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The Museum of Science to open new Bloomberg wing in October
The state-of-the-art, 10,000-square-foot performance and presentation space overlooking the Boston and Cambridge skylines will open in October.
Major construction continues for UC, Life Science Building, UTA West
Smaller projects are also underway across campus to update study spaces, classrooms, roads and more.
16 mummies and a dog reveal a hidden order inside an ancient Egyptian tomb
A tomb in Egypt’s Theban Necropolis reveals a surprisingly organized story of burial, reuse, and changing beliefs spanning hundreds of years. Researchers found 16 mummified people, the remains of at least four more, and a mummified dog, with burials ranging from wealthy individuals laid in coffins with amulets and imported goods to later bodies carefully stacked in increasingly crowded spaces.
Claude can do more with Gmail and Google Drive, and access to Claude Cowork is expanding.
A pair of announcements from Anthropic today include the word that access to Claude Cowork on mobile and web interfaces has rolled out to all paid accounts, so you can keep an eye on what it’s doing for you in more places. Separately, the Google Workspace connectors for Claude now support sending emails in Gmail and managing files in Google Drive — more details here. [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/778273589_17980259259118227_5377280649389143563_n.jpg?quality=90&strip=all]
UNT Health looks beyond Fort Worth with approved Frisco expansion
The university plans to turn part of UNT’s 52,000-square-foot Inspire Park into a space for Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Patriots announce new release after OL Greg Van Roten signing
The Patriots cut tight end Mitch Van Vooren to free up space on the roster for their newest signee Greg Van Roten.
Noll Wilson Group to open new West Des Moines office
The Noll Wilson Group will host an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 10 for its new office at 3408 Woodland Ave., Suite 201, in West Des Moines. The leadership development and organizational consulting firm will host the open house from 2-4 p.m., with the ribbon-cutting scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Attendees can tour the space,…
Boston Retail Solutions Expands into Live Events & Entertainment Segment
Boston Retail Solutions utilizes its 15 national service centers and modular wall systems to launch specialized activation, hospitality, and flexible event spaces for sports franchises and entertainment venues.
What to watch in Tuesday's primaries in Florida, Alaska and more
Tuesday's contests will help shape the fiercely contested midterms this fall to determine control of Congress, where Republicans have a narrow edge, and offer a referendum on President Donald Trump's second term.
Earth's Organisms Developed Via Evolution. Some Theorists Wonder: What if the Entire Cosmos Did, Too?
The idea that universes evolve like organisms sat on the fringes of theoretical physics for decades. Then, a Substack post and a 2022 find by the James Webb Space Telescope boosted the concept
SpaceX shares are 'crazy overvalued,' says Scott Galloway
Galloway argued that SpaceX's huge valuation was driven partly by unusually favorable market mechanics at its IPO in June.
What defines success at Rutgers? – fall sports edition, Part I
Back in July, we posted a story about defining success at Rutgers that focused on football. And, while football was the primary focus, there were a few comments looking at other sports. Speaking of other sports, I’m hopeful for a big rebound by WSOC this fall. —John Catapano (Space Cat) Being competitive in all sports […]
Universal Health Services buys Talkspace for $835M
Pennsylvania-based UHS expands into the virtual behavioral health space with the acquisition, though Talkspace will keep its branding and current CEO.
Astronomy and space sciences are soaring right now with kids. Keeping them engaged is much harder.
Science, pop-culture are converging at a crucial time for STEM recruitment. But some methods work better than others.
KCC Entertainment Design
New brand marks Adventure World Entertainment's move into spaces designed for competition and shared experiences
How NASA Engineers Are Keeping the Voyagers Alive
A reworking of the spacecraft’s power systems could extend the nearly 50-year-old Voyagers’ exploration of interstellar space into the early 2030s.
Rotating detonation engines: the science and the promises
Explore the science, advancements, and potential of rotating detonation engines, promising greater fuel efficiency for aerospace applications.
Scientists may have finally proved that “empty” space isn’t really empty
A magnetar’s colossal magnetic field may have revealed a quantum effect predicted by Werner Heisenberg nearly 90 years ago, in which seemingly empty space alters the behavior of light. If confirmed, the discovery could offer the first direct evidence of vacuum birefringence and open a new window into the strange physics of the quantum vacuum.
Multiple Businesses Burglarized During Overnight Crime Spree; Juvenile Arrested
On August 17, 2026, at approximately 5:00 AM, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office Regional Communications Center received a call for service reporting a burglary in progress at a business in the 6800 block of Space Village Avenue in unincorporated El Paso County. As Patrol deputies responded, dispatchers received additional information indicating the suspect was […]
In Gherdëina, Curating a Biennale Around the Politics of the Garden
“The garden is less a physical site than a conceptual space through which we could think about belonging, stewardship, memory and our shared responsibility toward the future,” curator S…
Roane State inks articulation agreements with MTSU for aerospace and fire science pathways
HARRIMAN, Tenn. — Roane State and Middle Tennessee State University have signed articulation agreements partnering with Tennessee Flight Training and supporting streamlined transfer opportunities for students pursuing two of the community college’s newest offerings — aerospace and fire science. Presidents from both institutions, along with the president of Tennessee Flight Training, met at Roane State’s campus in Cumberland County on […]
Computer Science Student wins NASA Space Grant
Moo Muhammad, a Computer Science student, is shooting for the stars, rising from a ride-share driver who once lived in his car to become the winner of a highly competitive scholarship. He’s the latest…
New analysis finds Orlando has highest business entry rate of 14.14%
A new Squarespace analysis ranked the Orlando metro area No. 11 for business growth and longevity in the United States.
Stunned by a glowing green light: what happened when the ground lit up at night? - Futura-Sciences
The Aurora Hunter of Alaska Vincent Ledvina is a doctoral student in space physics, but don’t be fooled by the academic credentials—he’s also a social media star. Ledvina scours the Alaskan skies night after night, always on the lookout for the magical spectacle of the Northern Lights, and he regularly...
Every business can see from space now
Businesses are using Earth observation data to monitor supply chains, assess disasters, track crops and gain real-time competitive insights
Roane State inks agreements with MTSU for aerospace, fire science path
Roane State and MTSU have partnered to create seamless transfer pathways for students in aerospace and fire science.
‘A game changer’: UHS closes $835M Talkspace acquisition
Bringing Talkspace on board should expand behavioral health services for UHS’ existing patients, while ushering more consumers through the health system’s doors, UHS CEO Marc Miller said.
Naturally Sparkling: The Science Behind Pet-Nat Wine
This week’s Northern Express — sister publication of The Ticker — is the Ingredients issue, featuring stories about our farmers, growers, chefs, bakers, and winemakers. In the lattermost category, a few local wineries are trying their hands at a 500-year-old winemaking process, pétillant-naturel, or pét-nat. What makes it different from traditional wine styles are three main components: …
Satellite operators emphasize launch deals in a constrained market
Amid a constrained launch market, satellite operators are increasingly emphasizing to investors and customers that they have lined up launch capacity.
Radio telescopes help scientists map molecules in space and uncover where and how stars form
You may have heard the phrase "we are made of star-stuff." This statement by the astronomer Carl Sagan refers to the fact that elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were forged in the centers of the ...
Scientists led by UCLA found that permanently shaded parts of pits on the Moon stay near a constant 17°C while the exposed surface swings between 127°C and −173°C — meaning humanity's first permanent lunar address may be underground.
LRO thermal data and UCLA-led modelling show why permanent shade in certain lunar pits can remain near 17°C, while cave habitability still depends on access, structure, air and power.
5 bizarre ways space experts want to clean up Earth’s orbit
Sticky satellites? Space harpoons? Robotic tentacles? Laser cannons? Space lassos? The fight against space junk continues
University of Chicago study suggests space missions don't affect astronauts' heart health
Researchers from the University of Chicago have uncovered some information on how space travel affects — or actually doesn't affect — the heart.
Voyager 2 is nearly 50 years old, losing about 4 watts of power every year as its plutonium power source fades — and NASA just bought it at least another year of science with an all-at-once power-system swap engineers called the “Big Bang,” performed on a spacecraft with razor-thin power margins and no possibility of physical repair.
The Big Bang swap freed almost 10 watts while preserving Voyager 2's thermal balance, keeping its three remaining interstellar instruments on for at least another year.
On this day in space! Aug. 16, 1963: Wingless M2-F1 completes 1st glide flight
On Aug. 16, 1963, NASA's M2-F1 aircraft prototype makes its first glide flight.
Locarno Winner ‘Forgotten Spaceman’ Adds Khan & Kumar Media, Prism Entertainment as Executive Producers Ahead of Toronto Bow (EXCLUSIVE)
“Forgotten Spaceman,” the documentary short by BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Elham Ehsas that won the Leopard of Tomorrow (International Competition) award at Locarno’s Junior Jury Awards, has added Khan ...
Locarno Winner 'Forgotten Spaceman' Adds EPs Ahead of Toronto Bow
Elham Ehsas documentary about Afghanistan's first astronaut adds Khan & Kumar Media, Prism Entertainment as executive producers.
How China’s record-breaking hypergravity centrifuge speeds up Earth physics - Futura-Sciences
The machine exceeds the capacity of its predecessor, the 1,300 g-tonne CHIEF1300, which entered service in September 2025. Both units surpass the former record holder at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which operates at 1,200 g-tonnes. The facility, named the Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary...
How I freed up 20GB of Google Photos storage with 5 simple steps
Google really should make freeing up space in the app easier, but I found some tricks to make the process simpler.
Musk’s headaches: meet China’s corporate matrix challenging his empire
From Tesla to SpaceX, Starlink and Neuralink, Chinese companies are giving – or trying to give – Elon Musk’s firms a run for their money.
Astronomers find water in the harsh environment near the Milky Way's black hole — Space photo of the week
Astronomers detected dust and water surprisingly close to the Milky Way's central black hole, Sagittarius A*, offering a rare direct view of how evolved stars may behave in hostile settings.
Which building blocks of life have been found in space, and which haven't?
So far, researchers have found many signs of the building blocks of life in space, but what exactly have they discovered, and what remains to be found?
I freed up 10GB of Gmail space in 5 minutes without deleting important emails
It's about time I audited my inbox
KATSEYE brings WILD energy to Rockefeller Center for TODAY Citi Concert Series
Thousands of fans packed Rockefeller Center Plaza Friday, spilling across the plaza and filling every available space as they waited for KATSEYE to take the
A meteorite punched through a bedroom ceiling in Hillsborough, New Jersey, in 2024. Scientists have now found hundreds of different amino acids inside it — and the majority are not known to occur naturally on Earth.
The Hillsborough meteorite was collected within minutes of falling through a New Jersey home, giving researchers a rare look at briny asteroid chemistry and a diverse set of extraterrestrial amino acids.
Volunteer Develops Machine-Learning Tool to Identify Rare Clouds
Certain kinds of clouds are misbehaving – appearing more often and lower in the sky than they used to. To help identify the factors influencing these changes, scientists have asked people around the world with cameras to submit fresh images of these clouds as a part of the NASA-supported Space Cloud Watch project.
Week Ends Aboard Station With Robotics, Spacewalk Reviews, and Science
Expedition 75 ended the week studying Canadarm2 robotic arm maneuvers and reviewing procedures for a spacewalk to support the removal and replacement of a space-to-ground antenna on Tuesday, Aug. 18. Science remained on Friday’s schedule as the International Space Station residents studied space exercise techniques, explored aerodynamic drag forces, and more.
Beau Rivage’s EIGHT75 entertainment venue returns with new look
BILOXI, Miss. (WXXV)- A new era of nightlife is arriving on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Beau Rivage’s signature lounge and live entertainment venue, EIGHT75, has gotten a major makeover with a new look and a new vibe. The space has been completely reimagined with rich colors, luxurious details, a 41-foot marble bar, and a new performance stage. Thursday night, Beau...
Gallery: Baptist Health Walker opens pediatric ER space, reopens NICU services
Baptist Health Walker Hospital has opened a new dedicated pediatric emergency room treatment space and reopened its Level II NICU services.Hospital leaders cut
Life on Earth may have begun twice. A Science Advances study found that bacteria and archaea inherited one ancient genetic code but independently evolved the machinery needed to become free-living cells — leading the researchers to describe it as “one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life.
The study proposes one inherited genetic system but two independent completions of cellular metabolism, not two unrelated acts of abiogenesis.
Laufey created a \'third space\' with her annual fan event, \'A Very Laufey Day.\' Then it exploded
The Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey has created a global fan event called “A Very Laufey Day.” It began in 2023 as a celebration of her second album, “Bewitched,” spurring fans to
Laufey created a ‘third space’ with her annual fan event, ‘A Very Laufey Day.’ Then it exploded
The Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey has created a global fan event called “A Very Laufey Day.”.
Radio telescopes help scientists map molecules in space and uncover where and how stars form
Interstellar maps can help scientists find patterns that tell them about fundamental chemical processes in the cosmos.
Hubble vs Roman
NASA's Hubble and Roman space telescopes will work together to broaden our perspective of the universe.
Count Binface has taken on three PMs and lost - but could this be his best ever performance?
The self-styled intergalactic space warrior wears a giant silver bin on his head and a silver cloak.
How Rocket Science Could Save Pacific Raceways
Aerospace development may provide the financial lifeline the historic Seattle-area racetrack needs to preserve its NHRA dragstrip and road course for generations.
AI needs science’s search history
“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.
Paragon lays off staff after Gateway cancellation
A subcontractor for a module that was being developed for NASA’s lunar Gateway has laid off 70 people after NASA halted work on the program.
How local vendors are finding success at Providence Place
While mall vacancies have piled up, local vendors at Providence Place have pioneered a creative way to fill space and boost the local economy.
Rams star names 49ers nightmare he ‘hates’ facing
“There’s nobody that covers that much space,” Nacua said. “It’s scary. The middle of the field is terrible.”
Business incubator coming to downtown Houghton in 2028
The city is encouraging entrepreneurs to reach out if interested in using a space in the building.
Johnson County entertainment restaurant closes after 12 years. ‘Deeply grateful’
Another spot plans to open up inside the former restaurant space. Here’s what to know.
Northrop's robot space mechanic is a new way to keep satellites at work longer
The Mission Robotic Vehicle is making the first attempt to attach a new thruster to an aging satellite.
Elon Musk: SpaceX’s AI Revenue Will Surpass Its Entire Space Business “Next Month”
Elon Musk just told SpaceX employees that a business most people have never heard of will soon dwarf rockets, Starlink, and every other revenue line the company has ever built, and he gave a specific month.
Lazarus Exploits Windows Zero-Day to Gain SYSTEM Access and Deploy Backdoor
Lazarus-linked attacks exploit Windows CVE-2026-68820 as a zero-day to gain SYSTEM access and deploy Troy against defense and aerospace firms.
A Space Expert Hoped to Use the Eclipse as Science Class. The D.J.s Had Other Plans.
Mar Carretero-Castrillo, an astrophysicist, returned to her remote village in Spain to be in the path of totality. Hundreds of partygoers came too.
Elon Musk Says AI Will Be SpaceX's Biggest Business by September: Does the Math Check Out?
SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) CEO Elon Musk says artificial intelligence will overtake everything else the company sells as soon as next month. In an all-hands meeting, Musk said AI revenue “will exceed all other SpaceX revenue probably in September, like next month,”...
Space tech: an orbiting market opportunity | Investors Lab
While AI models are excellent at parsing massive amounts of data, they struggle to pivot when faced with unprecedented events — the kind that frequently occur in the vacuum of outer space. Space operations are a zero-tolerance environment where the cost of a software miscalculation can be a total loss of assets or human lives. The solution isn't to abandon the technology, but to pivot toward human-assisted systems where an AI algorithm handles the heavy computational lifting while human experts serve as guides on the ground and remain the ultimate decision makers in aerospace technology. SN's Aaron Tremper takes us there.
SpaceX’s High-Margin Software Business Could Soon Hit $33 Billion. Investors Are Underestimating It.
Wall Street is fixated on SpaceX's lockup expiration while analysts quietly model a software business inside the company that could dwarf Google Cloud by 2030. Here is why the market may be pricing the wrong asset entirely.
Elon Musk says Grok will be trained on SpaceX employee data
SpaceX has become the latest tech giant to target employee data in the race to improve its AI models.
How to design a space habitat that supports its residents’ mental health
The Human-Environment Connection and Interaction Atlas (HECIA) is a tool for designing habitats in space and other extreme environments, where crews can not just survive but thrive. Users can explore the relationships between aspects of a habitat’s design and an inhabitant’s mental, emotional, and social wellbeing.
Count Binface, the man in a can with a plan, seeks Parliament seat in Britain’s wackiest election
Binface, a self-described intergalactic space warrior, has landed in the center of the U.K.’s political universe ahead of a special election against Trump ally Nigel Farage, among others.
China’s glueball ‘triumph’; SpaceX rocket debris on video: 7 science highlights
From China’s plan against desertification to nuking a ‘doomsday asteroid’, here are some highlights from SCMP’s recent science reporting.
UK 'joke' candidate Binface pushes serious point about politics
British politics has a long-cherished reputation for attracting the weird and wonderful. But in a pantheon of colorful characters, Count Binface, a man wearing a rubbish bin over his head, is stealing the show. The self-described "intergalactic space warrior" from the fictional planet Sigma IX takes on hardline anti-immigrant politician…
Astronomers created the largest-ever 2D map of the universe, charting 4 billion objects in the night sky
A new celestial map not only catalogs a variety of cosmic objects but also serves as a pointer for other telescopes on Earth and in space.
NASA Swift Boost Spacecraft Prepares to Continue Mission
Katalyst Space uploaded a flight software update that reestablished attitude control of its LINK spacecraft, which is set to boost NASA’s Swift observatory.
Crew Works Vein Scans For Health and Suit Checks for Spacewalk
Vein scans and spacesuit checks were the top duties for the Expediton75 crew aboard the International Space Station on Tuesday. The orbital residents also continued their Earth photography sessions, cargo operations, and life support maintenance.
Third macOS Golden Gate Public Beta Now Available
Apple today released the third public beta of macOS Golden Gate, allowing non-developers to test the software ahead of its fall release. You can sign up to test the update on Apple's beta website, and then download it by going to System Settings > General > Software Update and toggling on the macOS 27 beta. macOS Golden Gate includes the same Siri AI features as iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, but you get to Siri through Spotlight with a Command + Space keyboard shortcut.
Grok Bot is an all-new iPhone and Mac app from SpaceXAI and Cursor
SpaceXAI and Cursor are in the process of becoming a single company, but first, the two firms are releasing an...
AO Astrophysics Explorers Program 2026 SMEX Amended
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Science Mission Directorate (SMD) announces the release of Amendment #1 to the Announcement of Opportunity (AO) to solicit Principal Investigator (PI)-led space science investigations for the Small Explorer (SMEX) opportunity.
SpaceX shares can more than double, Morgan Stanley says. The bull thesis isn't based on space business
SpaceX has worked to become a bigger player in AI by acquiring startup Cursor, and that should add considerable value to its shares, Morgan Stanley says.
Health Sciences outreach program helps amplify the voices of people with aphasia
The UK College of Health Sciences is helping people with aphasia reconnect with their communities by partnering with local businesses and organizations to create more communication-friendly spaces. Through a unique outreach program, students work alongside individuals with aphasia to educate employees, reduce communication barriers and make everyday experiences more accessible and welcoming.
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4968-4974: Rock Climbing Towards the Discontinuity
Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Saber's newest game trailer takes a shot at Gearbox's CEO, if you look closely
The first hint that something might be up with the recent debut trailer for Saber Interactive’s Rideshare Stimulator is an unusual choice of words—aside from that second one in the game’s title. “Don’t take your passengers too seriously,” the trailer’s narrator says, as he describes this upcoming game. It a car game about the gig work of driving eccentric people to their destinations, a riff on Crazy Taxi. And then, he says: “When I think I’ve met the randiest of passengers, someone even stranger gets in.” “Randiest”? That suggests “randy,” which usually means having strong sexual desire. Yet none of the oddball backseat occupants featured in the trailer seem particularly lustful. One is an old man who considers his grandson a failure, another shares the theory that birds might control traffic lights, another says he’s banned from an aquarium. A little later, there’s a license plate, shown 63 seconds into the trailer, on the front of an SUV: USB DRV It’s a Texas plate. The symbol between those letters is a cog wheel. If you know, you know. That’s a reference to Texas-based Borderlands game development studio Gearbox Software (their logo features a cog wheel). More specifically, it’s a reference to Gearbox’s CEO Randy Pitchford, who in 2018 found himself explaining the nature of video he’d saved on a USB drive that was found at a Medieval Times restaurant before being returned to the studio: “It was ‘barely legal’ porn. This girl’s handle was ‘Only 18.’” The “girl” in the video had committed a solo sex act that Pitchford, an avid practitioner of magic, found remarkable. “I realized, this is not a sex worker…This is a fucking magician.” Back then, the USB drive was central to competing lawsuits against Gearbox by the studio’s former lawyer and by Gearbox against him. A settlement in late 2019 “exonerated” Pitchford, per the Hollywood Reporter. The USB story has resurfaced at times, now in a trailer from a company that not long ago was corporate brethren with Gearbox. Saber vs. Gearbox The head of Saber told Game File that the reference is payback. “The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4,” Saber CEO Matt Karch told me when I asked him about the license plate. “Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.” Having interviewed Karch during a cross-country flight in late 2024, I can confirm that Karch was unimpressed with Pitchford during their time both working in the Embracer group. I’d approached him not out of surprise that there was animosity but that it was manifesting publicly now. Gearbox was founded in 1999, worked on a port of Halo early on, and developed hit series such as the loot-based sci-fi shooter Borderlands before it was purchased by The Embracer Group in early 2021 for $363 million (with a possible earn-out of over $1 billion, if certain targets were hit by 2027). Saber was founded in 2001, worked on a remaster of Halo early on, had a big hit with zombie shooter World War Z and was purchased by Embracer in early 2020 for $150 million, with a potential earn-out of up to $375 million. For a few years, the Embracer group was a voracious acquirer of game studios. Then, as investment dried up, it choked. In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber to an investment company controlled by Saber CEO Matt Karch, and it sold Gearbox in an all-stock deal to long-time Borderlands publisher Take Two Interactive. Other studios were shut down. Hundreds of developers were laid off. Gearbox didn’t say much about their Embracer experience, nothing too direct, at least. In the summer 2024, Pitchford told reporter and occasional Game File contributor Nicole Carpenter that Borderlands 4’s story was in some way thematically connected to Gearbox’s experience at Embracer: “There’s this cultural and emotional shift in me, personally, and at the studio. What does it mean to trade some autonomy for organization?” When Borderlands 4 came out, there was something stranger: the matter of “Embracer’s Bluff,” a location in the game featuring an AI-powered toilet and a large trash dump, according to a detailed Kotaku account of the place. Gearbox never commented on it; Take Two never got back to me about it when I asked them last year. By contrast, since Saber exited Embracer, Karch has been one of Embracer’s biggest defenders, casting their management as well-meaning and supportive despite the layoffs and studio closures that resulted from their excessive expansion. Like others, Saber’s Karch saw Embracer’s as a shot. With Rideshare Stimulator’s trailer, he’s returned fire. “It’s amazing to me how fast people forget those who went above and beyond for them,” Karch told Game File. A rep for Gearbox did not comment by press time. Game File is a reader-supported publication. Your backing makes my reporting—including any coverage of trailer-based beefs—possible. Good news! I’m currently running Game File’s first big sale of 2026. You can get a one-year subscription for 23% off. Click here to take advantage of the limited-time offer. And thank you for your support! Item 2: In brief… 🚫 Wal-Mart has laid off the staff of Restart, a games media outlet launched in 2024, Aftermath reports. 🟥 A GTA VI preview is on the way, at last, via an “extended look” that will premiere, unusually, on Netflix at 3pm ET on August 27, then officially go live elsewhere six hours later. Last week, Game File noted that Take Two label Rockstar Games is overdue for showing off GTA VI, based on the timing of the initial hands-off previews of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2. During a call with investors, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said pre-orders for GTA VI were “unprecedented and astonishing,” but added the company can’t predict how many of those pre-orders represent bonus sales vs. sales that otherwise would have been made at launch. During the same call, Zelnick was noticeably bullish on the future of playing games over streaming cloud connections (predicting wider adoption in three or so years). He sounded unbothered by Sony’s plans to stop making discs for new games (he said the business is 90% digital already and predicted that there could still be limited edition physical editions of games “in the same way there’s still vinyl in the recorded music business.”) 👀 Take Two wrote off $43 million in their spring quarter after deciding “not to proceed with further development of an unannounced title in its pipeline from a third-party developer.” 🤔 Some rare age-demographics from a big publisher: Capcom recently told investors that “users in their 20s account for approximately half of the users of both Pragamata and Resident Evil Requiem.” Item 3: The week ahead Tuesday, August 11 Game releases: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (Switch 2; already out for PC, PS5, Xbox) continues the Bethesda strategy of putting Elder Scrolls games on everything; Royalty Free-For-All is a Smash Bros.-style fighting game featuring public domain characters such as Mother Goose brawling with Oliver Twist in a stage based on the original Little Shop of Horrors movie. Wednesday, August 12 Game release: Pro Jank Footy (PC, console) is an arcade-style Australian Rules Football game with increasingly ridiculous rules, the more you play (I enjoyed the Steam demo) Thursday, August 13 Game release: Super Mario Sunshine (Switch 2, originally released in 2002 on the GameCube) is released for Switch 2’s Nintendo Switch Online service. This game is the black sheep of 3D Mario games. It’s the successor to the breakthrough Super Mario 64 and the rare Mario game built around a single (vacation resort) theme. Mario’s got a water-spraying backpack, a Yoshi pal and a lot of blue coins to collect.
Self-flying air taxis and drones: Boeing sells key aviation technology businesses to Archer
Boeing is selling Wisk, SkyGrid and Insitu to Archer in a major deal combining autonomous aircraft, drones, airspace technology and AI.
Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe
Key Takeaways The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys combined more than 263,000 telescope exposures to make the largest 2D map of the universe in visible and near-infrared light. Astronomers can pair the Legacy Surveys map with their own observations to explore our universe and search for rare phenomena. The 2D map serves as the foundation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey to measure the universe in 3D and investigate dark energy. Hold on to your telescopes: the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe. The 5.6-trillion-pixel map contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies. The data is available for all to use and publicly viewable through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer. Astronomers and citizen scientists can explore the map or combine it with their own observations to better understand our universe. Researchers can search for rare phenomena like gravitational lenses, observe fleeting events like supernovae, and investigate two of physics’ biggest mysteries: dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for most of the mass in our universe, and dark energy, the force driving our universe’s accelerating expansion. The new map builds on earlier versions from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys that have already proved invaluable. To date, more than 1,800 science papers that reference the Legacy Surveys data have been published. “It’s part of the fabric of astronomy research now,” said David Schlegel, a co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “When you’re working with astronomical objects today, you often start by pulling up the Legacy Imaging Viewer to see what you’re looking at.” Covering roughly 75% of the sky in visible and near-infrared light, the updated map provides a deep view of the extragalactic universe not blocked by the dust and stars of our own Milky Way. Researchers expect it will remain the most comprehensive 2D map of our universe for years to come. More than 160 scientists contributed to data collection for the project, and a team of 20 produced the final dataset released today. It was built by combining 263,407 telescope exposures from three ground-based sky surveys: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS) at NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. That was supplemented by years of data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite mission and additional public data. “For our team, these data are fundamental to our investigation of the expansion history of the universe and the formation of our galaxy,” said Arjun Dey, co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and an astronomer at NSF NOIRLab. “But the skies belong to everyone, and this survey gives everyone the chance to explore the sky and marvel at its wonders.” Here be galaxies The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys were originally conducted to prepare for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. The Legacy Surveys’ 2D map is essentially a deep photograph of the sky; it records where galaxies and stars appear and how bright they appear. This crucial step enables DESI to select objects and measure their light in different wavelengths to determine their distances, building the largest high-resolution 3D map ever made. Scientists study the way galaxies have clustered at different ages of the universe to track dark energy over time. In April 2026, DESI completed its original five-year survey ahead of schedule and with vastly more objects than expected. The early results have shown surprising hints that dark energy’s impact may be weakening over time — a paradigm shift that could potentially shape the predicted fate of our universe. DESI expects to publish improved results using their first five years of data in 2027 and is continuing observations into 2028. DESI was so efficient at observing galaxies, the Legacy Surveys map needed to expand. Early on, “it became clear we might run out of galaxies to look at and run out of sky, and we better start doing something about that,” said Schlegel, who also works on DESI. The new Legacy Surveys map has been used to select DESI targets since June 2026 and will guide the telescope’s operations over the coming years. Computing the cosmos Merging hundreds of thousands of images taken on 2,285 nights, each with unique atmospheric and telescope conditions, was a massive computational effort. It took about a year to develop the computer code and eight weeks to process all the images at the Perlmutter supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab. Beyond supporting DESI, the Legacy Surveys will be a foundational reference for the next generation of telescopes. As new observatories like the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (jointly funded by NSF and DOE’s Office of Science) and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope come online, researchers can compare their observations with one of the deepest and most comprehensive views of the sky ever assembled. The Legacy Surveys data will also help scientists train artificial intelligence tools to analyze petabytes of astronomical data and accelerate new discoveries. It will be among the datasets used in an astrophysics pilot project within the American Science Cloud, part of the DOE’s Genesis Mission. The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics; the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility; the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences; and the partner institutions. DESI is supported by the DOE Office of Science and NERSC. Additional support for DESI is provided by the NSF; the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECIHTI) of Mexico; the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain; and by the DESI member institutions. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Lion Nebula Roars to Life With NASA’s Webb
Observing across the starry “plains” of space, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken new images of NGC 2392, nicknamed the Lion Nebula. NASA’s Hubble
Five Science Fiction Novels That Flirt With the Supernatural
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No Man’s Sky Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary
No Man’s Sky celebrates 10 years of space adventures!
Labour says Farage has ‘no serious answers’ to prisons crisis
Reform says it will free up space in jails in England and Wales by rapidly deporting all foreign offenders
How hospital monopolies are driving up the cost of your health care
More than a million times a year, a U.S. surgeon slices open a knee, strips out worn cartilage, caps the leg bones with metal and drops in a plastic spacer to allow the new joint to glide. But while these knee-replacement procedures have become standard, the prices charged have not.Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. At Catawba Valley Medical Center in Hickory, North Carolina, for example, the cost of the procedure under
No Dogs in Space is a music history podcast for true obsessives
Now if only they’d give us some new episodes.
Astronaut touches down at Shepherdstown Public Library
Retired U.S. Air Force colonel and NASA astronaut Paul Lockhart drew about 150 children and adults to the Shepherdstown Public Library for an impromptu presentation about space travel and his
Grants Boost New Waynesboro Businesses
Heading into Waynesboro on Route 250 past the Rockfish Gap entrance of Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Tunnel’s western portal, signs of an entrepreneurial wave are easy to spot. The Virginia Metalcrafters Marketplace, a cavernous industrial space where metalworkers forged iron and brass products for more than a century before sitting vacant for
Voyager 1 is down to two working science instruments, and the fix that just bought its twin, Voyager 2, another year of power is now being tested on a probe NASA says no longer behaves quite like its sibling
After nearly fifty years in the void, NASA is attempting an untested power trick on a probe that's increasingly unpredictable—and may be running out of time.
In 1967, US satellites hunting secret nuclear tests detected a flash from deep space; the accidental signal became the first observed gamma-ray burst
For more than half a century, gamma-ray bursts have remained one of the most puzzling events observed in space. These bursts are sudden flashes of gamma rays, a very high-energy form of light.
Selling the Dream of SpaceX Was the Easy Part. Now Elon Musk Has to Hang On.
SpaceX’s $300 billion swing in market value this past week put Musk back in grind mode, having to execute on highflying promises made in the lead-up to the biggest IPO ever.
7 Best Tech Gadgets of August 2026
August arrives with a lineup that feels genuinely considered. Not every gadget this month is chasing a headline spec or fighting for shelf space. Some of the most interesting things landing right now are smaller, quieter, and more honest about what they actually do — a folding mouse that disappears into a shirt pocket, a
Seedless and WatermelonDS Drop Their Latest Updates at Once
The world of Nintendo DS emulation has always been a bit of a strange thing. You're either in the camp where the emulation is fine, or the one where it's just better to do it on an original console. Recently though, those lines have been blurred with dual screen releases like the Anbernic RG DS,
Dallas' Perot Museum of Nature and Science to add $90 million expansion
The Perot Museum says a privately funded $90 million project will add more parking, a covered walkway and more event space. See the timeline.