Models and observations indicate that both stars and planets form as a cloud of material collapses into a disk. If the process proceeds in an orderly manner, then the planets will all form from the same disk and thus orbit in the same plane. And—because material from the same disk will fall into the star, bringing its momentum with it—the star will rotate with its equator along the same plane. That should lead to a tidy system with the equator of the star lined up with the plane of any plane...

Scientists believe they may have found a way to make cancer chemotherapy treatment less toxic to the body. They have begun testing a tiny sponge that sits inside a vein and removes excess chemo drugs from the blood once they have attacked the target tumour. Experts say the early work, in the journal ACS Central Science , offers hope of avoiding treatment side-effects, such as hair loss and nausea. So far, it has been tried in pigs, but researchers want to test it in people.

An ocean-saving device deployed in September to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has malfunctioned and will have to be towed back to port. During a routine inspection on Dec. 29, crew members discovered that a 60-foot end section of one of the booms that scoops up trash from the surface of the ocean had detached, 23-year-old inventor Boyan Slat wrote in a Jan. 1 blog post.

It wasn’t the successful, industry-changing run we had all hoped for from the startup founded by Android creator Andy Rubin, but the Essential Phone might be done. After a good year and a half of price drops and flash sales after a rocky, expensive start, the Essential Phone has begun slipping away into unavailability land.

Karl Rudnick, a retired 69-year-old mathematician who lives in Solana Beach, Calif., recently bought a second home outside Minneapolis to be close to family members. He did not have to draw on his knowledge of advanced calculus to reject the idea of paying for two cable TV subscriptions. “I talked to the cable companies and asked if there was a way to have one account,” Rudnick said. “There wasn’t, and all of a sudden I was looking at spending $300 a month just to have internet and TV.”

Signed, sealed, delivered … well, almost. Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth quietly filed for their marriage license on December 18, five days before their secret Tennessee wedding, a Williamson County clerk confirms to Us Weekly. The clerk adds that the pair have 30 days to sign the license and mail it back so the paperwork is complete.

President Donald Trump's trade battles are projected to hit middle-class families hard, according to a new study, especially if the president follows through on all of his threats. According to a report from the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, current tariffs will cause a squeeze for middle-class Americans — and lead to fewer jobs in the US. The think tank also estimated that the economic pain of the tariffs would get much worse in the event Trump follows through on all tariffs he ha...

Canada is vulnerable to efforts to undermine elections and has not yet reined in the role political ads on Facebook play in spreading disinformation, says a Conservative MP. Bob Zimmer, chair of the parliamentary committee investigating the Facebook privacy scandal, is among a cohort of international lawmakers in London this week scrutinizing the social media giant's digital policy.

Why has the Republican Party become so thoroughly corrupt? The reason is historical—it goes back many decades—and, in a way, philosophical. The party is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start. I don’t mean the kind of corruption that regularly sends lowlifes like Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic former governor of Illinois, to prison.

On the heels of a dire government report published last month about climate change and its devastating impacts, many cities and states are scrambling to find ways to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that threaten their air quality, not to mention their economies. As is often the case, California is leading the charge, yesterday becoming the first state to mandate that mass transit agencies purchase fully electric buses only beginning in 2029, and that public transit routes be populated by elect...

When you search the web with Ecosia, the profits from the search ad revenue go to support tree planting programs.

For the past two weeks, a massive protest movement known as the “yellow vests” has shaken France. While the movement began as a way for low-income people to voice their anger at the government’s efforts to target car pollution with a heavy carbon tax, it has now spiraled into an ongoing, at-times violent expression of general dissatisfaction with president Emmanuel Macron, as well as France’s political system and labor laws.

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Many years ago, Microsoft stopped reporting Xbox One sales figures and started measuring success based on Xbox Live members. In 2017, the company released the Xbox One X, the most powerful console ever made, but didn't provide us with figures as to how well the machine was doing at retailers. While there are numerous organizations around the world that report sales figures, The NPD Group tacks it in the United States.

When President Trump visited the piles of ash and charred rubble of what used to be Paradise, Calif., this month, he said that the Camp Fire was a “really, really bad one." “We’ve never seen anything like this in California,” he said. “It’s total devastation.” Reporters asked the president whether seeing what remained of the Northern California town and walking among the ashes made him rethink his opinion on climate change — that it is a hoax, fake news or simply nonexistent...

China will work to achieve its existing greenhouse gas targets and strive to do better as the challenges of climate change become more urgent, Xie Zhenhua, the country's top climate envoy, said at a briefing on Monday. "I believe the promises we make will be 100 percent completed and we will strive to do better," said Xie, speaking to reporters before a new round of climate talks in Katowice, Poland on how to implement the 2015 Paris agreement.

Facebook is carefully walking back statements it made about hiring a Republican opposition-research group to investigate billionaire George Soros. In a blog post published late Wednesday, right before many Americans left work to begin the Thanksgiving holiday, Facebook admitted to asking an opposition-research company to investigate billionaire George Soros over his public criticism of the social network.

For recreational users, ecstasy has long been associated with a harmonious mindset. Now there’s research to back that up. In a new study of MDMA, ecstasy’s main ingredient, the drug indeed made people more cooperative—but only with trustworthy partners.

The next generation of wireless technology, fittingly known as 5G, is just around the corner. If you ask Verizon, it's already here. One thing the entire industry can agree on is it's going to change our lives. The industry, of course, really wants 5G to be a thing.