the digest (Page 135)

Latest in the digest

Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin is furious that the U.S. government imposed sanctions on the company that makes the Soyuz rocket.

Russian Space Chief Accuses US of Sabotaging Russian Space Program

By Dan Robitzski

NASA euthanized all 27 of its primates at the agency's Ames research center in California in February 2019, The Guardian reports.

NASA Killed All Its Monkeys on the Same Day, Investigation Reveals

By Victor Tangermann

The massive, almost-certainly-Russian hack on the U.S. fedearl government compromised high-level networks used by the Treasury Department.

Science & Energy

Hackers Stole Top Officials’ Emails, Government Admits

By Dan Robitzski

Lawmakers have smuggled in legislation into the COVID-19 stimulus bill that would make profiting off of illegal streaming a felony.

COVID Stimulus Package Would Make Illegal Streaming a Felony

By Victor Tangermann

According to a Reuters exclusive, tech giant Apple is planning to produce a self-driving passenger car to be released in 2024.

Self-Driving Vehicles

Apple Is Reportedly Releasing a Self-Driving Car in 2024

By Victor Tangermann

A physics student used a scanning tunneling microscope to built a "Christmas tree" that's barely thicker than a DNA strand.

Science & Energy

World’s Tiniest “Christmas Tree” Is Barely Thicker Than a DNA Strand

By Dan Robitzski

Famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper just made major investments in jetpack suit companies JetPack Aviation and Gravity Industrie

A Tesla Investor Is Pouring Money Into Jetpack Technology

By Victor Tangermann

The head of Russia's space program, Dmitry Rogozin, took a jab at SpaceX, implying that the U.S.-based company couldn't handle the work done by Roscosmos.

Russia’s Space Chief Just Took Yet Another Swing at SpaceX

By Dan Robitzski

A restaurant in Singapore just became the first in the world to serve a "chicken nugget" made of lab-grown chicken meat made by US-based startup Eat Just.

Science & Energy

For the First Time, a Restaurant Is Serving Actual Lab-Grown Meat

By Victor Tangermann

Some scientists suggest that gene-hacking trees to grow faster and be more resilient could help fight climate change by restoring carbon sinks.

Scientists: Genetically Modified Trees Could Fight Climate Change

By Dan Robitzski

Roscosmos is prepared to ship additional oxygen supplies to the International Space Station, which continues to slowly leak oxygen.

Science & Energy

New Leak May Force Russia to Ship Oxygen to Space Station

By Dan Robitzski

Fume events, or instances where dangerous chemicals make it into an airplane's air supply, are disturbingly common. Yet the problem is often ignored.

Advanced Transport

Faulty Planes Reportedly Poisoned Passengers on Hundreds of Flights

By Dan Robitzski

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter this week to slander those who list the pronouns they prefer others to use to describe them in their social media bios.

LBGTQ Group Denounces Elon Musk For Mocking Gender Pronouns

By Victor Tangermann

NASA announced that Reid Wiseman would be its 17th Chief Astronaut. He previously logged lots of time in space and served as deputy Chief Astronaut.

NASA Names Its New Chief Astronaut

By Dan Robitzski

David Attenborough's narration taken from the BBC's "Planet Earth" docu-series fits perfectly over this clip of SpaceX's recent Starship test flight.

David Attenborough Narrates Starship Launch In Hilarious Video

By Victor Tangermann

A massive hack on U.S. infrastructure and federal agencies, likely perpetrated by Russia, targeted nuclear weapon facilities.

Science & Energy

Hackers Reportedly Targeted US Nuclear Weapons Facilities

By Dan Robitzski

The team in charge of recovering China's successfully returned lunar samples in Inner Mongolia wore exoskeletons to help them trudge through the snow.

China Used Exoskeletons to Recover Moon Samples

By Victor Tangermann

Mattel has just announced its delaying the delivery of its Hot Wheels remote-controlled Cybertrucks, as Bloomberg reports.

Advanced Transport

Toy Cybertrucks Will Be Delivered Too Late For Christmas

By Victor Tangermann

In an interview, John Brenann, ex-CIA officer who served under Obama for four years, said that we shouldn't disregard videos of recent UFO sightings.

Former CIA Director Says UFO Videos Are “Quite Eyebrow-Raising”

By Victor Tangermann

President-elect Joe Biden reportedly plans to nominate Michael Regan as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. It would be his third time at the EPA.

Biden’s EPA Pick Seems to Actually Care About the Environment

By Dan Robitzski

According to US Space Command (USSC) officials, Russia has launched a new anti-satellite missile test, the third one this year alone.

Space Force Claims That Russia Just Tested an Anti-Satellite Missile

By Victor Tangermann

In a matter of just two to three years, electric cars are set to become cheaper than their gasoline-powered alternatives according to a new report.

Advanced Transport

Report: Electric Cars Could Be Cheaper Than Gas Ones in Just 2 Years

By Victor Tangermann

In exchange for technical support from Canada, NASA will fly a Canadian astronaut to lunar orbit, making them the first non-American to reach the Moon.

NASA Says It Will Fly a Canadian to the Moon

By Dan Robitzski

NASA scientists modified a Boston Dynamics Spot robot that they say could explore Mars to find a suitable location for a human outpost.

Boston Dynamics

NASA Suggests Sending Boston Dynamics Robodog to Mars

By Dan Robitzski

A Space Force member was 30 minutes late for a fitness lesson because he was at a nearby Target to snag a PlayStation 5. He was knocked down a rank.

Space Force Airman Disciplined for Playing Hooky to Buy PlayStation

By Victor Tangermann

On Wednesday, Trump signed SPD-6 which calls for off-world nuclear reactors and nuclear propulsion systems for spacecraft.

Trump Signs Directive Calling for Nuclear Reactors in Space

By Dan Robitzski

The Air Force just let an AI-powered algorithm take over the navigation and sensor systems of a spy plane during a training flight on Tuesday.

The Air Force Just Let an AI Take Over Systems of a Military Jet

By Victor Tangermann

In a leaked company meeting, Facebook showed off recent progress on the brain-reading technology its been developing for years.

Leaked Meeting: Facebook Working on Device to Read Your Brain

By Dan Robitzski

India just laid the foundations for what officials are claiming will be the world's largest renewable energy park producing 30 gigawatts of green energy.

India Is Building a Green Energy “Megapark” the Size of Singapore

By Victor Tangermann

Cornell scientists traced a radio signal back to a hot Jupiter exoplanet. If confirmed, it could help the hunt for habitable worlds.

Science & Energy

Cornell Scientists Find Radio Signal Coming From an Exoplanet

By Dan Robitzski

Bill Gates, Amazon, and the U.K. government put millions into the hydrogen-powered plane startup ZeroAvia, which had a successful test flight in September.

Advanced Transport

Bill Gates Invests in Hydrogen-Powered Airplane Startup

By Dan Robitzski

China's lunar probe has officially returned with the first pristine samples collected from the Moon's surface in almost half a century.

China Just Brought the First Moon Rocks Back to Earth Since 1976

By Victor Tangermann

Members of the UK parliament recently put forth a motion that calls for the end of automated bots reselling hardware at prices "greatly above" MSRP.

The UK May Outlaw Scalping With Bots

By Victor Tangermann

After studying hundreds of marsquakes, data from NASA's InSight rover suggests that the crust of Mars is layered like a three-tiered cake.

Science & Energy

Mars’ Crust Structure Is Like a Layer Cake, NASA Scientists Say

By Dan Robitzski

According to the latest highway closures, SpaceX's SN9 Starship prototype could be headed to the launch pad as early as Thursday.

SpaceX’s Next Starship Prototype Could be Headed to Launch Pad on Thursday

By Victor Tangermann

Scientists at Japan's space agency were left speechless upon opening asteroid samples collected by spacecraft Hayabusa-2.

Scientist Left “Speechless” After Opening Asteroid Samples

By Victor Tangermann

While digging through the code of their Tesla's Full Self-Driving feature, this hacker found an augmented reality view of everything the vehicle sees.

Self-Driving Vehicles

Tesla Full Self-Driving Code Contains Secret “Augmented Reality View”

By Victor Tangermann

Next year, Walmart plans to take human drivers out of its delivery trucks on a number of routes, putting more faith into its many autonomous truck projects.

Advanced Transport

Walmart Plans to Start Ditching Human Delivery Drivers Next Year

By Dan Robitzski

The COVID-19 global pandemic has left a lasting impression on what our planet looks like from space, according to NASA's new dashboard.

You Can See the Pandemic From Space, NASA Says

By Victor Tangermann

A system that can turn pee into drinking water on the International Space Station could also improve access to clean water on Earth.

Science & Energy

Scientists Say Pee-Drinking Machine Could Save Lives

By Dan Robitzski

Good night, Chang'e-5. China's lunar lander has completed its mission of collecting the first lunar samples in almost half a century.

Chinese Lander Dies on Lunar Surface

By Victor Tangermann

A pair of physicists suggests that treating the Sun like a giant gravitational lens would give us a clear view of distant exoplanets.

Giant Telescope Could Spot Individual Continents on Exoplanets

By Dan Robitzski

Scientists reconstructed a dinosaur's brain from scans of well-preserved fossils, learning they had been wrong about how the species lived in the process.

Scientists Digitally Reconstruct Dinosaur Brain

By Dan Robitzski

SpaceX's SN9 Starship prototype has had a bit of a tumble, leaning onto its side inside its assembly building. Luckily, it's already upright again.

SpaceX’s Next Starship Prototype Appears to Have Fallen Over

By Victor Tangermann

After being trained on the very bizarre news of the year 2020, GPT-3 had some particularly unusual guesses for what's coming next.

Artificial Intelligence

A Powerful AI Generated Some Predictions for the Future and They’re Quite Outrageous

By Dan Robitzski

European Space Agency scientists put out a time-lapse video showing how the Milky Way galaxy will evolve over 400,00 years.

Science & Energy

Dazzling Video Shows How Milky Way Will Evolve Over 400,000 Years

By Dan Robitzski

Legendary car designer Frank Stephenson is not a fan of Tesla's Cybertruck. That's at least according to his "review that took over a year to make."

Famed Ferrari Designer Absolutely Demolishes Tesla’s Cybertruck

By Victor Tangermann

A team of researchers have figured out a way to store energy from the Sun for several months at a time and release it on demand later.

Researchers Debut Whole New Type of Solar Energy Storage

By Victor Tangermann

Walt Disney World, instead of enforcing its own mask requirements, is merely editing digital masks onto visitors' photos.

Disney World Seems to be Editing Masks Into Visitors’ Photos

By Dan Robitzski

Australia just got its own mysterious metal monolith — and this time it features some cryptic coordinates engraved on its surface.

Robots and Machines

The Latest Mysterious Monolith Is Engraved With Coordinates

By Victor Tangermann

A new vertical farm opening on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, is set to start producing 1,000 metric tons of greens a year.

Science & Energy

This Massive New Vertical Farm Can Produce 1,000 Tons of Produce a Year

By Victor Tangermann

NASA astronomer Alan Stern tells Discover Magazine that the discovery of liquid oceans on other worlds is among the "most profound discoveries" in space.

Science & Energy

A NASA Scientist Heralds “One of the Most Profound Discoveries” of the Space Age

By Dan Robitzski

Space agencies around the world are collaborating to make high-security facilities to study asteroids and Mars rocks for signs of life.

Science & Energy

Space Agencies Acknowledge That Asteroids Could Host Life

By Dan Robitzski

Japanese carmaker Toyota is set to unveil what the media is calling a "game-changing" solid state battery as soon as next year.

Advanced Transport

Toyota Making Electric Car With “Game-Changing” Solid State Battery

By Victor Tangermann

The tech giant's new wearable called Halo Band is designed to listen to your every word and tell you if your voice is too "overbearing" or "irritated."

Amazon’s Judgy Wearable Tells You If You Sound “Condescending”

By Victor Tangermann

The aurora borealis will be visible in large swathes of the northern United States and Canada over Thursday night. Here's why they occur.

You’ll Be Able to See the Northern Lights From the United States This Week

By Victor Tangermann

Scienitsts decided to bring spiders to the International Space Station to find out how important gravity was for their webs.

Whose Brilliant Idea Was It to Bring Spiders to the Space Station?

By Dan Robitzski

Finland's Olkiluoto nuclear power plant had a close call Thursday, initiating an emergency shutdown after one of its reactors leaked.

There Was a Close Call at a Nuclear Power Plant Today

By Dan Robitzski

The creator of the board games on which the popular video game Cyberpunk 2077 is based told the BBC that the games should be a "warning."

The Creator of Cyberpunk Game Says It’s a “Warning” About the Actual Future

By Victor Tangermann

A French military ethics committee just approved the military's plan to begin developing supersoldiers and keep pace with other nations already doing so.

Prosthetics and Devices

France Says It’s Working on Bionic Supersoldiers Because Everybody Else Is Doing It

By Dan Robitzski

According to a new study published in the reputable journal Nature this week, the total mass of human-made materials outweighs all living biomass.

Science & Energy

Global Human-Made Stuff Now Outweighs All Living Biomass

By Victor Tangermann

SpaceX managed to caught the most epic moment of its most recent Starship prototype launch in an incredibly detailed video.

Amazing Video Shows Starship Explosion in Incredible Detail

By Victor Tangermann

Elon Musk Explains Why Starship Launch Ended in Huge Explosion

Elon Musk Explains Why Starship Launch Ended in Huge Explosion

By Victor Tangermann

SpaceX Starship Explodes in Spectacular Fireball

SpaceX Starship Explodes in Spectacular Fireball

By Victor Tangermann