President-elect Donald Trump is expected to pick Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute, to be agriculture secretary, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Pope Francis will visit the French Mediterranean island of Corsica in December, days after skipping the reopening of Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral which was ravaged by a fire in 2019, the Vatican said Saturday.

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The vice president of the Philippines appeared to threaten to have the country’s president and two other high-profile persons killed if she herself were killed, prompting responses from the president’s…

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Congressional investigators subpoena ATF agents in Trump assassination attempt probe, alleging stonewalling by the agency. At a Glance Congressional task force investigating assassination attempts on…

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Astronomers have just found one of the youngest planets ever. At only 3 million years old, planet TIDYE-1b (also known as IRAS 04125+2902 b) is practically in its infancy. By comparison, Earth is 4.5 billion years old: that’s 1500 times older. The discovery of a planet this young can teach scientists a lot about the early stages of planet formation, and the peculiarities of this particular one have scientists re-evaluating their models of planetary birth. “Astronomy helps us explore our place in the Universe — where we came from and where we might be going. Discovering planets like this one allows us to look back in time, catching a glimpse of planetary formation as it happens,” said Madyson Barber, lead author of a new paper and graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill. Barber discovered TIDYE-1b using the transit method, where a planet passes in front of its star, dimming the light and revealing itself to the observer – in this case, NASA’s TESS telescope. Previously, more than a dozen young planets in the 10-40 million-year-old range have been found via transit, but TIDYE-1b surpasses them all. It’s a rare find because, under normal circumstances, such young planets are usually obscured by gas and dust that make up the ‘protoplanetary disc’, a debris field orbiting a star like a ring, out of which new planets are built. “Planets typically form from a flat disk of dust and gas, which is why planets in our Solar System are aligned in a ‘pancake-flat’ arrangement,” explains Andrew Mann, associate professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. “But here, the disk is tilted, misaligned with both the planet and its star — a surprising twist that challenges our current understanding of how planets form.”  Since TIDYE-1b orbits its star at a different angle than the main protoplanetary disc, it was visible despite its youth. It can often take more than five million years for such a disc to clear out in a young star system, so this was a lucky break without which the astronomers would not have been able to see the planet. The planet is very close to its star, orbiting around it about once every nine days. The researchers believe it is a young example of what will someday become a ‘super-Earth or a ‘sub-Neptune, a planet type missing in our solar system but which seems common in the wider Milky Way galaxy. TIDYE-1b is not as dense as the Earth is, but it is about 11 times larger in diameter. The discovery provides conclusive evidence that planets can form earlier than previously known – the lack of examples of planets younger than 10 million years found so far is not because they don’t exist. It’s just because they tend to be hidden from view. The post Astronomers Find a 3 Million Year Old Planet appeared first on Universe Today.

Cranking out the hits. Cody Johnson knows what he's doing when it comes to choosing songs to cut and feature on his records, and that statement was solidified with his CMA Album of the Year win for Leather. The Texas native has a way of conveying emotion through his vocal delivery, hitting the soul of his listeners. He has a track for every phase of life, whether you like his breakup, anthems, or tender love songs. While we love what Johnson is doing for country music, he's not shy about the fact that he would be nothing without the fantastic group of songwriters who have written some of his biggest hits. On the CMA red carpet, Billboard's correspondent Tetris Kelly asked Johnson how he knows a song will be a hit when pitched to him. Given that Johnson had two songs nominated for Song of the Year, which he was not a writer on, Kelly wanted to know how Johnson has the ear to find these massive hits. "It comes from being a songwriter first and knowing who I am. Obviously, I'm not the best songwriter because if I was I would've already wrote them all, but when you hear these songs you go, 'Oh my god. That's a big hit. That's a hit for me.'  And a lot of people have already passed on these songs. I've been asked, 'Does it bother you that somebody else has already passed on it?' And I'm like, 'No, because it wasn't for them.' I know it's for me." Kelly then inquires more about how he knows when a song is a good fit for you. Given that Johnson sings about such a vast topic range about life's emotions when he's happily married with children, it doesn't sound like it's easy to know when something is for you if it's a cheating song, for example. But Johnson knows in his bones. "I don't know, there's something in my DNA that when I hear one, I'm just like, 'That's it.' And I don't know, maybe it's something I've developed over time. But then I also kind of go, and I don't mean this derogatory, but you love it or hate it. Think about it if you were picking a spouse. Maybe I do? Maybe I love them; maybe it will work itself out. No, you either love them or you don't." Well, when you say it like that, it seems pretty straightforward as to how he chooses what to feature on his records. Kelly also talks with Johnson about how they came up with the idea to do Leather Deluxe Edition while still making it feel like a double album (given the length but without the singular release date). Johnson said he was all for leaving some time between the two "chapters" of music so the songwriting could sink in. "I love it. I might do it for the next record!" I am here for it because it gave time for the songwriting of the record's first half to digest with listeners before releasing the second half. Johnson clearly has a gift for hit songs and also knows a good idea when he hears one. Country music needs more Cody Johnsons; he's quickly becoming the prince of country music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JhiKEwbsVE