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The average person likely uses only a fraction of their creative abilities at work, often due to workplace structures, routines and expectations that prioritize efficiency over innovation. Studies suggest that although everyone has creative potential, many business owners and employees operate within constraints that limit creative expression.

Late in 2023, a video shared on Reddit that captured a passenger plane flying over San Francisco went viral because it appeared to be levitating mid-air. While some fighter jets can hover in place, there aren't any commercial planes with the technology to do so. What you see in the video is an optical illusion that has more to do with the concept of reference points and motion than any secret hover mode.

It's actually good news that NASA spotted a sizable asteroid with a (small) chance of hitting Earth in 2032. It means our asteroid-sleuthing telescopes are working.

In Hidden in the Heavens, Jason Steffen tells the tale of the Kepler mission: from its conception in the early 1980s, through its long road to approval in 2001, to the drama of its launch in 2009, to its bounty of early science results, to its heartbreaking demise in 2014, to its miraculous second life as the K2 mission through 2018. During its lifetime, Kepler detected some 5,000 planets. Those of us who worked on it were blessed to be part of a revolution in astronomy. The book is, at turns, a popular science survey of exoplanet discovery, an oral history of the Kepler mission, and Steffen’s own personal memoir.

The process of boarding an airplane,often perceived as a simple routine, has been the subject of study and discussion for years. Airlines, always looking to optimize their operations and improve the passenger experience, have explored different strategies to streamline this process. In this context, American Airlines, one of the world's leading airlines, took a step forward by implementing an innovative boarding system, designed to transform the way travelers begin their journey.

In 2006, NASA and its partners launched the Kepler telescope with a goal to try and identify planets in other solar systems. Since then, the telescope found over 2,700 planets orbiting different suns and existing in different solar systems before its retirement in 2018.

The darkest time of the year is the winter solstice, the day with the least sunlight and the longest night. However, the coldest time of the year is typically about one month after the winter solstice. So why isn't the darkest time of the year also the coldest?

On Episode 137 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with Dr. Jason Steffen, a professor of physics at 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ and a member of the science team for the Kepler Space Telescope mission. This mission finally ended in 2018, but the discoveries keep coming. Kepler returned so much data that it was like "drinking from a firehose," Jason tells us.