Constellations
May 2026
Every article published in May 2026. 593 articles · Back to full archive
Constellations
Enceladus is a tiny moon of Saturn that sprays water vapor and ice grains into space from an ocean hidden beneath its icy crust — meaning a spacecraft can sample material from an alien sea without ever landing.
Human Behaviour
I spent years assuming my personality was fixed — then I learned what neuroplasticity actually means and realised I had been maintaining myself like a finished product instead of a living system
Science
In 1908, something exploded in the sky over Siberia with hundreds of times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb, flattening more than 2,000 square kilometres of forest. When scientists finally reached the site years later, they found no crater at all
Human Behaviour
The modern 8-hour workday is usually traced to Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist and social reformer, who in 1817 popularized the formula: ‘eight hours’ labour, eight hours’ recreation, eight hours’ rest.’ Does this split still make sense in 2026?
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