Loughcrew Cairn: for a few days on and around the vernal equinox the rays of the rising Sun penetrate the passage and illuminate the back stone.
Just a quick note to mention that the Vernal Equinox (Spring Equinox) in the Northern hemisphere happens this morning, Thursday 20th March 2025, at 9.01 UTC (which is 9.01am local time here in Ireland, i.e. in about half an hour). Many people in the Northern hemisphere regard the Vernal Equinox as the first day of spring; of course in the Southern hemisphere, this is the Autumnal Equinox.
The date of the Vernal Equinox is often given as 21st March, but in fact it has only been on 21st March twice this century so far (2003 and 2007); it was on 20th March in 2008, has been on 20th March every spring from then until now, and will be until 2044 (when it will be on March 19th).
Anyway, people sometimes ask me how one can define the `equinox’ so precisely when surely it just refers to a day on which day and night are of equal length, implying that it’s a day not a specific time? The answer is that the equinox is defined by a specific event, the event in question being when the plane defined by Earth’s equator passes through the centre of the Sun’s disk (or, if you prefer, when the centre of the Sun passes through the plane defined by Earth’s equator). Day and night are not necessarily exactly equal on the equinox, but they’re the closest they get. From now until the Autumnal Equinox, days in the Northern hemisphere will be longer than nights, and the days will continue get longer until the Summer Solstice before beginning to shorten again.
Today is Q1 Day! This means the first public release of data from the full Euclid Survey. It’s only a very small portion (0.4%) of the survey – just 63 square degrees on the sky, while the full survey will be over 14,000 square degrees – but in contrast to earlier data releases, this has been passed through the full Euclid Ground Segment so it represents the true quality of the data we can expect for the rest of the mission. There are no actual cosmology results yet – there isn’t enough data to address the key science goals of Euclid – but there are some great illustrations of the many byproducts of a survey of this type.
Update: here’s one of the Cosmology Talks video by Shaun Hotchkiss with two members of the Euclid Consortium commenting on today’s data release:
As well as the splash of press coverage likely to follow the lifting of today’s embargo, there will be a deluge of Q1-related papers hit the arXiv on 20th March. You can find details here.
Here’s a gallery of pretty pictures released today. These are low resolution versions; try opening the image in a new tab to see it without the caption. You can find and explore higher resolution images on ESASky (see below). Picture credits are: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi for the first six images, then ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by M. Walmsley, M. Huertas-Company, J.-C. Cuillandre for the next two (bottom row); and ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; ESA/Gaia/DPAC; ESA/Planck Collaboration for the last one.
This is Euclid’s Deep Field Fornax. After only one observation, the space telescope already spotted 4.5 million galaxies in this field. In the coming years, Euclid will make 52 observations of this field to reach its full depth. This is a zoom-in of Euclid’s Deep Field North, showing the Cat’s Eye Nebula in the centre of the image, around 3000 light-years away. Also known as NGC 6543, this nebula is a visual ‘fossil record’ of the dynamics and late evolution of a dying star. This dying star is shedding its outer colourful shells. This is Euclid’s Deep Field North. After only one observation, the space telescope has already spotted more than ten million galaxies in this field. It is also very rich in Milky Way stars, as it is close to the Galactic plane. In the coming years, Euclid will make 32 observations of this field to reach its full depth. This is Euclid’s Deep Field South. After only one observation, the space telescope already spotted more than 11 million galaxies in this field. In the coming years, Euclid will make more observations of this field to reach its full depth. This image shows an area of Euclid’s Deep Field South. The area is zoomed in 16 times compared to the large mosaic.This image shows an area of Euclid’s Deep Field South. The area is zoomed in 70 times compared to the large mosaic.This image shows examples of galaxies in different shapes, all captured by Euclid during its first observations of the Deep Field areas. This image shows examples of gravitational lenses that Euclid captured in its first observations of the Deep Field areas. This graphic shows the location of the Euclid Deep Fields (yellow). This all-sky view is an overlay of ESA Gaia’s star map from its second data release in 2018 and ESA Planck’s dust map from 2014.
I’m taking the liberty to append the official ESA Press Release, which follows:
–o–
On 19 March 2025, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission released its first batch of survey data, including a preview of its deep fields. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies in different shapes and sizes take centre stage and show a glimpse of their large-scale organisation in the cosmic web.
Covering a huge area of the sky in three mosaics, the data release also includes numerous galaxy clusters, active galactic nuclei and transient phenomena, as well as the first classification survey of more than 380,000 galaxies and 500 gravitational lens candidates compiled through combined artificial intelligence and citizen science efforts. All of this sets the scene for the broad range of topics that the dark Universe detective Euclid is set to address with its rich dataset.
“Euclid shows itself once again to be the ultimate discovery machine. It is surveying galaxies on the grandest scale, enabling us to explore our cosmic history and the invisible forces shaping our Universe,” says ESA’s Director of Science, Prof. Carole Mundell.
“With the release of the first data from Euclid’s survey, we are unlocking a treasure trove of information for scientists to dive into and tackle some of the most intriguing questions in modern science. With this, ESA is delivering on its commitment to enable scientific progress for generations to come.”
Tracing out the cosmic web in Euclid’s deep fields
Euclid has scouted out the three areas in the sky where it will eventually provide the deepest observations of its mission. In just one week of observations, with one scan of each region so far, Euclid already spotted 26 million galaxies. The farthest of those are up to 10.5 billion light-years away. The fields also contain a small population of bright quasars that can be seen much farther away. In the coming years, Euclid will pass over these three regions tens of times, capturing many more faraway galaxies, making these fields truly ‘deep’ by the end of the nominal mission in 2030.
But the first glimpse of 63 square degrees of the sky, the equivalent area of more than 300 times the full Moon, already gives an impressive preview of the scale of Euclid’s grand cosmic atlas when the mission is complete. This atlas will cover one-third of the entire sky – 14 000 square degrees – in this high-quality detail.
“It’s impressive how one observation of the deep field areas has already given us a wealth of data that can be used for a variety of purposes in astronomy: from galaxy shapes, to strong lenses, clusters, and star formation, among others,” says Valeria Pettorino, ESA’s Euclid project scientist. “We will observe each deep field between 30 and 52 times over Euclid’s six year mission, each time improving the resolution of how we see those areas, and the number of objects we manage to observe. Just think of the discoveries that await us.”
“The full potential of Euclid to learn more about dark matter and dark energy from the large-scale structure of the cosmic web will be reached only when it has completed its entire survey. Yet the volume of this first data release already offers us a unique first glance at the large-scale organisation of galaxies, which we can use to learn more about galaxy formation over time,” says Clotilde Laigle, Euclid Consortium scientist and data processing expert based at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, France.
Humans and AI classify more than 380 000 galaxies
Euclid is expected to capture images of more than 1.5 billion galaxies over six years, sending back around 100 GB of data every day. Such an impressively large dataset creates incredible discovery opportunities, but huge challenges when it comes to searching for, analysing and cataloguing galaxies. The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, in combination with thousands of human citizen science volunteers and experts, is playing a critical role.
“We’re at a pivotal moment in terms of how we tackle large-scale surveys in astronomy. AI is a fundamental and necessary part of our process in order to fully exploit Euclid’s vast dataset,” says Mike Walmsley, Euclid Consortium scientist based at the University of Toronto, Canada, who has been heavily involved in astronomical deep learning algorithms for the last decade.
“We’re building the tools as well as providing the measurements. In this way we can deliver cutting-edge science in a matter of weeks, compared with the years-long process of analysing big surveys like these in the past,” he adds.
A major milestone in this effort is the first detailed catalogue of more than 380 000 galaxies, which have been classified according to features such as spiral arms, central bars, and tidal tails that infer merging galaxies. The catalogue is created by the ‘Zoobot’ AI algorithm. During an intensive one-month campaign on Galaxy Zoo last year, 9976 human volunteers worked together to teach Zoobot to recognise galaxy features by classifying Euclid images.
This first catalogue released today represents just 0.4% of the total number of galaxies of similar resolution expected to be imaged over Euclid’s lifetime. The final catalogue will present the detailed morphology of at least an order of magnitude more galaxies than ever measured before, helping scientists answer questions like how spiral arms form and how supermassive black holes grow.
“We’re looking at galaxies from inside to out, from how their internal structures govern their evolution to how the external environment shapes their transformation over time,” adds Clotilde.
“Euclid is a goldmine of data and its impact will be far-reaching, from galaxy evolution to the bigger-picture cosmology goals of the mission.”
Gravitational lensing discovery engine Light travelling towards us from distant galaxies is bent and distorted by normal and dark matter in the foreground. This effect is called gravitational lensing and it is one of the tools that Euclid uses to reveal how dark matter is distributed through the Universe.
When the distortions are very apparent, it is known as ‘strong lensing’, which can result in features such as Einstein rings, arcs, and multiple imaged lenses.
With the help of these models, Euclid will capture some 7000 candidates in the major cosmology data release planned for the end of 2026, and in the order of 100 000 galaxy-galaxy strong lenses by the end of the mission, around 100 times more than currently known.
Euclid will also be able to measure ‘weak’ lensing, when the distortions of background sources are much smaller. Such subtle distortions can only be detected by analysing large numbers of galaxies in a statistical way. In the coming years, Euclid will measure the distorted shapes of billions of galaxies over 10 billion years of cosmic history, thus providing a 3D view of the distribution of dark matter in our Universe.
“Euclid is very quickly covering larger and larger areas of the sky thanks to its unprecedented surveying capabilities,” says Pierre Ferruit, ESA’s Euclid mission manager, who is based at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Spain, home of the Astronomy Science Archive where Euclid’s data will be made available.
“This data release highlights the incredible potential we have by combining the strengths of Euclid, AI, citizen science and experts into a single discovery engine that will be essential in tackling the vast volume of data returned by Euclid.”
Notes to editors
As of 19 March 2025, Euclid has observed about 2000 square degrees, approximately 14% of the total survey area (14 000 square degrees). The three deep fields together comprise 63.1 square degrees.
Euclid ‘quick’ releases, such as the one of 19 March, are of selected areas, intended to demonstrate the data products to be expected in the major data releases that follow, and to allow scientists to sharpen their data analysis tools in preparation. The mission’s first cosmology data will be released to the community in October 2026. Data accumulated over additional, multiple passes of the deep field locations will be included in the 2026 release.
The three deep field previews can now be explored in ESASky from 19 March 12:00 CET onwards:
Euclid was launched in July 2023 and started its routine science observations on 14 February 2024. In November 2023 and May 2024, the world got its first glimpses of the quality of Euclid’s images, and in October 2024 the first piece of its great map of the Universe was released.
Euclid is a European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from its Member States and NASA. The Euclid Consortium – consisting of more than 2000 scientists from 300 institutes in 15 European countries, the USA, Canada and Japan – is responsible for providing the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the construction of the satellite and its service module, with Airbus Defence and Space chosen to develop the payload module, including the telescope. NASA provided the detectors of the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP. Euclid is a medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme.
Today is going to be a very busy day on the cosmology front – with the Euclid Q1 Data Release coming out at 11am GMT – but I’ll start off by sharing news of final data release (DR6) by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. This was announced yesterday and includes former colleagues at Cardiff University, so congratulations to them and all concerned. Here is a pretty picture showing one of the beautiful cosmic microwave background polarization and intensity maps:
Intensity and Polarization maps from ACT: arXiv:2503.14451
There are three related preprints on the arXiv today:
There’s a lot to digest in these papers but a quick skim of the abstracts gives two pertinent points. First, from the second paper:
We find that the ACT angular power spectra estimated over 10,000 deg2, and measured to arcminute scales in TT, TE and EE, are well fit by the sum of CMB and foregrounds, where the CMB spectra are described by the ΛCDM model. Combining ACT with larger-scale Planck data, the joint P-ACT dataset provides tight limits on the ingredients, expansion rate, and initial conditions of the universe.
They also find that, when combined with CMB lensing from ACT and Planck, and baryon acoustic oscillation data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI Y1), the ACT data give a “low” value for the Hubble constant: H0=68.22 ± 0.36 km s-1 Mpc-1.
The third paper also says
In general, models introduced to increase the Hubble constant or to decrease the amplitude of density fluctuations inferred from the primary CMB are not favored by our data.
It is my sad duty to pass on the sad news of the death of Sergei Shandarin, who passed away yesterday at the age of 77. He had been suffering from cancer for some time and had been undergoing chemotherapy, alas to no avail. Last week he was moved onto palliative care and we knew he would soon be leaving us. I was going to post something last night when I heard that he had died, but I just couldn’t find the words. I send my deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues who are grieving.
(The picture on the left shows Sergei in 2006; I’m grateful to John Peacock for letting me use it here.)
Sergei Fyodor Shandarin was born in 1947 and gained his PhD at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1974. He was a student of the great physicist Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich (whom I blogged about here). Sergei moved to the USA in 1991 to take up a Professorship at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, where he remained until his retirement. More recently he and his wife Vika moved to Toronto to be closer to his daughter Anya and their grandchildren.
Sergei’s main research interests were the dynamics and statistics of the “Cosmic Web” – the supercluster- void network in spacial distribution of galaxies. In particular, he was interested in nonlinear dynamics of gravitational instability, which is the major mechanism for the formation of a large variety of objects in the universe, and in geometrical and topological statistical descriptors of the distribution of mass and galaxies in space.
These topics overlap considerably with my own and I was delighted to have the opportunity to work with Sergei in 1992 when I was invited by Adrian Melott as a visitor to Lawrence fro about a month. My first impression of Sergei was that he was a bit scary – in that typical Russian physicist sort of way – but I soon discovered that, beneath his initially rather fierce demeanour, he was actually a kind and friendly person with a fine sense of humour. I remember that research visit very well, in fact, not only because of Adrian’s and Sergei’s hospitality, but also because the project we did together went so well that we not only completed the research, but I returned to London with a completed manuscript; the paper that resulted was published in early 1993.
After that I kept in touch with Sergei mainly at conferences. Last night after I heard the news that he has passed away I brought a box of old photographs down from the loft and rummaged around for some pictures. Here are two from a meeting in India in 1994, in which you can see Sergei very much in the centre of things:
The picture on the left shows: (standing, L to R) Francis Bernardeau, Paolo Catelan, Sergei, ?*, Paul R. Shapiro; (crouching) Enzo Branchini and Bernard Jones. The picture on the right has the addition of, among others, Varun Sahni (between Paul Shapiro and Bernard Jones), Dick Bond (with his arm on Sergei’s shoulder) and Sabino Matarrese (front left); I’m on the right of the front row. I remember these pictures were taken on an excursion from Pune to see the historic caves and temples at Ajanta and Ellora.
(*I think the unidentified person might be Lars Hernquist, but I’m not sure: I’d be grateful for any information.)
I also particular remember meeting up with Sergei at meetings in Los Angeles, Nice, Valencia (the meeting at which the first picture was taken). and most recently in Estonia (for a meeting to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Zel’dovich). He was always up for scientific discussions, but also liked to relax with a drink or several; he also liked to watch football.
Sergei was a wonderful scientist as well as a warm and generous human being who was held in a very high regard by the cosmological community worldwide. We will all miss him terribly.
The Ideas of March are come, so it’s time for another update of papers published at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published two papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 27 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 262.
Here is the overlay, which you can click on to make larger if you wish:
You can read the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.
The other paper published this week is “Exploring Symbolic Regression and Genetic Algorithms for Astronomical Object Classification” by Fabio Ricardo Llorella (Universidad Internacional de la Rioja, Spain) & José Antonio Cebrian (Universidad Laboral de Córdoba, Spain), which came out on Thursday 13th March. This one is in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies and it discusses the classification of astronomical objects in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey SDSS-17 dataset using a combination of Symbolic Regressiion and Genetic Algorithms.
Time for the weekly Saturday morning update of papers published at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published four new papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 25 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 260.
In chronological order of publication, the four papers published this week, with their overlays, are as follows. You can click on the images of the overlays to make them larger should you wish to do so.
The first paper to report is “Partition function approach to non-Gaussian likelihoods: information theory and state variables for Bayesian inference” by Rebecca Maria Kuntz, Heinrich von Campe, Tobias Röspel, Maximilian Philipp Herzog, and Björn Malte Schäfer, all from the University of Heidelberg (Germany). It was published on Wednesday March 5th 2025 in the folder Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics and it discusses the relationship between information theory and thermodynamics with applications to Bayesian inference in the context of cosmological data sets.
You can read the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.
The second paper of the week is “The Cosmological Population of Gamma-Ray Bursts from the Disks of Active Galactic Nuclei” by Hoyoung D. Kang & Rosalba Perna (Stony Brook), Davide Lazzati (Oregon State), and Yi-Han Wang (U. Nevada), all based in the USA. It was published on Thursday 6th March 2025 in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. The authors use models for GRB electromagnetic emission to simulate the cosmological occurrence and observational detectability of both long and short GRBs within AGN disks
You can find the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.
The next two papers were published on Friday 7th March 2025.
The official published version can be found on the arXiv here.
The last paper to report this week is “The DESI-Lensing Mock Challenge: large-scale cosmological analysis of 3×2-pt statistics” by Chris Blake (Swinburne, Australia) and 43 others; this is a large international collaboration and I apologize for not being able to list all the authors here!
This one is in the folder marked Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics; it presents an end-to-end simulation study designed to test the analysis pipeline for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Year 1 galaxy redshift dataset combined with weak gravitational lensing from other surveys.
Usually I disapprove of using a wine glass for any purpose other than drinking wine, but here’s a very neat short video by Phil Marshall explaining how you can use a one to simulate a strong gravitational lens such as the system that produced the wonderful Einstein ring recently discovered by Euclid. More specifically it shows how perfect alignment leads to a ring whereas other configurations can produce multiple images or arcs.
If you’re planning to try this at home, please remember to empty your glass beforehand.
It’s time once more for the regular Saturday morning update of papers published at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Things have picked up a bit after a quiet couple of weeks. Since the last update we have published three new papers which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 21 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 256. We’re now officially a byte-sized journal!
In chronological order of publication, the three papers published this week, with their overlays, are as follows. You can click on the images of the overlays to make them larger should you wish to do so.
The first paper to report is “Baryon-free S_8 tension with stage IV cosmic shear surveys” by Ottavia Truttero, Joe Zuntz, Alkistis Pourtsidou and Naomi Robertson (all based at the University of Edinburgh, UK). This paper is in the folder marked Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics and it was published on Monday 24th February 2025. It presents a study of the effect of baryonic feedback in the determination of cosmological parameters and the possibility of using large-scale clustering information to mitigate its effects
Here is the overlay:
You can read the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.
It appears in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies and it describes a method for Looking for a ‘kink’ in the power spectrum of galaxy images that might indicate at some transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional turbulence on the scale of the disk thickness. This paper was published on Wednesday 26th February 2025.
Here is the overlay:
You can find the officially accepted version of this paper on arXiv here.
The final paper, also published on Wednesday 26th February in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies is “The evolution of galaxy morphology from redshift z=6 to 3: Mock JWST observations of galaxies in the ASTRID simulation” by Patrick LaChance (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; hereafter CMU), Rupert Croft (CMU), Yueying Ni (CfA Harvard), Nianyi Chen (CMU), Tiziana Di Matteo (CMU), and Simeon Bird (UC Riverside); all based in the USA. This paper describes an An analysis of a large sample of mock observations of JWST galaxies obtained from the ASTRID simulation revealing how galaxy properties are expected to evolve with redshift.
Here is the overlay:
The official published version can be found on the arXiv here.
That brings us up to the end of February 2025. I had a delve through the archives and found that by the same stage last year we published 17 papers compared to this year’s 21. It’s small numbers, of course, but we’re up about 23% so far this year.
That’s all for this week. I’ll do another update next Saturday.
Interested in learning a little bit about the ideas behind string theory? Here’s a short video that tries to explain the basics in a thought-provoking way. It features three main characters: The Universe Keeper Renata, inspired by Russian-American physicist Renata Kallosh, the quizzical Wolfie, inspired by the Austrian Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, and the inquisitive Albie, inspired by Albert Einstein.
See what you make of it…
(One of the creators of this video is my PhD student Kay Lehnert, who has just given a departmental seminar in which he mentioned the video.)
I got home from a busy day on campus to find the 21st February issue of the Times Literary Supplement had landed on my doormat having arrived today, 27th February. It used to take a couple of weeks for my subscription copy to reach Ireland but recently the service has improved. Intriguingly, the envelope it comes in is postmarked Bratislava…
But I digress. This is the cover:
The text below the title “Light on darkness” under the graphic reads “Roger Penrose, discoverer of black holes, by Jennan Ismael”. Nice though it is to see science featured in the Times Literary Supplement for a change and much as I admire Roger Penrose, it is unreasonable to describe him as “the discoverer of black holes”.
A black hole represents a region of space-time where the action of gravityis sufficiently strong that light cannot escape. The idea that such a phenomenon might exist dates back to John Michell, an English clergyman, in 1783, and later by Pierre-Simon Laplace but black holes are most commonly associated with Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Indeed, one of the first exact solutions of Einstein’s equations to be found describes such an object. The famous Schwarzschild solution was obtained in 1915 by Karl Schwarzschild, who died soon after on the Eastern front in the First World War. The solution corresponds to a spherically-symmetric distribution of matter, and it was originally intended that it could form the basis of a mathematical model for a star. It was soon realised, however that for an object of any mass M there is a critical radius (Rs, the Schwarzschild radius) such that if all the mass is squashed inside Rs then no light can escape. In terms of the mass M, velocity of light c, and Newton’s constant G, the critical radius is given by Rs = 2GM/c2 . For the mass of the Earth, the critical radius is only 1cm, whereas for the Sun it is about 3km.
Since the pioneering work of Schwarzschild, research on black holes has been intense and other kinds of mathematical solutions have been obtained. For example, the Kerr solution describes a rotating black hole and the Reissner -Nordstrom solution corresponds to a black hole with an electric charge. Various theorems have also been demonstrated relating to the so-called `no-hair’ conjecture: that black holes give very little outward sign of what is inside.
Some people felt that the Schwarzschild solution was physically unrealistic as it required a completely spherical object, but Roger Penrose showed mathematically that the existence of a trapped surface was a generic consequence of gravitational collapse, the result that won him the Nobel Prize in 2020. His work did much to convince scientists of the physical reality of black holes, and he deserved his Nobel Prize, but I don’t think it is fair to say he “discovered” them.
I would say that, as is the case for discoveries in many branches of science, there isn’t just one “discoverer” of black holes: there were important contributions by many people along the way.
P.S. If you want to limit the application of the word “discovery” to observations then I think that the discovery of black holes is down to Paul Murdin and Louise Webster who identified the first really plausible candidate for a black hole in Cygnus X-1, way back in 1971…
P.P.S. The term “Black Hole” was, as far as I know, coined by John Wheeler in 1967.
The views presented here are personal and not necessarily those of my employer (or anyone else for that matter).
Feel free to comment on any of the posts on this blog but comments may be moderated; anonymous comments and any considered by me to be vexatious and/or abusive and/or defamatory will not be accepted. I do not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with the opinions or statements of any information or other content in the comments on this site and do not in any way guarantee their accuracy or reliability.