Stress Overload, a poem by: Sachi Dixit

 Stress Overload

By: Sachi Dixit

Everyone says these are the years of enjoyment

yet no one explains

how confusing or stressful they feel

One day, my life seems picture-perfect

The next day

Stress is knocking on my door

and stays around all day

In class, Stress joins me, reminding me about tests I haven’t studied for

At home, it whispers about tomorrow's worries

It compares me to my brother, who seems to know everything

But I must remind myself to just live in the moment

blocking it out and being happy

because that’s what life is truly about

Christmas Magic, a poem By: Sachi Dixit

 Christmas Magic

By: Sachi Dixit

The time has come

Christmas has arrived

Snow shimmers under the moonlight

Painting the world in silver

Lights glimmer brightly, making houses glow

Snow crunches beneath my feet

Frost decorates the windows

The world feels quiet,

Yet so magical

As Christmas dances through the snowy streets

Inside, the fire crackles softly,

and laughter fills the room

Families gather close,

sharing stories, hugs, and joy

The Wow! Signal by Umar Malek

The Wow! Signal by Umar Malek

 When it comes to the search for life beyond Earth, what comes to mind first is the Wow! signal. Back in 1977, the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State picked up this quick, powerful blast of radio waves. A few days later, astronomer Jerry Ehman spotted it in the data. He was so stunned, he just scribbled “Wow!”, and that name stayed. For decades, that single word has captured all the excitement and mystery packed into that fleeting signal.

Nearly fifty years later, the Wow! signal still stands out. It was sharp, strong, and came in right on a narrow frequency, close to the hydrogen line, a spot in the spectrum astronomers love to watch. Naturally, people started asking, was this aliens trying to contact us? But the truth is, no one ever picked up the signal again. All we have is that one spot, frozen in the data.

Lately, scientists have circled back to this puzzle, only now they’ve got better tech and a pile of old observations that hadn’t seen the light of day. A team at the Planetary Habitability Laboratory in Puerto Rico, working on the “Arecibo Wow!” Project dug deep into the original SETI data. Their new analysis gives us our sharpest look yet at what the Wow! signal might have been, and, maybe more important, where it really came from.

Turns out, their work rules out the simple stuff: it wasn’t just radio static from Earth. Instead, the evidence points to a natural source out in the universe. Maybe the signal came from a sudden surge in the hydrogen line, kicked off by something dramatic. It could’ve been a flare from a magnetar, or a burst from a soft gamma repeater. These cosmic powerhouses pour out radiation, and when that hits clouds of hydrogen, you can get exactly the kind of radio burst Big Ear picked up in 1977. It doesn’t wrap up the mystery, not quite, but it does point scientists in a much clearer direction.

The story isn’t over, far from it. With sharper tools and way more data, researchers see this as a brand-new chapter. Now they can zero in on certain patches of sky and target specific cosmic events. And here’s the fun part: inspired by the Wow! signal, there’s a citizen science project called Wow@Home. Anyone with a small radio telescope and the right software can pitch in, helping search for those quick cosmic signals and maybe, just maybe, catch the next big discovery as it happens.

Even now, the Wow! signal hangs onto us. It’s a tiny, stubborn riddle from the universe, something we still can’t quite explain. Sure, maybe it’ll turn out to be something ordinary, not the alien greeting people once hoped for. But honestly, that’s part of the magic. It reminds us that the universe still has plenty of secrets waiting out there.

David, Leonard. “That Mysterious “Wow! Signal” from Space? Scientists May Finally Know Where It Came from — and It’s Probably Not Aliens.” Space, 27 Aug. 2025, www.space.com/space-exploration/search-for-life/that-mysterious-wow-signal-from-space-scientists-may-finally-know-where-it-came-from-and-its-probably-not-aliens.

Betting by Kaveeshan Gnanarajah

 Betting by Kaveeshan Gnanarajah

Maybe this is just me, but I feel like gambling is everywhere nowadays. I first realized this when one of my favorite games at the time, Rocket League, removed its loot crates in 2019. Up until that moment, I never questioned how those crates worked or why the game even added them. When the developers admitted that it was too close to gambling, I still didn’t understand at the time. It was only around a year ago that I looked back on those loot crates and realized. This change made me recognize and pay more attention to how often chance-based rewards appear in everyday apps.

Loot boxes and similar chance-based rewards aren’t just in games like Rocket League. Almost 40 % of popular games and 60 % of popular smartphone games contain loot boxes that players can purchase for real money, and the loot box market generated about $15 billion USD in 2020 alone, showing how popular they’ve become. You can bet on your favorite sports team, on the coin toss for a football team, you can bet on Roblox, stocks, political events and even world events. Even more, examples include one pitch in a baseball game; it doesn’t even have to be a real sport, you can bet on esports, you can gamble on loot crates in other games on your phone, tablet, or even your Apple Watch. You no longer even have to go to a casino to become a gambling addict.

Research shows that people who purchase loot boxes are up to twice as likely to gamble and are more likely to develop problem gambling behavior compared with people who don’t buy them. With teens aged 12–16, nearly half (45.6 %) have done some sort of loot box, and higher involvement is linked to higher problem gambling severity. Studies consistently find that loot box purchasers are several times more likely to experience gambling problems than non-purchasers.

Even with my own mother, someone who is so against gambling and has never been to a casino in her life, was technically doing it on an app. She was playing her favorite game on her phone when, after she completed a level, the app gave her loot chests that she could open for a CHANCE at a better reward. There is not much we can actually do about this issue, but we must stay away from it.

Sources

Zendle, David, et al. “Links between Loot Box Spending and Problem Gambling.” Scientific Reports, vol. 12, 2022, Nature Publishing Group, doi:10.1038/s41598-022-20549-1.

Wardle, Heather, et al. “Loot Boxes, Gambling, and Problem Gambling among Adolescents.” Journal of Gambling Studies, vol. 36, no. 2, 2020, pp. 543–556, Springer, doi:10.1007/s10899-019-09906-0.

“Loot Boxes in Video Games Linked to Problem Gambling.” ScienceDaily, 2 Dec. 2022, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221202112513.htm.

“Gambling Addiction Statistics.” Recovery.com, www.recovery.com/resources/gambling-addiction-statistics/.

Davies, Rob. “Landmark Study Shows 1.4m Britons Have a Gambling Problem.” The Guardian, 2 Oct. 2025, www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/02/landmark-study-shows-14m-britons-have-a-gambling-problem.

The Disappearing Ship by Umar Malek

 The Disappearing Ship by Umar Malek

December 5, 1872. The British ship Dei Gratia spots something odd near the Azores. The Mary Celeste, an American ship, was just drifting along. From a distance, nothing seems off. Sails up, ship floating steady. But as they get closer, it gets weirder; no one’s on deck. Actually, no one’s anywhere. The place is deserted. Food and water are still there. Supplies untouched. The whole crew just...gone.

Not long before, on November 7, the Mary Celeste had sailed out of New York, headed for Genoa. Captain Benjamin Briggs was in charge, bringing his wife, their toddler, and a crew of eight. The ship carried about 1,700 barrels of crude alcohol.

When the Dei Gratia crew climbed aboard, the whole scene felt like a dream. The ship isn’t wrecked. The cargo is fine, everything you’d need to survive is right there. But the lifeboat’s missing, along with some key navigation tools.

The captain’s log offers the last clue: November 25, near the Azores. Nine days before they found the ship, and about 500 miles off. The log says everything’s normal, still headed for Genoa. But after that, nothing. For eleven days, the ship just drifts, empty. No captain. No family. No crew. No bodies or wreckage. Not a single clue about what really happened.

Even now, nobody really knows why the Mary Celeste was abandoned. The ship was in good shape and had everything needed to make it to Italy. Still, ten people vanished without a trace.

Some people think the crew believed the ship was sinking. When the rescuers boarded, they found over three feet of water sloshing around below, not enough to sink her, but enough to terrify someone. A sounding rod for checking water was lying out on deck, and one of the pumps was taken apart, maybe broken. Possibly, Captain Briggs saw the water, thought things were worse than they were, and ordered everyone into the lifeboat. If the weather got bad or the pump gave out, most likely the lifeboat would be lost at sea. Meanwhile, the Mary Celeste just kept going, empty, with no one at the wheel.

History.com Editors. “The Mary Celeste, a Ship Whose Crew Mysteriously Disappeared, Is Spotted at Sea | December 5, 1872 | HISTORY.” HISTORY, 4 Mar. 2010, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/december-5/the-mystery-of-the-mary-celeste.

Tikkanen, Amy. “Mary Celeste | Ship.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 22 Aug. 2017, www.britannica.com/topic/Mary-Celeste.

Damaged Broca, a poem by Fatima Azeem

 Damaged Broca

I dream.

Maybe, while braiding strands of hair—

Our eyes will be closed and our souls will meet

Will I be able to hear you speak then?

Or shall I reach into your mouth and connect us with string?

I’ll mend our flesh together and mix the dirt with us

Just so we can face the Heavens and sow our nails together

Up in the sky and constellations

Let's exchange secrets with the Dippers

And shout at the sun

I might just offer a shoulder and listen with deaf ears,

Cry crystals on Neptune,

Or maybe wish upon ourselves,

For the world is truly loud and your words are silent.

Ignorance, a poem by Fatima Azeem

 Ignorance

It’s loud

This world is really loud

In fact, if space had a sense of hearing

We’d have the ability to listen

See, the universe has a voice

One for everything

And yet the singing of planets are not heard

Nor is the death of a star

Or the mercy of a black hole

To hear is a choice for the abled

An ant might hear the plea of a hawk

But the blindness of a heart won’t face reality.