After an eight-year run, OnePlus announced today that it has exited the United States. It's bittersweet, as the brand has been on a comeback tour of sorts with its excellent OnePlus 15 and widely praised (though still too expensive) OnePlus Open.
The writing has been on the wall for a while now. T-Mobile stopped stocking OnePlus' flagship phones after 2022, instead deciding to only carry its low-end Nord devices, and Verizon's run with OnePlus only lasted two years, from 2020 through 2021. Even though it continued releasing flagships, OnePlus' US footprint has been fading. In January, Android Headlines even claimed that the brand was being …
The OnePlus 15 was the company’s final US flagship. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge
OnePlus has confirmed what industry observers have long expected: it's quitting the US and European markets, and will no longer launch new products in either region. Parent company Oppo promises that it will honor existing support and warranty agreements, with devices transitioning to its ColorOS for future updates.
"Software updates and after-sale support will be guaranteed" in both the US and Europe, Oppo's senior PR manager in Europe, James Paterson, told The Verge in a call. The company wouldn't confirm any specifics on how it will honor its warranty and support agreements in the US, where it will now have no presence at all. In Europe, …
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As Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arrives in theaters, archaeologists working off the western coast of Greece say a real-life cult site devoted to the legendary story’s hero has been uncovered.
Local traditions had long told of a stony hilltop on the Greek island of Ithaca that had once been home to a shrine to Odysseus, the legendary Greek king of the isle and main protagonist in Homer’s famous poem.
Now, after close to two decades of archaeological work on the island that served as home to the fictional king in Homer’s epic literature, archaeologists say they have uncovered the most compelling evidence yet that a genuine historical cult site had existed there, dedicated to the famed hero of The Odyssey.
An Ancient Cult Site Devoted to Odysseus
Researchers with the University of Ioannina recently revealed the discovery of new inscriptions and artifacts supporting the existence of a cult element devoted to Odysseus, uncovered at the ancient complex at Agios Athanasios, which had been a public sanctuary devoted to the worship of Homer’s famous hero during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods.
According to a statement released by the Greek Ministry of Culture, the building complex is characterized by a series of robust structures located on terraces, which involve several monumental elements featuring carved architecture and niches for what appear to have been votive offerings or inscriptions, all of which point to its use as a cult site.
Yannos Lolos, one of the project’s lead archaeologists, recently told ArtNet that the site’s role was revealed partially through a reexamination of existing materials found there, which helped reveal what he calls “new and strong inscriptional evidence” linking the site to Odysseus.
Bronze Bust and Inscription Discoveries
Among the most important discoveries at the site were a small bronze bust of Odysseus dating to the first or second century C.E., as well as a roof tile fragment which bore an inscription that reads, “to Odysseus.”
However, an even more compelling discovery involved a second stamped roof tile inscribed with the hero’s name but appearing in the Greek genitive case; this is significant, since it indicates ownership, thereby identifying the sanctuary as “belonging” to Odysseus.
A close-up image depicting the tile recovered from the site, bearing an inscription that references Homer’s Odysseus (Image Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture).
Based on current evidence, organized cult worship is believed to have begun at the site by around the late fourth century B.C.E., which places its use at around 500 years after Homer composed his famous epic poem, and almost a full millennium after the legendary events the epic describes.
The physical sanctuary itself was built onto a massive natural rock formation, and remnants of the ancient structure include a primary tower, a large oblong building, and terraces which were carved directly into the underlying bedrock.
Excavations over the last several years have also revealed the site’s deeper history, which points to evidence of earlier Mycenaean occupation during the 13th and 14th centuries B.C.E., at which time the site had likely served as a strategic center overseeing nearby harbors and local water resources.
A Discovery with Legendary Significance
In a statement, the Greek Ministry of Culture said the two new engravings arrives “in combination with the other available data, to document the development of a prominent public complex at the site,” which it said help to establish the “major role in the religious, social and possibly political life of the Ithacians of the Hellenistic-early Roman periods, but also with a broader pilgrimage character.”
The recognition of this ancient cult site only adds to the existing evidence that already supported worship of Odysseus on Ithaca. Past discoveries have revealed ancient coins depicting the hero, found near ritual offerings at Ithaca, which were also linked to cult activities. However, the identification of the sanctuary offers the most conclusive archaeological evidence to date that Homer’s legendary hero had been the cult’s focus.
Of course, these discoveries fall short of establishing Odysseus as a true historical figure, and most scholars agree that Odysseus was a fictional character born out of traditions that incorporated real places and events into their broader mythos.
However, in at least a few instances, the lines between myth and ancient history have been blurred—a famous example being Heinrich Schliemann’s identification of a site (originally discovered by British amateur archaeologist Frank Calvert, with his identification of the mound of Hisarlik) which helped reveal the archaeological reality behind the city of Troy, which had previously been considered a mythical location.
It was also reported last year that an archaeological discovery resembling the “labyrinth” from Greek mythology had been uncovered on Crete, in a discovery some have called “one of the most important archaeological finds” of the century.
Although the discoveries at Ithaca don’t establish Homer’s Odysseus as a historical figure in this way, they do confirm that centuries after The Odyssey was composed, inhabitants of Ithaca engaged in cult activities to honor the legendary king at a sanctuary on the island, which, according to legend, he once ruled.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached atmicah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
Homo erectus may have left a detectable genetic trace in living humans through ancient interbreeding with Denisovans. For much of the 20th century, human evolution was often pictured as a branching tree. One trunk split into separate limbs, and each ancient human relative, or hominin, occupied its own tidy branch. That was the version many [...]
Astronomers from the Université de Montréal led an international team in the new research, reported in a recent paper in The Astrophysical Journal, which presents the clearest images ever recorded of gaseous filaments connecting a galaxy’s atmosphere to the rotating disk that the supermassive black hole feeds on.
The team’s analysis of the data paves the way toward understanding how black holes consume matter, a mystery that has stumped astronomers for decades.
Strange Black Hole Feeding
“JWST observations are offering us thousands of new facts and measurements, and I can report it’s a lot to absorb,” said co-author Megan Donahue, MSU University Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy. “We are all working together to solve the astrophysics questions about how these black holes get their fuel and how they interact with their host galaxy.”
Supermassive black holes anchor most galaxies in the universe, with masses ranging from millions to billions of times that of the Sun. In active galactic nuclei (AGN), these central black holes both consume enormous amounts of surrounding material and unleash powerful jets that shape the galaxies around them.
This activity presents a longstanding puzzle. Because an AGN’s jets heat the surrounding gas, they should effectively cut off the black hole’s fuel supply, leaving astronomers to wonder how it continues to accrete matter.
Testing a Hypothesis
To investigate, the researchers tested the leading explanation: that heated gas eventually cools, condenses into long filaments, and falls back toward the galactic center, replenishing the black hole’s supply of material.
They turned JWST toward one of the best natural laboratories for studying AGN: the galaxy NGC 4696, located at the heart of the Centaurus Cluster, roughly 145 million light-years from Earth.
Using JWST’s NIRSpec instrument, the team collected eight hours of observations, mapping the motion of gas deep within the galaxy—where the black hole’s gravitational influence dominates—at a resolution of about 30 light-years.
Their observations revealed an 800-light-year-wide disk of gas orbiting the supermassive black hole at roughly 600 kilometers per second. Connected to this rapidly rotating disk was a large infalling filament, funneling gas inward to feed the AGN.
Feeding Cycle of the Black Hole
The discovery fills in a crucial missing piece of the puzzle surrounding how supermassive black holes sustain themselves. The researchers propose that after the black hole injects energy into the surrounding gas, heating it, that material eventually cools and collapses into thin filaments stretching hundreds of thousands of light-years. Guided by magnetic fields, these filaments then fall toward the galaxy’s center, where they accumulate in the rotating accretion disk.
The team also ran a series of computer simulations based on this model and found that the predicted behavior closely matched what JWST observed. While additional observations will be needed to confirm the results, the findings provide strong support for the filament-feeding hypothesis.
“It’s been really exciting to participate in this project,” co-author Mark Voit, an MSU Physics and Astronomy Professor, said in a statement.
“Calculations done by our Michigan State group predict that magnetic fields should help feed the universe’s biggest black holes by channeling cool gas toward them, and it’s amazing to see that happening in these JWST images,” he added.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
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New images of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4696 from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveal gas filaments funneling material into a spinning disk around a supermassive black hole 800 light-years across.
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For as long as readers have pored over Homer’s Odyssey they have pictured Ithaca, the homeland Odysseus fights for ten years to reach, as an island unto itself.
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