<h2>Clouded Thoughts</h2>
In 1831, a volcanic eruption flooded the skies with so much sulfur gas that it cooled the planet by nearly two degrees Fahrenheit, causing all manner of famine, devastation, and social upheaval.
So gloomy were its effects that, in the northern hemisphere, it even sullied the beaming visage of the Sun, turning it a somber blue instead. In other mood swings, reports from the period say that the Sun also appeared purple and green.
But in the nearly two hundred years since, exactly which volcano blew its top to so shake up the natural order has remained a mystery — until now.
<h2>Ashes to Ashes</h2>
As detailed in a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2416699122">new study</a> published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say they've determined the culprit to be the Zavaritskii volcano on the extremely remote and uninhabited island of Simushir, one of the Kuril Islands, in the Western Pacific.
The breakthrough, according to the authors, came through examining ash found in ice core examples, providing a "perfect fingerprint match" to the Zavaritskii volcano.
"Only in recent years have we developed the ability to extract microscopic ash shards from polar ice cores and conduct detailed chemical analyses on them," study lead author Will Hutchinson, a geoscientist at the University of St Andrews, <a href="https://news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/st-andrews-researchers-solve-200-year-volcanic-mystery/">said in a statement</a>. "These shards are incredibly minute, roughly one-tenth the diameter of a human hair."
The volcano's Kuril Islands are currently controlled by Russia, though Japan disputes its claim to the archipelago. It contains a number of volcanoes — with dozens of them being active — but the sheer remoteness of the islands means many of them remain understudied.
"Finding the match took a long time and required extensive collaboration with colleagues from Japan and Russia, who sent us samples collected from these remote volcanoes decades ago," Hutchin said in the statement.
But the hard work was worth it. "The moment in the lab when we analyzed the two ashes together, one from the volcano and one from the ice core, was a genuine eureka moment," he added.
<h2>Climactic Change</h2>
In addition to making an impressive achievement in geological forensics, the work is a friendly reminder that many of the world's volcanoes remain unmonitored, including those on the Kuril islands — despite being an extremely productive volcanic region, according to the researchers.
That doesn't bode well if we're to prepare ourselves for the worst consequences of a similar global disaster to the one the Zavaritskii wreaked.
"If this eruption were to happen today, I don't think we'd be much better off than we were in 1831," Hutchison <a href="https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/volcanos/mysterious-climate-changing-eruption-that-turned-the-sun-blue-traced-to-remote-pacific-island">told LiveScience</a>. "It just shows how difficult it will be to predict when and where the next big climate-changing eruption will come from."
More on geology: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-2-billion-year-old-stone">Scientists Cracked Open a 2-Billion-Year-Old Stone and Discovered Something Entirely Unexpected</a>

Mystery Solved

The Sun was feeling gloomy.

Scientists Say They've Figured Out What Turned the Sun Blue

<h2>Wave Function Collapse</h2>
For years, Google's Waymo driverless taxis have been wreaking havoc on San Francisco streets — and an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/technology/waymo-expansion-alphabet.html">increasing number of other cities</a> as the service expands — <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/waymos-clog-san-francisco-street">triggering traffic jams</a>, getting <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-waymo-stuck-roundabout">stuck in roundabouts</a>, and even <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/robotaxi-smashes-delivery-robot">colliding with a delivery robot</a>.
And when it comes to construction sites, a common fixture in any metropolis, Waymos are having a hard time.
Look no further than a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1hvxmr5/waymo_not_doing_so_great_with_hand_signals/">video circulating on social</a> that shows a Waymo cab struggling to decipher the hand signals of a construction worker, juddering to a halt and refusing to turn left.
The incident highlights persistent shortcomings with driverless ride-hailing tech, often related to chaotic edge cases: despite years of research and <a href="https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/safety-data-hub">tens of millions</a> of miles driven, simple hand signals can still seemingly pose an insurmountable obstacle.
<h2>Mixed Signals</h2>
It's unclear what exactly caused the Waymo to become so paralyzed. Confusing matters is the Stop sign the construction worker is pointing at the vehicle, suggesting the car's software was befuddled by the mixed signals.
"That is a big red stop sign," one Reddit user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1hvxmr5/comment/m5x3yza/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">argued</a> in a subreddit dedicated to the company.
Nonetheless, a human driver likely would've had no issues navigating the situation, responding to the construction worker's waving arm with ease.
Ironically, Waymo's driverless vehicles <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/13/24319860/waymo-robotaxi-first-responder-tuv-sud-analysis">recently passed an independent review</a> by German tech inspection company TÜV SÜD, which found that the company's First Responder Program "meets industry standards," including the ability to respond to hand signals for traffic cops.
In early 2019, Waymo <a href="https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/waymo-self-driving-cars-police-officer-gestures/">first demonstrated its cars' ability</a> to follow signals from a police officer.
But given the latest run-in, the company's software is far from foolproof even over half a decade later. Case in point, last year one of its cars was <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/police-pull-over-self-driving-car-wrong-side-road">pulled over by a police officer</a> after driving down a busy road in the opposite lane.
And chances are we'll see plenty of similar run-ins in the near future as well. Waymo made its autonomous ride-hailing service Waymo One available <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/04/10/us-news/waymo-offering-paid-robotaxi-rides-in-la/">in Los Angeles</a> in April and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/waymos-autonomous-ride-hailing-service-now-available-all-san-francisco-2024-06-25/">in San Francisco</a> in June, years after rolling out the service in Phoenix.
The company is also planning to expand into other US cities including Austin and Miami, as well as its first international foray in <a class="underline hover:text-the-byte hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/partnering-with-nihon-kotsu-and-go-on-our-first-international-road-trip">Tokyo, Japan</a>.
Whether its competitors, including Elon Musk's Tesla, which is <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-event-disappointment">planning to roll out a similar service</a>, will fare any better remains to be seen.
More on Waymo: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/man-catch-flight-driverless-waymo-stuck">Man Trying to Catch Flight Alarmed as His Driverless Waymo Gets Stuck Driving in Loop Around Parking Lot</a>

Wayless

Waymo's cars are still struggling with the basics.

Waymo Self-Driving Taxi Flummoxed by Construction Worker's Hand Signals

The makers of America's nonstick cookware are none too pleased about a new law that will bar them from using carcinogenic "<a href="https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pfoa.html">forever chemicals</a>."
As <a href="https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/cookware-advocacy-group-lawsuit-minnesota-pfas-ban/89-9f552938-a994-4ce3-adc4-1395d0935d07">Minnesota Public Radio reports</a>, the Cookware Sustainability Alliance advocacy group is suing Katrina Kessler, the head of the state's pollution control agency, over a newly-enacted law that will ban the use of cancer-causing <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/tap-water-forever-chemicals">per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances</a> (PFAS), which are <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/are-nonstick-pans-toxic#research">used to make non-stick pans</a>.
Dubbed "<a href="https://minnesotareformer.com/2023/05/09/lawmakers-to-name-chemical-ban-amaras-law-to-honor-20-year-old-cancer-victim/">Amara's Law</a>" after 20-year-old cancer victim Amara Strande, who in 2023 <a href="https://minnesotareformer.com/2023/05/03/amara-kind-of-was-someone-who-looked-out-for-the-underdog/">succumbed to a rare type of liver cancer</a> linked to PFAS after growing up near a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/14/pfas-forever-chemicals-cancer/">Minnesota-based 3M plant that dumped them into the local water supply</a>, the new regulation bans the chemicals and any items made with them from being sold within the state.
Though the cause seems worthy enough, the Cookware Sustainability Alliance — which was <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240520852038/en/Cookware-Producers-Launch-the-Cookware-Sustainability-Alliance">launched last spring by cooking utensil manufacturers</a> to purportedly enhance "public understanding of the safety of cookware based on scientific research and verifiable data" — is calling the law unconstitutional and unenforceable.
"Everything else that is produced for the consumer cookware industry — and 100 percent of the Subject Cookware — is manufactured, distributed, and sold from outside Minnesota," the lawsuit declares, <a href="https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/cookware-advocacy-group-lawsuit-minnesota-pfas-ban/89-9f552938-a994-4ce3-adc4-1395d0935d07">per Minneapolis' KARE 11</a>. "This out-of-state commerce is, consequently, the sole subject impacted by the cookware ban in the Statute."
Though Amara's Law covers everything from rugs to menstrual products alongside the cookware in question, the advocacy group insists that it unfairly discriminates against culinary tools that use these forever chemicals, and violates state commerce clauses to boot. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which championed the law and spurred on its passage, heartily disagrees.
"It is estimated Minnesota taxpayers will have to spend $28 billion in the next 20 years to remove PFAS from wastewater and landfill leachate in the state," reads a statement from the MPCA to Minnesota Public Radio. "We simply cannot clean our way out of this problem."
Mehmet Konar-Steenberg, a professor at Saint Paul's Mitchell Hamline School of Law, suggested to MPR that the nonstick advocates are questioning the law's worth.
"They’re saying that this law doesn’t deliver enough public health benefits when compared to the kind of difficulties it creates for out-of-state businesses to conduct business in Minnesota," Konar-Steenberg said. "They’re saying, on balance, this law just isn’t worth it."
A glance at the <a href="https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/56410273/Cookware_Sustainability_Alliance_v_Kessler">docket for this injunction</a>, which seeks to have the law declared unconstitutional by state courts, shows that the Cookware Sustainability Alliance means business — and that they're not going to stop making and selling products using cancer-causing nonstick technology without a fight.
More on toxicity: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/future-microplastics-removal-make-bank">Whoever Figures Out How to Remove Microplastics From the Human Body Is Going to Make a Fortune</a>

Sticky Subject

These pan manufacturers mean business. 

Nonstick Cookware Industry Furious at Suggestion They Should Stop Causing Cancer

What happens inside our digestive systems when we feeble humans consume digestion-resistant corn? You wouldn't know from the not-so-helpful graphics holding rank as Google's top image results for the query, which have been polluted by bizarre AI-generated slop.
As <a href="https://x.com/FacebookAIslop/status/1876879890630270994">pointed out on X-formerly-Twitter</a> by the hardworking account "Insane Facebook AI Slop," a simple search query for the phrase "does corn get digested" returns a Google image results page loaded down with strange, nonsensical AI graphics claiming to depict corn kernels' quest through the human digestive tract. As it stands, four out of the top six results for the query — including the first and second results — are AI slop, and all stem from one of two spam blog posts published by a shady website claiming to sell "Top-notch Proteins&amp;Nutrition" from "China No.1 Manufacturer."
Each graphic yields its own slate of AI-mangled oddities — and, frequently, body horrors.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
it&#39;s actually over <a href="https://t.co/LaHwHikJ9A">pic.twitter.com/LaHwHikJ9A</a>
&mdash; Insane Facebook AI slop (@FacebookAIslop) <a href="https://twitter.com/FacebookAIslop/status/1876879890630270994?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Take the top-ranked image for the query, which is linked to a clearly AI-generated blog post titled "Do Humans Digest Corn?" The graphic appears to suggest that human-consumed corn piles up in the human body outside of our intestines, and may even sprout a vine that could, per the allegedly scientific graphic, wrap around our internal organs. (It's unclear which organ this one is actually meant to be, but we're guessing maybe liver?)
Text overlaid on the graphic is somehow even less helpful than the image itself.
"Uncoked kermelss of corn thatlt stay stay undigetated," reads the garbled text. "Uncoked kardes of corn, corn, abenen of part in ite broken bown into grose and absosed." Okay!
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-338930" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/01/e6585c2c18c2ebbff43cb127c6eb168b.png" alt="" width="1024" height="1024" />
The second-ranked result — which is linked back to a near-identical spam blog titled "How Long Does It Take Corn To Digest?" — presents a similar vision for corn's digestive journey. This time, though, the graphic suggests that consuming corn somehow transforms humans' intestines into yellow maize, meanwhile insisting that a pink, Valentines-style heart is located at the center of the stomach.
The graphic also includes a series of captioned images to define the major players at hand; they include "cornc," the "sttomach," and the "lage intetiine." (We'll let you guess what all of those are supposed to be.)
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-338934" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/01/75cdce739c5d8cfc4245f03487280d4a.png" alt="" width="1024" height="1024" />
&nbsp;
To be clear: eating corn will not turn your intestines into the field vegetable, nor will it lead to internally-sprouted vegetation wrapping around major organs like a boa constrictor. While some parts of corn kernels are digestible, <a href="https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/corn-a-versatile-nutrition-choice#:~:text=Corn%20has%20many%20health%20benefits,unhealthy%20spike%20in%20blood%20sugar.">corn is packed with insoluble fiber</a>, meaning that certain parts of the kernel go through the human digestive system intact — leading to the widely accepted myth that humans simply can't digest corn at all. (Curious people Googling that phenomenon, presumably, are why spammy AI content mills are churning out garbage-quality blog posts about corn digestion in the first place.)
The discovery is just the latest that illustrates the impact that cheap and easy-to-make AI slop is having on our information pathways, clogging search results with woefully unhelpful — if at times hilarious — text and imagery.
As of May 2024, <a href="https://searchengineland.com/googles-huge-search-market-share-loss-wasnt-real-data-revised-440191">according to Search Engine Land</a>, Google controlled roughly 90 percent of all search market share, meaning that Google's search tools are the primary means by which most humans access and explore the web. So as AI garbage leaches its way into the search engine's top results, it makes the internet a more frustrating, harder-to-manage landscape riddled with inaccurate, insidious, or — as so perfectly captured by the image results above — straight-up bonkers information.
Put more simply? We're in the midst of a digital <a href="https://futurism.com/hurricane-scam-ai-slop">slopaggedon</a>, with the felt everyday impacts ranging from mild irritants like graphs about "uncoked kermelss" to <a href="https://futurism.com/google-ai-inaccurate-garbage">more serious information erosions</a> — the replacing of images of <a href="https://futurism.com/top-google-result-johannes-vermeer-ai-generated-knockoff">famous artworks</a> and <a href="https://www.404media.co/first-google-search-result-for-tiananmen-square-tank-man-is-ai-generated-selfie/">historical events</a> with AI-generated fakes, for example, or the flooding of social media with <a href="https://futurism.com/hurricane-scam-ai-slop">fake</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/hollywood-sign-fire-ai-slop">AI-generated imagery</a> during environmental disasters.
Anyway. Time <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-failing-climate-targets-ai">to go eat some glue</a>.
More on AI slop: <a href="https://futurism.com/hollywood-sign-fire-ai-slop">People Think the Hollywood Sign Is on Fire Because of AI Slop</a>

Uncoked Kermelss

Slopaggedon cometh!

Behold the AI Slop Dominating Google Image Results for "Does Corn Get Digested"

A body of the world's leading public health researchers says that the number of children dying from noncommunicable diseases over the past 50 years has gone up dramatically, largely because of exposure to synthetic chemicals and plastics.
In a new paper <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2409092">published in the </a><a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2409092">New England Journal of Medicine</a>, which one author <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/08/health-experts-childrens-health-chemicals-paper">described to </a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/08/health-experts-childrens-health-chemicals-paper">The Guardian</a> as a "call to arms," the scientists demand urgent global action and a dramatic restructuring of the law and the chemical industry.
"The evidence is so overwhelming and the effects of manufactured chemicals are so disruptive for children, that inaction is no longer an option," study coauthor Daniele Mandrioli, director of the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center at the Ramazzini Institute in Italy, told The Guardian. "Our article highlights the necessity for a paradigm shift in chemical testing and regulations to safeguard children's health."
The data the researchers point to, encapsulating the past 50 to 75 years, is alarming. Childhood cancer rates have increased by 35 percent. One in 36 children are now diagnosed with autism. The number of children with asthma has tripled, while obesity has quadrupled. And for boys, the rate of birth defects in the reproductive organs has doubled.
This escalation of disease rates coincides with a surge in synthetic chemical and <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/microplastics-cancer-young-people">plastics production</a>, which has increased by 50 times since 1950. Even today, the manufacturing of these largely fossil fuel-derived substances is on a steady upward trajectory of 3 percent per year and is expected to triple by 2050, the authors wrote, per The Guardian.
"There's an ancient axiom in medicine and toxicology that the dose makes the poison, meaning that the higher the dose, the greater the harm," lead author Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College, <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/01/08/chemicals-risk-danger-health-children">told </a><a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/01/08/chemicals-risk-danger-health-children">WBUR</a>. 
"But what we've learned in the last... couple of decades is that in early human development, which really means during the nine months of pregnancy, the timing is equally as important as the dose," he explained. "And even a very tiny dose at the wrong moment in early pregnancy can have very serious consequences for a child's health and child's development."
The threat is no less concerning once a baby is out of the womb, as even low levels of exposure to toxic synthetic chemicals during a child's development can cause diseases, the researchers said.
Combatting this will require nothing short of a herculean effort, but some of the most consequential changes that the scientists call for can be accomplished with existing institutions, though it will require both government and manufacturers to take more responsibility.
"The core of our recommendation is that chemicals should be tested before they come to market, they should not be presumed innocent only to be found to be harmful years and decades later," Landrigan told The Guardian. "Each and every chemical should be tested before they come to market." After they're brought to market, Landrigan says, manufacturers should be required to actively monitor the long term effects of their products. 

More on harmful chemicals: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/scandal-black-spatulas">There's a Scandal Growing About That Paper About How Black Spatulas Are Killing You</a>

Think of the Children

Developments

"Inaction is no longer an option."

Scientists Say Children Are Getting Sick and Dying in Huge Numbers Due to Chemicals and Plastics

<h2>Natty Ice</h2>
An international team of scientists have drilled nearly two miles down into the Antarctic bedrock, extracting an ice core sample that's estimated to be at least 1.2 million years old, they <a href="https://www.beyondepica.eu/en/news-events/press-releases/">announced</a> this week.
By analyzing the sample, the researchers, working as part of the Beyond EPICA project, expect to glean critical insights about the Earth's climate and atmosphere and why it shifted away from having more frequent ice ages.
"Thanks to the ice core we will understand what has changed in terms of greenhouse gases, chemicals and dusts in the atmosphere," Carlo Barbante, an Italian glaciologist and coordinator of the European Union-funded effort, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/scientists-drill-nearly-2-miles-pull-12-million-year-old-ice-core-anta-rcna186963">told </a><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/scientists-drill-nearly-2-miles-pull-12-million-year-old-ice-core-anta-rcna186963">The Associated Press</a>.
<h2>Core Cleanser</h2>
The ice sample is a staggering 2,800 meters, or about 1.7 miles, in length. It's in the uppermost 2,480 meters where over a million years of climate history are contained, and in which "up to 13,000 years are compressed into one meter of ice," explained the project's chief field scientist Julien Westhoff in a <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://www.beyondepica.eu/en/news-events/press-releases/">statement</a>.
This isn't the oldest sample ever found, but Barbante said that crucially, it does provide the longest continuous record of the Earth's past climate. A record-breaking <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/record-shattering-27-million-year-old-ice-core-reveals-start-ice-ages">2.7 million year old sample</a> extracted seven years ago was obtained from ice that was gradually driven to the surface by natural processes, and as such provided an incomplete picture (though a staggering find in its own right).
By extracting the ice, the scientists have surmounted the formidable <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/oldest-ever-ice-offers-glimpse-earth-ice-ages">800,000 year</a> barrier in the field. Obtaining continuous samples older than this has, until now, proved impossible, because ice that deep is typically melted by bedrock.
<h2>Cold Case</h2>
Previous samples extracted by Epica have already shown that the concentrations of greenhouse gases during the past 800,000 years has never exceeded the levels seen since the Industrial Revolution, according to Barbante.
"Today we are seeing carbon dioxide levels that are 50 percent above the highest levels we've had over the last 800,000 years," he told the AP.
The hope is that the new sample will provide a window into a period 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, when the Earth shifted to lengthier climate cycles. For reasons that <a href="https://tos.org/oceanography/article/the-mid-pleistocene-enigma">continue to stump scientists</a>, the planet's ice ages stopped occurring every 40,000 years, lengthening to every 100,000.
The groundbreaking ice core, along with others, will be shipped back to Europe for further analysis.
More on Antarctica: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/drastic-action-doomsday-glacier-melts">Scientists Consider Drastic Action as Doomsday Glacier Threatens to Flood Entire Islands and Coasts</a>

Chilling Find

Incredible.

Scientists Recover 1.2 Million-Year-Old Ice Core From Two Miles Deep in Antarctica

<h2>Under-Reacting</h2>
As his national funeral unfolds, you've probably heard tales of the good deeds of former president Jimmy Carter.
One story that's gotten surprisingly little attention, though: nearly three-quarters of a century ago, a youthful Carter was brought in during <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/04/world/canada/jimmy-carter-nuclear-canada-chalk-river.html">the world's first nuclear reactor meltdown</a> to lead a toxic cleanup crew, where he led the charge into the hazardous scene.
As <a href="https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/jimmy-carter-nuclear-meltdown-clean-up-canada-navy-history">Fox 5 Atlanta recounts</a>, the Georgia-born late president — who died on December 29 at the ripe old age of 100 — was just 28 years old when he was brought in to help clean up nuclear waste at an NRX research reactor in Chalk River, Canada.
During a cold December day in 1952, the reactor located just a few hours away from the Canadian capital of Ottawa suffered a partial meltdown when some of its fuel rods burst, Fox 5 notes. As a result, more than a million gallons of radioactive water flooded to the facility's basement — and somebody with expertise was needed to clean it up.
As it turned out, Carter was the man for the job.
<h2>Bottom of Everything</h2>
After working as a Naval submarine officer, the young military man had just begun his tenure at the US Atomic Energy Commission when the meltdown occurred. As he <a href="https://archive.is/IrWre">told CNN back in 2011</a>, Carter was at the time "one of the few people in the world who had clearance to go into a nuclear power plant."
Carter and a team of 22 men were sent in to do the cleanup, and the officer who'd grown up on a peanut farm outside of Atlanta was himself lowered into the depths of the Canadian reactor.
Despite the danger, the late president told CNN's Arthur Milnes that the incident was "a very exciting time for me."
Still, exposure to the waste had lasting effects on Carter.
"We were fairly well instructed then on what nuclear power was, but for about six months after that I had radioactivity in my urine," he told CNN. "They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now. It was in the early stages, and they didn't know."
The cleanup was a success, and the Chalk River reactor was reopened two years later. Carter's career in the military, however, ended less than a year after the incident in 1953, when he was honorably discharged from the Navy and began running his family's peanut farm.
More on disasters: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-jet-propulsion-lab-evacuated-los-angeles-wildfire">NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab Evacuated as Los Angeles Burns</a>

Nuclear President

"They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now."

Jimmy Carter Once Lowered Himself Into a Nuclear Reactor After a Partial Meltdown

<h2>Party On, Chicken</h2>
Chick-fil-A has built an armada of robots to squeeze citrus for its delectable lemonade, turning the <a href="https://www.chick-fil-a.com/careers/culture">God-fearing fast food chain</a>'s lemonade plant into a veritable lemon party.
As <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-chick-fil-a-lemonade/?sref=YfHlo0rL">Bloomberg reports</a>, the chicken chain's Santa Clarita, California plant is home to driverless forklifts, gigantic mechanic lemon-grabbing arms, automated rollers, and even robotic reamers that deliver, drop, clean, and squeeze the fruits.
Using the bots, Chick-fil-A not only creates the lemonade that's become its staple beverage, but also extracts oils to sell to cosmetics and fragrance companies hungry for that <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/beauty/g60456753/best-citrus-perfumes/">coveted lemony scent</a>. Whereas human squeezers were only able to use about 40 percent of the fruit, this army of robotic juicers apparently manages to use nearly the whole thing.
Per figures that Chick-fil-A shared with the business publication, this automation saves up to 10,000 hours of work per day. According to one human worker who oversaw that hand job, the labor-intensive nature of that dirty work will not be missed.
"Squeezing lemons was not a fun job," Kurt Cahill, a senior leader at the company who helped develop the lemonade plant, told Bloomberg. "Nobody liked doing it."
<h2>Life Gives You Lemons</h2>
Whereas workers used to have to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cfa.savannah.highway/videos/check-out-how-we-squeeze-lemons-for-our-freshly-squeezed-leomonade-and-diet-lemo/10155138226609063/">load small amounts of lemons into in-store juicers</a>, the Santa Clarita plant's only human intervention comes on the conveyor belts that require people to pick out the bad apples — er, lemons.
After the driverless forklifts bring the fruits into the facility, they're sent through automated rollers that look like ginormous versions of the hot dog rollers seen inside convenience stores — except these ones have tiny teeth on them that extract the oils that now provide Chick-fil-A with a revenue stream that it didn't have before.
Human workers on the conveyor line then collect fruit that exploded from their intensive massages before they're loaded into one of nine huge extractors, which slice and ream the lemons before they're squeezed to completion by rapidly-spinning automated mixers. The pure juice that results is mixed after the fact with pulp before being shipped off in Franzia-style bags to stores, where employees add water and sugar or Splenda to finish the job.
Amid <a href="https://futurism.com/ceo-bragged-replacing-workers-ai-job">anxiety about artificial intelligence</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/eb11f69c-e45c-4f23-8793-0ca5866b4b67">robots replacing human workers</a>, the removal of this tedious task doesn't seem all that bad — and the videos Bloomberg published of these fruits dancing at their lemon party are delightful, anyway.
More on automation: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-warehouse-robots-struggle">Amazon Robots Struggling to Keep Up With Human Workers</a>

Old Squeeze

Talk about advanced squeezing technique. 

Chick-fil-A Using Advanced Squeezing Robots to Conduct Huge Lemon Party

Are baby elephants, which weigh hundreds of pounds at birth, tiny enough to fit squarely within the bounds of a human palm? Common sense would say no — but Google's AI Overview, or the AI-generated summary of web content that now often pops up at the top of Google results pages, seems to think the answer is yes.
A Google search for "baby elephant" returns an incongruous AI summary that, despite accurately noting that newborn elephant calves "weigh between 200 and 364" pounds and "stand about 3 [feet] tall," inexplicably includes an obviously fake image of a teacup-sized elephant nestled into the palm of a human hand. It's smaller than <a href="https://www.instagram.com/pilaf.littlemouse/?hl=en">Demi Moore's dog</a> — and yes, it's clearly AI-generated.
Things only get worse from there. A simple click on the image reveals that it was created by an Etsy user named DazzlingVisions, who's selling the synthetic photo — along with many other similar images depicting a variety of tiny versions of definitely-much-larger animals — as a "digital print" for a dirt-cheap $1.69. The critter is described in an associated caption as an "adorable/impossible baby elephant."
The Overview slip-up is a fascinating instance of Google's AI search feature blending sound information with glaring fabulism, resulting in a confusing information stew and again calling the discernment of the search giant's AI Overview — how it sources text and imagery, and what it considers reliable — into question.
The Etsy seller themself, after all, noted that the elephant was "impossible." How did it make its way into Google's AI summary?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-338972 size-large" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/01/Screen-Shot-2025-01-09-at-10.59.36-AM-1-1200x732.png" alt="" width="1200" height="732" />
The bizarre inclusion is the latest hiccup for Google's AI search function, which has drawn widespread ridicule and numerous controversies <a href="https://futurism.com/google-sge-false-ai-generated-info">since its release in 2023</a>. Growing public controversy around the feature's oft-questionable results <a href="https://futurism.com/google-ai-inaccurate-garbage">reached a fever pitch in 2024</a>, when the tool was found telling people they should eat rocks for their health, or consider mixing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-ai-glue-pizza-i-tried-it-2024-5">Elmer's glue into pizza sauce</a> to ensure optimal cheese stickiness.
Meanwhile, among plenty of other gaffes, users also found that the tool falsely referred to Barack Obama as the "first Muslim president" — a troubling harkening back to the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37391652">debunked Birther conspiracy</a>. Our reporting has found the AI Overview offering terrible, deeply mangled <a href="https://futurism.com/google-sge-false-ai-generated-info">geography information</a>, as well as <a href="https://futurism.com/google-ai-fecal-matter-balloon">some very gross</a> — not to mention ill-advised! — guidance for parents hoping to bathroom-train their kids.
In each of these varied instances, the issue seemed to come down to one very important quality: nuance.
Take the example of the AI suggesting that users might consider chowing down on rocks. Its source for this very bad piece of advice was The Onion — the satirical website that publishes news-like comedy articles, which the AI seemingly took at face value. As for the the glue-on-pizza advice? That brain blast came from a <a href="https://x.com/kurtopsahl/status/1793494822436917295?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1793494822436917295%7Ctwgr%5E2bb2a5599ba796bd8215d0f6e05d9aed9357b930%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Fthe-byte%2Fgoogles-ai-glue-on-pizza-flaw">decade-old Reddit comment</a> posted by a user who went by the moniker "Fucksmith." Not exactly a reliable source.
And now, of course, we have AI Overview's embrace of "adorable/impossible baby elephant," which speaks once again to the AI's apparent lack of media literacy — and, by the same token, renews concerns around the search tool's usefulness. Over a year in, is Google's AI Overview making searchers' lives easier? Or is it muddying information waters, and causing more problems than it's worth?
More on Google's Search AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ads-ai-search">Google Is Stuffing Annoying Ads Into Its Terrible AI Search Feature</a>

Nuance Not Included

We wish you were real, tiny baby elephant!!

Google’s AI Overview Believes Baby Elephants Can Sit in the Palm of a Human Hand

<h2>Fossil Out Boy</h2>
Two "Punk" and "Emo" fossils — and we don't mean elder members of the music circles that once enjoyed greater cultural cachet — are challenging scientists' understanding of the evolution of mollusks. The scene, folks, is not dead.
As detailed in a study <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08312-0">published in the journal </a><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08312-0">Nature</a>, the researchers created 3D models of the 430 million year old specimens, revealing strikingly complex features that suggest an early group of mollusks called aculifera weren't as primitive as once believed.
To their modern human eyes, however, the scientists saw a superficial resemblance to the hallmarks of certain outsider subcultures.
"Punk in particular, with its spiky appearance, clearly resembles a rebellious punk rocker — and we thought Emo complemented it well," said lead author Mark Sutton, a paleontologist at Imperial College London, in a <a href="https://phys.org/news/2025-01-discovery-punk-emo-fossils-ancient.html">statement</a> about the work. If you squint hard enough, you might see "emo" looking bangs.
<h2>Petrified Kennedys</h2>
There are over 100,000 species of mollusks, making it one of the most diverse groups in biology as it comprises everything from octopuses to squids to snails to clams. It follows that we still don't have a perfect picture of its family tree and its hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
Officially named Punk ferox and Emo vorticaudum, these latest mollusk remains were recovered from a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalbrookdale_Formation">notable fossil site</a> located on the England-Wales border, home to many ancient specimens that once dotted the seafloor. 
Finding them, especially in such good condition that details of their soft tissue could be gleaned, was a godsend. "We don't know much about aculiferans, and it's unusual to find out we've suddenly got two," Sutton <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/08/science/punk-emo-fossils-slugs.html">told </a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/08/science/punk-emo-fossils-slugs.html">The New York Times</a>. 
Sutton and his team created 3D models of Punk and Emo through a combination of x-ray scans and photographs. The x-rays revealed the internal structures, while the photographs were taken as the researchers carefully shaved off external layers of the fossils, documenting each step of the way.
"We grind away a slice at a time, take a photo, repeat at 20-micron intervals or so, and basically destroy but digitize the fossil as we go," Sutton told the NYT. 
<h2>Funeral for a Friend</h2>
With the breathtaking accuracy of the digital models, the researchers discovered that both fossils possessed smooth undersides — strong evidence that they were seafloor dwellers.
In particular, Punk possesses a ridge-like "foot" — a trait shared by no other extant mollusks. It also has long, Liberty-spike-looking spines, and gills similar to those of another class of mollusks called chiton.
Likewise, Emo has long spines that resemble worm-like mollusks, too, but it also boasts shells and a top-to-down flattened body similar to chitons. Because it was found in a folded posture, the researchers believed that Emo moved like an inchworm. How Punk traversed the seafloor, though, is unclear.
"This is really giving us an almost unprecedented window into the sorts of things that were actually around when mollusks were getting going," Sutton told the NYT. "It's just this little weird, unexpected, really clear view of what was going on in the early history of one of the most important groups of animals."
More on animals: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/jellyfish-fuse-together-injured">These Mighty Morphin’ Jellyfish Have a Mind-Blowing Survival Trick Up Their Sleeves</a>