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A languid spiral galaxy appears draped against deep space in a stunning new image from the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope.

Euclid launched in 2023 on a six-year mission to map the cosmos at scale, observing billions of galaxies stretching as far away as 10 billion light-years from Earth. The effort could reveal how galaxies form and evolve and how the universe has expanded over its 13.8-billion-or-so-year history.

In turn, astronomers hope Euclid will shed light on dark matter, which we know tugs at normal matter but is utterly invisible to us, and dark energy, the force that is responsible for accelerating the speed at which the universe expands.

That effort will begin in earnest next year, when Euclid releases its first formal batch of data, which will account for about 14 percent of its final survey area.

Until then, the Euclid team has offered the occasional teaser for the telescope’s power, including a festive new image of the galaxy NGC 646. This elegant spiral galaxy, filled with stars, is about 392 million light-years away from Earth—some 4 percent of the distance of Euclid’s farthest targets—and is retreating at more than 5,000 miles per second.

Appearing at the left tip of NGC 646 is a second galaxy, known as PGC 6014—but their apparent closeness is merely an optical illusion; in truth, PGC 6014 is nearly 45 million light-years closer to Earth.

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ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing: Euclid Science Ground Segment and M. Schirmer (MPIA) (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

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If the rule stands that you shouldn’t discuss money at the dinner table, then there will likely be some awkward conversations happening over the next couple of decades.In the next 25 years, an intergenerational wealth transfer of $74 trillion is expected, according to a June report by UBS. Among the ultrawealthy, this transfer is accelerating: By 2040, the world’s billionaires are expected to pass down $5.9 trillion to their children, UBS estimated in a December report, which focused on billionaires.

That amounts to the greatest wealth transfer in history — and plenty of familial expectations.

The billionaires surveyed by UBS have high aspirations for their children: 82% hope their kids “develop the skills and values to succeed independently,” and 61% hope their children are “happy/comfortable with managing the family’s wealth.”

Richard Orlando, the founder of Legacy Capitals, a consulting and advisory firm for wealthy families and family offices, aims to help that transfer, and the expectations that come with it, go as smoothly as possible. He works with clients to educate them and cement plans around succession, investing, giving, and — the big one — inheritance.

While more money can mean more complex problems — Legacy Capitals families are worth between $20 million and $3.5 billion — everyone can learn from a thoughtful approach to these topics, he said.

“Any family who’s more intentional about transferring values, educating, and preparing the next generation for stewardship, whether that’s $2 million going to the kids or $200 million,” sees better results, he told Business Insider.

He broke down three common mistakes families make when dealing with inheritance — and how to correct them.

1. Silence is not the solution

Many wealthy parents shy away from discussing money with their children, fearing it may lead to entitlement.

The problem with that, Orlando said, is that it can leave a child totally unprepared until “someone dies and the estate plan speaks,” Orlando said. “It’s almost like a lottery winner.”

There are ways to be more open without showing your kids your bank statement or breaking down every asset.

“Move toward transparency” gradually, Orlando suggested, adding that families shouldn’t expect to flip a switch overnight.

One of Orlando’s clients planned to leave each of their children $100 million, he said. Up until then, their kids had largely been supporting themselves, with no idea they would soon have nine-figure fortunes.

Orlando convinced the parents to put $5 million into wealth management accounts in each of the children’s names to prevent a shock to the system.

“Let’s get them to start developing skills,” he said. “If you want your children to be responsible for $100 million, don’t stay silent.”

2. There is no plan

A large part of Orlando’s work revolves around creating policies for families around everything from communication to investing.

If a family owns a business, there should be a conversation about who will take over control and ownership of it. If there is a foundation, there should be a conversation about its goals.

For example, say a grandparent is conservative and a grandchild wants to give all their money to Planned Parenthood. There will likely be a disagreement. Orlando’s suggestion: Find common ground, agree on a few key causes, and incorporate those into a philanthropy mission statement.

Guidelines help prevent future conflict, he said.

3. If you want to produce leaders, stop controlling them

According to the UBS survey, 43% of billionaires hope their children “grow the family’s business, brand, or assets, ensuring the family legacy continues.”

But that expectation can lead to conflict.

The solution is for the leader not to micromanage, but to gradually hand over the reins through projects that are low-risk and allow the children to voice their opinions.

“That way we can go from a voice to a vote,” Orlando said. “There are these progressions.”

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More money, more problems? High-net-worth families are planning for the Great Wealth Transfer. Constantine Johnny/Getty Images

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Congress designated the center as a “living memorial” to President John F. Kennedy in 1964. Relatives of the slain 35th president opposed the change in posts on social media.

Mr. Redd said seven musicians were scheduled to perform on Wednesday. The concert had been held at the Kennedy Center for 20 years and was previously hosted by the jazz bassist Keter Betts, who died in 2005. Mr. Redd took over in 2006.

The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment after business hours. It was unclear whether ticket holders for the jazz concert would receive refunds.

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An annual Christmas Eve jazz concert was canceled by its host after President Trump’s name was added to the Kennedy Center building.Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times

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If New York City sees more than 4 inches of snow, it will be the most significant accumulation since January 2022, when more than 8 inches fell in Central Park.

The storm is expected to make getting into and out of the city even more complicated during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year. Gov. Kathy Hochul said that New Yorkers traveling on Friday “may wish to rearrange” their plans, and Mayor Eric Adams asked city residents to avoid driving on Friday if possible.

Ms. Hochul said that the state is planning to deploy more than 1,600 large plow trucks. The city’s sanitation department will send out hundreds of salt spreaders to pre-treat roads ahead of the storm.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said this week that it was expecting nearly 15 million travelers to use the region’s airports — including John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International, and LaGuardia — along with its bridges and tunnels during the holiday season, with travel peaking on Sunday.

The Port Authority said it was monitoring the weather forecast and encouraged travelers using the region’s bridges and tunnels to sign up for email alerts ahead of the storm, and for people using airports to check FlightAware for delays and cancellations.

On Christmas Day, some children in New York City were already anticipating the possibility of significant snowfall.

At the Hippo Playground within Riverside Park on the Upper West Side, Arianna Wesby, 11, was playing with her five cousins, whom she was visiting from El Paso, and bracing for the coming unfamiliar weather.

Back home, Arianna said, “They have sand storms, they have wind storms,” — not snowstorms. She was not prepared for what Friday would bring. “I brought shorts!”

The storm will represent one last managerial challenge for Mr. Adams, the outgoing mayor.

The city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, had been responsible for snow removal in her old job as sanitation chief. She joked on social media that she was “suffering from an acute case of FOMO” after reading the forecast.

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New York City got a bit of snow earlier in December. On Friday and Saturday, the city is expecting a more significant accumulation. Credit…Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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The space around Earth has become increasingly cluttered with decades of accumulated debris left over from rocket launches, derelict satellites, and the occasional antisatellite weapon test—not to mention growing mega constellations of thousands of active satellites. This influx of traffic means satellite operators have a fast-shrinking window of time to avoid a catastrophic collision in an emergency.

“While we had many months in the past, we now have less than a week for a close passage of serious concern—quite possibly a major collision,” says Aaron Boley, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia.

A new “Collision Realization and Significant Harm (CRASH) Clock” measure, described by Boley and his colleagues in a preprint posted to the server arXiv.org, shows how the rise of mega constellations has created an “orbital house of cards.” The clock uses statistics to estimate how long spacecraft now have to avoid a dangerous close pass or a collision, Boley says.

That reaction window has shrunk considerably since satellite mega constellations took off with the launch of SpaceX’s first Starlink satellites in 2019. The researchers’ latest, unpublished calculations suggest that the CRASH clock value stood at about 5.5 days as of June 2025, compared with 164 days back in January 2018. The clock suggests the average satellite in low-Earth orbit currently faces a 17 percent chance of a close approach that could lead to a collision within 24 hours, which means satellites must make more frequent evasive maneuvers than they used to.

“As a concept, the CRASH Clock is powerful because it turns ‘space is getting crowded’ into a time-based metric people can understand,” says Aaron Rosengren, a mechanical and aerospace engineer at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study. “The exact number matters less than the trend.”

The calculation looks at the current orbits of all cataloged objects and makes simplified assumptions about factors such as satellite distributions in orbit. It doesn’t account for different maneuvering policies or risk thresholds among satellite operators.

Spacecraft may not always be able to act quickly enough to avoid a crash, especially if software glitches or powerful solar storms interfere. In 2019, a European Space Agency science satellite had to dodge a SpaceX Starlink satellite, in part because of a “bug” in the communication system used between the agency and Starlink. More recently, this month, SpaceX described a near miss between one of its Starlink vehicles and a newly launched Chinese satellite.

The risk of collision and the cascading buildup of space debris—described as Kessler-Cour-Palais Syndrome—is only growing as companies and governments launch more satellites into similar orbits. The more than 9,000 Starlink satellites that are currently active account for about two thirds of all active satellites. Rivals such as Amazon’s Project Kuiper and Chinese companies are also racing to build their own mega constellations. Future plans for orbital space mirrors and space data centers may further complicate the situation.

The challenge is to coordinate collision avoidance among so many independent organizations that use different tools for monitoring space and do not all share information equally, Rosengren says. “The biggest driver is simple arithmetic,” he adds. “Far more satellites in the same orbital bands means far more close approaches, and the screening and response workload grows extremely fast.”

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Maciej Frolow/Getty

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