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In a study published earlier this year in Physical Review Letters, researchers from RIKEN Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences Program predicted the existence of a particle combining six quarks.

While atoms are made of subatomic particles such as protons and neutrons, these particles are made from elementary particles known as quarks. A particle that comprises three quarks is known as a baryon. Therefore protons and neutrons, each made of three quarks, are baryons.

Systems containing two baryons, named dibaryons, have been speculated to exist by scientists. Deuteron, the nucleus of deuterium, is the only known dibaryon to exist in nature. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen which typically has one proton in its nucleus, referred to in isolation as protium. Deuteron instead has an additional neutron to accompany the lone hydrogen.

A new Star Trek game is coming out of hyperspace to a console near you.

At the Game Awards 2021 showcase, indie devleoper Dramatic Labs revealed a new story-driven game called Star Trek Resurgence. While it does have some action sequences, Resurgence is primarily a narrative game where players make choices and follow an interactive branching path.

Star Trek Resurgence's dev team includes 20+ former Telltale writers, developers, designers, artists, and producers, and the devs promise Resurgence will be "familiar to fans of Telltale's unique style of gameplay."

Middle-earth Shadow of War developer Monolith Productions is making a new Wonder Woman game complete with its signature Nemesis System.

WB Games had a big surprise at The Game Awards. Wonder Woman's first-ever game debut is on the horizon, it's singleplayer-only, and it's being developed by Monolith. While Diana has appeared in a number of games as a starring character, this is the first time she's gotten her very own story-driven game.

Like Monolith's other releases, the Wonder Woman title is an action-adventure open-world game that will deliver an all-original storyline divergent from comics and other media. Gamers will traverse two different worlds that blur reality and myth--the modern world of the humans and the fantasy world of the Amazons--as they fight to unite both planes against an undeclared foe.

PC used to be exempt from the new $69.99 price tag. Not any more.

Square Enix is the first publisher to charge $69.99 for base versions of its next-gen PC games, and more publishers are likely to follow. The new $69.99 MSRP was introduced for next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S games, but now publishers are pushing the price hike on PC as well.

The Japanese publisher is charging $69.99 for PC versions of two of its upcoming PS5 and Xbox Series X games: Luminous Productions' new fantasy game Forspoken is $69.99 on Steam. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is also $69.99 on the Epic Games Store (and it's also exclusive to EGS). Both of these titles are are only coming to Gen 9 consoles, skipping Gen 8 consoles, and these are baseline prices for the standard PC ports--not deluxe or premium SKUs.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is finally coming to PC, but gamers are going to pay a premium.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake and its INTERmission DLC are coming to PC as an upgraded bundle on December 16. The game will cost a premium $69.99 and is exclusive to the Epic Games Store (at least for now). It will not be available on Steam. This is the first time a mainline publisher has released a high-profile PC port with the new $69.99 PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S price tag.

While PC gamers are pushing back against the move, Square Enix asserts that FF7R Intergrade will be optimized for PC hardware and offer high-end performance targets like 4K 120FPS. The PC spec requirements are pretty lenient and you can play FF7R on an i5-3300 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a GTX 780 on minimum settings.

Gun Interactive is working their multiplayer magic on one of the most terrifying horror films ever made.

A new Texas Chain Saw Massacre game is in development from Gun Interactive and Sumo Digital, and will offer similar asymmetrical multiplayer carnage similar to Friday the 13th: The Game. It's been 38 years since the last Texas Chain Saw Massacre video game released on the Atari 2600 back in 1983, and the developers promise an "authentic gaming experience" based on Tobe Hooper's disturbing 1974 classic.

There's no word on a release date but the new Texas Chain Saw Massacre game will be exclusively released on next-gen consoles and PC, and will not be coming to PlayStation 4 or Xbox One platforms.

Sony has acquired another video games studio, and this time it's support team Valkyrie Entertainment.

Seattle-based Vakyrie Entertainment has joined the PlayStation brand, Sony Interactive Entertainment's Hermen Hulst has announced. Valkyrie was previously an indie work-for-hire team founded in 2002 that helped make a multitude of games including Valorant, Halo Infinite, and Shadow of War, as well as first-party Sony games like God of War. Valkyrie has been helping with God of War Ragnarok's development from the get-go and Sony decided to put a ring on it to make things official.

Hulst says Valkyrie will deliver "invaluable contributions" to other PlayStation brands and the team themselves say they have two projects of their own in development: "Currently, we are working on several AAA Co-Development projects and two unannounced in-house titles," Valkyrie's website reads.

PUBG, the OG BR, is going free-to-play on January 12, 2022 and will fracture the playerbase between premium and free users.

After five years on the market and billions earned from microtransactions, PUBG Battlegrounds will soon be free-to-play on all platforms. The free version comes with some caveats: F2P gamers won't be able to play ranked matches or even set up custom games matches.

PUBG Corp will sell a new Battlegrounds Plus account upgrade for $12.99 that unlocks all modes. Anyone who has purchased PUBG before January 12 will receive a free upgrade to Battlegrounds Plus alongside a special commemorative pack that includes:

Hellblade II's first-ever gameplay footage keeps things super weird and visually enticing.

Ninja Theory debuted Hellblade II Senua's Saga gameplay at The Game Awards, and as you might expect, the game looks absolutely incredible. The first game was a metaphorical and psychological foray into a fractured mind, and Hellblade II ramps things up a notch with more twisted memories. The gameplay shows Senua and her Norse raiders attacking a hulking giant that's been cut in half, who also predictably eats enemies like snacks.

The new trailer shows just how far Ninja Theory has come, complete with impressive graphics, high-res textures, immaculate lighting effects, and of course some of the best motion capture in the games industry. Interactive gameplay seamlessly flows in and out of cinematic sequences to portray an engaging cinematic experience.

The rumors were true: Quantic Dream's next game is set in the Star Wars universe.

At The Game Awards, Quantic Dream announced Star Wars Eclipse, a brand new action-adventure game set in the High Republic era (more specifically in the Outer Rim). The trailer was a CGI graphics powerhouse that flexes the power of next-gen hardware but it was all in-engine and not actual gameplay.

Star Wars Eclipse promises the unique and divergent branching storylines that Quantic Dream is known for alongside a cast of all-original characters. This is a major part of Lucasfilm's decision to use video games to expand the franchise.

New technology developed by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) allows the activity of CRISPR to be seen with the naked eye and an ultraviolet flashlight.

In a paper published in ACS Synthetic Biology, scientists describe the development and function of this technology. Their process involves redirecting CRISPR from its target sequence of DNA to a section of the genome that encodes for a non-functioning green fluorescent protein (GFP). CRISPR edits the genes in this sequence, allowing the production of functioning GFP, which leads to a green glow signaling CRISPR activity.

A recent paper published in The Planetary Science Journal indicates that at least one volcano on Venus may still be active, helping shape the planet's landscape around it.

More volcanoes are found on Venus than any other planet in our solar system, with more than 1,600 hundred major volcanoes and potentially up to around a million smaller ones. So far, it has been unclear whether any remain active currently, as the planet is difficult to analyze both from space or on the surface due to the extremely hostile environment.

However, Piero D'Incecco of D'Annunzio University in Pescara, Italy, in his study of Idunn Mons, a Venusian volcanic peak roughly 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) high and 125 miles (200 km), has shown signs of potential recent activity. The volcano is located in the Imdr Regio, a region in southern Venus rich in volcanoes.

In a new study posted in the journal Cell, researchers have identified how cells in the immune system communicate and coordinate with one another to fight cancer.

Patients struggling with cancer have undergone immunotherapy to help boost their natural immune response to cancer in their bodies. However, sustained benefits from this therapy only continued in about twenty percent of patients who received them.

Scientists have found in recent years that those most likely to survive lung cancer developed structures similar to lymph nodes around tumors. Much like lymph nodes, the structures produce immune system cells like CD4 helper T cells, CD8 killer T cells, and B cells, which can identify, attack, and produce antibodies against cancer cells and tumors, respectively.

Nanoparticles dubbed "Cornell dots" are entering their first therapeutic trial, used in the treatment of advanced, recurrent, and refractory cancers.

Developed in Ulrich Wiesner's lab at Cornell University, the C'Dots are silica-encased, fluorescent nanoparticles first unveiled in 2005. They have since been used in creating the world's smallest laser and are shown to have great potential as biological markers. Since proving itself capable of finding cancerous tumors, a new version was created equipped with antibody fragments that allowed them to kill cancer cells in tumors.

After three diagnostic human clinical trials, C'Dots have been proven safe and effective and now begin their first therapeutic trial. Elucida Oncology, Inc. is a biotechnology company co-founded by Wiesner based out of New Jersey, which has iterated on C'Dots to make C'Dot drug conjugates (CDCs), which are nanoparticles attached to dozens of drug molecules.

Published in The Astrophysical Journal, new research shows that the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy creates astrophysical jets after consuming a large mass.

The black hole appears to have a vestigial jet dating back thousands of years. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has not captured an image of the jet but has helped find evidence suggesting it is propelling a vast hydrogen cloud.

Black holes attract material into their orbit, joining the accretion disk, though the strong magnetic fields cause some material to be captured by the out-flowing jets. These jets also spew out large amounts of ionizing radiation, and periodically the black hole will become more active and refill these jets.

On December 12, Comet Leonard will be making its closest approach to Earth, and it's teed up to be the brightest and best comet of 2021.

As Leonard makes its way closer and closer to the Sun, astrophotographers around the world are pointing their cameras to the skies to capture the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Leonard will be making its pass by Earth at a stunning speed of 158,084 miles per hour, and after it has passed through our solar system, it will be ejected out for millions of years.

For sky-watchers looking to catch a glimpse at the rare comet, Earth Sky reports that it will be difficult to see with an unaided eye, and that an amateur telescope or a decent pair of binoculars would yield better results. Additionally, if you are interested in checking out Leonard, it can be found traveling below the Big Dipper constellation and the star Arcturus. The image above is from photographer James Billings in the United Kingdom, and the one below is from Will Leverett from Llano County, Texas.

A stellar system located multiple light-years away may have just given researchers a clue into what could happen with our Sun in the future.

In a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers investigate the phenomenon known as "coronal mass ejections" or CMEs. Using our Sun as an example, the study explains that CME are eruptions of extremely hot particles or plasma that are thrown out into space at speeds of millions of miles per hour. CMEs can be dangerous as well, as they can cause geomagnetic storms that can cause communication problems with satellites, or even knock out electricity grids.

The researchers were observing a Sun-like star called EK Draconis, which is the same type of star as our Sun, but at just 100 million years old. The researchers observed Ek Draconis eject a CME ten times bigger than the largest CME researchers have ever recorded.

The Matrix Resurrections is less than two weeks away, with Build-A-Bear unveiling a new Matrix-themed bear which has been called the "Matrix Bear".

The new Matrix Bear has been created for the upcoming Matrix Resurrections movie that drops on December 22, with a wicked green-and-black patterned style. On one of the feet, the Matrix Bear has "The Matrix" logo on it, while you can grab the optional "hacker costume" which I just did and will give my Matrix Bear a huge hug when it arrives in January 2022.

Build-A-Bear explains: "Now you can enter The Matrix with the first-ever Matrix Bear by your side! This ultra-cool collector's item is inspired by the iconic science fiction film trilogy. This cyberpunk bear has green and black computer coded fur with the Matrix logo on its paw pad. Matrix Bear is ready to rebel against any dystopian future ahead thanks to its hacker costume, which includes a black trench coat and matching sunglasses. You're not in a simulated reality-Matrix Bear really does make an action-packed gift for movie fans and collectors!"

Seeing Comet Leonard is quite literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience as it won't be returning to our solar system for tens of thousands of years.

As I previously report, Comet Leonard will be making its closest approach to Earth on December 12, 2021, where it will be 22 million miles away from Earth, which is about 90 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. As December 12 approaches Comet Leonard is moving closer to the Sun, which usually means that it will appear brighter to observers as the Sun's rays are melting the ice ball more intensely, which then creates more vapor. However, Leonard isn't doing that.

According to a report from Space.com, researchers noticed in late November that Leonard wasn't getting brighter, it was actually dimming. The publication reports that based on what astronomers know after studying past comets, there are multiple answers to why its dimming, the first being the comet has broken a part and is splitting up as it journeying closer to the Sun. Ultimately, researchers aren't sure why Leonard is dimming, but hypotheses are flying!

NASA newest space telescope that will be the instrument the agency uses to hunt for violent celestial explosion has launched.

The new telescope is called the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) and has officially launched on the back of SpaceX's workhorse launch vehicle the Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The new observatory is X-ray focussed, and is a collaborative effort between NASA and the Italian Space Agency.

IXPE will be used by the agencies and astrophysicists to observe the magentic fields of celestial objects such as black holes and neutron stars. The data that will be acquired by the IXPE mission will pave the way forward for a deeper understanding of the environments around dangerous objects such as black holes, which will in turn allow researchers to understand the past and future of these objects.