NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program on Friday morning, including an increased cadence of missions and cancellation of an expensive rocket stage.

The upheaval comes as NASA has struggled to fuel the massive Space Launch System rocket for the upcoming Artemis II lunar mission, and Isaacman has sought to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs. There is ever-increasing concern that, absent a shake-up, China’s rising space program will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there this decade with Artemis.

“NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.”

Shaking things up

The announced changes to the Artemis program include:

• Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket
• Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage
• Artemis IV, V (and any additional missions, should there be) will use a “standardized” upper stage
• Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit
• Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission
• NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in “mid” 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028
• NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond

At the core of Isaacman’s concerns is the low flight rate of the SLS rocket and Artemis missions. During past exploration missions, from Mercury through Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle program, NASA has launched humans on average about once every three months. It has been nearly 3.5 years since Artemis I launched.

“This is just not the right pathway forward,” Isaacman said.

A senior NASA official, speaking on background to Ars, noted that the space agency has experienced hydrogen and helium leaks during both the Artemis I and Artemis II pre-launch preparations, and these problems have led to monthslong delays in launch.

“If I recall, the timing between Apollo 7 and 8 was nine weeks,” the official said. “Launching SLS every three and a half years or so is not a recipe for success. Certainly, making each one of them a work of art with some major configuration change is also not helpful in the process, and we’re clearly seeing the results of it, right?”

The goal, therefore, is to standardize the SLS rocket into a single configuration to make it as reliable as possible and to launch it as frequently as every 10 months. NASA will fly the SLS vehicle until there are commercial alternatives to launch crew to the Moon, perhaps through Artemis V as Congress has mandated, or perhaps even a little longer.

Is everyone on board?

The NASA official said all of the agency’s key contractors are on board with the change, and senior leaders in Congress have been briefed on the proposed changes.

The biggest opposition to these proposals would seemingly come from Boeing, which is the prime contractor for the Exploration Upper Stage, a contract worth billions of dollars to develop a more powerful rocket that was due to launch for the first time later this decade. However, in a NASA news release, Boeing appeared to offer at least some support for the revised plans.

“Boeing is a proud partner to the Artemis mission and our team is honored to contribute to NASA’s vision for American space leadership,” said Steve Parker, Boeing Defense, Space & Security president and CEO, in the news release. “The SLS core stage remains the world’s most powerful rocket stage, and the only one that can carry American astronauts directly to the moon and beyond in a single launch. As NASA lays out an accelerated launch schedule, our workforce and supply chain are prepared to meet the increased production needs.”

Solid reasons for changing Artemis III

NASA’s new approach to Artemis reflects a return to the philosophy of the Apollo program. During the late 1960s, the space agency flew a series of preparatory crewed missions before the Apollo 11 lunar landing. These included Apollo 7 (a low-Earth orbit test of the Apollo spacecraft), Apollo 8 (a lunar orbiting mission), Apollo 9 (a low-Earth orbit rendezvous with the lunar lander), and Apollo 10 (a test of the lunar lander descending to the Moon, without touching down).

With its previous Artemis template, NASA skipped the steps taken by Apollo 7, 9, and 10. In the view of many industry officials, this leap from Artemis II—a crewed lunar flyby of the Moon testing only the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft—to Artemis III and a full-on lunar landing was enormous and risky.

The new approach will, in NASA parlance, “buy down” some of the risk for a 21st-century lunar landing, including performance and handling of a lunar lander, rendezvous and docking, communications, spacesuit performance, and more.

It will also increase the challenges for NASA. In particular, the timeline to bring the Orion spacecraft to readiness for a mid-2027 launch will need to be accelerated, and efforts to integrate that vehicle with one or both lander providers will need serious attention.

For the Artemis IV lunar landing mission, NASA will also need to human-rate a new upper stage for the SLS rocket. The vehicle currently uses a modified Delta IV upper stage manufactured by United Launch Alliance. But that rocket production line is closed, and NASA only has two more of these stages. With the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage, NASA will now procure a new stage commercially. NASA officials only said they will seek a “standardized” upper stage. As Ars has previously reported, the most likely replacement would be the Centaur V upper stage currently flying on Vulcan rockets.

What of the Lunar Gateway?

Friday’s announcement—which, for the space community, is the equivalent of a major earthquake—left some key details unaddressed. For example, NASA has been developing a larger launch tower to support the Block 1B version of the SLS rocket, with its more powerful upper stage. Development of this tower, finally underway, has been a clown show, with project costs ballooning from an initial estimate of $383 million to $1.8 billion, and delays stacked on delays. Will this tower be scrapped or repurposed?

Isaacman and other NASA officials were also mum on the Lunar Gateway, a proposed space station in a high orbit around the Moon. Key elements of this space station are under construction. However, cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage raises questions about its future. The main purpose of the Block 1B version of SLS was to launch heavier payloads, most notably elements of the Gateway along with Orion.

“The whole Gateway-Moon base conversation is not for today,” the senior NASA official said. “We, I can assure you, will talk about the Moon base in the weeks ahead. I would just not overly read into this, because we had manifested some Gateway modules on Falcon Heavy already. The implications of standardizing SLS and increasing launch rate are about the ability to return to the Moon. I don’t think we necessarily have to speculate too much on what the other downstream implications are.”

The Gateway program office is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the lunar station is viewed as a successor to the International Space Station in terms of flight operations.

Key politicians, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have been supportive of this new station. But during some recent congressional hearings, Cruz has indicated he is open to a lunar space station or an outpost on the lunar surface. He just wants to be sure NASA has an enduring presence on or near the Moon. One industry source said Isaacman could be laying the groundwork to replace the Gateway Program with a Moon Base program office in Houston. It is unclear how much of a political battle this would ultimately be.

Some of this has been well-predicted

Although the changes outlined by NASA on Friday are sweeping, they are not completely out of the blue.

In April 2024, Ars reported that some senior NASA officials were considering an Earth-orbit rendezvous between Orion and Starship as a means to buy down risk for a lunar landing. NASA ultimately punted on the idea before it was revived by Isaacman this month.

Additionally, in October 2024, Ars offered a guide to saving the “floundering” Artemis program by canceling the Block 1B upgrade for the SLS rocket, replacing its upper stage with a Centaur V, and canceling the Lunar Gateway. This would free up an estimated $2 billion annually to focus on accelerating a lunar landing, the publication estimated.

That may be the very course the space agency has embarked upon today.

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Posted Saturday 28 February 2026 at 4:56 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of January) 461

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Welcome to Edition 8.31 of the Rocket Report! We have some late-breaking news this week with an update Thursday afternoon from Rocket Lab on the timing of its much-anticipated Neutron rocket. Following the failure of a first stage tank during testing, the company is pushing the medium-lift rocket’s debut into the fourth quarter of this year. Effectively that probably means 2027 for the booster, which is disappointing because we all very much want to see another reusable rocket take flight.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

The ghost of Vector lives on. Tucson, Arizona-based satellite and rocket developer Phantom Space, co-founded by Jim Cantrell in 2019, has acquired the remnants of Vector Launch, Space News reports. The announcement is notable because Cantrell left Vector as its finances deteriorated in 2019. Cantrell said some of the assets, comprising flight-proven design elements, engineering data, and other technology originally developed for Vector, will be immediately integrated into Phantom’s Daytona vehicle architecture to reduce development risk.

What’s your vector, Victor? … “As the original architect of Vector’s vision, it’s deeply meaningful to bring these assets home to Phantom,” Cantrell said in a statement. “This acquisition isn’t just about technology, it’s about momentum. We’re accelerating Daytona, creating high-tech aerospace jobs in Tucson, and moving faster toward orbital capability.” The small-lift Daytona rocket could use some acceleration since it has been delayed year after year for a while now. At present, it is slated to debut during the second half of 2027.

UK limits launch liability. An amendment to the United Kingdom’s Space Industry Act will mandate that limits are set on how much launch operators are financially liable if something goes wrong, European Spaceflight reports. According to Sarah Madden, a space lawyer at the London-based law firm Winckworth Sherwood, the amendment to the legislation removes the risk that operators launching from the UK might face unlimited liability.

Putting policy into law … Although the legislation provided certainty, all three launch operator licenses issued to date by the UK Civil Aviation Authority include a cap on indemnity to the government. Virgin Orbit’s 2022 horizontal launch license capped this at $250 million, while the vertical launch licenses granted to Skyrora and Rocket Factory Augsburg in 2025 set the cap at £10.5 million ($14.2 million). However, these limits were imposed as a matter of policy rather than law.

PLD nabs launch contract. Spanish satellite operator Sateliot has signed a launch services agreement with PLD Space to launch its first two high-capacity 5G D2D (Direct-to-Device) Tritó satellites aboard a dedicated MIURA 5 mission, European Spaceflight reports. PLD Space is working toward the first flight of its 35.7-meter-tall MIURA 5 rocket in 2026. The rocket is designed to deliver payloads of up to 1,040 kilograms to low-Earth orbit and will initially launch from a new multi-user facility being built on the grounds of the Guiana Space Centre’s former Diamant launch complex.

Two at a time … PLD Space will attempt to carry its first two Tritó satellites to orbit aboard a dedicated MIURA 5 mission in 2027. According to the company, Sateliot selected PLD Space “based on MIURA 5’s ability to provide an independent, dedicated service tailored to the client’s specific needs, ensuring optimal launch conditions for deploying its space infrastructure.” Each Tritó satellite will have a mass of approximately 160 kilograms.

Neutron rocket launch slips to Q4 2026. As part of its quarterly earnings guidance update on Thursday, Rocket Lab provided a new launch target for the medium-lift Neutron rocket. Following the failure of first stage tank during testing, Neutron’s first launch is now targeted for “Q4 2026,” the company said. This is a notable slip, given that it was only last November that Rocket Lab announced a slip from the end of 2025 to “mid-2026.”

Invoking Berger’s Law … In its news release regarding the fourth quarter of 2025 earnings, the company said it completed successful qualification for Neutron’s thrust structure and entered the qualification phase for the interstage, and successfully qualified Neutron’s Hungry Hippo fairing and delivered it to the Assembly and Integration Complex in Virginia. I hate to do it, but I’m afraid that I am compelled to invoke Berger’s Law for rockets on this one, which states, “If a rocket is predicted to make its debut in Q4 of a calendar year, and that quarter is six or more months away, the launch will be delayed.” Since its inception in 2022, the law has been undefeated.

Falcon 9 extends its reuse milestone. SpaceX’s most-flown Falcon 9 rocket booster launched once again Saturday night, making its 33rd mission to space and back, Spaceflight Now reports. The 33rd flight of Falcon 9 booster 1067 came about two and a half months after its previous launch in early December. Its previous missions include four flights for NASA, the European Commission’s Galileo L13, and 20 batches of Starlink satellites.

Lordy, lordy, Falcon 9 is turning 40? … Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1067 landed on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the 143rd landing on this vessel and the 575th booster landing to date for SpaceX. At present, SpaceX says it is working to certify its first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket for up to 40 flights.

Pentagon happy with military rockets. The Space Force officer tasked with overseeing more than $24 billion in research and development spending says the Pentagon is more interested in supporting startups building new space sensors and payloads than adding yet another rocket company to its portfolio, Ars reports. “We’re on path for mass-produced launch,” Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy said at a space finance conference in Dallas.

Help needed to speed up payloads … Payloads, Purdy told Ars after his talk, are “the last frontier” for scaling space missions. “I remain convinced that we’re going to think about the mission that we need, and we’re going to need satellites out the door and launched and in orbit within the week, at scale,” Purdy said. “I’m very convinced that that’s the path that we’re going to move down on the commercial and government side.”

New data on how rockets pollute the atmosphere. New research bolsters growing concerns about the pollution produced by rocket launches, Ars reports. The new study in Nature analyzed a plume of pollution trailing part of a Falcon rocket that crashed through the upper atmosphere on February 19, 2025, after SpaceX lost control of its reentry. The authors said it is the first time debris from a specific spacecraft disintegration has been traced and measured in the near-space region about 80 to 110 kilometers above Earth. Changes there can affect the stratosphere, where ozone and climate processes operate. Until recent years, human activities had little impact on that region.

Studying the Ignorosphere … “I was surprised how big the event was, visually,” lead author Robin Wing, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said via email. He said people across northern Europe captured images of the burning debris, which was concentrated enough to enable high-resolution observations and to use atmospheric models to trace the lithium to its source. The study shows that instruments can detect rocket pollution “in the ‘Ignorosphere’ (upper atmosphere near space),” he wrote. “There is hope that we can get ahead of the problem and that we don’t run blind into a new era of emissions from space.”

Ambitious Chinese launch company moves into development. Chinese launch startup Space Epoch has secured B-round funding as the company moves toward a first orbital launch and recovery attempt late this year, Space News reports. The company says the funding means Space Epoch has entered a stage of large-scale development. “Three Yuanxingzhe-1 rockets already in production will undergo ground testing in the second half of the year, with the goal of achieving a successful first orbital launch and recovery by year’s end,” Space Epoch said in a statement.

Vulcan likely “many months” from flying again. Twice, once in 2024 and again earlier this month, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket experienced issues with the nozzle on one of its solid rocket boosters during a launch. In both cases, the rocket’s main engines compensated for the issues, but the US military is not eager to test Vulcan’s ability to overcome such a dramatic problem again, Ars reports. “Any time there’s an anomaly, my team is going to be actively engaged with the contractors to make sure we understand what happened and we correct that issue,” said Col. Eric Zarybnisky, program acquisition executive for Space Systems Command’s space access program.

A nettlesome nozzle issue … Zarybnisky spoke with reporters Wednesday in a roundtable at the Air Force and Space Force Association’s Warfare Symposium near Denver. He said it was too early to provide details on the direction of the investigation but predicted it would be a “many months process” to identify the “exact technical issue” and the corrective actions required to prevent it from happening again. After the first booster issue in 2024, investigators identified a manufacturing defect in a carbon composite insulator, or heat shield, inside the nozzle. The latest incident suggests the defect was not fixed or that there is a separate problem with Northrop’s boosters. (submitted by philip verdieck)

SLS rocket rolls back to hangar. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced this week that a new problem with the Space Launch System rocket will require the removal of the rocket from its launch pad in Florida. The large booster, with the Orion spacecraft stacked on top, then rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building. The latest issue appeared on the evening of February 20, when data showed an interruption in helium flow into the upper stage of the Space Launch System rocket, Ars reports. NASA officials were eyeing a launch attempt for Artemis II as soon as March 6, the first of five launch opportunities available in March.

Marching into April … There are approximately five days per month that the mission can depart the Earth after accounting for the position of the Moon in its orbit, the flight’s trajectory, and thermal and lighting constraints. The next series of launch dates begins on April 1. The space agency bypassed launch opportunities earlier this month after a fueling test on the SLS rocket revealed a hydrogen leak. After replacing seals in the fuel line leading into the SLS core stage, NASA completed a second fueling test last week with no significant leaks, raising hopes the mission could take off next month. With the discovery of the helium issue last Friday night, the March launch dates are now off the table.

Next three launches

February 27: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-108 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 10:20 UTC

March 1: Alpha | Stairway to Seven | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 00:50 UTC

March 1: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-23 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 08:00 UTC

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Posted Saturday 28 February 2026 at 4:55 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of January) 461

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By now, it’s firmly established that modern humans and their Neanderthal relatives met and mated as our ancestors expanded out of Africa, resulting in a substantial amount of Neanderthal DNA scattered throughout our genome. Less widely recognized is that some of the Neanderthal genomes we’ve seen have pieces of modern human DNA as well.

Not every modern human has the same set of Neanderthal DNA, however; different people will, by chance, have inherited different fragments. But there are also some areas, termed “Neanderthal deserts,” where none of the Neanderthal DNA seems to have persisted. Notably, the largest Neanderthal desert is the entire X chromosome, raising questions about whether this reflects the evolutionary fitness of genes there or mating preferences.

Now, three researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Alexander Platt, Daniel N. Harris, and Sarah Tishkoff, have done the converse analysis: examining the X chromosomes of the handful of completed genomes we have. It turns out there’s also a strong bias toward modern human sequences there, as well, and the authors interpret that as selective mating, with Neanderthal males showing a strong preference for modern human females and their descendants.

What type of selection are we looking at?

Given how long modern humans and Neanderthals had been evolving as separate populations, some degree of genetic incompatibility is definitely possible. Lots of proteins interact in various ways, and the genes behind these interaction networks will evolve together—a change in one gene will often lead to compensatory changes in other genes in the network. Over time, those changes may mean re-introducing the original gene will actually disrupt the network, with a negative impact on fitness.

That means the introduction of some Neanderthal genes into the modern human genome (or vice versa) would be disruptive and make carriers of them less fit. So they’d be selected against and lost over the ensuing generations. Of course, some segments would likely be lost at random—the genome’s pretty big, and the modern human population was likely large and growing, allowing its DNA to dilute out the influence of other human populations. Figuring out which influence is dominant can be challenging.

One way to sort this out is to make the same comparison with Neanderthal genomes. If a Neanderthal gene is disruptive in a modern human context, then it’s likely that the modern human version will be disruptive in Neanderthals. And, in fact, that’s what we seem to see: A look at one Neanderthal genome found that there’s some correlation between the Neanderthal deserts in the human genome and the human deserts in that Neanderthal.

All of that, however, doesn’t go far to explain the fact that the X chromosome looks like a giant Neanderthal desert, with long stretches of nothing but modern human DNA. The genetics of the X is complicated by the fact that males inherit a single copy from their mothers, so they have only a single copy of almost every gene on it. If any of those genes are causing problems, they will be quickly selected against in males.

Thus, evolutionary selection against the Neanderthal X is definitely an option. The alternative they consider is that it’s the product of biased matings. If most mating between the two groups was biased in some way, it could skew the frequency with which the X chromosome was inherited. For example, if most of the matings involved Neanderthal males and modern human females, then you would have fewer Neanderthal X’s around as a result, since only half of a male’s offspring will inherit an X chromosome from them.

A strong preference

To figure out which result might be the case, the researchers again turned to the three Neanderthal genomes we have available, looking at the pattern of inheritance along the X chromosome. That was compared to X chromosomes from African populations that have very little Neanderthal DNA.

The results contrasted sharply with what was seen elsewhere in the genome, where Neanderthal deserts in modern humans correspond to human deserts in the Neanderthal genome. Instead, the X chromosome in Neanderthals tended to have an excess of modern human sequences—exactly as you see in modern humans. It appears that the modern human X ended up more common in both human and Neanderthal populations.

Could this be from evolutionary selection for something favorable about it? The researchers found that modern human DNA found on the Neanderthal X had a lower than average frequency of important sequences like those that regulate nearby genes or code for proteins. While that doesn’t rule out evolutionary selection as a factor, it does make it seem a bit less likely, since there’s less indication that the DNA being kept around is functional.

That leaves preferential mating as a more probable explanation. But the modern human DNA was present at such a high frequency on the X that it’s difficult to explain by a simple preference of Neanderthal males for modern human females. Instead, you’d have to have a continued preference for the offspring of these matches as well. “We did not rule out more complicated scenarios combining selection and sex biases, such as natural selection acting as a modifying force on top of the strong signature left by sex bias,” the authors also note.

Overall, we’re left with a picture of a relatively large number of matings between male Neanderthals and modern human females. The offspring of these matings ended up in both the modern human and Neanderthal populations; in the latter, their offspring were favored enough to have led to an excess contribution to the X chromosome.

Science, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/science.aea6774 (About DOIs).

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Posted Friday 27 February 2026 at 12:00 pm AEST (my time).

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For miles around xAI’s makeshift power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, neighbors have endured months of constant roaring, erupting pops, and bursts of high-pitched whining from 27 temporary gas turbines installed without consulting the community.

In a report on Thursday, NBC News interviewed residents fighting to shut down xAI’s turbines. They confirmed that xAI operates the turbines day and night, allegedly tormenting residents in order to power xAI founder Elon Musk’s unbridled AI ambitions.

Eventually, 41 permanent gas turbines—that supposedly won’t be as noisy—will be installed, if xAI can secure the permitting. In the meantime, xAI has erected a $7 million “sound barrier” that’s supposed to mitigate some of the noise.

However, residents told NBC News that the wall that xAI built does little to quiet the din.

Taylor Logsdon, who lives near the power plant, said that neighbors nearby jokingly call it the “Temu sound wall,” referencing the Chinese e-commerce site known for peddling cheap, rather than high-quality goods. For Logsdon, the wall has not helped to calm her dogs, which have been unsettled by sudden booms and squeals that videos show can frequently be heard amid the turbines’ continual jet engine-like hum. Some residents are just as unsettled as the dogs, describing the noises from the plant as “scary.”

A nonprofit environmental advocacy group, the Safe and Sound Coalition, has been collecting evidence, hoping to raise awareness in the community to block xAI from obtaining permits for its permanent turbines. The group’s website links to videos documenting the noise, noise analysis reports, and public records showing how challenging it’s been to track xAI’s communications with public officials.

Safe and Sound Coalition video documents constant roars after a “loud bang” signaled “something popped off.”

For example, public records requests to the city of Southaven seeking information on xAI exemptions to noise ordinances or communications about the sound wall turned up nothing. A director overseeing the city’s planning and development claimed that the office was not “involved with the noise barrier wall” and could provide no details. Similarly, a permit clerk for the city’s building department confirmed there were no documents to share.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the coalition told Ars that the “absence of documentation raises transparency concerns.”

“When decisions with community impact are made without accessible records, it creates an accountability gap and limits the public’s ability to understand how those decisions were evaluated or authorized,” the spokesperson said.

An IT worker who co-founded the coalition, Jason Haley, told NBC News that xAI’s wall showed that the city could have required the company to do more to prevent noise pollution before upsetting community members.

“If you knew the noise was going to be an issue, put in a sound wall first,” Haley said. “Do some other stuff first before you torture us. That’s not that hard of an ask.”

xAI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment. According to NBC News, the company has yet to make public a noise analysis that it conducted.

xAI’s turbines spark other concerns

xAI has maintained that it follows the law when rushing at breakneck speeds to build infrastructure to support its AI innovations. In Southaven, xAI was approved to operate the temporary gas turbines at the power plant for 12 months, without any additional permitting required.

Now it’s seeking permits for the permanent turbines, which residents worry could be nearly as loud, while possibly introducing more smog into an area that’s mostly homes, churches, parks, and schools, the Safe and Sound Coalition’s website said.

Pollutants could increase risks of asthma, heart attacks, stroke, and cancer, a community flyer the coalition distributed warned, urging attendance at a public meeting where residents could finally air their complaints (a meeting which NBC News’ report thoroughly documented). The flyer also suggested that the city’s main drinking water supply could be affected and perhaps tainted if the power plant’s wastewater contains toxic chemicals, since there isn’t a graywater recycling plant nearby. For residents, it’s hard to tell if things will ever get better. One noise analysis the coalition shared found that the daily sound of the turbines was higher on an “annoyance scale” than when entire neighborhoods set off New Year’s Eve fireworks.

“Our water, air, power grid, utility bills, property values, and health are all at risk,” the Safe and Sound Coalition’s website said. “We’re already facing toxic pollution and relentless industrial noise. There is no clear oversight, no transparency, and no plan to protect the people living nearby.”

The coalition expects that if enough community members protest the plant, the permitting agency will deny xAI’s permits and order any potentially dangerous turbines to be shut down. But other groups are taking a different approach, considering suing xAI if it continues operating the unpermitted gas turbines in Southaven.

Earlier this month, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) joined the NAACP in sending xAI a notice of intent to sue. In that letter, groups warned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently changed a rule that they argued now requires permits for the temporary turbines. They gave xAI 60 days to respond.

The same groups previously sent a legal threat to xAI, opposing alleged data center pollution in Memphis, Tenn. xAI eventually secured permits for some of the gas turbines sparking scrutiny there, which many locals found “devastating.” Further concerning, residents relying on drone imagery—with no other way to keep track of how many turbines xAI was running—warned that the permits only covered 15 of 24 turbines on site.

EPA shrugs off xAI permitting concerns

It’s unclear whether the SELC can win if it takes xAI to court, or whether the EPA would ever intervene if that action could be construed as delaying Trump’s order to rush permitting and build as many data centers as fast as possible to power AI.

The SELC declined Ars’ request to comment, but the EPA’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, seemed to negate that argument in an interview with Fox Business in January. Asked directly about xAI’s gas turbines, Zeldin confirmed that the EPA was working closely on permitting with local officials in Southaven and Shelby County—where xAI built a massive data center sparking protests.

Rather than suggesting that the EPA might be preparing to review xAI’s unpermitted gas turbines, Zeldin emphasized that for Donald Trump, it “is about getting permits done faster.”

“EPA has the power to slow things down; EPA also has the power to speed things up, and that’s where the Trump EPA is,” Zeldin said.

Permitting for the Southaven project’s permanent gas turbines may be approved as soon as next month, NBC News reported.

Residents skeptical second sound barrier will be better

For Southaven, xAI’s power plant—along with a planned data center, which Musk has dubbed “MACROHARDRR” to mock Microsoft—represents a chance to surge the local economy. That prospect seemingly swayed government support for the projects, which has apparently not waned in the face of mounting protests.

When Musk bought the dormant power plant, “it was the largest private investment in state history,” Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s Republican governor, claimed. Additionally, xAI’s affiliated company that’s behind the projects, MZX Tech, donated $1.38 million to the city’s police department, NBC News reported. Both the plant and the data center “are expected to bring in millions of dollars and new jobs,” Reeves said.

For Southaven residents, the only hope they have that the noise may die down any time soon is that construction on another sound barrier will be finished in the next two months, NBC News reported. Supposedly, engineers were taking time to study “what type of sound barrier would be most effective” amid complaints about the current sound barrier.

A spokesperson for the Safe and Sound Coalition told Ars that the group remains “skeptical” that the new wall will be any better than the first sound barrier.

“To our understanding, sound barriers can reduce certain frequencies under controlled conditions, but turbine noise involves low-frequency sounds and tonal components that often reach beyond barriers,” the coalition’s spokesperson said. “The most effective method for reducing industrial noise exposure is typically distance from residential areas, which is not a mitigation option in this scenario given the facility’s proximity to homes.”

The coalition urged xAI to be transparent and to share data backing mitigation claims if it wants the community to believe that the second sound barrier will make any difference.

“Without transparent modeling, validated field measurements, and independent verification, it is difficult to assess whether the barrier will meaningfully address the ongoing nuisance experienced by nearby residents,” the coalition’s spokesperson said. “Mitigation claims are only meaningful if they are supported by transparent data.”

Mayor labels protestors Musk haters

At least one city official, Mayor Darren Musselwhite, has suggested that community backlash is “political.” Although he acknowledged that the noise was a “legitimate concern,” he also claimed on Facebook that some people protesting xAI’s facility were simply Elon Musk haters, NBC News reported.

“Southaven is now under attack by all who choose to oppose Elon Musk because of his high-profile political stances,” Musselwhite wrote.

However, residents told NBC News that “their concerns have nothing to do with politics.” 

Instead, they’re worried that local officials seeing dollar signs have potentially let xAI exploit loopholes to pollute communities without any warning. The community flyer from the Safe and Sound Coalition criticized what they viewed as shady behavior from local officials:

“This project was started behind our backs, with zero community input. Local officials have repeatedly downplayed concerns, spun the facts, and misled residents about the true impacts and the deals made with xAI. Many people only found out after the turbines were up and running.”

The coalition’s spokesperson told Ars that a health impact analysis published on behalf of the SELC provides “meaningful insight” into the biggest health risks. That concluded that using the EPA’s COBRA health impact model, emissions from running 41 permanent turbines at the Southaven plant “are estimated to result in $30–$44 million per year in health-related damages, including costs from premature deaths, hospital visits, and lost productivity. Over a typical 30-year operating life, these impacts would amount to approximately $588–$862 million in cumulative discounted public-health costs, borne largely by residents of Tennessee and Mississippi.”

Additionally, the largest amount of harmful pollutants increases are expected to be “concentrated in communities that are disproportionately Black, highly socially vulnerable, and have elevated baseline asthma prevalence,” the report said.

If the permits are issued, the Coalition’s spokesperson told Ars that the group expects to continue gathering reports of “firsthand experiences” from nearby residents, which will “continue to provide valuable information regarding ongoing impacts.” The group plans to continue engaging with officials and pushing for greater accountability and transparent monitoring, as well as documenting noise conditions, reviewing emissions reports, and collecting independent data where feasible.

“The Coalition’s focus is long-term community protection, which means tracking compliance, advocating for corrective action if standards are not met, and ensuring residents have access to accurate information about environmental and health impacts,” the spokesperson said. “Permit approval would not resolve community concerns; it would shift our focus toward ongoing oversight and enforcement.”

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Posted Friday 27 February 2026 at 11:59 am AEST (my time).

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We’re all familiar with the high-pitched squeak of basketball shoes on the court during games, or tires squealing on pavement. Scientists conducted several experiments and discovered that the geometry of the sneakers’ tread patterns determines the squeak’s frequency, enabling the team to make rubber blocks set to specific frequencies and slide them across glass surfaces to play Star Wars’ “Imperial March.”

“Tuning frictional behavior on the fly has been a long-standing engineering dream,” said co-author Katia Bertoldi of Harvard University. “This new insight into how surface geometry governs slip pulses paves the way for tunable frictional metamaterials that can transition from low-friction to high-grip states on demand.” In addition, the dynamics revealed by these results are similar to those of tectonic faults and thus give scientists a new model for the mechanics of earthquakes, according to their new paper published in the journal Nature.

Leonardo da Vinci is usually credited with conducting the first systematic study of friction in the late 15th century, a subfield now known as tribology that deals with the dynamics of interacting surfaces in relative motion. Da Vinci’s notebooks depict how he pulled rows of blocks using weights and pulleys, an approach that is still used in frictional studies today, as well as examining the friction produced in screw threads, wheels, and axles. The authors of this latest paper used an experimental setup similar to da Vinci’s.

The squeaking of sneakers on a gym floor is usually attributed to friction, specifically a stick-slip variety that involves cycles of sticking and sliding between two surfaces. But that model is best suited for interfaces involving two rigid objects, such as squeaking door hinges. Sneaker soles sliding across a gym floor involves one hard object (the floor) and one soft one (the sneaker sole). Bertholdi et al. wanted a more complete understanding of the dynamics of soft-on-rigid interfaces.

First, the team slid commercial basketball shoes (the Nike CU3503-100) across a smooth, dry glass plate, simultaneously capturing sound and visual imagery of what was happening between the sole and the glass (i.e., the frictional interface). They identified opening pulses traveling in the sliding direction non-uniformly, resulting in temporary local supersonic separations between the shoe soles and the glass plate. Those audible squeaks aren’t random; the frequency is determined by the repetition rate of the generated pulses.

To test this hypothesis further, Bertoldi and colleagues made their own blocks from silicone rubber: one with a flat sliding surface and the other with parallel thin ridges, akin to sneaker treads. After sliding both versions on the same dry glass plate, they found that both consistently generated pulses along the frictional interface when sliding above a certain threshold (0.3 m per second). And sometimes there were triboelectric discharges (tiny lightning bolts created by friction) triggering the pulses, giving a squeak a bit of spark.

Tunable frequencies

There were some differences between the smooth and ridged blocks. The flat blocks produced disordered pulses, akin to broadband noise (a swooshing sound), and the slip amplitude showed large fluctuations over time and across the surface. The ridged blocks produced pulses with a more focused pitch and minimized larger fluctuations to get a more uniform slip amplitude and frequency. The results were also different from what is predicted by a standard spring-block model, in which frequencies of stick-slip dynamics increase as the sliding rates increase, per the authors. Instead, their experiments showed that as sliding rates increased, the fundamental frequencies remained the same.

So geometry plays a significant role in determining the frequency of sneaker squeaks. The team was even able to custom-design rubber blocks of differing heights tuned to specific frequencies to perform Star Wars’ “Imperial March” by sliding them across glass plates (see video above). “We were surprised that tiny surface features could so strongly reorganize frictional motion,” said co-author Gabriele Albertini of the University of Nottingham.

“These results bridge two fields that are traditionally disconnected: the tribology of soft materials and the dynamics of earthquakes,” said co-author Shmuel Rubinstein, a physicist at Hebrew University. “Soft friction is usually considered slow, yet we show that the squeak of a sneaker can propagate as fast as, or even faster than, the rupture of a geological fault, and that their physics is strikingly similar.”

Nature, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10132-3 (About DOIs).

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Posted Friday 27 February 2026 at 11:56 am AEST (my time).

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Last year, Ford set a new industry record: It issued 152 safety recalls, almost twice the previous high set by General Motors back in 2014. More than 24 million vehicles were recalled in the US last year, and more than half—13 million—were either Fords or Lincolns. By contrast, Tesla issued 11 recalls, affecting just 745,000 vehicles.

Truth be told, Ford’s not doing too hot in 2026, either; it’s currently leading the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s chart for recalls this year, with 10 on the books already. The latest is a big one, affecting almost 4.4 million trucks, vans, and SUVs.

The recall affects the Ford Maverick (model years 2022–2026), Ford Ranger (MY 2024–2026), Ford Expedition (MY 2022–2026), Ford E-Transit (MY 2026), Ford F-150 (MY 2021–2026), Ford F-250 SD (MY 2022–2026), and the Lincoln Navigator (MY 2022–2026). Just the F-150s alone number 2.3 million.

The problem is with the vehicles’ integrated trailer module, which allows the trailer’s lights and brakes to work in conjunction with those of the towing vehicle. According to the recall notice, a “software vulnerability within the ITRM allows for a potential race condition to occur between the ITRM and the CAN Standy [sic] Control bit (STBCC) during initial power-up.” If that happens, the trailer will have no lights or brakes, and you’ll get a pop-up alert on the main instrument display.

Sometimes, the fault can occur with no connected trailer if the vehicle wakes from sleep mode. Should this happen, you’ll see a message on the main instrument display alerting you to a “Trailer Brake Module Fault.”

Ford began investigating the problem last October and initially decided against a recall until NHTSA persuaded the automaker in December that towing a trailer with nonfunctional lights was unacceptable. Indeed, when Ford re-reviewed the data, it found 405 warranty claims linked to this defect had been filed by early February 2026, although the automaker says it knows of no accidents, injuries, or fires that have resulted.

Owners of affected vehicles will be notified next month. Happily, the software in the module can be fixed with an over-the-air update, which will be ready in May (though owners who would rather visit a dealership for the software patch can do so as an alternative).

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Posted Friday 27 February 2026 at 6:11 am AEST (my time).

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Scientific literature is building a wondrous story: A vaccine appears to prevent dementia, including Alzheimer’s, and may even slow biological aging.

For years, study after study has noted that older adults vaccinated against shingles seemed to have a lower risk of dementia. A study last month suggested the same vaccine appears to slow biological aging, including lowering markers of inflammation.

“Our study adds to a growing body of work suggesting that vaccines may play a role in healthy aging strategies beyond solely preventing acute illness,” study author Eileen Crimmins, of the University of Southern California, said.

Another study this month suggested the positive findings against dementia from the past may even be underestimates of the vaccination’s potential, with a newer vaccine against shingles providing even more protection.

Shingles

If the dementia protection is real, it’s a fluke. The vaccine was designed for the entirely unrelated task of keeping the varicella-zoster virus—the cause of chickenpox (varicella)—from reactivating and causing an agonizing rash.

Anyone who suffered the itchy childhood affliction carries the virus with them for the rest of their lives, largely dormant in their nerve cells. But, if it awakens, it causes a painful, itchy rash—aka shingles (herpes zoster). The rash develops fluid-filled blisters and crusts over, lasting for days to several weeks. For some, it can be intensely painful, and the pain can linger for months or even years after the rash fades. If it occurs near the eye, it can cause permanent vision damage; near the ear, it can cause permanent hearing and balance problems.

Shingles is thought to be triggered by a fault in the immune response that keeps the latent virus in check, often from age-related decline. That’s where a vaccine comes in. The first was Zostavax, released by Merck in 2006, which delivers a hefty dose of a live, but weakened, version of the varicella-zoster virus. This spurs the immune system to shore up defenses to prevent the virus from reigniting. Studies found the vaccine cut the risk of shingles by 51 percent.

In 2017, a new vaccine hit the scene: Shingrix, a recombinant, adjuvanted vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline. Instead of a whole, live virus vaccine like Zostavax, Shingrix delivers only a key protein found on the outside of the varicella-zoster virus particle (glycoprotein e) that re-primes the immune system. The shot also contains an adjuvant—an extra ingredient that stimulates the immune system—to ensure a vigorous response. Trials found that the response to Shingrix is indeed vigorous, with the vaccine being 90 to 97 percent effective at preventing shingles in adults age 50 and up.

With its superior efficacy, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its vaccine advisors switched its recommendation in 2018, ditching Zostavax for the more effective Shingrix.

In the meantime, researchers noted that since Zostavax’s debut, vaccinated adults seemed to be at lower risk of dementia than their unvaccinated peers. But studies comparing the vaccinated to the unvaccinated raise the question of whether the data is simply pointing to a background difference between the two groups; perhaps people who seek vaccination are generally healthier—a problem called healthy-user bias.

Natural experiments

In the past few years, studies have been putting that concern to rest. Instead of comparing vaccinated versus unvaccinated, researchers took advantage of vaccine rollouts in different countries, including Australia, Canada, and Wales. The vaccine introductions created clear cutoffs for people who were suddenly eligible for the vaccine and people who were permanently ineligible. These “natural” experiments lessened the concern of people being able to self-select their group.

So far, the results of these studies have consistently supported the finding that shingles vaccination is linked to a lower risk of dementia. The study in Wales, for instance, published in Nature in April 2025, looked at outcomes in over 280,000 older people after the September 1, 2013, debut of Zostavax. At the time, people 71 to 78 years old progressively became eligible for the vaccine, while those who were 80 at the start of the rollout were ineligible and never became eligible. Researchers looked at dementia diagnoses over a seven-year follow-up period and found that vaccination among the eligible reduced the relative rate of dementia cases by 20 percent compared with the ineligible group.

That same month, researchers published a study in JAMA that followed over 18,000 older people in Australia after the November 1, 2016, rollout of Zostavax. People 70 to 79 at that date were eligible for a free Zostavax dose. But everyone age 80 or older was permanently ineligible. After a 7.4-year follow-up period, the researchers found that 5.5 percent of the ineligible people were diagnosed with dementia, while only 3.7 percent of those in the eligible category were diagnosed with the condition, a 1.8 percentage point drop.

A third natural study out this month in The Lancet Neurology found a similar 2 percentage-point drop in dementia rates in Canada after the Zostavax rollout there.

Newer vaccine

As Eric Topol, a molecular medicine expert at Scripps Research Institute, noted, if a drug were found to cut the risk of dementia by 20 percent, it would be considered a breakthrough. But data on the shingles vaccine has been met with no such fanfare.

Still, further data suggests that vaccination may be even better than it already appeared—the rosy findings so far may be an underestimate based on the now-outdated Zostavax vaccine. With Shingrix, which is significantly more effective against shingles, the protective effect against dementia may be even larger.

In 2024, researchers reported another natural experiment comparing dementia rates among over 200,000 people in the US vaccinated before or after the switch from Zostavax to Shingrix. The study, published in Nature Medicine, found that compared with Zostavax, vaccination with Shingrix was linked to a 17 percent relative increase in dementia-free time.

A study published in Nature Communications this month by researchers in California went further. They compared dementia rates among nearly 66,000 people who received the Shingrix vaccine and over 260,000 unvaccinated matched controls. The researchers found that the vaccinated group had a 51 percent lower risk of dementia compared to the unvaccinated controls.

Lingering questions

Of course, these consistent findings on dementia prevention raise the question of how exactly the vaccine is preventing cases. Unfortunately, researchers still don’t know. However, many have speculated that by fortifying immune responses against the varicella-zoster virus and preventing reactivation, the vaccine reduces overall brain inflammation that could contribute to the development of dementia.

Another lingering question from the data so far is that several studies have found that women see more benefit from the vaccine than men in terms of dementia risk. It’s unclear why this would be the case, but researchers have noted that there are some potentially related associations: Women are more likely to develop dementia than men, and they’re also more likely to get shingles.

The study published last month, looking at biological aging after shingles vaccination, tried to address some of these questions. The study, published in the Journal of Gerontology and led by Crimmins and Jung Ki Kim, looked at blood and health markers from over 3,800 adults, about half of whom were vaccinated and half not. The researchers used tests to examine markers for inflammation, immune response, cardiovascular health, signs of neurodegenerations, and gene activity. They also created a composite biological aging score for participants.

The results suggest that vaccinated people had lower signs of inflammation and molecular aging as well as better composite aging scores. The data also hinted that vaccinated women had better results on some of the molecular aging testing.

Kim noted that chronic, low-level inflammation can contribute to age-related health conditions, including cardiovascular disease and dementia. “By helping to reduce this background inflammation—possibly by preventing reactivation of the virus that causes shingles, the vaccine may play a role in supporting healthier aging,” she suggested.

Of course, additional studies will need to confirm the findings. And if they do, the results could also be even better in follow-up studies. In Kim and Crimmins’ study, the participants were vaccinated with Zostavax, the older vaccine, not the newer, more effective Shingrix.

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Posted Thursday 26 February 2026 at 11:33 am AEST (my time).

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Each year the birds must stay on platforms of floating ice for long enough to replace weather-beaten feathers with new, waterproof coats.

But in 2022-24 Antarctic sea ice shrank significantly, largely down to climate change, depriving the birds of safe places to moult.

Now scientists who track the animals using satellite pictures can no longer find most of the birds. They fear that thousands of penguins may have frozen in Antarctica's icy waters.

"This was really an "oh my God" moment," says the scientist behind the findings, Dr Peter Fretwell at British Antarctic Survey, who has worked on Emperor penguins for 20 years.

"You could see this was something game-changing for Emperor penguins. Suddenly you're thinking, well, have we got time to save them?" he says.

The research, published in the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment, provides evidence about the impacts of the collapse in Antarctic summer sea ice in 2022-24 which the BBC reported on here.

It is focussed on West Antarctica, home to 30-40% of the global population of Emperor penguins. The animals are amongst the most threatened in the world.

They migrate thousands of kilometres to find stable sea ice during Antarctic summer to wait out what is called a "catastrophic moult" every year. 

On vast white sea ice, the blobs of brown are feathers left behind by penguins as they moult

Little else was known about the 30-40 day moult, until Fretwell spotted large brown smudges in satellite pictures from 2019-2025. They turned out to be mounds of feathers, left in an area called Marie Byrd Land.

The penguins' feathers are "the most complicated and best insulating of any animal", he says. Over time they are damaged, so the penguins shed them annually.

"It's incredibly energy-intensive and the birds use up to 50% of their body mass," he says.

Scientists identified extensive mounds of brown feathers in satellite pictures

It is "probably the most dangerous time for adult Emperor penguins because they haven't got their waterproof suits on," he says. If they go into water, they are likely to die.

In 2019, 2020 and 2021 the sea ice was relatively stable and significant feather mounds were visible.

But in 2022 summer sea ice in much of Antarctica dramatically shrank, falling from an average of 2.8m sq km to a record low of 1.79m sq km in 2023.

That trend continued until 2025, when there was a modest recovery in the sea ice in West Antarctica.

Researchers fear that most Emperor Penguins colonies could be wiped out by 2100

But when Fretwell looked at the satellite pictures, he saw few signs of the birds.

"There should have been lots of penguins there, but actually we could only see 25 groups," he said. Groups vary in size from 10s to up to 1,000 birds.

"Again this year the sea ice hasn't been too bad, but I can only see a handful of penguins really," he says.

He fears most have could died. Some may have travelled to another location in East Antarctica to moult, but this would have disrupted breeding, also leading to population losses.

Longer term, the bird's best chance for survival is to adapt to moult on shallow ice shelves. Fretwell has seen some groups begin to do this, although it may come with a cost to the penguins' breeding and feeding patterns.

He says the findings are a reminder that while the effects of global warming can be slow at times, there are moments of dramatic change.

"It wasn't just a few colonies that were lost and it wasn't a slow process," he says.

"It is the only piece of science I've ever done that's really emotionally got me," he says.

Next he will compare his findings with an imminent population count of Emperor penguins in the Ross sea region where the birds migrate to and from. That will give more data about the possible numbers of deaths.

He says the results could change predicted extinction dates for Emperor penguins.

"Now I'm asking, is that coming forwards towards us? Is it the end of the century?" he asked.

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The urine of chimpanzees contains high levels of alcohol byproduct, most likely because the chimps regularly gorge themselves on fermented fruit, according to a new paper published in the journal Biology Letters. It’s the latest evidence in support of a hotly debated theory regarding the evolutionary origins of human fondness for alcohol.

As previously reported, in 2014, University of California, Berkeley (UCB) biologist Robert Dudley wrote a book called The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol. His controversial “drunken monkey hypothesis” proposed that the human attraction to alcohol goes back about 18 million years, to the origin of the great apes, and that social communication and sharing food evolved to better identify the presence of fruit from a distance. At the time, skeptical scientists insisted that this was unlikely because chimpanzees and other primates just don’t eat fermented fruit or nectar.

But reports of primates doing just that have grown over the ensuing two decades. Earlier this year, we reported that researchers had caught wild chimpanzees on camera engaging in what appears to be sharing fermented African breadfruit with measurable alcoholic content. That observational data was the first evidence of the sharing of alcoholic foods among nonhuman great apes in the wild. The authors measured the alcohol content of the fruit with a handy portable breathalyzer and found almost all of the fallen fruit (90 percent) contained some ethanol, with the ripest containing the highest levels—the equivalent of 0.61 percent ABV (alcohol by volume).

And last September, Dudley co-authored a paper reporting the first measurements of the ethanol content of fruits favored by chimps in the Ivory Coast and Uganda, finding that chimps consume 14 grams of alcohol per day, the equivalent of a standard alcoholic drink in the US. After adjusting for the chimps’ lower body mass, the authors concluded the chimps are consuming nearly two drinks per day.

A thankless task

The next step was to sample the chimps’ urine to see if it contains any alcohol metabolites, as was found in a 2022 study on spider monkeys. This would further refine estimates for how much ethanol-laden fruit the chimps eat every day. That thankless task fell to Aleksey Maro, a UCB graduate student who spent last summer in Ngogo, sleeping in trees—protected from the constant streams by an umbrella—to collect urine samples. Sharifah Namaganda, a Ugandan graduate student at the University of Michigan, showed him how to make shallow bowls out of plastic bags hung on forked twigs for more efficient collection. He also collected samples from puddles of urine on the forest floor.

Aleksey Maro scanning the trees for foraging chimpanzees at Ngogo in Kibale National Park, Uganda.

Credit: Aleksey Maro/UC Berkeley

The authors tested the samples using immunoassay test strips similar to those used to measure alcohol levels in humans. The result: most of the urine samples (16 out of 20) contained significant levels of ethyl glucuronide, a byproduct of alcohol—above the 500 ng/ml that is roughly equivalent to one or two drinks for humans. And that is a conservative estimate. Once again, the most likely source is the fermented fruit the chimps consume in such large quantities.

In short, “We find widespread physiological evidence of the consumption of alcohol by chimpanzees,” Maro said. “If there’s any doubt about the drunken monkey hypothesis—that there’s enough alcohol in the environment for animals to experience alcohol in a way analogous to humans—it’s been cleared up. Food and alcohol evolutionarily are, as it turns out, very much connected, especially in the lives of chimpanzees.”

Those abstaining were females in estrus and juveniles, so future research will explore how dietary ethanol might affect the physiology and behavior of chimps over time. For instance, consuming fermented fruit may affect the timing of female fertility. And the phenomenon likely extends to other species; Maro’s camera traps caught several animals also eating large quantities of the fruit. A colleague is sampling fruit bat urine in Madagascar to confirm this.

Granted, there are still gaps to be filled for the hypothesis to be fully confirmed. “The final link here with the drunken monkey hypothesis remains to be shown: that the chimps are selectively consuming fruits with higher ethanol content,” Dudley said. “That hasn’t really been demonstrated for any taxon in the wild. So that would be the next future direction on this—to definitively prove the universal hypothesis of attraction to alcohol.”

Biology Letters, 2026. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2025.0740 (About DOIs).

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Posted Wednesday 25 February 2026 at 12:03 pm AEST (my time).

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There is a corner of Antarctica that looks like something out of a David Cronenberg movie. It's located in the dry valleys of McMurdo, an immense frozen desert where, periodically, a jet of crimson liquid suddenly gushes from the dazzling white of the Taylor Glacier. They're called the Blood Falls, and since their discovery in 1911 by geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor, they've fueled a century of scientific speculation.

Recently, a series of observations conducted since 2018 have clarified several mysteries, such as the nature of their reddish color and what keeps them liquid at almost –20 degrees Celsius. New research published this week in the journal Antarctic Science adds the final piece to the puzzle, clarifying what phenomena drive the falls to gush from underground.

The Science Behind the Blood Falls

At the time of their discovery, Taylor attributed the color to the presence of red microalgae. More than a century later, scientists have determined that the red is due to iron particles trapped in nanospheres along with other elements such as silicon, calcium, aluminum, and sodium. These were likely produced by ancient bacteria trapped underground in the area: Once in contact with air, the iron oxidizes, giving the mixture its characteristic rust color.

As for the presence of liquid water, it is actually a hypersaline brine, formed about 2 million years ago when the waters of the Antarctic Ocean receded from the valleys. The very high salinity of this brine prevents the water from freezing, thus allowing it to gush out periodically.

The New Discovery

With the temperature puzzle solved, the question remained as to what physically drove the fluid to erupt. The answer came from cross-referencing GPS data, thermal sensors, and high-resolution images collected in 2018 during an eruption. The analysis demonstrated that the Blood Falls are the result of pressure variations affecting the brine deposits beneath the glacier.

As Taylor Glacier slides downstream, the overlying ice mass compresses the subglacial channels, building up tremendous pressure. When the strain becomes unbearable, the ice gives way: Pressurized brine seeps into the crevices and is shot out in short bursts. Curiously, this release acts as a hydraulic brake, temporarily slowing the glacier's march. With this discovery, the mysteries of the Blood Falls should finally have been solved, at least for now. The impact of global warming on this complex system in the coming decades remains unknown.

This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.

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Posted Wednesday 25 February 2026 at 3:40 am AEST (my time).

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Scotch tape has been a household mainstay for nearly a century, but it still holds some scientific surprises. Researchers have discovered that the screeching sound emitted when one rapidly peels Scotch tape—akin to the screech of fingernails on a chalkboard—is the result of shock waves produced by micro-cracks propagating along the tape at supersonic speeds, according to a new paper published in the journal Physical Review E.

It was a 3M engineer named Richard Drew who developed the first transparent sticky tape in 1930. The impetus came from car manufacturing, specifically two-color designs, where the adhesives used were so sticky they often removed the paint when peeled off; the paint then needed to be manually touched up. Drew found a sandpaper adhesive with just the right amount of stickiness and used it to coat a roll of cellophane tape. (Fun fact: Drew also co-invented the snail-style dispenser for the tape with his 3M colleague, John Borden.) The tape was hugely popular during the Great Depression; consumers used it to repair everyday items rather than replace them. That popularity has never waned.

Scotch tape has also generated considerable interest among physicists. Back in 1939, scientists noticed that peeling tape could produce light—specifically, a glowing line where the tape end pulls away from the roll. The phenomenon was first recorded in the 17th century and is known as triboluminescence: the generation of light when a material is crushed, ripped, rubbed, or scratched. Diamonds, for instance, sometimes glow blue or red during the cutting process, while ceramics emit yellow-orange light when being cut by abrasive water jets.

The most popular example is Wint-O-Green Life Savers: crush the candy in a dark closet and you can see the sparks produced. It’s the sugar crystals that produce the effect: the crushing action rips electrons from the molecules, which leap across the gap to the more positively charged side. The jumping electrons collide with nitrogen atoms in the air, which briefly absorb the energy and then emit UV light. The effect is made visible by the wintergreen oil used for flavoring, i.e., fluorescent methyl salicylate, which absorbs UV light and converts it into blue light.

In 1953, Russian scientists peeling Scotch tape in a vacuum reported detecting electrons with sufficient energy to emit X-rays. Other scientists were skeptical, but this phenomenon was finally confirmed in 2008, when UCLA physicists produced X-rays while unwinding a roll of Scotch tape in a vacuum chamber. The goal was to harness triboluminescence for X-ray imaging, and the team produced a low-quality X-ray image of a lab member’s finger (see image below). Fortunately, this only works in a perfect vacuum, so everyday Scotch tape users are safe.

A shock to the system

X-ray images of a human finger taken with peeling tape.

Credit: Carlos G. Camara et al., 2008

Peeling Scotch tape produces sound as well as light, typically attributed to the slip-stick mechanism at play during the peeling process. In 2010, co-author Sigurdur Thoroddsen of King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia and colleagues used ultra-fast imaging to identify a crucial micro-fracture phenomenon of the slip mechanism: a sequence of transverse cracks that travel across the width of the adhesive at supersonic speeds. A follow-up 2024 study found a direct correspondence between the screeching sound and those transverse cracks, but did not identify a mechanism.

That is the purpose of this latest study. Thoroddsen et al. wondered whether the sound was directly generated by a crack’s rapidly moving tip, which would also produce the distinctive discrete sound wave pulses associated with peeling Scotch tape. The authors experimentally tested their hypothesis by conducting simultaneous high-speed imaging of the propagating fractures and the sound waves traveling in the air. They manually unpeeled Scotch tape using a metal rod, capturing the cracks with two video cameras and the sound with two microphones synchronized to the video camera, the better to pinpoint the origin of the pressure pulses.

Their results showed that the screeching arises from a train of weak shocks that culminate when the transverse cracks reach the edge of the tape. The supersonic speed at which they travel, relative to the surrounding air, is crucial to the generation of those shockwaves. “A partial vacuum is produced between the tape and the solid when the crack opens,” the authors explained. “The crack moves too fast for this void to be filled immediately, even though air is sucked in from the direction perpendicular to the crack. The void therefore moves with the crack until it reaches the end of the tape and collapses into the stationary air outside.” Each time a fracture tip reaches the edge of the tape, it generates a sound pulse—hence the telltale screech.

DOI: Physical Review E, 2026. 10.1103/p19h-9ysx  (About DOIs).

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Posted Wednesday 25 February 2026 at 3:39 am AEST (my time).

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It seems that tech giants eyeing rural zones for data center development have underestimated how attached American farmers have grown to their lands in the decades they’ve been nurturing them.

Across the country, several farmers have firmly rejected eye-popping offers—sometimes in the tens of millions. These offers dwarf the value of their properties, but farmers have refused to put a price on the lands that they love most.

In a report on Monday, The Guardian highlighted a handful of cases nationwide where farmers’ refusals have frustrated plans to build data centers in areas long deemed rural.

It’s unclear how many farmers have received such offers, but rural lands have been increasingly targeted as demand for data centers to power AI has grown—most recently projected to increase by 165 percent by 2030. Globally, 40,000 acres are needed to support data center growth over the next five years, Hines Research estimated.

For “Silicon Valley executives,” rural areas are likely attractive due to “weak zoning protections, cheap power, and abundant water,” The Guardian reported.

It likely doesn’t help to sell the farmers these deals when they tend to come out of nowhere, following a knock on the door from a middleman who doesn’t make it clear who wants to buy the land or how the land would be used.

One 82-year-old Kentucky woman, Ida Huddleston, turned away a “Fortune 500 company” offering $33 million for 650 acres. NBC News reported that several of her neighbors received similar offers. Huddleston joined at least five other residents in the county who refused to move forward after learning they’d have to sign a non-disclosure agreement just to find out who they would be dealing with. Ultimately, Huddleston had to search public records to figure out that a data center was even being planned in the area, The Guardian reported. The lack of transparency is a problem, farmers have said, because what buyers want to do with the land matters.

“You don’t have enough to buy me out,” Huddleston told the company representatives when rejecting the deal. “I’m not for sale. Leave me alone, I’m satisfied.”

Notably, one resident in Huddleston’s county who received an offer, 75-year-old Timothy Grosser, even declined a proposal to “name your price” when a tech company sought to buy his 250-acre farm, The Guardian reported.

“There is none,” Grosser said.

The farm is where he “lives, hunts, and raises cattle” and where his grandson hunts a turkey every Christmas for the family feast.

“The money’s not worth giving up your lifestyle,” Grosser said.

Another farmer in Wisconsin, Anthony Barta, reportedly fretted about what would happen to his neighbors if he took a deal he was offered—showing the deep bonds of people whose farms have bordered each other for years. In his community, another farmer was offered between $70 million and $80 million for 6,000 acres.

“Me and my family, we own the farm and run close to 1,000 animals,” Barta said. “What would that do if that’s next to it? Can they even be there? You know, that’s our livelihood—the farm. We’re just concerned what, if it would go through, what would happen to us and our neighbors and farms and our community? What would happen to that?”

Some tech companies are apparently not taking “no” for an answer. At least one farmer who spent 51 years milking cows in Pennsylvania prior to the AI boom described tech companies as “relentless.”

Eighty-six-year-old Mervin Raudabaugh, Jr., found a creative solution to end the pressure to sell two contiguous farms. He reportedly staved off developers by turning to “a farmland preservation program dedicating taxpayer dollars toward protecting agricultural resources.”

By working with the program, Raudabaugh will only receive about one-eighth of what the developers were offering. But he said it’s worth it to know his land would be preserved for farming purposes and out of reach of persistent tech companies.

“These people have hounded the living daylights out of me,” Raudabaugh said.

Data center deals come amid fragile farm economy

For people in rural communities, data center fights go beyond concerns about water and electricity consumption—although those are concerns, too. Communities are defending the character of the land, which they don’t want to see suddenly disrupted by extensive construction, data center noise pollution, or untold environmental impacts from massive operations.

There are also public health concerns, as an attorney with environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, told The Guardian that the pollution new data centers will emit could possibly proliferate “forever chemicals” known as polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

“We know there are PFAS in these centers, and all of that has to go somewhere,” Kalmuss-Katz said. “This issue has been dangerously understudied as we have been building out data centers, and there’s not adequate information on what the long term impacts will be.”

Some rural communities are fighting to block rezoning requests that would allow developers to build data centers in areas previously zoned only for agricultural lands. But those fights are seemingly hard-won. At least one Michigan community sought to settle after a developer firm working for an unnamed tech company reportedly sued to push through a construction project on farmland.

For farmers, the data center deals come at a particularly difficult time financially. On Friday, the National Farmers Union issued a statement after the Supreme Court blocked the majority of Trump’s tariffs. In it, NFU President Rob Larew confirmed that “many family farmers and ranchers have already felt the consequences” of Trump’s tariffs, which have raised costs, disrupted sales, and triggered retaliations impacting US agricultural goods.

“In an already fragile farm economy, uncertainty has hit family operations hardest,” Larew said.

The deals also arrived at a time when the number of US farms is shrinking, continuing “a long-lasting trend of declining farm numbers,” Farm Journal reported this month. In total, the US lost about 15,000 farms in 2025, with no state reporting an increase in farms.

So far, not much farmland has been ceded to data centers, the report seemed to indicate, perhaps due to farmers who dig their heels in when developer representatives come knocking.

Perhaps particularly in this dire climate—where farms are shrinking and existing farms are cash-strapped from unpredictable tariffs—it seems notable that farmers are not being swayed by developers’ offers of what the Guardian described as “unimaginable riches.”

But Huddleston made it sound easy to turn down $33 million, because her ties to the land run deep. She told The Guardian that “four generations of the Huddleston family have watched the world change from the same fields,” while raising cattle and living off the land.

“My whole entire life is nothing but the land,” Huddleston said. “It’s provided me with anything and everything that I’ve needed for 82 years.”

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Posted Tuesday 24 February 2026 at 1:44 pm AEST (my time).

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No one knows exactly when the vehicles we drive will finally wrest the steering wheel from us. But the age of the autonomous automobile isn’t some sudden Big Bang. It’s more of a slow crawl, one that started during the Roosevelt administration. And that’s Theodore, not Franklin. And not in America, but in Spain, by someone you’ve probably never heard of.

His name was Leonardo Torres Quevedo, a Spanish engineer born in Santa Cruz, Spain, in 1852. Smart? In 1914, he developed a mechanical chess machine that autonomously played against humans. But more than a decade earlier, he pioneered the development of remote-control systems. What he wrought was brilliant, if crude—and certainly ahead of its time.

The first wireless control

It was called the Telekino, a name drawn from the Greek “tele,” meaning at a distance, and “kino,” meaning movement. Patented in Spain, France, and the United States, it was conceived as a way to prevent airship accidents. The Telekino transmitted wireless signals to a small receiver known as a coherer, which detected electromagnetic waves and transformed them into an electrical current. This current was amplified and sent on to electromagnets that slowly rotated a switch controlling the proper servomotor. Quevedo could issue 19 distinct commands to the systems of an airship without ever touching a control cable.

By 1904, he was using the Telekino to direct a small, three-wheeled vehicle from nearly 100 feet away. It was the earliest recorded instance of a vehicle being controlled by radio. After that, Quevedo demonstrated the system’s usefulness aboard boats and even torpedoes, but here the story slows. The Spanish Crown, cautious and reluctant to invest, withheld its support. Without funding, Quevedo couldn’t build and sell the Telekino.

But he had shown that a machine could be guided by signals. It would be more than a century before that notion would reach fruition. But that doesn’t mean others didn’t try.

Leave it to Ohio

Dayton, Ohio, August 5, 1921. The country was in the thick of the automotive age, and Dayton stood as one of its industrious nerve centers. General Motors had established a strong presence there with its Frigidaire Division, promising a future of electrified domestic bliss. Meanwhile, across town, engineers at Delco, the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, were refining the very heart of the automobile. This was a place where invention was not merely encouraged, but expected.

But on this particular summer afternoon, the most remarkable innovation did not come from the factory floor or the corporate drafting room. It came instead from the US Army, an outfit not usually known for whimsical experimentation. It sent a small, three-wheeled vehicle, scarcely eight feet long and fitted with radio equipment, rolling through the city’s business district. The vehicle moved without a driver. Some 50 feet behind it, Captain R. E. Vaughn of nearby McCook Field guided its movement by radio signal.

A 1926 Chandler. Obviously, this one is human-driven—you can tell by the human waving from the driver’s seat.

Credit: American Stock/Getty Images

Four years later, the spectacle reappeared. This time it was on the streets of New York City, where a crowd along Broadway watched as a 1926 Chandler, sitting quietly at the curb, came to life. The engine turned, the gears engaged, and it pulled smoothly into the stream of traffic before making its way up Fifth Avenue without a driver. Dubbed the “American Wonder” by its creator, Francis P. Houdina, the car responded to radio commands transmitted from a chase car. Signals were received by antennas atop the Chandler, where they triggered circuit breakers and small electric motors that operated the steering, throttle, brakes, and horn.

The idea proved too tantalizing to fade. In Cincinnati, a Toledo inventor named Maurice J. Francill took up the cause in 1928. Francill, who styled himself “America’s Radio Wizard,” demonstrated how radio control could move Ford automobiles without a driver. In a series of stage-like performances, he also milked cows, baked bread, and operated a laundry, all through radio command. By 1936, newspapers from Ohio to California were still reporting his feats.

“Francill claims that he can accomplish anything the human hand can do by radio,” the Orange County News observed. “Eight pounds [3.6 kg] of delicate brain-like radio apparatus was employed to control the lights, ignition system, horn and start the motor running. Five pounds [2.3 kg] of radio apparatus is required to guide the car.”

These vehicles may seem like novelties today, but they’re early proof that the automobile can be guided by something other than humans.

Detroit buys into the dream

The dream of a self-driving automobile did not vanish when these moments passed. It lingered, an idea returned to again and again, particularly in the years when America believed that anything was possible.

At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, General Motors offered a glimpse of that future with its enormous Futurama exhibit. Seated above a raised platform, fairgoers saw a miniature city where tiny electric cars moved serenely along highways without drivers. The cars, they were told, would one day be guided by radio signals and electric currents running through cables and circuits beneath the pavement, creating an electromagnetic field that could both power the vehicles and guide their course. It was a bold, imaginative vision—and characteristic of a time when modern engineering was forecast to remake the world.

After the war, engineers did not let the idea fade. They continued to work on the idea of communication between road and machine. At General Motors’ Motorama, a traveling showcase of the car’s newest vehicles and latest ideas, one display in 1956 captured the imagination of audiences across the country. GM unveiled a sleek, gas turbine–powered automobile, sheathed in titanium and brimming with the promise of autonomous driving.

The Firebird II concept from 1956 could drive itself on special roads.

Credit: General Motors

Beneath certain stretches of highway, GM proposed laying an electronic strip. When the car traveled over it, sensors would lock onto the signal, guiding the vehicle automatically along its lane. The driver would simply lean back, hands free from the wheel, and watch the miles roll by. Onboard amenities inexplicably included an orange juice dispenser.

Proof of concept

By 1958, the idea became a reality. On a plain stretch of highway outside Lincoln, Nebraska, it was put to the test. The state’s Department of Roads embedded a 400-foot (121 m) length of the roadway with electric circuits, while engineers from RCA and General Motors brought specially fitted Chevrolets to test it. Observers watched as the driverless cars steered themselves, responding to the buried signal beneath the pavement.

A few years later, across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom’s Transport and Road Research Laboratory undertook its own experiments. Using a Citroën DS, they laid magnetic cables beneath a test track and sent the car down it at speeds of up to 80 mph (129 km/h). Wind and weather made no difference; the DS held its line faithfully.

Autonomy emerges in the modern age

Fast forward to 1986, and German scientist Ernst Dickmanns, as part of his position with the German armed forces, began testing an autonomously driving Mercedes-Benz using computers, cameras, and sensors, not unlike modern-day cars. Within a year, it was travelling down the Autobahn at nearly 55 mph (89 km/h). That was enough to capture the attention of Daimler-Benz, which helped fund further research.

Several years later, in October 1994, Dickmanns gathered his research team at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris, where they met a delegation of high-ranking officials. Parked at the curb were two sedans. They appeared ordinary but were fitted with cameras, sensors, and onboard computers. The guests climbed in, and the cars made their way toward the nearby thoroughfare. Then, with the traffic flowing steadily around them, the engineers switched the vehicles into self-driving mode and took their hands off the wheel. The cars held their lanes, adjusted their speed, and followed the road’s gentle curves without driver intervention.

The experimental driverless car VaMP (Versuchsfahrzeug für autonome Mobilität und Rechnersehen), which

was developed during the European research project PROMETHEUS: (top left) components for autonomous

driving; (right) VaMP and view into passenger cabin (lower right); (lower left) bifocal camera arrangement

(front) on yaw platform.

Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0

A year later, Dickmanns would travel from Bavaria to Denmark, a trip of more than 1,056 miles (1,700 km), reaching speeds of nearly 110 mph (177 km/h). Unfortunately, Daimler lost interest and cut funding for the effort. Dickmann’s project came to a halt, but the modern-day technology was in place to set the stage for what came next.

The military sparks innovation–again

By the turn of the century, the federal government had created a new research arm of the Pentagon, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Its mission was ambitious: to develop technologies that could protect American soldiers on the battlefield. Among its goals was the creation of vehicles that could drive themselves, sparing troops the dangers of roadside ambushes and explosive traps.

To accelerate progress, DARPA announced a competition to build a driverless vehicle capable of traveling 142 miles (229 km) across the Mojave Desert. The prize was $1 million, though the real prize was the knowledge gained along the way.

When race day arrived, the results were humbling. One by one, every vehicle failed to finish. But in the sun and dust of the Mojave, a community emerged, one of engineers, programmers, and dreamers who believed that the autonomous vehicle was not a fantasy but a problem to be solved. Twenty years later, their work has brought the idea closer to everyday reality than ever before.

By themselves, these efforts did not yet give the world the self-driving car. But these successful experiments demonstrate the ability to make a fantasy reality. It’s also a reminder that while the tech industry likes to position itself as a disruptor bringing self-driving cars to market, Detroit was dreaming about and demonstrating autonomous transportation long before Silicon Valley existed.

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Posted Tuesday 24 February 2026 at 3:21 am AEST (my time).

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New research published Thursday bolsters growing concerns that a handful of companies and countries are using the global atmospheric commons as a dumping ground for potentially toxic and climate-altering industrial waste byproducts from loosely regulated commercial space flights.

The new study analyzed a plume of pollution trailing part of a Falcon rocket that crashed through the upper atmosphere on Feb. 19, 2025, after SpaceX lost control of its reentry. The rocket was launched earlier that month, carrying 20 to 22 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The authors said it is the first time debris from a specific spacecraft disintegration has been traced and measured in the near-space region about 80 to 110 kilometers above Earth. Changes there can affect the stratosphere, where ozone and climate processes operate. Until recent years, human activities had little impact in that region.

Element-specific monitoring could be part of a broader effort to track how re-entry emissions spread and accumulate, the researchers noted, giving policymakers a chance to understand and manage the growing atmospheric footprint of spaceflight.

“I was surprised how big the event was, visually,” lead author Robin Wing, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said via email. He said people across northern Europe captured images of the burning debris, which was concentrated enough to enable high-resolution observations and to use atmospheric models to trace the lithium to its source.

The study shows that instruments can detect rocket pollution “in the ‘Ignorosphere’ (upper atmosphere near space),” he wrote. “There is hope that we can get ahead of the problem and that we don’t run blind into a new era of emissions from space.”

SpaceX did not immediately respond to questions or requests for comment from Inside Climate News.

A 2024 report from the United Nations University found that the rapid growth of commercial space activity is outpacing unevenly followed and voluntary guidelines. Without more global monitoring and collaboration, the rising demand for satellite launches will accelerate pollution risks in the shared space environment, the report warned.

International agreements covering rocket pollution include the Outer Space Treaty and Liability Convention. They require countries to avoid harmful contamination and to accept responsibility for damage caused by their space objects. Those principles are reflected by several International Court of Justice rulings and opinions on preventing cross-border environmental harm. Debris and atmospheric pollution from space launches disperses globally, affecting many nations that do not launch rockets at all.

Potential climate impacts

Research led by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, published in 2025, concluded that emissions from disintegrated satellites are likely to increase sharply in the coming decades. Some projections suggest as many as 60,000 satellites could be in orbit by 2040, with reentries every one to two days, injecting up to 10,000 metric tons of aluminum oxide particles into the upper atmosphere each year.

The study found that those aerosols could warm parts of the upper atmosphere by about 1.5 degrees Celsius within one or two years of reaching that number of satellites. That could alter winds and ozone chemistry, and persist for years, indicating a rapidly growing human-made source of pollution at the highest levels of the atmosphere.

The various layers of Earth’s atmosphere and how satellites vaporize as they hit the mesosphere at

the end of their lifetimes. This process seeds the middle and upper atmosphere with metal vapors,

aerosols, and smoke particles. The mesosphere is also where naturally occurring meteors vaporize.

he ozone layer lies within the stratosphere.

Credit: Chelsea Thompson/NOAA

Those particles matter because they act like other catalytic aerosols in the upper atmosphere. Aluminum oxide dust from burning spacecraft absorbs and scatters sunlight and can warm areas where it accumulates. That can subtly change atmospheric circulation, the researchers noted. As the particles drift and settle lower into the stratosphere, they can affect ozone chemistry and high-altitude clouds, altering how sunlight and heat move through the atmosphere and potentially influencing climate over time.

The potential scope of impacts from space activities was outlined by several researchers at the 2025 European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna. They said that, beyond orbital debris, the booming space industry is the source of a new form of atmospheric pollution, injected directly into the layers of air that protect the planet and regulate its climate.

Atmospheric scientist Laura Revell, with the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, presented research showing that rocket exhaust in the atmosphere can erase some of the hard-won gains in mitigating ozone depletion.

In a high-growth scenario for the space industry, there could be as many as 2,000 launches per year, which her modeling shows could result in about 3 percent ozone loss, equal to the atmospheric impacts of a bad wildfire season in Australia. She said most of the damage comes from chlorine-rich solid rocket fuels and black carbon in the plumes.

The black carbon could also warm parts of the stratosphere by about half-a-degree Celsius as it absorbs sunlight. That heats the surrounding air and can shift winds that steer storms and areas of precipitation.

“This is probably not a fuel type that we want to start using in massive quantities in the future,” she added.

Researchers at the conference estimated that in the past five years, the mass of human‑made material injected into the upper atmosphere by re‑entries has doubled to nearly a kiloton a year. For some metals like lithium, the amount is already much larger than that contributed by disintegrating meteors.

In the emerging field of space sustainability science, researchers say orbital space and near-space should be considered part of the global environment. A 2022 journal article co-authored by Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, argued that the upper reaches of the atmosphere are experiencing increased impacts from human activities.

The expanding commercial use of what appears to be a free resource is actually shifting its real costs onto others, the article noted.

At last year’s European Geosciences Union conference, Leonard Schulz, who studies space pollution at the Technical University Braunschweig in Germany, said, “If you put large amounts of catalytic metals in the atmosphere, I immediately think about geoengineering.”

There may not be time to wait for more scientific certainty, Schulz said: “In 10 years, it might be too late to do anything about it.”

Bob Berwyn is an Austria-based reporter who has covered climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species and public lands for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked as editor and assistant editor at community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

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Posted Monday 23 February 2026 at 3:40 am AEST (my time).

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A day after NASA officials expressed optimism that they could be ready to launch the Artemis II mission around the Moon next month, the space agency’s administrator announced Saturday that a new problem will require the removal of the rocket from its launch pad in Florida.

The latest issue appeared Friday evening, when data showed an interruption in helium flow into the upper stage of the Space Launch System rocket, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote in a post on X. Isaacman posted a more thorough update Saturday, writing that engineers are still examining the potential cause of the problem, but any fixes must take place inside the Vehicle Assembly Building.

That means NASA and contractor ground teams will immediately begin preparing to roll the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) SLS rocket off of Launch Complex 39B and back to the VAB. The rocket and its mobile launch platform will ride NASA’s crawler-transporter for the 4-mile journey.

“Regardless of the potential fault, accessing and remediating any of these issues can only be performed in the VAB,” Isaacman wrote. “As mentioned previously, we will begin preparations for rollback, and this will take the March launch window out of consideration. I understand people are disappointed by this development. That disappointment is felt most by the team at NASA, who have been working tirelessly to prepare for this great endeavor.”

NASA officials were eyeing a launch attempt for Artemis II as soon as March 6, the first of five launch opportunities available in March. There are approximately five days per month that the mission can depart the Earth after accounting for the position of the Moon in its orbit, the flight’s trajectory, and thermal and lighting constraints. The next series of launch dates begin April 1.

The space agency bypassed launch opportunities earlier this month after a fueling test on the SLS rocket revealed a hydrogen leak. After replacing seals in the fueling line leading into the SLS core stage, NASA completed a second fueling test Thursday with no significant leaks, raising hopes the mission could take off next month. With the discovery of the helium issue Friday night, the March launch dates are now off the table.

The helium system on the SLS upper stage—officially known as the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS)—performed well during both of the Artemis II countdown rehearsals. “Last evening, the team was unable to get helium flow through the vehicle. This occurred during a routine operation to repressurize the system,” Isaacman wrote.

The Space Launch System rocket emerges from the Vehicle Assembly Building to begin the rollout to Launch Pad 39B last month.

Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Another molecule, another problem

Helium is used to purge the upper stage engine and pressurize its propellant tanks. The rocket is in a “safe configuration,” with a backup system providing purge air to the upper stage, NASA said in a statement.

NASA encountered a similar failure signature during preparations for launch of the first SLS rocket on the Artemis I mission in 2022. On Artemis I, engineers traced the problem to a failed check valve on the upper stage that needed replacement. NASA officials are not sure yet whether the helium issue Friday was caused by a similar valve failure, a problem with an umbilical interface between the rocket and the launch tower, or a fault with a filter, according to Isaacman.

In any case, technicians are unable to reach the problem area with the rocket at the launch pad. Inside the VAB, ground teams will extend work platforms around the rocket to provide physical access to the upper stage and its associated umbilical connections.

NASA said moving into preparations for rollback now will allow managers to potentially preserve the April launch window, “pending the outcome of data findings, repair efforts, and how the schedule comes to fruition in the coming days and weeks.”

It’s not clear if NASA will perform another fueling test on the SLS rocket after it returns to Launch Pad 39B, or whether technicians will do any more work on the delicate hydrogen umbilical near the bottom of the rocket responsible for recurring leaks during the Artemis I and Artemis II launch campaigns. Managers were pleased with the performance of newly-installed seals during Thursday’s countdown demonstration, but NASA officials have previously said vibrations from transporting the rocket to and from the pad could damage the seals.

“That rollout environment is very complicated,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, earlier this month. “We think that’s a contributor.”

NASA is also expected to replace batteries on the rocket’s flight termination system inside the VAB. The destruct system batteries currently on the rocket will expire next month.

Artemis II will be the first human spaceflight mission to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972, and also marks the first time astronauts will fly aboard NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. Astronaut Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen entered NASA’s standard preflight medical quarantine Friday. Now, they will be released to resume normal training activities.

Artemis II is a precursor for follow-on missions that will target landings at the Moon’s south pole. NASA aims to land the first Artemis mission on the Moon by 2028, but the schedule comes with uncertainties, such as the availability of a human-rated lander, spacesuits, and the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. A successful, and timely, Artemis II mission would help demonstrate that the SLS rocket and Orion will be ready.

With questions about the readiness of nearly every element of the Artemis program for a Moon landing mission, Isaacman teased a “more extensive briefing” on Artemis II and NASA’s broader lunar program later this week.

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Posted Sunday 22 February 2026 at 12:01 pm AEST (my time).

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When dinosaur fossils surface at a site, it is often not possible to tell how many millions of years ago their bones were buried. While the different strata of sedimentary rock represent periods of geologic history frozen in time, accurately dating them or the fossils trapped within them has frequently proven to be frustrating.

Fossilized bones and teeth have been dated with some success before, but that success is inconsistent and depends on the specimens. Both fossilization and the process of sediment turning to rock can alter the bone in ways that interfere with accuracy. While uranium-lead dating is among the most widely used methods for dating materials, it is just an emerging technology when applied to directly dating fossils.

Dinosaur eggshells might have finally cracked a way to date surrounding rocks and fossils. Led by paleontologist Ryan Tucker of Stellenbosch University, a team of researchers has devised a method of dating eggshells that reveals how long ago they were covered in what was once sand, mud, or other sediments. That information will give the burial time of any other fossils embedded in the same layer of rock.

“If validated, this approach could greatly expand the range of continental sedimentary successions amenable to radioisotopic dating,” Tucker said in a study recently published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

This goes way back

Vertebrates have been laying calcified eggs for hundreds of millions of years (although the first dinosaur eggs had soft shells). What makes fossil eggshells so useful for figuring out the age of other fossils is the unique microstructure of calcium carbonate found in them. The way its crystals are arranged capture a record of diagenetic changes, or physical and chemical changes that occurred during fossilization. These can include water damage, along with breaks and fissures caused by being compacted between layers of sediment. This makes it easier to screen for these signs when trying to determine how old they are.

Eggs from two different Cretaceous sites were sampled. The first came from the Deep Eddy site in the Cedar Mountain Formation of Utah, which is surrounded by beds of petrified volcanic ash that had already been dated. The second group of samples came from egg clutches that had more recently been unearthed from the Teen Ulaan Chaltsai region of Mongolia’s Eastern Gobi Basin. The age of these eggs and the site they emerged from had previously been estimated but remained unknown.

Tucker and his team used uranium-lead radioisotopic dating on both sets of samples. This method can accurately date rocks that are anywhere from 1 million years old to those as ancient as the Earth itself, going back about 4.5 billion years.

Eggshells and other carbonate materials trap isotopes of lead and uranium. Uranium isotopes are unstable. Over time, they go through radioactive decay, releasing energy and losing protons and neutrons. One particular isotope decays via a pathway that ends with a lead isotope that is much more stable. The amount of lead keeps increasing in a way that’s proportional to the gradual decay of uranium. Finding out the relative amounts of these isotopes and taking their half-lives into account yields a sample’s age.

Old is an understatement

The eggs from Utah are thought to have been laid by a species of oviraptor, likely Macroelongatoolithus carlylei, while the Mongolian eggs were possibly laid by a Mongolian microtroodontid dinosaur—small, birdlike theropods that have been found to share ancestry with extant birds.

Trace element analysis showed that, despite being found on opposite sides of the planet, the structure of both eggshell samples was amazingly well preserved. There were only a few microfractures caused by the pressure of sedimentary layers packed above them as they fossilized.

After they determined an age for both shell samples by dating them directly, the researchers compared them. Zircons in the sediments of the Deep Eddy site had already established its age. It turned out that the nest site where the clutch of dinosaur eggs had been trapped between strata of volcanic rock dated as slightly older than the eggshells, which this method determined were 95 million years old. As expected, the rock found beneath the clutch was older, while the rock above was younger. The researchers think it is possible that fractures on these eggs may have resulted in slight inaccuracies.

As for the Mongolian eggs, the age from uranium-lead dating was also extremely close to that of the bedrock.

An analysis of trace elements in the Teen Ulaan Chaltsai eggs also turned up a surprise: A meteor had probably fallen to Earth around the time they were buried 99 million years ago. If there had been no meteor impact at the time, there must have already been meteor dust in the sediment that covered them.

“This study demonstrates that eggshell biocalcite from non-avian dinosaurs, birds, and other egg-laying vertebrates has the potential to serve as a reliable geochronometer in Mesozoic and Cenozoic terrestrial sedimentary basins,” Tucker said.

Next time a fossil site of indeterminate age confounds paleontologists, they need only look for dinosaur eggs.

Communications Earth and Environment, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s43247-025-02895-w

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Posted Sunday 22 February 2026 at 3:56 am AEST (my time).

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A second fueling test on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket ended Thursday night, giving senior managers enough confidence to move forward with plans to launch four astronauts around the Moon as soon as March 6.

Unlike the first attempt to load propellants into the SLS rocket on February 2, there were no major leaks during Thursday’s practice countdown at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Technicians swapped seals at the launch pad after hydrogen gas leaked from the rocket’s main fueling line earlier this month. This time, the seals held.

“For the most part, those fixes all performed pretty well yesterday,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s exploration programs. “We were able to fully fuel the SLS rocket within the planned timeline.”

The results keep the Artemis II mission on track for liftoff as soon as next month. NASA gave up on a series of February launch opportunities after encountering a persistent hydrogen leak during the first Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR).

“We’re now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt,” Glaze said. “I am going to caveat that. I want to be open, transparent with all of you that there is still pending work. There’s work, a lot of forward work, that remains.”

If teams complete all of that work, liftoff of the Artemis II mission could occur within a two-hour window opening at 8:29 pm EST on March 6 (01:29 UTC on March 7). NASA has other launch dates available on March 7, 8, 9, and 11, but the mission may have to wait until April. There are approximately five days per month that the mission can depart the Earth after accounting for the position of the Moon in its orbit, the flight’s trajectory, and thermal and lighting constraints.

The Artemis II mission will last between nine and 10 days, taking NASA’s Orion spacecraft with commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen around the far side of the Moon before returning to Earth for splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Wiseman’s crew will set the record for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth, and will become the first people to fly to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972.

Artemis II is a precursor for follow-in missions that will target landings at the Moon’s south pole. NASA aims to land the first Artemis mission on the Moon by 2028, but the schedule comes with uncertainties, such as the readiness of a human-rated lander, spacesuits, and the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. A successful Artemis II mission would help demonstrate that the SLS rocket and Orion will be ready.

“The excitement for Artemis II is really, really starting to build,” Glaze said. “We can really start to feel it. It’s coming.”

“A good day for us”

But getting to launch day for Artemis II has not been smooth sailing for NASA. The mission’s first fueling test ran several hours behind schedule on February 2. The launch team paused loading propellant into the rocket after identifying a leak in the connection where supercold liquid hydrogen flows from the launch platform into the SLS core stage.

Sensors near the connection detected hydrogen concentrations exceeding NASA’s safety limit of 16 percent during the first countdown rehearsal. The launch team temporarily contained the leak within limits by stopping and restarting the flow of hydrogen, but the hydrogen leak again tripped the safety threshold as the core stage fuel tank began to pressurize in the final 10 minutes of the countdown.

NASA called an end to the test, drained propellants from the rocket, and ordered workers to replace seals on the fueling umbilical, setting up for the second WDR this week. This time, the hydrogen sensors topped out at 1.6 percent, about one-tenth of NASA’s limit.

Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s Artemis II launch director, said her team saw “very good performance” from the hydrogen seals on Thursday. The countdown ran close to the planned schedule, allowing the launch team to complete two runs through the final 10-minute terminal countdown sequence before ending the test at T-minus 29 seconds.

“When we wrapped all that up, we still had launch window remaining,” Blackwell-Thompson said. “So, very successful day. I’m very proud of this team and all that they accomplished to get us to yesterday and then to go execute with such precision.”

Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s Artemis II launch director, and John Honeycutt, NASA’s chair of the

Artemis II Mission Management Team, speak to reporters at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on Friday, February 20, 2026.

Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Engineers will spend the next few days examining all the data from Thursday’s countdown. Several other issues popped up during the test. The launch team overcame a communications problem and briefly paused the countdown to assess a potential issue with a booster avionics system. Blackwell-Thompson said engineers will continue assessing the avionics system to ensure it is ready for launch.

“So far, we don’t have any indications of anything that we’re worried about, but we’re just getting started [with the data review],” said John Honeycutt, NASA’s chair of the Artemis II Mission Management Team. “So, we’ll go through that and see what the teams come up with and address those as needed, but overall, it was a good day for us.”

“Forward work”

There is no guarantee, of course, that the hydrogen seals will work as well the next time NASA fuels the SLS rocket. The seals, made of Teflon, have a history of fickleness. NASA encountered persistent hydrogen leaks ahead of the launch of the first SLS rocket on the Artemis I mission 2022.

But the seals worked better on Thursday than they did during any of the prior fueling operations. There are no plans to go in and replace them again before launch. “I’ve got a pretty high level of confidence in the configuration that we’re in right now,” Honeycutt said.

The “forward work” ahead for the Artemis II team includes a Flight Readiness Review late next week, when senior agency leaders will convene to formally certify the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft for flight. Over the next few days, technicians at Kennedy Space Center will retest the rocket’s range safety destruct system.

The Artemis II astronauts entered NASA’s standard two-week-long preflight medical quarantine on Friday at their home base in Houston. Wiseman and his crewmates will fly to Florida about five to seven days before launch.

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Posted Saturday 21 February 2026 at 12:15 pm AEST (my time).

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Astronomers have just identified what appears to be a cosmic anomaly: a faint galaxy with so few visible stars that, according to calculations, as much as 99.9 percent of its mass is dark matter. The remaining 0.1 percent is conventional matter.

This galaxy, located about 300 million light-years away, is practically invisible. Only four globular clusters, small concentrations of stars that look like isolated neighborhoods in the middle of the void, stand out. For years, these star collections in the Perseus cluster were considered independent objects.

Now, after an exhaustive analysis, a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters presents solid evidence that these globular clusters are part of the same galaxy dominated by dark matter. Tentatively named CDG-2 (Candidate Dark Galaxy-2), it is the first galaxy to be detected only by its brightest fragments.

The authors pooled data from the Hubble, Euclid, and Subaru telescopes, three of the most powerful observatories available. The combined readings reveal an extremely faint glow around the four globular clusters. This residual light is a clear sign of an underlying galaxy so dim that the three telescopes missed it on their own.

More Than Meets the Eye

Preliminary analysis indicates that CDG-2 has a total luminosity equivalent to about 6 million suns, with the four globular clusters contributing about 16 percent of that brightness, an unusually large share. This distribution suggests that, despite its low light, the galaxy is a gravitationally bound system, implying a particularly dense dark matter halo. Astronomers estimate that this invisible structure accounts for between 99.94 to 99.98 percent of CDG-2’s total mass.

According to current models, dark matter constitutes roughly 27 percent of the universe’s total energy density and about 85 percent of its matter. Although the exact nature of what makes up dark matter is still unclear, because it neither emits nor reflects light, scientists infer its existence from its gravitational effects on radiation, visible matter, and the large-scale structure of the cosmos.

Dark matter is so pervasive throughout galaxies that its presence explains the stability and motion of stars in systems such as the Milky Way. For example, current models indicate that our galaxy is embedded in a halo composed of about 90 percent dark matter.

However, the case of CDG-2 is extreme: a galaxy with almost no stars, surrounded almost entirely by an invisible halo. These types of systems, so-called “dark galaxies,” are beginning to appear in astronomical records. Beyond their rarity, scientists value them because they serve as natural laboratories for exploring the nature of dark matter and testing current models of galaxy formation.

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.

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Posted Saturday 21 February 2026 at 12:14 pm AEST (my time).

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Two skulls from Yunxian, in northern China, aren’t ancestors of Denisovans after all; they’re actually the oldest known Homo erectus fossils in eastern Asia.

A recent study has re-dated the skulls to about 1.77 million years old, which makes them the oldest hominin remains found so far in East Asia. Their age means that Homo erectus (an extinct common ancestor of our species, Neanderthals, and Denisovans) must have spread across the continent much earlier and much faster than we’d previously given them credit for. It also sheds new light on who was making stone tools at some even older archaeological sites in China.

Homo erectus spread like wildfire

Yunxian is an important—and occasionally contentious—archaeological site on the banks of central China’s Han River. Along with hundreds of stone tools and animal bones, the layers of river sediment have yielded three nearly complete hominin skulls (only two of which have been described in a publication so far). Shantou University paleoanthropologist Hua Tu and his colleagues measured the ratio of two isotopes, aluminum-26 and beryllium-10, in grains of quartz from the sediment layer that once held the skulls. The results suggest that Homo erectus lived and died along the Han River 1.77 million years ago. That’s just 130,000 years after the species first appeared in Africa.

(Side note: This river has been depositing layers of silt and gravel on the same terraces for at least 2 million years, and that’s just extremely cool.)

The revised date suggests that Homo erectus spread across Asia much more quickly than anthropologists had realized. So far, the oldest hominin bones found anywhere outside Africa are five skulls, along with hundreds of other bones, from Dmanisi Cave in Georgia. The Dmanisi bones are between 1.85 million and 1.77 million years old, and they (probably—more on that below) also belong to Homo erectus.

Until recently, the next-oldest Homo erectus fossils outside Africa were the 1.63-million-year-old fossils from another Chinese site, Gongwangling, a short distance north of Yunxian. (That’s not counting a couple of teeth from a site in southern China with an age that is a little less certain.) Those dates had suggested Homo erectus seemed to have taken a leisurely 140,000 years to spread east into Asia. But it now looks like hominins were living in Georgia and central China at about the same time, which means they spread out very fast, started earlier than we knew, or both.

The Homo longi and short of it

All of this means that the Yunxian skulls are probably not—as a September 2025 study claimed—close ancestors of the enigmatic Denisovans. The authors of that paper had digitally reconstructed one of the skulls and concluded that it looked a lot like a 146,000-year-old skull from Harbin, China (which a recent DNA study identified as a Denisovan, also known as Homo longi).

The researchers had argued that the original owners of the Yunxian skulls had lived not long after the Denisovan/Homo longi branch of the hominin family tree split off from ours—in other words, that the Yunxian skulls weren’t mere Homo erectus but early Homo longi, close cousins of our own species. Using the original paleomagnetic dates for the Yunxian skulls, that study’s authors drew up a hominin family tree in which our species and Denisovans are more closely related to each other than either is to Neanderthals—one in which the branching happened much earlier than DNA evidence suggests.

There were many issues with those arguments, but the revised age for the Yunxian skulls sounds like a death knell for them. “1.77 million years is just too old to be a credible connection to the Denisovan group, which DNA tells us got started after around 700,000 years ago,” University of Wisconsin paleoanthropologist John Hawks, who was not involved in the study, told Ars in an email.

But the most interesting thing about these skulls being 1.77 million years old is that the date provides a reference point for understanding even older sites in China—sites that may suggest that Homo erectus wasn’t even the first hominin to make it this far.

Stone tools collected from Shangchen, China.

Credit: Prof. Zhaoyu Zhu

Out of Africa: The prequel

Homo erectus first shows up in the fossil record around 1.9 million years ago in Africa, where it’s sometimes also called Homo ergaster because paleoanthropologists seem to enjoy naming things and then arguing about those names for several decades. A few hundred thousand years later, Homo erectus showed up everywhere: from South Africa northward to the Levant and from Dmanisi Cave in Georgia eastward to the islands of Indonesia.

We typically think of Homo erectus as the first of our hominin ancestors to expand beyond Africa, along routes that our own species would retread 1.5 million years later. More to the point, many paleoanthropologists think of them as the first hominin that could have adapted to so many different environments, each with its own challenges, along the way.

But we may need to give earlier members of our genus, like Homo habilis, a little more credit because stone tools from two other sites in China seem to be older than Homo erectus. At Shangchen, a site on the southern edge of China’s Loess Plateau, archaeologists unearthed stone tools from a 2.1-million-year-old layer of sediment. And at the Xihoudu site in northern China, stone tools date to 2.43 million years ago.

“If you have a site in China that’s 2.43 million years, and the origin of Homo erectus is 1.9 million years ago, either you need to push the origin of Homo erectus back to 2.5 or 2.6 million years or we need to accept that we need to be looking at other hominins that may have actually moved out of Africa,” University of Hawai’i at Manoa paleoanthropologist Christopher Bae, a coauthor of the new study, told Ars.

So who made those 2-million-year-old tools?

Archaeologists have unearthed stone tools but no hominin fossils at both sites, making it difficult to say for sure who the toolmakers were. But if they weren’t Homo erectus, the next most likely suspects would be older members of our genus, like Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis. That would mean hominin expansion “out of Africa” actually happened several times during the history of our genus: once with early Homo, again with Homo erectus, and yet again with our species.

“There could have been an earlier wave that died out or interbred, so there’s all kinds of possibilities open there,” Purdue University paleoanthropologist Darryl Granger, also a coauthor of the recent study, told Ars.

In fact, there’s some debate about whether the Dmanisi fossils actually belonged to Homo erectus proper. One thing the two dueling reconstructions of the Yunxian skulls agree on is that those hominins had flattish faces, more like ours—and like the 1.63-million-year-old Homo erectus skull from Gongwangling. But the Dmanisi hominins’ lower faces project dramatically forward, like those of older hominins.

Some paleoanthropologists classify the Dmanisi fossils as their own species, but others argue they’re more like early members of our genus, such as Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis. Those earlier hominins may have been more capable of migrating and adapting than we’ve realized.

It’s still very clear, from both fossil and genetic evidence, that our species evolved in Africa and spread from there to the rest of the world. But it’s also increasingly clear that there were several other species of hominins in other places, doing other things, at least off and on, for a very long time before we showed up. Yunxian, and its revised age, could help anthropologists better understand part of that story.

“Actually being able to anchor the Homo erectus sites with firm, solid dates helps us try to reconfigure this model,” said Bae. “This is where Yunxian really plays a major role in this. Now that we’ve got older dates to anchor the Yunxian Homo erectus fossils, I think we can really bring in this discussion with Xihoudu and Shangchen.”

Time to dig deeper

The answers may still lie buried—maybe just a few meters below the fossil skulls and stone tools at sites like Yunxian and Gongwangling, in older sediment layers. Archaeologists may not have seen a reason to explore these, since no one lived in China before 1.7 million years ago. The age of the Yunxian skulls, along with the even older stone tools at Shangchen and Xihoudu, may warrant deeper digging.

“People haven’t been looking for artifacts and fossils in two-plus million-year-old sediments in these locations in China,” said Granger. “I can think of places that I would like to go back and look if I had more time and money.”

At other sites, researchers have already unearthed fossil animal bones from the same age range as China’s oldest stone tools, but paleoanthropologists haven’t double-checked whether any of those bones might belong to early hominins rather than other mammals. Bae said, “It’s just that they haven’t been receiving any attention, or not enough attention.”

Science Advances, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ady2270 About DOIs).

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Posted Saturday 21 February 2026 at 6:04 am AEST (my time).

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Welcome to Edition 8.30 of the Rocket Report! As I write this week’s edition, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is undergoing a second countdown rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The outcome of the test will determine whether NASA has a shot at launching the Artemis II mission around the Moon next month, or if the launch will be delayed until April or later. The finicky fueling line for the rocket’s core stage is the center of attention after a hydrogen leak cut short a practice countdown earlier this month.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Who is actually investing in sovereign launch? No one will supplant American and Chinese dominance in the space launch arena any time soon, but several longtime US allies now see sovereign access to space as a national security imperative, Ars reports. Taking advantage of private launch initiatives already underway within their own borders, several middle and regional powers have approved substantial government funding for commercial startups to help them reach the launch pad. Australia, Canada, Germany, and Spain are among the nations that currently lack the ability to independently put their own satellites into orbit, but they are now spending money to establish a domestic launch industry. Others talk a big game but haven’t committed the cash to back up their ambitions.

Ranking them... Ars examined how much international governments, specifically those without a present-day orbital launch capability, are investing in sovereign access to space. Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have committed the most government funding to homegrown launcher development. The fruits of the UK’s investment are in question after the failure of the Scottish rocket company Orbex, which we wrote about in last week’s Rocket Report. Other countries with real, although less credible, orbital launch programs include Brazil, Argentina, and Taiwan.

An update on one of Germany’s launch startups. German rocket builder Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) is making significant progress toward once again attempting an inaugural flight of its RFA One rocket, European Spaceflight reports. The company is moving forward with commissioning its launch pad at SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland as it works toward a hot fire test of the rocket’s first stage. The RFA One rocket is a 30-meter (98-foot) tall two-stage rocket designed to deliver payloads of up to 1,300 kilograms (2,866 pounds) to low-Earth orbit. The company is also developing an optional kick stage called Redshift that can be configured for a wide range of applications.

They’ve been here before... In August 2024, as the company was preparing for the inaugural flight of its RFA One rocket, an anomaly during a first-stage hot fire test caused the vehicle to burst into flames, resulting in the total loss of the stage. Over the last 18 months, the company has been manufacturing a replacement for the destroyed first stage and upgrading the vehicle’s upper stage to resume preparations for launch from SaxaVord Spaceport. RFA’s chief executive told European Spaceflight that the rocket’s booster is being transported from its German factory to the launch site in Scotland. That will be followed by the upper stage. “We are taking the time to do it properly. We remain aggressive, fast, and flexible, but the wild times before August 2024 are over,” Indulis Kalnins, the company’s CEO, said.

UAE launches hybrid rocket. The first hybrid rocket domestically developed in the United Arab Emirates launched on February 13, marking a significant step in the country’s push to build sovereign space and propulsion capabilities, the Khaleej Times reports. The sounding rocket, developed by the Technology Innovation Institute, reached an altitude of 3 kilometers (1.6 miles) during a test flight over the UAE desert, validating a fully UAE-designed and operated propulsion system for the first time. At the core of the mission was a hybrid propulsion engine combining nitrous oxide with a solid polyethylene-based fuel—a system that blends elements of solid and liquid rocket technologies.

Room to grow... “This achievement is the result of years of disciplined research, engineering, and iteration,” said Elias Tsoutsanis, chief researcher at the institute’s Propulsion and Space Research Center. “That capability is the foundation for everything that follows—higher altitudes, heavier payloads, and more complex missions, all from the UAE.” The UAE has a growing space program, having already sent an orbiter to Mars. The nation has a long-term goal of developing an indigenous orbital launch capability. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX restores full crew to ISS. A Crew Dragon spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on Saturday, and astronauts popped open the hatches a few hours later to bring the lab back to a full crew complement of seven astronauts and cosmonauts. The arrival of four new astronauts as part of the Crew-12 mission—Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway of NASA, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency, and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos—came a day after their launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Recovering from something... One of the astronauts on the preceding SpaceX crew mission, Crew-11, experienced a health emergency on the ISS a few days into the new year. NASA made an unprecedented decision to bring them home early. NASA has not named the afflicted Crew-11 astronaut, but the flier is said to be recovering on Earth. The early departure of Crew-11 left just a single NASA astronaut, Chris Williams, aboard the space station. He had reached space on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in November, alongside two Russian cosmonauts, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev. The space station is a big place, and with much of the facility now more than two decades old, Williams had to spend most of his time on maintenance and monitoring activities. Because Crew-11 was brought home more than a month early, NASA and SpaceX scrambled to launch the Crew-12 vehicle a little sooner than expected to minimize the time Williams had to manage the large US segment of the station on his own. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX resumes Bahamas landings. For just the second time, a Falcon 9 booster returned to Earth Thursday night on a drone ship stationed among the islands of the Bahamas during a mission to deploy 29 Starlink satellites for SpaceX’s satellite Internet service. The booster landed on the drone ship parked near The Exumas less than 10 minutes after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster in this location for the first time almost exactly one year ago, on February 18, 2025, without incident. But the Bahamian government raised environmental concerns after two Starships broke apart and dropped debris near the Bahamas last year, putting further Falcon 9 landings there on hold. The two entities have since come to an understanding, paving the way for this second booster to land near the island nation.

Back on station… SpaceX’s offshore rocket landings typically occur in international waters. The shift to territorial waters near the Bahamas allows SpaceX to launch into more types of orbits from Cape Canaveral. The Bahamian government hailed the original rocket landing agreement as an opportunity for the island nation to attract visitors and investment, with plans for a regular cadence of Falcon 9 booster returns near the Bahamas over the coming months. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

LandSpace lays out plans for 2026. Chinese commercial launch firm LandSpace is targeting the second quarter of this year for a second orbital launch and booster recovery attempt of its Zhuque-3 rocket, followed by a reuse test in the fourth quarter, Space News reports. A LandSpace official provided the update in a presentation earlier this month before the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. The first launch of the Zhuque-3 rocket in December successfully reached orbit, but the first stage booster crashed near its downrange landing zone instead of descending to a controlled touchdown.

So close… Still, LandSpace got tantalizingly close to nailing an on-target landing. Something went wrong moments after ignition of the rocket’s engines for a final landing burn to slow for touchdown. The stage impacted around 40 meters off the center of a dedicated landing area in Wuwei County, Gansu province, some 390 kilometers (240 miles) downrange from the launch pad at the Jiuquan spaceport in northwestern China. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Another Chinese launch company rakes in cash. Chinese launch firm iSpace has secured a record D++ funding round to accelerate its reusable rocket development efforts and expand its industrial footprint, Space News reports. The money will support test flights of the company’s Hyperbola-3 rocket, a medium-lift launcher powered by nine main engines. The first launch is scheduled later this year. Public statements suggest the two-stage Hyperbola-3 is 69 meters (226 feet) long with a payload capacity of 8,500 kilograms (18,700 pounds) to low-Earth orbit in reusable mode and 13,400 kilograms (29.500 pounds) to LEO in expendable mode.

A mixed record... iSpace has attracted the massive funding round despite strong competition from other launch startups. iSpace, officially known as Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Ltd., became the first Chinese commercial company to put a rocket into orbit in 2019 with its smaller Hyperbola-1 rocket. But the Hyperbola-1 lacks a reliable track record, with just a 50 percent success rate over eight flights. The Hyperbola-1 is fueled by solid propellants, while the more powerful Hyperbola-3 will use new methane propulsion. iSpace’s latest fundraising round is the largest ever for a Chinese rocket company.

NASA vows to fix those pesky hydrogen leaks, eventually. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Saturday the agency is looking at ways to prevent the fueling problems plaguing the Space Launch System rocket before the Artemis III mission, Ars reports. Artemis III is slated to be the first crew mission to land on the Moon since the Apollo program more than 50 years ago. As for Artemis II, which remains on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after missing a launch window earlier this month, NASA is putting the rocket through a second countdown rehearsal on Thursday to test whether technicians have resolved a hydrogen fuel leak that cut short a practice countdown run on February 2.

Moving the goalposts… Artemis II is the first crew flight for the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. The nearly 10-day mission will carry four astronauts around the far side of the Moon and return them to Earth. But none of this can happen until NASA can fix the hydrogen leaks. During the first Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) earlier this month, hydrogen gas concentrations in the area around the fueling connection exceeded 16 percent, NASA’s safety limit. This spike was higher than any of the leak rates observed during the Artemis I launch campaign in 2022. Since then, NASA reassessed its safety limit and raised it from 4 percent—a conservative rule NASA held over from the Space Shuttle program—to 16 percent.

Florida community braces for big, new rockets. Before SpaceX’s Starship mega-rockets arrive on Florida’s Space Coast, leaders in Cape Canaveral want to explore state and federal grants to mitigate potential infrastructure damage caused by vibrations and sonic booms, Florida Today reports. The first Florida Starship launch could occur as early as late summer or fall, with US Space Force Col. Brian Chatman calling 2026 “the year of the giants” in Brevard County during a January space conference in Orlando. Blue Origin officials also hope to ramp up launches of their 322-foot New Glenn heavy-lift rockets.

Taking precaution… “We need more data, as well. I think we suspect that we’re going to sustain potential vibration damages. And what does that look like for us? And will there be other sources of revenue available in the event that that happens?” Cape Canaveral City Manager Keith Touchberry asked during the Tuesday City Council meeting. Mayor Pro Tem Kay Jackson, who spearheaded Tuesday’s discussion, said the city should move expeditiously, noting that Blue Origin’s Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station lies closest to the city. That’s where New Glenn rockets launch, 5.7 miles from the closest city condominium and 7.2 miles from City Hall.

Next three launches

Feb. 21: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-25  | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 08:00 UTC

Feb. 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-104 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 02:04 UTC

Feb. 24: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-26 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 14:00 UTC

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Posted Saturday 21 February 2026 at 6:03 am AEST (my time).

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It’s just two weeks until F1 gets underway in Australia, and teams are currently in Bahrain, midway through their third and final preseason test. The 2026 season promises to be wildly different from those of the past few years, with all-new cars, engines, hybrid systems, and sustainable fuels entering the mix and shaking up the established order.

You shouldn’t read too much into times from preseason testing. The cars don’t have to conform to the in-season rules as teams test new components or fit-test rigs; for example, glowing brake discs could once again be seen on some cars that weren’t running wheel covers at an earlier test, something we’re unlikely to see during actual races.

You also don’t know how much fuel—and therefore extra weight—anyone is carrying. In the past, some teams have even made headlines by running too light to set more competitive lap times in an effort to impress potential sponsors. And as the name explains, it’s a test, so drivers will be following run plans devised with their engineers to learn specific things about their new cars. Or as one Internet wag once put it, the times mean as much as “a bacon briefcase.”

All change

That said, the tests are far from meaningless, particularly this year. After 12 years of using the same hybrid power units, the sport has moved to an all-new design. The internal combustion engine is still a turbocharged 1.6 L V6, but that turbocharger no longer features the MGU-H hybrid system that both captured waste energy from the spinning turbine and also eliminated turbo lag. The remaining hybrid system—the MGU-K that harvests and deploys energy from and to the rear wheels—is much more powerful than before and is paired with a 4 Mj (1.1 kWh) battery pack. And like many hybrid road cars, that kinetic energy can come from braking or the engine.

Ferrari has shown real signs of speed during testing, but also a few problems. The contraption attached to the car measures wind pressure to correlate wind tunnel data with the real world.

Credit: Ahmad AlShehab/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Now, the V6 provides 400 kW (536 hp) and the MGU-K an additional 350 kW, as long as the battery has charge. Cars are allowed to deploy up to 8.5 mJ (2.4 kWh) of electrical energy per lap, so energy management—knowing when and how to harvest and when to deploy—will become as important to F1 drivers as it was during the LMP1h days at Le Mans, or currently in Formula E.

As a result, we’ve seen some drivers try out new techniques, downshifting to a lower gear than might otherwise be used in order to keep the engine revs up (and therefore charging the battery). There’s also a phenomenon called “superclipping” (previously known as derating), where cars slow toward the ends of a straight even as their engine revs rise—here, the cars are sending some of that engine power to the battery instead of the rear wheels to fill the battery so the MGU-K can help shove the car out of the next corner. And that isn’t always consistent lap to lap, as battery state of charge or track conditions change and the cars’ onboard computers juggle how much energy to deploy.

We may have to revisit that topic, as the teams have been asked to test a reduced power output of the MGU-K as a backup plan in case the fears of critics of the 2026 rules come to pass.

Interestingly, the MGU-K won’t be used at race starts—it only begins to contribute above 50 km/h (31 mph). That’s to prevent the danger of some drivers depleting their batteries and therefore slowing much faster than others in the approach to the first or second corner at the start as they superclip, and it has also exposed a potential performance differentiator this year. Ferrari, which also provides power units to Haas and Cadillac, opted for smaller turbochargers that spin up more quickly; the other OEMs all went for larger turbos that generate higher peak power. Ferrari has gambled that the smaller, faster turbos will give it an advantage at race starts and when its drivers have to rely solely on their V6s.

Sleek

2026 cars look good.

Credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

I’ll say this for the 2026 crop of cars: They sure look good. They’re a little shorter and narrower than last year’s cars, with slightly narrower tires and much greater diversity among the teams than in the tightly proscribed ground-effect era. Those rules, which ran from 2022 to 2025, gave such little leeway to the teams in design decisions that performance converged to within fractions of a percent across the entire grid. Now everyone looks quite different from one another.

The big thing to look out for this year is who can shed the most drag in straight-line mode. Each car’s front and rear wings are now active, with a raised position called corner mode that generates lots of downforce, and straight mode, which drops both wings to minimize drag (and therefore the energy the car needs to go fast). Ferrari tested an interesting approach to this in Bahrain at one point, with rear wing elements that flipped a full 180 degrees. I wonder if we’ll see that in-season.

The arguments about engine compression ratios are still ongoing. Briefly, Mercedes is believed to have used clever materials science to create an engine in which the compression ratio increases rather than decreases as the engine gets hot. For this year, engines are capped at a compression ratio of 16:1 but measured at ambient temperature. Next week, the teams and the sport’s organizers (the FIA) meet to discuss adding a hot test for compression ratios, which is unlikely to go Mercedes’ way. (For its part, Mercedes says there’s nothing illegal about its engines.)

The Mercedes-powered teams (Mercedes, McLaren, Williams, and Alpine), as well as Honda-powered Aston Martin, have another potential problem. Each power unit has its own sustainable fuel; Mercedes’ is provided by Petronas and Honda’s by Aramco. To ensure it is indeed fully sustainable, there’s a homologation process with an independent third party to verify compliance throughout the supply chain. Unfortunately for these five teams, neither Petronas nor Aramco have finished this homologation process, with a deadline of March 1 fast approaching. Should that not happen in time, we’ll still see those five teams race, but they’ll use a substitute fuel that won’t be optimized for the engines that will burn it.

Huge sums have been invested in Aston Martin, to little effect so far.

Credit: Bradley Collyer/PA Images via Getty Images

I’m pretty sure the unbelievable reliability that’s been a feature of F1 for the last few seasons may be a thing of the past, at least for the first few races in 2026. Up and down the pit lane, teams have missed hours of practice sessions as they troubleshoot gremlins. Aston Martin looks particularly bad in this regard, even in comparison to brand-new Cadillac.

Finally, we’re starting to get a better idea of how F1 coverage will work with the move to Apple TV here in the US. Apple TV users will find an F1 tab in the Apple TV app, but you can also use the standalone F1TV app with your Apple credentials. We still have to wait until the first weekend in March to find out which F1 feed and commentary Apple will use, but the F1TV app remains an excellent way to follow the sport, with in-house commentary, alternate commentary from the UK’s Sky TV, in-car feeds for each driver, and an archive of F1 races going back decades.

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Posted Friday 20 February 2026 at 12:02 pm AEST (my time).

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Does “bouba” sound round to you? How about “maluma”? Neither are real words, but we’ve known for decades that people who hear them tend to associate them with round objects. There have been plenty of ideas put forward about why that would be the case, and most of them have turned out to be wrong. Now, in perhaps the weirdest bit of evidence to date, researchers have found that even newly hatched chickens seem to associate “bouba” with round shapes.

The initial finding dates all the way back to 1947, when someone discovered that people associated some word-like sounds with rounded shapes, and others with spiky ones. In the years since, that association got formalized as the bouba/kiki effect, received a fair bit of experimental attention, and ended up with an extensive Wikipedia entry.

One of the initial ideas to explain it was similarity to actual words (either phonetically or via the characters used to spell them), but then studies with speakers of different languages and alphabets showed that it is likely a general human tendency. The association also showed up in infants as young as 4 months old, well before they master speaking or spelling. Attempts to find the bouba/kiki effects in other primates, however, came up empty. That led to some speculation that it might be evidence of a strictly human processing ability that underlies our capacity to learn sophisticated languages.

A team of Italian researchers—Maria Loconsole, Silvia Benavides-­Varela, and Lucia Regolin—now have evidence that that isn’t true either. They decided to look for the bouba/kiki effect well beyond primates, instead turning to newly hatched chickens, only one or three days old. That may sound a bit odd, but chickens have a key advantage beyond ready availability: unlike a 4-month-old human, newly hatched chicks are fully mobile and able to interact with the world.

Control experiments using silence or classical music showed that the young chicks are somewhat drawn to a rounded shape. But recordings of a person saying “bouba” caused 80 percent of the chicks to move to a rounded shape first. If a recording of “kiki” was played instead, that number dropped to just 25 percent, with the numbers going to a spiky shape rising. The effect is somewhat stronger in 3-day-old chicks, but it still showed up in the animals that were tested just one day after hatching.

The researchers attribute the bouba/kiki effect to what’s called a “crossmodal correspondence,” in which input from one sensory system influences our perception of another. Some of these make a degree of sense, such as associating high pitches with smaller objects, and low pitches with larger ones, something that’s generally consistent with how those pitches are produced. Beyond humans, that has been observed in animals as distant as dogs and tortoises—but not chickens. Other crossmodal correspondences are far less intuitive, such as associating high pitches with bright lighting, which has also been found in species as diverse as chimps and tortoises.

In any case, the results argue strongly that the bouba/kiki effect does not represent a capacity that’s distinct to animals that use complex language. They also suggest that the failure to find it in other primates is probably a product of doing the testing in adult primates, which probably have a complicated mixture of motivations that can override simple instinctual preferences.

Science, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/science.adq7188 (About DOIs).

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Posted Friday 20 February 2026 at 12:01 pm AEST (my time).

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Waymo defended its use of remote assistants for its robotaxis after the testimony of one of its top executives during a Senate hearing went viral. In a letter to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) on Tuesday, Waymo’s head of global operations Ryan McNamara provided a detailed description of the company’s remote assistance operations, including the number of employees based overseas.

Waymo has approximately 70 “remote assistance agents” that are on duty “at any given time,” with half based in the US and the other half in the Philippines, McNamara said. These agents “provide advice only when requested by the [automated driving system] on an event-driven basis,” the letter states. “Waymo’s [remote assistance] agents provide advice and support to the Waymo Driver but do not directly control, steer, or drive the vehicle.”

Waymo has been on the defensive after numerous outlets reported on the Senate testimony as if the company had revealed some terrible secret about its robotaxi operations. During the hearing, Markey pressed Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief safety officer, about the use of remote assistants, asking whether any of these workers were based overseas. “The Waymo phones a human friend for help,” Markey said during the hearing, adding that the vehicle communicates with a “remote assistance operator.”

Peña’s response that some agents were stationed in the Philippines then went viral, as numerous news publications and social media accounts mischaracterized his statement as meaning the vehicles were being controlled by remote drivers overseas.

But in his letter, McNamara says these agents do not control the vehicle, nor are they passively watching the live video feeds from the robotaxi cameras in case anything goes wrong. “Rather, the ADS reaches out to Remote Assistance when the vehicle encounters an ambiguous situation in which it may benefit from more context, even if the ADS can confidently proceed — a helpful safety redundancy,” he writes, adding that these interactions “typically last only seconds.”

Waymo’s remote assistants in the Philippines are all licensed drivers, English speakers, and have passed drug screenings, McNamara assures Markey: “These agents are provided extensive training tailored to the specific tasks they will complete and their performance is closely monitored, and despite never remotely driving the vehicles, are trained on local road rules.” He also claimed that latency between the vehicle and the assistant is insignificant, presenting it as “approximately 150 milliseconds for US-based centers and 250 milliseconds for [remote assistance] based abroad.”

Waymo’s letter to Sen. Markey includes this chart describing its remote assistance operation.

Image: Waymo

 

Remote assistants are used for tasks such as “simple vehicle occupancy or cleanliness checks to suggesting paths around obstacles,” McNamara stated. These workers are distinct from Waymo’s Event Response Team, who are deployed when a Waymo vehicle is involved in a crash or safety incident. All ERT employees are based in the US and receive special training, he added.

But while Waymo’s remote assistants may not drive the vehicles, there is a “tool” for “a rare set of specific situations” in which the vehicle is stopped on the shoulder of a highway and needs to be moved. In this case, the ERT agent “could prompt the [autonomous vehicle] to move forward at 2 mph for a short distance at fixed steering angles to exit the travel lane,” McNamara writes. To date, Waymo has only employed this tool in training, he added.

McNamara declined to provide Markey the specific number of “invoked sessions” or requests between Waymo’s automated driving system and its remote assistants on a per-mile basis, calling the number “not material” — though he assured the senator that the company keeps detailed records of the frequency of these requests.

McNamara says its “critical” to distinguish Waymo’s operations from autonomous driving companies that do use teleoperators or remote drivers. Tesla, for example, employs remote drivers for its robotaxis as backup when something goes wrong. Later, a steering wheel for remote operations was spotted in the background of a photo of Tesla’s robotaxi control room in Texas. Other companies, like May Mobility, use the Waymo method of having remote assistants who can send suggestions when problems arise.

Waymo’s operations are under increased scrutiny after several safety incidents, including a December power outage in San Francisco that left several of the company’s robotaxis paralyzed in intersections, and an incident in which a child was struck at low speed by a robotaxi in Santa Monica. When a Waymo robotaxi was caught running a red light in 2024, the company said it was because of an incorrect prompt from a remote assistant. It also comes as Waymo and other companies talk a big game about the spread of driverless cars, spurring anxiety among people who are concerned about AI job losses.

“It is not about whether the remote human driver exists, because all robotaxis will need such a person for the foreseeable future,” Phil Koopman, autonomous vehicle expert at Carnegie Mellon University, said in an email. “It is whether the safety concept for that arrangement is acceptable. For Waymo we have seen a mishap caused by a remote driver error (running the red light). And while we have a lot of claims from Waymo about rigorous operational practices, what we do not have is ongoing independent oversight that what is happening on the ground matches those claims.”

Moreover, as robotaxi operations scale, most people remain unaware or confused about the various levels of autonomy, and their human helpers. Waymo’s vehicles are often described as Level 4, meaning the vehicles do all the driving tasks under specific conditions — but does not exclude all human intervention or assistance. Level 5 is when the vehicle can drive anywhere, under any conditions, without any human help. Most experts agree that this level remains out of reach, in the realm of science fiction.

Update February 18th: A previous version of this story said that Waymo employed a total of 70 remote agents. That’s the number that are on duty “at any given time.” The company did not disclose the total number of agents.

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Posted Thursday 19 February 2026 at 5:40 am AEST (my time).

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In Qing dynasty China, artisans augmented decorative pieces by incorporating iridescent kingfisher feathers—a technique known as tian-tsui. Scientists at Northwestern University’s Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts have used high-energy X-ray imaging to achieve unprecedented nanoscale resolution of the unique structure of those feathers, presenting their findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As previously reported, nature is the ultimate nanofabricator. The bright iridescent colors in butterfly wings, soap bubbles, opals, or beetle shells don’t come from any pigment molecules but from how they are structured—naturally occurring photonic crystals. In nature, scales of chitin (a polysaccharide common to insects), for example, are arranged like roof tiles. Essentially, they form a diffraction grating, except photonic crystals only produce specific colors, or wavelengths, of light, while a diffraction grating will produce the entire spectrum, much like a prism. In the case of kingfisher feathers, the color is due to the microscopic ridges that cover the parallel rows of keratin strands that grow along the central shaft.

Also known as photonic band-gap materials, photonic crystals are “tunable,” which means they are precisely ordered to block certain wavelengths of light while letting others through. Alter the structure by changing the size of the tiles, and the crystals become sensitive to a different wavelength. They are used in optical communications as waveguides and switches, as well as in filters, lasers, mirrors, and various anti-reflection stealth devices.

The 19th century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins paid homage to the kingfisher’s brilliant plumage in his poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” but Chinese poets and artists were extolling their praises long before that. Tian-tsui (“dotting with kingfishers”) is a prime example of how much the feathers were valued. The feathers were cut and glued onto gilt silver and used as inlays for things like fans, hairpins, screens, and panels, or headdresses—carefully oriented in intricate patterns to enhance the dazzling hues. The feathers were so popular, in fact, that kingfisher populations were declared endangered following the Chinese Communist Revolution. The last tian-tsui studio closed in 1933.

A spongy nanostructure

Scanning a Qing dynasty screen with X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy

Northwestern University

 

China Cap, Qing dynasty (1644–1912), 18th–19th century, Gold wire, kingfisher feathers, amber, coral, jadeite, ivory, glass and silk

courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago

 

A scanning electron microscopy image of Kingfisher feathers reveals the semi-ordered nanostructure

Maria Kokkori/Northwestern University

 

By increasing the magnification of the scanning electron microscopy image, researchers discovered a nanoscale, spongey architecture.

Maria Kokkori/Northwestern University

 

The Northwestern team started looking at kingfisher feathers in tian-tsui objects via postdoc Madeline Meier, who has a background in chemistry and nanostructures and was interested in combining that expertise with studies of cultural heritage. The first step was to identify the bird species whose feathers were used in Qing dynasty screens and panels, as well as other materials used. Researchers carefully scraped away the topmost layers and imaged the feathers with scanning electron microscopy to get a better look at the underlying nanostructure. Hyperspectral imaging revealed how different areas of the screens absorbed and reflected light.

The team also made use of the center’s partnership with Chicago’s Field Museum, comparing the screen feathers with the museum’s vast collection of taxidermied bird species. The screens and panels contained feathers from common kingfishers and black-capped kingfishers, as well as mallard ducks (used to add green hues). Finally, X-ray fluorescence and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy enabled them to create a map of the various chemicals used in the gilding, pigments, glues, and other materials.

Most recently, the lab has partnered with Argonne National Laboratory and used synchrotron radiation to get an ever-better look at the nanostructure of kingfisher feathers. Synchrotron radiation differs from conventional X-rays in that it’s a thin beam of very high-intensity X-rays generated within a particle accelerator. Electrons are fired into a linear accelerator (linac), get a speed boost in a small synchrotron, and are injected into a storage ring, where they zoom along at near-light speed. A series of magnets bends and focuses the electrons, and in the process, they give off X-rays, which can then be focused down beam lines.

That makes it ideal for noninvasive imaging, since, in general, the shorter the wavelength used (and the higher the light’s energy), the finer the details one can image and/or analyze. It has become a popular technique for imaging fragile archaeological artifacts without damaging them—like Qing dynasty headdresses with inlays of kingfisher feathers. In this case, the imaging revealed that the feathers’ microscopic ridges have an underlying semi-ordered, porous, sponge-like shape that reflect and scatter light, thereby giving the feathers their gloriously brilliant hues.

“Long admired in Chinese poetry and art, kingfisher feathers have amazing optical properties,” co-author Maria Kokkori said. “Our discoveries not only enhance our understanding of historical materials but also reshape how we think about artistic and scientific innovation, and the future of sustainable materials.”

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Posted Thursday 19 February 2026 at 5:39 am AEST (my time).

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Imagine turning the key or pressing the start button of your car—and nothing happens. Not because the battery is dead or the engine is broken but because a server no longer answers. For a growing number of cars, that scenario isn’t hypothetical.

As vehicles become platforms for software and subscriptions, their longevity is increasingly tied to the survival of the companies behind their code. When those companies fail, the consequences ripple far beyond a bad app update and into the basic question of whether a car still functions as a car.

Over the years, automotive software has expanded from performing rudimentary engine management and onboard diagnostics to powering today’s interconnected, software-defined vehicles. Smartphone apps can now handle tasks like unlocking doors, flashing headlights, and preconditioning cabins—and some models won’t unlock at all unless a phone running the manufacturer’s app is within range.

However, for all the promised convenience of modern vehicle software, there’s a growing nostalgia for an era when a phone call to a mechanic could resolve most problems. Mechanical failures were often diagnosable and fixable, and cars typically returned to the road quickly. Software-defined vehicles complicate that model: When something goes wrong, a car can be rendered inoperable in a driveway—or stranded at the side of the road—waiting not for parts but a software technician.

It’s already happening

Take the example of Fisker. In May 2023, the Californian auto brand arrived in Britain with its Ocean Sport before filing for bankruptcy just one year later. Priced from £35,000 ($44,000)—although top-spec trims pushed the price to £60,000 ($75,000)—the all-electric Tesla Model Y rival featured tech including a partially retracting roof and a rotating BYD-like touchscreen. All cars also carried a six-year/62,000-mile (99779 km) warranty, with the battery and powertrain covered for 10 years or 100,000 miles (160,934 km).

Before Fisker’s 2024 bankruptcy, just 419 Fisker Oceans made it into British driveways. One unfortunate buyer, a marketing manager from Southampton, experienced the worst of the brand’s teething troubles. After taking delivery, her Ocean was plagued by persistent software glitches. Following a call to Fisker, engineers were dispatched to collect the vehicle for repairs, but when the car was due to be collected, it refused to start. Mere days later, Fisker declared insolvency, leaving the Ocean stranded as a 5,500 lb (2,500 kg) driveway ornament for the next ten months with no solution in sight.

Preceding Fisker, there was Better Place. Founded in 2007, Better Place wasn’t a car manufacturer but an EV infrastructure and software company that promised to solve range anxiety through battery-swap stations. Its entire model relied on centralized servers, subscriptions, and proprietary software to authenticate vehicles and manage battery exchanges. The flagship car for this system was the Renault Fluence Z.E., an electric sedan sold primarily in Israel and Denmark.

Better Place filed for bankruptcy in May 2013 after burning through $850 million, leading to Renault closing the Fluence Z.E’s Turkish assembly line. Servers were shut down, battery-swap stations stopped operating, and backend software used for authentication, charging, and fleet management disappeared, leaving many cars bricked.

Better Place founder and CEO Shai Agassi showing off a battery-swap station for electric taxis in Tokyo on April 26, 2010. Three years later, the company was done.

Credit: KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images

These cases highlight a broader shift in the auto industry, where long-term ownership is increasingly dependent not just on mechanical durability but on continued access to proprietary software and manufacturer support.

“When a modern car’s software misbehaves, you don’t fix it yourself—you call the manufacturer,” said Stuart Masson, founder and editor of The Car Expert. “They control the code. At that point, you’re not dealing with a traditional service department so much as an IT help desk.”

That dependence, Masson warned, becomes a critical failure mode when the manufacturer disappears. “Sooner or later, every owner risks a Fisker-style scenario, where the company is gone and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

While informal owner communities have begun attempting to reverse-engineer and distribute unofficial software updates, Masson is blunt about the risks. “You’re trusting that someone on the Internet actually knows what they’re doing,” he said. “If they don’t, the consequences might not be that Android Auto simply stops working but instead an airbag deploying at 70 mph.”

While buying a second-hand Fisker in the UK is a high-risk move, more established manufacturers generally have contingency plans if a critical software partner goes under. In practice, that usually means issuing recalls or pushing over-the-air fixes to affected vehicles. Warranty coverage should handle most issues for newer cars, but the story gets murkier on the used market.

Out of warranty

Take a decade-old Tesla Model S, for example: You might snag one at a bargain price, but there’s no guarantee Tesla will continue supporting it indefinitely. When a manufacturer drops software support, the car isn’t just at risk of breaking down—it becomes a potential cybersecurity liability. In a world where vehicles are increasingly defined by their code, running unsupported software is akin to leaving your router exposed to the Internet. You may have a functioning car today, but there’s no telling when—or how—it could stop running.

“Many teams, such as McLaren, who have F1 cars from the 1990s, require a 1990s-era laptop running an old Windows operating system, along with specialized interface hardware, for maintenance and to start the car,” Masson said. “We are up against time here, but it could be that brands like Tesla release its code, allowing people to use it. Who knows?”

The problem isn’t solely on the consumer; manufacturers shoulder a significant portion of the risk as well. One potential mitigation is standardization. Enter Catena-X, a collaborative data network connecting OEMs, suppliers, and IT vendors. By creating traceable digital records for parts and software—and standardizing data models and APIs for interoperability—Catena-X aims to make supply chains more resilient and software dependencies less catastrophic when a critical partner disappears.

When asked how OEMs can map software dependencies and mitigate vendor insolvency, Catena-X Managing Director Hanno Focken told Ars that “Catena-X supports software bills of materials and standardizes certain components to make software replaceable, plus a marketplace and open-source reference implementation helps OEMs find alternative vendors.”

The industry also shares responsibility in defining minimum operational lifespans for vehicle software. “As an association, Catena-X can facilitate shared industry commitments and consensus (e.g., data retention policies like a 10-year battery passport requirement), but it does not act as a regulator setting mandatory lifespans,” added Focken.

The lesson is clear: In today’s cars, the engine or electric motor isn’t always what keeps you moving—the software does. When that software vanishes with a bankrupt company, your car can go from daily driver to expensive paperweight overnight. And in the age of software-defined vehicles, owning a car increasingly means betting on the survival of its code. When that code dies, the driveway or highway—not the repair shop—becomes the final stop.

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Posted Wednesday 18 February 2026 at 6:24 am AEST (my time).

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