The Dailies

Word of the Day

Bacchanal (n., BACK-uh-NALL)

Drunken, wild revelry. Your neighbors with teenage kids during the summer when the parents aren't home. Every college movie ever. Romans, during the feast of Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry. Frank the Tank. Dennis Kozlowski's downfall.

Gif of the Day

Tags AnimalsCarsMan's best friendsSo that's how it worksIdyllic countrysidesUnconventional uses

Link of the Day

New Horizons flies by Pluto

Today, at 7:49am, the NASA spacecraft New Horizons flew past Pluto, a mere 7,000 miles from its surface. It sent back this image:

Not only is this the closest any spacecraft has been to Pluto, it's only 85 years after Pluto was even discovered. New Horizons was launched in 2006 (photo below) and is just now getting to its target. Crazy. Later tonight, it should "phone home" and tell if it survived the flyby and send more pictures of the not-a-planet and its moons, which you can find on NASA's Facebook, Twitter, and official mission pages. Huge congratulations to the NASA scientists who started planning this mission fifteen years ago.

Here's the launch photo:

ScienceSpace, the final frontierNot planetsNot Disney charactersSPACESHIP!Not E.T.Things that go fastEnglish-to-metric conversions