Day: September 9, 2026

Fun Facts: Food & Drinks Part 7

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There are pink bananas that exist called Musa velutina, and they peel themselves when ripe. They’re often grown as ornamental, but have soft, sweet flesh and can be eaten. The seeds however are quite hard and can chip a tooth.

There are 3D printers that can print your dinner. The Foodini Food Printer makes everything from pizza to burgers to chocolate using fresh ingredients.

A free kitchen, operated by volunteers in India at the Golden Temple in the Indian city of Amritsar, serves 100,000 hot meals a day and has been doing so for over three hundred years.

We have the ability to eat an entire bag of chips without really noticing, because the chips have a vanishing caloric density. What that means is that it tricks our tongue and brain into thinking that we haven’t actually eaten anything.

Marigolds and other plants that contain the pigment Xanthophyll are added to chicken feed to make their egg yolks appear more orange. 

Daily Wisecracks & Wisdom

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Never follow someone else’s path. Unless you are lost in the woods, then by all means, follow them.
Ellen Degeneres

I am glad she followed someone’s path to England’s bucolic Cotswold district. I hope all her Liberal followers follow her path to England.
-Sheila Tolley-

Astronomy Picture of the Day

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Witness XZ Andromedae Wink
Video Credit: Ogetay Kayali (MTU, Starfront Observatories)
Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

Explanation: Is this star winking at us? The central object in today’s animation is not one but two stars. XZ Andromedae, indicated by the bold lines, is an Algol-type eclipsing binary with a nearly edge-on orbit from Earth’s perspective. The bottom light curve shows the amount of light from the system dim and brighten as the cooler star eclipses its hotter, brighter companion. Analysis of several XZ Andromedae light curves indicates there may be two other stars orbiting the system. This particular light curve was created with Citizen Astronomy, an open-source software for differential photometry. The software takes the difference in brightness between a target and comparison star and traces its behavior over time. This technique reduces most variations from the instrument and Earth’s atmosphere. In addition to eclipsing binaries, this analysis is useful for studying transiting exoplanets, accreting black holes, supernovae, and many more time-varying astronomical phenomena. Astrophotographers: try it out on your own data!

Tomorrow’s picture: open space

Bible Verse

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