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Hope is more fragile than fear. Good outcomes often require that many things all go well, while bad outcomes often need only one particular thing to go wrong. But as bad outcomes are rare, if you think about what concretely might happen to you in the next day, hopes and fears are of similar magnitude.

However, as you widen the scope that you consider, both in time and social impact, your fears grow relative to hopes. For the world over the next half century, you have far more fears than hopes.

The more things and processes that you know about that happen in the world, and the more interdependent your world, the more pieces you can combine to create worrisome scenarios. Furthermore, you can build worries from abstract categories of things and processes, even if you don’t understand those well enough to develop specific worry scenarios. So knowing more, including more abstractions, gives you more things to worry about.

The ancient world did have some abstract worries, like gods, but a limited number of them. They knew a limited range of things, understood fewer processes, and were less dependent on one another. So they could not construct as many plausible big scope fears. Today, in contrast, every new tech, product, institution, cognitive bias, or social process that we learn of gives us more ways to construct worrisome scenarios.

Fear of AI today seems near a peak example of this. While very few concrete harms have been realized so far, those who publish words on this topic find it easy to imagine many things to worry about. Often their worries are quite abstract, without much in the way of supporting concrete scenarios to anchor such worries. AI plausibly has the potential to influence everything that matters, and might itself be influenced by a great variety of actors. Yes, all of which might in principle be used to support similarly strong hopes, and investments do reveal great hopes, but most published words are about fears.

The deepest parts of our ocean are more like the fare reaches of space than planet Earth. We never really know what we’ll find down there. A team from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Ocean Exploration team experienced that first hand when they spotted a very tiny fish in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England.

The team estimated that it measured only five millimeters (0.19 inches) to one centimeter (0.4 inches). It is still unclear what species this fish is, but scientists speculated that it could be a juvenile toadfish (family Batrachoidida) aka the sea toad. They have a sad-looking “Monday Face” and dwell on the sea floor to  hunt whatever comes within their reach.

This particular little fish was spotted during Deep Connections 2019: Exploring Atlantic Canyons and Seamounts of the United States and Canada. However, these kinds of deep-sea discoveries are not over. NOAA just completed their 2026 Cook Islands ROV Exploration in the Pacific Ocean, where they recovered a whale beak, observed an ethereal type of sea sponge called glass sponge (class Hexactinellida), and more.

A glass sponge amongst polymetallic nodules. It was one of several varieties of sponges seen during the final dive of the 2026 Cook Islands ROV Exploration cruise. Image: NOAA Ocean Exploration, 2026 Cook Islands ROV Exploration.

Currently, NOAA is partnering with Nautilus Live to explore the deep sea near Wake Island. The island is about halfway between the Hawaiian and Mariana Islands, and is one of the most isolated land masses on Earth. The 30-day expedition will utilize remotely operated vehicles (ROV), mapping technology, and the E/V Nautilus to collect baseline data about the 157,236 square-mile area and the marine life that lives there. 

The expedition could find potential maritime heritage sites associated with the Battle of Wake Island. From December 8 to 23, 1941, a small force of United States Marines and civilian defenders fought off parts of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Japanese Navy ultimately took Wake Island, but at great cost. According to the National World War II Museum, the Japanese Navy ultimately sacrificed two destroyers, one submarine, 21 aircraft, and 900 to 1,000 lives just to conquer Wake Island. Despite the loss, fewer than 100 Americans died during the 16-day siege, including 46 Marines and three sailors.

The Wake Island expedition is scheduled to end on September 18. 

The post NOAA scientists spot ‘outrageously tiny’ fish appeared first on Popular Science.

Torrance, United States / California, 1st September 2026, CyberNewswire

On September 3, 1967, at 4:50 a.m., a lone Swedish taxi driver stopped his car on the street in the light of early dawn. He carefully checked around him on both sides of the road, then pulled over from the left-hand side of the road onto the opposite lane on the right-hand side. He then stopped again. After 10 minutes, he continued driving on the right, along with every other driver in Sweden who had made this switch at the same time. This was Högertrafikomläggningen, also known as “Dagen H,” the largest traffic logistics event that Sweden—and perhaps the world—had ever seen.

Dagen H provides insight into some of the difficulties that people and systems have with changing their behavior, alongside highlighting the danger of having left-hand- or right-hand-drive vehicles misaligned on the road. With its memorabilia campaigns and smooth execution, Dagen H has since provided an example for other countries to follow, some of which still sorely need to make a change.

Rösta nej: Swedish voters said “no” to driving right

The origins of left-hand or right-hand traffic are “clouded in antiquity,” writes David Baldwin, a U.S. traffic safety expert, but are most likely related to horse-drawn carts. In Sweden’s case, the first ordinance on left-hand traffic originated in 1734. That was later affirmed in 1916. 

But this left-hand driving practice meant Sweden was out of step with all surrounding nations, where people drove on the right. This meant that most Swedes drove left-hand-drive vehicles (mostly imported from surrounding countries, or manufactured with export in mind), which resulted in a high level of head-on collisions and fatalities. Essentially, Sweden’s left-hand drive vehicles were “wrong-hand drive.”

The left-hand driving rule was hotly debated for several decades, followed by a 1955 referendum with dismal results. The Swedish National Maritime, Transport and Military Museums writes that “a violent scaremongering erupted about the enormous waste of money the changeover would entail and, above all, the terrible bloodbath that would occur on the roads.” Ultimately, the referendum concluded with 83 percent voting against the switch.

Generally, people don’t like making major changes to their habits, or feeling like their behavior is incorrect. “[People] are invested in maintaining the status quo,” said Dr. Christina (Missy) Rudin-Brown, a transportation safety and behavioral adaptation expert at Human Factors North. “Because if you switch everything, it means everything you’ve been doing your whole life has been wrong and unsafe.”

Despite the significant resistance, the Swedish parliament decided on May 10, 1963, that right-hand traffic would go ahead. 

The major pop hit: “Keep to the right, Svensson”

Several years of widespread advertising then took place, including memorabilia with a leaning blue letter “H” on a yellow background (for “Höger,” meaning “right”). People could purchase cups, soda bottles, socks, underwear, and bags, and each household received a 32-page pamphlet, produced in nine different languages. For children, cartoons helped them learn to look left, using characters such as Donald Duck and Dennis the Menace.

One popular song about the traffic switch called “Håll dej till höger, Svensson” (“Keep to the right, Svensson”) reached number five on the Swedish hit music charts, and stayed in the top 10 for three weeks. Despite the widespread attention and understanding, many residents were nervous. The Victoria Advocate reported that many Swedes said they’d prefer to “stay off the streets for a few days.”

In 1967, Sweden came out with the bop to remind drivers to stay on the right side of the road. Video: Håll dig till höger Svensson – Swedish propaganda song, All things Swedish

One of the issues was that this change affected everyone. “It’s not just the drivers,” said Dr. Rudin-Brown. “You have all the pedestrians, who might be very alert and conscious of the change for a few days, but that tends to wear off over time. All it takes is one instance of forgetting that you have to look left first.” 

The big switch takes place

The Saturday before the switch, traffic was banned, and workers hurried around switching signs. By evening, it was so quiet that it felt like there was “a touch of the eerie.” A few hours later, early on Sunday morning, the Swedish population (including its nearly 2 million drivers) was waiting with bated breath. Every driver knew they were required to stop at 4:50 a.m., switch sides of the road, and pause for 10 minutes, before continuing to drive at a lowered speed.

Thousands of Swedes came out on that Sunday to test out the new rules, with numerous resulting traffic jams. Crowds began gathering at around 4 a.m., with fireworks, impromptu choirs, clapping, and “what appeared to be every taxi driver in the city” ready to go. One man, so eager to be a part of it all, turned up in his pajamas.

For most people, making such changes is very hard because of behaviors that have become partly automatic. Difficulties arise particularly when our cognitive resources are under pressure. 

On September 3, 1967, at 4:50 a.m., Kungsgatan( King’s Street) in Stockholm, Sweden, suddenly switched from driving on the left to the right. Image: Public Domain / Jan Collsiˆˆ

However, in the case of Dagen H, every driver was potentially expecting every other driver to do something incorrect. “If you did turn the wrong way down the road,” said Dr. Rudin-Brown, “at least you’d be facing drivers who might expect that to happen rather than people just continuing [on] into a collision.”

Despite some level of chaos, the number of accidents was far below that of a typical day. One hundred and fifty-seven accidents were reported nationwide, only a small number of which were serious. 

However, one visiting traffic expert warned of celebrating too soon: “We have only seen the bride and groom brought to the altar. The citizens of Sweden have now embarked on their honeymoon. It is too early to judge the results.” 

In the first few weeks after Dagen H, traffic accidents maintained their low levels, some of which was attributed to lower speed limits and other rules established alongside the switch. 

Throughout 1967, the year of the switch, 1,077 traffic deaths were recorded, compared to 1,313 in 1965. The mood in Sweden had also changed: Instead of the initial 83 percent against the move in the 1955 referendum, 57 percent of Swedes after Dagen H perceived it favorably.

The complex safety results of Dagen H 

In the following years, overall traffic deaths crept back up. However, when compared to deaths per 100,000 cars, the fatalities continued reducing. This meant that even while the number of cars on the roads was increasing, driving had become safer.

Dr. Felix Rösel, professor of economics at Technische Universität Braunschweig, studied the Dagen H switch to examine the causal effect of wrong-hand-drive vehicles on road safety. He was able to determine that “more than 4,000 lives between 1953 and 1966”  could have been saved if Dagen H had happened earlier. Rösel’s results highlighted just how dangerous a wrong-hand-drive misalignment is. “I came up with this one-third markup in risk,” said Dr. Rösel. “I think that’s quite substantial. It’s not a trivial thing.”

In addition, it was not only the most serious types of accidents that could have been prevented earlier. Rather, the effect was also shown with minor accidents, such as hitting another parked car. 

“We see very similar effects on the number of fatalities and the number of injuries [from the study],” said Dr. Rösel. “It seems you have a problem per se, that you have this bad vision that is not aligned with the road.”

This diagram shows the field of view under different vehicle configurations. Image: Courtesy of Felix Rösel

Dr. Rösel also found that the reduction in accidents was likely due to the switch, rather than because of reduced speeds or other safety measures put in place after the event. But if safety improvements came from Dagen H, why did accidents not reduce more significantly? This is partially due to behavioral adaptation. 

“People usually use [a safety improvement] in some way to adapt and improve their experience,” said Dr. Rudin-Brown. “They feel like the road is safer, they feel like they’re better able to drive faster and assume more risk.” This means that even with the safety benefits of Dagen H and greater visibility, drivers eventually reverted to driving less carefully.

A huge undertaking with global relevance

Other countries have followed the example of Sweden and made similar changes, most notably Samoa in 2009. In Samoa, the country switched from right- to left-side driving to bring it into step with surrounding countries. Samoa also faced widespread protests (including from a group called “People Against Switching Sides”), and broadcast a song about the switch. 

A number of other countries around the world still deal with wrong-side-drive alignment, particularly Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Russia, all of which experienced widespread protests when changes were suggested.

“These fundamental institutions of driving on the left or right, it’s almost in the genes: the British on the left and the continent on the right,” said Rösel. “This really takes a long time [to change]. Even in Sweden, it was not a switch from one day to another. It took decades.”

In the case of Dagen H, the switch was considered a success. For Swedes at the time, only “a few minor skirmishes between right-hand partisans—now estimated at 43 percent of the population—and adherents of the old way were reported in towns across the country,” wrote the Daytona Beach Morning Journal. “But even the reluctant majority appeared to be swept up in the festive mood of the day.”

In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation.

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The post In 1967, 2 million Swedes started driving on the other side of the road appeared first on Popular Science.

San Rafael, United States, 1st September 2026, CyberNewswire

There is another huge increase in AI usage from productive agents like Grok bot. This is continuing the need for more energy and more construction of AI data centers. AI Revenues continue to grow. Breaking this down this dynamic situation is needed to know investment and business decisions. SemiAnalysis says Anthropic and OpenAI each ended ...

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Is the Tesla Robotaxi Era finally here. Many Tesla believers had lost faith. But look out Tesla is ramping unsupervised robotaxi. There are about 1000 Cybercabs parked in and around Austin and other Tesla robotaxi cities. Elon and Tesla AI lead Ashok are talking about flooding Austin with Cybercabs. Unsupervised Cybercabs are already being added ...

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The United States’ 63 official National Parks are often renowned for their natural beauty, but many of them are also hubs of history. To help honor both the country’s 250th birthday and the upcoming 85th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, more than a dozen locations are participating in World War II Across America’s National Parks. According to a recent announcement, three parks from around the country will highlight “different parts of America’s wartime story, including both triumphs and tragedies” every week leading up to December 7.

“This list of parks is by no means exclusive, nor are the stories that will be shared,” park representatives wrote on social media. “They represent just a fraction of the war’s impact on our parks and the nation, with many of those impacts still felt today.”

While the project began with the Pearl Harbor National Memorial itself, the two subsequent entries are arguably lesser known for their relationships to WWII—Governors Island National Monument in New York and Golden Gate Recreation Area in California.

An eastern military headquarters

Located in New York Harbor near Lower Manhattan, Governors Island National Monument commemorates the location of the Eastern Theater of Operations, later renamed the Eastern Defense Command in 1942. The U.S. established the military headquarters here two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This headquarters oversaw protecting the then 40 states, Washington D.C., as well as Army bases in Bermuda, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. 

Governors Island also oversaw New York City’s defensive brownouts and blackouts to guard residents against any suspected aerial bombardments.

According to the National Park Service, Governors Island was the command headquarters and military post for the United States Army from 1794 until 1966. From 1966 to 1996 it was the US Coast Guard’s largest and most complex installation. Credit: STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images STAN HONDA Anti-submarine nets, blackouts, and other domestic defences

On the other side of the country,the Golden Gate Recreation Area, was vital to the West Coast’s domestic defense during WWII. At the newly established Fort Cronkhite, thousands of troops in the Harbor Defenses of San Francisco mandated evening blackouts around the Bay Area, while maintaining an anti-submarine net, anti-aircraft weapons, and 600 underwater mines. The fort also included two 500-pound battery guns that were ready to aim at any potential incoming enemy naval vessels. Even today, many of the site’s hastily built, temporary wooden structures are still used by non-profit and educational park partners.

A sign for Golden Gate National Recreation Area near Crissy Field, in the Presidio, San Francisco, California. Credit: Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images Smith Collection/Gado

To keep up with the series, the National Park Service recommends following the #WWIINPS and #Freedom250 hashtags on social media. Next up for celebration: the Redwood National and State Parks.

The post National Parks commemorate ties to WWII ahead of 85th Pearl Harbor anniversary appeared first on Popular Science.

We are mere weeks away from Fat Bear Week 2026, but the brown bears (Ursus arctos) gorging on salmon at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska are already showing off that beautiful bulk. Based on a recent video posted by explore.org, Bear #910 might be a major contender for this year’s competition.

Bear #910 is a female brown bear that was first spotted in 2019 at Katmai’s Brooks River. She is about 10.5-years-old, has large, blonde, floppy ears, which can help viewers pick her out of the crowd on the live cam set up in the park. 

Bear #910 is also a particularly unique mother bear. Between mid-August and October 2022, she adopted her sister Bear #909’s 2.5-year-old female yearling cub (a one- to two-year-old cub still with its mother), while she herself had a spring cub (a first-year cub that was born over the winter and emerges in the spring). An adoption like this is an exceptionally rare event in the wild, but it has also been observed in polar bears. The pair was frequently seen fishing together with their cubs throughout 2023 and 2024 and a paper on their story was published in the journal BioOne in 2025. 

Most bear mothers generally keep their litters separated, and this year’s season was an example of why they tend to stick to themselves. On Tuesday, July 28, the live-cams captured a young brown bear cub being killed and eaten by an unrelated mother bear (Bear #806). The deceased cub was born this spring, and was one of Bear #909’s cubs. Bear 909 started this season with two cubs, but has now lost both. 

On Sunday, August 2, one of Bear #335’s (also known as Jolly) cubs died, after following three unrelated cubs up a tree. The mother of the cubs already in the tree attacked Bear #335’s cub, who did not survive the encounter. The identity of the mother bear who killed the spring cub was not confirmed. 

Following the first cub’s death, naturalist Mike Fitz and park rangers Christine Loberg and Sarah Bruce hosted a chat about the incident. The team said that while infanticide by female adults does occur, this is likely the first documented case occurring at Brooks River. While there is no single answer as to why mother bears are killing cubs, some experts suspect bear adoption, food scarcity, and fights for dominance all play a role. 

During Fat Bear Week 2025, she lost to Bear #856 in the second round of voting. Voting this year. The competition this year is scheduled to begin at the end of September.

The post History-making mother bear could be big Fat Bear Week 2026 contender appeared first on Popular Science.

Few entities from Australia’s Aboriginal cultures are more powerful than a Rainbow Serpent. Often likened to an archetypal mother goddess, the beings are associated with concepts like creation and chaos. Rainbow Serpents even possess the ability to fold the cosmos itself (often known as Dreamtime) to blend the past and the present. While stone wall paintings and rock arrangements of Rainbow Serpents across Australia date back hundreds of years, many examples of these revered deities apparently experienced a major growth spurt beginning during the 19th century.

“We could see from the shape of [it] with a large head-like stone at the end of a winding neck attached to a large body outlined with stones, that it resembled some paintings of Rainbow Serpents,” Paul Taçon, an archaeologist at Queensland’s Griffith University, said about a 407-foot-long rock arrangement near Awunbarna (Mount Borradaile) in northern Australia.

Taçon and his colleagues worked in partnership with local Amurdak representatives to meticulously document 165 archaeological locales across the region. In addition to 29 Rainbow Serpents found at 21 sites, the team also examined depictions of seven-foot-long pythons, life-sized kangaroos and crocodiles, Australia’s only known baleen whale rock art, and even a giant man measuring over seven feet tall.

A stone arrangement of a Rainbow Serpent is around 407 feet long. Credit: Paul Taçon

Although much of the art wasn’t available for radiocarbon dating, Aboriginal creators painted many of the Rainbow Serpents using white pipe clay that starts fading after only a few decades. Combined with other historical accounts and data, Taçon’s team now believes they can explain all of the elongated Rainbow Serpents. According to their recent study published in the journal Australian Archaeology, the desire to illustrate larger animals and other revered beings in art was a direct response to European colonization.

Awunbarna itself also supports this theory, since the region served as a nexus for trading, social gatherings, and religious ceremonies for multiple Aboriginal groups for generations. The area was also one of the initial places to experience colonial buffalo hunting during the latter half of the 19th century, making its inhabitants some of the first communities to endure European pressures on the environment. In some cases, Aboriginal artists even painted Rainbow Serpents and other mythically charged animals over or next to depictions of European firearms and sailing vessels. Archaeologists believe these depictions were communal attempts to reassert autonomy, authority, and tradition amid violent external threats.

Today, these cultural echoes remain vital reminders of an era marked by intense upheaval and Aboriginal erasure. But even centuries later, Rainbow Serpent artwork like a 407-foot-long stone protector Taçon spotted near Awunbarna remains as impactful as ever.

“I thought to myself, ‘Wow! This is one of the largest Rainbow Serpent paintings I have seen in 40 years of Arnhem Land rock art fieldwork,’” he recalled. “And look at those teeth and tongue!”

The post Rainbow Serpent rock art grew larger as Europeans colonized Aboriginal Australia appeared first on Popular Science.

Animals sometimes get stuck in the strangest (and most terrible) of places. From a peanut butter jar to a car’s front grill, wildlife experts have certainly seen it all. But when Cape Wildlife Center in Barnstable, Massachusetts received a call about a raccoon trapped in a drain grate earlier this month, their veterinary staff had their hands full with three other emergencies. 

While they couldn’t get to the trapped raccoon right away, other animal lovers were ready to step in. They physically took the raccoon—and the grate it was stuck in—to the Cape Wildlife Center. This team raccoon and drain grate removal effort involved the Bourne Department of Natural Resources, Fire/Rescue & Emergency Services, Police Department, and Department of Public Works. 

“In our line of work it sometimes takes a village to do what we do and this young raccoon had so many people fighting to save him today,” Cape Wildlife Center wrote in a social media post. “When they arrived at the hospital we were ready with meds to sedate the poor raccoon. We did not know how long he had been stuck like that and could only imagine how exhausted and scared he was.”

Bourne Department of Natural Resources, Fire/Rescue & Emergency Services, Police Department, and Department of Public Works worked together to save the raccoon. Image: Cape Wildlife Center.

With the trash panda fast asleep, the team used highly sophisticated equipment to pull its head out—canola oil and plastic garbage bags. Thankfully, it took less than 10 minutes. The medical team then carried out a full exam and administered rehydrating fluids and anti-inflammation medications. 

Finally, they woke up the unfortunate raccoon. In its misfortune this furry individual was pretty lucky—it doesn’t seem like he sustained any significant injuries, given that he could move his neck and limbs normally. For now, the wildlife center is keeping an eye on him while he stays in an outdoor enclosure. 

The raccoon did not have any major injuries. Image: Cape Wildlife Center.

“Wildlife rescues don’t always happen with one person or one team,” the wildlife center wrote. “This one took a whole community working together, and we’re grateful to everyone who helped get this little guy the care he needed.”

The post Raccoon rescued after sticking its head in a Cape Cod drain grate appeared first on Popular Science.

The Tesla Robotaxi tracker does not capture all Tesla Robotaxi but still identified 195 unsupervised robotaxi. Tesla doubled the vehicles in the last month and quadrupled in the last four months. It is a crowdsourced identification of unique robotaxi where people must submit vehicles and license plates to the system. The system has identified about ...

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When it’s time to finally greet the world, snakes emerge from their shells with the longest bodies of any vertebrate animal. This remarkable evolutionary achievement is only possible due to their limber gestational contortions. Snake embryos develop in a tight spiral, and these early stage coils always form dextrally, or towards the right. But how (and why) the reptiles consistently favor this right angle has baffled biologists for years.

“There is a touch of mystery to spirals,” explained University of British Columbia zoologist Alexandra Weber. “We are only beginning to understand how these shapes are produced in animals, such as our looping intestine, snail shells, and now these beautifully coiled snake embryos.”

Weber and an international team of scientists finally have an answer. As they explain in a study published today in the journal Current Biology, it all has to do with a snake’s gut.

An embryo of Cape house snake (Boaedon capensis) stained to show developing muscle blocks in the trunk. The embryo shows right-handed coiling. Credit: Raul Diaz / California State University Los Angeles

The investigation kicked off during the COVID pandemic lockdowns of 2020. At the time, an evolutionary biologist and study co-author at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa named Tetsuto Miyashita was struggling to envision a remote research project for his students. He eventually recalled his PhD advisor’s deep interest in evolutionary asymmetries, particularly when it came to snakes. 

“Every time I saw images of snake embryos in papers, I wondered whether they are right- or left-handed in their coiling,” said Miyashita.

After sending out a request call to various museums, Miyashita and his students amassed images of over 900 embryos from 39 snake and other limbless reptile species. They then meticulously reviewed all of them and saw a striking biological pattern. Snakes began their right-handed coiling within the first few weeks of embryonic development—but they were doing it before they had any muscles.

“Different forces are making them coil…but we didn’t know what’s making them do that,” said Weber.

CT scans began to fill in the gaps, revealing a previously unidentified biological structure: an intestine located outside the embryo’s body, but enveloped by blood vessels stretching from the yolk. According to Miyashita, this “pillar of gut” slowly detaches from the yolk while tethering the elongating body.

As the snake embryo develops, it twists into a coil on the opposite side of the yolk. And since the yolks are always on the left side of the embryo, the snake coils rightward. Miyashita likens the dynamics to adjusting a strap’s length so that the longer, buckling loop always twists. Snakes eventually gain the ability to wriggle as the embryo matures and its muscles develop. Once this occurs, around half of the late-stage spiraling bodies recoil to the left. 

Many evolutionary biologists previously focused on detailed snake genetic analysis to explain their unique anatomies, which importantly helped explain many of their attributes. Miyashita is thankful for these “key discoveries,” but noted how answers sometimes can be found thanks to simple observation skills.

“Out of the COVID lockdown, we uncovered a snake’s secret with a startlingly simple approach,” he said. “Just scroll through an album of snake embryos and record which way they are coiled, and take a good look at their anatomy.”

The post Biologists discover why snake embryos always coil to the right appeared first on Popular Science.

Bnei Brak, Israel, 31st August 2026, CyberNewswire

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, 31st August 2026, CyberNewswire

September 9Epsilon Perseids Predicted peakSeptember 22Autumnal EquinoxSeptember 26Neptune in Full OppositionSeptember 26Full Harvest Moon

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer, the temperature is dropping. That’s right, folks, summer is officially over! Well, not quite yet, but the month of September ushers in the official beginning of fall, along with a rare chance to see the solar system’s most distant planet, the Epsilon Perseids meteor shower, and a full moon that lives up to its name. So brew a nice cup of tea, put on a Leonard Cohen record and immerse yourself in pleasant melancholy, then grab some binoculars and get stargazing.

September 9: Epsilon Perseids Predicted Peak

Compared to the exciting celestial pyrotechnics of August, September is a pretty quiet month for meteor showers, but there’s at least one shower you can catch. The Epsilon Perseids are predicted to peak on September 9. These are a different meteor shower than the more famous Perseids. They share the same name simply because they both appear to originate from radiant points in the constellation Perseus. The constellation will rise in the northeast and move to the east over the course of the night. Expect to see about five meteors an hour, and be patient. There are not quite as many meteors in this shower.

September 22: Autumnal Equinox

If you’re as tired as we are of the heat, humidity and mosquitoes that come with summer, then rejoice: September 22 is officially the first day of autumn. 

The two annual equinoxes mark the midpoint between the summer and winter solstices. On an equinox, the earth’s axial tilt is perpendicular to the sun, meaning that both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres receive equal daylight.

Earth has two solstices and two equinoxes every year.  Image: Tom Hawking / Popular Science. September 26: Neptune in Full Opposition

If there’s one planet that doesn’t get a ton of attention, it’s Neptune. There’s a pretty simple reason for this: the cranky king of the sea is really, really far away. On any given day, Neptune is about 2.8 billion miles from the sun and 2.79 billion miles from Earth. Both distances are so large that they’re honestly pretty much incomprehensible. But here’s one way to think about it: we all learn at school that light takes eight minutes to get from the sun to the Earth. To reach Neptune, sunlight needs four hours.

Neptune’s remote spot in our solar system means that spotting it is a challenge for amateur astronomers. However, if you want to give it a shot, the evening of September 25 brings an excellent opportunity. At about 10 p.m. EDT, Neptune will be in full opposition. This means that the Earth will be directly between the sun and Neptune, and that Neptune will be as close to us as it gets.

How close? Well, it’ll only be a mere 2.68 billion miles away! You’ll need good binoculars or a telescope to see it, and you’ll need to look east towards  the constellation Pisces.The planet will rise in the east and will be visible all night. Happy hunting!

September 26: Full Harvest Moon 

Most of the names given to the full moon are poetic, but not quite reflective of reality: the Pink Moon is not pink, the Sturgeon Moon is not fishy, and so on. The Harvest Moon, however, really does have some significance for the annual harvest. As the Farmer’s Almanac explains, September’s full moon is close to the autumn equinox, so the moon “rises about the same time for several nights, providing extended evening light… [for] farmers to complete their harvests before fall frosts.” This year’s Harvest Moon will reach peak illumination at 12:49 p.m. EDT. 

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

The post September Stargazing: Summer’s official end, a big ol’ moon, and a chance to see Neptune appeared first on Popular Science.

Astrobiologists have, for decades, defaulted to a conservative burden of proof that leans into two aphorisms coined by Sagan … life … should be considered a “hypothesis of last resort,” largely because “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” But what if Sagan had it all wrong? If we live in a universe where life is common and not extraordinary at all, setting such an extraordinarily high bar for its discovery beyond Earth can backfire. … “There’s all these different lines of evidence that keep coming together that make me go, ‘Gosh, it’s becoming more and more difficult to explain everything on Mars abiotically’” … The most compelling clue comes via a reddish mudstone found by Perseverance that’s dappled with “leopard spots,” or mineral assemblages that contain chemically altered iron and organics. (More)

In ’61, Claus & Nagy presented in Nature signs of life in Orgueil and Ivuna meteorites. Science published rebuttals to one sign; dispute still open. In ’76, the Viking mission to Mars had three experiments that tested for signs for life; all three found such signs; dispute remains. (See ’26 book Meet The Neighbors). In ’96, McKay et al. said Mars meteorite ALH84001 had signs of life; dispute remains. In ’25, a JWST team reported evidence for life-signs DMS and/or DMDS in exoplanet K2-18b’s atmosphere. Also in ’25 in Nature, Hurowitz et al. presented those strong leopard spot signs of Mars life.

In ’11, I posted that meteor evidence then available seemed persuasive enough to me. Intellectuals seem overly reluctant to accept off-Earth-life claims, apparently because great status would accrue to anyone credited with proving them, and because accepting such claims might force us to change other big beliefs.

However, according to Bayesian statistics (a damn good account of rational belief for most situations), those just aren’t valid reasons for reluctance. Daves in ’03 and Lineweaver in ’04 argued persuasively that as so much material moved between Earth and Mars, and Mars cooled first to give life more time to evolve there, it is a priori nearly as likely that Earth life started on Mars, as that it started on Earth. Also, Mars had much land then while Earth was long totally covered in water.

As a reasonable prior for Mars life is quite high (>10%), we shouldn’t require strong evidence to believe it, and it seems to me we’ve long had sufficient evidence to make off-Earth-life more likely than not. But base rates suggest that usual authorities will continue to find the evidence insufficiently extraordinary for many decades to come.

Most seem to make a similar mistake re the hypothesis that some UFOs (= UAPs) are aliens. We’ve had over eighty years of testimony of flying (and submerged) objects behaving apparently far beyond human abilities, though not defying physics (e.g., see film The Phenomenon, book UFOs by Leslie Kean). Sometimes big groups see the same thing, sometimes professional flyers and observers see on their jobs, sometimes with supporting photos, videos, radar, and other physical data.

Yes, you can’t just believe everything anyone tells you, but humans have long developed heuristics re who we can believe more about what when, and outside of academia most of our world runs on such testimony. The dozen most solid UFO cases seem to me plenty solid by our usual testimony standards. Far better than the top dozen field cases of ball lightning, meteor sounds, earthquake lights, or animal rains, all elusive phenomena usually accepted as probably real. (Note camera-phones haven’t changed this fact.) And also far better than the top dozen cases of telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, ghosts, seances, or healing by prayer, all “impossible” phenomena thought to violate quite well-established scientific theories.

The key problem is that, as with off-Earth-life, most intellectuals treat some-UFOs-are-aliens as an “extraordinary claim” akin to impossible phenomena, deserving a crazy-unlikely near-zero Bayesian prior. But as an author of the great filter and grabby aliens analysis, I say that I’m a world class expert on the prior for this hypothesis. The possibility that some-UFOs-are-aliens is completely consistent with all known physical, biological, and social laws. And by my calculation its prior is roughly 10^-4 to 10^-3. This is less than 10%, true, but not by that much.

For a typical murder trial, the base rate is roughly 1/1000 that a particular death was a murder, and there are roughly 1000 associates who might have done it, giving a roughly one in a million prior for an accusation that X murdered Y. This is big enough to often be overwhelmed by available testimony evidence. Such evidence is usually not a smoking gun, and usually not much better than evidence in the top dozen UFO cases, yet it is rightly sufficient to convict “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Note that we also have telescope evidence for some-UFOs-are-aliens that relies less on testimony.

For the non-Earth-life hypothesis, I suggested above that two reasons for reluctance are that high status would go to those credited for convincing us of this claim, and we’d have to change many other beliefs to match. For some-UFOs-are-aliens, there’s also the fact that many intellectuals have long strongly ridiculed it, and so upon its acceptance their status would fall, as would that of government agencies blamed for actively hiding supporting evidence. And worst, it would lower the status of humans relative to aliens.

Researchers have long assumed that the timing of American black bear (Ursus americanus) annual hibernation mostly depends on temperature. However, new research indicates that how the bears know it’s time to hibernate might be more complicated than they once thought. 

A team from Virginia Tech investigated how temperature and daylight hours interact to influence the species’ hibernation behavior. To do so, the team followed the activity of four wild, pregnant female bears throughout various hibernation stages in over 22,000 hours of video footage from the university’s Black Bear Research Center. 

They categorized 45 behaviors and associated them with environmental triggers like temperature and photoperiod (day length), plus physiological changes in the course of hibernation. “To our knowledge, no studies have investigated the interplay between photoperiod and temperature in bear hibernation ecology,” they wrote in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

According to their findings, both temperature and day length are significant and interacting contributors to bear activity in relation to hibernation, especially during important phases like pre-hibernation feeding and den emergence. At the beginning of hibernation, only temperature shaped the bears’ behavior, but activity in other periods was significantly prompted by the effects of temperature and a day’s amount of sunlight together. 

A black bear is caught on a trail cam walking in the forest near Blacksburg. Image: Photo courtesy of Brogan Holcombe.

While temperature primarily drives the black bears’ hibernation timing, there is a more complicated dynamic between environmental signals. And shifting climate patterns could disturb this relationship. Climate change could pull apart the link between the amount of sunlight in a day and temperature, since daylight is constant and temperature isn’t. Decouplings of this sort could change hibernation timing and trigger chain reactions within the ecosystem, in addition to bringing about more human–wildlife interactions.

“Understanding relationships between physiological and environmental cues during hibernation is important for predicting behaviours in a changing climate,” writes the team, led by graduate student Brogan Holcombe, who studies black bears at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. “We also highlight the potential for a mismatch between physiology and environmental cues in areas projected to experience increased temperatures under a changing climate.”

As with most things in nature, the more scientists know about a species, the better equipped they are to protect it. As such, this study could help wildlife managers predict changes in black bear behavior and prepare for the future. 

The post Virginia scientists discover the cues black bears use for hibernation appeared first on Popular Science.

For the last five months, I’ve had a daily date with a little green owl. It cheers me on when I finish a language lesson and sends passive-aggressive reminders when I put it off. 

A few months in, I was thrilled to realize I could follow bits of a German conversation I happened to overhear. But I still wondered: If I keep using this app, will I actually be able to understand entire conversations and express myself clearly? So I asked some experts.

What language apps do well

Apps like Duolingo and Babbel, which break a language into a sequence of bite-size, gamified lessons, have several strengths, says Dr. Luke Plonsky, a professor of applied linguistics at Northern Arizona University. They combine audio, written text, and visuals, which helps learners connect how new words look, sound, and what they mean. 

They also enable something called “spaced practice”—going back to what you’ve learned several times over a longer period. Several studies show this leads to better memory of the new material than cramming. 

For example, if students spend 30 minutes learning vocabulary, they remember the words longer if they break that into three 10‑minute sessions spread over several days or weeks, instead of doing all 30 minutes at once.

In fact, “language apps tend to do a good job with vocabulary, short phrases, and other concrete material that benefits from repetition and memorization,” says Dr. Gillian Lord, a professor of Hispanic linguistics at the University of Florida.

Researchers at Duolingo published a peer‑reviewed study claiming that finishing certain parts of their French and Spanish courses gives learners reading and listening skills similar to those of students who have taken four university semesters—and in much less time. But it’s important to note this study didn’t compare speaking or writing ability.

On the practical side, apps are often free and “very convenient since they’re on our phones and can be accessed 24/7,” Plonsky says. 

Another strong point is their emotional appeal. “Duolingo’s character Lily [a teenager known for her sarcastic comments] is funny. The Owl is charming. The sounds and haptics are pleasing and rewarding. And the apps are gamified by features like streaks and hearts, which motivate us to keep going,” Plonsky explains. Starting a new language can feel intimidating, and—by making the process more playful—these apps lower the barrier to entry, says Lord. 

The Duolingo owl can help you learn Spanish, but it can also dance. Video: oy nambir oscar tuş, @duolingo

Dr. Daniel Isbell, an associate professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, points out how these apps help make learning a habit by sending reminders and using gamified elements like experience points (also known as XP, points you earn when you finish a lesson) or streaks (number of days in a row in which you’ve completed lessons). That consistency matters because language learning is “more of a marathon than a sprint,” and it can take several thousand hours to reach high proficiency, he says.

Where the apps fall short

The bad news for language app learners like me is that an app alone may not equip you with the skills you need for real-life communication. 

“Even when they incorporate speaking practice, it is usually highly controlled—repeat this phrase, pronounce this word, give the expected answer,” says Lord. “Someone can perform quite successfully in an app and still be entirely unprepared for a real, unscripted conversation!” 

Live human communication involves “interpreting meaning in real time, responding to unpredictability, managing misunderstanding, and adjusting to another person—a level of complexity that apps just can’t replicate,” she says.

What this means, Isbell explains, is that an app can help you “get the basics of the language under your belt,” “enough to read some subway signs and ask for directions,” but not to use the language comfortably at school or work.

Plonsky points out another limitation: Apps often avoid clear explanations of grammar, even though many adults “actually want to know what’s going on structurally!” 

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Culture, which is integral because “language always exists within a varied and living human context,” is often treated “too superficially,” says Lord. When it does appear, “it is often presented as though it were fixed and uniform, reduced to a handful of customs, holidays, or tourist-facing facts.”

Another big issue is dropout. Despite reminders and gamified elements, studies show many language app users quit before achieving fluency. For example, a 2019 study found that 64 percent of people had stopped using the app after four months, and 87 percent had stopped after a year. 

“So for every 1,000-day streak you see on social media, there are thousands and thousands of people who stop using their language learning app within a month, which is a big problem,” Isbell says. Language classes, meanwhile, “create some social expectations to show up and participate,” he notes.

Expert tips for learning a new language

So where does that leave me? “Sure, use the apps!” Plonsky says. “They’re probably the most efficient way to go, at least in the early stages. And they’re fun.” Lord agrees that apps are “fine as a starting point,” and Isbell recommends using them to build more practice and exposure into your daily routine.

But you should also seek out other opportunities to use the language. Ideally, learners immerse themselves where the language is spoken, Lord says, but if that’s not possible, they should seek “the most interactive option available”—“very often that means taking a class, whether in person or online.”

It also helps to expose yourself to films, TV, podcasts, and music in your target language to “get used to the sounds of the language, the rhythms of interaction, and the cultural norms that shape communication,” she adds. 

For example, with Korean, “you can get some of the basics from an app like Duolingo,” but you should also watch K-dramas and focus more on listening than reading subtitles, Isbell says.

So my plan is to keep the owl happy and maintain my streak—but also to sign up for a class where I can put my new vocabulary into practice with real people. Gulp.

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.

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Today at 7:26 a.m. EDT, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope officially launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Falcon Heavy’s 27 Merlin engines generated over 5 million pounds of thrust, and pushed the rocket through the atmosphere. It got it’s “first taste of space” about four minutes after liftoff.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope shortly after launch. Image: NASA

Roman is now en route to the second Lagrange point (L2), roughly 932,000 miles “behind” Earth as viewed from the sun. Once it reaches L2, the new space telescope will be about four times farther from Earth than the moon.

Ahead of the launch, NASA also announced the Adopt a Pixel campaign, where users can claim a pixel on one of Roman’s first images. Users will be assigned a pixel number that they can look up and receive a printable digital certificate.

Teams inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida encapsulate the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope within the payload fairing on Friday, August 21, 2026, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Encapsulation shields the spacecraft during rollout, ascent, and the early phases of flight. Image: Kennedy Space Center / NASA What is Roman’s mission?

First announced in 2020, the Roman Space Telescope arrives after years of development—as well as a close brush with cancellation in 2025. Astronomers estimate the Roman Space Telescope will measure light from as many as one billion galaxies while also conducting the first complete statistical census of planetary systems in the Milky Way. The discoveries made over the course of its five-year mission are expected to help answer some of the most persistent questions about infrared astrophysics, exoplanets, and dark matter. If all goes well, NASA may even extend the mission for an additional five years.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will survey vast swaths of sky during its five-year primary mission. During that time, scientists expect it to see an incredible number of new objects, including stars, galaxies, black holes and planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. This infographic previews some of the discoveries scientists anticipate from Roman’s data deluge. Image: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ Scott Wiessinger (eMITS)/Ashley Balzer (eMITS)/Julia Shepherd (Intern)/

Scientists will also pair Roman’s infrared data with visible-light observations taken from the ground-based Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a National Science Foundation–Department of Energy collaboration.

What’s onboard?

Roman’s equipment includes a massive, 300.8 megapixel camera known as the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), as well as a system of prisms, self-flexing mirrors, masks, and detectors collectively known as a Coronagraph. This addition will help block the glare of distant stars in order to better focus on their orbiting plants. 

The telescope’s nearly eight-foot-wide mirror and accompanying instruments will provide it with a field of view about 100 times wider than Hubble. While the primary mirror is about the same size as Hubble’s, design advancements have lightened the overall weight by about 80 percent.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope pictured on Friday, August 7, 2026, after engineers and technicians working inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida had carefully mated the observatory to its payload adapter and a strut payload attach fitting, a specialized piece of hardware designed for large, heavy loads. This allows the team to secure the payload to the second stage on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. Image: Kennedy Space Center / NASA.

It also carries 1.35 million names aboard on a commemorative memory card. These names were submitted by people all around the world, including astronauts from Artemis II and Artemis III. April’s Artemis II also has a special memory card with names aboard.

Who was Nancy Grace Roman?

The space telescope is named in honor of Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018), NASA’s first chief astronomer and a pioneering advocate for the development of orbital observatories. Widely known as the Mother of Hubble, Roman was instrumental in securing funding support for the once-controversial project.

Nancy Grace Roman, shown here at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in approximately 1972, was the first female executive and the first Chief of Astronomy at NASA. Image: NASA

“Hubble has brought astronomy into everyday life in a much more general way than it was before. The fact that it exists is something I’m proud of,” she said.

Roman’s love of astronomy began when she was a child. She had already formed an astronomy club for her classmates by the age of 11 in Reno, Nevada, and later graduated high school a year early while through an accelerated program in Baltimore, Maryland. She faced numerous obstacles as one of the first women in the field of astronomy, at one point even leaving her position at the University of Chicago after it became clear she wouldn’t receive tenure due to her gender. Her dedication to making the Hubble Space Telescope a reality ultimately led to the identification of dark matter, which she famously considered the program’s most interesting discovery.

Nancy Grace Roman stands next to a scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope outside the Hubble control center at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Roman is known as the “Mother of Hubble.” Image: NASA When should we see Roman’s first images?

We should receive the first images in early 2027. Over the next three months, the NASA team will perform an orchestrated series of deployments, calibrations, and tests before Roman reaches its final orbit. Roman has a primary mission lifetime of five years and is designed to support an additional five years.

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