Human Behaviour
July 2026
Every article published in July 2026. 860 articles · Back to full archive
Moon Daily
Seven fragments hidden inside lunar dust returned by China’s Chang’e-6 mission came from a rare, water-rich type of asteroid never before confirmed on the Moon — suggesting these fragile bodies bombarded the ancient Earth–Moon system far more often than Earth’s meteorite record implies
Cosmology
We tend to think dark energy has always pushed the universe outward at the same steady rate, but a 2025 survey of 13.1 million galaxies found it appears to have been stronger for the first nine billion years, then began weakening around 4.5 billion years ago
Solar Daily
Every second the Sun destroys a mountain of itself: it fuses hydrogen so furiously that it turns about four million tonnes of its own mass into pure energy each second — and has done so for four and a half billion years.
Science
In 1676 a Danish astronomer noticed the eclipses of Jupiter's moon Io kept arriving late as Earth pulled away, and used the delay to conclude that light does not travel instantly
Psychology
In March 1966, Neil Armstrong completed the first docking in space, then a stuck thruster sent Gemini 8 spinning once every second — fast enough to blur the astronauts’ vision and threaten unconsciousness — forcing Armstrong to shut down the main control system and save both men with the re-entry thrusters three years before he flew to the Moon
Science
Cuttlefish passed a version of the marshmallow test, waiting up to two minutes for a better meal, and the ones that held out longest also learned fastest
Saturn Daily
Even at noon Titan sits in permanent dusk: distance and thick haze together leave barely a thousandth of Earth's sunlight at the surface — about as dim as Earth ten minutes after sunset, a golden gloom that never lifts
Russian Space
In October 1976, Soyuz 23 came down in a blizzard on a half-frozen lake in Kazakhstan, where an electrical short deployed its reserve parachute and rolled the capsule onto its side with the hatch and air vent underwater; rescuers concluded the two cosmonauts were dead, but eleven hours later the men opened the capsule themselves
Space Travel
The navigation technique that brought Apollo 13 home in April 1970 — holding the spacecraft steady against the line where day meets night on Earth and timing a fourteen-second engine burn with a wristwatch — was later made mandatory training for every subsequent Apollo crew
Space Travel
In May 1969, Apollo 10 carried a lunar module called Snoopy to within 14.4 kilometres of the Moon, then fired its ascent engine until the fuel ran out and sent it into orbit around the Sun, leaving a spacecraft that had carried two human beings somewhere in interplanetary space while its crew returned safely to Earth
Culture
South Korea has won every Olympic women's team archery gold medal since the event was introduced at Seoul 1988 — 10 consecutive titles by Paris 2024, one of the longest unbroken streaks by any national programme in any sport
Science
While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were preparing to leave the Moon in July 1969, a Soviet robot called Luna 15 was descending toward another lunar sea in a final attempt to bring soil home first; it crashed after 52 orbits, ending a race that continued above the Moon even after Apollo 11 had landed
Science
A bar-tailed godwit flew 7,250 miles nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand, going more than eight days without landing, eating or drinking
Aerospace
In 2020 NASA installed a new female-friendly toilet on the International Space Station at a cost of about $23 million. The redesign was the first space toilet built specifically to work well for female as well as male astronauts, and 65 percent smaller and 40 percent lighter than the existing station toilet
Science