From the Science & Space desk
Science & Space
The news, fully digested. Our published Science & Space stories, newest first.
NASA SWEARS WE'RE ON THE MOON BY 2028
NASA says astronauts are on the lunar surface in 2028 and a permanent base goes up near the south pole. The mission next summer, though, is four people doing docking drills in Earth orbit for two weeks, including a two hour visit to a Starship. We also get into the part where nobody can agree how many refueling flights
CROWS MAKE UP THEIR MINDS ABOUT TWICE AS FAST AS YOU
Two carrion crows in Germany beat humans and monkeys at a moving-dot test, deciding in an average of 235 milliseconds. Their brain activity gave away the answer 70 milliseconds in, from a region that isn't even a cortex. We walk through what the study actually found, including the part where it was only two birds.
ONE IN FOUR DATA CENTERS IS PARKED SOMEWHERE THE WATER ALREADY RUNS OUT
Researchers mapped every known data center on the planet against local water supply and found a quarter of them sitting in places that already come up short. Most of those facilities are drinking next to a city or a farm. The lead author says nobody made this map before because nobody was really measuring.
SCIENTISTS WITH NOTHING BETTER TO DO, ARGUE ABOUT LUNAR TIME ZONE
NPR asked a delegate to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures what time it is on the moon, and the honest answer is that nobody has officially decided. Lunar clocks gain about 56 microseconds a day on Earth clocks, which stops being a fun fact the second you try to land something. We get into why the fix is
EGYPTIAN FARMER DIGS UP YARD, HITS 28-FOOT PHARAOH STATUE
A guy in the Nile Delta was working the dirt in front of his house, hit an inscribed stone, and called the government. Archaeologists then pulled out two colossal Ramesses II statues, one of which stood about 28 feet tall. The pharaoh's own back pillar calls him Strong Bull, Beloved of Truth, because of course it does.
39% OF OZEMPIC USERS SAY THEIR FINGERNAILS ARE FALLING OFF
A new survey presented at a dermatology congress in Vienna found GLP-1 users reporting detached fingernails four times as often as non-users, plus more hair shedding. The catch is that it's all self-reported, and half the drug group already had bad nails before they started. We go through what the numbers actually say
SIX FLAGS SHUTS DOWN NINE COASTERS, SAYS SAFETY IS 'ONE OF' ITS HIGHEST PRIORITIES
A man was killed Monday after being ejected from the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia, and the company has since closed nine similar rides at six parks in the US and Canada. We run through which coasters went dark, what actually holds you in on a 200-foot hypercoaster, and the corporate statement calling guest
SCIENTISTS NAME THE ONLY TWO THINGS THAT CAN END HUMANITY
A Lancet commission spent three years sorting through hundreds of ways the next 75 years could wreck us and landed on 17. Nuclear war and malicious AI are the only two that can finish the species off, but obesity is putting up the biggest number on the board. We walk through the math and the part where a medical journa
NASA FLEW FOUR ASTRONAUTS TO THE MOON AND THEY CAME BACK CALLING IT JAUNDICED
NASA put out a 130-page report on what the Artemis II crew actually saw during April's lunar flyby. The astronauts kept describing the moon as yellow, green and swamp-colored, and one of them called it jaundiced. It's real geology, and it's also four highly trained people landing on the phrase "the moon looks sick."
SCIENTISTS OPENED A 194-YEAR-OLD TORTOISE'S MOUTH, THEN STOLE HIS DNA
Scientists sequenced the genome of Jonathan, the 194-year-old tortoise living on the governor's lawn on St. Helena, and found 287 gene variants that might explain why he's still here. A blood draw was off the table, so they teased him with food until he opened up and scraped his cheeks. The only part of him that still
SHARKS GET EVEN SCARIER
Florida scientists dropped an underwater speaker near wild blacktip sharks, flew a drone overhead, and played loud low-frequency noise at them. The sharks heard it from about 243 feet out and turned away from it, which is the first hard proof they can tell where a distant sound is coming from. Nobody is sure yet which
TENNESSEE GAVE A WOMAN TWO LETHAL DOSES IN ONE NIGHT AND SAYS IT DID EVERYTHING RIGHT
Tennessee gave Christa Pike two doses of pentobarbital Wednesday night and she was still alive and snoring when the curtain closed. She was taken to a hospital, the Department of Correction said it followed every step of the protocol, and the governor called off the state's last execution of the year. The state's offic
THE FAT SHOT KEEPS ACCIDENTALLY TALKING PEOPLE OUT OF ANOTHER ROUND
Semaglutide was designed to make you stop eating, and trial after trial keeps finding it also makes people drink less. The newest one out of Colorado missed its main target and still cut heavy drinking days. We go through what the numbers actually say, including the Danish trial where the placebo group also got a lot b
EARTH FAILS ITS ANNUAL PHYSICAL, GOING 2 FOR 9 ON KEY METRICS
More than 60 scientists at Germany's Potsdam Institute ran the planet's yearly checkup and found seven of nine planetary boundaries breached, all at the worst levels ever recorded. The funny part, if you squint, is that the only two systems still healthy are the two humanity ever bothered to regulate. We also get into
GIANT DEEP-SEA BUG GOES FIVE YEARS WITHOUT EATING BECAUSE IT ROBBED A BACTERIUM
Scientists figured out how a supergiant deep-sea isopod survives more than five years between meals. It has a stomach that swells to two-thirds of its body and an energy gene it lifted from bacteria. We explain how a sea bug out-fasted every guy you know with a fitness app.
DANISH SCIENTISTS KINDA CURE BLIND MICE WITH INJECTED MICROSCOPIC SOLAR CELLS
A team at Aarhus University built hollow nanoparticles that work like tiny solar panels, shot them into the eyes of blind mice, and got the mice's brains to register light again. It's not vision, and the researchers say so themselves. It's still the most impressive thing anyone has done with a needle and some engineere
GUN N' ROSES GUITARIST GETS A SNAKE NAMED AFTER HIM
Field Museum scientists described a new groundsnake from Papua New Guinea and named it Lielaphis slashi, after the Guns N' Roses guitarist. It's 28 inches, reddish-brown, nonvenomous, and hunts lizard eggs at night. The scientist behind the name has been sitting on a Reptiles Magazine with Slash on the cover since she
LARGEST FAT BEAR WEEK EVER FEATURES 16 BEARS GOING FOR THE CROWN
Katmai expanded the Fat Bear Week bracket from 12 bears to 16 after a record cub count on the Brooks River. Defending champ Chunk is back, still enormous, still carrying the worst reputation in the field. Voting opens September 22.
THOSE 'DEMENTIA-PROOF' AMAZON COMMUNITIES ACTUALLY GET DEMENTIA AT OUR RATE
For years the Tsimané and Mosetén of the Bolivian Amazon were the poster children for pre-industrial brains that don't break. USC went back for a five-year follow-up and found new dementia cases piling up at roughly Western rates, with the famously low numbers explained mostly by how short survival is after diagnosis.
WOMAN LOOKING FOR ENDANGERED FROGS FINDS A PERFECT 10,000-YEAR-OLD MASTODON TOOTH STARING AT HER
A geomorphologist surveying a San Mateo County creek for a red-legged frog project spotted a weird rock. It was an intact Ice Age mastodon molar, about nine inches long, with the root canal still visible. A paleontologist called it the most spectacular one he's ever seen, and now Stanford gets to carbon-date it.