Blue Origin's Rocket Reuse Achievement Marred by Upper Stage Failure
Blue Origin achieved its first successful reflight of the New Glenn orbital booster, landing the first stage on a drone ship in the Atlantic. However, the rocket's upper stage failed to insert AST SpaceMobile’s broadband satellite into the planned 285‑mile orbit, leaving it in a low, unusable trajectory. The satellite will be de‑orbited and the loss covered by insurance. The setback raises concerns about New Glenn’s reliability ahead of scheduled Artemis lunar‑lander missions.
Rocket Report: Starship V3 Test-Fired; ESA's Tentative Step Toward Crew Launch
SpaceX advanced its Starship program with a successful static‑fire of the Version 3 vehicle and a full‑engine ignition of the Super Heavy booster, marking the most powerful rocket test to date. The European Space Agency opened a €1 million (≈$1.1 million) call for a...
After a Saga of Broken Promises, a European Rover Finally Has a Ride to Mars
NASA confirmed that SpaceX will launch ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover on a Falcon Heavy rocket, targeting a late‑2028 departure and a 2030 landing. The mission, originally slated for Russian rockets, has been reshaped by geopolitical shifts and budgetary changes, with...
OpenAI Starts Offering a Biology-Tuned LLM
OpenAI unveiled GPT‑Rosalind, a large language model fine‑tuned for biology workflows. Trained on 50 common biological tasks and public databases, it can suggest pathways, prioritize drug targets, and connect genotype to phenotype. The model is deliberately more skeptical to curb...
New 3D Map of Universe Could Solve Dark Energy Mystery
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has completed its five‑year, 3‑D survey, delivering the most detailed map of the cosmos to date with over 47 million galaxies charted. Early analyses hint that dark energy may not be constant, showing statistical signals...
What’s the Deal with Alzheimer’s Disease and Amyloid?
A wave of retractions, including a 2011 Neurobiology of Aging paper, has exposed fabricated data behind the amyloid‑β hypothesis for Alzheimer’s disease. Decades of costly clinical trials targeting amyloid‑β have repeatedly failed to deliver meaningful cognitive benefits, culminating in the...
New Paper Argues History, Not Mantle Plume, Powers Yellowstone
A new Science paper argues that the extinct Farallon plate, not a deep mantle plume, drives the Yellowstone hotspot. The authors model a translithospheric magma plumbing system (TLMPS) where stresses from the sinking Farallon slab open conduits for mantle material....
"Oobleck" Still Holds some Surprises
Researchers at the University of Minnesota studied oobleck drops impacting surfaces, discovering that dense, high‑shear drops briefly behave like Newtonian liquids before rapidly solidifying. Using high‑speed cameras and force sensors, they mapped the transition across shear‑thinning to shear‑thickening regimes. The...
Trump's Emergency Orders Pushing Coal Power Are "Illegal" As Well as Dumb
President Trump’s Department of Energy has revived Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, using emergency orders to keep aging coal plants like Michigan’s JH Campbell online despite utilities’ plans to retire them. Legal scholars argue the orders constitute an illegal...
"Cognitive Surrender" Leads AI Users to Abandon Logical Thinking, Research Finds
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania introduced the term “cognitive surrender” to describe users who hand over critical thinking to large‑language‑model chatbots. In experiments with 1,372 participants, AI‑assisted subjects accepted AI reasoning 73.2% of the time, even when the model...
Research Roundup: 7 Cool Science Stories We Almost Missed
Ars Technica’s March research roundup spotlights seven off‑beat studies, from raccoons solving puzzle boxes to sperm struggling in simulated microgravity. A missing page of the Archimedes palimpsest was located in France, while ravens were shown to rely on spatial memory...
LIGO Data Hints at Supernovae so Powerful They Leave Nothing Behind
Researchers analyzing LIGO’s gravitational‑wave catalog have identified a pronounced gap in black‑hole masses around 45 solar masses. The finding aligns with theoretical predictions that pair‑instability supernovae completely disrupt stars above a certain size, leaving no black‑hole remnant. The study also notes...
NASA Is Leading the Way to the Moon, but the Military Won't Be Far Behind
NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight near the Moon since 1972, launched from Kennedy Space Center with two Navy test pilots at the helm. The U.S. Space Force provided range safety, abort monitoring, and will recover the Orion capsule...
What's the Best Cabin Layout for Aircraft Evacuation?
The FAA mandates that all passengers evacuate an aircraft within 90 seconds, but a new AIP Advances study shows this target is unrealistic for modern cabins, especially with growing numbers of elderly travelers. Researchers built a full‑scale Airbus A320 model...
What Happened to Amelia Earhart? New Book Takes on the Case.
Rachel Hartigan’s new book, Lost: Amelia Earhart’s Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life, weaves the famed aviator’s biography with the three leading theories about her 1937 disappearance. Drawing on her National Geographic background and a 2017 Nikumaroro expedition, Hartigan...
Explanation for Why We Don't See Two-Foot-Long Dragonflies Anymore Fails
Recent research published in Nature challenges the long‑standing oxygen‑constraint hypothesis for giant prehistoric insects. By imaging flight muscles of 44 modern species, scientists found tracheolar volume density increases minimally—only 0.47% to 0.83%—even across a 10,000‑fold body‑mass range. Scaling calculations suggest...
How New Fishing Tech Can Reduce Bycatch of Turtles and Other Creatures
New bycatch‑mitigation technologies are showing measurable reductions in turtle and marine mammal mortality. Turtle excluder devices now reach 97% effectiveness, while solar‑powered LED lights on gillnets have cut turtle bycatch by up to 63% without harming target catches. Acoustic pingers...
How Chemists Turned Bourbon Waste Into Supercapacitors
Chemists at the University of Kentucky have devised a hydrothermal carbonization process that converts bourbon distillery stillage—a waste stream six to ten times larger than the final product—into hard and activated carbon powders. These carbon materials serve as electrodes for...
A Bit of Good News: It's Possible to Turn Around a Groundwater Crisis
A new Science paper by Scott Jasechko catalogues 67 global cases where groundwater levels rebounded after decades of decline. The analysis finds that 81% of recoveries involved securing alternative water supplies, roughly half relied on policy or market interventions, and...
Dogfighting in Space Won't Look Like the Movies, but This Company Wants in on It
True Anomaly, a stealth‑born startup, is building the Jackal satellite platform— a refrigerator‑sized, highly maneuverable spacecraft designed for low‑cost, mass‑produced space‑to‑space engagements. The company has already flown two test missions and plans a third, while securing roughly $400 million in venture...
Never Mind Band-Aids, Neanderthals Had Antiseptic Birch Tar
Researchers tested birch tar extracted using Neanderthal methods and found it inhibits Staphylococcus aureus, confirming its antiseptic potential. The study shows Neanderthals could have used birch tar for wound care as early as 200,000 years ago. Modern Indigenous practices align...
The Science of How Fireflies Stay in Sync
Researchers have identified the mathematical rules that enable male fireflies in South Carolina swamps to synchronize their mating flashes. Field experiments using 3D tracking and LED cues revealed that groups larger than fifteen individuals coordinate over several meters via a...