Planetary defense scientists detected an asteroid crashing into Earth off the coast of Australia this week, and only had a 6-hour warning that it would impact. On Sunday, September 6, 2026, self-tracking telescopes at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona, USA, captured a faint object crossing the sky. The object turned out to be an … Read more
As the world warms, many of its driest regions are expected to become even drier. When this happens, the boundaries of arid regions are expected to creep forward, transforming landscapes and wiping out plant life that can no longer cope. Amid the changes, projections suggest that Earth’s drylands could grow to cover more than 40 … Read more
LLMs remain a divisive topic these days. Maybe we all know someone who has fallen too much in love with their new robotic friend, or who thinks it has turned them into a genius. [Emily M. Bender] and [Nanna Inie] I’ve written about how people anthropomorphize the LLMs they interact with and have suggested some … Read more
NASA’s experimental supersonic plane recently completed its 25th flight, racking up significant miles in the air before its noise levels are put to the test. The X-59 took off from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on August 21 for the latest in a series of successful tests. The plane flew for a … Read more
Nā ‘Uhane Māhoe Huki Pū i ke Ola is the Hawaiian name given to this image of NGC 7253, a pair of spiral galaxies mutually trapped in gravity. This image was captured by the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea. (Image credit: Gemini International Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA) It is almost impossible to understand the entirety of a single … Read more
The moon could have formed within hours after the gigantic impact between Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet early in the solar system’s history. The theory arises from new simulations that take into account how the internal temperature of young protoplanets influenced their geological properties and, therefore, the collisions they suffered. This giant impact scenario has … Read more
The cd command, short for “change directory,” is one of the most fundamental commands on Linux. It’s how you navigate the Linux terminal — moving between different working directories. That said, cd is an old-school way to navigate the Linux file system, and several modern alternatives have emerged that make the process faster and easier. … Read more
Melbourne’s largest wastewater treatment plant is also one of the best places for bird watching in Australia. About 300 species appear there, and some of them fly in from Siberia. In the 1880s Melbourne had a problem it could no longer ignore. Open sewers emptied into the Yarra River and Hobsons Bay, and cholera and … Read more
Quantum computers are supposed to have capabilities far beyond conventional ones, but verifying that they actually have them is surprisingly difficult, because verifying their results can require calculations that become prohibitively difficult for classical machines. This is the problem of quantum verification, and a new experiment has found an ingenious solution: a game that tests … Read more
A B-52G on a Strategic Air Command air warning mission was refueling over the Atlantic when the tanker crew told its commander that it had a fuel leak on its right wing. The tanker drove away. The bomber carried two Mk 39 Mod 2 thermonuclear weapons and fell near Seymour Johnson Air Force Base at … Read more