Por Jacopo Prisco, CNN

Nereida, la tercera luna más grande de Neptuno, podría ser la única superviviente intacta de un antiguo conjunto de lunas destruido al principio de la historia del sistema solar, según un nuevo análisis basado en datos del Telescopio Espacial James Webb.

Neptuno, el octavo y más distante planeta del sol, destaca entre los planetas exteriores de nuestro sistema solar por su extraño grupo de lunas. Los otros gigantes exteriores —Urano, Saturno y Júpiter— tienen todos un conjunto de satélites en líneas generales similar y ordenado, con varias lunas más grandes orbitando en la misma dirección que la rotación del planeta anfitrión.

Pero Neptuno tiene una colección de lunas mucho más pequeña y caótica: Tritón, el mayor satélite de Neptuno, empequeñece a todos los demás y orbita en la dirección opuesta a la rotación de su anfitrión. Es la única luna grande del sistema solar que lo hace.

Los astrónomos sospechan que la razón del comportamiento extraño de Tritón es que no se originó a partir de los restos de la formación de Neptuno, lo que haría que orbitara en la misma dirección que ese planeta. En su lugar, plantean la hipótesis de que Tritón podría haberse originado en el Cinturón de Kuiper, una región en forma de anillo de cuerpos helados en el borde del sistema solar, y haber entrado en el entorno neptuniano hace más de 4.000 millones de años.

Estudios anteriores han sugerido que Tritón pudo haber sido capturado por la gravedad de Neptuno tras un paso cercano y lanzado hacia el interior para estrellarse contra el sistema de satélites primordial de Neptuno.

Si Neptuno sí tuvo un conjunto original de lunas que se pareciera más al de sus vecinos planetarios, la llegada de Tritón —que es apenas más pequeño que nuestra propia luna— habría sembrado el caos, chocando contra los otros satélites y aniquilando a algunos de ellos. Las características actuales del sistema de Neptuno respaldan este escenario, y sus siete lunas interiores parecen ser restos de este antiguo choque.

Pero ahora, una nueva investigación que utiliza datos del Telescopio Espacial James Webb sugiere que un objeto podría haberse librado por completo del caos.

“Creo que Nereida es la única superviviente intacta de este proceso”, dijo Matthew Belyakov, estudiante de posgrado en ciencias planetarias en el Instituto de Tecnología de California y primer autor de un estudio sobre el tema publicado el miércoles en la revista Science Advances.

“Los otros supervivientes son las lunas más internas de Neptuno, pero no están intactas porque tenemos imágenes de ellas de Voyager, y parecen montones de escombros desintegrados. Así que son material superviviente del sistema inicial, pero no lunas completamente intactas”.

Esta hipótesis trastocaría suposiciones anteriores de que Nereida era, al igual que Tritón y algunas otras lunas neptunianas, un objeto del Cinturón de Kuiper capturado, ya que los nuevos datos del James Webb revelaron que la composición de Nereida no coincide con lo que los científicos saben sobre los objetos del Cinturón de Kuiper.

Los astrónomos no saben mucho sobre Nereida, porque es tenue y está lejos de la Tierra y del sol. La única imagen que los científicos tienen de ella es una foto borrosa tomada en 1989 por la nave espacial Voyager 2 de la NASA durante su breve sobrevuelo de Neptuno. Nereida es la más externa de las lunas conocidas de Neptuno, y tiene una de las órbitas más excéntricas (es decir, no circular) del sistema solar. La luna tarda 360 días terrestres en completar una vuelta alrededor de Neptuno.

Bautizada en honor a las ninfas marinas de la mitología griega, se cree que Nereida tiene alrededor de 210 millas (338 kilómetros) de diámetro. Incluso si forma parte de un conjunto original de lunas que Neptuno tuvo poco después de su formación, hace unos 4.500 millones de años, es difícil especular cómo podría haber sido

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By Marshall Cohen, Holmes Lybrand, Donie O’Sullivan, CNN

(CNN) — Supporters of President Donald Trump who tried to overturn the 2020 election are among those eager to potentially cash in from the $1.8 billion compensation fund for people the Trump administration believes were victims of government “weaponization and lawfare.”

In interviews with CNN, convicted US Capitol rioters from January 6, 2021, fake electors and prominent election deniers said they’re hoping to tap the massive fund, which they think is long overdue.

“I can’t even find a job answering the phone at a motorcycle dealership,” said convicted January 6 rioter Dominic Box, who spent 1.5 years in jail awaiting trial and was later pardoned by Trump. “I can’t find a way to support myself right now. I lost my career. I look forward to financial compensation. I need it. This will be a welcome relief.”

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told CNN he believes his company lost $400 million due to what he views as government weaponization in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He was perhaps the loudest promoter of baseless voter-fraud claims – drawing boycotts from businesses, defamation lawsuits and even FBI scrutiny.

“I would say we were the number-one company in the world hurt by our own government,” said Lindell.

A lawyer for One America News, the pro-Trump channel that promoted false 2020 vote-rigging claims, also confirmed to CNN that the company is “seriously considering pursuing rights under this fund.” OAN was later dropped by most large cable providers and also settled multiple 2020-related defamation lawsuits.

Top Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, have dodged questions over whether people convicted of January 6-related crimes, including people who assaulted police, should be awarded any of the funds.

“Anybody can apply,” Blanche told lawmakers during a budget hearing Tuesday, noting that even people who stormed the Capitol can submit claims that will be reviewed by a five-member commission that he’ll appoint.

The fund is open to a much broader swath of Trump allies, far beyond the 2020 election. Potential recipients could include people who were scrutinized during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Trump administration officials who were entangled in Trump-Ukraine impeachment in 2019, and others.

The first known potential claimant, Trump adviser Michael Caputo, was investigated by Mueller in part because of his connections to Russian officials. He was never charged and is seeking $2.7 million in restitution

By Elle Reeve, CNN

(CNN) — When the livestreamer who calls himself “Chud the Builder” was arrested and charged with shooting a man in Tennessee last week, it sounded as if everyone was supposed to already be aware of him. Reports described Chud, whose real name is Dalton Eatherly, as a “popular livestreamer” and “notorious,” and as someone “known for posting racist content.”

But many people who follow current events on the boundary between online and offline outrage hadn’t really heard of Eatherly. Before the shooting, he didn’t even have a page on Know Your Meme, a site that was once just a funny website about documenting internet culture, but unfortunately now is a vital reference source about figures who make news while bringing internet activity into the real world.

Instead of conventional notoriety, what Eatherly had was a sort of potential notoriety, or notoriety in waiting. Where his provocations had caught on was mostly within the community of “clippers.”

Clippers are the middlemen between all the people looking for attention today and the billions of people who are looking for something to pay attention to. They sift through longform material — hourslong podcasts and livestreams that are mostly very boring — and pick out a few seconds of conflict or misadventure or some other drama, then package it into short, shareable video clips.

Then they hose down social media sites with these clips. The algorithms of Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and especially TikTok are designed so you don’t need to have a big account to make a post go viral. A stimulating enough clip, pushed out by enough minor and passably non-robotic-seeming accounts, can catch on and be amplified into ubiquity on the platforms.

The story of Chud the Builder can be interpreted as a political one, made for sparking discourse about free speech and right-wing extremism and the normalization of racism. But at the core it’s a story about money, and the incentives for antisocial behavior created by the social media companies that make money off it.

Some clippers clip because they’re fans of the person they’re clipping, and they want everyone else to share the experience. But most are either paid per post or per 10,000 views. In retrospect, clippers are a predictable development in the online attention economy, heirs to the people who cut movies down to trailers or political events down to sound bites.

There are many Reddit threads about how to become a good clipper. On one such thread, a comment offered a prime directive of clipping: “stay symbiotic.” Meaning, make sure the relationship is beneficial to both the creator and the clipper. There are pages of YouTube videos about the clipper economy, many with the uncanny urgency of a multilevel marketer.

“They post the videos, we pay them a certain rate per 100K. That keeps them motivated to keep posting, keep posting, keep posting, and without them, I’d be nothing. Because all that matters is the clips,” the streamer N3on says in a video posted by KlipDumpOfficial. “There’s people who make 20K like every two weeks.” In a video posted by ClippingDynasty, the ubiquitous streamer Adin Ross —who is monetized enough to have giv