Featuring the latest in daily science news, Verge Science is all you need to keep track of what’s going on in health, the environment, and your whole world. Through our articles, we keep a close eye on the overlap between science and technology news — so you’re more informed.
“I am hesitant to foist being public on SpaceX, especially given the long term nature of our mission.”
It’s the Clear Drop Soft Plastic Compactor, and it’s not exactly adorable. But it’s fun to feed unrecyclable plastic into the machine and have it spit out bricks! Justine and I teamed up for a hybrid report and review of the somewhat flawed creation. You can even see and hear what happens to the bricks.
Reserves can offset short-term disruptions to the global market. Beyond that, higher prices could encourage American companies to ramp up production in coming months.
Trump campaigned on a promise to “drill,” promoting “American energy dominance.” Asked if he’s worried about oil prices ahead of US strikes on Iran, Trump responded, “I’m not concerned … I’m concerned about long term health for this country.”
A review of the Clear Drop Soft Plastic Compactor — and what happens afterward.
In 2022, Cortical Labs demonstrated a culture of lab-grown human brain cells playing Pong. Now the company claims it has trained its CL-1 chip, composed of 200,000 neurons, to play Doom. Data from the screen is translated into electrical stimulation, and the neurons respond with their own signals controlling Doomguy.
Technically, it’s food. (It doesn’t taste like it.)
Then you’ll be pleased to know that Beyond Meat’s protein soda now comes in four new flavors. You can now buy a 12-pack with piña colada, cherry berry, cucumber grapefruit, and strawberry lemonade, still with your choice of 10g or 20g of protein.
Fincke expressed gratitude to his crewmates and clarified that, while it was determined the best course of action was to return early for medical imaging, it was not an emergency. He said he’s “doing very well” now and going through standard post-flight recovery at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
“On Jan. 7, while aboard the International Space Station, I experienced a medical event that required immediate attention from my incredible crewmates. Thanks to their quick response and the guidance of our NASA flight surgeons, my status quickly stabilized.” - Mike Fincke
During his State of the Union speech, Trump claimed to have negotiated a “ratepayer protection pledge” to keep data centers from raising utility bills for other customers. He didn’t say which companies are involved or what commitments they’ve made.
A draft pledge obtained by Politico earlier this month describes a voluntary pact to cover the costs of new energy infrastructure.
The Supreme Court is poised to make a decision that could determine whether states and local governments attempting to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate disasters will need to fight their battles in federal rather than state courts.
The LHC will enter a four-year “intensive work period” to “transform the LHC into the [High-Luminosity] LHC,” according to The European Organization for Nuclear Research (aka CERN).
The upgraded accelerator will “increase by a factor of ten the number of particle collisions (called ‘luminosity’), vastly increasing the volume of physics data available for researchers.”
Artemis 2, slated to launch four astronauts around the Moon in just a few weeks, has been delayed due to a helium supply issue in the SLS rocket’s upper stage. The mission, originally scheduled for 2023, has now been delayed to April, at the earliest.
The team is constructing the Human Flatus Atlas, bringing modern wearable monitors to bear on digestive health, measuring the frequency and intensity of farts. The team even had to create an artificial butt that could pass gas on command while developing the prototype. According to the Wall Street Journal:
In the current study, the Human Flatus Atlas app asks participants to take a picture of everything they eat and drink. Researchers could analyze that data, seeking correlations between diet and the sensor’s main metric: the total volume of gas passed in a day.
Following a successful wet dress rehearsal on Thursday plagued only by ground communications glitches, NASA says March 6th will be the earliest launch date for the long-delayed Artemis II mission that will send four astronauts on an approximately 600,000-mile trip to circle the moon and return to Earth.
Skinfluencers swear topical salmon-sperm serums will make your skin glow. The reality is a bit less impressive.
That’s the message from NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on Thursday as the agency released a 311-page redacted report (pdf) on what went wrong during the Boeing Starliner’s first crewed flight test in 2024.
NASA and Boeing announced that “Investigators identified an interplay of combined hardware failures, qualification gaps, leadership missteps, and cultural breakdowns that created risk conditions inconsistent with NASA’s human spaceflight safety standard.”
HBO’s medical drama has been teasing out a smart story about what makes gen AI so tempting and concerning.
California regulators killed a proposal that would have imposed fees on gas-burning furnaces and water heaters that release smog-forming pollutants. More than 20,000 comments they received opposing the proposal were generated by a single AI platform, some addressed from people with no idea their names had been used.
Musk used to call the Moon ‘a distraction.’ Now he says SpaceX is building a city there.
A coalition including the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, and Sierra Club have filed suit against the Trump administration for repealing the landmark ‘endangerment finding.’ The repeal — if successful — could strip away the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to to regulate planet-heating pollution.
The NAACP sent a notice of intent to sue, accusing Musk’s company of illegally installing gas turbines in Mississippi to power its Colossus 2 data center. Thermal images taken by drone show more than a dozen turbines running at the site without a permit, according to a Floodlight investigation.
Oura is lobbying for relaxed wearables regulation. It has a point, but is regulation even the problem here?
The first Southwest Airlines plane with Starlink will enter this service this summer, and Starlink is set to be available on “more than 300 aircraft” by the end of the year, Southwest says.
Southwest joins airlines like United, WestJet, and British Airways in bringing SpaceX’s Starlink to customers.
[Southwest Newsroom]
Amazon’s Leo now has FCC approval for about 7,700 low Earth orbit satellites. So far it’s only launched about 150, well short of its FCC requirement to deploy 1,600 by July 2026 (it’s seeking an extension). SpaceX has launched over 11,000 Starlink satellites into LEO with about 9,600 still active.
According to recently released documents, the convicted sex offender had a vast network of people working to whitewash his digital presence.
“SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon,” Musk said on Sunday, just a week after merging SpaceX and xAI. It’s a notable change in plans from a little over a year ago when Musk insisted that, “we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.”
[SpaceX prioritizes lunar 'self-growing city' over Mars project, Musk says]
This Politico story is a fascinating deep dive into Oura cozying up to the government. What caught my eye is a tidbit that Oura is lobbying lawmakers for a “digital health screener” device classification process that would sidestep the more intensive FDA clearance process for medical devices.
[Politico]
The first Super Bowl ad from SpaceX apparently didn’t have enough time left in production to mention its newly-joined X / xAI elements, but it is promoting the idea of global satellite internet.
