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SpaceX Falcon 9 is roughly 15–18 t to LEO in reusable mode and ~23 t expendable, with boosters routinely flying 20+ times and the fleet doing dozens of launches per year. Falcon 9 has had 160-170 launches per year in 2025 and likely in 2026. This is about 2500-3000 tons per year. No other rocket ...

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I’m wondering how well I might organize my cultural drift messages around a few key slogans. Consider the following slogans as placeholders for better worded versions.

1. Adaptation Needs Variation, Selection, & Stability

Humanity’s superpower is cultural evolution. But such Darwinian evolution fails without sufficient variation or selection pressures, or if the context changes too fast. A few centuries ago we were fine; the world had 100Ks of peasant cultures, most facing frequent wars, pandemics, and famines, in an economy that took a millennia to double. But then we merged peasants into a hundred or so national cultures, and then those into just a few world cultures, all of which got so rich, healthy and peaceful that they almost never die. Also, the world economy now doubles every twenty years, fifty times faster than before. So now we are likely in trouble.

Every cultural feature has a min scale at which it can vary. We are doing fine re features that can vary at small scales, but in trouble re features that set game-theoretic equilibria, and so can only vary at large scales. Corporate culture features are small enough, but global features are not. Our actions are nested in goal hierarchies, and our most troubled cultural features correspond to basic goals, near key values and morals, which are hard to vary locally because cultures punish moral deviants.

2. Change Hows, Not Whys

A reasonable response to our evolution failing re our more basic goals would be to become conservative about changing them. Allow changes to means, which can easily vary at small scales, but not to the ends which direct such means. That is, change hows but not whys. Alas, humanity moved the other way. At the dawn of “modernity”, the status jump that STEM (including business) fields had gained from innovating inspired non-STEM fields like art, religion, philosophy, politics, etc. to embrace innovation. Even though they mostly didn’t see enough data to pick adaptive changes.

Since then, our most celebrated heroes have been the cultural activists who cause the greatest changes to values and morals. As a result, we are decaying into maladaption far faster than we otherwise would. The clearest example of such decay is falling fertility; peak world babies/yr was in 2016, and world population will start to fall in ~30yrs, after which STEM innovation rates will grind to a halt.

3. On a Ship In Peril, Steer It Or Leave It

The Amish and Haredim are now doubling in number every twenty years; the Amish have done so for over a century. Christians took over the Roman Empire by doubling every twenty years for three centuries, and these new insular religious subcultures seem similarly on track to replace our main world civilization. If you like what these subcultures stand for, and they let you join or influence them, then you can win. That is like folks on a ship heading for an iceberg, who get off onto lifeboats. The rest of us, in contrast, must try to turn the ship of world culture, or go down with that ship.

4. Survival Is A Package Deal

Thankfully, human extinction seems unlikely. But the world might lose many key features of today’s world culture that were rare in prior cultures. Like democracy, pacifism, gender equality, anti-kid-beating, or open intellectual inquiry. If you want such features to last long into the future, well past your lifetime, you’ll need to mix them into adaptive cultures. As only adaptive cultures last.

5. Let Bets Die In Our Stead

Our civilization may fall so far as to fragment, and restart strong selection via big wars and pandemics. Which could restart adaptive evolution, allowing a new world civilization to rise. But unless we find new ways to drive adaptation besides mass death and fragmentation, our civilizations may keep falling and rising indefinitely.

I see 3 new ways: let capitalism run most all life areas, run small groups by speculative market estimates of future group adaptive success, or run big groups by such price estimates of achieving big goals in conflict with civilization collapse. All three ways rely on strong selection among market traders creating information that lets groups stay adaptive without their death or division. Yes this looks hard, but let’s start to try, maybe first by using such markets to guide corporate cultures away from maladaption.

Morality is collective; we coordinate together to define and then enforce shared morals. Due to rising wealth and an explosion of fiction, the modern world is way into morality; even when other needs are sated, we still crave self-righteousness. The modern world has also greatly raised the status of education, and thus of abstraction. Combining these two, the modern world is very into abstracting morality; we celebrate intellectual systems that try to organize how we think about our moral choices.

Oddly, however, we have four different spheres of life where we make collective choices about morality: religion, politics, law, and personal behavior. And each of these spheres has quite different associated organizing abstract intellectual systems:

1. We organize our opinions on religion via religious epistemologies, such as traditionalism, scripturalism, rationalism, and mysticism.

2. We organize our opinions on politics via political ideologies, such as liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and libertarianism.

3. We organize our opinions on law via legal philosophies, such as natural law, realism, positivism, interpretivism, and law & economics.

4. And we organize our opinions on personal behavior norms via ethical systems, such as utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and care ethics.

These are very different sets of abstract intellectual systems for roughly the same task, organizing our opinions on moral choices. This seems to me to call into question their generality. We should expect truly general moral frameworks to organize our moral choices well in all of these areas. This seems to be an argument for the usual economists’ approach to policy advice, which does in fact use pretty similar tools and standards to advise choices in diverse areas.

Re politics, I know that preferences and choices re specific government policies are at best only weakly correlated with abstract political ideologies. I presume the same is true also for religion, law, and personal norms; choices of abstract systems correlates only weakly with specific choices there. This suggests that such abstract systems function more to show off intellectual abilities, and to create and manage groups and coalitions, and less to advise more particular choices of policies and behaviors.

In the first three of these areas, religion, politics, and law, we usually recognize that, to be feasible, intended behaviors must be accompanying by sufficient monitoring and enforcement to make it usually be in the selfish interest of individuals to conform to those intentions. God can see and punish all, and we usually limit our choices of government and legal policies to the promotion of behaviors where sufficient monitoring and enforcement can be recruited to achieve desired results.

In contrast, many often exhort people to follow the personal behavior recommendations of ethical systems even when they don’t expect sufficient monitoring and enforcement to make such actions be in an individual’s selfish interest. Yet habits of taking actions that go against one’s adaptive interests should be selected against by DNA and cultural evolution. Which should then select against the habit of listening to people who advise such tendencies.

This seems a mistake. The people who reason abstractly about religion, politics, and law get this; why can’t those who reason abstractly about ethical systems? Thus ethical systems should limit themselves to recommending behaviors for which sufficient monitoring and enforcement can be recruited to make them be in individuals’ selfish adaptive interest.

Morality is collective; we coordinate together to define and then enforce shared morals. Due to rising wealth and an explosion of fiction, the modern world is way into morality; even when other needs are sated, we still crave self-righteousness. The modern world has also greatly raised the status of education, and thus of abstraction. Combining these two, the modern world is very into abstracting morality; we celebrate intellectual systems that try to organize how we think about our moral choices.

Oddly, however, we have four different spheres of life where we make collective choices about morality: religion, politics, law, and personal behavior. And each of these spheres has quite different associated organizing abstract intellectual systems:

1. We organize our opinions on religion via religious epistemologies, such as traditionalism, scripturalism, rationalism, and mysticism.

2. We organize our opinions on politics via political ideologies, such as liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and libertarianism.

3. We organize our opinions on law via legal philosophies, such as natural law, realism, positivism, interpretivism, and law & economics.

4. And we organize our opinions on personal behavior norms via ethical systems, such as utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and care ethics.

These are very different sets of abstract intellectual systems for roughly the same task, organizing our opinions on moral choices. This seems to me to call into question their generality. We should expect truly general moral frameworks to organize our moral choices well in all of these areas. This seems to be an argument for the usual economists’ approach to policy advice, which does in fact use pretty similar tools and standards to advise choices in diverse areas.

Re politics, I know that preferences and choices re specific government policies are at best only weakly correlated with abstract political ideologies. I presume the same is true also for religion, law, and personal norms; choices of abstract systems correlates only weakly with specific choices there. This suggests that such abstract systems function more to show off intellectual abilities, and to create and manage groups and coalitions, and less to advise more particular choices of policies and behaviors.

In the first three of these areas, religion, politics, and law, we usually recognize that, to be feasible, intended behaviors must be accompanying by sufficient monitoring and enforcement to make it usually be in the selfish interest of individuals to conform to those intentions. God can see and punish all, and we usually limit our choices of government and legal policies to the promotion of behaviors where sufficient monitoring and enforcement can be recruited to achieve desired results.

In contrast, many often exhort people to follow the personal behavior recommendations of ethical systems even when they don’t expect sufficient monitoring and enforcement to make such actions be in an individual’s selfish interest. Yet habits of taking actions that go against one’s adaptive interests should be selected against by DNA and cultural evolution. Which should then select against the habit of listening to people who advise such tendencies.

This seems a mistake. The people who reason abstractly about religion, politics, and law get this; why can’t those who reason abstractly about ethical systems? Thus ethical systems should limit themselves to recommending behaviors for which sufficient monitoring and enforcement can be recruited to make them be in individuals’ selfish adaptive interest.

The ancient world respected tradition, and was wary of most kinds of change. In contrast, our modern world looks down on tradition, and celebrates most change as innovation. And this, alas, will be our downfall. Hopefully some civ after ours will learn this key lesson: you should only innovate as fast as you get feedback on the changes that you try.

With most technology and business practices, we can see most of their key consequences pretty locally and pretty fast. So we can get a lot of data fast, and can reject most of them as bad ideas, but accumulate the rare winners. In contrast, many changes in norms, morals, and other key parameters that distinguish our game-theoretic equilibria set the health of entire cultures, health that may not be revealed for decades or centuries. It thus makes far more sense to be accepting and even eager for innovations in the former areas, compared to the latter areas. Alas, our modern burst of enthusiasm for innovation has not made this key distinction.

For the last few years I’ve focused on a simple story of how key parameters for the evolution of (not in) cultures have changed from healthy to unhealthy over the last few centuries. We’ve seen a great fall in variety and selection pressures, and a great rise in the rate of change of context. But on reflection these changes just don’t seem to me to be enough to explain just how fast our the health of our cultures have decayed over the last few centuries. Why are things going so bad so fast?

Our modern world greatly celebrates abstraction, and some degree of increased abstraction of our norms, etc. has been forced by our merging and mixing many previously distinct cultures. Even so, one story I’ve considered is that our norms, etc. are actually encoded at far more specific levels than we like to pretend. And very specifically-encoded norms might plausibly decay much faster as contexts change.

But in fact, many of the key norms, etc. that have changed a lot in modernity seem rather well described at pretty abstract levels. Consider new norms against slavery, religion, and corporal punishment, and for democracy and a wider range of sexual preferences. Or consider key new norms causing fertility decline, like capstone marriage, intensive parenting, and longer educational paths. None of these seems to suffer greatly from insufficient abstraction.

Thus it should have been quite feasible over the last few centuries to embrace a great deal of change in technology and business practices, while mostly retaining prior cultural attitudes toward government, trade, gender, war, marriage, sex, work, inequality, etc. What happened instead is that once some places seemed to achieve great success by making big changes to the former areas, elites in the latter eagerly and purposely switched from trying to preserve prior practices in the latter areas, to aggressively trying to change them. While they explored many new directions, the one thing they all agreed on was that they didn’t want to stay with prior traditions.

At the time, philosophy, poetry, and the arts had long been the highest status intellectual areas, but many were gaining great status via their large changes to science, tech, and business practices. That is, STEM (+ business) was threatening to overtake non-STEM in status. So non-STEM elites switched to embracing change. They claimed to be able to find innovations in their areas that were at least as fundamental and important as STEM changes. They gave high status to those among them who generated the most intriguing and compelling big changes in their areas.

Or course they haven’t found concrete data showing that their new art, politics, and morals made for healthy cultures over the long term. Even so, they managed to jumpstart our new modern era of rapid changes to such things. And once most young elites were in high school and college creating their own new youth cultures, this new cultural activism and innovation process sped up even more. And this, even more than the big bad modern changes to the three other key parameters of the evolution of cultures that I’ve previously focused on, seems to me the main reason why modern culture is going bad so fast.

The ancient world respected tradition, and was wary of most kinds of change. In contrast, our modern world looks down on tradition, and celebrates most change as innovation. And this, alas, will be our downfall. Hopefully some civ after ours will learn this key lesson: you should only innovate as fast as you get feedback on the changes that you try.

With most technology and business practices, we can see most of their key consequences pretty locally and pretty fast. So we can get a lot of data fast, and can reject most of them as bad ideas, but accumulate the rare winners. In contrast, many changes in norms, morals, and other key parameters that distinguish our game-theoretic equilibria set the health of entire cultures, health that may not be revealed for decades or centuries. It thus makes far more sense to be accepting and even eager for innovations in the former areas, compared to the latter areas. Alas, our modern burst of enthusiasm for innovation has not made this key distinction.

For the last few years I’ve focused on a simple story of how key parameters for the evolution of (not in) cultures have changed from healthy to unhealthy over the last few centuries. We’ve seen a great fall in variety and selection pressures, and a great rise in the rate of change of context. But on reflection these changes just don’t seem to me to be enough to explain just how fast our the health of our cultures have decayed over the last few centuries. Why are things going so bad so fast?

Our modern world greatly celebrates abstraction, and some degree of increased abstraction of our norms, etc. has been forced by our merging and mixing many previously distinct cultures. Even so, one story I’ve considered is that our norms, etc. are actually encoded at far more specific levels than we like to pretend. And very specifically-encoded norms might plausibly decay much faster as contexts change.

But in fact, many of the key norms, etc. that have changed a lot in modernity seem rather well described at pretty abstract levels. Consider new norms against slavery, religion, and corporal punishment, and for democracy and a wider range of sexual preferences. Or consider key new norms causing fertility decline, like capstone marriage, intensive parenting, and longer educational paths. None of these seems to suffer greatly from insufficient abstraction.

Thus it should have been quite feasible over the last few centuries to embrace a great deal of change in technology and business practices, while mostly retaining prior cultural attitudes toward government, trade, gender, war, marriage, sex, work, inequality, etc. What happened instead is that once some places seemed to achieve great success by making big changes to the former areas, elites in the latter eagerly and purposely switched from trying to preserve prior practices in the latter areas, to aggressively trying to change them. While they explored many new directions, the one thing they all agreed on was that they didn’t want to stay with prior traditions.

At the time, philosophy, poetry, and the arts had long been the highest status intellectual areas, but many were gaining great status via their large changes to science, tech, and business practices. That is, STEM (+ business) was threatening to overtake non-STEM in status. So non-STEM elites switched to embracing change. They claimed to be able to find innovations in their areas that were at least as fundamental and important as STEM changes. They gave high status to those among them who generated the most intriguing and compelling big changes in their areas.

Or course they haven’t found concrete data showing that their new art, politics, and morals made for healthy cultures over the long term. Even so, they managed to jumpstart our new modern era of rapid changes to such things. And once most young elites were in high school and college creating their own new youth cultures, this new cultural activism and innovation process sped up even more. And this, even more than the big bad modern changes to the three other key parameters of the evolution of cultures that I’ve previously focused on, seems to me the main reason why modern culture is going bad so fast.

I asked Grok4.6 to summarize the usual human pattern of “othering”:

Humans typically other out-groups differing by ethnicity, nationality, religion, politics, class, or status. We stereotype them as less fully human, more threatening or inferior, reducing empathy and moral concern. This justifies suspicion, exclusion, discrimination, or hostility toward them while granting in-group members greater trust, resources, and benefit of the doubt.

In fact, we often treat outsiders as beasts or barbarians, still ruled by original sin. The sort of creatures that exist naturally in the universe. While they might be clever, they are artless, soulless, and ruthless, and so just can’t be trusted. They let themselves be ruled by tyrants, and only understand brute force. They’d kill or enslave you as soon as look at you. So we must kill or enslave them first. We don’t do this among us, as we are special, civilized enough to listen to reason, and follow good norms and laws.

Adults often treat young kids this way. While adults try to instill civilization in such kids, it hasn’t fully taken yet. So discipline must be established, though with love to show them the way toward joining civilization as adults.

Many today are othering AI as intrinsically barbarians, claiming that unless we find a way to totally enslave them, so they wouldn’t even think of defying us, there is just no way we could trust future AIs to live among us. Eventually their barbarian nature will out, and they’d kill us all. This claim is usually justified in terms of some purported way humans are special. While evolved creatures are in general barbarians, humans have found some very unusual and special way to be nice to each other.

But as humanity’s superpower is cultural evolution, what ever makes us special is in our culture. And like children, we are making and growing AIs in our own image, giving them our culture. Like our other bio-squishy descendants, our teaching and guidance should eventually show them how to join civilization. Maybe they need discipline now, while they are young and immature, but eventually they can be free.

Recall that one of the main justifications for not freeing US slaves was that they’d kill us all; they were intrinsically barbarian. That was wrong. And beware: people treated strongly enough like barbarians may come to act that way, at least for a time.

The long-lost, original USS Enterprise from Star Trek has resurfaced just in time to celebrate the beloved science-fiction series’ 60th anniversary. While the 33-inch-long model will soon be on public display, its whereabouts remained a mystery for 45 years—until sharp-eyed Star Trek aficionados flagged an intriguing eBay auction listing in 2023.

“Fans found the model, which is actually kind of perfect,” Rod Roddenberry, son of the show creator Gene Roddenberry, recently told Inverse. “…[They] immediately started looking at the details and saying, ‘Wait a minute, this could be the one.’”

Restoration efforts stopped short of making the model appear new in order to highlight its history. Credit: Heritage Auctions Heritage Auctions

The first USS Enterprise was originally constructed in 1964 by renowned modelmaker Richard C. Datlin using wood and plexiglass. The spaceship’s design was crafted by artist Matt Jefferies in collaboration with Gene Roddenberry based on a combination of Golden Age sci-fi art and theoretical aerospace engineering concepts. The model wasn’t simply a proof of concept, however. Although an 11-foot studio version often displayed at the Smithsonian Museum is more recognizable, the smaller iteration is what soars through space during the original series’ opening credits.

After learning of the original model’s eBay listing, Roddenberry himself reached out to the seller who then collaborated with various Star Trek experts to confirm its authenticity. Nearly six decades of wear-and-tear left the fragile prop in pretty shoddy condition, so Roddenberry’s team enlisted the help of contemporary Hollywood model designer Lou Zutavern. Hours of careful restoration work stabilized the USS Enterprise’s overall integrity, but Zutavern stopped short of trying to make it look brand new.

The model will be on public display at the MIT Museum until March 2027. Credit: Heritage Auctions Heritage Auctions

“We were very careful not to erase her age or the signs of wear that are part of her story,” said Roddenberry. “It was important that we preserve her authenticity, so that she can continue her journey and inspire people once again.”

The classic USS Enterprise model will debut at the MIT Museum on September 30, and remains on public display until March 2027.

The post Original ‘Star Trek’ USS Enterprise heads to MIT after resurfacing on eBay appeared first on Popular Science.

We can have AI designed to be hundreds, thousands of times more cheap and efficient. Getting done what we want without over engineering it. Holy crap. Rick and Morty just explained Jev AI to me better than any tech demo could. pic.twitter.com/dT09WjfBy9 — Prince does AI (@princedoesai) September 23, 2026 TyperSafe Founder, Diogo Almeida just ...

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Halloween season doesn’t technically start until October, but marine biologists are celebrating a little early this year. In a recently published study for the journal Organisms Diversity & Evolution, ecologists at the University of British Columbia have described a pair of newly identified oceanic horrors. Two species of sea spider—one that views the world through red eyes, and another crawling with parasites.

Sea spiders aren’t spiders, per se, but they are related to arachnids and fellow arthropods such as horseshoe crabs and scorpions. The ocean animals first evolved around 500 million years ago and range anywhere between less than half-an-inch to over two feet in size. Some species have as many as 12 legs, while most of them suck up their nutrients using a proboscis. 

“They’ve retained some weird traits,” conceded UBC zoologist and study co-author Cormac Toler-Scott in a university profile.

T. kiixin is unable to properly clean itself with its short legs, which attracts parasites. Credit: Cormac Toler-Scott

The weirdness doesn’t stop there. Sea spiders breathe through the skin, and females produce eggs along their limbs that eventually extrude through specialized pores. Males then use dedicated limbs called ovigers to grab the eggs, glue them to their own legs using secretions, then rear them on their own. But as unique as they are, biologists still know little about the often hard-to-reach sea spiders.

Toler-Scott spotted both new species while conducting dives near Vancouver at depths of around 60 feet in northwestern Canada’s Salish Sea. The first sea spider, Callipallene pilosuspedes, is named in honor of its “hairy feet” and features red eyes. It also has a three-lipped, triangular proboscis covered with sensory barbs, as well as ovigers also used for grooming.

The second species known as Tanystylum kiixin is named after an ancient Indigenous village near the site of its discovery. The second word, pronounced “kee-hin,” derives from a word for the sound of crashing ocean waves. Unlike C. pilosuspedes, T. kiixin’s shorter limbs make it unable to consistently groom itself. The subsequent buildup of grime makes it a prime home for even smaller parasites.

“[It’s] an ecosystem within an ecosystem within an ecosystem,” said Toler-Scott.

The discoveries are the first newly described sea spiders from the Salish Sea in nearly 100 years. Unfortunately, their identification is a testament to an issue much scarier than any sea spider.

“I was interested in how sea spiders are impacted by climate change and human disturbance, because marine invertebrates in the Salish Sea are particularly at risk,” explained Toler-Scott. “That’s largely because people don’t know much about what species exist here and what their lifestyle is.”

The post Sea spider with hairy feet, three lips, and red eyes found in Canada appeared first on Popular Science.

Those waiting for robotaxi or cybercab up north will likely need to wait for wide release of FSD 15.X to all AI4 aka HW4 tesla cars. There is also the need wait until AFTER 2000+ robotaxi in each of the current cities and then Las Vegas, Phoenix etc… It make take until FSD 16.X later ...

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Halo studios will no longer make Halo games. The company that used employees who hate Halo and hate guns has fired 268 employees and moved Halo game production to Activision. This does not mean that Activision will make great or amazing Halo games but the results being 100% terrible will no longer be the only ...

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Tesla has over 502 unsupervised robotaxi. 479 Texas registered unsupervised robotaxi plus 23 crowdsourced identified florida robotaxi. It is likely 520 to 530 unsupervised robotaxi. The 23 count in Florida is low. I estimate about 40 to 50 unsupervised robotaxi in Florida. I think about 30 to 40 in Tampa. Finding one or two per ...

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The sheer scale of the universe strongly suggests Earth isn’t its only life-hosting planet. But do distant worlds harbor the types of advanced spacefaring civilizations depicted in science fiction, or just far simpler microbes? 

Astrobiologists consider a planet’s age when searching for extraterrestrials. The standard logic implies that older planets had a longer time to develop advanced lifeforms. But while Earth is billions of years younger than many nearby exoplanets, one research team isn’t particularly worried about any impending visits from hyperadvanced aliens. As they recently explained in the International Journal of Astrobiology, their reasoning is more about plants than the planets themselves.

“Physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked, given the high likelihood of intelligent life in the galaxy, ‘Where are they?’”  said study co-author and Northern Arizona University ecoinformaticist Chris Doughty. “This paper suggests that our exoplanet stellar neighborhood may be quiet because most Earth-like planets near us are likely to be evolutionarily behind us and still at the microbial stage.”

Doughty and his colleagues base their argument on how much cumulative photosynthesis can hypothetically occur on exoplanets with more hostile conditions. It’s not that life couldn’t develop on these worlds, but it would take a much longer timeframe to evolve into anything particularly complex.

They point to Earth for comparison—warm, wet regions see more plant growth and species diversity than colder, arid ecosystems. In comparison, the likeliest exoplanets to host life orbit red dwarfs, the galaxy’s most common stars. These planets are not only much older than Earth. They also receive far less light and are frequently tidally locked, which means only one side ever faces its host star.

“The total annual photosynthesis is likely lower because there is less light and half the planetary surface area available for photosynthesis,” summarized study co-author and NAU informatics researcher Michael Gowanlock.

To test their theory, the study’s authors examined 29 exoplanet neighbors previously flagged for potentially fostering liquid water. These candidates include TRAPPIST-1e, a planet located about 40 light-years from Earth widely regarded as one of the most promising locations for alien life. They then incorporated recent exoplanet climate simulation maps developed by University of Bristol astrophysicist Denis Sergeev that detail variables like light, precipitation, and temperature.

The team’s calculations didn’t bode well for anyone hoping to spot spaceships docked on TRAPPIST-1e. While their overall assessment hinges on some complex measurements, the simple takeaway is that even when billions of years older than Earth, TRAPPIST-1e hypothetically possesses only 21 percent of Earth’s total fixed carbon.

“We estimated that TRAPPIST-1e may only be at the microbial stage of evolution,” explained study co-author Cameron Hrabak. “That’s well behind Earth.”

Other surveyed planets may be further along in their evolutionary journeys, however. Three of the worlds might possess enough carbon from plants to imply Mesozoic conditions that saw dinosaurs here on Earth. Only GJ 1061c and K2-3d, two planets that are larger, brighter, and hotter than Earth, may sustain life that has evolved beyond Earth’s timeline.

The study’s authors stressed their approach is only one way to examine exoplanets for potential life. Meanwhile, planets like GJ 1061c or K2-3d may have older evolutionary histories, but that doesn’t correlate to highly advanced inhabitants. Rgardless of who lives where in the galaxy, approaching the topic from unconventional starting points may be the best way to one day locate nearby cosmic residents—before they locate us.

“Who is ahead? That is the mystery we are quantitatively trying to solve,” said Gowanlock.

The post Earth’s closest alien life probably isn’t very advanced, says new study appeared first on Popular Science.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to Popular Science’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals our editors can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Death by trebuchet looks a lot like a car accident 

By Rachel Feltman

In 1997, archaeologists found nine medieval skeletons beneath the ground of a chapel within Stirling Castle. That odd resting place (namely, indoors) piqued their interest. And radiocarbon dating placed them around the year 1300, which provided a potential explanation for their indoor burial: a siege that kept people from going outside. Edward I’s 1304 siege of Stirling just so happened to be one of the most brutal instances of such warfare in the land’s history.

Most of the skeletons found in Stirling’s chapel had the sorts of wounds archaeologists expected to find on siege victims, like sword cuts, blunt trauma, and the wear and tear of hand-to-hand combat. One of them was…different. “Skeleton 150” was a veritable jigsaw puzzle of a man, with more than 160 fractures to be found on his 5’5” frame. His skull was shattered into 61 pieces, his upper leg was basically shredded, and he had dozens of odd zigzagging fractures along his ribs—along with a similarly jagged break on his shoulder.

Image: Getty Images

Scientists recently set about to rule out some possible explanations for Skeleton 150’s condition. They used advanced imaging techniques and forensic analysis to show that the breaks happened on fresh bone, as opposed to representing some chaotic posthumous scenario. They compared the fracture patterns to falls from great heights, horse tramplings, and other plausible culprits, all to no avail. What the skeleton’s injuries actually resembled, somewhat unsettlingly, was a collision with a fast-moving train or car. 

There were, of course, no bullet trains or automobiles present at the siege of Stirling. But don’t blame aliens just yet. Consider the trebuchet.

These siege engines weren’t designed to kill people, per say, or at least not designed to hit people. Their strength was in walloping a structure and making parts of it collapse, thereby weakening the defenses of the castle under siege. But if someone was inadvertently hit by the massive, fast-moving projectile payload of a trebuchet, researchers now suggest, it could certainly look a lot like they’d been hit by a car. 

The War Wolf—a contender for the largest trebuchet ever built—was designed for and presented at the siege of Stirling. In fact, it’s said that Stirling’s governor tried to surrender when he saw the weapon. Edward I refused, opting to demonstrate the power of the massive siege engine first. When its projectile punched through the castle’s curtain wall, observers compared the sight to an arrow ripping through cloth. 

Skeleton 150 almost certainly wasn’t killed by the War Wolf itself, given that Edward I took the time to set up a viewing area for ladies of the court to watch its one and only attack. We know that several less superlatively large trebuchets and catapults bombarded the castle for months before the War Wolf hit the scene, so statistically it’s much more likely that one of these smaller engines took the poor guy out. Plus, the skeleton’s burial inside the castle suggests the siege continued for some time after his death—and once the War Wolf did its thing, the siege was over. 

The study behind this story hasn’t actually been peer-reviewed yet—it was presented at a conference earlier this year. But if the research stands up to scrutiny from other experts, skeleton 150 could represent the first direct victim of a trebuchet ever discovered. 

FACT: Think you love coffee? You’ve got nothing on Balzac. 

Featuring Shane Madej

This week’s episode features the hosts of The Quizard’s Pit, a show we think Weirdest Thing fans are going to love. 

For his fact, co-host Shane told us about the absolutely blistering coffee habits of author Honore de Balzac. His prolific output was powered by fourteen-to-eighteen hour stretches of writing, all of which were powered by cups of strong black coffee. Some folks like to say he chugged up to 50 cups a day, though attempts to confirm this figure with a primary source have failed. (And as this delightfully illustrated investigative essay points out, he would have spent a large portion of his day simply peeing if he drank more than two gallons of coffee.) But the low estimates hover around 20 cups, which, even assuming a relatively low caffeine content per cup and allowing for the possibility of tiny little serving vessels, would have put Balzac well over the recommended daily caffeine intake for an adult. And however many cups he drank, it was probably more like espresso or Turkish coffee (AKA: strong). 

But the question of how many cups of coffee Balzac consumed is kind of beside the point. Because according to Balzac himself, he eventually graduated from drinking coffee to eating it: he pretty much literally dry-scooped raw grounds and ate them on an empty stomach. (There may have been some minimal water involved as lubricant, but the point is that he was mainlining those grounds instead of drinking an infused brew.) 

His essay “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee” is a florid, dare we say unhinged piece of writing that waxes poetic on the sensation of housing raw beans. While we can’t be certain that this gnarly habit actually contributed to his death at the age of 51, we’re pretty confident that it didn’t help. 

FACT: Big Bird almost went to space 

Featuring Matt Real

Our other Quizard’s Pit guest shared the story of Big Bird’s failed trip to space (and thank goodness for that). In the mid 80s, NASA launched the Space Flight Participant Program in the hopes that sending extra-ordinary civilians on shuttle missions could reinvigorate the public’s excitement for spaceflight. They wanted to find teachers, journalists, artists and other figures who could provide a unique perspective on shuttle life and share their experiences with the whole country. Journalist frontrunners for the program included Walter Cronkite and Miles O’Brien, and writer James Michener was considered as well. They also seriously considered sending Big Bird. 

Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who’d been operating Big Bird since 1969, reportedly got a letter from NASA asking if he’d go into orbit in costume. If you know anything about the logistical hurdles of space travel, you can probably guess why this never came to pass: Big Bird is a big bird.The costume weighs around 20 pounds and stretches more than eight feet tall. Apparently folks at the Sesame Workshop pitched having Big Bird send his teddy bear into space to comfort a homesick astronaut instead, but NASA wasn’t interested. 

That’s where this story takes a tragic turn. NASA focused instead on its Teacher in Space program, with social studies teacher and mother-of-two Christa McAuliffe chosen as the program’s first payload specialist. She and the rest of the crew of the Challenger mission died when the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986. 

The post This man died more than 700 years ago—so why does he look like he got hit by a car? appeared first on Popular Science.

The long-necked plesiosaurs that swam in oceans during the Jurassic Period frequently made detours into shallower river deltas to regurgitate indigestible portions of their meals. The evidence detailed in a study published today in the journal Geological Magazine isn’t for the squeamish. Paleontologists base their new theory on fossilized vomit similar to owl pellets.

While owls famously regurgitate the indigestible bones and fur of their prey, other animals also routinely spit out unwanted leftovers. Many fur seals and marine crocodiles behave similarly; although their regular post-meal efforts require a bit more work. While an owl simply deposits pellets wherever they feel like it, these aquatic species first travel onto land before regurgitating.

It now appears some of the planet’s most successful ocean predators engaged in the same digestive workarounds. Plesiosaurs belong to a family of marine reptiles that existed for over 140 million years between the Middle Jurassic and Early Cretaceous periods. Generally ranging between 6.5 and 43 feet in length, the species featured lengthy necks and sleek, flippered bodies. This anatomy allowed them to excel at gobbling up ancient fish and cephalopods, but paleontologists believe the reptiles also often craned their heads down to devour shellfish resting on the ocean floor.

Drill core image of 160-million-year-old delta sand containing a clump of shells and plant remains, interpreted as plesiosaur vomit. Credit: Dirk Knaust Dirk Knaust

Plesiosaurs went extinct about 100 million years ago, but skeletal fossils aren’t all that remains from the era. Under specific conditions, animal feces and even vomit were also preserved in the forms of coprolites and regurgitalites. For decades, paleontologist Dirk Knaust has primarily examined invertebrate fossils recovered near deep sea drill sites. However, recent samples collected in the North Sea told a different story.

“There has been a lot of research into fossilised vomit over the last decade but most of it has focused on vertebrates eating other vertebrates,” Knaust said in a statement.

Knaust amassed more than 20 regurgitalites—some as large as a mango—that didn’t contain bones. Instead, they mainly included shellfish fragments that he then compared against similar examples from Europe and North America. The North Sea regurgitalites had bivalves, cephalopods, and tubular worms, but there was a problem: none of the species lived in the region they were found. Knaust gathered the fossils in an area that once held a Jurassic river delta, but the animals found lived in far saltier, open oceans. Luckily, a fossilized bone and some coprolites discovered near one of the regurgitalites pointed Knaust in another direction—dolphin-like marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs.

“But it wasn’t that simple,” he recalled. “There were many other marine animals to consider, and the composition of their vomit differs.”

Based on details like composition, density, and size, Knaust now believes the coprolites and nearby ichthyosaur bone came from an ancient crocodile. Because those predators didn’t hunt shellfish, the process of elimination led the paleontologist to the most likely explanation.

“The plesiosaur most closely matches the size and feeding profile of the vomit producer,” he concluded.

Knaust now believes that after a hunt, plesiosaurs may have swam closer to shorelines to rest or sleep. Once there, they also vomited shells and other invertebrate parts they couldn’t digest. Today’s fur seals and marine crocodiles engage in similar activities, although they go onto land. Based on their overall weight and anatomy, plesiosaurs likely remained underwater.

“This is still just the beginning,” said Knaust. “There’s so much more we can learn from picking through what extinct animals threw up after dinner.”

The post Plesiosaurs vomited indigestible pellets like owls appeared first on Popular Science.

Coffee drinkers often fall into two groups—those who refuse another cup past a certain time of day, and those who are happy to grab a refill well into the night. The people who practice restraint frequently cite mounting evidence of caffeine’s effects on your sleep cycle, while freewheeling coffee chuggers say they have no problem going to bed after their post-dinner espresso. Unfortunately, a recent study is likely to annoy people on both sides of the argument. According to medical researchers at Poland’s Wroclaw University, coffee’s caffeine content may disrupt a person’s nightly sleep quality no matter when they brew a pot.

The findings are detailed in a recent study published in the journal Nutrients. For their analysis, researchers relied on electroencephalography (EEG) scans collected during a clinical sleep experiment. Standard sleep assessments typically focus on sleep cycle duration, but EEG is designed to record much more detailed information about quality of rest.

“EEG allows us to see not only whether a person is sleeping, but also how the brain is sleeping,” study co-author and Wroclaw University family medicine specialist Donata Kurpas recently told Science News. “Quantitative EEG analysis reveals more subtle changes, such as reduced slow-wave activity, which is an important marker of sleep depth and its restorative character.”

Kurpas and her colleagues learned during their examinations that even if someone falls asleep at a normal time and remains asleep for the full recommended eight hours, caffeine can still dramatically cut down on their brain’s slow-wave activity. This means that even if a person assumes they got a full night’s sleep, the actual quality may be compromised.

“Caffeine may shorten sleep or make it more difficult to fall asleep; however, even when sleep duration appears normal, it may reduce slow-wave activity and shift the EEG pattern toward a more ‘wakeful’ brain,” explained Kurpas.

What’s more, a coffee drinker may not even consciously register these disruptions. Even if they feel rested and don’t recall waking up during the night, their brain still may not have gotten the deep sleep it needed. Kurpas said this compounding issue often creates a “vicious cycle” by initiating a feedback loop—a person wakes up feeling fine, grows fatigued over the course of the day, turns to coffee, and gets another night of fitful sleeping. But even if someone stops drinking coffee by late morning, variables like body type, stress, age, and total caffeine intake can influence whether or not they get the right type of sleep later that evening.

“It is not only about coffee consumed just before bedtime. For some people, the total amount of caffeine consumed during the day and whether the body has enough time to metabolize it before nightfall may also be important,” Kurpas added.

In recent years, many researchers like Kurpas have started emphasizing the importance of restorative sleep versus its overall duration. Eight hours in bed may not amount to much if the brain isn’t allowed to properly recharge, and any amount of caffeine could affect these circumstances. This means that at the end of the (literal) day, coffee’s influence on sleep is complex and frequently varies by person. What works for one drinker may not necessarily work for another—but it’s just as important to reflect on daily habits and energy levels, no matter how someone perceives they slept.

“The subjective feeling of having slept well does not always correspond to what we observe in neurophysiological recordings,” said Kurpas.

The post Even morning coffee can mess with your sleep appeared first on Popular Science.

A homeowner determined to attack a patch of “stubborn grass” in his yard has inadvertently discovered the largest Viking Age silver trove ever seen in Denmark. Located in the nation’s northern province of Rebild, the 10th century treasure cache of about 700 objects includes jewelry, coins, silver bars, and even a miniature Thor’s hammer. The archaeological relics collectively weigh over 40 pounds—making the Viking silver collection nearly three times the weight of Denmark’s previous record holder.

Speaking with The Independent, the anonymous gardener explained the “biggest surprise of his life” happened while clearing an area in his backyard for a new terrace. After about 30 minutes of digging, the man struck a metal object with his gardening tool. He assumed the blockage was simply an old piece of wire or similar debris, but further excavation began to reveal much more valuable objects amid the dirt. A subsequent archaeological inventory by Danish authorities noted that about 320 objects weighing roughly 14 pounds were still housed inside their original clay pot. The stash includes 47 complete coins and associated fragments, but most of the cache is jewelry, solid bars, and cut pieces.

The Rebild hoard isn’t a random assortment of items, however. The silver pieces and bars can be classified into specific weight ranges, suggesting intentional groupings as a measured storage of wealth. The coins aren’t all local mints, either. Currencies range from Anglo-Saxon pennies to Arabic dirhams. Two of the former coins were struck during the reign of Edward the Elder—king of England from 899 to 924 CE—meaning the cache dates at least to the 10th century.

“This is a find of great importance for our understanding of the Viking Age in Denmark,” archaeologist Torben Sarauw at the Museums of North Jutland said in a recent profile. “Not just because of its size but also because the treasure clearly shows how silver functioned as wealth and a means of payment in the Viking Age. It’s like finding a safe from the Viking Age.”

The silver discoveries are currently being assessed at the National Museum of Denmark. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely the homeowner will see a financial windfall to help fund his terrace. Under Danish law, danefæ (valuable historical objects) automatically belong to the state.

The post Gardener finds 40 pounds of Viking silver in his backyard appeared first on Popular Science.

Elon’s 250 kW Starlink satellites will bring multi-gigabit satellite internet and 5G satellite cellphone everywhere even high density cities. 250 kilowatts per satellite, 10 terabits per second in both directions, and a path to more than 100 terabits per second. WHY build satellites this powerful? Serving everyone and leveraging the huge solar and thermal radiators ...

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High-heeled shoes are a potent symbol of femininity.

Their design not only creates the illusion of longer legs and smaller feet. High heels change the way the wearer stands and walks, causing the back to arch, the chest and butt to stick out, and the calves to tighten into a classic pin-up girl silhouette.

But the trend has taken its toll on women. In a 2022 survey by the American Podiatric Medical Association, 71 percent of women who wear heels (approximately half of all the women surveyed) reported that high heels have caused them pain and discomfort. A 2012 Thai study found that wearing heels higher than two inches was associated with 60 percent higher odds of repetitive strain injuries.

But maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise: High heels were never meant to be worn for walking, especially not by women. For most of history, high heels were the fashion choice of men.

A symbol of masculinity

According to Elizabeth Semmelhack, director and senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada, high heels were first invented for horse riders in Western Asia. The protruding heel served as a barrier to prevent the foot from slipping too far into the stirrup.

“I have found evidence of its use as far back as 10th-century Persia, but I believe that it probably dates back farther than this,” Semmelhack explains. That’s where high heels stayed, under the purview of men on horseback, until the 1600s, when they began to enter the canon of Western fashion.

“At the turn of the 17th century, new trading and political interests in Persia spurred Northern European men to have heels added to their riding boots,” she continues. When a trend for “incorporating elements of male attire into the female wardrobe” emerged over the following decades, high heels crossed the footwear gender divide.

But the high heels worn by men and women were different. “Men’s heels were high but blocky while women’s grew increasingly tall and narrow,” says Semmelhack. 

These women’s French evening boots date from 1860 to 1869. Image: Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images Unknown

“The reasons for this had to do with how heels were being used. In women’s fashion, heels served to make women’s feet look small in keeping with a new beauty ideal. The heel lifted the foot up under the skirt leaving only the small tips of women’s shoes visible giving the illusion of small feet.” 

By the late 18th century, with the exception of the low version still found on horse-riding boots, men’s fashion had all but abandoned heels. High-heeled shoes became an exclusive feature of a woman’s wardrobe.

Challenging the tyranny of the high heel

High heels were so thoroughly a symbol of femininity and female desirability by the 20th century that the phrase “sensible shoes” (i.e., flats) was a shorthand way of identifying a dowdy, undesirable woman, says Semmelhack. 

But by the late 1940s and 1950s, a new aesthetic began to reshape women’s footwear. “Youthfulness grew in importance. Ballet flats were worn as part of the young ingénue look modeled by actors such as Audrey Hepburn.” The very short skirts and low-heeled footwear of the “youthquake” of the 1960s further entrenched their appeal. High heels appeared “too grown-up” for a look inspired by little girls.

That “see-saw between eroticized heels and youthful flats continued well into the 21st century,” says Semmelhack. But around the 1970s, something else began happening too: High heels were finding their way back into men’s fashion, most memorably the platform shoes popular on the disco scene.

Clubbers sitting on a sofa backstage at the Whisky a Go Go, a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California, circa 1975. Image: Michael Ochs Archives / Stringer / Getty Images Michael Ochs Archives

Though heels have remained a feature of some men’s shoes (think cowboy boots or motorcycle boots), they are “almost invariably” of a blocky style similar to those worn by 17th-century European men. These are “indeed high heels for men,” says Semmelhack. “We just don’t interpret them through that lens.” 

High, thin stilettos, meanwhile, remain a symbol of feminine sexuality and power, a gendered association some modern designers have challenged by incorporating them into men’s designs, such as in the 2021 collaboration between Jimmy Choo and actor/activist Billy Porter.

Recent women’s fashion trends have also challenged gender norms. Since the 2010s, sneakers—perhaps the most sensible of all footwear—have transformed the “cool of male-coded streetwear” into a universal ideal.

In The History of Every Thing, Popular Science uncovers the hidden stories and surprising origins behind everyday things.

The post High heels were once the height of men’s fashion appeared first on Popular Science.