Technologies
Meteor Shower Season Heats Up as Orionids and Taurids Activate
Earth is set to pass through a series of dusty clouds of space debris from Halley’s Comet and others that promise to light up night skies.

August’s Perseid meteor shower may be the most well known of the year, but it’s the last quarter of the year that brings the most shooting-star and fireball action to night skies.
As of this week, both the Orionid and Southern Taurid meteor showers are active. While the Orionids aren’t set to peak until around Oct. 20, they still add some shooting stars to each evening right away. The Taurids, on the other hand, don’t have a very defined peak and are forecast to be visible at a rate of around two per hour over the next several weeks.
Adding to the celestial drama is the Taurids’ reputation for delivering a number of bright fireballs streaking through the sky.
«In 2022, the Earth passed through a swarm of Taurid fireballs,» writes Bob Lunsford for the American Meteor Society. «This year we are further from this swarm but will still encounter some fireball activity.»
The Taurids can be traced to debris from the comet 2P/Encke, while the Orionids are connected to the leavings of the famed Halley’s Comet, which visits the inner solar system only about every 75 years. The celebrity snowball won’t be back until 2061.
Two distinct clouds from Halley’s Comet are responsible for both the Orionids each October and the Eta Aquariids meteor shower in May.
How to see the celestial show
When the Orionids peak between Oct 20 and 22, the conditions should be nearly perfect, especially with the moonless sky on the morning of the 22nd in the hours just before dawn. Most nights, the area near the constellation of Orion the Hunter where the Orionids appear to radiate from will be highest in the sky around 2 a.m. But it may be possible to see the meteors anytime between midnight and dawn.
The Orionids are known for zipping through the sky at relatively high speed and often leaving long trains that can linger for a second or two.
During those peak mornings, the number of Orionid meteors will suddenly increase to between 10 and 20 per hour, but sometimes Earth passes through a particularly dense pocket of debris and those rates shoot up to 50 to 70, rivaling the Perseids.
While it’s worth marking the Orionids’ peak on your calendar, you might be able to catch a handful of meteors and a fireball on any given night over the next several weeks.
If you have at least an hour free on a night with clear skies and a location away from light pollution, all you need to do is find an area with a broad view of the night sky. Allow at least 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness and then just relax, lie back and watch.
You’ll hear seasoned skywatchers talking about orienting yourself to face the radiant of a particular meteor shower. The radiant is the section of the sky from which certain meteors will appear to radiate outward. Meteor showers are usually named for a constellation within that radiant, so the Orionids are named for Orion.
If you can locate Orion in the sky and orient yourself in that direction, it might boost your viewing experience slightly. But the reality is that most amateurs won’t notice a difference. It’s far more important to have dark skies away from light pollution and the widest view of the sky possible. While meteors might originate from a certain radiant, they go all over the sky from that point, so it really doesn’t matter much which way you face.
Plus, there are more than Orionids up there on most nights. There are also the aforementioned Taurids, smaller showers like the Anthelion and even sporadic meteors that aren’t part of defined showers.
So just plan for at least an hour outside, preferably between midnight and dawn, for the best chance to make it through lulls in activity and spotting a few meteors. Be sure to bring all you need to be comfortable that long: Blankets, snacks and drinks are a good idea. Good luck!
Technologies
Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.
The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea.
According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»
The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»
Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.
Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»
K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.
More research to do on finding life on K2-18b
The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.
«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»
Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»
The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»
As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.
«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»
Technologies
The Future’s Here: Testing Out Gemini’s Live Camera Mode
Gemini Live’s new camera mode feels like the future when it works. I put it through a stress test with my offbeat collectibles.

«I just spotted your scissors on the table, right next to the green package of pistachios. Do you see them?»
Gemini Live’s chatty new camera feature was right. My scissors were exactly where it said they were, and all I did was pass my camera in front of them at some point during a 15-minute live session of me giving the AI chatbot a tour of my apartment. Google’s been rolling out the new camera mode to all Android phones using the Gemini app for free after a two-week exclusive to Pixel 9 (including the new Pixel 9A) and Galaxy S5 smartphones. So, what exactly is this camera mode and how does it work?
When you start a live session with Gemini, you now how have the option to enable a live camera view, where you can talk to the chatbot and ask it about anything the camera sees. Not only can it identify objects, but you can also ask questions about them — and it works pretty well for the most part. In addition, you can share your screen with Gemini so it can identify things you surface on your phone’s display.
When the new camera feature popped up on my phone, I didn’t hesitate to try it out. In one of my longer tests, I turned it on and started walking through my apartment, asking Gemini what it saw. It identified some fruit, ChapStick and a few other everyday items with no problem. I was wowed when it found my scissors.
That’s because I hadn’t mentioned the scissors at all. Gemini had silently identified them somewhere along the way and then recalled the location with precision. It felt so much like the future, I had to do further testing.
My experiment with Gemini Live’s camera feature was following the lead of the demo that Google did last summer when it first showed off these live video AI capabilities. Gemini reminded the person giving the demo where they’d left their glasses, and it seemed too good to be true. But as I discovered, it was very true indeed.
Gemini Live will recognize a whole lot more than household odds and ends. Google says it’ll help you navigate a crowded train station or figure out the filling of a pastry. It can give you deeper information about artwork, like where an object originated and whether it was a limited edition piece.
It’s more than just a souped-up Google Lens. You talk with it, and it talks to you. I didn’t need to speak to Gemini in any particular way — it was as casual as any conversation. Way better than talking with the old Google Assistant that the company is quickly phasing out.
Google also released a new YouTube video for the April 2025 Pixel Drop showcasing the feature, and there’s now a dedicated page on the Google Store for it.
To get started, you can go live with Gemini, enable the camera and start talking. That’s it.
Gemini Live follows on from Google’s Project Astra, first revealed last year as possibly the company’s biggest «we’re in the future» feature, an experimental next step for generative AI capabilities, beyond your simply typing or even speaking prompts into a chatbot like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. It comes as AI companies continue to dramatically increase the skills of AI tools, from video generation to raw processing power. Similar to Gemini Live, there’s Apple’s Visual Intelligence, which the iPhone maker released in a beta form late last year.
My big takeaway is that a feature like Gemini Live has the potential to change how we interact with the world around us, melding our digital and physical worlds together just by holding your camera in front of almost anything.
I put Gemini Live to a real test
The first time I tried it, Gemini was shockingly accurate when I placed a very specific gaming collectible of a stuffed rabbit in my camera’s view. The second time, I showed it to a friend in an art gallery. It identified the tortoise on a cross (don’t ask me) and immediately identified and translated the kanji right next to the tortoise, giving both of us chills and leaving us more than a little creeped out. In a good way, I think.
I got to thinking about how I could stress-test the feature. I tried to screen-record it in action, but it consistently fell apart at that task. And what if I went off the beaten path with it? I’m a huge fan of the horror genre — movies, TV shows, video games — and have countless collectibles, trinkets and what have you. How well would it do with more obscure stuff — like my horror-themed collectibles?
First, let me say that Gemini can be both absolutely incredible and ridiculously frustrating in the same round of questions. I had roughly 11 objects that I was asking Gemini to identify, and it would sometimes get worse the longer the live session ran, so I had to limit sessions to only one or two objects. My guess is that Gemini attempted to use contextual information from previously identified objects to guess new objects put in front of it, which sort of makes sense, but ultimately, neither I nor it benefited from this.
Sometimes, Gemini was just on point, easily landing the correct answers with no fuss or confusion, but this tended to happen with more recent or popular objects. For example, I was surprised when it immediately guessed one of my test objects was not only from Destiny 2, but was a limited edition from a seasonal event from last year.
At other times, Gemini would be way off the mark, and I would need to give it more hints to get into the ballpark of the right answer. And sometimes, it seemed as though Gemini was taking context from my previous live sessions to come up with answers, identifying multiple objects as coming from Silent Hill when they were not. I have a display case dedicated to the game series, so I could see why it would want to dip into that territory quickly.
Gemini can get full-on bugged out at times. On more than one occasion, Gemini misidentified one of the items as a made-up character from the unreleased Silent Hill: f game, clearly merging pieces of different titles into something that never was. The other consistent bug I experienced was when Gemini would produce an incorrect answer, and I would correct it and hint closer at the answer — or straight up give it the answer, only to have it repeat the incorrect answer as if it was a new guess. When that happened, I would close the session and start a new one, which wasn’t always helpful.
One trick I found was that some conversations did better than others. If I scrolled through my Gemini conversation list, tapped an old chat that had gotten a specific item correct, and then went live again from that chat, it would be able to identify the items without issue. While that’s not necessarily surprising, it was interesting to see that some conversations worked better than others, even if you used the same language.
Google didn’t respond to my requests for more information on how Gemini Live works.
I wanted Gemini to successfully answer my sometimes highly specific questions, so I provided plenty of hints to get there. The nudges were often helpful, but not always. Below are a series of objects I tried to get Gemini to identify and provide information about.
Technologies
Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for April 26, #1407
Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,407 for April 26. Hint: Fans of a certain musical group will rock out with this puzzle.

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. The letters are fairly common, and fans of a certain rock band might get a kick out of the answer. 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 no repeated letters.
Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels
There is one vowel in today’s Wordle answer.
Wordle hint No. 3: Start letter
Today’s Wordle answer begins with the letter C.
Wordle hint No. 4: Rock out
Today’s Wordle answer is the name of a legendary English rock band.
Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning
Today’s Wordle answer can refer to a violent confrontation.
TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER
Today’s Wordle answer is CLASH.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer
Yesterday’s Wordle answer, April 25, No. 1406 was KNOWN.
Recent Wordle answers
April 21, No. 1402: SPATE
April 22, No. 1403: ARTSY
April 23, No. 1404: OZONE.
April 24, No. 1405: GENIE
What’s the best Wordle starting word?
Don’t be afraid to use our tip sheet ranking all the letters in the alphabet by frequency of uses. In short, you want starter words that lean heavy on E, A and R, and don’t contain Z, J and Q.
Some solid starter words to try:
ADIEU
TRAIN
CLOSE
STARE
NOISE
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