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Science
Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe and our place in it.
India landed its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft near the Moon’s south pole in August 2023 on a mission that cost around 75 million dollars, reportedly less than the production budget of several big-budget Hollywood space movies, making it one of the cheapest journeys ever completed to another world
A jar of honey sealed inside an Egyptian tomb around 1000 BCE was opened by archaeologists in the 20th century and found still edible, preserved by its own low water content, natural hydrogen peroxide, and a pH acidic enough that no known bacterium can grow in it
NASA timed Voyager 2’s 1977 launch to catch an alignment of the four outer planets that only lines up once every 176 years, letting a single spacecraft slingshot past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune on borrowed gravity — a shortcut through the solar system that will not repeat until the 2150s
Neptune sits more than a billion kilometres farther from the Sun, yet parts of Uranus’s atmosphere fall to minus 224 degrees Celsius and become colder — a reversal scientists associate with the strange planet releasing remarkably little heat from its own interior
More than 45,000 meteorites have been collected from Antarctica, not because more fall there, but because flowing ice carries dark rocks into blue-ice stranding zones while the wind strips away snow, concentrating pieces of the Moon, Mars and asteroids on one enormous white surface
Ötzi the Iceman has been frozen for 5,300 years and kept in a chilled room at minus six for the last thirty. Scientists just checked him over properly and found things living on him — some of which appear to have been there the whole time
Scientists have found a cell that fights infection by detonating. It bursts, kills everything within reach, and five minutes later there is nothing left to show it was ever there
The Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977, crossed into interstellar space in 2012 — but it will still take many thousands of years to exit the Oort Cloud, meaning it has technically left the solar system and is nowhere near leaving the solar system at the same time
NASA engineers working to extend the Voyager missions cannot physically touch the spacecraft, cannot send a replacement part, and must wait nearly 24 hours for every command to arrive — and another 24 hours for the reply — yet they just bought Voyager 2 at least a year of extra life
Two habitable-zone planets now sit within 11 light-years of Earth: Proxima Centauri b at 4.24 light-years, confirmed years ago, and GJ 887 d at 10.7 light-years, confirmed only in 2026 — both orbiting red dwarfs, and both raising more questions than they answer
