, HD 59686, that appears to have a planet in a retrograde orbit. But, as with ν Octantis, the data isn't clear enough to rule out alternative configurations yet. So, once again, more data is needed. Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09006-x  (About DOIs). John Timmer Senior Science Editor John Timmer Senior Science Editor John is Ars Technica's science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots. 5 Comments

Some collaborations are unexpected in the best way. “Satellites”, a new exhibition conceived by Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn and celebrated Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima – is one of them. Presented by Prada with support from Fondazione Prada, the show landed at Prada Aoyama Tokyo with a simple but lofty goal: exploring how two creatives, from opposite sides of the world in different industries, overcome language barriers to connect over time, space, and shared imagination. When you arrive on the fifth floor of the Herzog & de Meuron–designed Prada Aoyama building, you’re not stepping into a typical gallery. Instead, you enter a meticulously staged, mid-century one-bedroom apartment, complete with a couch, bed, lamp, and rotary telephone – each seemingly pulled from another era, eerily lifelike and strangely timeless all at once. The space feels more like a movie set than an exhibition, setting the tone for what unfolds next. The exhibition is divided into two parts. In the first, Refn and Kojima appear on six retro-futuristic televisions reminiscent of small spaceships with exposed circuit boards, wires, and glowing components. Inside these sculptural screens, the two creatives engage in a slow, contemplative dialogue – one speaking in English, the other in Japanese. Their conversation drifts through themes like friendship, collaboration, technology, creativity, identity, and even mortality. The effect is intimate and reflective, inviting visitors to linger, listen, and interpret at their own pace. The second part of the installation unfolds in a nearby dressing room, where a cassette player sits surrounded by stacks of tapes. Each tape contains a remix of Refn and Kojima’s conversation, blending sound bites, cinematic scores, and alternate versions of their dialogue translated into various languages using AI. Visitors are encouraged to sift through the tapes, piecing together their own version of the exchange. At its core, “Satellites” is an exploration of connection between people, mediums, and realities. As the worlds of film and video gamess continue to converge, they hint at a future shared digital dimension – one that reimagines how we create, communicate, and experience together. It’s a poetic look at how creativity and technology might ultimately bring us closer, no matter how far apart we begin. Nicolas Winding Refn and Hideo Kojima \\\ Photo: Daisuke Takeda “Satellites” is on view until August 25, 2025 at Prada Aoyama Tokyo every day from 11am – 8pm. For more information, visit prada.com. Photography by Yasuhiro Takagi courtesy of Prada.

Let’s imagine for a second that the impressive pace of AI progress over the past few years continues for a few more. In that time period, we’ve gone from AIs that could produce a few reasonable sentences to AIs that can produce full think tank reports of reasonable quality; from AIs that couldn’t write code to AIs that can write mediocre code on a small code base; from AIs that could produce surreal, absurdist images to AIs that can produce convincing fake short video and audio clips on any topic. This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter.Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week.Companies are pouring billions of dollars and tons of talent into making these models better at what they do. So where might that take us?Imagine that later this year, some company decides to double down on one of the most economically valuable uses of AI: improving AI research. The company designs a bigger, better model, which is carefully tailored for the super-expensive yet super-valuable task of training other AI models. With this AI trainer’s help, the company pulls ahead of its competitors, releasing AIs in 2026 that work reasonably well on a wide range of tasks and that essentially function as an “employee” you can “hire.” Over the next year, the stock market soars as a near-infinite number of AI employees become suitable for a wider and wider range of jobs (including mine and, quite possibly, yours).Welcome to the (near) futureThis is the opening of AI 2027, a thoughtful and detailed near-term forecast from a group of researchers that think AI’s massive changes to our world are coming fast — and for which we’re woefully unprepared. The authors notably include Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI researcher who became famous for risking millions of dollars of his equity in the company when he refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement.“AI is coming fast” is something people have been saying for ages but often in a way that’s hard to dispute and hard to falsify. AI 2027 is an effort to go in the exact opposite direction. Like all the best forecasts, it’s built to be falsifiable — every prediction is specific and detailed enough that it will be easy to decide if it came true after the fact. (Assuming, of course, we’re all still around.) The authors describe how advances in AI will be perceived, how they’ll affect the stock market, how they’ll upset geopolitics — and they justify those predictions in hundreds of pages of appendices. AI 2027 might end up being completely wrong, but if so, it’ll be really easy to see where it went wrong.Forecasting doomsdayIt also might be right. While I’m skeptical of the group’s exact timeline, which envisions most of the pivotal moments leading us to AI catastrophe or policy intervention as happening during this presidential administration, the series of events they lay out is quite convincing to me. Any AI company would double down on an AI that improves its AI development. (And some of them may already be doing this internally.) If that happens, we’ll see improvements even faster than the improvements from 2023 to now, and within a few years, there will be massive economic disruption as an “AI employee” becomes a viable alternative to a human hire for most jobs that can be done remotely. But in this scenario, the company uses most of its new “AI employees” internally, to keep churning out new breakthroughs in AI. As a result, technological progress gets faster and faster, but our ability to apply any oversight gets weaker and weaker. We see glimpses of bizarre and troubling behavior from advanced AI systems and try to make adjustments to “fix” them. But these end up being surface-level adjustments, which just conceal the degree to which these increasingly powerful AI systems have begun pursuing their own aims — aims which we can’t fathom. This, too, has already started happening to some degree. It’s common to see complaints about AIs doing “annoying” things like faking passing code tests they don’t pass.Not only does this forecast seem plausible to me, but it also appears to be the default course for what will happen. Sure, you can debate the details of how fast it might unfold, and you can even commit to the stance that AI progress is sure to dead-end in the next year. But if AI progress does not dead-end, then it seems very hard to imagine how it won’t eventually lead us down the broad path AI 2027 envisions, sooner or later. And the forecast makes a convincing case it will happen sooner than almost anyone expects. Make no mistake: The path the authors of AI 2027 envision ends with plausible catastrophe. By 2027, enormous amounts of compute power would be dedicated to AI systems doing AI research, all of it with dwindling human oversight — not because AI companies don’t want to oversee it but because they no longer can, so advanced and so fast have their creations become. The US government would double down on winning the arms race with China, even as the decisions made by the AIs become increasingly impenetrable to humans. The authors expect signs that the new, powerful AI systems being developed are pursuing their own dangerous aims — and they worry that those signs will be ignored by people in power because of geopolitical fears about the competition catching up, as an AI existential race that leaves no margin for safety heats up.All of this, of course, sounds chillingly plausible. The question is this: Can people in power do better than the authors forecast they will? Definitely. I’d argue it wouldn’t even be that hard. But will they do better? After all, we’ve certainly failed at much easier tasks.Vice President JD Vance has reportedly read AI 2027, and he has expressed his hope that the new pope — who has already named AI as a main challenge for humanity — will exercise international leadership to try to avoid the worst outcomes it hypothesizes. We’ll see.We live in interesting (and deeply alarming) times. I think it’s highly worth giving AI 2027 a read to make the vague cloud of worry that permeates AI discourse specific and falsifiable, to understand what some senior people in the AI world and the government are paying attention to, and to decide what you’ll want to do if you see this starting to come true.A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. 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