Technologies

Comet Nishimura Survives Brush With the Sun and Enters Evening Sky

The space snowball is now heading back out to deep space for the next four hundred years, but it might be possible to catch it as it goes.

The brightest comet of 2023 is still intact after making a hairpin turn around the sun over the weekend.

Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) was first spotted last month by Hideo Nishimura, an amateur astronomer in Japan, using only a digital camera setup and a lot of skill. It made its close pass by the sun on Sept. 17 before being flung back out to deep space.

Under dark skies, the comet is easily visible with the naked eye. Unfortunately, as it recedes to the outer limits of the solar system, it is best viewed low on the horizon just after sunset, when it can be washed out by fading daylight.

A number of sky watchers and astrophotographers are reporting having luck imaging it using a digital camera on a tripod taking exposures that last at least a few seconds.

However, it’s encouraging that Nishimura survived its encounter with the sun and there is always a chance it could brighten as it passes by Earth’s orbit.

How to catch the comet

This comet is trickier to see than other bright comets of the recent pass due to its low angle to the horizon, which is really a reflection of how close it passed by the sun. This is why it’s been most visible before sunrise on its way toward the sun and now after sunset as it recedes into space.

«It’s really best seen with binoculars or a telescope,» Alison Klesman, who holds a doctorate in astronomy, wrote for Astronomy.com. «But through those optics, it will dazzle.»

You can search for the comet in the constellation Leo an hour or two before sunrise. You can use apps like Stellarium, Star Walk or TheSkyLive to help locate it.

See bright Comet Nishimura at dawn.
Finder chart below. pic.twitter.com/CMRiPk4dPM

— Con Stoitsis (@vivstoitsis) September 4, 2023

It’s very difficult to know what the future holds for a comet. They can travel for centuries from the edge of the solar system to make a single orbit around the sun. At the same time, they are fragile things with a tendency to disintegrate as they pass through the inner solar system. They’ve even been known to crash into Jupiter or the sun along the way. The dinosaurs may also have had a close encounter with one many millions of years ago.

The comet has met some serious resistance during its journey in the form of blasts of charged particles and plasma issuing forth from a tumultuous sun. Observers like astrophotographer Michael Jaeger (see above) watched earlier this month as a solar storm engulfed the comet and appeared to blow a portion of its tail away for a moment.

Here’s a more dramatic example that was captured by NASA in 2007 of Comet Encke having its tail briefly stolen:

«Researchers call this a disconnection event; it’s caused by a CME (or fast solar wind stream) hitting the comet,» former NASA astronomer Tony Phillips wrote at Spaceweather.com.

CME stands for coronal mass ejection, which is an eruption from the outer layers of the sun that often accompanies a solar flare. Think of it as a very strong gust of energetic wind coursing through space and causing electromagnetic chaos. This is the same force that causes auroras to light up the skies when it collides with Earth’s magnetic field. It can also influence other things in space, like asteroids and comets.

The sun is currently building toward the peak of its roughly 11-year solar cycle, which means more frequent flares and CMEs.

Technologies

Samsung to Supercharge 800 Million Devices With AI This Year, Report Says

This could exacerbate the global RAM crunch.

Samsung is doubling the number of devices it’ll deliver with Galaxy AI this year to 800 million units, the company’s co-CEO TM Roh told Reuters on Monday.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

«We will apply AI to all products, all functions and all services as quickly as possible,» Roh told Reuters.

Galaxy AI includes features like circle to search, live translate on phone calls, real-time translation, a writing assistant, generative photo editing and generative wallpaper.

The AI features are currently available on the Samsung Galaxy S25 series of phones, the Galaxy S24 series, the Galaxy S23 series; the Galaxy S23 FE, Galaxy S24 FE and Galaxy S25 FE; the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Z Fold 6 and Z Fold 7; the Galaxy Z Flip 5, Z Flip 6 and Z Flip 7; the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus, S10 Ultra and Galaxy Tab S11; and the Galaxy Tab S9 series.

Although Samsung is also a manufacturer of RAM, it is facing supply issues caused by exceedingly high demand resulting from the rise of AI.

«As this situation is unprecedented, no company is immune to its impact,» Roh told Reuters. The co-CEO also didn’t rule out price increases, but said he’s working with partners to find solutions.

A representative for Samsung didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The AI push from Samsung comes during a memory chip crunch fueled by AI data centers, causing the cost of certain electronics to surge. Analysts predict that high demand and low supply will result in price increases across multiple product categories, including phones and cars.

AI systems require more RAM, which is why, for example, the iPhone 16 shipped with 16GB of RAM to power Apple Intelligence. The demand for power from AI data centers that run ChatGPT is so high that US memory manufacturer Micron killed off Crucial, its consumer RAM business, to pivot toward enterprise clients. Crucial had been around since 1996.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI will use up about 40% of DRAM output from South Korean firms Samsung and SK Hynix alone, according to Reuters. DRAM refers to Dynamic Random-Access Memory, the main working memory in computers, phones and servers, and AI relies heavily on it.

This memory crunch has reportedly left Google and Microsoft scrambling to secure supply for 2026, leading to firings and heated exchanges, according to South Korean publication Seoul Economic Daily. As a result, consumers may see devices with less RAM hit the market, reminiscent of products from years ago, such as 4GB smartphones and potentially 8-12GB graphics cards.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Jan. 6, #470

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Jan. 6, No. 470.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tough one. Remember that athlete surnames sometimes look like regular nouns, especially since Connections lists all its words in all caps, so you can’t tell if they’re a name or not. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic app. You can also play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Go the other way.

Green group hint: Nothing but net.

Blue group hint: Fire it in there.

Purple group hint: Not front.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Change direction.

Green group: Basketball shot types.

Blue group: Active MLB pitchers.

Purple group: Back ____.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is change direction. The four answers are pivot, turn, veer and zig.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is basketball shot types. The four answers are alley-oop, fadeaway, floater and layup.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is active MLB pitchers. The four answers are Cease, Crochet, Wheeler and Woo.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is back ____. The four answers are board, field, stop and stretch.

Technologies

HP HyperX Omen Ups Its Game With a Cutting-Edge OLED, Leverless Controller and More

There are several bright spots in HP’s gaming announcements at CES 2026.

HP’s gaming gear for CES 2026 doesn’t bristle with jaw-dropping announcements, but there are a few that stand out, including a monitor incorporating a new Samsung V-Stripe OLED panel and a first-for-HP leverless game controller.

The company dropped a brief mention of a partnership with Neurable for a new HyperX headset, as part of its CES announcements. The headset will most likely be similar to the one HP developed in conjunction with Master and Dynamic, the MW75 Neuro LT. Though Neurable «envision(s) a future where brain-computer interfaces are as ubiquitous as smartphones,» these will likely not plug into your head.

In what I think is a smart move, HP has decided to merge its Omen and HyperX gaming products into a single line under the HyperX banner, while retaining Omen as a sub-brand of HyperX. In other words, laptops, displays and other Omen products will now be branded as HyperX Omen; previous HyperX devices remain as HyperX. This consolidation is equivalent to Dell letting its G series gaming laptops die quietly and moving all its gaming under Alienware in recent years.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

HP is also releasing its first leverless arcade controller, the Xbox-licensed HyperX Clutch Tachi. Albeit a bit late to the game, it’s ostensibly the first to incorporate Tunneling Magnetoresistance switches for the buttons (like Hall Effect controls, TMR is magnetism based, but uses a different sensing technique). Current competitors frequently use TMR technology for sticks.

On the other hand, not so late to the market, the new 34-inch HyperX Omen OLED 34 is one of the first to incorporate Samsung’s recently announced V-Stripe QD-OLED panel — LG’s competing subpixel arrangement is RGB Stripe. Both are intended to rectify the artifacts that plague the rendering of few-pixels-wide elements with earlier OLED technologies, which can make things like text difficult to read. Basic specs include 3,440×1,440 resolution at 360Hz refresh and DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification. And there’s a headphone hook.

Most notable among the gaming laptops, the HyperX Omen Max 16, which comes in Intel- or AMD-based versions, is novel for its high-polling-rate (how frequently it sends a signal) keyboard: 1,000Hz. While that speed has become relatively common for external gaming keyboards, it’s more rare for gaming laptops. HP has also reworked the cooling design of the system, which should help eke out more performance from the high-end configurations.

The laptop generally ships with an AI-happy processor like AMD’s Ryzen AI Max, so HP’s pairing it with a beta of a new utility, Omen AI, its own one-click settings optimization tool for the system and support games.

All these devices are slated to ship in the spring. No pricing is available yet.