Scientists studying the surface of Mars recently found a piece of the rocky planet smiling back at them.
In an image shared Jan. 25 by The University of Arizona (opens in new tab) (UA), what appears to be the face of an enormous Martian teddy bear — complete with two beady eyes, a button nose and an upturned mouth — grins at the camera of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). According to UA, this photo of an uncanny assortment of geological formations was snapped on Dec. 12, 2022, as the MRO cruised roughly 156 miles (251 kilometers) above the Red Planet.
What’s really going on here? It’s likely just a broken-up hill in the center of an ancient crater, according to a statement posted to UA’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera blog.
“There’s a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure (the nose), two craters (the eyes), and a circular fracture pattern (the head),” the statement reads. “The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater.”
Viewers may see a bear’s face emerge from a collection of dusty rocks and crevices thanks to a phenomenon called pareidolia, a psychological tendency that leads people to find significance in random images or sounds.Related stories—Listen to a Martian dust storm engulf the Perseverance rover in eerie, world-first audio recording
—See Mars ‘peek out’ from behind the moon in stunning eclipse photo
—Colossal ‘planet killer’ asteroid sparked mega-tsunami on Mars, and now we know where it landed
Space provides endless fodder for pareidolia. Take this nebula (a random outflow of gas and dust) that sort of looks like the city-smashing monster Godzilla, or this Martian rock formation that NASA briefly mistook for the meeping Muppet Beaker.
Both Beaker and the newly discovered Martian teddy bear were imaged by HiRISE, which is one of six science instruments on board the MRO. HiRISE has been snapping pictures of the Red Planet from orbit since 2006 and, according to UA, is the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet.
More incredible images — and perhaps more cuddly-wuddly faces — surely await just over the Martian horizon.
Eli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.
USC secured the commitment of former Oregon defensive tackle pledge Tomuhini Topui on Tuesday, a source told ESPN, handing the Trojans their latest recruiting victory in the 2026 cycle over the Big Ten rival Ducks.
Topui, ESPN’s No. 3 defensive tackle and No. 72 overall recruit in the 2026 class, spent five and half months committed to Oregon before pulling his pledge from the program on March 27. Topui attended USC’s initial spring camp practice that afternoon, and seven days later the 6-foot-4, 295-pound defender gave the Trojans his pledge to become the sixth ESPN 300 defender in the program’s 2026 class.
Topui’s commitment gives USC its 10th ESPN 300 pledge this cycle — more than any other program nationally — and pulls a fourth top-100 recruit into the impressive defensive class the Trojans are building this spring. Alongside Topui, USC’s defensive class includes in-state cornerbacks R.J. Sermons (No. 26 in ESPN Junior 300) and Brandon Lockhart (No. 77); four-star outside linebacker Xavier Griffin (No. 27) out of Gainesville, Georgia; and two more defensive line pledges between Jaimeon Winfield (No. 143) and Simote Katoanga (No. 174).
The Trojans are working to reestablish their local recruiting presence in the 2026 class under newly hired general manager Chad Bowden. Topui not only gives the Trojans their 11th in-state commit in the cycle, but his pledge represents a potentially important step toward revamping the program’s pipeline to perennial local powerhouse Mater Dei High School, too.
Topui will enter his senior season this fall at Mater Dei, the program that has produced a long line of USC stars including Matt Leinart, Matt Barkley and Amon-Ra St. Brown. However, if Topui ultimately signs with the program later this year, he’ll mark the Trojans’ first Mater Dei signee since the 2022 cycle, when USC pulled three top-300 prospects — Domani Jackson, Raleek Brown and C.J. Williams — from the high school program based in Santa Ana, California.
Topui’s flip to the Trojans also adds another layer to a recruiting rivalry rekindling between USC and Oregon in the 2026 cycle.
Tuesday’s commitment comes less than two months after coach Lincoln Riley and the Trojans flipped four-star Oregon quarterback pledge Jonas Williams, ESPN’s No. 2 dual-threat quarterback in 2026. USC is expected to continue targeting several Ducks commits this spring, including four-star offensive tackle Kodi Greene, another top prospect out of Mater Dei.
GE Vernova has produced over half the turbines needed for SunZia Wind, which will be the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere when it comes online in 2026.
GE Vernova has manufactured enough turbines at its Pensacola, Florida, factory to supply over 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of the turbines needed for the $5 billion, 2.4 GW SunZia Wind, a project milestone. The wind farm will be sited in Lincoln, Torrance, and San Miguel counties in New Mexico.
At a ribbon-cutting event for Pensacola’s new customer experience center, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik noted that since 2023, the company has invested around $70 million in the Pensacola factory.
The Pensacola investments are part of the announcement GE Vernova made in January that it will invest nearly $600 million in its US factories and facilities over the next two years to help meet the surging electricity demands globally. GE Vernova says it’s expecting its investments to create more than 1,500 new US jobs.
Advertisement – scroll for more content
Vic Abate, CEO of GE Vernova Wind, said, “Our dedicated employees in Pensacola are working to address increasing energy demands for the US. The workhorse turbines manufactured at this world-class factory are engineered for reliability and scalability, ensuring our customers can meet growing energy demand.”
SunZia Wind and Transmission will create US history’s largest clean energy infrastructure project.
If you live in an area that has frequent natural disaster events, and are interested in making your home more resilient to power outages, consider going solar and adding a battery storage system. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –trusted affiliate link*
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.
Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, has filed for an initial public offering and plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange.
The prospectus, filed with the SEC on Tuesday, lays the groundwork for Circle’s long-anticipated entry into the public markets.
JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are serving as lead underwriters, and the company is reportedly aiming for a valuation of up to $5 billion. It will trade under ticker symbol CRCL.
It marks Circle’s second attempt at going public. A prior merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) collapsed in late 2022 amid regulatory challenges. Since then, Circle has made strategic moves to position itself closer to the heart of global finance, including the announcement last year that it would relocate its headquarters from Boston to One World Trade Center in New York.
Circle reported $1.68 billion in revenue and reserve income in 2024, up from $1.45 billion in 2023 and $772 million in 2022. The company reported net income last year of about $156 million., down from $268 million a year earlier.
Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro
A successful IPO would make Circle one of the most prominent pure-play crypto companies to list on a U.S. exchange. Coinbase went public through a direct listing in 2021 and has a market cap of about $44 billion.
Circle will be trying to hit the public markets at a volatile moment for tech stocks, with the Nasdaq having just wrapped up its steepest quarterly drop since 2022. The tech IPO market has been mostly dry for over three years, though there are signs of life. Online lender Klarna, digital health company Hinge Health and ticketing marketplace StubHub have all filed their prospectuses recently. Late last week, artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave held the biggest IPO for a U.S. venture-backed tech company since 2021. But the company scaled back the offering and the stock had a disappointing first two days of trading before rebounding on Tuesday.
Circle is best known as the issuer of USD Coin (USDC), the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization.
Pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar and backed by cash and short-term Treasury securities, USDC has roughly $60 billion in circulation and makes up about 26% of the total market cap for stablecoins, behind Tether‘s 67% dominance. Its market cap has grown 36% this year, however, compared with Tether’s 5% growth.
The company’s push into public markets reflects a broader moment for the crypto industry, which is enjoying political favor under a more crypto-friendly U.S. administration. The stablecoin sector specifically has been ramping up as the industry gains confidence that the crypto market will get its first piece of U.S. legislation passed and implemented this year, focusing on stablecoins. President Donald Trump has said he hopes lawmakers will send stablecoin legislation to his desk before Congress’s August recess.
Stablecoins’ growth could have investment implications for crypto exchanges like Robinhood and Coinbase as they become a bigger part of crypto trading and cross-border transfers. Coinbase also has an agreement with Circle to share 50% of the revenue of its USDC stablecoin, and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on the company’s most recent earnings call that it has a “stretch goal to make USDC the number 1 stablecoin.”
The stablecoin market has grown about 11% so far this year and about 47% in the past year, and has become a “systemically important” part of the crypto market, according to Bernstein. Historically, digital assets in this sector have been used for trading and as collateral in decentralized finance (DeFi), and crypto investors watch them closely for evidence of demand, liquidity and activity in the market.