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Researchers from the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have identified a host of new plastic-degrading enzymes associated with an uptick in plastic pollution.

The researchers analyzed DNA samples from hundreds of locations globally and found a correlation between local levels of plastic pollution and the number of microbial enzymes capable of breaking down said plastic. Computer analysis identified plastic-degrading potential in the DNA, and the results were cross-referenced with official numbers for plastic waste pollution at the locations where the DNA was sampled.

A new technique to help astronomers find and identify 'bright' black holes has been developed by researchers from the University of Western Australia (UWA) node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a compact region of space at a galaxy's center, with higher than average luminosity. The light emissions come from portions of the electromagnetic spectrum that show stars do not produce them and instead indicate an active black hole.

New reports indicate that a powerful storm is moving through several states across the US, bringing dangerous winds and the potential for blizzard conditions.

According to a report from AccuWeather, a "potent" storm is currently ripping through central states in the US with high wind speeds. The storm is expected to swing northeast, where it will bring some snow to the northern Plains throughout the middle of the week. AccuWeather warns that the storm will bring high wind speed to affected areas, which can raise the chances of a fast-moving wildfire in the area.

Researchers from Stanford University have published a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, showing how forecasts may become unreliable sooner due to increasingly warmer weather.

An increase of only a few degrees Celsius is enough to reduce the reliability of temperature, wind, and rainfall forecasts by a day. Each degree reduces the accuracy of forecasts by several hours, with a day of accuracy being lost for precipitation with every three-degree rise and a day lost for wind and temperature forecasts for a five-degree rise.

As Bitcoin is struggling to maintain the $48,000 price range, the famous cryptocurrency has reached a major milestone in its history.

A report from CoinDesk states that Bitcoin's circulating supply has crossed the 18.89 million Bitcoin mark, which means that 90% of the total 21 million supply of Bitcoin has successfully been mined. It took 12.9 years to mine 90% of the total supply of BTC, with the first Bitcoins being mined on January 9, 2009.

According to the publication, it will take a staggering 112 years to mine the remaining 10%, with the estimated time frame for completion is sometime in February 2140. Bitcoin's value has been in a downwards trend ever since it reached its new all-time high of $69,000 back in November, and with the digital asset already down 30%, some are wondering if the range the coin is currently sitting at is the bottom. To find out more, check out the below link.

NASA has taken to its blog to announce that it has successfully received a sample that originally came from outer space.

The space agency has posted to its social channels that it has received a Hayabusa2 sample canister that contains fragments of the asteroid Ryugu, which the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) retrieved in June 2018 when the Japanese spacecraft landed on the asteroid. The Hayabusa2 aircraft departed from the Ryugu asteroid in November 2019, and the samples it was carrying returned back to Earth on December 5, 2020.

Now, JAXA is sharing the samples with NASA by transferring them to researchers at ARES, the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division located at the Johnson Space Center. NASA writes that its researchers have now received 23 millimeter-sized grains and four containers of even finer material from the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, which equates to about 10% of the total samples collected. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

Spatial made a major announcement on Tuesday. The company has shifted its focus and made a significant pivot into the world of NFTs. The company was built to create a virtual collaboration space for enterprises that brought AR and VR users together. It has now abandoned that whole idea and is doubling down on NFTs to become one of the leaders in this immerging new space.

"User feedback has always been at the heart of our product strategy, but over the last year since we launched our freemium version across any platform, we've witnessed a fascinating shift occurring," Jacob Loewenstein, head of business at Spatial. "We've gone from an AR/VR platform focused on enterprise productivity to a web/VR platform linking digital creators and the broader NFT economy. Why? Because the metaverse will be far beyond a meeting space. We're witnessing this trend in the creator economy from the inside and can see the huge opportunity as power moves into the hands of these creators."

NFTs are not new to Spatial. The company started hosting art galleries and exposes for up-and-coming NFT artists earlier this year. Now, Spatial is shifting its entire focus towards digital artwork. Spatial is no longer focusing on VR and AR with this new direction. The company said that 80% of its users come from web browsers and mobile devices. Before Spatial started offering NFT art galleries, 80% of its users used headsets to access the platform.

A team of astronomers detected a mysterious signal that appears to be the birth of a baby black hole or possibly a neutron star.

A new study published in Nature Astronomy details a mysterious signal that was detected in 2018 that came from 200 million light-years away. Researchers dubbed this signal "the Cow", and now MIT researchers detail in the recently released study that the signal contains millions of high-energy X-ray pulses. These X-ray pulses were found to flash at regular intervals of every 4.4 milliseconds.

After further analysis there researchers estimated that the object emitting these signals could be no larger than 621 miles wide and has a mass 800 times less than the mass of the Sun. Futurism reports that these dimensions are too small for a large black hole, leading researchers to consider it may be a baby black hole. Additionally, the astronomers say that the celestial object could be a supernova that turned into a neutron star.

In the coming weeks, NASA will be launching its next-generation space telescope that has scientists and researchers sweating.

NASA is nearing the end of the road for its James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as the agency is only days away from its scheduled launch on December 22. The JWST cost approximately $10 billion, has been in development for more than 20 years and is the most complicated and powerful space telescope ever created. The telescope is described as a piece of origami as it folds up into the Ariane 5 rocket, and once out in space, unfolds itself over a six-month period.

While the construction of the telescope was certainly a monumental challenge for engineers, the most terrifying part is almost here. The JWST will be loaded into the Ariane 5 rocket, where it will need to survive the vibrations of the launch. After reaching its designated location a million miles away from Earth, the JWST will slowly unfold, keeping the world on edge for 29 harrowing days as thousands of parts of the telescope work in unison.

NASA has announced that its Parker Solar probe has officially arrived at the Sun and "touched" it, marking a big moment in solar science.

NASA has released a video on its NASA Goddard YouTube channel that explains the Parker Solar probe mission and what researchers were planning on achieving when it was launched in August 2018. The probe was launched with the goal of getting closer to the Sun than ever before, and now after years of traveling towards our star, the probe has officially entered the Sun's atmosphere.

The Parker probe has passed the boundary that marks the edge of the Sun's atmosphere called the Alfven critical surface. The exact location of this boundary was unknown until the Parker solar probe recently passed through it, allowing NASA to estimate based on remote images of the Sun's corona, the boundary is anywhere between 4.3 to 8.6 million miles from the surface of the Sun. NASA's solar probe is flying through the Sun's upper atmosphere and is taking samples of particles and the magnetic fields of the unknown region.

Time Magazine has named SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk "Person of the Year", and throughout Musk's interview with Time, he outlined why he picks Dogecoin over Bitcoin.

The interview with Musk has been posted to the Time Magazine YouTube channel and begins with Musk being asked who he most admires, to which he explains that he admires anyone who is in pursuit of making a positive contribution to humanity. Time explains that Musk is incredibly influential, being the leader in two separate industries while also having nearly 70 million Twitter followers, he has the power to affect the price of cryptocurrencies at the push of a button.

Two of Musk's most-talked-about cryptocurrencies are Dogecoin and Bitcoin. During the interview, Musk outlines why he backs Dogecoin over Bitcoin, saying that Bitcoin is suitable for a store of value, but when it comes to transactional currency, Bitcoin isn't a good substitute, and this is due to Bitcoin having a high cost-per-transaction. Musk goes on to say that Dogecoin is a much better substitute for transactional currency due to Dogecoin having the capabilities of being able to support more transactions per day over Bitcoin.

An astrophotographer has snapped an incredible new image of the Sun, showcasing the violent and chaotic surface of our star.

The astrophotographer that snapped the image is Andrew McCarthy that states he used a modified telescope to take more than 150,000 separate images of the star. With those 150,000 images, McCarthy combined them all together, stacking all of the data that he acquired in a process that he says took about 10 hours. Additionally, it took another 3-4 hours to take the raw image to its final form. McCarthy posted the image on Twitter, saying, "Yesterday I took a 300 megapixel photo of our star".

According to a report from ScienceAlert, McCarthy snapped the images of the Sun from his backyard in Arizona on November 29, 2021. The astrophotographer writes on his website that the image is called "Fire and Fusion", and it showcases the violent and chaotic nature of the Sun as "planet-sized streams that snake up from the surface, dwarfed by looming prominences and filaments."

A new VR headset maker is making a big splash jumping into the market. A relatively unknown VR headset company called Arpara launched a Kickstarter today, and it was fully funded within 15 minutes. There seems to be a hunger for micro-OLED VR headsets.

There's a new VR headset maker in town, and it's not messing around. Arpara launched a Kickstarter campaign to help bring two new VR headsets to market: an all-in-one device and a tethered device. The unique part about these headsets is the screens that they use. Arpara equipped its hardware with 5K micro-OLED panels, allowing for a much smaller headset design.

The Arpara All-In-One and Arpara Tethered headsets offer similar specifications. Both devices feature the same screens and lenses, offering motion controller options. The Micro-OLED displays are just 1.03-inches each, which means they take up less space and weigh less than the displays you would typically find in a VR headset.

The Bank of England has issued a statement saying that leading cryptocurrency bitcoin could become "worthless" and that anyone investing in bitcoin should be prepared to lose it all.

The warning from the Bank of England was delivered to its investors, questioning if there's any inherent worth in bitcoin. Bank of England deputy governor, Sir Jon Cunliffe, said that the Bank had to be prepared for risks associated to the viral nature, and the rapid rise of cryptocurrency prices.

Sir Jon Cunliffe told the BBC: "Their price can vary quite considerably and [bitcoins] could theoretically or practically drop to zero".

Animoca Brands, an NFT blocckchain startup that acquired a $65 million investment from Ubisoft, is making a blockchain-based video game using Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.

Yuga's Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are so popular they're getting a video game. No exact details have been revealed on the actual gameplay mechanics, however Animoca was quick to say the product will be a play-to-earn experience that's due out in Q2 2022.

The game will also feature a ton of NFTs from the BYAC NFT line in an effort to grow the "Bored Ape Yacht Club universe."

The new System Shock remake is coming to PC and consoles in 2022, complete with physical disc-based versions thanks to a newly-inked publishing deal.

Today Nightdive Studios announced they've signed a deal to have the new Prime Matter label publish its System Shock remake. Backed by the might of its parent company Koch Media (Deep Silver), Prime Matter will handle worldwide distribution of physical console versions of the game as well as promotion and marketing of digital titles.

As a result, System Shock is officially on track to release in 2022 on PC and unspecific consoles--possibly current- and next-gen hardware. The boost from Prime Matter is welcome by the developers at Nightdive:

Comic enthusiasts and Marvel fans are in uproar as Stan Lee's estate bearers use the late pop-culture legend's 4 million-strong Twitter account to promote NFTs.

The people that run Stan Lee's estate are under the crosshair right now for helping create what's seen as an exploitative use of the comic legend's image. The estate owners have created a Stan Lee NFT collection, and the first run is centered on Chakra The Invincible. This line of NFTs is called the Chakraverse collection and actually merges widely-unpopular randomization of loot boxes with the increasingly-unpopular NFT market.

Dictionary.com went so far as to say the estate was "defiling" Stan Lee's image. Some of the NFTs actually include Stan Lee's likeness.

Subscriptions typically succeed based on two things: Value and features. Sony's new PlayStation Spartacus subscription might offer both.

Sony is readying a new subscription service to rival Xbox Game Pass. The service is codenamed Spartacus, and would merge PS Plus and PS Now together complete with legacy PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, and even PS5 games. Reports say there may be three pricing tiers:

On paper that sounds incredibly ambitious. Depending on total cost, the value proposition is there. But Sony could go way beyond our expectations with an innovative new feature that allows Spartacus subscribers to create and share their save states and custom game demos with friends.

Ubisoft is planning a big Assassin's Creed Valhalla x Odyssey crossover. This could be the beginning of its ambitious plans with its never-ending Assassin's Creed Infinity game.

Having already conquered live services, Ubisoft wants to do something different. It wants to transform its franchises from separate mainline releases into singular releases that treat new "games" as content rather than sequelized titles. I call this new model games-as-a-platform, something I originally predicted with Halo Infinite. Think of it as a kind of MMO-like subscription model where you pay for full or segregated access to specific content points. Ubisoft's first games-as-a-platform title will be the new Assassin's Creed Infinity.

The new crossover event between Valhalla and Odyssey should set the stage for Infinity's content ramp up. The never-ending Assassin's Creed Infinity would be a launcher that hosts a bunch of "games" within it, and I predict that crossover events will play a big part of the content offerings included within Infinity. The convergence of multiple timelines and games is a valuable and powerful tool for engagement, combining nostalgia, creativity, and most importantly, existing video game assets that can be re-used and re-purposed.

Dr. Disrespect is making video games alongside some of the most well-known shooter developers in the industry.

Dr. Disrespect's new game development studio is called Midnight Society, and is made up of FPS veterans like ex-Halo sandbox designer Quinn DelHoyo, who worked at 343 Industries for 9 years, and Robert Bowling, a six-year Infinity Ward veteran who helped shape the modern Call of Duty franchise. Both DelHoyo and Bowling are co-founders and will serve as creative director and studio head, respectively.

Midnight Society's first project is (you guessed it) a competitive multiplayer game, likely a shooter. The studio is hiring multiple new roles including marketing, engineering, combat designers, and artists. What's interesting is the devs say they will gather feedback from fans in order to shape the game, not unlike an early access title.