Goodable

This groom was brought to tears as delivered a special message to his new stepdaughter, promising to take her of her as his daughter. "Not only today am I marrying your mom, but I accepted you as my daughter and I promise to always take care of you, wanting to call me dad for a long time," said the groom to his bride's daughter in front of a church full of guests watching the couple get married. He then gave her a ring, promising to be her dad forever.

<p>This groom was brought to tears as delivered a special message to his new stepdaughter, promising to take her of her as his daughter. "Not only today am I marrying your mom, but I accepted you as my daughter and I promise to always take care of you, wanting to call me dad for a long time," said the groom to his bride's daughter in front of a church full of guests watching the couple get married. He then gave her a ring, promising to be her dad forever.<br></p>

It's The Most Heartwarming Wedding Moment and It's Not What You Think

Gizmodo

A YouTuber has built a device that does something surprisingly futuristic: it shoots music in a narrow beam that only you can hear—if you’re standing in the right place.

In a new video, the channel Electron Impressions unveils what amounts to a sonic version of a laser. Instead of using light, this contraption uses ultrasound to transmit audio in a tightly focused direction. Aim it at someone’s head, and they hear the music. Move it a few degrees off-target, and the sound vanishes completely.

It’s not a speaker in the traditional sense. You won’t hear anything unless you’re in the beam’s path.

So how does it work?

Much like a laser emits light of a single wavelength with perfectly aligned wave crests, this “sound laser” produces a coherent, high-frequency beam of sound waves. These aren’t normal, audible soundwaves—they’re in the ultrasonic range, far above what the human ear can detect.

Ultrasound has some neat properties. You can blast it at volumes that would be painfully loud if they were audible, and because it’s so directional, it can be aimed with precision. But if the frequency is too high to hear, how does it play music?

The trick is to use the ultrasonic tone as a carrier wave. By layering the audio signal—say, a song—on top of this high-frequency tone, the system creates a combined signal. This is essentially how radio works: the carrier wave transmits the signal, and a receiver decodes it back into sound.

But here’s where this gets clever. Unlike radio, this device doesn’t need a receiver or a speaker on the other end. The air does the decoding on its own.

That’s because sound travels at slightly different speeds through low-pressure and high-pressure air. When the ultrasonic beam moves through air, it subtly modulates the pressure along its path. That modulation distorts the waveform in just the right way to shed the ultrasonic tone and leave behind the audible sound embedded within it.

As the YouTuber explains it: “The air itself demodulates the signal, creating audible sound in mid-air.” In effect, the beam creates an invisible speaker hovering in front of the person you’re pointing it at.

The experience is disorienting and fascinating. In the video, music plays only when the device is pointed directly at the camera’s microphone. Tilt it slightly, and silence returns.

It’s a curious blend of physics and engineering, with applications that range from fun to potentially unsettling. The comment section is already filled with people dreaming up ways to prank friends or create ultra-personal audio zones in public spaces.

But there’s a caution buried in the fine print: while ultrasound at volumes over 110 decibels has been approved for certain directional audio uses, there are still open questions about its long-term safety. The creator of the device notes that some researchers think the current safety guidelines may need updating.

For now, it’s a slick piece of DIY tech and a reminder that light isn’t the only wave that can be focused, directed, and turned into something magical. Sound—when wielded cleverly—can do the job too.

This DIY 'Sound Laser' Shoots Music Straight Into Your Ears—and Nowhere Else

Euro News

Deep in Antarctica, nine metres below the surface of the East Antarctic ice sheet, lies a new kind of time capsule: a growing archive of ice cores pulled from melting glaciers across the world, now preserved in one of the coldest places on Earth.

On January 14, scientists inaugurated the Ice Memory Sanctuary, a man-made ice cavern near the Franco-Italian Concordia research base. It’s a last-ditch effort to protect precious samples from the planet’s rapidly disappearing glaciers.

The first two samples to arrive in this underground archive came from two of the Alps’ most iconic glaciers: Mont Blanc in France and Grand Combin in Switzerland. Shipped in containers chilled to minus 20 degrees Celsius, the ice cores made the long journey from Europe to the Antarctic plateau, where they’ll now stay frozen for decades, if not centuries, to come.

More samples are on the way. Ice cores from glaciers in Bolivia, Tajikistan and other non-polar regions will join the collection over the next few years, as scientists rush to preserve the climatic and environmental data locked inside these shrinking ice fields.

“The ice doesn’t lie,” said Professor Carlo Barbante, Vice Chair of the Ice Memory Foundation. “All the samples are different. The ice cores from non-polar regions tell us the history of the regional climate they are from.”

That history, he explained, includes atmospheric traces of everything from volcanic eruptions to nuclear bomb tests, to combustion particles and even traces of DNA. Tiny air bubbles trapped in the ice offer clues about how Earth’s atmosphere changed over time, how weather patterns evolved, and how human activity left its mark.

But as the planet warms, glaciers in the Alps and other low-altitude regions are vanishing fast. And even those that survive won’t remain uncontaminated for long.

Barbante warns that most glaciers below 4,000 metres in the Alps are on track to disappear by the end of this century. That makes projects like Ice Memory more than just symbolic—they’re a scientific emergency response.

Celeste Saulo, Director General of the World Meteorological Organization, said the urgency couldn’t be clearer. “Since 1975, glaciers have lost the equivalent of a block of ice the size of Germany and 25 metres thick,” she told the crowd at the Concordia base. “Information lost can never be recovered.”

To create the ice cavern that now houses the samples, researchers used a giant inflatable balloon to carve out the frozen space. The team believes the structure will hold for decades. And if the ice shifts, they’re prepared to recreate it nearby within six weeks.

Still, the sanctuary’s long-term future isn’t entirely guaranteed. While it sits on protected Antarctic territory governed by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and the Madrid Protocol, the project still needs political backing from France, Italy, and the international community to safeguard its mission.

The opening ceremony had the tone of both celebration and warning. Scientists applauded the feat of engineering and cooperation but also acknowledged the bittersweet truth behind the project.

Professor Jérôme Chappellaz, founder of the Ice Memory initiative and researcher at EPFL in Switzerland, said he felt a mix of “pride, but despair as well, due to the slow answer to the current climate challenge worldwide.”

Prince Albert II of Monaco, attending as Honorary President of the Ice Memory Foundation, echoed those sentiments. “We are reminded of the fragility and permanence of our planet,” he said. “Glaciers should be recognised as a common heritage of humanity. The memory of our planet matters. Safeguarding it is our common duty and responsibility.”

That message is at the heart of the Ice Memory project. For the scientists leading the effort, preserving these ice cores in Antarctica isn’t just about scientific preservation. It’s about protecting evidence—of what Earth once was, and what we’ve done to it—before it melts away forever.

Europe’s Melting Glaciers Are Being Archived in Antarctica — Before It’s Too Late

For more than two decades, volunteers around the world lent their computers to the search for extraterrestrial life. Now, the team behind the project has narrowed 12 billion space signals down to just 100 worth a second look.

The project, called SETI@home, ran from 1999 to 2020. It was an ambitious experiment out of UC Berkeley that invited regular people to help scientists process radio signals from space by installing software on their home computers. The idea was simple: instead of using expensive supercomputers to analyze vast amounts of cosmic data, break the job into small chunks and crowdsource it.

At its peak, the project attracted millions of volunteers—far beyond the 50,000 the team initially hoped for.

“We had a million volunteers,” said David Anderson, a computer scientist and co-founder of SETI@home. “It was kind of cool, and I would like to let that community and the world know that we actually did some science.”

That science involved using data from the now-decommissioned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. As astronomers aimed Arecibo’s massive radio dish at the sky, it recorded vast amounts of data, which were then distributed to volunteers’ home computers. The software ran a Fourier transform—essentially a way of identifying frequencies—then scanned for changes that might indicate the presence of unusual, possibly non-natural signals.

Those changes, known as Doppler drift, could point to something interesting, like a signal from a moving object in space.

But even with help from millions of devices, the results were overwhelming. The project turned up about 12 million potential signals. For years, the team wasn’t sure how to deal with them all.

“Until about 2016, we didn’t really know what we were going to do with these detections that we’d accumulated,” Anderson said. “We hadn’t figured out how to do the whole second part of the analysis.”

To get there, the team turned to a supercomputer in Germany, courtesy of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. That helped eliminate most of the radio interference and noise—signals likely generated by human technology or Earth-based sources.

What remained was a more manageable 2 million signals. From there, the team whittled the list down even further by removing duplicates or signals coming from the same place in the sky. Then, they went through the top 1,000 candidates manually.

The result? A final list of 100 signals of interest.

None of them are confirmed as alien in origin, and there’s a good chance they’re not. But they are unusual enough to warrant closer inspection.

“If we don’t find ET, what we can say is that we established a new sensitivity level,” Anderson said. “If there were a signal above a certain power, we would have found it.”

SETI@home’s findings are now published in two papers in The Astronomical Journal, and while the search isn’t over, the project has delivered a huge scientific dataset—and a model for how crowdsourced computing can contribute to serious research.

Eric Korpela, an astronomer and project director, said the team learned a lot—not just about signal detection, but about the limitations of their process.

“There’s no way that you can do a full investigation of every possible signal that you detect, because doing that still requires a person and eyeballs,” Korpela said. “We have to do a better job of measuring what we’re excluding. Are we throwing out the baby with the bath water?”

The answer to that is still unfolding. But thanks to millions of ordinary people who signed on, the SETI@home project has brought scientists a little closer to understanding what, or who, might be out there.

After 21 Years and Billions of Signals, Scientists Narrow Alien Search to Just 100 Candidates

Talker News

After decades under a tarp and more than 60 years of rust and grime, a 10-ton steamroller from 1928 is roaring back to life — thanks to the determination of a 26-year-old engineer from Greater Manchester.

Cameron Stephenson, founder of C.J.S Heritage Engineering, has spent the past two years and tens of thousands of pounds restoring the Marshall S-Type Steamroller in his workshop, Clarington Forge, in Ince. The massive, 18-foot-long machine was originally built for Formby District Council in Lancashire and was used to lay roads by compacting asphalt.

“It is a beautiful machine, very much a novelty piece,” Stephenson said. “It has a rich history and I'm glad to be keeping it alive.”

The roller’s story spans nearly a century. After serving on road crews, it was reportedly repurposed during World War II to support airfields in the region. In the postwar years, it was bought by Joseph Entwistle of Wigan, who operated it for fun alongside his son, David. But when Joseph passed away in the late 1960s, the restoration work he had begun came to a halt. The machine was left under a tarpaulin in a yard — and largely forgotten.

That is, until Cameron came along. He purchased the steamroller in 2022 and began restoration work the following year.

“I started off cleaning off the over 60 years of dirt, dust, and rust before building and replacing parts in-house,” he said. “There was some boiler work that needed doing and a couple of valves and bearings that needed replacing, but most of it was in good nick. The gears were mostly fine.”

Cameron, who launched his heritage engineering business at just 17, is believed to be the youngest of only 10 remaining heritage engineers in the UK.

Alongside his partner, Hannah Walsh, 26, he’s now in the final stages of the restoration — adding fresh paint to the boiler and rooftop and preparing the machine for its return to the public eye. He expects the project to be completed by May, just in time for the summer steam rally circuit.

“I’ve spent tens of thousands on the project, but it has been worth it,” he said. “I’m very proud of the outcome.”

Soon, the steamroller that once built roads and supported wartime efforts will be back in action — this time, as a rolling tribute to British engineering history.

This Engineer Spent Two Years Restoring a 100-Year-Old Steamroller

USA Today

Drew Shouse has been Indiana football’s heart and soul all season. Now, the 10-year-old superfan — who’s battled a rare heart defect since birth — is heading to the national championship with his team.

The Hoosiers surprised Shouse with the news in a heartfelt video message featuring players like Heisman-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza and receiver Isaiah Jones. “There’s no way we could go to the national championship without you,” Mendoza told him. Jones added, “We can’t go without the heart and soul of our team.”

Born with mitral valve regurgitation and aortic stenosis, Shouse underwent two open-heart surgeries before he was nine months old and a third procedure in 2017. Though he’ll likely need one more surgery in the future, he’s currently stable and sees a cardiologist just once a year.

In 2023, Shouse was matched with Indiana’s football program through Team IMPACT, a nonprofit that connects children facing serious health challenges with college athletic teams for mentorship and support. Since then, he’s become a fixture on the IU sideline — and a source of inspiration for the entire roster.

He even scored a touchdown at the team’s 2024 spring game.

"Drew is an inspiration to all of us on the team," IU quarterback Tyler Cherry said. "He’s a fighter, and seeing him battle through what he has been through motivates all the players to keep going every day."

Team IMPACT surprised Drew with Rose Bowl tickets earlier in the playoff run, where he watched Indiana dominate Alabama 38-3. Throughout the season, players like Isaiah Jones, Omar Cooper Jr., and Elijah Sarratt have spent time with him on shopping trips and pregame sidelines.

Now, the Hoosiers are bringing their biggest fan to Miami Gardens, Florida, as they face No. 10 Miami in the national title game on Monday, January 19 at Hard Rock Stadium.

For Indiana, it’s the biggest game in program history. For Drew, it’s a dream come true.

Indiana Invites 10-Year-Old Fan With Rare Heart Defect To National Championship

People

What was supposed to be a 5-mile run turned into a 31-mile ordeal for 17-year-old Bohdi Jackson, who went missing during a triathlon training camp in Kosciuszko National Park, New South Wales.

Jackson, from Sydney, was taking part in a group run on January 13 when he surged ahead and missed the turnaround point. Distracted by “very loud” rap music in his headphones, he didn’t realize he was off course until hours later.

“I went a bit too far and forgot to turn around and kept on running,” he told ABC Australia. “At like 12 kilometres in, I realized I was lost — and I wasn’t going to turn around there, because then you have to do 24 kilometres. I just kept on going.”

His friends, concerned when he failed to return to the Cascade Trail’s entrance, alerted authorities. NSW Police, the Rural Fire Service, and National Parks teams launched a multi-agency search that lasted seven hours.

Meanwhile, Jackson pressed on through rugged terrain, taking breaks every couple of kilometers and occasionally cooling off in river water. “Apparently, it’s not drinkable water though,” he said. “I might have diarrhea.”

Eventually, nearly 19 miles from where he started, he came across a mountain biker and used her phone to call for help. A rescue helicopter located him on a walking trail roughly 30 kilometers from his last known location.

“They hooked me up and they pulled me up onto the helicopter,” Jackson said. “It was very cool — it was very loud.”

Despite the ordeal, Jackson was in good spirits afterward. “My legs are very tired but I actually feel alright,” he told ABC. His post-rescue wish list? “A steak and a choccy milk.”

Detective Inspector Ritchie Sim used the incident to remind bushwalkers of the dangers in alpine areas. “Kosciuszko National Park is a beautiful place to enjoy bushwalking, but it can be a dangerous place if you do not plan your trip carefully,” Sim said. He encouraged visitors to carry a personal locator beacon, check weather conditions, and always let someone know their plans.

As for Jackson, he was already joking about a possible “long run tomorrow” — but maybe with a few more safety precautions in place.

Teenage Triathlete Rescued After 30-Mile Mountain Detour: 'I Forgot to Turn Around'

After eight weeks of care and recovery, Alvey the osprey is soaring once more — and making the most of a unique 100-meter loop designed just for birds of prey.

The striking raptor had recently been under close observation at Healesville Sanctuary in Australia after his keepers noticed his feathers weren’t in peak condition — a serious issue for a bird that relies on waterproofing to dive for fish. A swollen preening gland at the base of his tail was to blame.

“Alvey was in care for eight weeks,” said Shaun Scott, a keeper at the sanctuary. “We found he was able to do long flights in the Raptor Centre, and his fitness improved along with his feather condition.”

Veterinary staff applied topical treatments and kept Alvey dry during his recovery, using the Raptor Centre’s flight loop — a 100-meter circular track that allows birds to safely rebuild their stamina.

Now, the impressive osprey is once again gliding effortlessly through the air.

Alvey’s story goes back decades. Originally a wild bird, he was raised by a wildlife carer 27 years ago after being rescued as a chick. When he was released in the Northern Territory, he made a habit of hovering around fishing boats, quickly learning they offered an easy meal. Eventually, the decision was made to bring him into permanent care at Healesville Sanctuary, where he’s been thriving ever since.

Now, after his latest recovery, Alvey is back in full flight — and his keepers are hopeful he’ll continue enjoying life on the wing for many more years to come.

Osprey Soars Again After Successful Rehab at Healesville Sanctuary

A wedding ring lost in the depths of Lake Windermere five years ago is back where it belongs — and the emotional reunion has left an unforgettable mark on the couple who thought it was gone forever.

Chef Richard and his wife Natalie were vacationing with their family at Wray Castle when a simple, well-intentioned moment turned into heartbreak. About to go for a swim with their daughters, Richard handed his wedding ring to Natalie for safekeeping. But when she slipped it onto her thumb, it quietly slid off — and disappeared into the water.

“I’ve lost something that means the world to us and it’s hard,” Natalie said, still emotional about the moment.

The ring wasn’t just a symbol of their 17-year marriage — it also carried a deeply personal inscription: My partner, my lover, my best friend.

In a recent episode of Lost and Found in the Lakes, a team of freedivers — Angus, Renée, and Mike — took on the near-impossible task of finding the ring, armed only with a video clip filmed just five seconds before it was lost. The search, however, wasn’t easy.

Between murky waters stirred up by a nearby tourist ferry and layers of trash and debris, the odds didn’t look good. “It’s a needle in the haystack, really,” Richard admitted. “I probably spent about three hours diving down. The silt was being moved up, and we couldn’t find it.”

Natalie, meanwhile, said she carried “huge guilt” ever since that day. “He entrusted me with the ring, and then I go and drop it… If I were to get that ring back, it would mean the world. I think it would be a bit emotional.”

To clear the lakebed, the divers used their fins to rapidly kick away the top layers of silt, pulling out old straws, spoons, and even some items they were later able to return to other owners. Finally, after hours of searching and a little help from a metal detector, Renée struck gold — literally.

The ring was recovered.

“It still fits after five years, so that’s a good thing,” Richard said, sliding the band back onto his finger as Natalie broke into tears. “That is literally unbelievable.”

“It was a massive surprise,” he added. “I’ve probably not been that shocked before. It’s a bit worse for wear, but I think that tells the story… You think what’s happened to that in the last five years. Fingers crossed now, it stays with us.”

Couple Reunited With Wedding Ring Lost in Lake Five Years Ago Thanks to Freediving Team

GoodGoodGood

For decades, a mysterious fungal disease has been wiping out frogs and toads around the world. It’s now blamed for infecting over 500 species and completely eradicating at least 90. But thanks to a quirky invention and some breakthrough research, scientists are finally finding ways to fight back.

At the center of it is Australian biologist Dr. Anthony Waddle, whose unconventional tools — including frog-sized saunas made from bricks — are giving endangered species a second chance.

“In the 25 years since chytridiomycosis was identified as a major cause of the global collapse of amphibian populations, our results are the first to provide a simple, inexpensive and widely applicable strategy to buffer frogs against this disease,” Waddle told Macquarie University’s Lighthouse journal.

The disease, chytridiomycosis, is caused by a chytrid fungus that attacks the skin of amphibians — their most vital organ — disrupting their ability to absorb water and electrolytes. It thrives in cool, damp conditions, which means winter is particularly deadly.

So Waddle decided to use nature’s oldest remedy: heat.

He began building sun-heated “frog saunas” — small bricks and PVC greenhouses designed with frog-sized openings. Inside, temperatures naturally rise just enough to kill the fungus without harming the animals. “The whole thing is like a mini med spa for frogs,” Waddle said. “In these simple little hotspots, frogs can go and heat up their bodies to a temperature that destroys the infections.”

Waddle’s main focus is the green and golden bell frog, once common across eastern Australia. The species has lost over 90% of its natural habitat since chytridiomycosis arrived in the region in 1978. “They lived in letterboxes and backyards and really adapted to human settlements,” Waddle said. “Before chytridiomycosis came and hammered the population.”

But since the saunas were installed, that trend is changing. Not only do infected frogs recover after spending time in the warm shelters, but many develop lasting resistance to the disease — even as winter returns.

The research, published in Nature, suggests that simple changes to local habitats could be enough to tip the balance in favor of survival. “Habitat protection alone cannot protect species that are affected by invasive diseases,” the study said, “but simple manipulations to microhabitat structure could spell the difference between the extinction and the persistence of endangered amphibians.”

Still, Waddle isn’t stopping there. With funding from the 2025 Future for Nature Award, he’s expanded his efforts to include gene editing and vaccine development.

Over the past year, he’s led gene replacement trials and helped raise and vaccinate hundreds of green and golden bell frogs. When released into the wild, Waddle said it will be “probably the largest input of frogs in that population in a decade.”

To support that effort, he’s also opened two “frog hospitals” in Greater Sydney — places where vulnerable frogs can be treated, vaccinated, and held safely ahead of seasonal outbreaks. His team is now delivering vaccines along Australia’s east coast while continuing lab work aimed at unlocking the genetic secrets behind long-term immunity.

“We need to future proof our conservation efforts and genetic resistance will be key,” Waddle told Future for Nature.

What started as a few bricks in a field is now part of a larger, coordinated campaign to stop a disease that’s devastated amphibian populations globally. It’s low-cost, it’s scalable, and so far, it’s working — one frog sauna at a time.

A Biologist is Saving Endangered Frogs With Tiny 'Frog Saunas'

In a rare and hopeful sighting, 33 North Atlantic right whales were observed in Cape Cod Bay during an aerial survey on January 10 — a number researchers say may be the highest ever documented in the bay on a single day in January.

The discovery was made by the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS), which has been monitoring the critically endangered species as part of its 2025-2026 field season. With only an estimated 384 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, this one-day sighting represents more than 8% of the entire global population.

“It may be the highest number of right whales documented in the bay in a single day in January,” said CCS aerial observer Ryan Schosberg in a press release. He also noted the whales were behaving differently than usual for this time of year. “Most of our sightings in December and early January have been of animals in what we call surface active groups, but almost all of the whales on Saturday’s flight were observed in shallow subsurface feeding.”

Since the start of the current monitoring season in November, CCS has counted 54 individual whales in the bay — starting with 10 on December 5. Among the recently observed group was a 45-year-old whale that has only been seen once in the past 15 years, as well as a young calf first recorded during last year’s Cape Cod Bay surveys.

The New England Aquarium also reported 23 right whale sightings during two aerial surveys just south of Nantucket, prompting the establishment of a “slow zone” for marine vessels in that area to help protect the animals.

Ship strikes remain one of the leading threats to North Atlantic right whales, and new protections are in place this winter to address that. Since January 1, vessels 65 feet and longer have been required to reduce speeds to 10 knots or less in Cape Cod Bay. Additional restrictions for smaller vessels and fixed fishing gear are scheduled to take effect February 1.

The CCS also reminded the public that approaching a North Atlantic right whale within 500 yards is illegal without a federal research permit. That includes boaters, kayakers, swimmers, drone pilots, and even light aircraft.

The North Atlantic right whale has been listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act since 1970 and is currently classified as “Critically Endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

While the species faces serious challenges, there are signs of cautious optimism. The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium reported a 2.1% population increase from 2023 to 2024 — small, but encouraging progress for one of the world’s most at-risk marine mammals.

With sightings like this and protections in place, researchers hope the new year will bring more than just rare glimpses — but real momentum toward recovery.

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