Constellations
June 2026
Every article published in June 2026. 837 articles · Back to full archive
Psychology
Scientists spent years arguing that only a quantum computer could decode nitrogenase, the enzyme that makes most of life on Earth's nitrogen available — a classical computer at Caltech solved the key problem first
Mind & Meaning
We tend to imagine happiness as a life of rest and leisure. But after years of study, one psychologist found that our deepest satisfaction arrives somewhere else — in the middle of a demanding task, where challenge and skill are finely matched and the ordinary sense of time and self slips away
Constellations
We picture the asteroid belt as a dense field of tumbling rock, but the spaces between its objects are so vast that spacecraft can fly straight through it, with the chance of hitting anything almost nil.
Mind & Meaning
China approved the world's first commercial brain implant before Neuralink — and the key difference is that NEO's sensors rest on top of the brain's protective membrane rather than piercing the cortex itself
Ice Worlds
More than 65% of all the fresh water on Earth sits in one part of the world — and it's almost entirely beyond our reach
Mind & Meaning
Wabi-sabi: the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and simplicity
Science
If the Sun vanished this instant, we would carry on in full daylight for about eight minutes and 20 seconds before anything seemed wrong, because that is how long its light takes to reach us
Earth Observation
The most remote spot in the world is so remote that the nearest humans are often not on Earth at all
Science
Bananas sold in supermarkets are nearly all the Cavendish cultivar, genetic clones of a single plant, which is why a fungal disease called Tropical Race 4 spreading through plantations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America could gradually erase the commercial banana just as Race 1 did its predecessor.
Aerospace
Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado was hollowed out in the 1960s into a 4.5-acre complex of buildings mounted on 1,319 steel springs, each weighing about 1,000 pounds, designed so that the entire underground city could sway during a nuclear blast without snapping the wiring inside.
Science
Honey recovered from Egyptian tombs sealed more than 3,000 years ago can remain edible because honey’s low water content, acidic pH, and bee-made peroxide chemistry make it almost impossible for bacteria and fungi to grow
Human Behaviour
David Allen's Getting Things Done system became famous for one simple idea: your brain is for having ideas, not holding them, and every uncaptured task quietly taxes the mental space you need to think
Science
For the first space flight in 1961, Soviet engineers locked Gagarin's manual controls behind a code sealed in an envelope on the cabin wall, because they were not sure a human mind would function in orbit.
Mind & Meaning
Why the promotion, the house and the finish line so rarely feel as satisfying as we imagined
Psychology