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Spider-Man: No Way Home has become the first movie since Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker to reach $1 billion globally, a feat that has taken a considerable amount of time -- as Rise of the Skywalker came out in 2019. Between then and now the planet has been ravaged by the pandemic, with No Way Home destroying the box office in just a week.

Disney enjoyed the near-record-breaking 12-day run to $1 billion with Spider-Man: No Way Home, which ties with Disney's own Star Wars: The Force Awakens which was the third-fastest movie in history to reach $1 billion. The only movies to beat that are also Disney movies, with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame quicker to the $1B punch.

Warner Bros. just red-pilled the planet with the huge release of The Matrix Resurrections, the fourth movie in The Matrix franchise, but it has fallen flat on its face compared to Disney and Marvel Studios with Spider-Man: No Way Home. The Matrix Resurrections in comparison has only hauled in $69 million in 5 days, compared to $1 billion from No Way Home. WB can't blame the pandemic on that failure now, can they?

ADATA's new XPG CASTER DDR5 memory has been unveiled, with speeds of up to DDR5-7000 on offer -- and with 16GB modules thrown into the mix -- we have some big kits of super-fast DDR5 memory for your new gaming PC.

That is, if you can buy DDR5 RAM at the time of purchase.

We first heard about ADATA's next-gen XPG CASTER DDR5 RAM back in May 2021, but now it's closer to being real. The company has donned the XPG CASTER DDR5 memory in steel gray heat sinks, with beautiful RGB lighting that will ensure any gaming PC looks awesome lit up.

AMD could have quite the surprise up its sleeve with the delayed Ryzen Threadripper PRO series CPUs, which will be based on the current Zen 3 architecture: dual-socket Ryzen Threadripper PRO... oh boy.

We've found out recently that AMD is expected to launch 5 x Ryzen Threadripper PRO series CPUs, starting with the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX processor that will boast 64 cores and 128 threads -- but a dual-socket system would take two of those CPUs -- giving you 128 cores and 256 threads of Zen 3-based CPU processing power.

Even the current-gen Zen 2-based Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX processor, in dual-socket form (64C/128T per CPU = 128C/256T in 2P. The dual Ryzen Threadripper 3995WX processors absolutely cream the competition, offering up to 44% more performance in PassMark -- let alone something that would truly flood those 128 cores and 256 threads of CPU power.

I don't know about you, but I'd have some issues with an alien being in my room... I've listened to enough Blink-182 that I know they exist. But in Northern Ireland, they're dealing with not just the ongoing pandemic but a huge uptick in UFO sightings.

Northern Ireland's police department has been dealing with 8 separate "weird" UFO sightings in the last year alone, a 30% increase over the 6 sightings of UFOs in 2020 and double the 4 reports of UFO sightings in 2019. A few months ago, Northern Ireland police were called to a locals house about "aliens in bedroom" but no further reporting happened locally, or internationally.

But it gets more interesting: the police department actually detailed a Northern Ireland local who claimed they were abducted by aliens. Another incident had police checking out "strange images" on CCTV footage of a house in the Newtownabbey area, while another sighting of a "dome-shaped" object with 8 bright lights spotted in the Saintfield area.

NASA has just hired 24 theologists, who will be assessing how the human race would react to the discovery of alien life on other planets... and how it would impact religion, our gods, our creation, the fabric of our existence would change. We wouldn't be alone.

The US space agency is hiring 24 theologists who will join their program at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton University in New Jersey, where NASA awarded them a $1.1 million grant back in 2014. The CTI describes itself as building "bridges of under understanding by convening theologians, scientists, scholars, and policymakers to think together - and inform public thinking - on global concerns".

The group will be tasked with some of the most impossible -- and sought after -- questions of our existence. What does it mean for humans? What do we consider the differences between aliens and humans, depending on the aliens we discover as they will all be different? What about possibly sentient life in other places, possibly even here on Earth.

MSI is set to unveil its new Crosshair 15/17 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition gaming laptops at CES 2022, but with leaks abound we have our first look courtesy of our friends at VideoCardz:

The new MSI Crosshair 15/17 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition gaming laptops will have Intel's latest 12th Gen Core CPUs and NVIDIA's latest flagship GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU inside. We should expect MSI to use Intel's flagship Core i9-12900HK processor, while the smaller 15-inch MSI Crosshair 15 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition gaming laptop will pack the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU, the bigger 17-inch Crosshair 17 packs the RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU.

We should expect to see a large 17.3-inch 1080p 360Hz refresh display on the MSI Crosshair 17, while there's a 15.6-inch 1440p 165Hz refresh display on the MSI Crosshair 15 -- both pack IPS panels. MSI will be fully unveiling the new Crosshair 15/17 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition gaming laptops at CES 2022 in January.

Marc del Pozo Puig of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has created a new 'smart ink' for use in 4D printing.

4D printing uses 3D printing to create objects capable of rearranging themselves in response to environmental stimuli. Given that they change with time, the fourth dimension in 4D printing is time. Printing with a material that changes in response to its environment has been done before to create some objects that can grow or shrink, open and close or twist.

To reverse these changes, the objects needed to be placed underwater. The new ink developed by del Pozo will make reversible change possible in normal conditions. The ink itself is made with liquid crystals instead of the previously used shape-memory polymers or hydrogels. Shape-memory polymers cannot reverse their form changes, and hydrogels can only reverse their changes underwater.

Researchers from the University of Oldenburg have successfully fabricated tiny metal objects with their new 3D printing technique.

In collaboration with researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the research team has published a new study in Nano Letters detailing the technique. The electrochemical method used makes objects out of copper as small as 25 nanometers, around 3000 times thinner than a human hair.

The method is similar to electroplating, which involves depositing positively-charged metal ions onto a negatively-charged electrode, forming a neutral, solid metal layer. The team used a solution of positively-charged copper ions in a pipette which passed them through a print nozzle with an opening of as small as 1.6 nanometers, which only allows two copper ions through simultaneously onto a negatively charged substrate.

After surpassing recent technical issues, only the weather can stop the launch now.

Scheduled for December 25th, 2021, the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launch has moved one step closer to being realized as it has made its way to the launch pad located at the Arianespace ELA-3 launch complex at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Loaded atop Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket, the telescope and rocket were moved out of the Arianespace's final assembly building at 11 a.m. EST (16:00 UTC), arriving at the launch pad by 1 p.m. EST (18:00 UTC). Teams will conduct electrical diagnostics and aliveness tests to ensure all systems are fully operational before liftoff. Now the only obstacle is the weather, which already delayed the launch from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day.

As Comet Leonard makes its way through our solar system, a Chinese satellite has spotted it through an aurora.

Yangwang 1 is a small Chinese satellite owned by Origin Space, launched in June 2021, and is searching the universe around our planet for near-Earth asteroids. It is looking for asteroids that could be mined for resources, with Origin Space hoping to capture a small asteroid in 2025.

Since beginning its orbit, the satellite has captured many images of auroras and meteors, now capturing this year's brightest comet, Comet Leonard (formally known as C/2021 A1). Comet Leonard made its closest approach to Earth on December 12th and will make its closest pass by the Sun on January 3rd, 2022, before disappearing for the next 80,000 years.

Researchers from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have made the world's thinnest Christmas tree using graphene.

The Christmas tree measures only one-third of a nanometer thick and 14 centimeters long. It is made of graphene, consisting of a one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms. The tree was cut out of a 10-meter long roll of graphene and transferred in one piece, demonstrating the capability for continuous quality control in graphene production.

First George R.R. Martin helped with Elden Ring, now famed fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson is also helping another popular game studio make a new project.

Brandon Sanderson is one of the most renowned fantasy writers in the business, having worked on The Wheel of Time and created multiple universes (or Cosmeres) with The Stormlight Archive, and Mistborn series of books. Now he's also helping write a video game.

Sanderson revealed that he's been working on a video game for the "past several years," but it won't be set in one of his franchises. The game is entirely new, similar to Elden Ring with George R.R. Martin's lore contributions. This means it's likely a brand new IP considering other established fantasy RPGs like Dragon Age (and even Elden Ring) all have their own established lore and fictional historical bases set in place.

Embracer Group's most important game-related acquisition in 2021 isn't an actual game developer.

Video game animation expert DIGIC is Embracer's most valuable acquisition of 2021. DIGIC has worked on cinematics for practically every game-related IP in the industry from Halo to Final Fantasy, and will bring its expertise to Saber Interactive's growing segment powerhouse. Under Embracer, DIGIC will continue its work-for-hire projects and also work organically with Saber Interactive and other Embracer-owned segments (including Gearbox) on both game projects as well as multimedia endeavors, including Gearbox's transmedia ambitions.

"This acquisition is unique because the skillset is so complimentary to what we do, and it's something that we're lacking, not only internally within Saber but within the Group as a whole," said Saber boss Matthew Karch.

Ubisoft calls its new Tezo-based Quartz NFT platform "experimental," assuring gamers (and investors) that the initiative will evolve and change over time.

Ubisoft's toe-dip into NFTs has seemingly further damaged an already-tenuous relationship with gamers (first there was microtransactions, then the sexual harassment scandals heated things up, now its NFTs). The publisher is trying to establish a foot-hold in an emerging market in order to fulfill its promise to "become a leader in blockchain gaming." Things aren't going so well PR-wise, and the new Quartz NFTs are seen as a money-hungry cash-grab by gamers who already feel Ubisoft over-monetizes all of its core games.

So where does Ubisoft go from here? They learn and keep trying. At least that's what Ubisoft Blockchain Technical Director Didier Genevois says.

Global investment banking firm Goldman Sachs now owns more shares in CD Projekt Group than the Polish company's longstanding president and joint CEO Adam Kicinski.

As reported in a new investor relations release, Goldman Sachs now owns 6.8% of CD Projekt Group voting rights or 4,224,065 of total rights. The financial institution is now the fifth leading shareholder in CD Projekt Group, beating out company president Adam Kicinski.

The breakdown of shares is: 2.07% from securities lending, 4.19% from equity-based swap contracts, and 0.53% voting rights assigned to shares. More voting rights gives the institution a greater foothold into corporate decision making.

Microsoft is bringing the metaverse to Xbox, but their approach will remain the same as it is now: Put gamers at the center of everything.

Microsoft has built a billion-dollar service empire out of one core concept: Gamer-centric delivery. First Microsoft used Windows to connect Xbox consoles to PC, then they created Project xCloud to deliver games to laptops, phones, and tablets. Now they're using services--what they're best at--to deliver games on multiple platforms. The ethos that drives this ever-spinning billion-dollar flywheel (Xbox gaming made $15 billion in FY21) is basically this: "What's good for gamers is good for a company."

This makes sense and is perfectly rational, if not obvious. Xbox is a gaming division, so it behooves Microsoft to put gamers first (and what are gamers anyway other than engaged consumers?). Microsoft is also applying this concept to its nebulous plans for the metaverse, a new emerging trend that should incorporate all of Xbox's core strengths into one virtualized ecosystem of products, services, content, and most importantly, connectivity.

Two explorers have embarked upon a 2,268-mile (3,650 kilometers) journey across Antarctica, and NASA is watching closely.

The duo comprises British explorers Justin Packshaw and Jamie Facer Childs, undergoing an 80-day trek across Antarctica as part of the Chasing the Light mission. The mission aims to give space agencies insight into the impact living in similarly harsh conditions on other planets like Mars might have on people's psychology and physiology.

While facing freezing temperatures and katabatic winds potentially up to 200 miles per hour (320 kilometers per hour), the pair will first travel 1,342 miles (2,159 kilometers) from Novolazarevskaya to the geographic South Pole, followed by a 926 mile (1,490 kilometers) journey past Hercules Inlet to Union Glacier Camp.

The new image comes from research published in Nature Astronomy, showing radio emissions from the supermassive black hole.

Centaurus A is a nearby radio galaxy, home to Earth's closest active supermassive black hole, roughly 12 million light-years away. The black hole feeds on in-falling gas and violently ejects material at almost light-speed, creating massive bubbles of radio emissions that grow for hundreds of millions of years and can reach up to a million light-years away.

The eruption extends through eight degrees of the sky when viewed from Earth, equivalent to sixteen full moons side by side. The image was captured using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in Western Australia. Researchers suggest the new study's findings corroborate a theory known as 'Chaotic Cold Accretion' (CCA).

Telescopes at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have observed the largest group of rogue planets ever discovered.

Rogue planets are exoplanets similar in size to planets found in our Solar System but are found with no host star to orbit. Relatively few have been discovered until recently when telescopes from the ESO and other facilities observed at least 70 new rogue planets in our galaxy, and potentially up to 170, the largest group ever discovered.

The planets are generally difficult to observe as they have no light from nearby stars illuminating them. Nuria Miret-Roig, the lead author of a recently published study in Nature Astronomy, used data spanning twenty years from various telescopes to observe the planets' glow from the heat following their formation, that would have shone for a few million years.

Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China, the Harbin Institute, and Northumbria University have developed new technology to make bionic eyes more efficient.

The team developed a new method for controlling the artificial synapses in bionic retinas, improving electrical conductivity, and reducing power consumption. They achieved this by injecting indium, a soft metal element, into a two-dimensional molybdenum disulfide material. When tested within an electronic retina, the artificial optical synapses produced the high-quality images required for a bionic eye.

Bionic eyes work within existing eye structures and connections to the brain and are designed to return visual function to the patient instead of purely cosmetic replacements. Some bionic eye implants are available currently but are only suitable for cases of blindness resulting from certain eye diseases.