Mind & Meaning
July 2026
Every article published in July 2026. 860 articles · Back to full archive
Science
Over six days in July of 1994, 21 fragments of a comet named Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed one after another into the atmosphere of Jupiter as telescopes across the world watched — the first time in recorded history that human beings had ever directly observed a collision between two bodies in the solar system
Science
A freely swinging pendulum slowly turns the direction of its swing on its own — not because anything pushes it, but because the Earth is rotating beneath it, the effect Léon Foucault used in 1851 to let Paris watch the planet turn
Mind & Meaning
Researchers found that on days people did more small kind things for others, the usual toll of stress on their mood and mental health tended to be noticeably softened
Science
A world just 25 light-years away sits in the narrow zone where liquid water could exist on its surface — and astronomers at UC Irvine have now revised its mass down to just 2.3 times Earth’s, making it look less like a gas-shrouded mini-Neptune and more like solid ground.
Internet Space
Rocket Lab to acquire Iridium in an $8 billion deal, gaining a global satellite network and rare spectrum
Political Economy
Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic, is controlled by a Copenhagen charity that holds 77% of the voting power through special shares that have never been traded and legally can never be sold
Science
Astronomers found a third galaxy with almost no dark matter, and all three sit on the same straight line — pointing to a collision that tore ordinary matter loose
Human Behaviour
There is a language on a small Spanish island in the Canary archipelago that is made entirely of whistles, can carry a full sentence across six miles of mountain ravine, and is still taught to every child in school
Science
Scientists have detected a giant fan-shaped structure buried beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, suggesting the frozen continent may be hiding the geological scars of the breakup that helped separate Antarctica from Australia
Science
A rare meteorite found in the Sahara may be a surviving shard of a lost Moon-sized world — one that formed beside the young Sun, followed a path unlike Earth or Mars, and was smashed apart while the planets were still being built.
Science
Fossil jaws hidden inside Cretaceous rocks have revealed that 100 million years ago, some octopuses grew into giant predators — possibly longer than a bus and more fearsome than any octopus alive today.
Mind & Meaning
When Israel's first president died in 1952, the new nation offered the presidency to Albert Einstein — who turned it down, writing that he had neither the natural ability nor the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official functions
Science
In November, a spacecraft that has spent eight years falling toward the Sun will finally settle into orbit around Mercury, a planet we have seen up close fewer times than almost any other in the solar system.
Psychology
Researchers compared 5,556 people across 10 nations and found that parents tended to report a little more meaning and purpose in life — though their day-to-day happiness looked virtually the same as non-parents
Technology