Deep Space
August 2026
Every article published in August 2026. 557 articles · Back to full archive
Science
Scientists in Iceland drilled straight into 900°C magma by accident — so energy-dense was the well that resulted, it could produce nearly ten times the power of a conventional geothermal well
Science
Elephants are among the few animals shown to recognise themselves in a mirror, a test most species fail entirely — and when researchers painted a white X on one elephant’s forehead, she reached for herself, not the reflection
Psychology
When scientists disrupted dopamine in hungry rats, the animals still showed pleasure when sweet food was placed in their mouths — they just lost the drive to work for it, suggesting dopamine governs wanting more than enjoyment
Science
One set of simulations suggests Uranus may have been tipped over by at least two giant impacts rather than one: when researchers modelled a single abrupt collision acting on an existing moon-forming disk, the resulting moons orbited backward. Multiple impacts produced a prograde satellite system aligned with Uranus’s extraordinarily tilted equator—but newer models show that a single impact followed by moon formation remains possible.
Science
A single army-ant colony can move like one creature made of hundreds of thousands of bodies — up to 700,000 workers with no leader, no central plan, and no ant understanding more than the neighbours around it, yet together solving problems no individual could even perceive
Marsdaily
Mars lacks Earth’s protective global magnetic field, and a 2026 Boston University-led study revealed one consequence: solar-wind shear generates enormous plasma waves that tear clouds of atmospheric ions into space, with instantaneous fluxes 10–100 times greater than typical steady escape channels. Scientists think such events may have contributed to Mars’s transformation from a wetter, potentially habitable world into today’s frozen desert.
Solar Science
The sharpest-ever images of the Sun, published in August 2026, revealed plasma vortices as small as about 20 kilometres across—structures no previous telescope could resolve. They may help twist and transport magnetic energy through the solar atmosphere, potentially contributing to the still-unsolved mystery of why the corona is far hotter than the surface.
Science
When scientists announced Webb’s first definitive detection of Neptune’s auroras in March 2025, they revealed another surprise: observations taken in 2023 showed that the planet’s upper atmosphere had cooled by several hundred degrees since Voyager 2 visited in 1989—and scientists still don’t know exactly why.
Marsdaily
A microwave-oven-sized experiment inside NASA’s Perseverance rover made history in 2021 by extracting oxygen from Mars’s carbon-dioxide atmosphere—the first demonstration of producing a usable resource from the environment of another planet.
Science
Biologists who necropsied 75 bats found dead under wind turbines in southern Alberta counted 32 with visible injuries and 69 with blood pooled in their chests, because the pressure drop behind a passing blade bursts a bat's lungs without the blade ever touching it
Science
Surveys at the Ivanpah solar site in the Mojave predicted at most 32 desert tortoises, and crews then unearthed close to 1,000, halted construction for three months and spent 56 million dollars relocating them, with one juvenile carried off to an eagle nest, microchip still pinging
Space Travel
Physics says a spacecraft with mass can never reach the speed of light: as it accelerates closer to c, the energy required rises without limit, so light speed isn't merely difficult to reach — for massive objects, it's physically unattainable.
Outer Planets
Titan is the only place besides Earth with stable liquid on its surface, a working weather cycle and complex organic chemistry — and now, according to 2025 NASA research, a plausible mechanism for building the first membrane around a primitive cell, without liquid water involved.
Human Behaviour
A meta-analysis of nearly 47,500 adults found that mortality risk kept falling as people took more daily steps, with the association levelling off at roughly 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day among adults aged 60 and older.
Energy News