I have a layer of atoms on a surface and am trying to do a 2D Frenkel–Kontorova-like energy minimization using at first simplex then once that works, with simulated annealing. The number of atoms could range from 100 to 10,000. Each evaluation of energy is calculated from the atomic positions wit...

Sky and Telescope's How Bright will Comet Leonard Get? includes the skymap and projected (possible) light curve for comet Leonard C/2021 A1 that will potentially reach +4 magnitude this month. It has an interesting trajectory in that it's passed Earth (at least) once before but this time will lea...