Science

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Disk Space

NASA Just Made Nearly 1 TB of Artemis II Data Available to the Public

The data drop includes photographs, audio, video, and astronauts’ notes that will be used to study the moon and prepare for future human missions.

Jorge Garay

Up in Smoke

A New Mexico Community Was a Place to Build a Life. Then a Hypersonic Missile Factory Showed Up

Yulia Almazova

Mirror, Mirror

Life Is Asymmetric. The Scientists Who Figured Out Why Won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Fernanda González

Health

You Probably Aren’t Going to Get the Plague

The death of a lab worker in Russia has authorities looking at whether plague played a role. Even if it did, though, the odds of it spreading are very low.

Emily Mullin

Measles Is Forcing Hospitals to Adapt to a New Normal

The US resurgence of measles is forcing hospitals and health systems to adopt new protocols and procedures to deal with a disease they thought was in the past.

Emily Mullin

Nicotine Is Mounting a Comeback in the Wellness Movement

Improving mood and increasing longevity are just some of the unfounded claims about this substance circling around the “natural” medicine corners of the internet.

Hasmeena Kathuria

Some Pancreatic Cells Are Just One Genetic Tweak Away From Treating Diabetes

By deactivating a gene, researchers were able to cause cells in the pancreatic ducts to produce insulin to regulate blood sugar.

Jorge Garay

Environment

A Startup Has a Plan to Make Water From Air Using Data Centers’ Waste Heat

Atoco’s new machines use specialized materials that can harvest water from some of the driest air on Earth without using electricity.

Brian Kahn and Molly Taft

Rural Data Centers Are in for a Big Federal Tax Break

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, data center projects in rural areas could be eligible for major tax benefits starting next year. Some hyperscalers do not seem eager to take the free cash.

Molly Taft

Plastic Is Melting Onto Corals

Scientists have found a new form of pollution, one where plastic and pieces of coral become irreversibly intertwined.

Ritsuko Kawai

Why This Weekend’s Nor’easter Is Like a Hurricane

Nor’easters are usually a winter phenomenon. But this week’s storm is arriving earlier than usual, and it could take on some characteristics more typical of tropical systems.

Dennis Mersereau

Climate

The Atlantic’s Near-Record Hurricane Drought Is About to End

Tropical Storm Isaias is set to become the basin’s first hurricane of the season, bringing life-threatening rain and storm surge to the Gulf Coast.

Brian Kahn

Digger Is a Box Office Flop. It Might Be the Most Relevant Film of the Year

Sold by its trailer as a gag reel, Tom Cruise’s strangest movie may be the most unsettling portrait of our tech and climate moment yet.

Carla Sertin

A Decade-Long Experiment Is Unlocking the Mysteries of the Ocean’s ‘Deep Reefs’

Scientists left structures up to 100 meters under the surface. Here’s what they found when they retrieved them 10 years later.

Byrd Pinkerton

The Data Center Backlash Should Also Be a Climate Reckoning. It Isn’t Yet

Climate groups are latching onto the data center opposition movement, but it remains to be seen if they can get people to care about the facilities’ impact on the atmosphere.

Molly Taft

Energy

A Startup Wants to Power Data Centers With ‘Supercritical’ Carbon Dioxide

The technology could strap onto existing gas turbines and make them more efficient—but it wouldn’t do away with their emissions entirely.

Molly Taft

Data Centers Are Driving an Alarming Gas Power Expansion in the US

There’s no clearer sign of the data center boom than rampant gas projects that have been proposed or that are already under construction.

Molly Taft

Transistors Changed Everything. Here’s How They Work

How a tiny little electronic switch sparked the computer revolution.

Rhett Allain

The Super El Niño Won’t Fix the West’s Water Crisis

“People have talked about the Colorado River crisis for decades—we’re now in it,” says one expert. “Everyone you talk to is like, ‘Shit, man.’”

Molly Taft

Space

A Scientist Working on the ‘IceCube’ Neutrino Detector Explains the Nobel Prize–Winning Technology

“Detecting a neutrino is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” says Juan Carlos Díaz Vélez, who breaks down why researchers are looking for the cosmic particles under the Antarctic ice.

Javier Carbajal

Astronomers Confirm Discovery of the Youngest Known Exoplanet Ever

Under 1 million years old, “Elias 2-24b” is now the youngest exoplanet ever observed, and it may force researchers to reevaluate theories about how planets are formed.

Teruyuki Hayakawa

Space Lasers Are About to Get Their First Real Test Generating Energy

Startup Star Catcher is launching a system that, if successful, would be the first time energy has been beamed between two separate spacecraft.

Brian Kahn

A Gravitational Battle Within the Earth Is Changing the Length of Days

A competition between the gravity of the inner core and other forces in the mantle is altering the Earth’s rotation.

Jorge Garay

Physics and Math

OpenAI Is Pissing Off a Bunch of Mathematicians—Again

“There’s a perception of mobster behavior” from leading AI companies, one mathematician tells WIRED as OpenAI prepares to release more than 100 new solutions to unsolved problems.

Isabella Ward

Elusive ‘Geoneutrinos’ Are Building a New Map of Earth’s Volatile Interior

A global network of detectors are reporting some of the most substantial measurements yet of neutrinos created deep underground by the radioactive elements that power our planet’s tectonic activity.

James Dinneen

Solving Math’s Greatest Problems Was an Art Form. Then Came AI

Mathematics has been one of humanity’s most creative endeavors, akin to painting and poetry. Now, mathematicians are trying to save it from the brute force of AI.

Sophia Chen

Mathematicians Hate AI. They Can’t Quit It

Powerful AI models have created an existential risk to the field, but researchers can’t stop relying on them because they’re too useful.

Isabella Ward

Biotech

A New Neurotech Startup Launches to Rival Sam Altman’s Merge Labs

Bridge Neurotech is planning to build a wearable brain-computer interface that uses ultrasound.

Emily Mullin

There Are Plenty of Reasons to Be Concerned About Bioweapons Development—Even Without AI

In her new book on biological warfare, Annie Jacobsen didn’t even discuss AI because scientists can already warp Mother Nature to create extinction-level events.

Michael Mechanic

A Biotech Founder Makes the Moral Case for Gene-Editing Human Embryos

The practice of editing the genes of embryos remains highly controversial and risky, but Origin Genomics founder Cathy Tie argues its a “moral imperative” to address hereditary diseases.

Kristen V. Brown

Anthropic Says It Discovered a Crispr-Like System. Now What?

“The experiments are still in the queue. The PR is already live,” says one expert.

Emily Mullin and Anna Rogers

Psychology and Neuroscience

The Science Behind the Nobel-Winning Technology That Controls Neurons With Light

Optogenetics revolutionized neuroscience, but its origins come from an entirely brainless organism—an alga.

Fernanda González

Psilocybin Might Make Your Brain Live in the Moment

Psychedelics are often associated with disconnecting from reality, but a recent neuroimaging study found that psilocybin can actually make our brain activity more connected to the world around us.

Jorge Garay

Big Tech Wants to Harvest Your Thoughts

Silicon Valley companies are already working on neurotechnology products that track your brain activity. The next privacy frontier might be the things you only think.

James Crawford

Study of Buddhist Monks Finds Meditation Alters Brain Activity

Meditation isn’t thinking about nothing. New research reinforces that it’s a mind-altering, dynamic state that promotes focus, learning, and well-being.

Javier Carbajal