Well, howdy there, internet people. It's Dana again, and today you're at Research Road.

This is a weekly series where we go through science and tech news with a bit of dry humor.

Then, we answer some questions from y'all. Today is the 17th of December 2024. And on this date in

1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright flyer took to the air for the first time.

It was the first powered airplane and its first flight lasted 12 seconds.

Later on in the day, the plane stayed airborne for 59 seconds.

So, starting off with tech news, at this point, it looks like TikTok is probably headed out of the

U.S. market. This will likely mean billions in revenue for META and Google, but TikTok's CEO met

with Trump and has signaled openness to stopping the proceedings. The U.S. will start mandating

that cars have alarms that go off if passengers in the rear seat

don't fasten their belts. The New Jersey drone thing looks to be nothing. A combination of federal

agencies released a statement that's almost identical to Bell's video on the topic, although

Bell's video got a little into the psychology of what's happening and added some historical

context. But the important part of the statement from the feds is,

We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast.

And now on to space, anthropologists are calling for the preservation of the human archaeological

record on Mars. The idea is that the stuff left behind isn't space junk. It's the archaeological

record that people will want to know about in the future. It's the archaeological record that people will want to know about

in the future. It's good to know that anthropologists don't see us going extinct anytime soon.

Data has long suggested that the rings around Saturn are between 100 million and 400 million years

old. That's young, comparatively speaking. The new study suggests that Saturn's rings are 4.5 billion years old. That's young, comparatively speaking. The new study suggests that Saturn's

rings are 4.5 billion years old, which is the same age as the planet. That's kind of anticlimactic.

...