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A team of astronomers were fortunate when their original comet target couldn't be observed with the Hubble. They quickly pivoted to a different target, and caught Comet K1 in the process of breaking apart. This gave them an excellent opportunity to learn more about the doomed object.

Tweaking our skin's microbiome via a probiotic cream could prevent frostbite and hypothermia in extreme environments

Banksy is a pseudonym for a street artist who became a famous and high-priced “establishment’ artist, all the while remaining completely unknown—until now. (Actually, the Daily Mail had correctly guessed his identity in 2008).  Banksy started drawing graffiti in Bristol, England, and then began using stencils, which were quicker to put up—making him less likely to get caught.  But he did get caught in 2000 for vandalizing a billboard in New York, and for that he had to disclose his real name. A spiffy piece of detective work published in Reuters two days ago, shows that the Mail was correct, and that Banksy is in fact a 50-53-year old white man named Robin Gunningham. He remains a multimillionaire.

His most famous work can be seen here: “Girl with Balloon,” showing a girl trying to catch the string of a heart-shaped balloon. It’s been sold in several versions, including one on paper that was deliberately shredded by a machine inside its frame while it was being auctioned off at Sotheby’s.  Here’s the event, and the video—showing the preparation—was clearly made by Banksy. It was another of his pranks, but one that was viewed (and priced as) Banksy art itself.

And the explanation (note what the shredded artwork went for!):

On 5 October 2018, a 2006 framed copy of the artwork was auctioned at Sotheby’s selling for £1,042,000 – a record high for the artist. Moments after the closing bid, the artwork began to self-destruct by means of a hidden mechanical paper shredder that Banksy had built into the frame bottom. Only the lower half shredded. Banksy released an image of the shredding on Instagram with the words “Going, going gone..”. Sotheby’s said, “We have not experienced this situation in the past where a painting spontaneously shredded”,  leading some market watchers to speculate the remains of the painting will be worth even more. Banksy released a video of the shredding and how the shredder was installed into the frame in case the picture ever went up for auction.

The woman who won the bidding at the auction decided to go through with the purchase. The partially shredded work has been given a new title, Love Is in the Bin, and was authenticated by Banksy’s authentication body Pest Control. Sotheby’s released a statement that called it “the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.” Love Is in the Bin was itself sold at Sotheby’s for £18 million in October 2021.

Note that the price shot up after the drawing was shredded! It is considered an “art intervention“!

Bansky is both political (and pro-Palestinian) as well as mischievous. And filthy rich. If you’re into art, or want to see how the mystery of his identity was solved for good, click on the Reuter’s screenshot below or see the article archived for free here. There’s also a short take at Entertainment Weekly.

It’s a long but fascinating investigation, and if you’ve been following Banksy over the years, you’ll want to read it. But I’ve taken excerpts from condensed summary from EW:

One of the art world’s biggest modern mysteries may have just been solved.

A new report claims to have once-and-for-all unmasked the elusive graffiti artist Banksy, who has been operating under complete anonymity since the early 1990s.

The investigation, published Friday by Reuters, combs through and eventually sets aside some of the buzzier theories as to the “Girl with Balloon” artist’s true identity. Is he the Massive Attack frontman Robert Del Naja? Or the street artist Thierry Guetta, also known as Mr. Brainwash, who was the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, which Banksy directed and — completely disguised, of course — also featured in?

After nearly three decades of speculation, journalists Simon Gardner, James Pearson, and Blake Morrison claim “beyond dispute” that Banksy is a man named Robin Gunningham.

. . . The final identification started with a clue from Banksy Captured, a 2019 memoir from Steve Lazarides, who managed the artist from the late 1990s through 2008. The year that book was published, Lazarides posted a photo from 2000 of an “aborted Banksy work” to his Instagram — a defaced Marc Jacobs billboard in New York City that was left incomplete after authorities allegedly arrested the artist.

. . .Police documents and a court file relating to the arrest that Reuters unearthed repeatedly make reference to Gunningham — who signed his own name at the bottom of a written confession.

Though police sought to charge Gunningham with a felony, he was released and the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor after posting $1,500 bail, temporarily turning over his passport, and completing five days of community service.

. . .This isn’t the first time Gunningham has been suspected as the real hand behind the mysterious graffiti artist. The Daily Mail pointed the finger at Gunningham in 2008, the same year he legally changed his name to David Jones. But suspicions persisted around figures like Del Naja, Guetta, and British politician Billy Gannon.

Banksy started out as a guerrilla artist whose quickly rendered, stencil-like illustrations with an often highly political charge garnered him instant notoriety. He has made work in innocuous corners of major metropolitan cities like London and New York City, but has also become known for provocative illustrations left in conflict zones like Ukraine and the Palestinian West Bank.

And, from the Reuters exposé, here’s how he was caught and identified:

In September 2000, Banksy was shifting from painting freehand to using stencils, a method suited for repetition and speed. But when he climbed up on [Gallerist Ivy] Brown’s roof to have at the billboard, he painted freehand.

The half-finished image resembled a billboard Banksy saw in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws.” In his 2023 “Cut & Run” exhibition in Glasgow, the artist said the movie scene inspired him to get into graffiti. In “Jaws,” someone doctored a tourism billboard depicting a woman on an inflatable raft in the sea. The vandal added a shark fin and gave the woman bulging eyes and a speech bubble: “HELP!!! SHARK.”  [JAC: The Reuters site has a photo of the doctored billboard.]

In a painting spree, Lazarides wrote, Banksy “doctored the Marc Jacobs Men billboard so that the model had goofy teeth” and drew a “giant speech bubble” that was strangely empty.

That’s because New York police caught Banksy before he could finish.

. . . . . at 4:20 a.m. on September 18, 2000, authorities found a man defacing a billboard on the roof of 675 Hudson Street. Because damages exceeded $1,500, police sought to charge him with a felony. Among the documents is the man’s handwritten confession.

Within hours of his arrest, documents show, the man was assigned a public defender. That afternoon, he was released after agreeing to temporarily turn over his passport.

The court file shows he would later post $1,500 bail in exchange for his passport. The felony charges were reduced to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. He paid a fine and fees totaling $310, and by early 2001, he completed his sentence of five days of community service, the records show. On the bail form, he gave his address as 160 E. 25th Street in New York, the location of one of Manhattan’s most eccentric hotels.

. . . When Banksy was busted in 2000, he wasn’t on the New York Police Department’s radar, said Steve Mona, the now-retired lieutenant who ran the 75-member vandal squad back then. The police had no idea they had nabbed “Banksy” because the artist had only recently begun employing the style and pseudonym that would make him famous.

Given Banksy’s celebrity, the name of the culprit now takes on significance. It wasn’t Del Naja who defaced the billboard atop 675 Hudson Street. The man who confessed was Robin Gunningham.

In addition to his signature, Gunningham is repeatedly named in court and police documents related to the arrest.

The Reuters piece photos of his signed confession, with “Robin Gunningham” appearing at the bottom, barely legible. The rest of the excerpts are from Reuters:

The Mail on Sunday had been right in 2008 in making the case that Gunningham was Banksy. In hindsight, Gunningham’s effort to hide his identity began falling apart with his September 2000 arrest in New York. Records of the bust existed and they contained his real name. The books by former manager Lazarides wouldn’t be published until 2019. But the photos and the details Lazarides included about the arrest enabled us to pinpoint where Banksy was apprehended and the ad he defaced.

There’s one more bit of evidence that is telling.  In 2022, Bansky did seven famous murals in Ukraine (you can see them here) but there was no record that a “Robin Gunningham” ever entered Ukraine (remember, he had a passport).  Reuters reveals that Bansky had since adopted the name of “David Jones.”  This was verified by several documents, but Reuters isn’t making them public  out of the desire to preserve some of Gunningham’s information, including his address. (The documents are, however, apparently available publicly.)

At any rate, Bansky did enter Ukraine at the same time as his painting partner, Robert Del Naja, and the crucial evidence was found:

On October 28, 2022, the day Duley and Del Naja entered Ukraine, a “David Jones” also crossed the border at the same location, according to a source familiar with immigration procedures. The source also told us the date of birth listed on Jones’ passport. It was the same as Robin Gunningham’s birthday.

According to the source, records also indicate Jones left Ukraine on November 2, 2022, the same day Del Naja departed.

I don’t know what will happen now: will Gunningham still use the name “Bansky,” turn out art under his birth name, Robin Gunningham, or use his changed name, David Jones? My guess is that whatever name he uses, he’ll still make art, and perhaps mysteriously, but now that he’s known, perhaps the work won’t be worth as much as it was when Banksy was a ghost.

Here’s an Instagram Post purporting to show two photos of Gunningham. You can see more at this Google Search page.

This is a tiny ray of light in what has been a gloomy year for science-based federal health policy. Recently U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Boston ruled that the actions of RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary to fire the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) did not follow procedure and is therefore not valid. Further, he concluded that the new ACIP, packed with anti-vaxxers, made capricious and arbitrary decisions that did not follow established science-based procedure. His ruling is a preliminary injunction that has delayed meetings of the ACIP and stays the revised vaccine schedule. The ruling is in a case brought by a coalition of medical professional societies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. They are celebrating the ruling as “a momentous step toward restoring science-based vaccine policymaking.”

There are a few layers to this story. The first is RFK Jr. himself and what he has been doing as HHS secretary. I have not written much about him here, because posts about him and other Trump health appointees have dominated the SBM blog over the last year. This has been an “extinction level event” for rational federal health policy, and we have documented it and analyzed it every step of the way. David Gorski has done a great job specifically documenting what RFK Jr. has done to vaccines in the US in his series – “RFK Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines”, in which he just published part 8. He did a great job not only documenting all of RFK Jr’s harmful actions but actually predicting them. Essentially, RFK is systematically using every lever at his disposal to dismantle the vaccine infrastructure in the US to reduce vaccines as much as possible. Given his actions he clearly straight-up lied to the confirmation committee when he said he was not anti-vaccine and would not take away American’s vaccines.

We, of course, recognized exactly what RFK Jr was doing during the hearings, because we have been following his nonsense for 30 years. He said, for example, “If we want uptake of vaccines, we need a trustworthy government,” Kennedy said. “That’s what I want to restore to the American people and the vaccine program. I want people to know that if the government says something, it’s true.” He then promised “gold standard science”. I would argue he has done the exact opposite. But what this statement is is classic denialism. Just claim you want to review the science, that everything is open to examination, and you just want the highest standards of science. These principles are great, but they can be used as a weapon, not just a tool. You can deny well-established scientific conclusions by arbitrarily claiming we need yet higher standards. Also, claiming you want to “restore” faith in the vaccine program assumes there is currently a lack of faith, which is rich coming from the person who has done the most to undermine that faith with pseudoscience and false claims. That is another denialist strategy – make a well-established science seem controversial, then argue that because it’s controversial we need to reexamine it and call it into question.

This point requires further discussion. It may seem ironic that at SBM we are constantly calling for higher standards of medical science, but now we are complaining about calling for higher standards of science. But again, this gets to using such calls as a weapon vs a tool. No conclusion in medical science is bullet-proof. All science is simply inference to the best current conclusion based on existing evidence. Medical science, because we are dealing with variable biological units (and not things like electrons), is especially complex. We are always making decisions with imperfect information, making our best extrapolation from what is known, and ultimately making a risk vs benefit decision. This requires constant review of the evidence by recognized experts to help establish and maintain a standard of care. But you can attack any medical practice as lacking sufficient evidence, if that is your agenda. This is why expert reviews need to be as free from bias as possible, and as transparent as possible. And the reviews need reviews. It’s a constant process.

The problem with what RFK Jr is doing is not that he is reviewing the science, it’s that he is putting a massive anti-scientific, conspiracy-addled, and biased thumb on the scale. He arbitrarily fired the entire ACIP, then packed it with known anti-vaxxers. Packing a review panel is one way to get the outcome you want.

David lays out what RFK Jr has already done and will likely do going forward to undermine vaccines. The most recent outrage – his MAHA institute is sponsoring a MEVI conference, which stands for Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury. Gee – I wonder what they will conclude. He’s not even pretending anymore.

The other big layer to this story, however, is how effective will a court injunction be in stopping the RFK Jr anti-vaccine wrecking ball? The court is correct – we have a process for a reason, to ensure that judgements about what the evidence say are objective and transparent. Bypassing that process and arbitrarily replacing it with one that is blatantly agenda-driven is not a valid process. But this gets into a tricky area – the “checks and balances” of the three equal branches of our federal government. How much oversight and veto power does and should the judicial branch have against overreach by the executive branch? Legal scholars can debate this – again I just hope we have an objective and transparent process to make such decisions.

But executives can put their fat thumb on the scale of this process too – by packing the federal courts with ideologues that will follow their wishes rather than following the law. They can also do it by judge-shopping, keep raising cases until you get a friendly judge. Our rights and freedoms should not so heavily depend on “federal judge roulette”. It should also not depend so much on the randomness of which executive gets to appoint the most Supreme Court judges. If the system gets too biased in one direction, then the public starts to lose confidence in the objectivity of the court, and the overall problem deepens. We seem to be digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole of affective polarization, lack of faith in the system, and justifying extremism.

What saves us from bias, arbitrary decisions, extremism, and corruption are institutions that have a process to maximize transparency, average out and minimize bias and conflicts of interest, and elevate genuine expertise. This is partly built on codified procedure, but also on democratic and professional culture and standards. RFK Jr is a blatant example of what happens when you ignore that culture of professionalism and let lose an ideologue to “go wild”.

 

The post Federal Judge Partly Blocks RFK Jr’s Anti-Vaccine Wrecking Ball first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

In 1959, the Luna 2 probe from the Soviet Union became the very first human-made object to reach our closest celestial neighbor. In the decades since, we have been leaving footprints - both literally and figuratively - all over the Moon. Today, there are over 100 metric tons of human-made material resting on the Moon’s surface - everything from advanced cameras and sensors to literal human waste. But that’s nothing compared to what’s to come. NASA predicts the next decade will see over 100 new lunar missions, equaling or exceeding all the missions previously flown. Which brings up a pressing question about all the stuff that’s already there - how do we protect that history? A new paper by Teasel Muir-Harmony, the Curator of the Space History Department of the Smithsonian and Todd Mosher, a Scholar in Residence at University of Colorado, Boulder, reports on a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Summit on Outer Space Heritage that dives into the legal, scientific, and engineering hurdles of preserving these historic sites.

It was an amazing sight witnessed by many during the April 2024 total solar eclipse. For a few precious moments, it seemed like a celestial dimmer switch was thrown, as the Moon eclipsed the Sun. It was one of the very few times you could actually see prominences and the pearly white corona of the Sun in person, without the aid of special equipment. Now, a recent study out of the University of Hawai’i has linked high resolution images taken during totality with observations from missions orbiting the Sun, in an effort to chronicle the evolution of space weather.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) probe is on its (very long) way to Jupiter, and will finally arrive at the King of Planets in 2031. Its primary mission is to focus on the “big three” icy moons - Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. But while JUICE is busy mapping Ganymede’s magnetic field, it will also be keeping a sharp eye on the other 94 moons in the Jupiter system. A recent paper published in Space Science Reviews by Tilmann Denk of DLR, Germany’s space research association, and his co-authors showcases just how much “bonus science” JUICE is expected to squeeze out of these other targets.

A new subatomic particle known as the Ξcc⁺ has been discovered at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. This heavy proton-like particle contains two charm quarks and was detected using the upgraded LHCb experiment. Scientists observed it through its decay into lighter particles in high-energy collisions. The finding confirms predictions and settles a decades-long question about its existence.

Gerd Faltings shocked mathematicians around the world for his 1983 proof of the Mordell conjecture, which brought together seemingly disparate mathematical fields

When you fold a flexible material such as a pancake or a tortilla, its behaviour depends on a competition between gravity and elasticity

We are constantly told to watch out for the health risks of eating ultra-processed food, but should you be worried every time you sit down for a meal? Sam Wong takes a look at the evidence

Lower starting doses with cautious titration reduce toxicity without sacrificing effectiveness

The post ‘Start low, go slow’: The smart, safe approach to drug dosage in the elderly first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Neuroscience terms are everywhere. If you log into social media, you’re likely to be bombarded with advice on how to “increase neuroplasticity.” You might be told to “stop chasing the dopamine” or given instructions on how to “regulate your nervous system.” Meditation works because it “rewires your brain.”

Self-help gurus and productivity coaches love these terms. They signal depth. They suggest that beneath the surface of our messy behavior there are precise mechanisms that have been identified that can give us the answer to our problems, whatever those problems may be.

The trouble is, despite their suggestion of a mechanism, most of these terms are used in a way that offers no explanatory value. When a wellness blog tells you going for a walk will “regulate your nervous system” they’re just saying a walk may reduce stress. Whether it actually does reduce stress doesn’t hinge on whether we can describe it in neural terms. Similarly, when an influencer says meditation “changes the brain” this doesn’t tell you anything new. Anything from practicing a motor skill to remembering this sentence changes your brain. The question is whether it changes it in a way that’s helpful. For that, the neuroscience doesn’t provide an answer.

Neuroscience terms used in these ways are decorative—a way to jazz up tired old advice and make it seem fresh and new again. By decorative neuroscience, I mean the use of irrelevant or oversimplified brain-based concepts to rhetorically bolster some claim, explanation, or intervention.

Neuroscience terms used in these ways are decorative—a way to jazz up tired old advice and make it seem fresh and new again.

Why do we continue to see so much decorative neuroscience? A study published in 2008  found that laypeople rate explanations that contain irrelevant neuroscience as better than those that lack neuroscience. This has been termed “the seductive allure of neuroscience explanations.” People without neuroscience training interpret the presence of brain-based explanations as meaning we have a much firmer grasp on a concept than we do. When influencers throw in neuroscience terms, it ends up being interpreted as more authoritative.

Many of the uses of decorative neuroscience are innocuous enough. Influencers have discovered a new rhetorical trick to ply their trades, but much of what they’re saying is the same old thing. What's more worrying is the way decorative neuroscience has started to influence public discourse.

Dopamine talk has become ubiquitous. California psychiatrist Dr. Cameron Sepah recommends “dopamine fasting,” which involves taking a break from things like smartphones and social media. Individuals following his protocol talk about being “addicted to dopamine.” From a neuroscience perspective, these terms make little sense. You can’t take a “fast” from dopamine; it’s a naturally occurring molecule in your brain and critical for movement and motivation. While addictive substances alter dopamine signaling, you can’t be addicted to dopamine itself.

Instead, the term dopamine in “dopamine fasting” is decorative, something Dr. Sepah himself admits: “Dopamine is just a mechanism that explains how addictions can become reinforced, and makes for a catchy title. The title’s not to be taken literally.” 

But when the catchy title is taken away, we see the dopamine fast for what it is: advice to take a break from technology to reconnect with ourselves and others. This may be good advice, but it certainly isn’t a new idea, and it has little to do with neuroscience.

More significantly, the term dopamine has become a catch-all for sinful pleasurable activities. The bestselling book Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke claims anything pleasurable, even reading a book, is potentially addictive because it releases dopamine.

Positing a neural mechanism is no substitute for direct evidence that an intervention actually changes behavior, experience, or well-being.

While it’s true that pleasurable activities stimulate dopamine release, superficial similarities don’t mean two things are the same. The reward system of the brain responds to everything from love to video games to chocolate to methamphetamine. The involvement of the same brain regions doesn’t mean they have the same impact on us. Both addictive drugs and video games stimulate the release of dopamine, addictive drugs stimulate much more.

But again, the neuroscience is largely irrelevant—we should just look at the behaviors associated with these activities. The majority of methamphetamine users develop a use disorder, resulting in severe health and behavioral problems. Despite how widespread technology use is, technology use disorder is rare; it’s estimated around 3 percent of video game players develop any kind of behavioral problem associated with gaming (like neglecting schoolwork to the point of harming grades), and most of those problems are mild. 

Part of the trouble here is pushing our understanding of neural mechanisms beyond their scope and assuming they provide a more solid basis for understanding than simple psychology. But often, the psychological level is much closer to the level of explanation we need than neuroscience. Take the classic misunderstanding of the brain hemispheres: the idea that the left hemisphere is analytical while the right hemisphere is creative. This isn’t just bad neuroscience, it’s bad psychology to boot. 

First the neuroscience: it’s true there are hemispheric differences. Some functions occur more in the right or left hemisphere, something neuroscientists refer to as lateralization. Language production is a classic example—for most people, language production mostly happens in the left-hemisphere. While you can find some functional differences between the hemispheres, nearly every complex activity involves both sides. Even for analytical tasks like solving math problems, there’s substantial involvement from both hemispheres. For example, the left-brain right-brain personality theory claims that some people (the logical type) are “left-brained” and others (the creative type) are “right-brained.” This, too, doesn’t hold—people don't predominantly “use” one hemisphere over the other.

A bad psychological model can’t be bolstered by bad neuroscience. You don’t need a neuroscience mechanism to explain something that doesn’t exist.

But again, the neuroscience here is largely irrelevant. We should instead look at psychology. Is it true that people are either logical or creative? Without looking at the brain, we can determine that no, it isn’t. Far from there being two categories of people (left-brained and right-brained), people fall in different parts of the distribution for each. Classic measures of intuitive versus analytical thinking styles have found they’re largely independent. If anything, there may be a positive association between analytical thinking ability and creativity, as scoring higher on an IQ test makes one more likely to score high on a test of creativity. A bad psychological model can’t be bolstered by bad neuroscience. You don’t need a neuroscience mechanism to explain something that doesn’t exist.

If you have a theory of personality types, how to study better, be more productive, or strengthen self-control, that’s great. It should be put to the test to see if it works. What’s important is whether there’s actually an effect. Does reading books often lead to addiction? Are people either analytical or creative? Does going for walks lower stress? These are straightforward questions about behavior. Pointing to possible neural mechanisms doesn’t help—the brain is complex and has many mechanisms. You can come up with all sorts of post hoc possible neural mechanisms to explain theoretical relationships between an activity and an outcome.

Looking to neuroscience for wellness or productivity advice is like looking to cell biology for dietary advice.

It would be nice if we have some specific, clear mechanism like right brain versus left brain to explain the difference between people, but neuroscience rarely can offer something like this. Neuroscience is messy. Looking to neuroscience for wellness or productivity advice is like looking to cell biology for dietary advice. It might provide constraints and guidance for nutrition research, but what you really want is to have people eat stuff to see what happens.

Moving from behavior to neurons might feel like it’s digging down a level, getting rid of the messy complexities of psychology and leaving something more precise and scientific. But our understanding of the brain isn’t clearer or more complete than our understanding of behavior. Neuroscience is full of uncertainty, indirect measures, and interpretive gaps. More importantly, it operates one level down from the level of explanation we generally care about in our everyday lives: observable behavior and experience.

The human brain is a wonderfully complex organ. It’s arguably the most complex thing we’ve discovered in the universe. Neuroscience is a young science with a gargantuan task, made all the harder by the ethics of studying the living brain and the modesty of our tools for probing it. It has enriched our understanding of behavior, perception, and ourselves as biological beings. It’s helped clarify neurological and psychiatric pathologies, and offers hope for a future for treating them. Neuroscience can illuminate constraints and underlying processes, and work alongside psychological research to triangulate how cognition works in different domains. But positing a neural mechanism is no substitute for direct evidence that an intervention actually changes behavior, experience, or well-being.

A strange lack of stellar orbits around the core of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) mystified astronomers for decades. Not only that, but the SMC has a strange, irregular shape, and sports a tidal. Now, a team of observers led by graduate student Himansch Rathore at the University of Arizona, has tracked down the reason why the stars don't orbit. It's because the SMC crashed directly through its neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), in the distant past. That huge collision disrupted stellar motions and [sent them on wildly different trajectories](https://www.universetoday.com/articles/something-is-tearing-the-small-magellanic-cloud-apart). It also disturbed the clouds of gas within the SMC and created a tail of gas stretching out across space.

A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our Solar System – one that stores large amounts of sulphur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The magma ocean has lasted 5 billion years so far, while Earth's magma ocean likely lasted only tens of millions of years.

With the first images from the spacecraft now in hand, the team behind NASA’s Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) is ready to begin charting the energetic lives of the galaxy’s most common stars to help answer one of humanity’s most profound questions: Which distant worlds beyond our solar system might be habitable?

The Perseverance rover has found tiny crystals that seem to be rubies or sapphires inside pebbles on Mars, where they have never been seen before

The neurodegenerative condition chronic traumatic encephalopathy appears to be driven by damage to the blood-brain barrier due to repetitive head injuries, like those that occur in boxing. This suggests that drugs that strengthen this barrier could prevent or slow the condition

Tar made from birch tree bark is commonly found at Neanderthal sites, and experiments show that it kills some bacteria that cause skin infections

It is scarily fascinating to read about the US military's journey into AI warfare in this deeply-researched book. But what happens next, asks Matthew Sparkes