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China’s economy for the past 50 years has been investment/export/industrialization-driven with permissive building. There are fast approvals, state capacity). India’s became more consumption-led with decentralized hurdles and lower infrastructure spending. China’s GDP multiplied ~30× (1980–2010) vs. India’s ~5×. Productivity growth (output per worker) was nearly double India’s for decades. India and China starting point was ...

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Europe’s restrictive energy policies—characterized by lengthy, fragmented permitting (often 7–10+ years for renewables and industrial projects), heavy environmental/regulatory burdens, NIMBY/local opposition, carbon pricing (ETS), and phased-outs of reliable baseload (nuclear/coal) without rapid replacement—have led to persistently high energy costs, volatility, and slow infrastructure rollout. China has a permissive pro-growth energy approach. State-directed fast approvals, massive ...

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Metro areas/states allowing sprawl (Texas metros like Dallas/Houston permitted ~72k homes in 2024 alone) + densification (Minneapolis, Auckland NZ upzoning → 21–24% rent drops in targeted studies) show housing stock growth 2–3x higher and price appreciation 50–80% lower than restrictive peers (California, New York). Supply elasticity over 0.5 typically caps real price growth near inflation. ...

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I recently said our civ will fall if we do not finish the industrial revolution, and apply the industry trio of math, big orgs, and capitalism to more areas of life. Especially our fast activism-driven evolution of values, morals, and norms.

But watching a documentary on early activist H.D. Thoreau brought home to me just how huge an ask this seems. Our modern world has come to deeply adore and revere changing its morals fast via youth movements, and a great many features of our modern world support this new pattern.

For example, youths are generally more risk-taking, emotionally expressive, eager to impress potential mates, less invested in prior arrangements, and better able to bond together into groups. Which attracts youths to the chance to skip the usual dues to rise fast in status as leaders of new tightly-bonded emotional youth movements.

Helping further, we legitimized fashions, seeing those who first adopt new popular changes as more virtuous. And we put kids together in high school and college, where they have more time for activism, bond into their own youth cultures, and are taught to see the world more abstractly and thus morality more simply and universally. Also, better communication tech has let them coordinate faster across wider distances.

Finally, the modern world has widely adopted the views (a) that morality is a whole separate realm where the usual adult knowledge and experience are less relevant, (b) that moral opinions should from come authentically from within, and (c) that youthful opinions on morals tend to be less corrupted by habit and self-interest.

All of this has created a perfect storm encouraging youth to repeatedly make and join new internal-feelings-driven moral crusades, movements maximally suspicious of opposing older adults with ties of interest and habits to the existing order.

Could we apply industry to more strongly to manage this process? For example, by paying big orgs to create, suppress, and influence such movements to achieve key metrics. Yes, big orgs do substantially influence youth movements today, but mostly from behind the scenes. And these are mostly not for-profit orgs, and our world is pretty hostile to for-profit orgs operating outside their usual scopes, especially in sacred areas like moral activism. Social media feed algorithms seem to be the main form of this now, but I doubt they could do that much more than they do now.

We should do our best to try, but damn does this look hard.

In The Fatal Conceit (1988), F.A. Hayek argued that cultural evolution has bequeathed to us a capitalist “extended order” of money, property rights, and competitive markets, all with matching morals, and that socialism is bad because it appeals instead to dysfunctional moral instincts that this order had suppressed, while flattering us into thinking that we can apply reason well to more things than we actually can. Socialism replaces many capitalist choices with choices from deliberate “rational” bureaucratic government agencies. Capitalism, in contrast, typically makes use of more info than can our reason, and was also designed using more info.

Hayek, however, seems fine with using reason to choose within big firms, and he admits that cultural evolution (a) has often induced simpler societies to prevent such capitalism, (b) has often induced governments to greatly hinder capitalism in their later civilization periods, and (c) seems a proximate cause of the recent rise of interest in socialism. So why not estimate that the levels of capitalism and reason use that we seem to be drifting toward are in fact the most adaptive? Why see all that as a mistake?

Hayek seems to actually rely here not on cultural evolution, but instead on his theoretical economic analysis, together with empirical correlations between capitalism and places and periods that have had especially large wealth and growth. Which allows him to conclude that allowing cultural evolution to push us far enough away from capitalism now would plausibly result in the fall of our civilization, causing many deaths and much suffering. Which would be bad more because suffering is bad, and less because cultural evolution would go awry.

Behind Hayek’s argument there, however, seems to be a judgment that our modern world looks especially vulnerable to appeals to deeply embedded ancient moral instincts, and to flattery about our abilities to reason. However, as he never says this explicitly, Hayek never offers arguments for why we should expect to be more vulnerable to such things now.

This is where I offer cultural drift analysis as a complement to Hayek’s story. At the level of cultural features that we can only vary effectively in large groups, over the last few centuries our civilization has drifted toward less variety, weaker selection pressures, and faster rates of change of culture and environments. All of which does plausibly make us more vulnerable to flattery and simplistic moral appeals undermining our commitments to morals supporting capitalism.

However, such analysis also predicts that these same forces make us vulnerable to many more fatal conceits, i.e., to decay in many other key features of our shared culture. Does Hayek also fear and warn against excess trust in reason and moral instincts there? Is it feasible for us to reason well enough to usefully overturn other non-capitalist morals that we have inherited from cultural evolution? Hayek said:

Rebellion against private property and the family was, in short, not restricted to socialists. … Limits of space as well as insufficient competence forbid me to deal in this book with the second of the traditional objects of atavistic reaction that I have just mentioned: the family. I ought however at least to mention that I believe that new factual knowledge has in some measure deprived traditional rules of sexual morality of some of their foundation, and that it seems likely that in this area substantial changes are bound to occur. (p.51) …

Nor do I dispute that reason may, although with caution and in humility, and in a piecemeal way, be directed to the examination, criticism and rejection of traditional institutions and moral principles. … I wish neither to deny reason the power to improve norms and institutions nor even to insist that it is incapable of recasting the whole of our moral system in the direction now commonly conceived as `social justice’. We can do so, however, only by probing every part of a system of morals. (p.8)

So Hayek is relatively open to rationality overturning traditional morals in one big area of life, and is in principle open in many other areas. So let me say this clearly: our usual styles of rational analysis deployed over the last few centuries seem to have been quite inadequate to the task of changing morals while preserving or enhancing their cultural adaptability. Maybe we could up our game, but that does look quite hard.

Years ago I noticed that when my kids tried out a new game, those who won more wanted to play it again. And parents often try to make sure kids win at stuff they want kids to do more. We come to like things in part due to seeing ourselves win at them.

Nations seem similar. Yes, nations value some activities more, and engage in those more as a result. But nations often double-down on stuff after seeing themselves as win at it in ways that they personally respect, and expect others to respect. Nations continue to do that stuff lots in part to remind the world of how grateful it should be for their contribution.

For example, the US has seen itself as pioneering and greatly advancing democracy, free speech, medicine, higher education, basic research, legal due process, mass production, mass media, space exploration, entrepreneurship, the internet, and global military suppression of nazism, communism, and terrorism. This helps explain continued record US spending on medicine, education, military, and legal process.

Other nations act similarly. For example, Britain doubles down on law, parliaments, and anti-racism. France doubles down on liberties and fancy food. India doubles down on yoga and spirituality, Russia on war, sacrifice, and anti-decadence, and China on development.

If you want a nation to do more of X, maybe praise what they’ve already done on X.

While it might not always feel like it, spring has finally sprung for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. At the New England Wildlife Center in Massachusetts, the arrival of the first baby squirrels is an important indicator of the start of the season. 

While they usually begin to come in around St. Patrick’s Day, the center has received them as early as late February. This year’s  first baby squirrels have just arrived, New England Wildlife Center CEO Greg Mertz, tells Popular Science. 

Regardless of their admittance date, baby squirrels always mean lots of work for the staff. And the work has just begun, as the staff must feed them specially formulated milk every half an hour. 

Mertz explains that they receive the young animals in waves. They’re currently experiencing a spring wave and there will be another over the summer, and one more at the beginning of October. 

Baby squirrels can fall out of their nests for a variety of reasons. Wind storms can knock the babies out of a tree, the nest could be too small, or yard work like trimming or cutting down a tree may cause problems. The mother squirrel may also be injured, killed, or have been scared away. If the mother is still alive and well she will usually return her baby to the nest, which is why people shouldn’t immediately move a baby squirrel when they find one. 

Staff at the New England Wildlife Center must feed baby squirrels specially formulated milk every half an hour. Image: Greg Mertz / New England Wildlife Center.

“I would tell people to monitor the situation, not closely, but monitor from a distance for a good 12 hours, even if it’s overnight,” Mertz explains. “If people have indoor outdoor cats, keep the cat inside. If they have dogs, keep dogs inside and away from where that area is and let mom do her business, because as soon as we’re nearby, or dogs are nearby, or cats are nearby, she’s going to run away.” 

A predator like a hawk or raccoon might still come by, “but that’s the way of nature. We’re trying to do what we can for those that are left out of the system.”

If 12 hours passes and the baby has not been recuperated, then you should pick it up and reach out to a wildlife rehabilitator, he adds. 

According to an adorable New England Wildlife Center video, people could facilitate a healthy baby’s return to the mother by putting it (and a hot water bottle in case of cold weather) in an elevated basket and playing baby squirrel noises on YouTube. After setting this up, people should keep their distance. 

“Yes, it can work,” Mertz says, explaining that this solution is meant to keep the baby out of reach from predators. Though he admits, “I’m not sure that it’s gonna work successfully all the time.” 

When in doubt, contact your local animal rescue organization. 

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Baby squirrels are here! Here’s what to do if you find one. appeared first on Popular Science.

Modern life requires lots of logging into apps and websites. Even with a password manager, remembering all of that log in information can be difficult. Using a fingerprint, eye, or other biometrics can introduce privacy concerns. A new security system might solve that password problem by using vibrations—in our skulls. 

The newly designed software program called VitalID uses the tiny vibrations generated by heartbeats and breathing that move through the skull. Like our fingerprints, these patterns are unique to an individual’s facial tissue and bone structure. VitalID is designed for use in extended reality settings and was presented at the 2025 ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. 

What is XR?

Extended reality (XR) includes virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality technologies that mix digital content with the physical world. XR systems including Viture, MetaQuest, and Oculus Rift are best known in the gaming world. However, this technology is expanding into finance, medicine, education, and remote work. As it increases its reach, security in XR systems has become increasingly urgent.

“Extended reality will play a major role in our future,” Yingying Chen, a study co-author and computer engineer who specializes in remote sensors at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said in a statement. “If immersive systems are going to become woven into daily life, authentication has to be secure, continuous and effortless.”

How VitalID works

VitalID uses simple biology to fix these user experience and security issues. Even when we are sitting still, our bodies are moving in subtle ways. Every breath and heartbeat creates tiny vibrations that travel through the neck and into the head. Once they reach the skull, they make our heads shake slightly. Since every skull has a different shape, thickness, and bone structure, the vibrations change in unique ways as they travel. 

As a result, we all produce a distinct vibration pattern within our skulls. Motion sensors that already reside inside virtual reality headsets can detect these tiny patterns and determine who is wearing the device.

“We do not need to add any device or additional hardware,” Chen said. “It requires only software.”

In their study, Chen and the team tested 52 users over a 10-month period using two popular XR headsets. Their system correctly authenticated legitimate users over 95 percent of the time. Importantly, it rejected unauthorized users more than 98 percent of the time.

They also built a filtering system that removes interference from extra head and body movement like nodding. This helps the headset only focus on the tiny vibrations in the skull that are caused by an individual’s breathing and heartbeat. They then used computer models to analyze the skull vibration patterns.

According to Chen, these vibrations may be more difficult to mimic since they travel internally through a person’s bone and tissue. While someone might imitate another person’s breathing rhythm, they can’t replicate the biomechanical properties of another person’s skull quite so easily. The headset would constantly sense these subtle vibrations to confirm that the right person is using it.

A next-gen solution

XR headsets now store confidential documents, personal accounts, and access to web services. However, typing passwords in a virtual environment based on gestures can be awkward. Two-factor authentication often interrupts immersion and hardware that scans the eye adds cost, according to Chen.

While not commercially available yet, VitalID is an attempt at solving this user experience and security problem. It allows users to access financial platforms, medical records or enterprise systems inside immersive environments without stopping to log in. 

This technology is available for licensing and/or research collaboration and Rutgers has applied for a provisional patent. The study was a collaboration with Cong Shi at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Yan Wang at Temple University in Philadelphia, and Nitesh Saxena at Texas A&M University.

The post Skull vibrations could be your next password appeared first on Popular Science.

Only 80 to 90 percent of Earth’s vast oceans have been explored, leaving countless species just waiting to be discovered. That’s where the Sustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative: One Thousand Reasons campaign comes in. The project is designed to describe 1,000 previously unknown deep-sea species by 2030 in order to assess ocean biodiversity to protect species as the prospect of deep-sea mining expands.

Twenty-four new species of deep-sea crustaceans are now on the project’s growing list. The new species are detailed in a special edition of the journal Zookeys and were discovered in the remote Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ). This vast area of 1.7 million square-miles of deep ocean between the west coast of Mexico and Hawaii is home to numerous unknown species as well as minerals needed for many high-tech uses.

The type specimens of some of the new species, including Elimedon breviclunis, are now cared for by curators at the Natural History Museun in London. Image: © Horton et al. 2026. Meet the amphipods

These new species are amphipods—a diverse group of crustaceans made up of over 10,000 known species. Some amphipods are only millimeters in size, while the largest species Alicella gigantea is the size of a loaf of bread. They play a key role as a food source for larger animals and help decompose the bodies of larger creatures. 

Amphipods are adapted to live in a wide range of habitats. Some live in damp caves or even woodlands on land, while most live in fresh and saltwater environments. Parasitic whale lice ride around on marine mammals, eating algae and keeping whales clean. Predatory amphipods hunt small worms and other invertebrates, while other species are scavengers that help recycle nutrients in marine ecosystems.

The new species were found while researchers were taking so-called “box samples” from the seafloor. During box sampling, scientists take a huge cube of mud from the seabed and bring it up to a ship to study its contents and get a sense of what’s lurking inside. After washing and separating the material from these particular cores, they found a variety of pale amphipods.

“These amphipods appear to have a range of different feeding styles,” Dr. Eva Stewart, a study co-author and deep-sea scientist at the Natural History Museum in London, said in a statement. “Some seem to be eating the mud and getting nutrients from that, while others have large claws, which suggest they might be predating other things that are living in the sediment.”

Naming the new amphipods after video games, family, and a short butt

Since amphipods are such a diverse group of animals, it only makes sense that their names follow suit. The scientists met for one week to determine the name for this exciting new batch of critters. 

Mirabestia maisie and Astyra mclaughlinae are named after family members and colleagues, while Elimedon breviclunis is named for the animal’s short butt. 

Pop culture inspired other names. Lepidepecreum myla reminded the team of Myla from the videogame “Hollow Knight.” According to the team, both the character and specifically Lepidepecreum myla “are just little arthropods trying to survive in total darkness.”

In addition to new species, the team also discovered a new family and superfamily. A superfamily ranks below an order and above family. For example, the superfamily Hominoidea (or apes) includes both the family Hominidae (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans) and Hylobatidae (gibbons).

“To find a new superfamily is very rare, so this is a discovery we’ll all remember,” added study co-author Dr. Tammy Hortonopens. “But each species we describe is just as important, as they’re a vital step towards improving our understanding of this fascinating ecosystem.”

One of the new species, Mirabestia maisie, was named after Dr. Tammy Horton’s daughter. Image: © Horton et al. 2026. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone has the attention of big tech

Further study of these creatures will give us a better idea of how they are living in one of the most untouched places on Earth. Despite its remoteness, the CCZ has drawn a lot of interest due to the metallic nodules found on the ocean floor. These nodules often contain minerals used for solar panels and wind turbines. While deep-sea mining can help us reach environmental goals, this region is poorly understood and mining could risk damage to these important ecosystems. 

“It’s estimated there are around 5,600 species in the CCZ, but around 90 percent of these are undescribed,” Stewart explained. “As a result, there are thousands of potential species that have been discovered over the past decade just waiting to be named.”

These types of discovery will be vital to understand the possible impacts of deep-sea mining in the future.

The post New crustacean named after its unique butt appeared first on Popular Science.

April 1Full Pink MoonApril 17Best Chance to See Comet C/2025 R3April 19The Moon, Venus, and Pleiades ConjunctionApril 22Lyrid Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

Spring has sprung, the annual hour of sleep has been stolen from us, and the days are getting longer.  But don’t fear, skygazers, there are still enough celestial sights to see this month to keep you happy. They include an early full moon, a meteor shower known for generating unexpected spectacles, and a lovely conjunction of the moon and one of our cosmic neighbors. Also, there’s a comet to see! Onwards! 

April 1: Full Pink Moon

A full moon on the first day of the month! As far as we know, there’s no name for this, but it doesn’t matter, because April’s moon is gifted with the most poetic of names anyway. It’s the Pink Moon, making April the best month of the year for fans of Nick Drake, Édith Piaf and, excuse the pun,, P!nk herself. Sadly, despite the poetic name, the moon itself is the same color as always. The “pink” in the pink moon is a reference to the flowers that bloom as winter releases its icy grasp and spring warms the Earth for another year.

This April’s full moon is also a micromoon, placing it firmly at the opposite end of the scale from the string of supermoons we had from October through January. A micromoon is a full moon that occurs when the moon is at or near its furthest distance from Earth. This distance means that the moon will appear relatively small. To see our little April moonlet, bless it, look to the skies at 10:12 p.m. EDT on April 1 when it reaches peak illumination.

April 17: Best Chance to See Comet C/2025 R3

There’s a comet heading our way this month—but don’t worry! As per NASA, that comet named Comet C/2025 R3 might be the brightest such visitor visible this year. While its closest approach to Earth isn’t until April 27, NASA suggests that the evening of April 17 might be the best time to catch it, because there’ll be no moonlight to interfere with comet viewing action. You’ll still need a telescope or a good pair of binoculars, though. If you have access to such gear, look to the eastern sky above the constellation Pisces—the comet should be visible within the constellation Pegasus.

April 19: The Moon, Venus, and Pleiades Conjunction

By April 19, the moon will have waxed almost to invisibility—but not quite. And that’s just as well.Otherwise, we’d be denied the lovely spectacle of the tiny crescent moon peeking its way out from the constellation Pleiades, just above the always eye-catching beauty that is the planet Venus. The scene will play out in the western sky, not far above the horizon. If you look a little further upward, you’ll see the absolute big boy himself, cousin Jupiter, rumbling into the chat to make sure he gets some attention too.

April 22: Lyrid Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

As far as meteor showers go, the Lyrids don’t mess around. They’re in and out of the sky in a couple of weeks, and if you miss them, that’s it  until next year. This means they can be hit or miss, especially if they coincide with the light of a full moon or a spell of bad weather. In these cases, there might be none to see at all.

Fortunately, their predicted peak will coincide with excellent viewing conditions—weather permitting, of course. The meteor shower will last from April 15 to April 29, with the predicted peak smack bang in the middle on April 22. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the radiant point—from which the meteors appear to originate—will be high in the northern sky. Expect to see 10 to 15 meteors an hour—but as per EarthSky, the Lyrids are known for generating “uncommon surges,” so you never know what you might see!

During any month, remember that you’ll get the best experience gazing at the cosmos if you get away from any sources of light pollution, give your eyeballs some time to adjust to the darkness, and review our stargazing tips before setting out into the night.

Until next time! 

The post April skygazing: An early micromoon, comet flyby, and the Lyrid meteor shower appeared first on Popular Science.

NASA’s Lead Electrostatics Scientist, Dr Charles Buhler, claims he’s discovered a “new force” that counteracts gravity with no fuel necessary. Dr. Charles Buhler has run 2,000 vacuum chamber experiments showing a propellantless thrust force that persists after the power is switched off, and cannot be explained by ion wind, magnetic effects, or classical energy conservation. ...

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Navigating streaming services is basically a nightmare at this point. On top of their constantly shifting libraries, it feels like nearly every week includes the announcement of yet another subscription price hike. If you’re looking for a temporary reprieve and some truly unique content this week, an unsung hero is ready to help you out. Folks, it’s time to tune into C-SPAN for NASA’s upcoming Artemis II launch.

Yes, that C-SPAN. The same channel that has been broadcasting government hearings daily since 1979.

Through Sunday, April 5, CSPAN is airing daily coverage of all things Artemis II. The NASA mission deserves it, after all. The four astronauts are scheduled to launch no earlier than Wednesday, April 1, and when they do it will kick off a major new era of space exploration. Over 10 days, the Artemis II crew will complete the first human flyby loop around the moon since the Apollo 8 mission in 1972.

The trip is expected to pave the way for NASA’s return to the lunar surface, estimated for 2027. The mission will also set new milestones and break multiple records in the process. Upon its return, Artemis II will have carried the first woman, first person of color, and the first non-United States citizen beyond low Earth orbit. It will also travel about 4,800 miles beyond the moon to surpass Apollo 8’s total distance, and set a new reentry top speed of around 25,000 miles per hour.

C-SPAN’s special programming began on March 29 and will continue through April 5. It features daily news briefings before all-day launch coverage expected on April 1. On March 31 and April 4, C-SPAN2 will air 24 hours of documentaries on the history of U.S. crewed spaceflights. There will also be live call-in sessions, as well as commentary from guests from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. While the exact date isn’t confirmed yet, C-SPAN will also cover Artemis II’s atmospheric reentry and splashdown.

No T.V.? No problem. You can also watch all of the coverage on C-SPAN.org, the C-SPAN YouTube channel, C-SPAN Radio, and the C-SPAN mobile app. Check out the upcoming programming schedule below.

C-SPAN’S Artemis II Coverage Schedule

Monday, March 30

• LIVE 5:00 p.m. ET (C-SPAN): NASA news conference

Tuesday, March 31

• LIVE 1:00 p.m. ET (C-SPAN): NASA pre-launch news conference

Wednesday, April 1 – expected Launch Day

• LIVE 1 p.m. ET (C-SPAN): C-SPAN’S extended live all-day launch coverage begins

Saturday, April 4

• 24 hours Historic Space Programming (C-SPAN2): American History TV marathon of historic programming about America’s manned spaceflight program

Sunday, April 5

• C-SPAN’s “Q&A” series (C-SPAN): Program will feature a history of the Space Shuttle, including video shot on location at The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum

The post The best way to watch the Artemis II launch is on C-SPAN appeared first on Popular Science.

Navigating streaming services is basically a nightmare at this point. On top of their constantly shifting libraries, it feels like nearly every week includes the announcement of yet another subscription price hike. If you’re looking for a temporary reprieve and some truly unique content this week, an unsung hero is ready to help you out. Folks, it’s time to tune into C-SPAN for NASA’s upcoming Artemis II launch.

Yes, that C-SPAN. The same channel that has been broadcasting government hearings daily since 1979.

Through Sunday, April 5, CSPAN is airing daily coverage of all things Artemis II. The NASA mission deserves it, after all. The four astronauts are scheduled to launch no earlier than Wednesday, April 1, and when they do it will kick off a major new era of space exploration. Over 10 days, the Artemis II crew will complete the first human flyby loop around the moon since the Apollo 8 mission in 1972.

The trip is expected to pave the way for NASA’s return to the lunar surface, estimated for 2027. The mission will also set new milestones and break multiple records in the process. Upon its return, Artemis II will have carried the first woman, first person of color, and the first non-United States citizen beyond low Earth orbit. It will also travel about 4,800 miles beyond the moon to surpass Apollo 8’s total distance, and set a new reentry top speed of around 25,000 miles per hour.

C-SPAN’s special programming began on March 29 and will continue through April 5. It features daily news briefings before all-day launch coverage expected on April 1. On March 31 and April 4, C-SPAN2 will air 24 hours of documentaries on the history of U.S. crewed spaceflights. There will also be live call-in sessions, as well as commentary from guests from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. While the exact date isn’t confirmed yet, C-SPAN will also cover Artemis II’s atmospheric reentry and splashdown.

No T.V.? No problem. You can also watch all of the coverage on C-SPAN.org, the C-SPAN YouTube channel, C-SPAN Radio, and the C-SPAN mobile app. Check out the upcoming programming schedule below.

C-SPAN’S Artemis II Coverage Schedule

Monday, March 30

• LIVE 5:00 p.m. ET (C-SPAN): NASA news conference

Tuesday, March 31

• LIVE 1:00 p.m. ET (C-SPAN): NASA pre-launch news conference

Wednesday, April 1 – expected Launch Day

• LIVE 1 p.m. ET (C-SPAN): C-SPAN’S extended live all-day launch coverage begins

Saturday, April 4

• 24 hours Historic Space Programming (C-SPAN2): American History TV marathon of historic programming about America’s manned spaceflight program

Sunday, April 5

• C-SPAN’s “Q&A” series (C-SPAN): Program will feature a history of the Space Shuttle, including video shot on location at The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum

The post The best way to watch the Artemis II launch is on C-SPAN appeared first on Popular Science.

The notorious disease known as sleeping sickness can lurk inside a host for months or even years before serious symptoms arrive. When these tiny parasites do, it’s often a death sentence for its human host. After confounding epidemiologists for decades, researchers now know exactly how sleeping sickness can remain undetected for so long. Its secret weapon is a constantly adapting “invisibility cloak” crafted from special proteins. The evidence is laid out in a study published on March 30 in the journal Nature Microbiology.

Trypanosomiasis, better known as sleeping sickness, starts with a tiny bloodsucking bug called the tsetse fly that causes a huge problem. Like the mosquito, the tsetse fly is a vector for multiple dangerous diseases. However, the tsetse fly is particularly notorious for its role in spreading sleeping sickness in humans via the parasite Typanosoma brucei gambiense (T. brucei). Roughly 70 million people across 36 countries are still at risk of contracting sleeping sickness, and a total eradication remains elusive. 

Around 70 million people live in regions at risk of spreading sleeping sickness. Credit: Deposit Photos

Cases of sleeping sickness are steadily declining, but they remain frequently fatal. Initial symptoms appear relatively innocuous, with a patient developing a fever, joint pain, headaches, and itchiness between one and three weeks after an insect bite. But the problems intensify from there. The second stage of sleeping sickness may arrive weeks, months, or even later, but its effects on the nervous system invariably include neurological complications like confusion, numbness, poor coordination, irregular sleep disruptions, and coma. What’s more, it’s often already too late for effective treatment once the most severe symptoms arrive. At that point, there isn’t much to do for a patient.

But how and why does it take so long to learn when someone has sleeping sickness? Newly discovered ESB2 proteins may be the reason why. These collectively create a barrier structure called a variant surface glycoprotein (VSG). At the same time, the parasite is also precisely editing its genes to hide inside its host.

“We’ve discovered that the parasite’s secret to staying invisible isn’t just what it prints, but what it chooses to redact,” explained University of York biologist and study co-author Joana Faria. “By placing a ‘molecular shredder’ directly inside its ‘protein factory,’ the parasite can edit its genetic manual in real-time.”

The explanation answers a question that’s stumped microbiologists and epidemiologists for nearly 40 years. In addition to the protein cloak, T. brucei is producing “helper genes” that ensure its survival by hiding it from the immune system. Researchers noted that although the genetic instructions should result in equal quantities of each gene type, the parasite knows to make many more VSG proteins than the helpers.

That’s where ESB2 comes into play. Faria’s team successfully identified the protein inside a region of the parasite known as the Expression Site Body. As new genetic material is manufactured, ESB2 immediately takes a cellular scalpel to the helper sections while sparing the cloaking mechanisms. Basically, it’s retracting telltale phrases in a manifesto that would otherwise trace back to the author.

“When we first saw the molecular shredder localized in the microscope, we knew we had found something special,” recalled biologist and study co-author Lianne Lansink.

The implications also extend beyond sleeping sickness. According to Faria, the breakthrough “suggests a fundamental shift” in how infectious diseases are approached. In some cases, an organism’s survival may rely less on how it creates genetic instructions, and more on which ones they eliminate in the moment.

Despite its classification as a neglected tropical disease, sleeping sickness cases have steadily declined in recent decades thanks to public health efforts. With the discovery of ESB2, researchers are one step closer to wiping out sleeping sickness.

“The mystery of how this parasite manages the asymmetric expression of its genetic manual has been a cold case in the back of my mind since my days as a postdoc,” said Faria. “It’s a testament to what a fresh lab and a diverse group of scientists can achieve when they look at an old problem from a completely new angle.”

The post Parasitic sleeping sickness creates ‘invisibility cloak’ to hide in humans for years appeared first on Popular Science.

Betty White spent the winter hiding from the authorities. The roughly 20-year-old female Russian tortoise (Testudo horsfieldii) named after the iconic actress is one of Oregon’s Badger Run Wildlife Rehab resident reptiles. She went missing this past fall, only to be found months later underneath her enclosure by a volunteer named Rose.

Russian tortoises like Betty White are found throughout Central Asia, including in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and China. After the fall of the Soviet Union, they became a popular export for former Soviet states. 

“Almost all of the Russian tortoises in the pet trade are wild-caught and this has taken a toll on their species in their native territories along with habitat loss,” Laura Hale, a biologist and the president of Badger Run Wildlife Rehab, tells Popular Science. “They are considered endangered or threatened in much of their range.” 

Betty White is a Russian tortoise, a species found through Central Asia. Image: Laura and John Hale / Badger Run Wildlife Rehab.

In December 2023, Betty White and a male Russian tortoise named Smudge were rescued after her owner had died. Both were brought to Badger Run Wildlife Rehab in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where they teach the public about turtles, tortoises, and the dangers of the exotic pet trade. Trafficking wild animals takes them out of their natural habitats and owning exotic pets also pose health risks for human handlers and the animals—Betty White included. Her name comes from the white lines on her shell due to improper growth between the individual sections of the shell. These lines are due to a poor diet and the incorrect humidity she was originally kept in.

Betty White and Smudge now spend their spring, summer, and fall together in a large outdoor enclosure with deep soil for burrowing. In the winter they are moved indoors to a warmer enclosure with UVB lamps.

Betty White (left) and her buddy Smudge (right) were reduced in 2023 and now help teach the public about reptiles and the dangers of the exotic pet trade. Image: Laura and John Hale / Badger Run Wildlife Rehab.

“Since Betty White and Smudge have ‘day jobs’ as education animals we do not let them brumate (hibernate) during cold weather,” Hale says. “They are moved indoors where they stay active throughout the cold months.”

According to Hale, many reptile experts advise against letting captive animals like Betty White and Smudge brumate unless caretakers can ensure absolute silence without any disturbances for the animals’ wellbeing.

“Every time a hibernating animal is awakened, it raises their metabolism again which burns precious calories,” Hale explains. “If that happens too often, they won’t have enough calories stored to survive until spring.”

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This past fall, the Badger Run team prepared to move the pair into their winter lodgings. Smudge, who is  more of a “people tortoise,” made sure to come out for shell rubs and scratches. But Ms. White had other plans. She burrowed a few feet beneath the heavy and insulated house underneath their 16 by eight foot rectangular enclosure. 

“The bottom of the enclosure has a heavy wire mesh floor to prevent a tortoise from completely tunneling out and escaping,” says Hale. “So, we knew she was in there somewhere.” 

Betty White spent the winter snugly tucked into her burrow, while the team patiently scanned the area for signs of tortoise life. When a spell of unusually warm weather returned earlier this month, Betty White came out to sun herself and was picked up by volunteers on Saturday March 21. 

Russian tortoises like Betty White were heavily trafficked after the fall of the Soviet Union. Image: Laura and John Hale / Badger Run Wildlife Rehab.

She was cleaned up and fed greens, dried flowers, a calcium supplement, in addition to access to water, heat, and UVB lamps. “Betty White was none too pleased with having her shell rinsed of caked mud upon return from her winter brumation adventure,” Hale explains.

Betty White will remain back indoors with Smudge until more steady warm temperatures return to southern Oregon.

“Smudge was very happy to see Betty White return,” says Hale. “He spent the first day following her around their indoor enclosure.”

The post Volunteers finally find Betty White—the rescue tortoise appeared first on Popular Science.

Artemis II astronauts have entered final preparations for their historic trip around the moon, but they won’t be flying alone. While speaking recently at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, mission commander Reid Wiseman revealed the mission’s adorable zero gravity indicator. Designed by a 2nd grader from California, “Rise” is a tiny plush doll that will let the four-person crew know when they’ve reached zero gravity. Aside from being extremely cute, Rise is also a symbolic celebration of the first crewed NASA mission to leave Earth’s orbit and circle the moon since the Apollo program.

“Rise,” designed by Lucas Ye of Mountain View, California, as the zero gravity indicator that will fly with the crew around the Moon. “Rise” was inspired by the iconic Earthrise moment from the Apollo 8 mission. A zero gravity indicator is a small plush item that typically rides with a crew to visually indicate when they are in space.
Credit: NASA

A zero gravity indicator is an untethered object—often a stuffed animal or something similar—that highlights astronauts’ journey into space. However, their inclusion during flights wasn’t an original NASA idea. In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first to pack a small doll alongside him during the Vostok I journey to showcase when he reached microgravity. Zero gravity indicators have since become an international staple of spacefaring, with past examples including plushies of R2-D2, Albert Einstein, and multiple dinosaurs. More recently, Snoopy was the sole inhabitant aboard the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022.

The Rise doll was one of over 2,600 submissions from more than 50 countries during NASA’s Moon Mascot contest. In August 2025, the Artemis II crew narrowed down the selections to 25 finalists before settling on the top five contenders:

• “Big Steps of Little Octopus,” Anzhelika Iudakova, Finland
• “Corey the Explorer,” Daniela Colina, Peru
• “Creation Mythos,” Johanna Beck, McPherson, Kansas
• “Lepus the Moon Rabbit,” Oakville Trafalgar School, Canada
• “Rise,” Lucas Ye, Mountain View, California

Ye’s creation is inspired by the historic Earthrise scene captured during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. While Rise will only be one official zero gravity indicator for Artemis II, there’s a solid chance that its very trendy, planet-themed baseball cap may start showing up in stores after the mission’s completion. Artemis II is currently scheduled to launch no earlier than Wednesday, April 1.

The post A 2nd grader designed an adorable mascot for NASA’s Artemis II mission appeared first on Popular Science.

Peter Cottontail would probably pull a muscle trying to lug this giant chocolate egg down the bunny trail. After the success of the world’s largest Cadbury Creme Egg in 2025, Cadbury World has a new sweet concoction. Behold the world’s largest Cadbury Mini Egg, aka The Mega Mini Egg.

The Mega Mini Egg is currently on display in the U.K.  Image: Cadbury World / PA Media

It took chocolatiers Claire Fielding, Dawn Jenks, and Donna Pitt two days to craft the giant egg entirely by hand. The 27.5-inch-tall, 121-pound egg weighs about as much as an emu. The Mega Mini Egg has a pastel pink sugar coating on its crisp shell and some subtle speckles on the surface. 

“Cadbury Mini Eggs are another absolute favourite and a British Easter staple, so creating the Mega Mini Egg felt like the perfect next challenge,” Cadbury chocolatier Claire Fielding said in a statement. “We took that instantly recognisable shell and chocolate centre and scaled it up into a real showstopper. It’s been so rewarding seeing it come to life, and we can’t wait for visitors to come and see it in person this Easter.”

Cadbury World Chocolatier Claire Fielding with the “Mega Mini Egg.”  Image: Cadbury World / PA Media

The egg is on display in the Chocolate Making area at Cadbury World in Bournville, England, about 100 miles northwest of London. 

Even if you were able to take a bite out of this enormous piece of candy, it would take a lot of chocolate to kill a person. The adult human weighing 165 pounds would need to eat 75,000 milligrams to be at a toxic level. To reach that level, our estimates say that a person would need to consume:

• 711 regular-sized Hershey’s milk chocolate bars OR 

• 7,084 Hershey chocolate kisses OR

• 332 standard- sized Hershey’s dark chocolate bars.

You’d probably end up getting sick long before reaching that chocolate critical mass. 

The post World’s largest Cadbury Mini egg weighs as much as an emu appeared first on Popular Science.

Tesla is deploying more supervised robotaxi, hiring more drivers and testers and will start production of Cybercab in weeks. This should lead to a scaled robotaxi future.

The NASA Lunar Gateway program was cancelled but pieces of it will be used for the early parts of the moonbase and as part of the nuclear mission to Mars. NASA wants to fly two crewed missions to the moon every year. Japan is helping to build a large 15 ton lunar rover that will ...

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Excerpted from THE EDGE OF SPACE-TIME: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein with permission from Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House. Copyright © 2026 by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.

Halfway through Space Is the Place, Sun Ra muses that scientists are fed on research while Black people have been fed on freedom. As a Black physicist, I have been fed on both, and I have tried to grow the seeds that my ancestors passed on to me. The ancestors could fly. I do too, whenever I am able to escape into looking at the universe through the lens of quantum fields. I am not the first to escape into the abstractions of space and time. If you’ve read this far, then you have joined me. We are not the first. We will not be the last.

When I was younger, I knew I could be a scientist because I grew up watching LeVar Burton play one on television. As Geordi La Forge, chief engineer of the starship Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Burton gave us a brilliant, Black nerd. Because I saw this early example, my child self never doubted that I had the freedom to be a professional nerd too. It was not a possibility that was, as it had been for Black generations before me, “Far Beyond the Stars”—the title of a powerful episode about twentieth-century anti-Black racism that aired during the sixth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. DS9, as many fans know it, was the first Trek series to feature a Black lead. Avery Brooks’s Benjamin Sisko broke barriers in what is to this day the longest-running television drama with a Black man in the leading role. Like Burton’s Lieutenant Commander La Forge, Captain Sisko taught Black children like me that not even the sky was the limit.

In this sense, representation has real material meaning: Trek has continuously pushed the boundaries of our imaginations for as long as it has existed. Burton’s performance as Geordi La Forge has its origins in an earlier iteration of Trek—the first Black person Burton ever saw on television was Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in the original Star Trek series. This milestone was marked in the January 1967 issue of Ebony magazine, which also features a cover photograph of Nichols. In the photo, she’s wearing a form-fitting red synthetic velour dress with a respectably high black scoop-neck collar—the uniform of a liberated Black woman who is Earth’s chief communicator in outer space. The dress looks straight out of the 1960s except for the small patch over the left breast, which is roughly shaped like an arrowhead and features a swirly letter e (for engineering). The accompanying feature story declared that Nichols, then a star of the brand-new NBC Color television show Star Trek, was “the first Negro astronaut, a triumph of modern-day TV over modern-day NASA.”

The Edge of Space-Time is available on April 7th from Pantheon Books. Credit: Pantheon / Penguin Random House

The decision to feature the stunningly beautiful Nichols on the cover, complete with a lengthy feature describing her significant contributions to the production of Gene Roddenberry’s new humanistic drama of life in space, was both clear and pointed. Not only was Ebony celebrating a great Black actor; it was also offering political commentary on the whiteness of the political zeitgeist, asserting that NBC had imagination NASA utterly lacked. Of course, there are limits to this way of looking at things. Roddenberry had filmed the first Star Trek pilot featuring white actress Majel Barrett (his wife) as second in command of the Enterprise, but NBC hated the idea of portraying a white woman in such a powerful position and refused to pick up the series. The franchise might have died were it not for the intervention of Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy fame, who insisted that Roddenberry be given a second chance. So Roddenberry got rid of the white woman first officer and replaced her with not just any male but a male alien: Leonard Nimoy’s science officer Spock. He also added pilot Hikaru Sulu to the crew, played by Japanese American concentration-camp survivor George Takei. And he cast Nichols, already a star stage performer, in the role of the communications officer whose last name recalls uhuru—Swahili for “freedom.”

It would be nearly three decades before a Black woman would finally make the journey to space in real life. Roddenberry, of course, was not the first to dream of it. I imagine that Black women have dreamed of space throughout the centuries—for much longer than the idea of “Black people” has existed. Even Star Trek was a few years behind journalist Edward Murrow, who, as head of the U.S. Information Agency, wrote to NASA administrator James Webb in 1961 to suggest that the United States send “the first non-white man to space.” Webb replied that such a choice was “inconsistent with our agency’s policies.” And so in 1967, it was Lieutenant Uhura who first fulfilled that dream in the popular consciousness. Beamed into the living rooms of Black children across the country, Nichelle Nichols transformed how Black children saw themselves and their futures. 

Media like Trek kept me open to the possibility that space represented. I am a child of the space shuttle era, so I never knew a world where humans, including Black people, weren’t annually flying to space. I was fascinated by the 1976 IMAX film To Fly!—and saw it at both the California Science Museum and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where it brought me “past Mars, past Jupiter and its moons, past Saturn and beyond.” The script of the twenty-seven-minute film, juxtaposed with the larger-than-life IMAX movie screen, was the best kind of propaganda, designed to inspire awe. Toward the end, the narrator sums up the journey: “Today we look upon our planet from afar and feel a new tenderness for the tiny and fragile Earth. And so I learned early on from documentary as well as Star Trek that space was a tapestry for our dreams.

______________

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, dark matter, and neutron stars. She is also a researcher of Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. She is also the creator of the Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy Bibliography. Her first book The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type Books) won the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the science and technology category, the 2022 Phi Beta Kappa Science Award, and a 2022 PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award.

The post When ‘Star Trek’ put the first Black astronaut into space appeared first on Popular Science.