Culture
One of the oldest known written 'recipes' in the world is a nearly 4,000-year-old…
Around 1800 BCE, the Hymn to Ninkasi was written down in cuneiform. It was addressed to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer.
Science & Engineering
Every drawing of a yellow Sun is technically wrong
Ask almost anyone to draw the Sun and the yellow crayon comes out. It is one of the most consistent images in human culture, and it is also wrong.
Science & Engineering
For billions of years, Earth’s magnetic field may have been doing something…
For most of the space age, Earth's magnetic field has been described as a shield.
Science & Engineering
Voyager 1 will reach a new milestone in November 2026
In November 2026, Voyager 1 will cross a boundary that is not marked by dust, plasma, gravity or any visible edge.
Science & Engineering
More than 8,000 people applied to become NASA astronauts in 2024, and just 10 were…
The odds were never the most interesting part, though they were sharp enough to make the point.
Science & Engineering
Asteroid 16 Psyche, a metal-rich world roughly 225 kilometres wide orbiting between…
The number attached to asteroid 16 Psyche is so large that it almost stops being a number.
Science & Engineering
In April 2026, four Artemis II astronauts flew 406,771 kilometres from Earth
Artemis II broke a human spaceflight record in a way that looks almost modest until the geometry is understood.
Science & Engineering
In 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the…
On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin lifted off, circled the Earth once, and came home a legend.
Science & Engineering
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, due to launch in August 2026, is expected…
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now listed by NASA for launch on August 30, 2026, a little earlier than the September 2026 timing that has appeared in some recent coverage.
Science & Engineering
We tend to think of Jupiter as permanently giant, but a 2025 study found it used to…
Jupiter was roughly twice its current size, and by some estimates as much as two and a half times, around 3.8 million years after the solar system's first solid material formed.
Science & Engineering
For 21 years, Voyager 1’s primary roll thrusters were considered dead
For most spacecraft, a failed thruster is an engineering problem. For Voyager 1, it is a problem stretched across interstellar space, handled by commands that take more than 23 hours to arrive and another 23 hours to report back.
Science & Engineering
The Sturtian glaciation, the longest Snowball Earth event, lasted about 57 million…
The Sturtian glaciation is difficult to hold in the mind because its scale is so out of proportion to human history.
Science & Engineering
Scientists initially weighed the planet GJ 3378b at 5.3 Earth masses, a number that…
When astronomers first weighed the planet GJ 3378 b, they got a figure of about 5.3 times the mass of Earth.
Science & Engineering
A Jupiter-sized planet outlived its dying star, and NASA’s Webb has now read its…
The gas giant WD 1856 b should have been swallowed when its star ballooned into a red giant. Webb found methane, haze, and a faint leftover heat in its air, and that heat became the clue to how the planet survived.
Science & Engineering
A single ten-month run added 161 gravitational-wave detections and pushed the total…
The LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA network released its fifth catalog on May 26, and the tally of collisions detected since 2015 now stands at 390. Most are black holes finding each other in the dark. A few are stranger than that.
Science & Engineering
On 13 April 2029, a 375-metre asteroid called Apophis will sweep past Earth closer…
On 13 April 2029, an asteroid the size of a large skyscraper, roughly 375 metres across and named Apophis, will sweep past Earth closer than many telecommunications satellites orbit.