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Apple, in a rare move on Wednesday, issued a warning on its quarterly revenue guidance amid slowing iPhone sales in China and a litany of other issues. The announcement slammed shares, sending them down more than 8% early Thursday.

"While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China," CEO Tim Cook wrote in a letter to investors. "In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad. 

"Lower than anticipated iPhone revenue, primarily in Greater China, accounts for all of our revenue shortfall to our guidance and for much more than our entire year-over-year revenue decline."

But while analysts have warned of an impending slowdown in the iPhone market and Apple suppliers have been cutting their own guidance for the very same reason, Google Trends shows interest has been waning for years.

An analysis from DataTrek Research shows interest in iPhones — Apple's flagship product that accounts for 63% of its revenue, according to UBS — peaked in the US in September 2012, when the iPhone 5 was released. It topped out in Hong Kong in September 2014, when the iPhone 6 was released.

Declining interest among Google users comes as the iPhone's average selling price has risen and the quality has improved, leading to consumers holding onto their phones for longer periods of time.

"The market for +$700 smartphones is a good one, to be sure," Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, told clients in a report on Thursday. "But technological disruption is all about scale and growth, not just profitability." 

Searches during the most recent iPhone launch — the iPhone XS/XR in September 2018 — were 46% below those in September 2012.

This chart shows how searches for the term "iPhone" have trended within the US over the past 15 years.

Google Trends

The peaks have come toward the end of each year ever since the iPhone debuted, likely due to launches each September.

Now, here's how searches for the term "iPhone" have trended in Hong Kong over the same timeframe. DataTrek Research used Hong Kong as a reliable proxy for "Greater China" results because Google is not available on the mainland. Search volumes for the most recent launch, last September, were 40% lower than the same time in 2014.

Google Trends

Read more: Apple just warned its holiday quarter was a huge miss, and the stock is getting crushed

Analysts responded to the warning by cutting their price targets on Apple shares. Timothy Arcuri, an analyst at UBS, lowered his sales and earnings per share estimates for 2019 and 2020. He also cut his price target from $210 to $180. Still, that target implies a 14% gain from Wednesday's closing price of $157.92. Arcuri maintained his "buy" rating.

"Slower iPhone growth ultimately presents services headwinds, but AAPL still has huge untapped services rev pool (600mn+ active iPhones pay zero) and new bundle appears very likely," he told clients on Thursday.

Read more about Apple's sales and iPhone demand warning:

Markets Insider

Mark Zuckerberg has sold close to 30 million shares of Facebook to fund an ambitious biomedical-research project, called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, with a goal of curing all disease within a generation.

A less publicized initiative related to the $5 billion program includes work on brain-machine interfaces, devices that essentially translate thoughts into commands. One recent project is a wireless brain implant that can record, stimulate, and disrupt the movement of a monkey in real time.

In a paper published in the highly cited scientific journal Nature on New Year's Eve, researchers detail a wireless brain device implanted in a primate that records, stimulates, and modifies its brain activity in real time, sensing a normal movement and stopping it immediately. One of those researchers is an investigator with the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a nonprofit medical research group related to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Scientists refer to the interference as "therapy" because it is designed to be used to treat diseases like epilepsy or Parkinson's by stopping a seizure or other disruptive motion as it starts.

"Our device is able to monitor the brain while it's providing the therapy, so you know exactly what's happening," Rikky Muller, a coauthor of the new study, told Business Insider. A professor of computer science and engineering at UC Berkeley, Muller is also a CZ Biohub investigator.

The applications of brain-machine interfaces are far-reaching: While some researchers focus on using them to help assist people with spinal-cord injuries or other illnesses that affect movement, others aim to see them transform how everyone interacts with laptops and smartphones. Both a division at Facebook, formerly called Building 8, as well as an Elon Musk-founded company, called Neuralink, have said they are working on the latter.

Muller said her research at the Biohub is walled off from the other work on brain-computer interfaces being done at Facebook.

The company's notoriously secretive Building 8 program underwent a recent reshuffling that included killing off the Building 8 label and shifting its experimental projects to new divisions. Earlier this year, Business Insider exclusively reported that the program's director had helped create an armband that transformed words into understandable vibrations.

Read more: Facebook's secretive hardware group made an armband that lets you 'hear' through your skin, a key part of the company's bigger plan to embed computers in our bodies

A brain device that changes behavior automatically

In Muller's paper, she and a team of researchers from Berkeley and a medical-device startup called Cortera detailed how they used a device they label the "Wand" to stop a monkey from doing a trained behavior. In this case, the behavior involved moving a cursor to a target on a screen using a joystick and holding the target there for a set period of time.

Placed on top of the monkey's head, the wireless, palm-sized Wand device connected directly to its brain and could record, stimulate, and modify its behavior in real time. Nature Biomedical Engineering / Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Placed on top of the monkey's head, the wireless, palm-sized Wand device connected directly to its brain. From there, it was able to record, stimulate, and modify the monkey's behavior in real time.

Read more: You can control this new software with your brain, and it should make Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg nervous

The Wand could "sense" when the primate was about to move the joystick and stop that movement with a targeted electric signal sent to the right part of its brain, Muller said. And since the machine was wireless, the monkey didn't need to be physically confined or attached to anything for it to work.

"This device is game-changing in the sense that you could have a subject that's completely free-moving and it would autonomously, or automatically, know" when and how to disrupt its movement, said Muller.

'We want people to do the thing that's crazy, the thing that other people wouldn't try'

The Wand could one day have applications for a range of ailments that affect movement (also called motor skills), including spinal-cord injuries and epilepsy.

"Right now we can take a specific motor function, sense that it's happening, and disrupt it," said Muller.

That's a big departure from current devices, which typically require multiple pieces of bulky equipment and can only sense movement or disrupt it at one time. Muller's device does both at once. To do so, it uses 128 electrodes, or conductors, placed directly into the primate's brain — roughly 31 times more electrodes than today's human-grade brain-computer devices, which are limited to 4-8 electrodes.

"I believe this device opens up possibilities for new types of treatments," said Muller.

Muller is also the cofounder and chair of the board of Cortera, which has received grant funding from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institutes of Health. Her work on brain-machine interfaces is just one component of a broader set of projects under the CZ Biohub umbrella.

Joe DeRisi, the copresident of the Biohub and a professor of biophysics at UCSF, told Business Insider that the initiative aims to help bolster the research projects being done by local scientists, to build important medical devices that wouldn't otherwise exist, and to "push boundaries."

"We want people to do the thing that's crazy, the thing that other people wouldn't try," DeRisi said.

The English rock band Pink Floyd named a best-selling album after it. There are Disney anthems that sing it. Even news stories (including some of our own) plaster it across headlines: the "dark side of the moon."

However, the phrase is almost always used incorrectly.

When people say the "dark side" of the moon, they're most often referring to what is technically called the "far side" — where China just landed its Chang'e 4 spacecraft for the first time in history. Scientists call the face of the moon that we always see the "near side."

The reason why the far side exists is owed to complex physics called tidal locking, and the origin of how Luna got stuck dates all the way back to the formation of the moon-Earth system.

Today, the net result is that the moon spins counterclockwise on its axis, and the moon also orbits Earth in a counterclockwise fashion, and it does so almost perfectly in sync.

On average, according to Wolfram Alpha (a search engine for nerds), one lunar rotation takes 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes, and 40 seconds. This is exactly the same amount of time it takes the moon to orbit our planet. If the moon did not rotate on its axis, we'd see the full far side about once every 30 days.

That's not to say there is no such thing as the moon's dark side, though you'd have to accept that it's always moving.

Just like the near side of the moon, the far side cycles through day and night (or "dark side") phases due to the changing angle of the sun as the moon orbits Earth.NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

It works out that the average length of a month lasts about 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 2.8 seconds, per Wolfram Alpha. This time span is a couple of days longer than the moon's sidereal day, or time it takes to rotate once, because the moon-Earth system orbits the sun.

This celestial dance and the angle of sunlight makes the average lunar night last for about 14 days, 18 hours, 22 minutes, and 1 second at any given point on the moon.

Put another way: The dark side of the moon is the half not illuminated by the sun, and it's constantly creeping around the world, just as it happens on Earth. Except instead of taking about 24 hours to complete one lap, the dark phase takes about 30 days.

Here's a sped-up view of that process as seen from the moon's far side in an animation created by NASA's Science Visualization Studio:

We see a new moon when the dark side faces Earth, and a full moon when the dark side covers the far side. So if you want to shout "China is on the dark side of the moon!" into the night sky and be absolutely correct, you will have to wait until January 21 at 12:16 a.m. ET— the moment that the next full moon peaks.

The event also happens to be what's called a "super blood wolf moon," so be sure to mark your calendar to see it.

My new year's resolution started early this year.

After switching to Android in November after over a decade of using iOS and iPhones, I was determined to find a better note-taking/organizing/journaling solution than the mishmash of hard-copy notebooks, the iOS Notes app, and Google Docs that I've been using for the past few years.

As Business Insider's international correspondent, I'm constantly traveling around the world while juggling a dozen different tasks, like planning itineraries, taking notes during interviews or experiences, prioritizing my workload, and jotting down some observation about a place on the go.

The combination I was using was making me more disorganized than organized. I had some observations in one app, another in Google Docs, and to-do lists and interview notes in my notebooks. To put it simply, I lost or misplaced a lot of notes, or I would find myself in a desperate scramble to find one note or another when trying to write a story. It was no fun.

My first instinct was to use Evernote, as I'd used it before. But during my last stint with Evernote several years ago, I found the interface too complicated for the quick observations and to-do lists that I am most often writing down. It's probably most useful for intensive tasks like say, writing a book, as Insider Inc.'s Global Editor-in-Chief Nich Carlson once did. Some of the best features are hidden by a premium paywall. I wasn't ready to commit to a for-pay solution.

After reading through my colleague Kaylee Fagan's rundown of popular note-taking apps, I settled on Google Keep Notes. It was the best decision I've made in a long time, for a few reasons:

1. It works the same everywhere.

Google Keep Notes works exactly the same on every platform, from iOS to Android to its web app.

When I switched to Android from iOS, all my iOS notes were suddenly trapped on my old phone and my iCloud account. I was determined to not get stuck like that again.

Google Play Store

Other note-taking apps I've used in the past work only on a smartphone. Having a web version means I can quickly access my story notes or observations when I come back from a day of interviews and am ready to sit down and write up my draft.

2. The interface is simple, lightweight, and visually appealing.

I've found that encourages me to use the app more often. It's literally one click to start a note.

Whereas in the past I found myself whipping out my hard-copy notebook to jot down a note or a list, I now find myself opening up Keep because of how easy and quick it is to use.

Screenshot / Business Insider

The app supports every kind of note you might want to take, including to-do lists, images, text, voice, drawings, maps, and even webpages you want to remember.

Even more amazingly, if you take voice notes — I take a lot for talking out story ideas — Keep Notes converts all voice memos to text so you can read them later.

The simplicity of the app can occasionally be annoying. It's impossible, for instance, to have a note that is both text and a checklist. In addition, the app doesn't support rich text like bold or italics, two features I like to use to visually signal what's important in a note.

Still, it's a small price to pay for how easy and useful the app is overall.

3. The organizational system is best described as controlled chaos — just the way I like it.

Google Play Store

The interface most closely resembles a cork board covered with different-colored notes. It allows you to scroll through and quickly find the note you are looking for without so much as typing a search or cycling through folders.

Some people might find this system to be chaotic, but I've found it to be adaptable to multiple levels of organization. It all depends on how much thought or customization you want to put into the app.

Notes can be color-coded with about a dozen different colors. For now, I've simply added color to the notes I am consistently going back to, but you could easily color-code notes based on projects or type.

Additionally, Keep Notes uses labels rather than folders, like most other note-taking apps, meaning you can sort your notes any which way you want. Simply add a hashtag with the label to the end of your note, and it's already sorted.

When you want to find your note later, you can click into a label or use Google's powerful search to find exactly what you're looking for, by text, label, or note type.

4. The app includes premium features you normally have to pay for in other apps.

Google Play Store

Keep can extract text from photos, like from a sign or a business card — a feature for which Evernote charges extra.

Unsurprisingly, Keep integrates well with Google Drive and Google Docs, the two apps I use most for work. If you want, Keep can transfer notes to a Google Doc, which I've found extremely useful when I'm ready to start writing an article; my notes and observations go directly into my draft.

Keep can even have notes that act as reminders, which can be set to pop up on a specific date and time, or even based on a GPS location.

Perhaps, most importantly, Keep allows you to have collaborative or shared notes. That means that in the same app my partner and I can have a shared to-do list for personal stuff and I can keep my editor updated on which stories I'm working on.

Everything is in one place. And that's what's been keeping (ha!) me using the app long after I abandoned other solutions.

It's a new year, new me after all.

Semiconductor companies could suffer a "sharp contraction" in revenue as a cluster of challenges, from rising inventory levels to trade tensions with China, swamp the industry, Morgan Stanley warned in a noted published on Wednesday.

Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore wrote that he expects to see 5% revenue declines across the semiconductor sector in 2019, despite industry data which showed semiconductor sales on the rebound in November after a weak October.

According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, global chip sales increased roughly 10% year-over-year in November, to $41.4 billion. Semiconductors are used in everything from smartphones to automobiles, with much of the manufacturing taking place in China.

Morgan Stanley raised its overall chip industry revenue growth forecast for 2018 from 13% to 14%, but maintained a low-single-digital growth-forecast for the fourth quarter.

The industry faces growing challenges including excess inventory and weak demand, combined with China trade tensions and slowing M&A, Moore wrote. Chip companies will report Q4 results in the coming weeks, and the signs of trouble could appear in companies' end of year results and their Q1 forecasts.

The biggest companies at risk, Morgan Stanley warned, are memory companies such as Micron Technology and Western Digital; Analog companies such as Texas Instruments and NXP; and MCU companies Cypress Semiconductor Corporation and Microchip Technology.

"We remain cautious on semis," Moore wrote.

That note was published Wednesday, just before Apple made an announcement of its own to lower its revenue guidance for the fourth quarter. This sent the stocks of chip manufactures like Qualcomm and Intel stumbling.

The gist, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, is that a downturn in the Chinese economy and US/China relations have made it extremely tenuous to be a tech company dependent on revenues from China.

ClassPass is a relatively inexpensive way to drop into boutique fitness classes in your area without any commitment or membership. You pay a monthly ClassPass fee and get credits, and you use those credits to sign up online for classes that pique your interest: boxing, yoga, cycling, weight training, martial arts, pilates, and a seemingly never-ending list of others.

And, since budget-friendly options can often mean second-rate options, it's nice to know ClassPass typically features top-tier studios, including a majority of the fitness classes you've likely heard of or have actually been meaning to try.

Right now, ClassPass is offering a free month-long trial for the new year.

Their standard offer is typically two weeks. You can take up to six classes during your free month, and you can cancel your membership whenever. If you don't cancel, though, you'll be auto-enrolled in a monthly membership.

Rates depend on your location and how many classes you want to go to per month. ClassPass/Mara Leighton

Here's how ClassPass typically works:

The perks are plentiful. You pay as much as 50% less per month for multiple specialized fitness classes (for comparison, a single class can normally run for $30), you can get class recommendations and read reviews so you know what's good before you try it, and you can stream workouts from home if you're not up to leaving the house. You don't have to buy class packs or commit to a membership that penalizes you if you decide in February that you're really not interested in getting into fitness in 2019.

Plus, the versatility means working out can actually be fun and engaging — and you can rope friends into trying out new classes with you, in the hopes that you'll discover you actually love something like martial arts but just never knew it. And if you're traveling, you can switch your account location and use ClassPass wherever you are (given you're in one of the 80 participating cities).

The risks you run, depending on the city, are popular classes booking up quickly, falling in love with a high-credit class, needing to buy more credits because you exercised too much that month (is this really a bad thing, though?), or paying for a month and never using the credits. If you end the month with a bunch of unused credits, you can use them on the considerably higher credit spa treatments ClassPass also offers. Otherwise, up to 10 credits roll over each month. And if you love a workout spot that isn't listed, submit it as a recommendation to ClassPass.

You can go to most studios an unlimited times per month (or per "cycle"), though it's possible more credits will be charged if you go often, in which case you'll see a message explaining the change.

Overall, ClassPass is ideal for relatively inexpensive access to variety and top fitness classes. But, with a month to try it, you don't have much to lose. If you're thinking about trying it, now is a good time.

Sign up for your free month-long trial of ClassPass here

What does an operator of a self-driving car do when they're threatened or attacked by an angry motorist or pedestrian?

If you work for self-driving car company Waymo, you go to the nearest mall.

According to a spokesperson for Waymo, drivers feeling threatened on the road are instructed to find a secure location like a mall parking lot and decide whether or not to call 911.

Waymo has been testing its robo-cars on Arizona public roads for roughly two years. The cars have a Waymo employee in the driver's seat, serving as a back-up driver who can take control of the vehicle when necessary (the self-driving car technology is still not perfect).

Not everyone is enamored with the self-driving cars however, and the Waymo back-up drivers often find themselves on the front lines of anti-robot road rage. According to recent reports, Arizona residents have thrown rocks, brandished guns at and slashed the tires of the self-driving cars.

Over the past two years, there have been at least 21 incidents where police were notified, according to the Arizona Republic.

Read more: P eople are attacking Waymo's self-driving cars in Arizona by slashing tires and, in some cases, pulling guns on the safety drivers

Waymo's training manual encourages drivers to "report suspicious behavior. When it's safe to do so, pull into a secure location (E.g., a mall parking lot) and contact dispatch, or call 911 if you're being threatened or feel that you're in danger."

Most drivers, however, find it easier and more effective to use the hands-free option of calling the company dispatch center, the spokesperson told us. A call to Waymo dispatch will alert the entire fleet when incidents occur.

The spokesperson would not say how many threats have been reported to Waymo's dispatch center.

Waymo says there has not been a need to update its safety procedures for drivers, even as accounts of its cars being driven off the road by road-raged residents have surfaced.

"It's a pretty close-knit group of folks. They've had really great lines of communication and those continue," the spokesperson said.

For the first time in history, China landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon— the part we never see from Earth.

The Chinese moon mission is called Chang'e-4, and it set down a robotic lander and rover at 2:26 a.m. UTC on Thursday (Wednesday night in the US), according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

"Chang'e" is the name of a mythical lunar goddess, and the numeral "4" signifies the fourth robotic mission in China's ambitious quest to explore the moon. No other nation — the US and Russia included — has ever touched the far side of the moon.

The CNSA shared photos of the landing through state media, and the latest picture (above) shows the Yutu-2 or "Jade Rabbit" rover rolling off the landing spacecraft and onto the moon's unexplored far side.

The agency has been less forthcoming about other details of its mission, but lunar researchers have been analyzing data to help confirm there was a landing and also track the rover's precise location.

Read more: NASA's first moon landings in nearly 50 years may happen in 2019. The agency thinks these 9 companies can get it to the lunar surface.

Noah Petro, a planetary geologist, told Business Insider that he used images distributed by China on social media to pinpoint the landing site.

"Looks like Change-4 landed near 45.47084 South, 177.60563 East," Petro, who is a project scientist on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, tweeted on Thursday.

As the graphic below shows, those coordinates place Chang'e-4 within two impact sites that are very important to geologists and planetary scientists. The larger of the two is the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Within that expansive site, Chang'e-4 landed inside Von Kármán Crater.

China landed its Chang'e-4 lunar mission inside an ancient crater located on the far side of the moon. Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

The South Pole-Aitken Basin is a 1,550-mile-wide scar left by a horrendous collision that occurred about 3.9 billion years ago. This smash-up likely busted all the way through the moon's crust, leading part of the moon's deeper-down geologic layers to spill out onto the surface.

"It's possible this basin is so deep that it contains material from the moon's inner mantle," Tamela Maciel, an astrophysicist and communications manager at the National Space Center in England, tweeted after the mission's launch on December 7. "By landing on the far side for the first time, the Chang'e-4 lander and rover will help us understand so much more about the moon's formation and history."

The Von Kármán Crater within the basin stretches about 111 miles in diameter and should provide good access to the area's scientific wonders.

China built its solar-powered moon rover to last about three months and its lander to function for about a year. But once they stop phoning home — through a relay satellite called Queqiao, which makes the mission possible — China won't stop exploring the region.

Read more: The moon has ice on its surface in hundreds of places — and it could be the 'first step in building a space economy'

The nation is intent on launching crewed missions to the moon in the early 2030s. If that happens as planned, it could be the first time people set foot on the lunar surface since NASA's Apollo program ended in 1972.

A crewed landing would give China the upper hand in exploring the moon and space around it. The stakes are high; the lunar poles are rich in water ice and other resources that could support permanent moon bases, make rocket fuel, and power deep-space exploration.

"Von Kármán crater would be a worthy target for future crewed landings," Mark Robinson, a planetary geologist and leader of the LRO mission, said in a blog post about the landing site.

It's 2019, and the marijuana M&A market is already heating up.

Cannabis technology company TILT Holdings on Thursday signed an agreement to acquire Jupiter Research, a vaporizer-maker, for $210 million in cash and stock.

"We never expected to acquire a hardware company," Joel Milton, TILT's senior vice president of software and services told Business Insider in an interview.

But when Milton and TILT's CEO, Alex Coleman, met with Jupiter's CEO, Mark Scatterday, "we were really impressed with what they were doing," said Milton.

Read more: A top marijuana CPA says the 'bubble will burst' for weed M&A deals

That, coupled with the "exponential growth" vapes offer made Jupiter a nice fit within TILT's arsenal, said Milton.

Jupiter booked over $100 million in orders last year, up from under $25 million in 2017, according to a December note from Canaccord Genuity.

The deal is expected to close in the "near future," said Milton.

TILT was created out of a four-way merger between marijuana software company B aker Technologies— where Milton served as CEO — with Briteside Holdings, Sea Hunter Therapeutics, and Santé Veritas Holdings in May 2018.

The combined entity went public via a reverse merger on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) last December and began to roll-up other marijuana companies shortly after.

"We're a little differentiated from some of our other peers in the market in that we take a much more B2B (business-to-business) approach in terms of how we look at the industry," Milton said.

Read more: Marijuana companies are using a 'backdoor' strategy to tap the public markets — and it's fueling an M&A boom

Whereas other US-based marijuana companies, known as multi-state operators, are focused on acquisitions that expand their geographical retail presence, TILT is focused on supplying software and services — and now hardware — to marijuana dispensaries.

TILT acquired Blackbird, a marijuana distribution and software company in December.

"So rather than solely focused on opening retail stores, we're really focused on providing solutions to the whole industry," Milton said, adding that the Jupiter acquisition is an "unbelievable" way to expand TILT's reach into a new category.

"When you look at the data within the states [where marijuana is legal], vaporizers are growing rapidly," Milton said. "When you have that growth within a market over time plus new markets, you get exponential growth. And quite frankly we have really, really high expectations for what the vaporizer market's going to look like."

Vape companies, whether used for marijuana or otherwise, have been prime acquisition targets in recent weeks. Altria, the tobacco-maker behind Marlboro, sank $12.8 billion into a 35% stake of Juul, a popular e-cigarette maker in December.

Marijuana is legal in Canada and for adult use in 10 states, and medical use in 33. In December, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said legalizing the adult use of marijuana is one of his top legislative priorities for next year.

Apple's shock announcement that the holiday quarter turned out worse than expected not only provided investors a warning about uglier than expected earnings for the company, but also boosts one of President Donald Trump's key arguments in favor of the trade war with China.

Despite reports of pain for American businesses and workers, Trump has long said that the trade war is taking a much larger toll on China than the US. Given the relative strength of the American economy, Trump argues, the US can afford to wait for the economic pain to force China into concessions.

"China, which is for the first time doing poorly against us, is spending a fortune on ads and P.R. trying to convince and scare our politicians to fight me on Tariffs — because they are really hurting their economy," Trump tweeted on August 4.

In Trump's line of thinking, the US can withstand blows from tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods because the underlying economic fundamentals are stronger than those in China. Apple's sudden revenue disappointment seems to support the argument, as the company placed nearly all the blame on the shoulders of China.

"While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China. In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad.," Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday.

Cook also explicitly named Trump's trade war a contributing factor for the Chinese slowdown.

"We believe the economic environment in China has been further impacted by rising trade tensions with the United States," he wrote.

Read more: Tim Cook blames Trump's trade war with China as a big factor in Apple's slowdown»

Other companies are also reporting troubles in China due to the slowdown and trade war. The head of aircraft manufacturer Airbus' China business said the trade war will have a "negative impact on China's aviation growth."

Kevin Hassett, the Chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, told CNN that American companies with significant operations in China will get similarly whacked.

"It's not going to be just Apple," Hassett said. "There are a heck of a lot of US companies that have sales in China that are going to be watching their earnings being downgraded next year until we get a deal with China."

Read more: One of Trump's top economic advisers thinks the US-China trade war will cause a 'heck of a lot of US companies' to make nasty announcements like Apple's»

While China's slowdown is not entirely attributable to the tariffs — internal factors like high debt levels are also contributing — Apple and others make clear that the pain caused by the trade war is a contributing factor.

Trump's argument is twofold:

"The Wall Street Journal has it wrong, we are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us. Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing," Trump said in December.

Apple's announcement and other company warnings seem to echo the first element of Trump's argument.

At the same time, US economic data remains relatively strong. Despite some softening data, unemployment remains historically low, wage growth is picking up, consumer confidence is high, and Americans are still spending money at a solid clip. This could change, but the American economy appears to be on more solid footing than China.

The US and China are currently in negotiations on a trade deal during a 90-day truce. The pause in action — which is set to end March 1 — comes after months of back-and-forth tariff announcements. In total, the US placed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing hit back with tariffs on $110 billion worth of American goods.

But the Chinese appetite for economic pain could be much more expansive than Trump anticipates. For one, Chinese President Xi Jinping doesn't have to worry about an election anytime soon and Beijing may still have the ability to prop up domestic firms in the event of protracted trade war.

But Hassett made it clear on Thursday that the White House believes that the US has the upper hand in the trade battle with China, saying the declining earnings of companies in the country "puts a lot of pressure on China to make a deal."

On Thursday, the US State Department issued a new travel advisory urging Americans to "exercise increased caution" when traveling to the People's Republic of China.

According to the State Department, China may issue exit or travel bans in instances where there are business disputes and court orders to pay a settlement. Unfortunately, individuals and family members not directly involved with or even aware of the dispute can still be subject to a ban, the agency explained.

Thursday's advisory is based on concerns that the Chinese government may arbitrarily enforce local law and prevent US citizens from leaving the country.

Chinese authorities have asserted broad authority to prohibit US citizens from leaving China by using 'exit bans,' sometimes keeping US citizens in China for years," the State Department said in its advisory.

Read more: The US government is warning Americans that if they visit China they may not be able to return home.

The level-two advisory doesn't dissuade Americans from going to China. In fact, countries such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom all boast level-two travel advisories.

In addition, millions of Americans visit China every year without incident. So here's what you need to know before going to China, according to the US State Department.

The US Embassy in China is located at No. 55 An Jia Lou Rd, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100600, China. Its phone number is 86-10-8531-400. Its email is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. There are local US consulates in Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Wuhan.

Verily, the enigmatic life-science company formerly called Google Life Sciences, has raised $1 billion from investors.

The company announced the mammoth round on Thursday but did not include details of what the funds would be used for. Technology-investment firm Silver Lake is the leading new investor, and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan also joined on as a first-time backer.

"We are taking external funding to increase flexibility and optionality as we expand on our core strategic focus areas," Andrew Conrad, Verily's CEO, said in a statement.

A subgroup of Google's parent company, Alphabet, Verily aims to develop tools that help collect and organize health data. Its list of semipublic projects include work on a miniaturized continuous glucose monitor with partner organization Dexcom, contact lenses for people with age-related farsightedness and for sight improvement after cataract surgery, and a watch that lets researchers collect data for clinical studies.

Read more: A little-known technology that Fitbit and Apple are exploring could be the answer to healthy eating and peak performance

Verily researchers had also been working on a contact lens equipped with sensors to measure glucose levels for people with diabetes, but announced in November that they were pausing work on the initiative, which began in 2014 as a partnership with Alcon, the eye-care division of drug giant Novartis.

As part of the new funding, Ruth Porat, Alphabet's chief financial officer, will be nominated to join Verily's operating board. Egon Durban, the managing partner and managing director of Silver Lake, will also be nominated to join the board.

"Verily's unique capabilities, world-class partnerships and bold vision are enabling the company to tackle the most significant problems impacting global healthcare," Durban said in the statement.

While more details about what the funds will be used for were scant, the round marks only the second time Verily has ever raised outside funds. The first, almost exactly two years ago, was an $800 million round led by Singaporean investment firm Temasek.

Read more: Alphabet's life sciences company Verily takes $800 million from Singapore investment company

"We look forward to working with Andy and the entire Verily team in their mission to use cutting-edge science and technology to change the paradigm of care delivery and improve clinical outcomes," said Durban.

While software company stocks have taken a brutal hit from the volatility that closed out 2018, tech dealmakers have their eyes on a $1 trillion figure that tells a much different story.

That number: the total net cash that the top 10 tech companies could have on their balance sheets by 2020. Even if the economy enters a major downturn, the top tech companies will have a lot of cash throw around.

In the words of TV's favorite financial criminal George Bluth, there's always money in the banana stand.

When asked whether Apple's downgraded guidance and 10% stock decline was a sign of rough times ahead for the tech sector, Union Square Advisor president Ted Smith told Business Insider that nobody is "packing up and closing up business."

Companies still have access to capital, and they're still eager to move forward with the mergers-and-acquisitions deals on the docket, Smith said.

Read more: What tech bankers expect to see in tech M&A in 2019

For Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne, this means even if tech stocks continue to nosedive, software M&A "will provide a bit of a backstop for valuations."

"While we acknowledge that software stocks are 'at the mercy' of the broader markets right now, we believe one of the overlooked aspects in software is the likelihood of more M&A (and alpha generation) if stocks were to continue to pull back in 2019," Materne wrote in a note on December 19.

This means big players like Google and Microsoft will see lower price tags for companies they've had an eye on through the boom. Now that prices are lower, buyers can acquire their target companies at a steep discount.

The top 10 companies are expected to bring in a total of $600 billion in cash by 2020. Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Specifically, Materne called out the vast amount of "dry powder" that could make this happen. The top 10 tech companies have a combined $350 billion in net cash on their balance sheets as of the third quarter of 2018, and they're expected to generate another $600 billion in free cash flow through 2020, according to the note.

Assuming an unlikely world in which none of that money gets spent between now and 2020, the top 10 companies could have a total $1 trillion in cash by next year, according to the note.

The next 40 largest US software companies have a combined value of just $660 billion, Materne wrote. That means the top 10 companies could — at least in theory — buy up the whole market.

Of course, much of that money will be spent, most likely through share repurchases and dividends, like the ones promised by Apple CEO Tim Cook to return the company's $130 billion in net cash to shareholders.

But Materne writes that even if only 10% of the free cash flow and net cash from those companies was spent on M&A, that would mean nearly $100 billion in M&A activity just from strategic buyers.

Think SAP's all-cash acquisition of Qualtrics for $8 billion in November.

And even if software stocks continue to tank, Materne thinks M&A alone could keep software valuations afloat.

"It only takes one larger deal (great than $2 billion) to potentially lift relative valuations across the entire sector," he wrote.

When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo toured a subway tunnel nearly destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in December, he and an entourage of engineers from Columbia and Cornell Universities saw first-hand the tremendous damage that salt water can do to a century-old tunnel.

After the hurricane's 14-foot storm surge inundated the L train's tracks, it crippled a vital link between Brooklyn and Manhattan that carries more than 250,000 commuters every day. The only option, now more than six years later, seemed to be a complete closure of the tunnel for 15 months.

That's no longer the case, officials announced Thursday.

After carefully studying technologies in London, Hong Kong, and Riyadh, the team assembled by Gov. Cuomo — the de-facto leader of the state's Metropolitan Transportation Administration — recommended a ten-fold solution that would avoid a complete shutdown.

First, it's important to understand why the damage was so bad

New York's subway is old. Very old.

The Canarsie Line, which now carries the L train service from 14th street in Chelsea, under the East River to Williamsburg, through Bushwick and eventually to Canarsie, began service in 1924. It's only two tracks for its entire 10-mile length — a surprising anomaly, considering most of the system has multiple to accommodate express and local services.

A cross-section of the Canarsie tube shows the embedded cables, which were destroyed by flooding. Governor Cuomo's Office Despite being the first service of New York's 27 lines to receive an upgrade to a modern signal system, known as Communications Based Train Control, or CBTC for short, much of the electronic equipment was installed inside a concrete "bench wall" in the tunnel.

When the tunnel flooded, it got inside the wall and corroded the communications and signaling equipment.

The MTA was able to restore service following the storm, but warned for years that a complete shutdown would be necessary to remove and replace the destroyed infrastructure. In 2017, after three years of public input and several possible options, officials decided a 15-month closure beginning in April 2019 was the best course of action.

A surprise announcement

With just months until the closure was scheduled to begin, a cryptic tweet from the non-profit Transit Center foundation began to make the rounds on Thursday morning.

And an hour later, a scheduled announcement appeared on the Governor's public schedule for 12:45 pm at his Midtown Manhattan office.

Assembled high above third avenue's bustling traffic was the team of experts assembled by Cuomo, including the deans of Columbia and Cornell's engineering schools alongside MTA acting chairman Fernando Ferrer and other agency officials.

Moments later, the governor would announce the cancellation of the closure that had seen Brooklyn rents plummet and businesses make contingency plans for the lost foot traffic and revenue.

The repaired tunnel will be the first of its kind in the US

Instead of replacing the cabling that's stuck inside the concrete benchwall, contractors will instead repair any damaged portions of the wall and convert it into a walkway for emergency situations and repairs going forward. For this, they'll use fiberglass patching that's been used on other infrastructure projects and is a bonafide method of construction, experts said at the press conference.

NY Governor's Office New electronic equipment will be sheathed in low-smoke, fire resistant cabling and "racked" or hung from the tunnel in a way that it avoids further damage and can be easily repaired if need be. A ground wire will be placed underneath the track bed, as is currently done on some outdoor and above-ground lines.

"This is a design that has not been used in the US before," Cuomo said. "It has been implemented in Europe, but has never been implemented in a tunnel restoration project. It uses many new innovations that are new, frankly, to the rail industry."

Some night and weekend closures of one tube will still be necessary, the MTA said in a press release, allowing for a limited service to continue at the same time as construction.

The "de-coupling" of the infrastructure has "never been done before," the governor added. Damaged cabling inside the benchwall will be abandoned and replaced with new electronics.

Fiber optic cables will also be installed along the entire 32,000 benchwall that can continuously monitor the tunnel for cracks or damage, before a catastrophe occurs. Lidar, a laser-like radar technology, can also be added onto trains for more thorough periodic inspections to the structure.

"This is really state of the art technology," Lance Collins, dean of Cornell's engineering school, said at the press conference. "This is an unusual application in that we're using it in rehabilitation, but its proven technology."

Other recommendations from the task force, all of which have been accepted by the MTA, include waterproof tunnel gates which can be closed in the event of high water to prevent flooding.

The technology could be rolled out to other infrastructure projects, too

The L train is far from the only piece of New York infrastructure experiencing a crisis.

The Gateway tunnel that connects New York and New Jersey via the Hudson River, which Gov. Cuomo also toured in December, is also badly in need of repair or a new tube for the critical Amtrak Northeast Corridor trains and commuter rail services. The Second Avenue Subway — a multi-decade boondoggle that only recently opened with three stops — could also use the technology, the MTA said.

"Human nature is to do what you have done that is tried and true," said Gov. Cuomo. "No designer wants to give you a plan that hasn't been done before, but you have to be willing to break the box."

Now read:

Tesla is close to receiving approval to sell its Model 3 sedan in Europe, Bloomberg reports. The automaker is reportedly on track to begin delivering the Model 3 to European customers in February.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more: Tesla's stock could drop another 27% after Wednesday's sell-off: JPMorgan

The automaker has reportedly received approval for safety, noise, environmental, and production requirements through the Dutch regulator RDW. The agency will likely approve the Model 3 soon, Bloomberg reports. If an automaker receives approval to sell a vehicle from one European Union nation, it is able to sell that vehicle throughout the EU.

The RDW did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, though the agency told Bloomberg it does not comment on its approval process.

The European and Chinese markets are expected to be important sources of growth for Model 3 sales. During Tesla's third-quarter earnings call in October, the automaker's CEO, Elon Musk, cited the prospect of European and Chinese deliveries as a reason why he did not anticipate the gradual expiration of a federal tax credit for electric vehicles to have a significant impact on Model 3 sales. Musk said at the time that he expected Tesla to produce a "significant" number of Model 3s for European customers in January.

Musk has said that he expects Model 3 deliveries to China to begin in March or April.

Tesla cut the price of each of its vehicles by $2,000 after a $7,500 federal tax credit for US customers was reduced to $3,750 on January 1. The credit will be cut to $1,875 in July and expire in 2020. The reduction was set in motion when Tesla sold its 200,000th vehicle in 2018.

Have a Tesla news tip? Contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

To ring in the new year, former Apple engineer Bob Burrough uploaded a new video to his fledgling YouTube channel to show off a new idea he has for a smartphone interface.

Burrough's "Project Erasmus" is a user interface (UI) implementation that renders the lighting in your immediate environment to light, shade, and reflect on the software elements in the device. The result is an incredible, immersive visual effect that will make you want to use your phone even more (as if that's possible).

Take a look.

Tesla announced fourth-quarter and full-year vehicle sales on Wednesday. They were a bit lighter than some analysts' projections, but the company still delivered close to 250,000 cars in 2018 — a milestone, and a miracle of sorts, given how much trouble the new Model 3 sedan caused as it made it way through what CEO Elon Musk termed "production hell."

The stock swooned, but that might have been due more to worries about demand for Tesla vehicles going forward, as the company also cut prices by $2,000 to make up for an expiring federal tax credit of $7,500 per car (it was chopped in half after Tesla sold 200,000 qualifying vehicles).

As I pointed out on Wednesday, a $2,000 Tesla price cut is roughly 50% below what the rest of the auto industry is offering, on average, to sell cars in the US right now; the GMs and Fords just call it an "incentive."

Tesla's cars are arguably a tad overpriced anyway, so trimming the sticker could actually be the right thing for the company to do, especially for less affluent consumers. It bears repeating: the tax credit is worthless if you don't actually owe the IRS anything for 2018. And the folks most likely to owe are, you know, rich.

Read more: Top tech analyst Gene Munster says Tesla's miss on deliveries and price cuts are 'psychological setbacks for investors,' but things aren't as bad for the automaker as they sound

Analysts have been fretting over Tesla demand for years. This has been due largely to the lack of a meaningful electric-car market; globally, EVs make up just 1% of total sales.

Still, Tesla was able to sell another 100,000 of its luxury Model S and Model X vehicles in 2018, repeating 2017's result. The other approximately 150,000 cars it sold were Model 3s — a car that didn't really exist in 2017 and that found an impressive number of buyers in 2018. By contrast, Chevy will likely sell 16-17,000 Bolt EVs in 2018.

The gaps between those vehicles' sales mean that Tesla has essentially created a new market for a near-luxury EV priced between $40,000 and $80,000 at the top end (and Chevy has shown that there is a consistent, if modest, market for a lower-priced EV.) That's a good thing in the short term because Tesla can gobble up all the sales. Longer term, the question is, "How big is that market?"

Tesla's factory. Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

With something like 400,000 preorders for the Model 3, Tesla could argue that it's satisfied about half the initial demand for the car. A lot of buyers continued to wait for the $35,000 "base" Model 3, but at the moment it's probably good that Tesla isn't selling it because it would post much lower profit margin if it posts one at all. And Tesla needs profits to stay afloat.

As for overall Tesla demand in 2019, it looks to be holding up, if you use the metric of "days supply." Tesla has a few weeks of inventory, a rather low level of days supply compared to the rest of the car business. Ford, for example, has more than two months worth of F-150 pickups sitting around at the moment — something on the order of 200,000 vehicles. It has to maintain that much inventory to satisfy daily demand for 2,500 new trucks.

Plus, Tesla seems to be "conquesting" buyers from other luxury marques, such as BMW, Audi, and Mercedes. Right now, I'd call it curiosity conquesting. Only time will tell if longtime BMW 3-Series owners stick with their Model 3s.

Those are the nuts and bolts of Tesla's auto business as we commence 2019. So what about the stock? Why is it sliding?

Because it's a volatile stock as it has always been! My advice is to treat it as a gauge of how much unjustified optimism there is about Tesla becoming one of the world's biggest carmakers by sales. Tesla mega-bulls see Musk and his company delivering many millions of vehicles annually ... someday. Hence the $500-ish target prices from some boosters. Anything that threatens that growth narrative or that collides with the harsh realities of actually building those millions of vehicles will ding the stock.

How will we know if Tesla has a true demand problem? Much bigger price cuts, for starters, and if when the company unveils its Model Y compact SUV later in 2018, as anticipated, it doesn't rack up a lot of pre-orders. Until then, demand worries are overblown.

On New Year's Day, scientists flew NASA's nuclear-powered New Horizons probe past a mysterious, mountain-sized object.

The space rock is known formally as (486958) 2014 MU69, though it's more commonly referred to as "Ultima Thule" (a nickname that has garnered some controversy — see the editor's note below). It's located more than 4 billion miles from Earth and 1 billion miles beyond Pluto, making MU69 the farthest object humanity has ever explored up close.

New Horizons recorded hundreds of photos in a highly choreographed flyby at 32,200 miles per hour; it came within about 2,200 miles of MU69. On Wednesday, researchers giddily revealed the first photographic spoils of their unprecedented mission.

"It's a snowman," Alan Stern, who leads the New Horizons mission, said of the object's shape during a press conference on Wednesday.

Stern explained that MU69 appears to be what's technically called a contact binary, or "two completely separate objects now joined together."

A humorous comparison by New Horizons scientists shows what they think MU69 looks like. NASA

Jeff Moore, a planetary geologist and co-investigator on the New Horizons mission, said during the briefing that the two lobes of MU69 likely smooshed together at few miles per hour, or "the speed at which you might park your car."

"If you had a collision with another car at those speeds, you might not even fill out the insurance forms," he added.

The scientists also referred to MU69 as a bi-lobate (or two-lobed) comet that has never journeyed near the sun. They are currently called the larger lobe "Ultima," which is nearly 12 miles in diameter, and the smaller lobe "Thule," which is about 8.7 miles across.

Cathy Olkin, a planetary scientist and deputy project scientist on the New Horizons mission, said MU69's surprisingly round lobes and final shape is an exciting development in explaining how planets form.

"This is exactly what need to move the modeling work on planetary formation forward, because we're seeing evidence — right here — of accreting objects, and then having them combine," she said during the press conference.

An illustration showing how MU69 might have formed at the dawn of the solar system. NASA

Since MU69 is so distant, cold, and relatively unchanged, Moore said it's likely "the most primitive object that has yet been seen by any spacecraft."

"What we think we're looking at is the end product of a process which probably took place in only a few hundred thousand or few million years — the very beginning of the formation of the solar system," he added.

No one knew what MU69 looked like until this week. Fuzzy images captured before the flyby led some scientists to guess it was an elongated object, shaped like a bowling pin or peanut, or two objects caught in tight orbit with each other.

The first low-resolution pictures beamed to Earth from New Horizons show MU69 is one object formed from two separate ones and has reddish coloring. Scientists compared the hue with that of Pluto's moon, Charon.

A comparison of Pluto's moon, Charon, and 2014 MU69. NASA

"We can definitely say Ultima Thule is red," Carly Howett, a co-investigator of the New Horizons mission, said during the briefing.

Howett noted the color likely comes from billions of years' worth of radiation that has pummeled organic compounds on MU69's surface and converted them into complex chemicals called tholins (which are red-hued).

A low-resolution color image of MU69 (left), a high-resolution black-and-white image (center), and a merged version to show the object's color (right).NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Stern said the team would, using data it already has, begin writing its first scientific paper next week.

"This is going to revolutionize our knowledge of planetary science," Stern said.

An unprecedented bonus mission beyond Pluto

The mission to fly past MU69 was as surprising as it was ambitious.

When NASA launched New Horizons toward Pluto in 2006, nobody knew MU69 existed. There wasn't even a reliable way to detect the object until astronauts plugged an upgraded camera into the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009.

An illustration of the Kuiper Belt with New Horizons' flight path, Pluto, and Ultima Thule (or 2014 MU69).NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Alex Parker

New Horizons achieved the first-ever visit to Pluto in July 2015. Once the probe finished that main mission, it coasted farther into a zone called the Kuiper Belt.

In this cold and icy region, sunlight is about as weak as the light from a full moon on Earth. Frozen leftovers of the solar system's formation, called Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), lurk in vast numbers.

Pluto is one of them, but MU69 is the most pristine yet encountered. It might have been a comet with a brilliant tail, had it been tossed toward the sun, but instead it has stayed in its distant, freezing-cold orbit for billions of years.

"Any time we see comets, we have to remember that they're post-toasties; they've been fired, crackled, and crunched by the sun. They're badly damaged examples of former Kuiper Belt objects," Moore said. "Being able to go out and see a pristine Kuiper Belt object tells us now that, indeed, contact binaries really do form — and maybe when we see comets, we're looking at smaller versions of very badly damaged contact binaries."

The unprecedented data acquired by New Horizons will likely reveal new clues about how the solar system evolved to form planets like Earth.

"Ultima is the first thing we've been to that is not big enough to have a geological engine like a planet, and also something that's never been warmed greatly by the sun," Stern previously told Business Insider. "It's like a time capsule from 4.5 billion years ago. That's what makes it so special."

He compared the flyby to an archaeological dig in Egypt.

"It's like the first time someone opened up the pharaoh's tomb and went inside, and you see what the culture was like 1,000 years ago," he said. "Except this is exploring the dawn of the solar system."

An artist's rendering of an asteroid swarm.NASA/JPL-Caltech

Another analogy: Stern said he thinks of MU69 as a "planetary embryo" since it's a building block of larger planets that never became one.

"In that sense, it's like a paleontologist finding the fossilized embryo of a dinosaur," Stern said. "It has a very special value."

The long wait for more unprecedented data

A photo of 2014 MU69, or Ultima Thule, taken by NASA's New Horizons probe just 30 minutes before its closest approach on January 1, 2019. At left is a raw spacecraft image, and at right is a sharpened version.NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

As with New Horizons' flyby of Pluto several years ago, researchers on the mission must now play a waiting game for more images and scientific data.

According to Stern, the first pictures New Horizons captured during the flyby each took two hours to transmit. Each bit of data, moving at the speed of light as radio waves, then took about six hours to reach antennas on Earth.

Although the first images are now public, they are low-resolution versions. It will take much longer to receive the most detailed, full-resolution images because of physical limitations of the New Horizons spacecraft and its location. In fact, it may take 20 months to download all of the probe's data.

Part of the reason it will take so long is because the output of the spacecraft's radio antenna is now about 15 watts — or one-quarter of a standard light bulb's power — and it's broadcasting from 4 billion miles away.

Most immediately, New Horizons will also have to wait until January 10 before beaming back more data because the sun will come between it and Earth, blocking the spacecraft's feeble transmissions.

Stern added during a press conference on Thursday that the researchers would be analyzing the data they have in the meantime. New Horizons team members expect to see the highest-resolution color photos in February.

"We are guardedly optimistic that those highest-res images will cover a massive amount of the surface," Stern said on Thursday. "Stay tuned for February."

One thing researchers have learned so far is that MU69 rotates on its axis about once every 15 hours.

On Thursday, the team released the above animation of two images taken by New Horizons about eight minutes apart, revealing some of MU69's shape. The team also released a red-blue stereo image that shows it in 3D.

"What is striking home with me is that we can build a spacecraft on Earth, and we send it out billions of miles away from Earth, and it sends us back all this wonderful data that we get to look at and learn more about our world, our solar system," Alice Bowman, the New Horizons mission operations manager, said during a press conference on Tuesday.

'10,000 times harder than reaching Pluto'

This flyby was dramatically more difficult to pull off than New Horizons' Pluto visit, Stern said.

"Rendezvousing with something the size of a large, filthy mountain covered in dirt, a billion miles away from Pluto, and honing in on it is about 10,000 times harder than reaching Pluto," Stern previously told Business Insider. "That's because it's about 10,000 times smaller. The achievement of getting to it is unbelievable."

An image composite of Pluto (right) and its moon, Charon, (left).NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Pinpointing exactly where MU69 would be in space when New Horizons could fly near it required a "two and a half week odyssey" of telescopic observations around the world, mission scientist Simon Porter said on Twitter.

To see MU69 block the light of a distant star — a way to confirm the space rock's precise orbit — the researchers had to fly an airplane-mounted telescope called SOFIA and deploy dozens of telescopes in Argentina.

The New Horizons team is already plotting and scheming to make a flyby of an even more distant object.

"New Horizons is a very healthy spacecraft. In fact, all of the systems on board are redundant, and we're not using any of the backup systems because we haven't had any systems failures in 13 years of flight," Stern told Business Insider during Wednesday's press conference.

The New Horizons spacecraft before its launch in 2006. NASA

The probe's power supply — a system that converts the heat emitted by decaying plutonium-238 into electricity — has about 15 to 20 years of life left in it. Stern said this could power all of the spacecraft's electronics out to a distance of about 10 billion miles, or about 2.5 times its current distance.

Where the team might go next is still up in the air.

"I can't give you the answer today because we don't know," Stern said. "We've been very careful, during this period of three years, where we were planning every detail of this flyby, to stay focused on that — and not get distracted by the next shiny thing, if you know what I mean."

He added that by the summer of 2020, the team will make a formal pitch to NASA to look for another object to fly past, perhaps at the very edge of the Kuiper Belt (and a decade from now).

"There's plenty of time to go find other targets — if we're in the position of having a still-healthy spacecraft and an accepted proposal," Stern said.

Editor's note: After a public campaign, the New Horizons team selected Ultima Thule as a nickname for (486958) 2014 MU69. However, we've de-emphasized it here because the Nazi party used the word "Thule" as a tenet of its ideology.

This story has been updated. It was originally published at 2:40 p.m. ET on January 2, 2019.