This discusses various methods of propulsion, assuming a cruising speed of 0.1c

https://theconversation.com/could-aliens-ever-visit-earth-an-aerospace-scientist-unpacks-the-challenges-of-interstellar-spaceflight-280657

“Consequently, using chemical propulsion on a spacecraft with a cruise velocity of 19,000 miles per second (30,000 km/s) would require more fuel than all the mass in the observable universe”

Of course you could go slower but that amplifies some other issues raised, like how equipment breaks down over time. It’d be interesting to see an analysis of what the maximum cruising speed is with chemical rockets, for a reasonable fuel load.

It doesn’t investigate other problems you’d encounter that relate to biology, nor does it investigate the problems of visiting planets if you somehow got to a destination.

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/sand-battery-polar-night-energy

“The net result: Pornainen fulfilled all of its municipal climate targets with a single installation. Oil use dropped 100 percent, emissions fell 70 percent, and woodchip combustion was cut by 60 percent. According to the Mayor of the Municipality of Pornainen, Antti Kuusela, the municipality now heats all its public buildings, including a new sports arena opening in September 2026, entirely through this district heating network.”

https://petapixel.com/2026/05/04/nasa-releases-thousands-of-unseen-artemis-ii-photos/

https://gizmodo.com/this-ridiculously-simple-trick-might-stop-gulls-from-nabbing-your-lunch-2000742276

You’d think that lunch containers might have evolved this trait on their own, so it must not confer a reproductive advantage…

The NIST scientists also added an extra twist: They ran two versions of the experiment, one with copper masses and one with sapphire masses, achieving nearly identical values for both. This ruled out the possibility that the specific materials used were affecting the measurements“

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/we-still-dont-have-a-more-precise-value-for-big-g/

Interesting that they did this with both copper and sapphire but I thought that the weak equivalence principle had been confirmed at higher precision than this, so what would be the point? (Guess I gotta go read the actual paper)

(edit: quick scan suggests the different materials were used for other reasons - EM properties and mass amount and uniformity)

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/21/us/deaths-disappearances-scientists-investigation

A nuclear physicist and MIT professor fatally shot outside his Massachusetts residence. A retired Air Force general missing from his New Mexico home. An aerospace engineer who disappeared during a hike in Los Angeles.

These are among at least 10 individuals connected to sensitive US nuclear and aerospace research who have died or disappeared in recent years, prompting concerns whether they are connected and fueling speculation online about the possibility of nefarious activity.

According to reports, the FBI are now leading an investigation to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists in tandem the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and with state and local law enforcement partners to try and find answers.

A separate investigation by the Republican House Oversight  Committee  into the same questions was announced on Monday.

The reports “raise questions about a possible sinister connection” between the deaths and disappearances, the committee said in its statement, seeking briefings on the matter from the FBI, the Defense Department, the Department of Energy and NASA.

https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-burlison-seek-information-on-missing-nuclear-and-rocket-scientists/

In Eric Frank Russell’s novel “With A Strange Device” inexplicable numbers of US scientists working in highly classified government weapons research are abandoning their jobs and careers for completely irrational reasons, then disappearing and refusing to explain why when traced  by the authorities The story is told from the perspective of a young metallurgist called Richard Bransome working in missile research.

https://variety-sf.blogspot.com/2007/09/eric-frank-russells-with-strange-device.html

One day a conversation overheard by chance in a lunch-diner discloses that the body of a young woman he strangled years earlier has been found hidden under the roots of a fallen tree. Filled with horror, he prepares to abandon his career and family and go on the run. But there is one problem - as he belatedly discovers no such murder ever took place. It’s a completely false memory implanted and triggered by post hypnotic suggestion - the chance conversation overheard in the diner.

As an FBI agent later explains to him -  “There are two ways of weakening the enemy. You can acquire his brains for your own use or, if that proves impossible, you can deprive him of the use of them."

Eric Frank Russell explored a similar theme - i.e. the inexplicable disappearances or deaths of leading scientific researchers in an earlier novel called “Sinister Barrier” (1939). He was said to have spent WW2 working for British military intelligence on wartime deception operations like ‘Operation Mincemeat’  (‘The Man Who Never Was’)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Never_Was

Russell later wrote another novel called “Wasp” (1957) about asymmetric terrorist warfare which was said to have become part of the CIA’s training manual on this subject.

…

somehow, playing back “Rhythm Nation” over a laptop’s speakers would crash the laptop. In fact, it could crash nearby laptops as well.”

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2767927/a-janet-jackson-song-killed-laptops-for-nearly-a-decade.html

Solar alone set to overtake next year.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/china-solar-power-capacity-coal-first-time-b2912940.html

This, amid other reports of places where renewables are occasionally accounting for all generated electricity. (Makes the US position all the more painful, though the courts have reinstated some renewables projects)

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/smart-underwear-human-fart-frequency

Enjoy.-

Abstract

Honeybees are important crop pollinators, but they increasingly face pollen starvation as a result of agricultural intensification and climate change1. Frequent flowering dearth periods and high-density rearing conditions weaken colonies, which often leads to their demise2. Beekeepers provide colonies with pollen substitutes, but these feeds do not sustain brood production because they lack essential sterols found in pollen3,4. Here we describe a technological advance in honeybee nutrition with wide-reaching impacts on global food security. We first measured the quantity and proportion of sterols present in honeybee tissues. Using this information, we genetically engineered a strain of the oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica to produce a mixture of essential sterols for bees and incorporated this yeast strain into an otherwise nutritionally complete diet. Colonies exclusively fed with this diet reared brood for significantly longer than those fed diets without suitable sterols. The use of this method to incorporate sterol supplements into pollen substitutes will enable honeybee colonies to produce brood in the absence of floral pollen. Optimized diets created using this yeast strain could also reduce competition between bee species for access to natural floral resources and stem the decline in wild bee populations.

https://www.psypost.org/people-with-the-least-political-knowledge-tend-to-be-the-most-overconfident-in-their-grasp-of-facts/

“New research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied suggests that people often overestimate their understanding of political facts. This tendency to be overconfident appears most common among individuals who actually know the least about politics and those who lean conservative. The findings provide evidence that psychological traits, like a desire for quick and definitive answers, help explain why some voters struggle to accurately judge their own political knowledge.”

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-closer-mathematical-abilities-autistic-people.html

https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/march-could-be-the-best-month-for-the-northern-lights-for-nearly-a-decade-if-the-sun-stays-active

I had not previously heard of the equinox effect (aka Russell–McPherron effect, as I learned) but it makes sense that there would be times where the alignment of the earth’s field made it easier for the solar wind to enter the atmosphere

https://www.northernshotstours.com/equinox-effect/

https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/CONFNOTES/ATLAS-CONF-2025-008/

Relevant arxiv copy of first linked article of above news article

https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.11780

https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/02/could-a-vaccine-prevent-dementia-shingles-shot-data-only-getting-stronger/

“A study published in Nature Communications this month by researchers in California went further. They compared dementia rates among nearly 66,000 people who received the Shingrix vaccine and over 260,000 unvaccinated matched controls. The researchers found that the vaccinated group had a 51 percent lower risk of dementia compared to the unvaccinated controls.”

ScienceDaily

So if we have software that recognizes colour, does this mean that software would need updating to allow for any changes to ideas on how we perceive colour?

An onboard algorithm performs the comparison in about two minutes and can pinpoint the rover's location to within roughly 10 inches (25 centimeters), all without assistance from human planners”

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/mars-rovers/nasas-perseverance-rover-now-has-its-own-gps-on-mars-weve-given-the-rover-a-new-ability

New research in the US has suggested the body's major functions experience a more steady decline after death

Data has revealed that some people may be alert to their surroundings despite being declared biologically dead, long after the heart has stopped pumping blood.

According to scientists, the body shows that biological and neural functions "steadily decline from minutes to hours," rather than "ceasing abruptly."

Researcher Anna Fowler came up with the findings suggested the decrease of brain activity lasts hours, rather than seconds as previously believed.

Writing in her study, she added: "Consciousness may not vanish the moment the brain falls silent. Cells may not die the moment the heart stops.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/brain-conscious-hours-after-death-5HjdSPt_2/

AP News

And industry leadership in EVs requires constant technical innovation (e.g. SS batteries), along with having at least one line producing simple bare bones sedans affordable to Millennials in the middle class. Fancy sporty cars are fun, help reduce testicular shrinkage in midlife males, and help establish brand visibility, but you can't depend on them or on dumpster-trucks, or on theatrical drug induced looniness from a CEO, to maintain your market share.

When I heard that BYD was selling a subcompact for around 9K (USD) in China, I sorta knew Tesla's days as the reigning EV monarch were ending.

“For most nuclear transitions, the energy difference between the two states lies in the kilo-electron-volt to mega-electron-volt range. Consequently, such transitions are inaccessible to today’s high-precision lasers, which can deliver photons of typically a few electron volts in energy. A long-known exception is the transition between the ground state and first excited state of thorium-229 nuclei. Indirect measurements over the past 50 years have gradually pinned down that transition’s energy difference to only about 8.4 eV. As a result, this transition is being actively investigated as a candidate for developing a nuclear clock.”

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v19/19

There’s a bit of boilerplate cheerleading in this, like it’s a press release. Any improvement to GPS a tenuous claim unless you’re talking about a pretty long horizon, and any suggestion of a portable frequency standard relies on the portability of the laser and not just the container for the atoms.

…

The discovery will help explain why some massive stars turn into black holes when they die, while others don't.”

https://phys.org/news/2026-02-supernova-clearest-view-star-collapsing.html

It challenges the leading theory that Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), a proposed black hole at the heart of our galaxy, is responsible for the observed orbits of a group of stars, known as the S-stars, which whip around at tremendous speeds of up to a few thousand kilometres per second.

The international team of researchers have instead put forward an alternative idea – that a specific type of dark matter made up of fermions, or light subatomic particles, can create a unique cosmic structure that also fits with what we know about the Milky Way's core.”

https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-highlights/dark-matter-not-black-hole-could-power-milky-ways-heart

“growth in energy storage capacity and clean-power output topped the increases in peak and total electricity demand, respectively”

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months/

https://gizmodo.com/this-earth-facing-sunspot-region-is-absolutely-popping-off-2000717888

Probably more to come, since 4366 just came into view a week ago