Human Behaviour
May 2026
Every article published in May 2026. 667 articles · Back to full archive
Science
The human genome contains traces of ancient viruses that infected our ancestors millions of years ago — and some of those viral leftovers were later repurposed into genes that help make human pregnancy possible
Human Behaviour
Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins called early hunter-gatherer societies "the original affluent society" — not because they had more than us, but because they wanted less than they had, and worked the minimum required to meet what they wanted
Psychology
Sam Altman asked what problem people most hope AI will solve — and the answer that keeps coming up isn't cancer or climate change
Constellations
Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice less than a minute after launch, and the mission kept going only because a flight controller recognised an obscure telemetry failure pattern and told the crew to flip a switch almost nobody else in the room understood
Constellations
JPL's management contract is suddenly up for grabs for the first time since the 1930s, and NASA's own language shows why this is more than a routine procurement fight
Constellations
Australia keeps being described as a junior AUKUS partner — but the radar in its outback and the port in its northwest are quietly rewriting who controls orbital traffic
Science
A fossil site in North Dakota appears to have captured the day the dinosaur-killing asteroid struck Earth, right down to tiny glass beads from the impact lodged in the gills of fish that died within hours
Science
A slice of the static on an old untuned television was the afterglow of the Big Bang, which means millions of people spent decades staring at the oldest light in the universe without knowing it.
Constellations
Researchers simulated 30 million routes to the Moon and found a hidden detour through L1 that saves fuel and keeps spacecraft talking to Earth the whole way
Constellations
The fuel-saving lunar trajectory that looks like the long way round could solve one of crewed Moon travel’s most awkward problems — losing contact behind the far side
Constellations
The Apollo astronauts left mirrors on the Moon that scientists still bounce lasers off 57 years later, and the round-trip measurement is precise enough to track the Moon drifting away from Earth at the speed your fingernails grow
Constellations
NASA deliberately crashed Galileo into Jupiter in 2003 to protect Europa, after the spacecraft found signs of the ocean it could one day contaminate
Constellations
The Cassini spacecraft was deliberately flown into Saturn in 2017 because NASA refused to risk contaminating Enceladus, and in its final 90 seconds its thrusters fought the atmosphere so it could keep sending data home
Constellations
A Colorado startup just raised $30 million on a quiet bet that astronauts won't actually be the ones building the moon's first permanent base — robots will get there first
Mind & Meaning