A Japanese Yakuza leader pleaded guilty in federal court on Wednesday for attempting to traffic military-grade weapons and roughly 1,100 lbs of narcotics. Those charges alone will get someone locked up for quite a long time—throw in another conviction for trying to offload thousands of pounds of uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, and it’s unlikely Takeshi Ebisawa will ever leave prison.

It’s hard to pick the most damning evidence on display in the Department of Justice’s court filings. There’s an undercover agent’s photograph of Ebisawa brandishing a stolen US Army rocket launcher. There’s also a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation between Ebisawa and a co-conspirator showing images of lab-confirmed heroin, the co-conspirator asking, “Is this the correct packages [sic] you gave to my guys?” followed by Ebisawa responding, “Yes.” Then there’s audio of the Yakuza boss discussing nuclear weapons-grade material sales with an undercover agent he believed was a general in the Iranian army.

“Ebisawa unwittingly introduced [agents]… to Ebisawa’s international network of criminal associates, which spanned Japan, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, and the United States, among other places, for the purpose of arranging large-scale narcotics and weapons transactions,” the DOJ’s January 7 announcement explains. If completed, these sales would have helped fund and supply multiple armed militant groups in Burma, as well as distribute drugs such as methamphetamine and heroin across New York.

Apart from the narcotics and stolen munitions, Ebisawa reportedly worked for years to facilitate deals involving “a large quantity of nuclear materials,” according to the DOJ. To prove he possessed them, the Yakuza leader offered undercover authorities multiple pictures of “rocky substances” next to Geiger counters indicating their radiation levels. These were accompanied by supposed paper records confirming it to be thorium and uranium. During later meetings with undercover officers, Ebisawa later offered up 220 lbs of uranium concentrate powder—commonly referred to as “yellowcake”— for sale. He also told an agent posing as an Iranian general that he could supply him “better” and more “powerful” plutonium for the country’s nuclear weapons program.

Ebisawa wasn’t wrong about the plutonium from a technical standpoint. Modern thermonuclear weapons rely on what is called a plutonium pit. This core component contains a gas such as deuterium and tritium that is encased in chemical explosives. Once detonated, the explosives condense the plutonium surrounding the case so intensely that it triggers a fission reaction. The transition from “atomic” to “thermonuclear” designation occurs when a warhead’s uranium core combines to generate a fusion reaction. This crucial detail is what boosts a weapon of mass destruction on the order of a few dozen kilotons to something like Castle Bravo, the first US thermonuclear bomb test. Although initially estimated in 1959 to generate a blast equivalent to six megatons of TNT, the device yielded a 15 megaton explosion—allegedly the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated by the US.

Ebisawa’s access to plutonium went beyond its potential for devastation. Plutonium occurs much more rarely in nature than uranium, meaning it generally requires sophisticated and expensive laboratory and manufacturing facilities. Buying the product outright likely would have allowed bad actors to skip more than a few steps while saving them quite a lot of cash. According to court documents, a nuclear forensic laboratory confirmed Ebisawa’s plutonium was weapons-grade material “suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.”

Ebisawa pleaded guilty to a total of six counts: conspiracy to commit international trafficking of nuclear materials, international trafficking of nuclear materials, two counts of narcotics importation conspiracy, conspiracy to possess firearms, and money laundering.

Nuclear material trafficking convictions are  comparatively rare, given the industry’s stringent regulations. The International Atomic Energy Agency cites only 4,243 incidents involving the illegal handling of nuclear material since 1993. Of those, however, only an estimated eight percent related to “trafficking or malicious use.”

The post Yakuza boss tried to traffic nuclear weapons-grade plutonium appeared first on Popular Science.

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Just before Christmas, two backyard birders in Michigan were in for the ultimate surprise–a yellow Northern Cardinal. Arlene and John McDaniel spotted the incredibly rare bird in their backyard in Bath, Michigan near East Lansing.

“I really couldn’t believe it,” Arlene tells Popular Science. “We do get a lot of cardinals. There’s always a lot here. The males are just a stunningly beautiful red and females are more orangey, But when we saw this yellow one, the thing that really made it distinctive, other than its feathers, is that its beak is also yellow.”

Both musicians, John says they named the bird Donovan in homage to the folk musician. His catchy tune “Mellow Yellow” reached the number two slot on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966.

Here’s what you should know about these beautiful birds. 

While previous sightings of these birds have garnered the phrase, “one in a million,” there is no solid data on just how rare these canary-colored cardinals are in the wild. 

“It is hard to get a sense of just how rare yellow Northern Cardinals are, and there does not seem to be any study that estimates the frequency of this plumage aberration in the general population of cardinals,” Cornell University ornithologist Shawn Billerman tells Popular Science. “But, given that I’ve been birding for close to 30 years and have never seen a yellow Northern Cardinal, it is safe to say they are pretty rare.”

Genetic mutations that alter pigments in an animal’s feathers, scales, or hair are typically behind strange colorings in animals. Sometimes these pigments are either not expressed or are overexpressed, which results in some rare changes in the color.  

“We do not seem to know the exact genetic mutation that causes yellow-pigmented Northern Cardinals, but whatever the mutation is affects the bird’s ability to produce red carotenoid pigments,” explains Billerman. “All carotenoid pigments, most of the bright yellows, reds, and oranges that we see in birds plumage, including those of the Northern Cardinal, come from the diet, but the red pigments in a cardinal’s plumage are metabolically derived and synthesized from the carotenoids they acquire from their diet.”

[ Related: One in 100 million cotton candy lobster caught in New Hampshire. ]

A 2003 study analyzed the feathers of an individual yellow Northern Cardinal. This specific bird lacked all of these reg pigments that were derived from what it had eaten. The authors believed that the unknown genetic mutation present in this bird disrupted the metabolic pathway that helps the body synthesize red carotenoids. The enzyme that converts the carotenoids from the birds’ diet into the red that is seen on feathers was likely not present. 

“At least in the individual they studied, they also identified some yellow pigments that were metabolically altered, so the bird did not lose all carotenoid metabolic functionality, but it was just unable to create the red pigments typical of the species,” says Billerman.

While ornithologists are still learning about yellow Northern Cardinals, it does not appear that they differ from more typical red cardinals. However, Billerman says that the mutation that prevents them from synthesizing red pigments might affect others aspects of their lives. 

Some evidence does suggest that the redder and brighter male Northern Cardinals have both greater reproductive success and held larger territories. 

“If red coloration is indeed an important factor in mate choice or breeding success, it may be possible that this yellow Northern Cardinal has a harder time finding a mate,” says Billerman. 

The post Extremely rare yellow cardinal flies into a Michigan backyard appeared first on Popular Science.

I’ve loved Sid Meier’s Civilization games for decades, so I’m really excited about the upcoming Civilization VII. What I’m not excited about is how my current laptop probably won’t be able to handle one turn, let alone … just one more turn. But this wouldn’t be an issue if I had the latest MSI Titan 18 HX gaming laptop. 

I’ve spent the last few days in Las Vegas at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, where I’ve been eye-to-eye with the latest tech (more of which I’ll share in the coming days). Few things, however, have been quite as eye-catching as the Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Norse Myth … and I might have caught its acid-etched eye, too. 

If you’re wondering where the laptop gets its name, well, there it is, right there, carved into the magnesium-aluminum alloy lid. It’s an incandescent dragon’s eye peering out from its textured motif, complete with Norse runes that mean “Dragon.” (The same mythical beast can be found on the medallion embedded in the laptop’s palm rest.) As for what’s inside the Dragon Edition, well, that’s fire, too.

First there’s the 18-inch Mini-LED 4K 120Hz 16:10 screen with VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification, which is run by an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU with 24GB of GDDR7 VRAM (another CES 2025 big reveal). There’s an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor and up to 96GB of DDR5 RAM, plus four M.2 NVMe slots in a Super RAID 5 configuration capable of read speeds of up to 18,000MB/s. And OverBoost Ultra gives up to 270W of headroom for pushing intense campaigns and applications. As for the I/O giving all that somewhere to go, there are two Thunderbolt 5 USB-C ports, three USB-A 3.2 Gen. 2 ports, HDMI 2.1 with up to 8K60 output, and a full-sized SD card reader.

If all that sounds like it might run as hot as an angry dragon, it might if it wasn’t for an exclusive Vapor Chamber Cooler and a dedicated heat pipe for the one PCIe Gen. 5 SSD (the rest are Gen. 4) to avoid thermal throttling. Powering this desktop-level nearly 8-pound transportable is a 99.9WHr battery, plus a 400-watt power supply. Rounding out the features are Intel Killer Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, a Dynaudio-designed six-speaker system (featuring two subwoofers), a SteelSeries keyboard with Cherry MX switches and per-key RBG illumination, and a “Mystic Light” seamless haptic RBG touchpad. 

OK, so you might need some of Smaug’s treasure to afford the Dragon Edition. But if you, like me, plan to do some expansive worldbuilding, you can always opt for the standard, more subdued Titan 18 HX and get the same specs and screen real estate without the styling (or choose step-down components if the budget’s tighter). Or there’s the rest of the 18-inch laptop family, including the new Raider, Stealth, Vector, and Crosshair Series. These offer many of the same core features, like the GeForce RTX 50 Series, but don’t stack quite as many slots or push quite the same output. You can also opt for AMD processors and different SoC packages. Plus, they’ve got differing aesthetics—some more gamer and others more office-friendly. MSI’s options make it easy to strategize the best way to play your strategy games (and anything else, for that matter). The one thing they would all have in common if I had them is me angrily muttering about grain, Ganhdi, and gameplay mechanics.

The post I saw MSI’s new flagship gaming laptops, and there’s one I really want appeared first on Popular Science.

What’s a 11-letter concept shared by crossword puzzles and avalanches, and starts with the letter “P?” According to one physicist, the answer is simple: Percolation.

“When a statistical physicist looks at a partially solved crossword puzzle, she or he sees immediately a percolation problem: Is there a spanning path consisting of fully solved words?” writes the University of Oldenburg’s Alexander Hartmann in a recent paper published in Physical Review E.

“Percolation is ubiquitous in all fields of sciences like physics, mathematics, computer science, social sciences, or biology,” he adds.

Percolation, in this sense, relates to what is known as “percolation theory.” In mathematics and statistical physics, percolation theory concerns the behavior of a network model as additional points, nodes, or links are added to the overall system. At a certain point, these interconnected frameworks undergo a geometric version of a phase transition, suddenly becoming a much larger, new formation with novel properties.

Think of it like a tea bag so saturated by water droplets that it begins to leak out of its mesh container, the snowflake that shifts a mound of frozen powder into an avalanche. Or, as Hartmann describes, the letters and words that suddenly make a formerly difficult crossword puzzle much easier to solve.

Hartmann, a crossword fan, was recently curious if he could generate a single block of letters that created words in every direction, minus the puzzle’s trademark black spacer squares. He soon realized, however, that he was encountering a variation on a percolation problem. In mathematics and statistical physics, “percolation theory” concerns the behavior of a network model as additional points, nodes, or links are added to the overall system. Hartmann then devised percolation-based calculations to illustrate the concept.

“In the present work, crossword-puzzle percolation is introduced, where letters or words are occupied with independent or neighbor-dependent probabilities. In the model, letters correspond to sites and words to segments of sites, bordered by black sites,” he explains. But Hartmann noticed something after graphing his crossword-centric formula.

“[I]t appears that crossword-puzzle percolation comprises a new type of universal behavior,” he writes. This means Hartmann’s new formula is unique among all other known percolation problems.

The physicist theorizes one potential explanation may be that the uncertainty one feels while staring at a largely blank crossword puzzle changes as you make progress.

“Since solving a word leads to an increase of the probability of solving neighboring words, this leads to further iterations, i.e., avalanches of solving words,” writes Hartmann.

Hartmann believes this concept can be studied further to explore relations between these abstract phase transition concepts and their physical counterparts. In the meantime, crossword puzzlers can be comforted that physics now implies that as difficult a puzzle may seem, it’s often darkest before the dawn. All it often takes is one letter or word to bring a puzzle to its percolation point.

The post Why crossword puzzles get easier as you solve them, according to physics appeared first on Popular Science.

• With a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip, the AirTag 2 is expected to have up to 3× longer range compared to the current AirTag. The chip debuted in the iPhone 15 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2. On the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, there is a Precision Finding for People feature that can help you to find your friends in crowded places, and it offers a range of up to 200 feet/60 meters.


• The new AirTag's built-in speaker is expected to be more difficult to remove, as a stalking-related safety measure.


• The new AirTag is rumored to have improved integration with the Apple Vision Pro, but there are no specific details about this.


• No major design changes or rechargeable battery are expected.

Tired of clunky software that makes productivity feel like a chore? Microsoft Office 2024 Home is here to change that. It’s packed with AI-powered features, real-time collaboration tools, and a sleek, user-friendly interface.

And for just $119.97 (regularly $149), it’s a one-time investment that will level up your home office, family projects, and everyday tasks without any recurring fees.

Whether you’re writing reports in Word, crunching numbers in Excel, creating dazzling presentations in PowerPoint, or keeping track of life’s chaos in OneNote, Office 2024 makes it all easier, faster, and smarter.

This isn’t the old-school Microsoft Office your parents used. Office 2024 is flush with modern features, including AI integrations that make repetitive tasks a thing of the past. Think intelligent formatting suggestions, real-time data analysis, and natural language processing that make finding insights in your documents and spreadsheets as easy as asking a question.

The contextual ribbon navigation keeps the tools you need front and center, minimizing distractions and simplifying your workflow. Need to adjust a table? The right options appear automatically. Need to collaborate with your family or roommates on a shared project? The co-authoring and chat features make it seamless.

And let’s talk about Excel—because data nerds need some news. With dynamic arrays, Excel can now handle formulas like FILTER and UNIQUE, automatically updating outputs in real-time. It’s like having your very own data assistant on call 24/7.

Here’s where Office 2024 really shines: the AI-powered features. These aren’t just gimmicks—they’re real tools that can make your life run smoother.

Imagine opening a report in Word, and the AI suggests ways to tighten up your writing. Or using Excel to crunch some numbers, and it highlights trends you hadn’t noticed. Even PowerPoint can now help you design a more engaging presentation without you having to lift a finger.

Need to manage your household budget, plan a family vacation, or help your kid with a school project? Office 2024’s AI tools take the heavy lifting off your plate so you can focus on what really matters.

Don’t miss Microsoft Office 2024, while it’s just $119.97 (regularly $149).

StackSocial prices subject to change.

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The post Don’t settle for less: Get Microsoft Office 2024 for $119.97 appeared first on Popular Science.

• More aluminum: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a stainless steel frame. The back of the devices will supposedly have a new "part-aluminum, part-glass" design. The frame could end up using a combination of both aluminimum and titanium.


• Rectangular camera bump: On a related note, the devices are expected to have a "larger rectangular camera bump" made of aluminum. There are conflicting rumors about the camera lenses sticking with a triangular arrangement or being repositioned horizontally or vertically.


• A19 Pro chip: iPhone 17 Pro models are expected to use Apple's next-generation A19 Pro chip, which will reportedly be manufactured with TSMC's newer third-generation 3nm process. Like usual, expect modest year-over-year performance gains and power efficiency improvements compared to the current iPhones.


• Apple-designed Wi-Fi 7 chip: At least one iPhone 17 model is rumored to get a Wi-Fi 7 chip designed by Apple rather than Broadcom. However, another report said the chip will support Wi-Fi 6E like iPhone 16 models.


• 24-megapixel front camera: All four iPhone 17 models are said to feature an upgraded 24-megapixel front-facing camera, whereas all iPhone 16 models are equipped with a 12-megapixel front-facing camera.


• 48-megapixel rear Telephoto camera: An upgraded 48-megapixel Telephoto camera is rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models, up from the 12-megapixel Telephoto camera on iPhone 16 Pro models.


• 12GB of RAM: An increased 12GB of RAM was initially rumored exclusively for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but later the iPhone 17 Pro as well. This upgrade should help to improve the performance of Apple Intelligence and multitasking. All four iPhone 16 models have 8GB of RAM.


• A smaller Dynamic Island for iPhone 17 Pro Max: A change rumored exclusively for the iPhone 17 Pro Max is a "much narrowed Dynamic Island," as a result of Apple adopting a "metalens" for the Face ID system.