Messier 74, nicknamed "the Phantom Galaxy" for its dimness, comes to life when Chandra revealed its X-ray activity (purple) alongside observations from Hubble and Webb.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; IR NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team; Image Processing: N. Wolk and K. Arcand
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory faces budget cuts that may end its mission.
The Chandra X-ray Observatory has been orbiting Earth for 25 years, peering at the universe in X-ray light that's invisible to the human eye.
Through its stunning images, the telescope has revealed that the cosmos is teeming with black holes, discovered direct evidence for the existence of dark matter, and spotted the light of colliding neutron stars that warped space-time.
Check out some of Chandra's best photos, including collaborations with the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes.
The Chandra X-ray Observatory is one of NASA's flagship space telescopes.
The Tarantula Nebula, imaged by the Chandra and Webb space telescopes. Chandra's X-ray observations (in royal blue and purple) reveal gas that was heated to millions of degrees by shock waves from the wind of massive stars.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L. Townsley et al.; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/JWST ERO Production Team
The observatory cost NASA about $2.2 billion to build and launch, and it has paid off.
"For many years it was the most productive mission in NASA's program if measured in publications/dollar spent," Thomas Zurbuchen, who was the Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate from 2016 to 2022, told Business Insider in an email.
But in its budget request for the 2025 fiscal year, NASA slashed Chandra's funding from $68 million to $41 million.
Combined data from Chandra and Webb revealed new details of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/CalTech; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand
Over the ensuing years, the budget proposes to give the observatory $26.6 million annually until a drastic plummet to $5.2 million in 2029.
That budget plan is not enough to keep the telescope running at full capacity.
Chandra revealed X-ray emissions (pink) on Uranus for the first time, either from its rings, from auroras on the planet, or from its atmosphere scattering the sun's X-rays.
X-ray: NASA/CXO/University College London/W. Dunn et al; Infrared: W.M. Keck Observatory
In fact, Chandra's operating team says that's just the amount it would need to decommission the telescope and end its operations.
The observatory still makes new discoveries, like the record-setting black hole in this image.
The James Webb and Chandra telescopes teamed up to produce this X-ray image of the most distant black hole ever discovered.
Chandra also complements Webb and Hubble photos by imaging ultra-hot material that's invisible to those telescopes.
The "Pillars of Creation," a formation of dusty clouds where new stars are born, as imaged by the James Webb and Chandra space telescopes.
X-ray: NASA/CXO/SAO; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image processing: L. Frattare.
For example, Chandra revealed a sea of young stars burning bright in X-rays across the above Webb image of the iconic Pillars of Creation, a cloud formation constantly birthing new stars.
"Often you get like a gas cloud that's glowing, and then there's this X-ray source in the middle that's pumping the energy into it that's causing it to glow," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who leads science data systems for Chandra, told Business Insider. "If you don't have Chandra, you can't see that. So you're missing a big part of the story."
For instance, take the bright X-ray footprint at the center of the Milky Way in this image.
Chandra spotted Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Chandra is also key to studying explosive, fleeting cosmic events like supernovae or the collisions of dead stars.
Here Chandra made the first X-ray detection of a gravitational wave source — a collision of neutron stars called GW170817.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Northwestern U./W. Fong & R. Margutti et al. & NASA/GSFC/E. Troja et al.; Optical:NASA/STScI
The telescope clearly captured the X-ray emissions of a neutron-star collision in 2017. It was the first — and, so far, only — time that anyone had seen the light from a violent cosmic collision that sent gravitational waves (ripples in space-time) through Earth.
Scientists expect to discover thousands more such mysterious flash-in-a-pan events with the advent of the Rubin Observatory, which is set to begin scanning the entire southern sky next year.
Rubin will open an entirely new field of astronomy.
Chandra joined forces with other telescopes to map this remnant of a supernova explosion that suddenly appeared in the night sky 800 years ago.
X-ray: (Chandra) NASA/CXC/U. Manitoba/C. Treyturik, (XMM-Newton) ESA/C. Treyturik; Optical: (Pan-STARRS) NOIRLab/MDM/Dartmouth/R. Fesen; Infrared: (WISE) NASA/JPL/Caltech/; Image Processing: Univ. of Manitoba/Gilles Ferrand and Jayanne English
When Rubin discovers an explosion unfolding rapidly in the distant universe, telescopes worldwide will have to turn their lens to capture the phenomenon in visible light, infrared, radio, gamma rays, and X-rays. Without Chandra, a piece of the puzzle will be missing.
Losing Chandra would be "a devastating blow" and "a disaster" for X-ray astronomy, astrophysicists said after the budget announcement, according to Space.com.
NASA had to trim down somewhere.
A mosaic of the center of the Milky Way, using data from Chandra (shown in orange, green, and purple) and the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa (gray).
Congress put a cap on its spending for 2024 and 2025, slashing its science budget by half a billion dollars while the agency invests more in its Artemis moon program.
In the astrophysics division, most missions escaped the cuts this year. In fact, plans for the ambitious alien-life-hunting Habitable Worlds Observatory for the 2040s got a boost. To offset that, NASA proposed a 5% cut to Hubble's budget and the extreme cuts to Chandra.
NASA's budget document suggested Chandra should scale down to "minimal operations."
Chandra captured the two tails of superheated gas (in blue) that this galaxy leaves behind as it barrels through space at 1.5 million miles per hour.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Alabama, Huntsville/M. Sun et al.; H-&alpha: ESO/MUSE; Optical/IR: NASA/STScI/HST
The document said the spacecraft has degraded over time, requiring more intense management to keep its temperatures low enough to operate. That complicates scheduling and increases mission costs beyond what NASA can afford, the document says.
Patrick Slane, director of the Chandra X-ray Center, took issue with that explanation.
Chandra revealed mysterious clumps throughout the Tycho supernova remnant.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIKEN & GSFC/T. Sato et al; Optical: DSS
In a letter to Chandra astronomers, he wrote that "there has been only one instance in which the cost has increased to help manage temperatures," and that was a 1% increase in costs so the project could hire two additional people for the flight team.
"I'm unclear whether I still have a job in October, or whether I can keep it one more year," McDowell said.
This Chandra image of a galaxy cluster shows a clear separation between the normal matter seen as hot gas in X-rays (pink) and where astronomers find most of the mass in the cluster (blue). The blue regions must be dark matter.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.; Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.
If the current budget proposal holds, and Chandra has to begin its end when the 2025 fiscal year starts in October, that will likely lead to layoffs.
That's another crisis for X-ray astronomy. If Chandra ends, many jobs in the field will disappear until NASA launches its next major space-based X-ray telescope, Lynx, in about a decade at the earliest.
"There are just simply not going to be people who can do this," X-ray astronomer David Pooley told USA Today.
Astronomers are pushing to save Chandra.
The Kepler supernova remnant is the remains of a white dwarf that exploded after undergoing a thermonuclear explosion. Chandra (blue) shows a powerful blast wave that ripped through space after the detonation.
During April, Chandra is undergoing a review to assess its options within the new budget, including any possibilities for restructuring the mission to avoid its end.
Astronomers are taking the opportunity to push for NASA to amend its proposal, writingletters to NASA leadership.
NASA's 2025 budget won't be final until Congress approves it later this year.
Chandra's data (pink) reveals over a dozen individual X-ray sources, mostly young stars, in the "Cosmic Cliffs" formation of the Carina Nebula.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. Observ. Munich/T. Preibisch et al.; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
"We will continue to strongly make the case for the continued full support of Chandra, which the astrophysics community recognizes as a highly functioning facility that provides transformational science and crucial support to many of NASA's primary astrophysics goals," Slane wrote.
As a high school jock, I couldn't imagine not playing sports in college.
But at my Division III college, I was forced to focus too much on my sports.
After injuring myself for life, I regret being a college athlete.
I love sports. If you give me a ball and an open field, I'll play for hours. Give me wings and a TV with a game, that's all I need.
My love for sports started when I was young, and I developed my passion as a high school jock. I decided to continue that passion in college when I enrolled in a Division III school. There, I played both soccer and track and field.
But I didn't love my time playing sports in college. In fact, I wish I hadn't played in college at all.
Collegiate athletics was less competitive than I thought
On my first day of soccer preseason my freshman year, I was nervous my new team would eat me for lunch. But once we scrimmaged, I discovered I was among the best players. I hadn't expected it.
I thought playing in college meant playing at a higher level of competition than I ever had, but some players on my team would have ridden the bench at my high school.
I chalked up the level of play to Division III, but I at least thought if the play wasn't as competitive as I had hoped, the team would be more committed since we were actively choosing to continue our athletic careers. But there was never any intensity in our drills or fire in our practices.
On my team, soccer felt more like an unwanted activity than a conscious commitment. We couldn't even keep people from quitting throughout the season.
I put too much pressure on myself and ruined my college experience
As captain of the soccer and track and field teams — which finished poorly in the conference standings — I felt I had to do something to improve us.
And I tried, but the truth is I tried too hard and gave too much to my teams. That means I didn't study abroad in college because I played sports every semester. I didn't make deep friendships with people in my classes because I had a schedule that didn't allow it. I didn't even party the way I should have. I sacrificed my last chance just to be a kid trying new things and meeting new people because I was too worried about giving my best to a college athletic department that wasn't giving its best to me. I wish I understood that leading my peers wasn't my responsibility.
I spent half my nights in college lying wide awake, replaying practice repeatedly in my head. My worries were never about soccer or track. Instead, I agonized over intense personal dynamics that I was too young and inexperienced to navigate.
Naively, I thought all of this would lead to a better job. But in the corporate world, no one cared about my leadership experience of captaining two college teams. Once I became a manager at a Fortune 500 company, I was dogged by the turbulence and failure I had experienced as a college athlete and struggled to find the confidence to lead a team in the real world.
The physical cost also wasn't worth it
Because I felt a responsibility to improve our teams, I physically pushed myself too hard. During my freshman soccer season, I played every minute of every game and took nearly all our free kicks.
I had pain, but I played through it. I ended up with an overuse injury that nearly ended my athletic career, cost me my sophomore year of soccer and track, and caused me to take toxic amounts of ibuprofen.
After graduation, I never got to compete in the triathlons I always imagined I would because my injury still flares up. I've had to pick hiking over marathons. I've chosen running with my kids over playing in adult soccer leagues. I've found a way to have an active life, but not a pain-free one, and I never will.
I wish I didn't do college sports
As a mom, I don't know exactly what I would tell my daughters if either one of them said they wanted to play in college. I probably would tell them about my experiences and allow them to make an educated choice.
I know there is more than one way to keep playing, and it doesn't have to be at the collegiate level. Local adult leagues, even semi-pro could have been a better option for me, and someday may be a better option for my children.
Either way, playing in college is an experience, but mine cost more than it should.
Dropbox has about 2,600 employees and is 90% remote.
Drew Angerer/Getty
Dropbox's CEO said business executives are pushing too hard to get people to return to the office.
"They keep mashing the go back to 2019 button, and they see it's not working," Drew Houston told The Verge.
He said workers value remote work and not being tied to a tech hub more than lavish office perks.
Dropbox cofounder and CEO Drew Houston said he views his employees like customers, and that means giving them what they want — which isn't in-person work.
"We will support however they want to gather," Houston said in a new interview with The Verge. "But we're finding that these retreats and off-sites and things like that are often a lot more effective than asking people to commute."
Houston said other business leaders are making the wrong move by forcing employees back to the office. Many companies are pushing employees to return to office in a hybrid structure, including giants like Google, Apple, and Amazon.
"They keep mashing the go back to 2019 button, and they see it's not working," Houston said in the interview, speaking generally about return-to-office mandates. "Then they just push harder, and then you have this really toxic relationship."
He compared returning to the office to returning to movie theaters or malls. It may have been cool for a time and people might still occasionally want to watch a big movie like "Top Gun" at the cinema, he said, "but the world has moved on."
The CEO said the reason it used to be so easy to get people to the office was because they didn't have a choice. A lot of CEOs today don't understand that flexibility wasn't an option in the past, Houston said.
Dropbox implemented a "virtual first" model in April 2020 based on studying remote-first companies. Dropbox now has about 2,600 employees and is 90% remote, the CEO said. The remaining 10% in-person programming and providing space for people to self-organize in hubs.
A Dropbox spokesperson said if a team is looking for team-building, they can do an offsite gathering or retreat. Retreats usually last two and a half days and include workshops and strategy sessions with team-building activities.
A team recently did an offsite gathering in San Francisco, which included a walking tour of Chinatown, according to the spokesperson.
Dropbox Studios are designed to create human connection.
Aaron Wojack
In San Francisco, Dropbox converted its offices into studios, which are collaborative spaces designed for human connection. The CEO said utilization has been low for these spaces.
Transitioning to virtual first meant getting rid of the "super vibrant in-person culture" Dropbox had before, the CEO said. The company had a fancy office with Michelin-star chefs, a full coffee bar, a karaoke studio, and an Equinox-like gym.
In the midst of an AI-talent war, some have questioned Dropbox's decision to go 90% virtual, especially when competitors like Google still offer elaborate office perks to its employees. But Houston said people voted "voted with their feet that they value flexibility a lot more than snacks in the office."
"At home, you can set up your environment exactly how you want it and not just have snacks but your dog and something that's totally purpose-built for you," he added.
The move ended up being good for recruiting talent, the CEO said. Houston said 75% of employees used to be in the big tech hubs and now it's about 50%.
"That means we've gotten all these awesome people in these places who never would've joined Dropbox before at all levels," Houston said in the interview. "Places like Boston, LA, and Chicago went from zero people working there to now all those places have 100 or hundreds."
The 90% virtual model also avoids the "worst of both worlds," which according to Houston is the two or three-day hybrid compromise.
The CEO said one of the problems with hybrid work is it puts employees on a leash to tied to the nearby office space. That means you can't live outside commuting distance and you're still spending a lot of time in transit, which is "totally dead time," Houston said.
The CEO said the market will reveal whether going back to the office is the best way to get great talent — but he doesn't think it is.
An ex-TikTok worker claims the company hid the involvement of ByteDance, Fortune reported.
Evan Turner said he had check-ins with a ByteDance exec in Beijing and never met his American boss.
The claims come as TikTok fights legislation forcing a sale of the Chinese-owned app.
A former TikTok employee said the company tried to hide the involvement of Chinese owner ByteDance in his work by assigning him to a manager in Seattle, whom he never met.
Evan Turner, a former senior data scientist, told Fortune he was being managed by a Beijing-based ByteDance executive when he joined the company.
Turner worked at TikTok from April to September 2022, Fortune reported. He claimed he was placed under the management of an American manager in Seattle later in his employment. However, he said he was told in a video call that he would actually still work under the Beijing manager, the report said.
He added that he never met the American manager and claimed the opaque management structure differed from what executives at TikTok maintained about it operating independently from ByteDance.
Turner told Fortune that he met with the Beijing-based executive weekly, which consisted of meetings under seven minutes to report on his progress with tasks.
In a comment to Fortune, a TikTok spokesperson disputed the claims from Turner and the outlet's other sources in broad terms."These are completely unfounded assertions brought forth by disgruntled ex-employees," the person said. "It is incredible that Fortune would solely rely on individuals with clear motives and agendas to spread anonymous lies and distortions."
TikTok didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Turner was unable to be reached for comment by BI.
The claims come as TikTok and ByteDance try to fend off legislation aimed at forcing a sale.
TikTok is facing a ban in app stores unless ByteDance sells it to non-Chinese owners. A new bill proposing the ban was passed last month by the House.
US lawmakers said in a statement announcing the bill that apps like TikTok are "controlled" by foreign players and "pose an unacceptable risk to US national security." But TikTok has insisted that it's run independently and has tried to distance itself from ByteDance.
Tesla layoffs reportedly impacted workers in China in addition to the US.
JOHN THYS / Getty
Elon Musk announced a 10% Tesla workforce reduction in an email to staff on Sunday night.
The carmaker denied reports they'd cut roughly 25% of their Berlin workers.
But some members of its China sales team have been made redundant, Reuters reported.
Tesla's layoffs will also reportedly impact its international workers.
On Sunday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company planned to cut "more than 10%" of its workforce, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider. Workers who'd been laid off in the US were notified that same night via their personal emails that they were terminated, effective immediately, and had been locked out of Tesla's internal systems, several laid-off workers told BI.
And the cuts reportedly don't just apply to US staff. Some members of China's sales team have also been laid off as part of the company's recent actions, two sources told Reuters. It's unclear how many people are affected.
But its German division has denied reports from local outlets that the layoffs impacted about a quarter of the company's 12,000 workers at its factory in Berlin, according to Reuters.
Tesla has major manufacturing footprints in both China and Germany. Ahead of the layoffs, the carmaker employed over 140,000 people globally, including about 20,000 in China. The Chinese EV market is the largest in the world and Musk has said in the past that Tesla faces competition from Chinese EV companies.
On Monday, some US Tesla employees were told during an all-hands meeting there would be further cuts outside North America, two sources told BI. Three other workers said they'd been told by managers that workers outside the region would be notified of layoffs in the days following the US notices of termination that were sent out on Sunday night.
A spokesperson for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk said in the companywide email that there had been a "duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas" due to the company's rapid growth, according to a memo viewed by BI.
Over the weekend, US Tesla workers had speculated that layoffs were on the horizon, as rumors that some managers had been told to provide upper management with a list of names spread throughout the company.
Separately, Tesla started instructing managers in February to identify which roles at the company were business-critical and had temporarily delayed performance reviews.
Tesla's recent round of cuts is the company's first large-scale layoffs since it eliminated a few dozen workers at its plant in Buffalo, New York, in February 2023 and 10% of its salaried workforce in 2022.
Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email at gkay@businessinsider.com
One user on X pointed that out, calling the review "almost unethical" for "potentially killing someone else's nascent project" in a post reposted over 2,000 times.
But it highlights the power of Brownlee's reviews. Earlier this year, a negative video of Fisker's Ocean SUV by Brownlee also made waves on social media.
Mario Tama/Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
Critical reviews in the age of innovation raise some interesting questions.
To be clear, there was nothing wrong with Brownlee's review. Humane's AI Pin costs $700. Watering down his review to ease the blow would be a disservice to the millions of fans relying on his perspective before making such a significant purchase.
Too often, companies view potential customers as an extension of their research and development. They are happy to sell a product that is still a work in progress on the promise they'll fix it on the fly. ("Updates are coming!")
But in a world of instant gratification, it can be hard to appreciate that innovation takes time.
Even Apple can run into this conundrum. Take the Apple Vision Pro. Reviewers are impressed with the technology behind the much-anticipated gadget — but are still struggling to figure out what they can do with it. Maybe, over time, that will get sorted out.
It's also worth remembering how cool tech can be, as Business Insider's Peter Kafka wrote following a bunch of trips in Waymo's software-powered taxis in San Francisco. Sure, robotaxis have their issues, Peter said, but they also elicit that "golly-gee-can-you-believe-it" sense.
As for Humane, America loves a comeback story. Just look at "Cyberpunk 2077." The highly anticipated video game had a disastrous launch in 2020, but redeemed itself three years later, ultimately winning a major award.
Still, Humane shouldn't get a pass for releasing a product that didn't seem ready for primetime, according to the reviews.
And its issue could be bigger than glitchy tech. Humane's broader thesis about reducing screen time might not be as applicable. As BI's Katie Notopolous put it: "I love staring at my iPhone."
3 things in markets
REUTERS/Danny Moloshok
1. Goldman finally strikes gold. After a rough stretch, the vaunted investment bank crushed earnings expectations, sending its stock soaring. A big tailwind, according to CEO David Solomon, is AI spawning "enormous opportunities" for the bank.
2. Buy the dip, Wedbush says. Last week's drop among tech stocks shouldn't scare away investors, according to Wedbush. A strong earnings report, buoyed by the ongoing AI craze, should keep them soaring, strategists said. But JPMorgan doesn't see it that way, saying prices are already stretched.
3. China's economy beat analysts' expectations. The country's GDP grew 5.3% in the first quarter of 2024, according to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday. It's a welcome return to form for the world's second-largest economy, although below-par new home and retail sales remain a cause for concern.
3 things in tech
Kevin Winter/Getty
1. Amazon Prime Video viewers are giving up on its shows. Leaked documents show viewers are fed up with the streamer's error-ridden catalog system, which often has incomplete titles and missing episodes. In 2021, 60% of all content-related complaints were about Prime Video's catalog.
2. Eric Newcomer is bringing his Cerebral Valley AI Summit to New York. The conference, originally held in San Francisco, is famous for producing one of the largest generative AI acquisitions ever. Now, it's coming to New York in June.
3. OpenAI is plotting an expansion to NYC. Two people familiar with the plans told BI that the ChatGPT developer is looking to open a New York office next year. That would be the company's fifth office, alongside its current headquarters in San Francisco, a just-opened site in Tokyo, and spots in London and Dublin.
3 things in business
iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI
1. America's young men are spending their money like never before. From sports betting to meme coins, young men are more willing than ever to blow money in the hopes of making a fortune.
2. Investors are getting into women's sports. With women like Caitlin Clark dominating March Madness headlines, investors see a big opportunity. BI compiled a list of 13 investors and fund managers pouring money into the next big thing in sports.
3. Bad news for Live Nation. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department could hit the concert giant with an antitrust lawsuit as soon as next month. Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, has long faced criticism over its high fees.
In January, the Securities and Exchange Commission finally gave its seal of approval to 11 spot ETFs after months of speculation.
The following month, the token surged nearly 50% — and then in March, its price hit a new record high of more than $69,000 for the first time since November 2021. (It's given up some of those gains since, but is still up over 50% year-to-date.)
Next on the horizon is the fourth bitcoin "halving" (or halvening, if you prefer your crypto events to sound like Hollywood horror franchises), which is expected to take place sometime this week.
What is the halving?
New bitcoins are produced by a process known as "mining," where computers solve complex mathematical problems to validate and secure transactions on the cryptocurrency's network.
In a halving event, the reward for mining new blocks is cut in half. Halvings are scheduled to happen once every 210,000 blocks — and it typically takes around four years to mine that amount.
The halving's purpose is to gradually reduce the rate at which new bitcoins are generated, ultimately capping the total supply at 21 million, as laid out in the cryptocurrency's original white paper.
During bitcoin's lifespan, there have been three previous halvings:
In the first halving, in November 2012, the reward for each mined block fell from 50 bitcoins to 25 bitcoins.
In the second halving, in July 2016, the reward dropped again to 12.5 bitcoins.
In May 2020, the reward was again halved, this time to 6.25 bitcoins per block.
Analysts expect the next halving event, where the reward will fall once more to 3.125 bitcoins per block, to happen on either April 19 or 20.
How will it affect bitcoin's price?
The halving is designed to maintain bitcoin's scarcity — and simple market economics dictate that an asset's price benefits from supply falling.
Previous halvings have been no exception to that rule, with bitcoin climbing to new highs in the aftermath of each event. Last time out, its price surged from under $9,000 to about $60,000 in under a year.
!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();
Some on Wall Street aren't so confident the cryptocurrency will repeat that feat. JPMorgan warned last month that its price could fall as low as $42,000, or over a third, this time around due to higher production costs.
But perhaps the fact that the world's largest bank by market value is paying attention to what was at one point a niche crypto market event is a sign of how high bitcoin's stock has risen in recent years.
"More ETFs are coming, which is increasingly institutionalizing the crypto asset class," Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid said last month in a research note.
"Other things to watch are the fourth bitcoin halving in April, where the new coins available to miners halves to maintain scarcity, and also more clarity on regulation coming up."
"Whether you're a cynic or a convert, whether you think it's cheap or in a bubble, what's clear is that bitcoin is becoming increasingly institutionalized," Reid added.
The rise in air travel marks a recovery to 93.8% of levels in 2019 before the world shut down, according to preliminary data published by the Airports Council International (ACI), a trade association that includes 2,600 airports worldwide.
Increasing travel to airports in Asia and the Middle East was one of the key trends to emerge from the data, with Dubai International Airport jumping from the fifth to the second busiest airport in the world.
Airports in India, Japan, and Turkey also made it into the top 10 and were some of the biggest movers in terms of annual gains in passenger numbers.
As the world's largest domestic market for flights, US airports still make up five of the busiest airports in the world, with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport retaining its No. 1 position.
Despite tough global economic conditions, there was "a growing inclination towards travel," Luis Felipe de Oliveira, the ACI's world director general, said in a press release.
"Airports continue to demonstrate their resilience and adaptability amidst the challenges posed by the ever-evolving landscape of global travel," said Oliveira.
Here's a closer look at the top 10 busiest airports in the world.
10. Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi, India
Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Tooykrub / Shutterstock.com
Passengers: 72.2 million
2022 ranking: 9th
Delhi's main airport, Indira Gandhi International Airport, saw a 21.4% increase in year-on-year traffic. While it has dropped a place this year, Delhi has grown significantly as a transport hub since 2019, when it sat at number 19 in the rankings.
9. Chicago O’Hare International Airport, USA
A snowstorm at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois.
Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters
Passengers: 73.9 million
2022 ranking: 4th
Travel through Chicago O'Hare jumped by 8.1% throughout 2023. O'Hare is a hub airport for domestic travel, particularly for United and American Airlines flights. It is also a focus city for low-cost rivals Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines.
8. Los Angeles International Airport, USA
Los Angeles International Airport.
Eric Glenn/Shutterstock
Passengers: 75.1 million
2022 ranking: 6th
Travel through LAX was up 13.8% in 2023, however, compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, passengers at the West Coast airport decreased by 14.8% — the largest decrease of any airport in the top ten rankings. LAX is a hub for a number of carriers, including Alaska Airlines, United, American, and Delta. But domestic travel at the airport shrunk dramatically as airlines cut the number of flights following a series of meltdowns in 2022.
7. Istanbul Airport, Turkey
Istanbul Airport.
gokcentunc/Shutterstock.com
Passengers: 76 million
2022 ranking: 7th
Passenger numbers at Turkey's Istanbul airport have increased by 18.3%, making it the only transit hub to keep level with its previous ranking in the top 10. Notably, traffic through the airport has jumped by 45.7% since 2019.
6. Denver International Airport, USA
A TSA security checkpoint at Denver International Airport.
Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
Passengers: 77.8 million
2022 ranking: 3rd
Denver Airport has dropped down several places on the list but still shows strong signs of growth in terms of passengers. In the last year traffic through the Colorado airport was up 12.3%, and it has also grown 12.8% from pre-pandemic levels.
5. Tokyo Haneda International Airport, Japan
Tokyo Haneda International Airport.
Sean Pavone / iStock
Passengers: 78.7 million
2022 ranking: 16th
Japan's Tokyo Haneda Airport saw the largest increase in traffic by far, with passenger numbers surging by 55.1%. Some of that jump can be explained by a lag in tourism as Japan only reopened its borders in late 2022. Despite the jump, Tokyo Haneda is still 7.9% under its 2019 level of traffic. This January the airport made headlines after a fatal collision involving a Japan Airlines plane and a coastguard vehicle killed five people.
4. London Heathrow, UK
Passengers line up to go through security in departures at Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport.
Steve Parsons – PA Images via Getty Images
Passengers: 79.2 million
2022 ranking: 8th
Travel through the UK's largest airport shot up by 218% in 2022 and has once again made strong gains throughout 2023, jumping by a slightly more modest 28.5%. The airport has credited travel from the Asia-Pacific region as a major factor in its increased passenger numbers. It hopes to supersede its pre-pandemic level of traffic in 2024 and hit a record 81.4 million passengers, the airport said in a report published in December.
3. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, USA
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
LJ Jones/Shutterstock
Passengers: 81.8 million
2022 ranking: 2nd
Dallas/Fort Worth airport, known as DFW, is American Airlines' busiest hub and the departure city for many of the airline's international flights. Last year traffic through the airport jumped by 11.4%.
2. Dubai International Airport, UAE
Departures at Dubai International Airport in February 2022.
KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images
Passengers: 87 million
2022 ranking: 5th
Dubai took the number 2 ranking in the list for the first time, thanks to a significant 31.7% increase in passenger numbers. Dubai's new position reflects the heavy investment that has gone into the aviation industry and boosting tourism in the region.
1. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, USA
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
REUTERS/Tami Chappell
Passengers: 104.7 million
2022 ranking: 1st
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport comes in at No. 1 as the busiest airport in the world, a position it has held for more than two decades. In 2023, the Atlanta airport saw an 11.7% increase in passenger numbers.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, believes AI will increase productivity and wages.
His firm has increased assets while keeping head count the same which Fink credits to AI advances.
Although AI optimists hope it'll raise wages, others are more skeptical and fear job displacement.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said on a recent earnings call that the company's investments in AI will drive up productivity and raise wages.
Fink said the firm had increased assets by $2.5 trillion over the last 18 months while keeping head count the same, which he credits to productivity gains from technology advances, including AI.
"We're going to bring down inflation in America. This is how it's going to have to be done, driven through technology, which will increase productivity," he said.
"What it also means is rising wages … the whole organization is doing more with less people as a percent of the overall organization. That is really our ambition," he added.
"We spend a lot of time with different technologists who know much more about this than I do. They believe things like it will increase productivity by 30%," he said.
AI is already helping workers in white-collar jobs become more productive, according to studies done by economists. But this doesn't necessarily guarantee wage gains: if productivity goes up, business owners may pocket those extra gains for themselves.
While AI optimists hope it'll create an economic boon, others fear it will create fewer jobs and lower wages in some professions.
20% of Americans have jobs that are likely to be highly exposed to the impacts of AI, according to a White House report by the Council of Economic Advisors.
Some of those will benefit positively from AI through increased productivity and new job opportunities, while "some are harmed, typically due to job displacement," the council wrote.
On Tuesday, the Education Department released its first set of draft rules for Biden's second attempt at student-debt relief after the Supreme Court struck the first plan down.
The regulatory text comes after Biden unveiled details of the plan last week, which included up to $20,000 in debt relief for borrowers with unpaid interest and relief for those who have made at least 20 years of payments. According to the department, this draft "includes nine rules that permit separate and distinct types of waivers using the Secretary of Education's longstanding authority under the Higher Education Act."
Eight of the rules apply to student loans held by the Education Department, while the ninth applies to borrowers with commercially held loans in the Federal Family Education Loan program. Combined with Biden's other relief efforts, his new proposals are expected to benefit over 30 million borrowers.
"Today's announcement shows that the Biden-Harris Administration is continuing to fulfill our promises to fix a broken higher education system," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. "Student loan forgiveness isn't only about relief for today's borrowers. It's about social mobility, economic prosperity, and creating America that lives up to its highest ideals."
The regulatory text will be formally published to the Federal Register on Wednesday, after which the public will have a 30-day period to submit comments on the department's proposals. The department "will carefully consider comments received and aims to finalize these rules in time to start delivering relief this fall, including for borrowers who have been subject to runaway interest," the press release said.
Additionally, a department spokesperson told Business Insider that the department is "vigorously" working to develop a separate rule that would deliver relief to borrowers experiencing financial hardship, expected to be released in the coming months.
The majority of the relief proposed would be conducted automatically, per the department. Additionally, while some of the rules are intended to be one-time relief — like for borrowers who have entered repayment at least 20 years ago — the department is proposing a rule for ongoing relief for borrowers who took on debt to attend schools that did not pay off financially post-graduation.
The regulatory text mirrors the proposals the department developed with negotiators over the past few months, but it could change based on the feedback the department receives during the public comment period.
"These distinct forms of debt relief are designed for borrowers struggling with their loans – and that's a lot of people," Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a statement. "There are 25 million borrowers whose interest is growing faster than they can pay it down. That fact alone shows how badly President Biden's student loan relief is needed."