We took two weeks off IQNEWs to sit on a beach and sip Mai Tais.

And by sit on a beach and sip Mai Tais we mean sell bars at California Costco locations for 12 straight days, 11 hours per day.

Was it fulfilling? Yes. Did we get great customer feedback? Yes. Are our lower backs and knees in devastating condition? Also yes.

As always, please forward IQNEWS to a friend if you're a fan!

The universe just got even more heady...

On Monday, NASA scientists unveiled a stunning new photo (see above!) taken by the James Webb Telescope of M74, a galaxy 32 million light-years away composed of 100 billion stars.

Its gargantuan spiral arms are incredible to behold, but its low brightness always made it notoriously hard for astronomers to visualize, earning it the nickname “Phantom Galaxy.”

No longer! Webb’s high infrared resolution and sensitivity allow it to capture old, distant, faint galaxies in far greater detail than the now-dethroned Hubble Space Telescope.

Most importantly: this image discredits long-held beliefs on the origins of our universe.

For decades, experts thought "early" galaxies like M74 (those much older than our own, the Milky Way) were small, chaotic, misshapen systems. But the Webb-captured pic shows them to be surprisingly huge, balanced, and well-formed.

"We thought the early universe was a chaotic place with all these clumps of star formation and things are a-jumble," Astronomer Dan Coe exclaimed. "Turns out it wasn't."

Bottom line: Webb will totally re-write our understanding of space - far out!

Ever hear of a kitchen trick and wonder how you've gone your whole life without it?!

This will fit that bill. Plus, it involves everyone's favorite lazy dinner food: pasta (low-carb pasta, that is). 👀

When boiling noodles, one typically places a colander in their empty sink, dumps the pot of pasta into the colander from the stove, then transfers the pasta back to the pot.

But this hack saves you one of those steps! Instead of the typical order of operations, place your colander directly into your pot of boiling noodles, then hold it in place at its edges as you strain the water into the sink.

The pasta never leaves the pot, saving you time, hassle, and mess.

1. Darts is a board game.
2. The more you look at the spelling of a word, the weirder it looks.
3. Breaking someone's heart is bad but melting someone's heart is good.
4. Movie characters can only be as smart as the screenplay writers were.
5. The early bird catches the worm, but the night owl has different dietary requirements so it doesn't matter.

John Muir: “In every walk in nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”

Today I learned that at least five separate groups of crustaceans all evolved into crabs and scientists don't know why - it's a phenomenon known as carcinisation. (more here)

ersatz [ ehr-saats ] - adjective
being a substitute, typically an artificial or inferior one, for something else
After the thieves stole the artwork, they replaced it with an ersatz version.

Q: How many calories can a blue whale eat in one mouthful?
A: (see below next section)