Technologies

NASA satellite witnesses rare sight: Dying star ‘switching on and off’

In a «totally unexpected» turn of events, a white dwarf couldn’t swallow any of its star food floating nearby. That forced its lights to go out.

Deep within the cosmos, a fading star’s quiet death was sharply interrupted. Instead of gracefully vanishing into the heavy darkness of space, as stars typically do, it coughed out a mysterious, prolonged flicker of light.

This «has never been seen in other accreting white dwarfs,» Simone Scaringi, an astronomer at Durham University’s Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. «It appears to be switching on and off.» Scaringi is lead author of a study on the star published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Every iridescent star that decorates our universe — and those yet to add to the glittering collection — will one day disappear. Slowly but surely, their luster, fueled by heaps of hydrogen gas, will dwindle as the supply runs out. Entering their final stages of life, they will become white dwarfs.

And NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, caught a unique glimpse of this particular white dwarf’s strange behavior. The dying star is part of the two-star system dubbed TW Pictoris, located 1,400 light-years away.

«To see the brightness of TW Pictoris plummet in 30 minutes is, in itself, extraordinary,» Scaringi said. His team believes the star unexpectedly lost illumination because of a sudden hurdle in its food-funneling mechanism. Basically, the shiny space ball’s fiery snacks were falling out of reach.

White dwarfs feast on their companion stars by pulling flaming bits of the body into their Saturn-like ring of matter, or accretion disc, held in place by suspended magnetic fields. Swallowing a delicious bite makes a white dwarf literally light up with glee.

But these gently glimmering orbs are expected to pace themselves while feeding off their companion stars, meaning the sparkly spheres’ luminescence should dim gradually as they finish their dinner. Darkness isn’t anticipated to happen all at once, the way it did with TW Pictoris.

«The brightness variations seen in accreting white dwarfs are generally relatively slow, occurring on timescales of days to months,» Scaringi said. That’s why, he explained, TW Pictoris’ white dwarf switching off is «totally unexpected from our understanding of how these systems are supposed to feed through the accretion disc.»

In decoding the puzzle, the team found that during its «off» phase, the white dwarf’s accretion disc was spinning so fast it induced a centrifugal force strong enough to prevent the disc’s matter from ever reaching the central star. That’s why the expiring stellar object didn’t have anything to gobble on, thereby limiting its light. Such regulation, according to the research, is called magnetic gating.

The phenomenon is similar to what happens when you ride a roller coaster and enter a loop. A rider wouldn’t fall into the loop due to the force that presses the passengers into their seats.

After the «off» phase and during the «on» phase, the disc’s speed of rotation went back to normal. Matter could, once again, escape the grips of the spin for the white dwarf to snack on.

«This really is a previously unrecognized phenomenon,» Scaringi explained, adding that «because we can draw comparisons with similar behavior in the much smaller neutron stars, it could be an important step in helping us to better understand the process of how other accreting objects feed on the material that surrounds them, and the important role of magnetic fields in this process.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 8, #728

Here are some hints and the answers for Connections for June 8, #728.

Looking for the most recent 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, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle could be tricky. The purple category is one of those «sounds like» groups, that can be really tough to figure out. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

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

Yellow group hint: Keep at it.

Green group hint: Think Wall Street animals.

Blue group hint: Online encyclopedia subheads.

Purple group hint: $$$.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Persist.

Green group: Animal metaphors in economics.

Blue group: Sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page.

Purple group: Homophones of slang for money.

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

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is persist. The four answers are hold, last, stand and stay.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is animal metaphors in economics. The four answers are bear, bull, dove and hawk.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page. The four answers are born, education, occupation and spouse.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is homophones of slang for money. The four answers are bred, cache, doe and lute.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for June 8, #1450

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,450 for June 8.

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

Today’s Wordle puzzle isn’t too tough, especially if your first guesses are heavy on vowels. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There are two vowels in today’s Wordle answer, but one is the repeated letter, so you’ll see it twice.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with L.

Wordle hint No. 4: Ending

Today’s Wordle answer ends with a vowel.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer refers to a contract where someone is given the right to use something for a specific time and payment.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is LEASE.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, June 7, No. 1449 was REUSE.

Recent Wordle answers

June 3, No. 1445: ADMIN

June 4, No. 1446: CEASE

June 5, No. 1447: DATUM

June 6, No. 1448: EDIFY

Technologies

Resident Evil Requiem Revealed, but Where’s Leon Kennedy?

The Resident Evil 9 trailer showed off a new character, but not the much-rumored return of Leon.

After a fake-out earlier in Summer Game Fest on Friday, Resident Evil Requiem, or Resident Evil 9, was shown for the first time.

The new title is the first mainline entry since Capcom released Resident Evil Village in 2021, and is rumored to feature series stalwart Leon Kennedy. In the trailer, the only person we saw was a character named Grace Ashcroft, who works for the FBI and appears to have ties to Raccoon City.

For the most hardcore Resident Evil fans, the name Ashcroft will ring a bell. Alyssa Ashcroft was one of the survivors of the online-only title, Resident Evil Outbreak for the PS2. Alyssa was a journalist who was trapped in Raccoon City during the events of Resident Evil 2, and she, along with other survivors, had to escape the city before it was destroyed.

Grace is Alyssa’s daughter, and in the trailer, she is going to visit the Remwood Hotel, where Alyssa was murdered. Later in the trailer, images from what appears to be the remnants of a destroyed Raccoon City are shown — including the police department from RE2 — so it appears Resident Evil 9 will return to where the series started.

Leon’s (rumored) return is a big deal for the series, which has made some of its best games with him in the starring role. He first showed up as a rookie cop in Resident Evil 2, which built on the original game’s success with more story and improved monsters and level design.

He showed up again in Resident Evil 4, which took the series in a new direction by introducing an over-the-shoulder perspective, instead of the usual static camera angles and tank controls. Leon was also one of several playable protagonists in Resident Evil 6, a game that seemed to forget about its survival horror roots. We mostly don’t talk about that one.

But the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 was an excellent return to form, bringing RE4’s gameplay and much better graphics to a fan-favorite entry. The RE4 remake was a similar success.

Resident Evil Requiem is set to drop Feb. 27, 2026, for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, but we’re hoping to get our hands on it this weekend. If you want to catch up on older Resident Evil games, Capcom is having a sale that includes basically all the games, including Village and the three remakes.