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From Around The World

Euclid’s First Images

The first test images of stars and galaxies taken by the European Space Agency’s Euclid Space Telescope were released last week. The milestone comes about a month after Euclid launched, reaching its final orbit roughly 1 million miles away from Earth.

Euclid is on a quest to survey more than 1 billion galaxies—each with roughly 100 billion stars—as it investigates the nature of dark energy and dark matter, which constitute 95% of the universe but remain poorly understood. Dark matter exerts a gravitational pull on objects but doesn’t interact with light, while dark energy remains hypothetical and is needed to account for the expansion of the universe.

The test images were taken to verify and review the operation of the instruments on the Euclid spacecraft. More detailed and sharper images are expected in October.

AR Technica

‘Barbie’ Scores Record $93M Second Weekend in U.S.

The movie earned an estimated $US93 million in its sophomore outing at the North American box office — one of the best second weekends of all time and the best second weekend ever for Warner Bros.

The female-fueled Barbie, which continues to shatter any and all expectations, finished Sunday with a domestic cume of $US351.4 million. Detractors had predicted it would fade away quickly after a history-making debut, but that isn’t the case.

Barbie continued to paint the overseas box office pink as well. It dropped 32.2 percent to $US122.2 million over the weekend for a foreign tally of $US423.1 million and global total of $US774.5 million through Sunday as it speeds toward the $1 billion mark. It will be only the second pic of 2023 so far to join the box office billion-dollar club after Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which topped out at $US1.34 billion worldwide.

Hollywood

Electrified cement could turn houses and roads into nearly limitless batteries

Energy storing building materials could make on-demand power from renewables affordable worldwide. Researchers have come up with a new way to store electricity in cement, using cheap and abundant materials. If scaled up, the cement could hold enough energy in a home’s concrete foundation to fulfill its daily power needs. Scaled up further, electrified roadways could power electric cars as they drive. And if scientists can find a way to do this all cheaply the advance might offer a nearly limitless capacity for storing energy from intermittent renewable sources, such as solar and wind.

So far, the cement devices are small, only big enough to power a few LED lightbulbs. But efforts are already underway to scale them up. Science.org

Uber shares drop after revenue miss, despite first operating profit

Uber reports first-ever quarterly operating profit, but shares fall 6% as the company misses revenue expectations

Revenue for the quarter was up 14% from the same quarter last year. Uber reported net income of $US394 million, or 18 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $US2.6 billion, or $US1.33 per share, in the same quarter last year. That includes a $US386 million net benefit from revaluations of Uber’s equity investments.

In a prepared statement, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the ride-hailing company achieved two major milestones during the quarter: its first quarter of free cash flow over $US1 billion and its first GAAP operating profit.

CNBC