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For millennia, humans have been able to manipulate metals. In modern times, we have learned ways to make them more resistant to environmental effects. One could assume that in the vacuum of space, metals would fare better without ways to rust or degrade, but there are other concerns in vacuum. Concerns that can have very serious consequences for space missions.It is useful to join metals together. Ever since there have been metals used by humans, we have joined them by welding. The process requires hot temperatures, melting one or both metals, fusing them together, and letting them cool. There are of course other methods now to weld metals together. Chemicals, pressure, and more molecular approaches can deliver the union between the metals in question. But there is also an approach that can happen in the vacuum of space. And that is cold welding.In cold welding, as the term implies, you don’t need to fuse metals together to join them. But as processes go, there are some requirements. The metals need to be of the same type. They need to be clean, flat, and in vacuum. As the metals approach, the Van der Waals forces between the atoms become stronger. These forces are not as strong as a chemical bond, but can help in getting the metals close together.Once the surfaces are in contact, the system welds together. Take, for example, two gold plates. They are put together in vacuum, with nothing in between. The gold atoms on the surface of one will touch the gold atoms on the other. Those atoms will feel the interactions with the other plate as they feel the interactions with the gold atoms deeper in their “own” plate. They can’t distinguish between plate one or two, and so they join in a metallic bond.In many cases, at the macro scale, you can’t simply make metals touch and voila, cold-welded. Reality is muckier and more difficult than theory. You need specific pressures to make the cold welding happen. But at nanoscales, you can make some pretty consistent welding of gold nanowires that are nearly perfect – you can hardly believe they used to be different pieces of the same metal.But we should not assume that just because macroscopic cold welding is difficult it doesn’t happen or can’t happen in real life scenarios. A manual from the European Space Agency actually reports a fairly major case. The Galileo spacecraft that visited the Jupiter mission in the 90s failed to deploy its high-gain antenna because of cold welding. Fretting between the ribs of the antenna, which were locked during launch, led to them welding together. The mission had another antenna with lower speed so it was all good but it could have meant the end of what would be a crucial mission to explore the Solar System.

While hunting for submerged fossils off the coast of Florida, a 29-year-old man discovered the huge tusk of a mastodon, a distant cousin of the woolly mammoth and modern-day elephants.Alex Lundberg recovered the 1.2-meter (4-foot) tusk in April 2024 while exploring the waters off Venice Beach in the Gulf of Mexico. Upon diving, he noticed an intriguing object poking out of the seabed around 7.6 meters (25 feet) below the water surface."I look over, and I see what looks like a [15.2-cm] 6-inch piece of wood uncovered in the sand, and I swim over to it, and I started fanning it, trying to get the sand off of it. It just kept getting bigger and bigger,” Lundberg told USA Today."It was absolutely crazy," he added.It's possible the find could be a mammoth tusk. However, based on its shape, he believes the specimen is most likely a mastodon tusk.What a discovery!Image courtesy of Alex LundbergLundberg spends many of his weekends looking for fossils in Florida, where prehistoric shark teeth and shards of mammoth tusk are aplenty, but this latest tusk discovery is a favorite find so far. It's not hard to see why, eh? The discovery has been reported to the Florida Museum of Natural History, as required by local fossil hunting permits. If they don’t believe the find is scientifically significant, Lundberg should be able to keep it. And no, he isn't planning on selling it.Mastodons and mammoths share some superficial similarities – they are clearly relatives of elephants, with their impressive tusks and lengthy trunk – but they bear some clear differences and have distinct evolutionary histories. Mastodons, which belonged to the genus Mammut, were shorter and stockier than mammoths with stumpier, straighter tusks. In contrast, most mammoths, members of Mammuthus genus, had larger, more elaborately curved tusks.One of the key differences for paleontologists is their teeth, which vary quite significantly due to their diet; mastodons had cusp-shaped teeth for browsing woody vegetation such as leaves and twigs, while mammoths possessed flat, ridged molars ideal for grazing on grasses.Both animals fell into extinction at the end of the last ice age around 14,000 to 10,000 years ago (except for a freak population of dwarf woolly mammoths that lived on Siberia's Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago).Fossilized remains of both genus have been found throughout North America especially along the Atlantic coast and south of the Great Lakes, not mention across vast swathes of Europe and Asia. 

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan barely survived his re-election bid in state House District 21, eking out a less than 400-vote victory in the Republican primary runoff where both candidates earned more than 12,000 votes. But other Texas state House incumbents didn't fare as well.Between the Republican primaries in March and the primary runoffs in May, 15 incumbent Texas state House Republicans lost their re-election bids, including nine during the primaries and six in the runoffs. "The Texas legislature now has enough votes to pass School Choice," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, declared on the heels of the Republican primary runoff contests on Tuesday. — (@) 'School choice just happens to be the poster issue in a long list of unaccomplished promises.'Blaze News asked BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales what she thinks the results of the Texas Republican primary and primary runoff elections say about school choice and the state of the Republican Party in Texas."The grassroots sent a clear message to the Texas Legislature that we want educational freedom in this state, and with the makeup of the incoming legislature, we will succeed in that endeavor. The grassroots also sent a clear message that the days of accepting wishy-washy, lukewarm Republican leadership are over. Fifteen incumbents whose voting records were weak and/or who participated in the sham impeachment of our Attorney General Ken Paxton paid the price at the ballot box. Texas primary voters were asleep – not any more. We're awake now. Every single member of that body has been put on notice that if you do not work for your constituents, we will come for you," Gonzales said.Michael Quinn Sullivan, publisher of Texas Scorecard, responded to the same question from Blaze News by noting, "It is always hard, and wrong, to pin a single issue on the results in so many different races. The candidates had to sell themselves, personally. The issue of school choice played a role, but not so much as the issue itself but because it has become emblematic of incumbent lawmakers so willfully disregarding the long-established desires of their constituents. Republicans in the Texas House have been [more] eager to let their chamber leadership make deals with Democrats than achieve the victories their constituents have long demanded. School choice just happens to be the poster issue in a long list of unaccomplished promises."Katrina Pierson — who served as national spokesperson for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign — defeated incumbent GOP state Rep. Justin Holland in the Republican primary runoff for Texas state House District 33. Pierson's campaign site indicates that she "supports ESAs." The term refers to education savings accounts. Holland was one of the state House Republicans who last year opposed a plan for education savings accounts. "I've never seen an ESA plan that I liked or made good logistical sense," Holland told CBS News Texas during an interview ahead of the primary runoff.Mandy Drogin, campaign director of Next Generation Texas at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, indicated to Blaze news that the aim of school choice is to give parents the opportunity to choose alternative educational options if they are not satisfied by the "school that they're zoned for." She also noted that introducing the opportunity to choose different options "incentivizes the public schools to get better."'Texas WILL pass school choice next session.'Gonzales is confident that the state will greenlight school choice."Texas WILL pass school choice next session. Our state is not immune to the rot within the education system, and similar to other states, COVID was a wake-up call to those who didn't understand that. With as much as we pay in taxes toward our community schools, it is only reasonable that the money should follow the student. Stop rewarding bad behavior in a corrupt system and let the free market decide. As conservatives, that shouldn't be difficult to understand," she noted."Gov. Abbott has said it is all but now guarenteed," Sullivan told Blaze News regarding the potential passage of school choice in the state. "I tend to take a less cheery view. Declaring victory is an easy way to encourage activists to check out and move in. The devil will be in the details. Not a single advocate for school choice wants strings, or the possibility of strings, included in the package. That will be a sticking point. There are also concerns about scale. There are roughly 5 million students in Texas public schools. I think voters are expecting a lot more than a pilot program aimed at a highly restricted population. The governor, the lieutenant governor, and the legislature have made big, bold promises. They are going to have to now deliver," he noted.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Pride Month is officially canceled due to White Boy Summer.It’s that time of year again. Election season is heating up. President Trump was just found guilty after a clearly biased trial in New York. The political scene is feeling rather chaotic at the moment. WBS is really just about kicking back, enjoying quality time with loved ones, joking around, and going with the vibes.It’s also that time of year when corporations pander to our social justice overlords and paint progress flags on doorposts of their superstores to celebrate this new religious holiday they call “Pride Month.” But 2024 feels different. There’s a certain energy out there. The winds are shifting, and everyone can feel it. In recent months, defenders of all that is good and normal have emerged from the sidelines and spoken out. NFL Star Harrison Butker going viral for his speech promoting Christian values, college frat bros defending the American flag on campus, severe backlash to DEI policies following pro-Palestinian protests. Recent doxes against anonymous accounts on our side backfiring in spectacular fashion. The list goes on and on. Enemies want us demoralized, but it seems quite the opposite is occurring despite their best efforts. Most regular people are getting sick and tired of this dystopian reality our rulers have unsuccessfully attempted to force on us. And what better way to express this rejection of their idols than by embracing White Boy Summer? Chet Hanks, the man responsible for founding WBS and turning it into an internet sensation, indicated 2024 could be the biggest WBS to date. “I have consulted with the heavens, felt a westward breeze, and saw my shadow. This will be a #WBS,” he wrote. Those who aren’t terminally online might ask, “Ok, but what IS White Boy Summer?”WBS is really just about kicking back, enjoying quality time with loved ones, joking around, and going with the vibes.Your itinerary for this WBS should include but is not limited to: Tubing at the lake, tanning by the beach, having a few (or many) cold ones around a bonfire, road trips across the country with the sunroof down, cookouts with the boys, playing sports, running around, lying under the stars, jumping into a pool, enjoying a crisp breeze while lying in a hammock, attending fun events, listening to live music, hiking through the mountains, and so much more. Pro tip: These activities get even better when one is wearing cool shades and popping a few 6mg ZYNs. There's simply no better way to show support for LGBT: Liberty, Guns, the Bible, and Trump.Don’t give in to the doomsday news cycles or the Debbie Downers. Get outside and have fun. Seize the day. Be a happy warrior. It’s officially WBS!

For anyone who values the WNBA, it is self-sabotaging to treat Clark as a white interloper. She’s an incredible draw and an invariably courteous emissary for the game.

Help Andy McCarthy and the rest of us keep up the fight.

President Ebrahim Raisi’s death brought more of the same from an administration that can’t help treating an enemy like a friend.

Recent elections in Texas spotlight the political curiosity that some rural Republicans oppose school choice and show why it’s time they end their opposition.