Tech Space
May 2026
Every article published in May 2026. 666 articles · Back to full archive
Mind & Meaning
Reaching your 60s without close friends can have many explanations
Science
If you removed all the empty space from the atoms in every human being on Earth, the entire species would fit inside a sugar cube — and it would still weigh what 8 billion people weigh
Space Industry
There is a company in Osaka called Kongō Gumi that has been in continuous operation since the year 578, which means it was founded before Islam existed, before England was a country, and before the rise of nearly every institution on Earth that still has a name
Human Behaviour
There is a moment near death, documented in EEG recordings of dying patients, when the brain produces a coordinated burst of gamma wave activity more intense than anything measured in waking life — and no one knows what it is, what it's for, or what the person experiencing it perceives
Constellations
The ISS travels at 17,500 miles per hour, which means astronauts inside it are aging measurably slower than people on the ground, and by the time Scott Kelly returned from his year in orbit he was 5 milliseconds younger than his identical twin brother Mark.
Science
Your body replaces roughly 330 billion cells every day, which means the person reading this sentence is not made of the same matter as the person who started reading it — and the version of you from seven years ago is, in a literal physical sense, gone
Constellations
The Apollo astronauts left behind retroreflectors on the lunar surface that scientists still bounce lasers off today, and the round-trip time has been measured precisely enough to prove the Moon is drifting away from Earth at 3.8 centimeters per year, about the rate your fingernails grow.
Constellations
Neutron stars are so dense that a sugar-cube-sized piece would weigh as much as Mount Everest — and they spin so fast that some complete a rotation 700 times per second
Science
The gold in your ring formed before Earth existed — and the atoms in that small band are older than every ocean, every continent, and every form of life that has ever lived on this planet.
Constellations
There are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on every beach on Earth, and the visible cosmos is the small part — most of it is moving away faster than light can travel
Constellations
The most crucial atoms inside your body — the calcium in your bones, the iodine in your thyroid, the zinc in your blood — weren't just made by a single dying star, and their true cosmic history is far more complex
Constellations
If you compressed the entire history of the universe into a single year, all of recorded history would fit in the final 14 seconds — and a single human lifetime would last only 0.2 seconds
Constellations
When astronauts come home from months in orbit, recovery teams often put them in chairs before they walk, because sudden head movements can still make them feel like the ground is moving under them
Human Behaviour
Most Woman of the Year awards are handed over at a gala dinner. Sweden's 2026 winner accepted hers over a live video link from the International Space Station.
Human Behaviour