SCIENCE
Ash Pendant: The only known depiction of a pregnant Viking woman
QUICK FACTS
Name: Ash Pendant
What it is: A silver pendant with a female figure
Where it is from: Aska hamlet, in southern Sweden
When it was made: Circa 800 to 975
This round, silver pendant was found in a 10th-century elite woman’s burial in Sweden in 1920 and is the only known depiction of a pregnant Viking.
The pendant was discovered by Swedish archaeologist T.J. Arne in his 1920 excavation of several burial mounds at the site of Aska. Dozens of artifacts were found in the grave, including eight other pendants, four silver rings, a bone game board and an Islamic silver coin. Based on the presence of rivets and nails, the excavators suspected the woman was buried in a wooden casket that decomposed over time, and her bones suggest she was a young or middle-aged adult. It’s unknown if she was pregnant or giving birth when she died.
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There is some disagreement about what the unique Ash Pendant may signify about the deceased Viking woman.
According to the Swedish History Museum, the pendant may depict the Norse goddess Freyja, who was associated with pregnancy and childbirth. Freyja wore a special necklace called the Brísingamen, the descriptions of which closely match the button clasp and rows of beads on the Ash Pendant. The pendant may therefore have been a talisman for the woman in the grave.
MORE ASTONISHING ARTIFACTS
But the Aska site also features a large, flat-topped mound that might have been the foundation for a “royal hall,” according to archaeologist Martin Rundkvist, meaning the people buried in the graves were “petty royalty.” They appear to have passed down the silver pendants, including the Ash Pendant, as heirlooms over several generations.
Given the range of artifacts discovered in the woman’s grave, including a wolf-headed iron staff and the series of heirloom pendants, the woman may have held a prominent role as a practitioner of magic or ritual, archaeologist Neil Price has argued.
And because later graves in the Aska area lack similar ritual objects, according to a study by archaeologist Hide Gustafsson, this may mean that the Viking woman buried in the mound was the last pagan practitioner of her kind before the introduction of Christianity to the region, and that her Freyja pendant was buried with her.
For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.
From Dec. 5 to Dec. 8 of every year, France celebrates the Fetes des Lumieres (Festival of Lights) at the Parc de la Tete d’Or in Lyon. There, the city hosts artwork spread across its iconic squares and opera house, including artwork made via drone.
What is it?
Over time, the religious event became much more urbanized, and in modern times now uses projectors, LEDs, and even drones to light up the night sky. By the 2000s, the festival had become world-famous, attracts millions of visitors to Lyon every December.
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Where is it?
This image was taken at the Parc de la Tete d’Or in Lyon, which is in central-eastern France.
A view of our home planet made by drones. (Image credit: ALEX MARTIN/Getty Images)
Why is it amazing?
This year’s celebration included a “ballet” of 500 synchronized dronesworking together to make distinct shapes in France’s night sky, including this model of planet Earth. Each performance lasted about eight to 10 minutes, with shows beginning every 30 minutes to allow the drones’ batteries to recharge. This image captures two moments in time, a centuries old tradition meeting cutting-edge technology to give spectators a dazzling wintry show they would never forget.
Want to learn more?
You can learn more about drone technology and LEDs.
Archaeologists in Jerusalem have unearthed a rare 1,300-year-old lead medallion decorated on both sides with the image of a seven-branched menorah — the ceremonial candlestick unique to the Second Temple.
Researchers think the medallion was worn on a necklace by a Jewish person in the late sixth or early seventh century, when the city and surrounding region were under the rule of the Christian Byzantine Empire — only decades before the city fell, first to the Sasanian Persians in 614 and then to mostly Arab Islamic invaders in about 638.
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“One day while I was digging inside an ancient structure, I suddenly saw something different, gray, among the stones,” Ayayu Belete, an archaeological worker for the nonprofit City of David Foundation, said in the statement. “I picked up the object and saw that it was a pendant with a menorah on it.”
The discovery is a surprise to archaeologists because Jews were restricted from entering the city at that time. Centuries earlier, the Jewish people’s failed Bar Kochba (also spelled Kokhba) Revolt from 132 to 136 (the third major rebellion against Roman rule in Judaea) led the Roman emperor Hadrian to declare that Jerusalem would be rebuilt as “Aelia Capitolina” and that the surrounding province of Judaea would be called Syria-Palaestina. This ancient name was inspired by the long-dead Philistines, biblical enemies of the Israelites who had lived along the nearby Mediterranean coast.
The medallion was discovered at an archaeological site in Jerusalem’s ancient “City of David” archaeological site, south of the Temple Mount. (Image credit: Emil Aladjem, Israel Antiquities Authority)
Rare medallion
The newfound medallion was discovered inside a Late Byzantine-era building, which had been buried beneath a thick layer of rubble from construction work directed by the city’s Umayyad rulers a few decades after the Islamic conquest, the statement said.
The medallion is disc-shaped, with a loop at the top. Both sides depict a seven-branched menorah, a type of menorah that was used only in Jerusalem’s Second Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70. (Nine-branched menorahs are used nowadays at Hanukkah.) The top of each candlestick branch on the medallion has a horizontal crossbar with flames rising above it. One side of the medallion is well preserved, but the other side is covered by a natural patina from weathering; analysis shows it was made almost entirely of lead.
Only one other millennia-old lead medallion bearing the menorah symbol has ever been found before, the statement said. “A pendant made of pure lead, decorated with a menorah, is an exceptionally rare find,” IAA archaeologists Yuval Baruch, Filip Vukosavović, Esther Rakow-Mellet and Shulamit Terem wrote in the statement. “The double appearance of the menorah on each side of the disc indicates the deep significance of this symbol.”
Archaeologists think the lead medallion was worn as an amulet for magical protection, rather than as jewelry. (Image credit: Eliyahu Yanai, City of David Foundation)
Hadrian’s city
Jews were supposedly forbidden from entering the city in Byzantine times and had been since the Roman victory in the Bar Kochba revolt. But according to Günter Stemberger, an emeritus professor Jewish Studies at the University of Vienna, the prohibition was sometimes relaxed, and many Jews lived in nearby cities and territories.
However, it’s unclear what significance these medallions held for their owners. “Were they private objects of Jews who came to the city for various reasons — perhaps merchants, or those on administrative missions, or individuals who came to the city as secret pilgrims, and under unofficial circumstances?” the archaeological team wrote in the statement.
This is only the second lead medallion depicting a menorah ever found. (Image credit: Emil Aladjem, Israel Antiquities Authority)
The newfound medallion reveals that “during periods when imperial edicts were issued prohibiting Jews from residing in the city, they did not stop coming there,” said Baruch, the IAA’s Jerusalem District archaeologist.
The fact that the medallion was made from lead indicated it was worn as an amulet — and probably hidden — rather than as jewelry, according to Baruch. “Lead was considered a common and particularly popular material for making amulets at that time,” he said.
Refresh
Thursday, Dec. 18: Orion’s Sword (after dark)
See Orion’s Sword on Dec. 18. (Image credit: Starry Night)
Anytime after dark is great for looking more closely at one of the jewels of the winter night sky. Look below Orion’s Belt — which will be visible in the southeast after sunset — for a short vertical line of faint stars known to astronomers as Orion’s Sword.
A soft haze of light may be visible surrounding the middle star. This is the Orion Nebula (M42), the closest large star-forming region to the solar system, which orbits within the Milky Way at just 1,500 light-years from Earth. — Jamie Carter
For the first time, scientists have created detailed, 2D maps of the sun’s outermost atmosphere. This feat was accomplished using data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which has been dipping in and out of the sun’s atmosphere, called the corona, since 2021.
Parker is the first craft in history to fly so close to a star. This ability is largely thanks to its extraordinary heat shield, which can withstand temperatures in excess of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,370 degrees Celsius). The sun’s corona is much hotter — around 1 million to 3 million F (555,000 C) — but it is extremely diffuse, meaning that objects moving swiftly through it don’t encounter very many superheated particles. This allows Parker to skim through the outer boundary of the corona for brief periods.
This boundary — beyond which solar particles get swept into the 1 million-mph (1.6 million km/h) stream of solar wind that constantly flows from our star — is known as the Alfvén surface. This invisible border is the point of no return for solar particles, and its precise shape and nature have remained largely mysterious — until now.
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The new maps, made using data from Parker’s Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons instrument, define the shape of the Alfvén surface in greater detail than ever before. Using data from the past seven years, Parker’s maps prove that the Alfvén surface routinely changes its shape and extent depending on how active the sun is. (The sun follows a roughly 11-year activity cycle, with solar maximum — its peak period — bringing powerful solar flares and space weather more frequently.)
The new maps reveal that the Alfvén surface grows “spikier” and more turbulent as the sun becomes more active, as it has been for the past several years. This is important for understanding exactly where the outer edge of the sun’s atmosphere is and how solar winds behave in relation to it. But it could also help scientists protect the technologies we use on Earth.
Systems like GPS, communication radios and power grids are susceptible to disruption from powerful solar flares. The ability to predict when such a flare might occur, or even how strong it will be, could help the people who operate these systems brace for a potential disruption.
Parker completed its 25th flyby of the sun in September, matching its record close distance of 3.8 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) from the sun’s surface, according to NASA. The probe also matched its record speed of 427,000 mph (687,000 km/h), making it the fastest human-made object in history. The speed and distance records were first set in December 2024 and have been tied on three subsequent flybys (in March, June and September 2025).
Parker’s primary mission has now ended, but the probe remains in good condition and will continue collecting data at least through mid-2029.
Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock is a space scientist and science educator who has worked on a number of instruments that are revolutionising our view of the cosmos, including the James Webb Space Telescope. This year she will be giving the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, Britain’s most prestigious public science lectures, in which she will be exploring some of the big questions space science still has to answer.
Nicola Davis sat down with Dame Maggie to discuss the lectures, why she is convinced there is life beyond our planet, and her dream of journeying to a distant exoplanet. Madeleine Finlay hears from them both in this Christmas special edition of Science Weekly.
SCIENCE
James Webb Space Telescope confirms 1st ‘runaway’ supermassive black hole rocketing through ‘Cosmic Owl’ galaxies at 2.2 million mph: ‘It boggles the mind!’
Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second).
That not only makes this the first confirmed runaway supermassive black hole, but this object is also one of the fastest-moving bodies ever detected, rocketing through its home, a pair of galaxies named the “Cosmic Owl,” at 3,000 times the speed of sound at sea level here on Earth. If that isn’t astounding enough, the black hole is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized “bow-shock” of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it, within which gas is accumulating and triggering star formation.
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Supermassive black holes, which can reach masses billions of times that of the sun, are usually found at the hearts of their home galaxies, which they dominate with their immense gravity. The incredible speed of this supermassive black hole means it is around 230,000 light-years from its point of origin.
“This is the only black hole that has been found far away from its former home,” van Dokkum said. “That made it the best candidate [for a] runaway supermassive black hole, but what was missing was confirmation. All we really had was a streak that was difficult to explain in any other way. With the JWST, we have now confirmed that there is indeed a black hole at the tip of the streak, and that it is speeding away from its former host.”
How to spot a runaway
This now-confirmed runaway supermassive black hole was first identified by van Dokkum and colleagues back in 2023 using the Hubble Space Telescope, which spotted what appeared to be the wake of a massive body passing through space. Of course, like all black holes, this runaway is bounded by a one-way light-trapping surface called an event horizon, making it difficult to spot.
“The black hole is, well, black – and is very difficult to detect when it is moving through empty space. The reason why we spotted the object is because of the impact that the passage of the black hole has on its surroundings: we now know that it drives a shock wave in the gas that is moving through, and it is this shock wave, and the wake of the shock wave behind the black hole, that we see,” van Dokkum said. “With the JWST, we discovered the huge displacement of the gas at the tip of the wake, where the black hole is pushing against it. The shock signatures are crystal clear, and there is just no doubt about what is happening here.” The gas is pushed sideways away from the supermassive black hole at a velocity of hundreds of thousands of miles per hour (hundreds of km per second), a dynamical signature that the team saw with JWST.
A Hubble image of a now confirmed runaway supermassive black hole with the wake investigated by the JWST (Image credit: van Dokkum et al (2025)/ arXiv)
“The velocity of the displaced gas is directly related to the velocity of the black hole, and this is how we determined the black hole’s velocity from the JWST data,” van Dokkum said. “It is moving at approximately 1000 km per second, faster than just about any other object in the universe. It is this high speed that enabled the black hole to escape the gravitational force of its former home.”
How does a supermassive black hole ‘go rogue?’
van Dokkum explained that two possible mechanisms could lead to a supermassive black hole being ejected from the heart of its own galaxy. Both scenarios begin when two galaxies collide and begin to merge, each bringing to the cosmic smash its own supermassive black hole. Both mechanisms are initiated when the supermassive black holes reach the center of the newly formed galaxy.
“The first mechanism is that the two black holes merge with each other, and that the gravitational radiation [gravitational waves] released in that merger imparts a powerful kick to the newly formed black hole. That kick could impart a speed of 1,000 km/s, enough to eject the black hole,” van Dokkum said. “The second is a three-body interaction. That happens when one of the two galaxies had a pair of binary black holes at its center. When a third black hole enters the binary system, it becomes unstable, and one of the three black holes will get kicked out of the system.”
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The team believes that it is the first scenario that accounts for the runaway supermassive black hole in this instance. That would lead to a galaxy lacking a supermassive black hole at its center, which van Dokkum said is unlikely to impact said galaxy very much. However, this runaway supermassive black hole could have a huge impact on any other galaxy it encounters as it rockets through space.
“An encounter with another galaxy would be quite spectacular, mostly because of the huge, galaxy-sized shock wave that precedes the black hole,” van Dokkum continued. “When this shock wave encounters the dense gas of another galaxy, it would compress and shock that gas and likely form a lot of new stars. It would be quite the show!”
Fortunately, the two-ring galaxies that comprise the Cosmic Owl are located around 9 billion light-years away, meaning even if this runaway cosmic titan were headed our way, we don’t ever need to worry about it reaching us.
Mergers between galaxies are common, occurring multiple times over the lifetime of a single galaxy. That means that ejected supermassive black holes may also be quite common, though population numbers vary based on how these collisions are modelled.
“Mergers happen often in the life of a galaxy; each galaxy with the size and mass of the Milky Way has experienced several during its lifetime. So black hole binaries should form pretty regularly. What we don’t know is how quickly these binaries merge, if at all, and how often the resulting kick removes a black hole,” van Dokkum said. “My view is empirical: now that we know how to look for them, we can find other examples – and then we can answer the question directly from data, by counting the number of escapes. The big thing is that black hole escapes lived purely in the realm of theory until now.”Even though runaway supermassive black holes had been predicted by theory long before this discovery confirmed their existence, that doesn’t mean these findings didn’t deliver some unexpected twists.
“Everything about this research surprised me! I never expected to see such a thing, and confirming it with JWST was just incredible,” van Dokkum said. “What we also had not quite appreciated is how much impact these escaping black holes have on the gas that they are moving through. In the wake, many new stars have formed from the shocked gas, about 100 million times the mass of the sun. This mode of star formation was unknown before, and it leads to a trail of stars far away from the galaxy, seemingly formed in empty space.”
The Yale University researcher explained that the obvious next step for the team will be to search for more examples of runway black holes.
“You need space-based imaging to see them: the wake stood out to us because it is such a thin streak, and in ground-based images, it would be blurred beyond recognition,” van Dokkum explained. “Fortunately, wide-field Hubble-quality imaging is just around the corner, thanks to the Roman Space Telescope, and, slightly blurrier, Euclid. Using machine learning algorithms to find thin streaks in the Roman data will be a cool project!”
The team’s research has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is currently available as a pre-peer-reviewed paper on arXiv.
SCIENCE
US Senate confirms billionaire Musk ally Jared Isaacman as Nasa chief | Trump administration
The US Senate on Wednesday confirmed billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman to become Donald Trump’s Nasa administrator. The confirmation makes an advocate of Mars missions and an ally of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk the space agency’s 15th leader.
The vote on Isaacman, who Trump nominated, removed and then renamed for the post of Nasa administrator this year, passed 67-30, two weeks after he told senators in his second hearing that Nasa must pick up the pace in beating China back to the moon this decade.
Acting Nasa chief Sean Duffy, who also leads the US transportation department, congratulated Isaacman on Twitter/X, wishing Isaacman “success as he begins his tenure and leads NASA as we go back to the Moon in 2028 and beat China”. Duffy had been lobbying to move the space agency under the permanent purview of his own bureau, a fight he lost with Isaacman’s confirmation. Duffy’s consolidation efforts sparked conflict with Musk around the same time that the transportation secretary had said that SpaceX had fallen behind on its contracts with Nasa and looked to the private company’s competitors, in particular Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, for alternatives.
Isaacman’s nomination for the role was previously pulled back in May during a period when Musk and Trump were in a public feud. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Isaacman’s donations to Democratic candidates were the reasons behind the move. Isaacman re-emerged as a candidate in recent months, however, and according to the Wall Street Journal he tapped allies within the administration to promote his cause.
Isaacman’s fortune came from founding a payment processing startup called Shift4, which now handles billions of transactions each year. He has flown on two SpaceX missions, both of which he funded himself and contained all-civilian crews. The most recent was in 2024, a mission that involved the first spacewalk conducted by a private company.
SCIENCE
10 years into the Disney ‘Star Wars’ era: Grading the ups and downs of a galaxy far, far away
December 18, 2015 (December 17 in the UK) will be a day long remembered. It was the day “The Force Awakens” first arrived in theaters, when “Star Wars” icons Han Solo, Leia Organa, and (eventually) Luke Skywalker made their long-awaited return to the big screen, and continued their fight against the dark side.
The Skywalker Saga’s seventh instalment was a critical and commercial success, and made Disney’s $4 billion purchase of Lucasfilm in 2012 look like a very smart piece of business.
Since then, there have been four more movies and the franchise’s first-ever adventures in live-action TV, but — while it’s undoubtedly been a lucrative endeavor — this new “Star Wars” era hasn’t always been plain sailing.
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The Skywalker Saga
(Image credit: Disney)
The “Star Wars” sequel trilogy was the holy grail of Disney’s Lucasfilm purchase. Fans — and numerous spin-off novels — had been pondering what happened after “Return of the Jedi” for decades, and now they’d get to see it on the big screen. With Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher returning as the holy trinity of Han, Luke, and Leia.
Hiring a director who’d recently had success resurrecting the other major “Star” franchise proved a smart move. Lucas’s weird, out-there story treatments (ultimately jettisoned by Disney) would have made for intriguing movies, but JJ Abrams’ crowd-pleasing approach (co-scripted with “The Empire Strikes Back” writer Lawrence Kasdan) was what the franchise needed. Yes, “The Force Awakens“‘ plot was essentially a remix of “A New Hope” but it also told those gen-X fans who’d moaned about the prequels that Disney knew how to make their kind of “Star Wars”. It remains the only film in the franchise to top $2 billion at the global box office.
While “The Force Awakens” played it safe, follow-up “The Last Jedi” (2017) took some big swings. The resulting film became the most divisive in the entire saga.
(Image credit: Disney / Lucasfilm)
For some — this writer included — writer/director Rian Johnson’s choices were wonderfully bold and unexpected: Luke’s disillusionment with the Jedi, Rey’s “nobody” parentage, and Snoke’s shock death all delivered on the trailer’s promise that “this is not going to go the way you think”. Other sectors of the fanbase, however, saw these as negatives, along with the very slow starship chase, the detour to a gambling planet, and accusations of excessive wokeness. (The deeply unpleasant online abuse directed at members of the cast and crew, particularly Kelly Marie Tran, highlighted the dark side of fandom.)
Then came “The Rise of Skywalker” (2019)…
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Mistakes were undoubtedly made in both “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi” — most notably, passing up the opportunity to reunite Han, Luke and Leia on screen — but “The Rise of Skywalker” was a bona fide catalogue of errors.
With Leia reportedly set to take a leading role in “Episode IX”, the sad passing of Carrie Fisher in December 2016 threw the filmmakers the most tragic of curveballs. But when original writer/director Colin Trevorrow (“Jurassic World”) departed the project less than two years ahead of its planned release— “we have come to the conclusion that our visions for the project differ,” said a Lucasfilm statement — returning director Abrams found himself in a race against time.
(Image credit: Lucasart)
He wasn’t helped by the Skywalker Saga’s ad hoc approach to plotting, strangely reminiscent of Consequences, the old parlour game where players have to continue each other’s unseen stories. It turned out there’d been little overarching grand plan for the new trilogy, as each creative team riffed on their predecessor’s ideas.
While this narrative flexibility had arguably worked in Johnson’s favor, Abrams and co-writer Chris Terrio made some really odd choices. They didn’t shy away from those aforementioned big swings, but resurrecting the long- (and very) dead Emperor Palpatine — while revealing he’d been pulling the First Order’s strings all along — made the “Star Wars” galaxy feel very, very small, undermining everything that had made “The Last Jedi” memorable.
The retcons — such as Rey being anything but nobody (hey everyone, she’s Palpatine’s granddaughter!) — were utterly nonsensical, as were the cheap, easily undone shock moments like Chewbacca’s “death”. Questions posed in “The Force Awakens” about the origins of the Knights of Ren and how Maz Kanata obtained Luke’s lightsaber remained frustratingly unanswered. And then there was Carrie Fisher’s posthumous appearance as Princess Leia, an unsatisfying blend of unused footage and CG recreation. In hindsight, it would have been better to have this beloved character die off-screen.
“The Rise of Skywalker” remains a very expensive ode to that old proverb that “those who fail to plan, plan to fail”. It’s still, by some distance, the worst film in the franchise, and ended (for now) the Skywalker Saga on a downer. It was also the fifth “Star Wars” movie released in the space of four years — it’s telling there hasn’t been another in the six years since.
Swipe to scroll horizontallyThe Skywalker Saga Report Card
Star Wars Project
Grade
The Force Awakens
A-
The Last Jedi
A
The Rise of Skywalker
D-
Standalone movies
(Image credit: Disney/Lucasfilm)
“Rogue One” (2016) shouldn’t have worked. This was a standalone movie inspired by a couple of lines from “A New Hope”‘s opening crawl (about the Rebels stealing some famous Death Star plans), featured an ensemble of unknown characters, and was the result of a famously troubled production, where “Michael Clayton” writer/director Tony Gilroy came on board to oversee extensive reshoots. The full extent of his involvement is still shrouded in secrecy.
And yet the film turned out to be one of the best in the entire franchise. It was a dark, gritty war movie, where themes about sacrifice (everybody dies!) sat side-by-side with the unashamed nostalgia of OG X-Wings and TIE Fighters dogfighting.
The second “Star Wars Story”, “Solo”, was less successful. Going back to the origins of everyone’s favorite scoundrel, Han Solo, may have felt like a no-brainer — especially with Kasdan on board as co-writer — but the film never felt like an essential addition to the rapidly expanding canon.
(Image credit: Lucasart)
As with “Rogue One” there was trouble behind the scenes, as original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (“The Lego Movie”) left the production — “different creative visions” were blamed for the departure once again. Ron Howard, owner of two of the safest hands in Hollywood, was hired to shepherd the production over the line.
But, whether or not you feel Alden Ehrenreich was up to filling Harrison Ford’s boots, the film’s biggest problem was its concept. “Solo” was less a story than a succession of answers to questions you never needed to ask, from recreating the Kessel Run to confirming the origins of the Solo name — he’s travelling alone, geddit? Little did we know that this “fill in the canonical blanks” approach to storytelling would later become integral to the “Star Wars” galaxy….
Swipe to scroll horizontallyStandalone Star Wars Movies Report Card
Star Wars Project
Grade
Rogue One
A
Solo
C
Television
(Image credit: Disney)
The launch of Disney+ in November 2019 gave “Star Wars” the chance to take its first step into a larger world. Sure, there had been plenty of animated series already (including the brilliant “The Clone Wars”), but nothing live-action, despite Lucas’s best efforts on the abandoned “Star Wars: Underworld“.
Jon Favreau’s “The Mandalorian” (2019) was the right show at the right time, a welcome nod to the franchise’s space-western roots in which a bounty hunting loner became surrogate dad to the cutest kid in the galaxy. It looked as good as a movie, but also made the most of its episodic structure. For the first time in its history, the most exciting place in the “Star Wars” galaxy could be found on TV.
Subsequent Disney+ shows have been more inconsistent. The galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter had come close to headlining his own movie in the 2010s, but ultimately became the lead in “The Mandalorian” spin-off, “The Book of Boba Fett” (2021). Fett’s efforts to take control of the late Jabba the Hutt’s crime empire lacked the crucial Grogu factor, however, and — somewhat ironically — the seven-part series’ two best episodes were “The Mandalorian” outings in all but name.
(Image credit: Lucasfilm / Disney)
This post-“Return of the Jedi” period in the “Star Wars” timeline has proved particularly fertile ground for the franchise, with “Ahsoka” (2023) (which has been renewed for a second season) and “Skeleton Crew” (2024) (which has not).
Co-created by “Spider-Man: Homecoming” director Jon Watts, “Skeleton Crew” was a fun, refreshing effort to recreate “The Goonies” in outer space. “Ahsoka”, meanwhile”, gave former Lucasfilm animation overlord Dave Filoni (now Lucasfilm’s chief creative officer) the chance to continue the stories of characters and storylines established in “The Clone Wars” and “Star Wars Rebels”. It’s as lore-heavy as anything in “Star Wars” — arguably too much so for casual viewers — and adheres closely to the “plug those gaps” formula established by “Solo”.
Along with the functionally titled “Obi-Wan Kenobi” miniseries (2022), “Ahsoka” marked an important shift in the franchise’s strategy. While the first batch of Disney-era movies went all-out to push the nostalgia buttons of older fans who’d grown up with Han, Luke, and Leia, Lucasfilm started to acknowledge that the kids who’d grown up on the prequels were now adults buying Disney+ subscriptions of their own. Anakin Skywalker (played by the returning Hayden Christensen) was their hero, while the Ewan McGregor incarnation of Obi-Wan was the Jedi Master they’d always known.
(Image credit: Walt Disney Pictures & Lucasfilm)
“The Acolyte” (2024) (the brainchild of “Russian Doll” creator Leslye Headland) became “Star Wars”‘ first screen outing set outside the Skywalker era. Unfortunately, the Jedi/Sith action of the High Republic era — roughly a century before the events of “The Phantom Menace” — didn’t feel significantly different from what we’d seen before, and the show was axed after a single season.
As on the big screen, it’s Lucasfilm’s biggest TV swings that have been the most successful. From various Lego spin-offs to “The Bad Batch” (2021), there’s been no shortage of “Star Wars” animation over the last decade, but “Star Wars: Visions” (2021) has been the most radical. While it’s undeniably hit and miss, the anthology series has allowed animators around the world to put new and varied spins on a universe that’s nearly half a century old.
(Image credit: Disney Plus)
And, of course, there’s “Andor” (2022), the “Rogue One” prequel that redefined what “Star Wars” can be. Without ever forgetting that it’s set in a galaxy far, far away, Tony Gilroy’s complex political thriller felt chillingly relevant, as a small band of Rebels risked everything to mobilize against crushing Imperial brutality. Forget Darth Vader and the Emperor, the Empire has never been scarier than it was here.
“Andor”‘s two seasons are the standout of the Disney era, a reminder of “Star Wars”‘ impressive versatility. Of course, not everything has to be so dark and gritty, but — if the powers-that-be have been paying attention — they’ll realise that any stories they want to tell could and should be on the (Sabacc) table. Even a “Lower Decks”-style comedy.
Swipe to scroll horizontallyStar Wars TV Shows Report Card
Star Wars Project
Grade
The Mandalorian
A
The Book of Boba Fett
C
Obi-Wan Kenobi
B
Ahsoka
C+
Skeleton Crew
B-
The Acolyte
C+
The Bad Batch
B-
Star Wars: Visions
B+
Andor
A+
The future
(Image credit: Disney)
In 2018, following the disappointing box-office performance of “Solo”, Disney CEO Bob Iger issued a mea culpa to the Hollywood Reporter. Referring to the breakneck pace of Disney’s early “Star Wars” release schedule, he admitted, “I think the mistake that I made — I take the blame — was a little too much, too fast.”
And over the last decade, it’s been hard to escape the feeling that — to paraphrase Indiana Jones, Lucasfilm’s other timeless movie icon— they’re making this up as they go. “Star Wars” has certainly suffered in comparison to Disney stablemate Marvel, whose MCU — despite some recent stumbles — remains the gold standard for all shared universes.
Projects come and go at every major studio — and more eyes are on “Star Wars” than most — but the sheer number of movies and TV shows that have fallen by the wayside is mind-boggling.
(Image credit: Disney/Lucasfilm)
Josh Trank’s Boba Fett project, Patty Jenkins’ “Rogue Squadron”, a Lando Calrissian film, and potential big-screen projects from “Thor” director Taika Waititi, Marvel boss Kevin Feige, and “The Last Jedi”‘s Johnson have all been discussed, but — for various reasons — never made it out of the development pipeline. “Rangers of the New Republic”, another proposed “Mandalorian” spin-off, was also spiked. Stories teased by “Solo” (Maul’s new career as a crime lord) and “The Acolyte” (the arrival of Palpatine’s master, Darth Plagueis) were frozen in carbonite, plot threads left hanging by shifting plans and cancellations.
But now, a decade on from “The Force Awakens, Disney may finally be finding some balance in the Force. Dave Filoni (a man steeped in “Star Wars” lore after serving as Lucas’s Padawan on “The Clone Wars”) feels like a wise appointment as chief creative officer, and hopefully, he’ll be able to shape Lucasfilm’s output as Feige has Marvel’s. A much-needed slowdown in output should also give everyone — fans included — a chance to regroup.
(Image credit: Lucasfilm)
The only major TV releases on the immediate horizon are “Ahsoka”‘s second season (date TBC) and the animated “Maul: Shadow Lord” (2026). And, six years after “Star Wars” last graced movie theaters, the big screen is finally back on the agenda.
Upcoming Star Wars movie announcements about Rey’s return in a post-“Rise of Skywalker” “New Jedi Order” film, and a Jedi origins tale from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” director James Mangold, both got the internet buzzing. But it’s the continuation of a TV show that’ll be first out of the spaceport, as “The Mandalorian and Grogu” get ready to land in multiplexes in May 2026. At some point, we’re also expecting a big-screen finale to the interweaving stories told in “The Mandalorian”, “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Ahsoka”.
And then there’s “Starfighter” (2027), “Star Wars”‘s first-ever attempt to sell a movie on established A-list talent, as “Deadpool & Wolverine”‘s Shawn Levy directs Ryan Gosling. The Force could be very strong with this one…
You can find a galaxy of “Star Wars” movies and TV shows on Disney+.
SCIENCE
Pumas in Patagonia started feasting on penguins — but now they’re behaving strangely, a new study finds
Pumas in Patagonia are preying on penguins — and it’s changing how the big cats interact with each other.
The pumas in question reestablished themselves in an Argentinian national park that housed a penguin breeding colony — and the cats promptly began eating the birds. Now, it turns out the normally solitary cats that eat the penguins are tolerating each other more often than expected, new research published Wednesday (Dec. 17) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B reports.
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“Restoring wildlife in today’s changed landscapes doesn’t simply rewind ecosystems to the past,” said study co-author Mitchell Serota, an ecologist at Duke Farms in New Jersey. “It can create entirely new interactions that reshape animal behavior and populations in unexpected ways.”
Sheep ranchers in Patagonia forced pumas out of the region in the 20th century. After Monte Leon National Park was established in 2004, pumas have started making their way back. But in the pumas’ absence, other species had adapted to the reduced hunting pressure. For example, a group of Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus), usually confined to offshore islands, established a mainland breeding colony consisting of some 40,000 breeding pairs.
Shortly after the park was established, researchers started noticing penguin remains in puma scat. The pumas were taking advantage of the changed ecosystem.
“We thought it was just a couple individuals that were doing this,” said Serota, who conducted the research while he was a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley. “But when we got there … we noticed a ton of puma detections near the penguin colony.”
In the new study, researchers used cameras to estimate how many pumas lived near the penguin breeding colony, a 1.2 mile (2 kilometers) stretch of beach inside the national park. They also tracked 14 individual pumas with GPS collars and investigated penguin kill sites across several field seasons between 2019 and 2023. Nine of the pumas they tracked hunted penguins, while five did not.
Pumas are hunting penguins at Monte León National Park, Argentina. The yellow highlight shows the penguin colony. On the right are several photos of pumas going into the colony. (Image credit: Serota et al. / Proc B)
Pumas that ate penguins had bigger variation in their ranges from season to season, the study found. The penguin-eating cats stuck close to the penguin colony when the birds were in the national park during breeding season. But they ranged about twice as far when the birds migrated offshore during the summer.
Penguin-eating pumas also interacted with each other more often than pumas who relied on other prey. The researchers documented 254 encounters between any two of the pumas who both ate penguins, and just four encounters between pumas where neither ate penguins. Most meetings between pumas occurred within 0.6 miles (1 km) of the penguin colony.
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Because multiple pumas were using the colony as a food source, this disparity suggests that penguin-eating pumas tolerate other pumas better than those that rely on other prey, likely because they don’t have to compete as much for the plentiful food. In fact, the researchers found that the density of pumas within the park was more than twice the highest previously-recorded concentration within Argentina. Usually, adult pumas are solitary and establish large ranges to ensure they have enough prey to feed themselves and their kittens.
Understanding how large carnivores behave when they return to ecosystems impacted by humans “is essential for conservation planning because it allows managers to … design management strategies that are grounded in how ecosystems actually function today, not how we assume they should function based on the past,” Juan Ignacio Zanon Martinez, a population ecologist at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email to Live Science.
Knowing how the pumas’ behavior affects both the cats and the penguins could aid future conservation efforts in the park.
For example, puma predation might not have a big effect on large breeding colonies, but it could affect the growth of new, smaller colonies. It’s a “complex situation for the people who do the management of the area, because you have two native [species] interacting,” in a way that’s different from before human activities changed the ecosystem, said Javier Ciancio, a biologist at CONICET who was not involved in the new study.
In future work, Serota says the team will investigate how the relationship between pumas and penguins affects pumas’ other prey, such as the guanaco (Lama guanicoe), a relative of the llama.
Rocket Lab – ‘Don’t Be Such A Square’ Launch – YouTube
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Rocket Lab will launch a new type of satellite for the U.S. Space Force tonight, and you can watch the action live.
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Rocket Lab launches a mission called “The Nation God Navigates” from New Zealand on Nov. 5, 2025. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)
The upcoming launch, which Rocket Lab calls “Don’t Be Such a Square,” will kick off the Space Test Program (STP)-S30 mission for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command.
STP-30 will deploy and operate the first-ever DiskSats, a new type of spacecraft developed by The Aerospace Corporation with funding help from NASA. At 40 inches wide by just 1 inch thick (102 by 2.5 centimeters), each DiskSat has the approximate dimension of a manhole cover.
An illustration of DiskSats being deployed from a small launch vehicle fairing. (Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation)
That odd shape could lead to greater performance in the final frontier for small satellites, which have traditionally employed the boxy “cubesat” form factor.
DiskSats “could offer more power and surface area for instruments, providing more opportunities for NASA to expand upon target mission objectives for small spacecraft,” agency officials wrote in a description of the new tech.
“With its ability to fly continuously with one face pointing at the Earth, the DiskSat can also have a very low drag, making them capable of very-low altitude missions (less than 300 kilometers or 185 miles) such as those necessary for some Earth-observation missions,” NASA added.
The DiskSats won’t be flying so low on their inaugural mission, however. If all goes to plan on “Don’t Be Such a Square,” the Electron will deploy the quartet at an altitude of 342 miles (550 km) about 55.5 minutes after launch, according to Rocket Lab’s mission description.
Rocket Lab technicians prep for the “Don’t Be Such a Square” mission, which will launch four “DiskSats” for the U.S. Space Force. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab initially planned to launch “Don’t Be Such a Square” in April 2026 but expedited it at the Space Force’s request, the company said in an emailed statement.
The mission will be Rocket Lab’s 20th of 2025, extending the company’s single-year launch record. The previous high was 16, set in 2024. Most of these have been orbital flights of the 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to Earth orbit. But three were suborbital missions conducted by HASTE, a modified version of Electron that lets customers test hypersonic technologies in the space environment.