Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Astronomers taking a closer look at a cosmic showdown have spotted a rare, mindbending event 730 million light-years from Earth. After reviewing a massive stellar explosion, researchers believe they spotted a never-before-seen type of supernova that involves a nearby black hole. According to their study published August 13 in the Astrophysical Journal, it may be the first of many other, similar discoveries. Supernovae are some of the most violent moments in the universe.

A couple of decades ago, on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada, I was marching up a mountain solo under the influence of LSD. Halfway to the top, I took a break near a scrubby tree pushing up through the rocky soil. Gulping water and catching my breath, I admired both its beauty and its resilience. Its twisty, weathered branches had endured by wresting moisture and nutrients from seemingly unwelcoming terrain, solving a puzzle beyond my reckoning. I sensed a kind of wisdom in its conservation of resources.

Developing a god complex never felt so good. Ever wonder what it may feel like to play god? To exhibit total control over an environment and its inhabitants using a series of god-like abilities? What kind of omnipotent being would you be? Kind and nurturing, or cruel and unforgiving? Available now via Steam and Oculus Rift/Rift S for $2.99, Agence, an interactive VR film developed by Transitional Forms and the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada, offers you the chance to answer these questions for yourself, granting you complete and total control over an adorable race of AI-powered creatures, "Agents," scattered across a series of tiny planetoids.

The square-faced, three-legged alien shoves and jostles to get at the enormous plant taking over its tiny planet. But each bite just makes the forbidden fruit grow bigger. Suddenly the plant's weight flips the whole sphere upside down and all the little creatures drop into space. Reach in and catch one! Agence, a short interactive VR film from Toronto-based studio Transitional Forms and the National Film Board of Canada, won't be breaking any box office records.

Gagliano previously won the first ever Emmy for a VR experience in 2015. Now he and producer David Oppenheim, who works at the National Film Board of Canada, are experimenting with a kind of storytelling they call dynamic film. "We see Agence as a sort of silent-era dynamic film," says Oppenheim. Agence was debuted at the Venice International Film Festival last month and was released this week to watch/play via Steam, an online video game platform. The basic plot revolves around a group of creatures and their appetite for a mysterious plant that appears on their planet: can they control their desire or will they destabilize the planet and get tipped to their doom?

I watch as he toys with the small group of lifeforms named Agents that curiously ramble around a tiny planet. They're odd three-legged things that go from goldfishing their way from one side of their tennis ball-sized existence to another to staring at me in bemusement to accidentally – and then angrily – bumping into each other. When the call ends, Gagliano – perhaps unknowingly – leaves the stream going for another 10 or so minutes. I sit, slightly transfixed, continuing to observe the Agents that go on existing in the absence of their newfound virtual deity. Agence is a hard thing to pin down. Gagliano, the piece's director, and Oppenheim, the creative producer, label it as a'looping' and'dynamic film', something that starts right back up again the moment it ends.

Plants are intelligent beings with profound wisdom to impart--if only we know how to listen. And Monica Gagliano knows how to listen. The evolutionary ecologist has done groundbreaking experiments suggesting plants have the capacity to learn, remember, and make choices. Gagliano, a senior research fellow at the University of Sydney in Australia, talks to plants. Plants summon her with instructions on how to live and work. Some of Gagliano's conversations happened in prophetic dreams, which led her to study with a shaman in Peru while tripping on psychoactive plants. Along with forest scientists like Suzanne Simard and Peter Wohlleben, Gagliano raises profound scientific and philosophical questions about the nature of intelligence and the possibility of "vegetal consciousness." But what's unusual about Gagliano is her willingness to talk about her experiences with shamans and traditional healers, along with her use of psychedelics. For someone who'd already received fierce pushback from other scientists, it was hardly a safe career move to reveal her personal experiences in otherworldly realms. Gagliano considers her explorations in non-Western ways of seeing the world to be part of her scientific work.

We've made great strides in the field of computer vision, to the point where self-driving cars equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) can effectively "see" their surroundings. But can we teach AI to "feel" something about what it sees? The folks at Getty Images think we can. At first blush, the idea that AI could "feel" something would seem to be pretty far-fetched. Feelings in general are closely intertwined with our human identities.

We've made great strides in the field of computer vision, to the point where self-driving cars equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) can effectively "see" their surroundings. But can we teach AI to "feel" something about what it sees? The folks at Getty Images think we can. At first blush, the idea that AI could "feel" something would seem to be pretty far-fetched. Feelings in general are closely intertwined with our human identities.

Do plants have a mind? "My work is not about metaphors at all," says Monica Gagliano. "When I talk about learning, I mean learning. When I talk about memory, I mean memory." Gagliano, an evolutionary ecologist, is talking about plants. She's adopted methods from behavioral experiments used to test animal intelligence and found that plants respond in a similar manner. The results of her research suggest plants might possess intelligence, memory and learning, although the mechanisms at play may be fundamentally different from those of humans and animals. Her book "Thus Spoke the Plant" will be out this fall. She's received equal amounts of attention and criticism from colleagues and the media. Her work was introduced to the public in an in-depth primer on plant intelligence that came out in The New Yorker in 2013 called, Intelligent Plant.