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An asteroid as large as five cruise ships is barreling towards Earth at 5.6 miles per second. Civilization thankfully isn’t in any imminent danger, but the cosmic debris will still come close enough to possibly spot using only a pair of strong binoculars.

The asteroid (152637) 1997 NC1 will pass closest on June 27 at around 7:15 a.m. EDT. It , when it will only be about 1.59 million miles away—over six times the distance between Earth and the moon. Discovered nearly two decades ago, (152637) 1997 NC1 likely measures somewhere between 820 and 1,800 yards-wide based on its reflective sunlight, although astronomers say it may be a bit smaller. 

Stargazers in the Northern Hemisphere will be able to see the space rock during its approach in dark enough conditions, while those living in the Southern Hemisphere can catch a glimpse as it begins departing this corner of the solar system. That said, seeing 1997 NC1 may be a bit more difficult thanks to the lunar cycle.

At its closest, the asteroid will be over six times the distance between the Earth and the moon. Credit: ESA

“A close approach to Earth by an object this size only occurs every few years, although this time the bright nearby moon might impede its observability at closest approach,” European Space Agency Planetary Defense Office information specialist Juan Luis Cano said in a statement.

Earth is no stranger to asteroid encounters, with the oldest evidence of a cosmic impact dated to around 3 billion years ago. Luckily, truly devastating events are comparatively rare from a geological standpoint. The space rock that led to the dinosaurs’ extinction slammed into the present-day Gulf of Mexico about 66 million years ago, while the last major example known as the Tunguska Event occurred in 1908. The roughly 180-foot-wide meteor’s explosion above a remote region of Russia released the energy equivalent of three to 50 megatons of TNT while leveling about 830 square miles of Siberian forest.

The post Asteroid as large as 5 cruise ships will soar past Earth this weekend appeared first on Popular Science.

This fluorescent bat did not fly into bright yellow road paint or dive into a bowl of saffron. It’s covered in pollen. 

Lesser long-nosed bats (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae) are some of the animal kingdom’s lesser-known pollinators. The medium-sized bats primarily live in arid grasslands, desert scrublands, and dry tropical forests. In North America, female lesser long-nosed bats migrate from south-central Mexico up to the southwestern United States in the spring. They follow “nectar corridors” of columnar cacti and agave plants.

From brush-tipped tongues to bodies covered in fine hair that gathers pollen, the lesser long-nosed bat is a perfectly-designed pollinator. Image: NPS.

According to the United States Department of the Interior (DOI), this particular bat ended up covered in pollen after stopping on a blooming agave plant.

“As it travels from flower to flower, the bat helps pollinate the plants that support desert ecosystems and produce crops we rely on,” the DOI writes. “And yes, agave pollination also plays a role in helping make tequila possible.”

Lesser long-nosed bats are so linked to tequila that they are commonly called the ‘tequila bat.’  They pollinate agave plants, which are then used to make tequila and mezcal. When they feed on cactus fruits and nectar, they may also help disperse cacti seeds.  

A lesser long-nosed bat sips nectar from a cactus flower (and isn’t covered in pollen). Image: Bruce Taubert/Bat Conservation Inc. via USFWS

While the lesser long-nosed bats are considered near threatened, they are a conservation success story. In 2018, it became the first bat species to be taken off of the Endangered Species Act, after 30 years of conservation efforts. 

These bats and other pollinators such as bees, butterflies, beetles, and moths are all being celebrated during National Pollinator Week (June 22–28, 2026). While critical to our entire ecosystem, habitat loss, pesticides, pathogens, and changes in land use among other impacts threaten the pollinators. According to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the number of managed honey bee colonies in the United States dropped from five million in the 1940s to roughly 2.68 million in 2023.  

To help protect the planet’s pollinators, a growing number of home gardeners and cities are planting pollinator gardens. Native plants can attract and house the pollinators needed to grow fruits, vegetables, and other plants that we need to survive. Backyards can even be transformed into bat hangouts, so that these power pollinators and insect eaters have a place to rest.  

The post Bats covered in pollen make tequila possible appeared first on Popular Science.

Around 465 active geysers are roiling across Yellowstone National Park at any given time, with new ones regularly bubbling to the surface every year. But as impressive as they are, they’re best appreciated at a distance. And there’s a new pool of boiling water to avoid, thanks to an event that began almost two years ago. 

On July 23, 2024, a hydrothermal explosion burst from Biscuit Basin’s Black Diamond Pool, sending a 400 to 600 foot plume of mud, rock, and scalding water into the air. No one was injured, but park geologists have kept the area closed to visitors ever since.

After months of relative calm, monitoring tools began picking up a low-frequency acoustic signal known as infrasound along with anomalous seismic reading in the basin on June 13, 2026A visit to the site later that day revealed an unexpected sight—a roughly 3.7-mile waterway called Firehole River wasn’t its typically clear color. Instead, the currents were tinted with opaque, light-gray sediment. On top of that, two additional runoff channels had appeared.

A review of sensor data indicated only a small rise in heat before slowly returning to ambient air temperature, which differed from quick drops seen in previous eruptions at Black Diamond Pool. This eliminated Black Diamond as a likely suspect—so what caused the odd readings?

Thankfully, a nearby livestream camera previously installed by the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory revealed the culprit. At 5:09 a.m. local time, a dark jet of water shot from the ground north of Black Diamond Pool that matched the seismic and infrasound upticks. Geologists returned to the site the following day and confirmed a large amount of hydrothermal water had flowed into Firehole River via three new sets of vents. These vents offered a route for underground water that reached boiling temperature and flashed into steam, causing the explosion that rose tens of feet into the air.

Pool of boiling water that formed a few days after the June 13, 2026, hydrothermal explosion at Biscuit Basin, Yellowstone National Park, and that is located near the middle vent group of features that formed during the explosion. Credit: Yellowstone National Park

Researchers noted only one vent was still funneling water into the river, but it was a sizable opening at 61-feet-long and upwards of five-feet-wide. The water was also around 194 degrees Fahrenheit—near the 200-degree boiling temperature at that elevation. A subsequent return visit two days later showcased an even more incredible find. In a matter of hours, the eruption vents had formed a pool of boiling, silty water measuring 21-by-17 feet. A lack of surrounding debris confirmed the natural bath formed from an underground collapse instead of a separate explosion. Further camera footage captured multiple geysers measuring 20 to30 feet high.

Given all that activity, Biscuit Basin will remain closed to visitors for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, the geologic events can still be appreciated thanks to the impressive video feeds.

The post Yellowstone geyser creates a new natural hot tub appeared first on Popular Science.

In archeology, the truth lies in the teeth. Our hearty chompers can withstand the test of time, preserving precious genetic data that can help tell the stories of long-deceased animals—and also complicate those narratives. Several teeth discovered in a South African cave system point to a potentially all-female burial site belonging to one of our more mysterious extinct human cousins. More than just fossils, the teeth indicate that these relatives may have had complex cultural practices as well as some odd genetics. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Cell.

Homo naledi is an extinct cousin of our species, Homo sapiens. First discovered in South Africa’s Rising Star Cave system between 2013 and 2015, Homo naledi lived in present-day South Africa between 225,000 and 241,000 years ago. Very little is known about their life on Earth, since scientists have not found many fossils or tools associated with Homo naledi. The limited information that we have primarily comes from their teeth. They show an unusual mixture of primitive and ape-like traits, alongside more human features.

For more than 10 years, scientists have wondered why the adult fossils discovered in the cave’s Dinaledi Chamber looked so identical. The remains showed almost none of the physical variations normally present between males and females. To figure out why, an international team investigated the proteins lurking inside of the skeletal remains. They used a minimally destructive acid etching technique to protect the teeth, while also extracting microscopic fragments from inside of them called peptides. In total, they extracted peptides from 23 teeth representing 20 different individuals. 

With the precious peptides in hand, they analyzed the tooth enamel for Amelogenin-Y. This protein is only coded by the male Y chromosome, and indicates that an individual was biologically male. 

The team did not find any of this male genetic marker inside of the tooth enamel.  To double check this puzzling result, they analyzed the amino acids to prove that the proteins were genuinely ancient and not the result of contamination.

“The lack of male markers with the group is truly fascinating,” Dr. Marc Dickinson, a study co-author and University of York analytical chemist, said in a statement. “It is incredibly exciting to gain a window not only into the biology of our ancestors, but also into how they lived.”

This potentially all-female burial site opens up new questions regarding Homo naledi’s culture and social structure. If the chamber was reserved just for females, it could imply a level of complex and symbolic burial practice that was previously believed to be unique to modern humans.

However, there could be a biological explanation for the burial as well as a cultural one. According to the team, it’s possible that the Homo naledi population was highly isolated, causing the male-specific Amelogenin-Y gene to mutate or be deleted entirely. In this case, males would have been present, but their teeth did not have the typical genetic signature seen in other male teeth.

“Unlike those found in other remains like bone fragments, proteins in tooth enamel are preserved because dental enamel—the hardest tissue in the human body—shields proteins from environmental contamination even for millions of years,” added Palesa Madupem, a study co-author and palaeoproteomicist at the University of Copenhagen. “This makes them ideal carriers of genetic information from deep time. Our study helps in the long-standing mystery of why Homo naledi lacked significant variation; it’s probably because they could have all belonged to one sex.”

These ancient females or genetically unique males are shaking up what scientists thought they knew about the dawn of human society and our extinct relatives. 

“These findings offer rare insights into a culture that has, until now, been difficult to access directly,” Dickinson said. “Advances in ancient protein analysis are opening the door to a far richer and more nuanced understanding of ancient hominins.” 

The post Burial site of all female extinct human relatives baffles scientists appeared first on Popular Science.

I’m writing this very sentence while sitting in a so-called “body doubling” session. On an open Zoom screen are the friendly, if focused, faces of fellow writers. Cameras are on, audio is muted, and I know we’re all working on similar tasks. That’s because we’ve shared our to-do list in the chat. When the hour wraps up, we’ll celebrate what we’ve accomplished and move on with our days. 

Body doubling—a focus technique where friends, colleagues, or classmates work alongside one another to stay on task or power through difficult work—is fairly new to me. But the concept has been floating around the internet for years. It took off during the pandemic as we sat at home, struggled to focus, needed a little accountability, or just wanted to see some friendly faces. It’s especially touted in the neurodivergent community, including among those with ADHD, as a way to direct attention toward a task they’re not excited about.

But body doubling isn’t a quick fix for everybody, Will Canu, a licensed psychologist and psychology professor at Appalachian State University, tells Popular Science. Canu’s research interests include attention-deficit disorders, and he was one of the founders of AsUR, Appalachian State’s intensive student support program for, primarily, first and second-year students with executive functioning challenges. The program helps students build new academic habits and self-management skills to navigate the college transition and to support long-term academic success.

Body doubling works for some, and there are plausible scientific reasons why, Canu says. But that doesn’t mean it’s a hack that solves every focus challenge, whether the individual has ADHD or not. 

“Some people with ADHD may actually do worse body doubling than by being by themselves and reducing distraction,” Canu says. “It may really be something that depends a lot on who you are.” 

What is body doubling? 

Exactly what constitutes body doubling depends on who you’re talking to. For Canu, it’s intentionally having a partner who is there to help facilitate your work. “Not necessarily actively,” he says. They’re “not giving you tips” he adds, “but being there with you and not being distracting.” 

Russell Ramsay, a clinical psychologist who specializes on adults with ADHD and co-founded the University of Pennsylvania’s Adult ADHD Treatment and Research Program, sees body doubling a bit more broadly. It could include classmates in a study group, walking buddies, personal trainers at the gym, or people trading services, such as “I’ll help you clean out your closet if you help me clean out my garage,” Ramsay tells Popular Science.

People practice body doubling in various ways, including virtually or in person. A growing industry of apps, such as Focusmate and Focus Space, along with live streamers on social media, also market themselves as a way to boost productivity with others. 

Why body doubling might work

While headlines swirl around body doubling, there aren’t any large, randomized trials to show it works. “Despite the theoretical possibility of this being something that’s beneficial, we don’t have evidence that it is, besides anecdotal evidence,” Canu says. That gap prompted him to study the question a few years ago. 

During the 2022 to 2023 academic year, Canu and fellow researchers added a few questions about body doubling to a larger survey of 1,600 students across seven college campuses. About 10 percent had ADHD. Their research found that while some with ADHD preferred to work with someone else, the boost in performance wasn’t huge and they weren’t seeking it out more than students without ADHD. 

The two groups, however, differed in why they wanted to work with others. For students with ADHD, accountability was the top reason to study with another person, the research found. Those without ADHD were more likely to say it made studying more fun, or that they simply had someone available to lean on for help if needed. 

Around 8.4 percent of children and 2.5 percent of adults experience ADHD, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Video: What is ADHD? | APA, @AmericanPsychiatricAssociation

Some theories exist around why body doubling might work for some of us. For example, Ramsay notes, body doubling draws on the fact that we’re a social species. It works by externalizing motivation, turning a private intention into a shared plan. That social commitment, plus the anticipation of meeting someone, can create a kind of dopamine “wave” that pushes people through tasks. 

“A little bit of face time and that social contract helps,” Ramsay says. 

Tips for a body doubling session

Does body doubling sound like something you want to try? Here are some tips about how to get started. 

1. Pick the right partner: Look for someone who will work during the session and not spend the hour chatting. Finding partners who do similar work, such as a classmate or co-worker, can help. If you get stuck, your partner is more likely to understand the task and normalize the struggle.

2. Create a simple structure: Start with a quick check-in where each person states a specific, actionable goal for the session. Work quietly for a defined period, then end with a quick debrief on what got done. Regularly scheduled sessions and clear time boundaries—a set block, such as an hour—can keep tasks manageable and sustainable, Ramsay says. 

3. Evaluate honestly: Don’t expect body doubling to work for you, Canu advises. Try it a few times, and then evaluate the results honestly. Did you actually focus better and get more done? Or were you more distracted, drained, or resentful?  

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Body doubling isn’t for everyone

Canu worries that people, especially those with ADHD, will see the hype around body doubling, assume it’s a proven solution to work on undesirable tasks and then either skip better-supported treatments or feel discouraged if it doesn’t work for them.

“What bothers me is that it’s described by some as being this kind of miraculous thing, and everyone with ADHD should do it,” Canu says.

If it works, great, he says. But if you’re still struggling with getting a task done, other approaches work well and even better. Canu points to evidence-supported strategies such as breaking big tasks into smaller chunks, working at your own optimal time of day, and using low or no-cost timers or apps, such as Pomodoro-style tools, that reward sustained focus.

“There are lots of other things that you can do to maximize your effectiveness,” he says. 

For me, some days a body doubling session is exactly what I need. Other days, I just need to step away from the computer and take a walk to get back on track. And that’s fine too.  

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

The post Can ‘body doubling’ really help you focus? Psychologists say maybe. appeared first on Popular Science.

In 2025, paleogeologists announced the discovery of the world’s oldest known asteroid impact. Trace evidence of the strike is still standing in northwest Australia, and the team estimated the region known as the North Pole Dome (NPD) formation dated back around 3.5 billion years ago.

However, the timeline needs to be corrected a bit after months of further analysis. But at roughly 3 billion years old, however, the asteroid strike still remains the most ancient example of a cataclysmic interstellar event on Earth. The details are laid out in a study published today in the journal Geology and hinge on miniscule trace minerals.

“The impact left a ‘mineral clock’ behind. By dating minerals that were remade or newly grown in the damaged rocks, we can now pin down when this extraordinary event happened,” Chris Kirkland, a Curtin University planetary scientist and study co-author, said in a statement.

Kirkland explained the central evidence resides in the tiny, resilient mineral called zircon. At the NPD structure, some traces exhibited unique, skeletal shapes indicating they formed under extreme conditions.

“We interpret these as impact-modified crystals, formed when older zircon was disrupted, partly recrystallised, and in places regrown during the intense heating caused by the impact,” he said. These zircon crystals point to an event about three billion years ago, which is their best estimate so far about the age of the impact.

To further solidify their theory, Kirkland and colleagues also looked at apatite. This second mineral only forms while hot fluids transfer through rocks damaged by shocks. The dates on the apatite and zircon aligned within the same 3 billion-year-old window.

“The agreement between two different mineral systems gives us confidence that we are seeing the signature of a single major event—a meteorite impact,” said Kirkland.

The evidence reinforces the NPD structure as the oldest asteroid impact ever discovered. It also remains the only asteroid impact confirmed from the Archean Era about 4–2.5 billion years agoTKTK. The rarity of such ancient events is owed to Earth’s ever-shifting geology. Although imperceptible to humans, the planet’s rocky surface and interior are constantly influenced by immense pressure, heat, and fluids. This means that particularly ancient evidence like the NPD impact almost never survives to the present-day.

“This discovery pushes Earth’s impact record deeper into geological time than any previously well-dated crater, offering a rare glimpse of the violent processes that shaped the early Earth,” said Kirkland.

Although the oldest known to researchers, the NPD structure is far from the most famous. The Chicxulub impactor struck Earth much more recently, about 66 million years ago. And while that doesn’t earn it any timeline records, it is largely responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs.

The post Earth’s oldest asteroid impact struck 3 billion years ago appeared first on Popular Science.

Global international tourism is massive with around 1.5 billion arrivals per year. This covers flights, cruises, road/rail travel, and more. Domestic tourism adds even more volume, but international arrivals give a solid benchmark for around the world leisure/business travel. Carbon Footprint of Global Tourism A comprehensive 2024 study (using 2019 data) estimates the total global ...

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DC, United States, 23rd June 2026, CyberNewswire

Humans suffer two big but under-discussed biases, which together make us overly favor people we see as prestigious and sincere. First, humanity’s superpower is cultural evolution, wherein we copy each others’ behaviors, and this wouldn’t work if we copied from random others. So it couldn’t get going without our first big clue on who to copy: prestige. Which has become so entrenched that we greatly over-emphasize prestige now even when better alternatives are now available.

Second, selection to win in forager talky collectives induced key humans errors: to think they are great at reading others’ motives, to think that motives matter more than they do in complex modern worlds, and to feel overconfident in knowing which are in fact the better motives. These induce us today to like idiot story plots, to be overly paternalist, to overly trust salespeople and prestigious professionals.

This is my best explanation of why we today don’t use more betting market estimates and incentive contracts to buy medicine, lawyers, teachers, coaches, therapists, and other professional services, especially prestigious ones. We are too easily persuaded that such folks are sincere and thus can just be trusted, especially when prestigious. Add in a strong inclination to see bettors or folks with incentive pay as greedy and insincere, but to not apply such skepticism to salary-paid professionals.

Turns out, this is actually a much bigger problem that I’d realized. Our civilization will likely fall due to cultural drift, to be replaced by a new civ that rejects much of what we hold dear about ours. This fall can be blamed on our overly trusting prestigious and sincere cultural activists, who tell us how to change key values, norms, and status markers. And on our being overly trusting of key values that tell us to block capitalism from taking over more areas of life, and making them more adaptive.

If we had been distrusting enough re our values, and re our judgments of sincerity and prestige, and thus willing to buy professional services via bets and incentives, we might now be ready to demand strong concrete evidence of adaptiveness before changing key values. For example, we might be willing to move to a new firm, or neighborhood, which seemed unusually adaptive, and adopt its local values. But we are not so ready, and do not so demand; so our civilization will fall.

Humanity will not reach the stars until we become more hard-headed and adaption-favoring in our values. I’ve previously said that underneath it all our values are actually about adaption, I’ve predicted that our distant descendants would directly and abstractly value adaption (modulo self-deception), and I now make this prediction: our descendants who overcome cultural drift will in effect value adaption far more. Plausibly directly and abstractly so, though perhaps a bit indirectly.

Note that I do not say adaption must be our only value. I instead say you can’t make any value last long unless it is part of a pretty adaptive package. So you must ensure that your descendants are pretty adaptive, if they are to preserve stuff you value. It is like being told your city is being invaded, and you have one hour to pack one suitcase. Yes it matters what you pack. But it matters even more than you pack and leave soon.

Starfall is SpaceX’s new uncrewed disk-shaped cargo return capsule (launched on its first demo flight today, June 23, 2026, aboard a Falcon 9). It is a flat, low-profile vehicle (~3.1 m diameter × 0.75 m tall) designed for rapid, high-volume return of up to ~1,000 kg of payload from orbit — especially for in-space manufacturing ...

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Today SpaceX deployed and demonstrated the Starfall low cost capsule return system. This a demo of a new vehicle that will enable affordable, routine access to the microgravity environment for scientific research and in-space manufacturing. After demonstrating controlled flight, the spacecraft will splash down in the Pacific Ocean Today’s mission includes a demo of a ...

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Practical podcast interview with Matt Pocock (AI engineering educator and creator of popular agent skills). The core message is that the model is important, but the harness (your skills/prompts/procedures + environment + workflow) matters just as much or more. XAI bought Cursor because it is a top level harness and they have the data and ...

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Cursor is training its own Opus-class model from scratch. They are no longer fine-tuned on open-source model like Kimi K2. This is a major step up in capability and independence. They are using the 10-20X compute provided by xAI and Colossus 2. In a few weeks the 1.5 trillion parameter coding model and harness. Then ...

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In yet another lesson about the great circle of life, Sandy and Luna are getting ready to leave the nest. Over the weekend, Luna began going out further on one of the tree limbs surrounding the nest. Called the “front porch,” this limb does not have any nest underneath to protect the birds, so exploring it can be a bit dangerous. Sandy also briefly stepped out on the front porch, before getting her talon stuck on a twig that appeared to put her off balance. However, Sandy did get in some good wing tests. 

While preparing to fledge, the pair are flapping their wings frequently. 

“While Shadow was playing a little hide and seek in the quiet of the Twin Pines, Luna was busy displaying a close-up demonstration of his wing’s ability on the back porch of the nest,” Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV) writes. “Sandy practiced her wingers on the front porch all while firmly gripping her talons on the branches. Luna, however, could not pass up another chance to show off his beautiful wing for the camera.”

Both eagles are right on target to fledge, and will keep venturing out further on the branches to test out winds and build their confidence.  Sandy and Luna will turn 11 weeks old this weekend and Big Bear eagle chicks generally fledge at around 13 weeks, give or take a few days. Based on past eaglets, they may return to the nest for food, sleep, or a little hang out from time to time. They also generally stay near parents Jackie and Shadow for about one month, learning how to fish and be adult eagles.

Jackie and Shadow’s 2026 babies: Everything you need to know

It’s been another roller coaster nesting season for Jackie and Shadow, a pair of internet-famous bald eagle parents living in San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California. After two of their eggs were destroyed by ravens in January, Jackie and Shadow laid two new eggs that have successfully hatched.

Chick 1 hatched on April 4 at 9:33 p.m. PDT, while Chick 2 followed on April 5 at 8:30 a.m. Their large nest in Big Bear Valley east of Los Angeles is livestreamed 24 hours a day by nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV) and has captivated millions. 

On May 1, FOBBV announced the chicks’ names: Sandy and Luna.

How long will the chicks stay in the nest? 

Chicks usually stay in the nest until 10 to 14 weeks of age.

What challenges do the eaglets face?

Before leaving the nest, the chicks face threats from other birds of prey, including hawks, ravens, other eagles, and owls. Inclement weather can also present challenges for the chicks. In 2025, a March snowstorm resulted in the death of one of Jackie and Shadow’s three chicks.

During fledging, only 70 percent of eaglets survive. One of the greatest threats is from cars that can injure or kill the birds while they scavenge for food on roadkill. 

Who are Jackie and Shadow? 

The pair first got together in 2018 and successfully raised chicks in 2019 and 2022. However, their eggs failed to hatch in 2023 and 2024. Only 50 percent of eagle eggs successfully hatch, so this pair has already beaten the odds.

What happened to Jackie and Shadow’s 2025 eaglets?

In 2025, Jackie laid three eggs that all hatched in early March. On March 13, a strong snowstorm dumped up to two feet of snow and battered the nest with strong winds. Only two of the chicks were visible on the live cam when the storm passed by the next morning. FOBBV later confirmed the passing of one of the chicks. The two surviving chicks were later named Sunny and Gizmo after 54,000 names were submitted by fans.

What happens after chicks fledge? 

Young eagles usually fledge–or leave the nest and fly–when they can flatten their wings and have feathers capable of flight. This typically occurs when the birds hit 10 to 14 weeks of age. Males also tend to take their first flight a little sooner than females. 

According to FOBBV, fledglings from Southern California have been spotted as far south as Baja California, as far north as British Columbia, and as far east as Yellowstone National Park.

About 70 percent of bald eagles survive the fledgling stage. FOBBV does not tag their eagles, so it’s not possible to follow the chicks’ journeys after they flee the nest.

Can I help Jackie and Shadow?

Yes. Environmental groups are currently fundraising $10 million to protect Jackie and Shadow’s foraging area from development. Learn more at SaveMoonCamp.org.

The post Sandy and Luna venture out of the nest before fledging appeared first on Popular Science.

People are not super-excited about the SpaceX Starfall test tomorrow. This is a hockey puck shaped space vehicle that will be released from a Falcon 9 flight that goes to orbit or near orbit. It is a heat shield capsule that will hold about 1000 kg of payload and has some cold thrusters and parachutes ...

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I liked Richard Hanania’s two prior books, but less like his new third one, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster. (“Kakistocracy” means rule by the worst, least qualified, or most unprincipled.)

I accept Hanania’s core claim, which is that, all else equal, political factions whose supporters are less elite tend to govern less well. Robustly, elites tend to be smarter, better informed, better organized, and to more follow local norms and laws. Yes, there are exceptions, and Hanania tries hard to list many of them. Even so, beware populists.

All of which I would have easily accepted based on a few pages of argument and data. Not that I would have then agreed with all his political stances. We can generate many other plausible “all else equal” political presumptions, like prefer smarter more honest more experienced candidates, and prefer bigger parties, those of your associates, and those with clearer track records. We can also identify many particular cases where elites seem to induce worse outcomes.

So what then is the point of a whole book on this one claim? Maybe Hanania wants to recruit readers to share his particular political stance. Except he doesn’t offer a party, a wing of a party, or even particular candidates, for them to support. So I guess a more plausible theory is that he wants to justify his stance, which he sees as unusual and thus vulnerable to criticism:

Right-­wing concerns about issues like DEI and the handling of Covid were completely justified. Yet I could not ignore that the Trump movement over time came to be dominated by epistemological nihilism, open bigotry, authoritarianism, and an embrace of conspiracy theories. Some of my values stayed the same, while others changed. I realized that being obsessed with race and gender issues is the other side of the coin of wokeness, and leads to a zero-­sum view of the world and policy ideas that make society as a whole worse off. I came to see my embrace of white identitarianism in my early years as a kind of mental derangement, yet it was one that had largely taken over the American right.

In which case, fine, I’ll count him has having justified his unusual political stance to the world, at least as much as most such stances are ever justified. But as much as I like Hanania, and found his other books insightful, I am just not that interested in which particular political candidates and parties I should have supported in each particular time and place. I guess I’m not that political.

More interesting to me is the key question of his Chapter 3:

Why does populism seem to have been gaining a foothold in one country after another over the past two decades?

Hanania largely rejects as explanations objective elite failure and increasing salience of immigration. He’s more sympathetic to tech change stories. He mentions Gurri’s theory that new tech let people see more elite details, which looked worse than they had expected. But he prefers the idea that tech let people explore and develop ideas that elites had blocked.

Hanania is most sympathetic to:

Revolutions and transformative political movements tend to occur in waves, driven by the contagious power of ideas and the examples of prior or contemporary upheavals.

But this just predicts correlated changes, not a recent trend toward populism per se. Re predicting that trend, I still put substantial weight on a toward-forager trend due to cultural drift.

Researchers have officially solved a shipwreck mystery that has plagued historians for nearly 30 years—the identity of a ship discovered off the southern coast of England in 1995. The ship is the ill-fated Dutch trading ship Dom van Keulen, which left Morocco for the Netherlands in the fall of 1633 with a hefty cargo that included more than 9,000 gold coins. But just before reaching home, the ship sank off the coast of England. The ship’s identity and its legacy are detailed in a new book From Morocco to the Coast of England: The Story of the Dom van Keulen and its Remarkable Cargo. 

Historian Ian Friel uncovered documents chronicling the Dom van Keulen’s final voyage in the United Kingdom’s National Archives. The crew “met with much tempestuous weather,” and the ship eventually sprang a leak. The large ship wrecked near the coastal town of Salcombe, 30 miles southwest of Plymouth.  

Luckily, all of the crew survived, and most of the cargo was likely salvaged shortly after the sinking. According to Dave Parham, a marine archeologist at Bournemouth University who helped edit the new book, the ship was loaded with 150 bags of gum arabic (a tree gum used in thickening), 64 bags of saltpeter (used in gunpowder), 320 goat skins, and 9,000 Barbary ducats and other gold Moroccan coins.

These coins and goods originated from the Barbary Coast (present-day Morocco). In the 16th and 17th centuries, Dutch merchants actively traded manufactured goods for pure West African gold from the Sa’dian Sharifs. This Arab Sharifian dynasty ruled Morocco between 1549 and 1659. Around the same time, the Netherlands had a large maritime industry and a global trading empire that spanned five continents. Dutch officials melted down the West African gold to make their own coins, which became one of the most widely accepted trade currencies in the world.

A diver above the wreck site with cannons below on the sea bed. Image: Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust (MAST).

400 of the ship’s gold coins remained embedded in the seabed until 1995, when a team from the South West Maritime Archaeology Group discovered the wreck. 

The coins themselves provide “important context for the wealth and architecture of the Sa‘dian Sharifs, the trade in African gold, and tangible evidence of the flourishing 17th-century maritime trade linking Morocco, the Low Countries, and Britain,” Parham added in a statement.

Other recovered artifacts include: a pewter bowl and spoon, a ceramic sounding weight shaped as a pilchard, stamp seal, and finger nugget. Image: British Museum.

According to the team, very little is known about theDom van Keulen’s size and appearance, and no known paintings of the ship exist. The wreck site itself is about 98 feet-long and is about 60 feet below the surface. The wreck site is still littered with cannons, anchors, and other small items of cargo. The British Museum owns several items from the wreck, including a pewter bowl and spoon, gold jewelry, a weight in the shape of a fish, a stamp seal, and pottery.

In 1995, “the discovery of African gold from under the sea off the coast of Devon was an amazing discovery that raised so many questions about how it came to be there,” added Jeremy D. Hill, the head of research at the British Museum. 

Now, we finally know the exact ship that carried the gold-laden cargo. “The story can now be told of how a Dutch ship carrying North African gold was wrecked off the English coast, making this a discovery of international importance,” said Hill. “It reminds us how much there is still to be found under our seas.”

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Post-spacetime physics refers to the idea that our familiar 4D spacetime is not fundamental but emerges from deeper structures—whether geometric (fiber bundles, higher-dimensional manifolds), quantum (entanglement, information), or vacuum effects. Eric Weinstein’s Geometric Unity (GU) proposes a 14-dimensional geometric framework (involving a metric bundle over 4D spacetime) from which the Standard Model forces, gravity, and ...

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Wine grapes from Texas will soon join worms, human sperm, and cookie dough on a growing list of Earth objects sent to space. Hundreds of grape seeds will spend about six months being exposed to cosmic radiation on the International Space Station (ISS). The seeds will then return to Earth for planting. They might even be turned into wine. If so, they’d become the first wine ever made from grape seeds that traveled through space, much like a meteorite-infused vodka. 

This experiment is part of the Texas A&M/Aegis Aerospace Multi-Use Space Platform Integrating Research and Innovative Technology (TAMU-SPIRIT) research mission. The project is designed to serve as a “satellite campus in space,” that will host several experiments. 

Texas A&M seniors Coby Arnold and Arvind Subramanyam built the carrier that will bring the seeds to the ISS as their senior capstone project, under the guidance of Texas A&M viticulture specialist Justin Scheiner. Once the seeds leave the protection of Earth’s atmosphere, the extended exposure to space radiation could induce genetic mutations. According to Scheiner, the carrier will protect the seeds from harmful radiation exposure that could damage the seeds and prevent them from sprouting.   

Once they are back on Earth, the seeds will be planted next to identical control seeds at the AgriLife Research vineyard at Thomas Ranch in central Texas. Scientists will then study differences in plant growth, vine and wine grape performance, and genetics between the seeds that went to space and the control seeds.

Three wine grape varieties were chosen to go to space based on their disease resistance and adaptations to soils and water conditions that help them thrive in Texas vineyards. One of three grape varieties is called lomanto. Horticulturist and pioneering viticulturist T.V. Munson developed the variety in 1902.  Called “the grape man of Texas,” Munson and his lomanto grape is credited with helping save the global wine industry. 

In the late 1800s, tiny aphid-like insects called phylloxera destroyed many of France’s vineyards. Lomanto is a hardy vine that is naturally resistant to several diseases and droughts, and Munson sent lomanto vines to help fortify French vineyards. Scheiner said this new mission represents a “full circle” moment for the historic vine with roots in the Lone Star State.

“The research will help us understand how different levels of radiation impact the seeds and their varietal genetic expression once we grow them, but there is also the novelty that in several years we will potentially be bottling wine from seeds that left Earth,” Scheiner said in a statement. 

Testing the seeds in such a stressful and alien environment could help scientists produce more resilient, adaptive, and productive plants. The knowledge gained from experiments like this and understanding mutations could benefit future space missions and crop production on Earth. 

Mutations have long shaped horticulture and wine production throughout for centuries. For example, pinot gris originated from just one mutation that yielded the ever popular pinot noir wine grapes. 

“From a research standpoint, we want to see how being in space might influence these varieties,” Scheiner said. “For the wine geek in me, it would be very interesting if these seeds show some random positive mutation.” Who knows maybe the next pinot noir will come from space seeds?

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