Scientists have detected a signal around an exoplanet that might be the signature of a circumplanetary disk—a disk of debris that could one day form into exomoons.

“Senator [Hawley] thinks conservatives are too stupid to realize he’s trying to kill free speech online,” FreedomWorks, the conservative advocacy group, tweeted out last month. It’s not alone in its criticism. In recent weeks, a slew of prominent right-wing voices have taken similar aim at Sen. Josh Hawley, a…Read more...

The Federal Trade Commission, which has been investigating Facebook in the wake of its massive Cambridge Analytica scandal, has voted to approve levying a massive $5 billion fine against the social media giant, according to reporting in both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. It’s the single largest fine…Read more...

On Wednesday, I did a short blog about a congressional hearing in which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mentioned something many Americans go through: rationing out their healthcare and doctor’s visits because they’re on shitty insurance plans with high deductibles or exorbitant copays or just overall terrible coverage.

Babies born prematurely might have an unexpected disadvantage by the time they reach adulthood, according to new research out Friday. It suggests that they’ll be less likely to ever have a romantic relationship or sex, as well as be less likely to have children, than people born full-term.Read more...

North Carolina is the latest state to throw its hat into the Hyperloop One ring. Today, Virgin Hyperloop One announced that North Carolina’s Regional Transportation Alliance (RTA) was launching a pre-feasibility study to connect the cities of Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and the RDU International Airport.Read more...

Amazon’s made-up holiday dedicated to “epic deals” and working its warehouse workers to the bone is fast approaching, and so, apparently, are pretty convincing phishing scams disguised as emails from the tech giant.

Warner Bros, Sony, and Universal might be sitting out San Diego Comic-Con 2019, but we’ve still got plenty of amazing panels to be excited about—especially in regards to new television shows. We’ll be covering all of it from San Diego next week, but for those prepping their must-see lists, we’re counting down the 10…Read more...

No one has ever accused Mike Adams, the self-proclaimed Health Ranger, of being an understated guy, but recent events have taken him to new, shouty heights. After Adams’ website, Natural News, had its page suspended by Facebook in June for violating the company’s spam policies, Adams likened the suspension to genocide…Read more...

Like humans, birds breathe. And on a cold day, the moisture from their breath condenses into steam that emanates from their beaks. Photographer Kathrin Swoboda knew this, and was hoping to capture it on film at the park near her house.

The next time you see Facebook ads for, say, erectile dysfunction pills or egg freezing, you can check to see why you were targeted by those brands and where the companies got your data.Read more...

Two years ago, Greenland lit ablaze. It was weird, and a harbinger of things to come on our changing planet. It just didn’t seem like they would come again so soon.Read more...

The DJI Robomaster S1 is the childhood toy I always wanted. Actually, it’s way better than that. Compared to junk like the Tyco Rebound I had in the 90's, the Robomaster S1 is faster, more sophisticated, and thanks to its Mecanum wheels, much more nimble than anything my tiny kid brain could have even imagined. And…Read more...

Just in case you were holding out any hope that Google didn’t let humans listen voice recordings from Google Home and Google Assistant, stop doing that. One of the humans that Google hired to review voice recordings recently leaked over a thousand Assistant recordings to a Belgian news organization, which published a…Read more...

Just in case you wanted a robot butler to follow you around the house, Amazon is reportedly working on an Alexa bot with wheels that can be summoned via voice commands.Read more...

As last week’s major earthquakes in Southern California reminded us, we humans are still at the mercy of the geologically-active planet we live on. But despite the ever-present seismic threat, there’s a lot more West Coast cities could be doing to prepare their infrastructure and citizens for disaster, like…Read more...

If you want to save money on Prime Day, Amazon will be offering plenty of deals. So many, in fact, that you might end up spending more than you planned.Read more...

Don Cheadle could be joining Space Jam 2. Kristen Schaal will come from the future in Bill & Ted 3. Tim Miller has vague thoughts about Sonic the Hedgehog’s new redesign. Plus, a better look at Killer Frost’s new costume on The Flash, details on the end of iZombie, and a new adult-oriented...Flintstones? It’s spoilin’…Read more...

Earlier this week, Nintendo finally announced the long-rumored Switch Lite and it looks good. At $200, even though it doesn’t have support for the standard model’s docking feature, the Switch Lite seems like the natural upgrade for anyone still clinging to a 3DS, and a perfect handheld companion for long car rides or…Read more...

While SCUBA diving off the coast of Zanzibar, marine biologist Luiz Rocha saw a fish he had never seen before. He sent a photograph to his collaborator Yi-Kai Tea, currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Sydney, who confirmed that it was a new species of fairy wrasse from the genus Cirrhilabrus. As a fan of…Read more...

Links make the digital world go round—links to your Twitter profile or the daily headlines or a file stored in the cloud. Being able to manage those links and open them more efficiently can be a bigger time-saver in your day than you might think... and so we’re going to outline how you can take more control over your…Read more...

Huawei says its relationship with the U.S. is basically the same as it was a couple of months ago, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to ease restrictions that currently bar American companies from doing business with the Chinese tech giant.Read more...

A woman who reportedly shared a video to social media of her daughter licking a tongue depressor at a medical facility in Jacksonville, Florida and replacing it in a jar of unused ones was arrested this week on a felony charge.

Dozens of passengers aboard an Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Sydney, Australia on Thursday were injured after the aircraft met “un-forecasted and sudden turbulence,” forcing the plane’s pilots to make an emergency landing in Honolulu.Read more...

Just days after releasing the first teaser for Battlestar Galactica star Katee Sackhoff’s new sci-fi series, Another Life, Netflix has dropped a full trailer that reveals even more about the show’s crew of space explorers—as well as the mysterious (and apparently hostile) aliens that inspire their journey from Earth…Read more...

At a Homeland Security hearing this week that largely focused on the unsolved mystery of whether it’s illegal to use face recognition software on U.S. citizens at airports, a senior Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official proved unable to answer the most rudimentary questions about a recent data breach that has…Read more...

Wormed-brained attendees at Donald Trump’s Social Media Summit were treated to nearly an hour of him complaining about not getting enough engagement on his tweets, slamming the media for reporting on his spelling and grammar errors, and a flurry of other grievances about socialism, antifa, and much, much more. In…Read more...

Today, President Trump hosted his big “social media summit,” which coincided almost perfectly with a worldwide Twitter outage. Notably, the White House invited exactly zero social media company representatives to the event, but plenty of online conspiracists and grifters to make up for their absence.

If there is one thing you need to know about Tropical Storm Barry, it is this: The storm bearing down on Louisiana is forecast to be a flooding disaster.Read more...

Using a robotic sub, a team of investigators has detected traces of radiation leaking from Komsomolets—a Soviet nuclear submarine that sank 30 years ago in the Norwegian Sea. The recorded radiation levels are unusually high, but scientists say it’s not threatening humans or marine life.Read more...

Sometime in the three years before he murdered nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Dylan Roof sat down at his computer and typed “black on White crime” into Google. According to Roof’s online manifesto, something about the death of Trayvon Martin sparked his…Read more...

Continuing the summer of site outages... Twitter is now down. Both the mobile and web-based versions of Twitter are failing to load tweets, or even show like and retweet notifications.Read more...

A UK reporter’s harrowing story of losing sight in his right eye is sure to terrify anyone who’s been lax about contact lens hygiene. He contracted a rare parasitic infection, likely as a result of showering with his contacts in. The costly mistake required over 18 months of intensive treatments, and there’s a chance…Read more...

The Amazon Fire Phone was garbage when it was released five years ago in July 2014. At its announcement, Jeff Bezos stood on stage and called the device “gorgeous,” “elegant,” and “refined.” It’s none of those things. I spent a few weeks revisiting Amazon’s phone failure, and to be sure, reviewers were not wrong when…Read more...

Scientists have found evidence of Bronze Age human civilization written into ancient cattle DNA, according to a new study.Read more...

Computer scientists have developed a card-playing bot, called Pluribus, capable of defeating some of the world’s best players at six-person no-limit Texas hold’em poker, in what’s considered an important breakthrough in artificial intelligence.

After months of growing confusion and anger, the people of Wisconsin are finally getting some answers about the manufacturing plant that Foxconn is building in their state. Though even those answers are already being questioned.Read more...

A former Tesla engineer admitted on Monday that ahead of leaving the company and joining a competitor, he uploaded Tesla files to his personal iCloud account as well as made .zip files with the company’s Autopilot “trade secrets.” However, the ex-employee, Guangzhi Cao, is denying Tesla’s claims that he engaged in…Read more...

Earlier today, Japan’s Hayabusa2 may have become the first probe in history to collect material from beneath the surface of an asteroid—a mission that could yield important new insights about the early stages of our solar system. The attempt alone is an exciting achievement, but we won’t know for sure whether the…Read more...

Google has never made a successful social network, but you have to give the company some credit for never giving up. After the shutdown of platforms like Orkut, Google Buzz, and Google+ (and the shuttering of messaging services like Allo and Google Wave) it appears that Google is testing out yet another social…Read more...

Tropical Storm Barry just officially formed this morning, but water is already bearing down on New Orleans. The situation looks bad, to say the least, and we at Earther will be following it closely as the city and state of Louisiana prepare for what is forecasted to become a hurricane by the weekend.Read more...

Cult-favorite Cuisinart Advantage Knife Set, 20% off Sonos Speakers, and a Back Brace Posture Corrector lead off Thursday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

Due to an unspecified security vulnerability, Apple has decided to disable the Walkie Talkie app as it could potentially allow a person to eavesdrop on another’s iPhone.Read more...

NASA’s longtime associate administrator for its human exploration program, William Gerstenmaier, has been re-assigned to be a special adviser to NASA Deputy Administrator Jim Morhard in what seems like a fairly clear demotion, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

Low key the best part aspect of the Apple Watch is how easy it is to swap out bands at will. It takes about five seconds, so you can pop a new one on to match your outfit or your activity of choice.

No, it isn’t just you. Reddit is down.

A Wrinkle in Time’s Storm Reid could be joining the cast of The Suicide Squad. The Walking Dead spinoff casts another major character. Flash and Supergirl set photos reveal some new looks for hero and villain alike. Plus, what’s to come on The Handmaid’s Tale, more American Horror Story: 1984 casting, and a shocking…Read more...

20% off Sonos Speakers | eBayRead more...

President Donald Trump insisted in a tweet this morning that he could’ve won the presidency in 2016 without the help of social media. But Trump immediately contradicted himself, sending out a series of follow-up tweets claiming that he doesn’t need the mainstream media and that social media is much more important.Read more...

The United Arab Emirates lost a spy satellite after a failed rocket launch from the South American country of French Guiana late Wednesday. It’s still unclear what caused the failure, which became evident about two minutes after liftoff.Read more...