Steven Spielberg grants that his 1977 UFO film Close Encounters was "speculative," writes the Associated Press, but "Disclosure Day, he insists, is the real deal." "It's my first film that will be considered science fiction that I do not consider to be science fiction," Spielberg said in a recent interview. "It's much more reflective of the world as it is evolving and discoveries that are being made as we speak." Spielberg, at 79, is trying to revive and reconsider the alien wonder that's long lingered in his mind, from "E.T." to "War of the Worlds." "Disclosure Day," Spielberg's first summer movie in a decade, is already being hailed as one of his best in years. But this time, Spielberg is testing whether he can conjure some of his trademark movie magic less with imagination than with conviction. "I've been a believer since I made 'Close Encounters' 50 years ago," Spielberg says. "But I would always say: Until I've seen a UAP or a UFO with my own eyes, I'm not going to categorically state that life from out there has come here. But I've changed that," he adds. "I'm now willing to change my mind because of the circumstantial evidence which is overwhelming..."

Spielberg, having long followed reports of alleged alien encounters, was inspired by the 2023 House Subcommittee on National Security hearing on UAPs: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Among the witnesses was whistleblower and former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch, who testified that the government concealed a program investigating UAPs. The Pentagon then denied it... Those 2023 testimonies and others so fueled Spielberg that he produced a 50-page treatment on what would become "Disclosure Day." During the writing process with Koepp, he texted him more notes, he says, "than I've ever sent to anyone in my life."

"There was a period in there where I believe he re-read the script every single day for a year," Koepp says. "We'd be in different time zones and I would wake up to 30 or 35 texts from his most current reading of the script. When the leader of the project has that level of commitment, it tends to bring along everyone. You up your game."
The article calls it "a grand bookend for one of the most cosmically-minded moviemakers of our time." But the man who filmed some of the world's first summer blockbusters also shared his thoughts on the future of movies. "Even though the numbers are still not pre-COVID level numbers for any films being released now, it's more robust than it has been for many years. The audience gives me belief that people still want to congregate in a dark space in the company of strangers to share an experience of a film made by storytellers. And that gives me faith to continue making films."

Rolling Stone wrote that "There's a lot to love in Disclosure Day." Though they also offer this pithy summary of its plot. "Remember when Steven Spielberg digitally replaced the guns in the hands of government agents for the 20th anniversary of E.T., then expressed regret about the decision? Imagine that he not only restored the weapons but crafted an entire two-and-a-half-hour feature around that one sequence as a mea culpa. That's Disclosure Day." The filmmaker may be staging a pulpy campaign with this sci-fi throwback, but he sincerely seems to believe the truth is out there — and will set us free... [W]hile the quality of his output can vary wildly when you look at the big picture of his career, there's still a baseline of love — for filmmaking, for storytelling through images, for giving people an experience that pushes emotional buttons and taps adrenal glands — that gives his work a sense of vitality and displays the sensibility of an artist at work...

There's also a weird full-circle feel to it, and not just because he's returning to the fertile ground of Close Encounters and his other science fiction spectacles. You can see traces of everything from Duel to Minority Report show up, to the point where this almost doubles as a career retrospective in miniature... Yes, Spielberg does believe that we are not the only game running in the cosmos. But he also believes that our better angels have not left the building, and that movies still have the power to communally blow minds and open hearts.
The Associated Press calls it "a grand bookend for one of the most cosmically-minded moviemakers of our time" and "a distant answer to the final notes of Close Encounters."

A few weeks ago on a bike ride "inspiration struck" for Dave Eggers, reports SFGate... Without a pen and paper handy, he was stuck texting the idea to himself. The problem? Eggers doesn't own a smartphone. "It takes 20 minutes to write a sentence," Eggers said... It's a funny predicament for Eggers, given that he's arguably the city's biggest proponent of the written word... Now age 56, Eggers' latest book is called "Contrapposto"...

On writing days, Eggers bikes to his sailboat docked near the Golden Gate Bridge. He writes using a hefty 1998 Mac that has never been connected to the internet. On the boat, he keeps "banker's hours," working 9 to 5 without any meetings or interruptions except for the occasional wildlife visit. "You're there with the cormorants and the occasional porpoise and sea lions and seals, and when you want to take a break, you walk around and you're in the thick of it, one of the most beautiful spots on Earth," he said. "Especially coming from the Midwest, it never gets old."

Given Eggers' decidedly low-tech existence, it's not surprising that the current state of San Francisco gives him pause, but there's a streak of hope that underlies his concerns. He abhors the growing surveillance technology that's gripping the city, refusing to get into Ubers that use recording devices, but he feels a well-written ballot measure about Flock cameras could potentially save our dwindling privacy. ChatGPT's effects on the art of writing are demoralizing, but he welcomes that teachers are re-embracing pencil and paper, with cursive making a big comeback. The wave of artificial intelligence ads blanketing bus stops imploring companies to stop hiring humans are so over the top, they'd sound cliché if he were to include them in one of his dystopian tech industry novels like "The Circle" or "The Every," but tech philanthropy has helped many of his projects flourish.

Case in point, Art + Water, a new art space scheduled to open next year on Pier 29 funded largely by art world donations... Co-founded with the artist JD Beltran, the space is slated to operate as an old-school apprenticeship system, hosting 10 artists in residence mentoring 20 students, all free of charge... The ultimate goal is to break down the financial barriers that keep students from pursuing art.
Thanks to Slashdot reader destinyland for sharing the article.

NASA has named Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio, and Andre Douglas as the crew for Artemis III, which has been reworked from a moon-landing mission into a roughly two-week Earth-orbit test of lunar landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. NBC News reports: Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas are expected to launch into Earth orbit next year, with the goal of testing two commercially developed lunar landers that are slated to carry astronauts to the surface of the moon during the Artemis IV mission in 2028. Bresnik will be the mission's commander, with Parmitano, an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency, serving as the pilot. Douglas and Rubio will be mission specialists, and Bob Hines will train with the crew as a backup member. "This test flight will enable us to prove we can carry out highly choreographed operations with our partners across hardware interfaces, software propulsion systems and life support elements with crew in the high-stakes space environment," Jeremy Parsons, NASA's Artemis program manager, said during NASA's announcement on Tuesday.

Bresnik has been to the International Space Station twice, most recently as commander of an expedition in 2017. A retired U.S. Marine colonel, he was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2004. Bresnik has helped oversee development and testing of spacecraft for the Artemis program as an assistant to the chief of the Astronaut Office, which manages astronaut training and operations. Parmitano has also done two stints on the ISS and served as commander of an expedition in 2019. He has completed a total of six spacewalks and also performed the first live DJ set in orbit. Before becoming an astronaut, Parmitano was a test pilot for the Italian air force.

For Rubio, a physician with 28 years of service in the Army, Artemis III will be his second trip to space. From 2022 to 2023, he spent 371 days on the space station, breaking the record for longest-duration spaceflight by an American, according to NASA. Douglas is the only crew member making his spaceflight debut. An engineer who previously worked on space exploration and robotics at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, he became a NASA astronaut in 2022. Douglas was the backup crew member for the Artemis II mission around the moon earlier this year. He told NBC News in an interview after Tuesday's announcement that the role had at times been a challenge. "It was hard to figure out how do you balance getting ready to go, not go, all that stuff," he said. "But to go now is just fantastic."

Researchers say mysterious, seconds-long GPS interference bursts detected across Europe appear to come from Russian EKS early-warning satellites, making this "a rare example of human-made GPS interference coming from space," reports Ars Technica. The signals may be tests of space-based jamming capability, short satellite communications, or something else, but experts say they raise troubling questions about whether GPS disruption could eventually be weaponized on a continental scale. From the report: The discovery came from an investigation detailed in a June 2 preprint paper by Todd Humphreys and his student Zach Clements at The University of Texas at Austin, along with Argyris Krizise at Stanford University in California. By sifting through public data from ground-based stations with global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers, they identified a pattern of high-powered interference lasting less than 10 seconds each time but simultaneously detectable by ground stations across Europe from Norway to Spain to Poland, and even reaching as far west as Greenland and Canada.

By analyzing the ground station data from January 2019 to April 2026, the researchers found 75 days with at least one widespread GNSS interference event overlapping with the GPS L1 frequency band centered on 1575.42 megahertz. That represents the main band used for signal transmission by the US-made GPS satellite constellation and GNSS constellations from other countries. Such interference patterns happened mostly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays during business hours in Europe, Humphreys told the YouTube channel Veritasium. Because such "continental-scale" interference was simultaneously affecting GPS receivers across Europe and beyond, Humphreys and his colleagues calculated that the source had to be at least 1,200 kilometers above the Earth.

[...] In the Veritasium video, Humphreys speculated that the Russians may have been testing the satellites' GPS interference capabilities only briefly on a neighboring frequency adjacent to the typical GPS band. "And then in the eventual future when there is a hot conflict, they go ahead and tune their transmitter down to the GPS band, but it's much more damaging now that it lies right on that band," he said. Incidentally, the raw data also revealed a second interference burst from the Russian satellites in a lower-frequency band used by China's BeiDou navigation system. "I can no longer say this is accidental with confidence," Humphreys told Veritasium. He also described the Russian satellites' quiet demonstration as a "massive escalation in the electronic warfare background conflict that is going on right now." Richard Bowden, division head of assured and resilient PNT at the multinational technology company GMV in Spain, wrote in a LinkedIn comment: "These signals are, without a doubt, intentional and placed on or around GNSS signals, and have the potential to disrupt legitimate use of GNSS services. But from our side at least, we can't be sure they are intentionally malicious or intended as an EW [electronic warfare] weapon."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's oceans are under "severe and accelerating" pressure from human activities, with the rate of sea-level rise double that of a decade ago, according to a damning assessment from the United Nations. The "intensifying" stressors, which include pollution and large-scale industrial fishing, are cumulative, said the report, resulting in widespread biodiversity loss and putting ocean systems under "severe strain."

The UN's third World Ocean Assessment, which reflects the work of nearly 600 scientists from 86 countries, looked at the oceans' health from 2021-25. The previous report, that covered up to 2018, found persistent degradation of the marine environment. Five years on, scientists know more about the cumulative impacts of anthropogenic pressures on the ocean, and the latest report shows just how much of the damage has been done in the past few years. The scientists' key findings include:

- Sea levels continue to rise at an increasing rate, from 2mm a year prior to 2015 to 4.3mm a year in 2023.
- 16% of the increase in global ocean heat since 1955 occurred after 2018.
- The greatest relative warming has been observed in the Atlantic Ocean and the southern parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
- Large gaps in knowledge persist -- with only 27% of the ocean floor mapped by 2025, deep-sea ecosystems remain poorly understood. Lukas Meus, Greenpeace's global ocean campaigner, said: "We are calling on governments to create fully protected ocean sanctuaries that will close vast areas of the ocean off from extractive human activities. Governments have promised to protect 30% of the world's ocean by 2030 -- the minimum scientists say we need for the ocean to be able to recover."

Valve says its long-awaited Steam Machine and Steam Frame are both "shipping this summer." The company is also expanding its Verified program beyond Steam Deck to cover the new hardware. "Steam Verified is a developer-focused program where game makers ensure that their titles are capable of running on the Deck (meaning they'll run fine under Linux), that the UI elements and text are readable at standard resolutions, and that sensible default graphics settings are used," notes Tom's Hardware. From the report: The news should ease the worries of many an expecting gamer, given today's constant worries about AI servers slurping every RAM and NAND chip on the face of the earth, as well as Valve's own statements about component scarcity delaying the release. Plus, the company always works on its own schedule, so much so that Valve Time is a term.

The release of the Machine has been taking flak, given that while Valve was initially hoping for an estimated $600 to $800 price -- in the ballpark of the higher-end consoles -- the rumored pricing is climbing around or over $1000. This fact is somewhat corroborated by a February statement from a Valve executive who, like most anyone in the world, stated the price revision was due to the AI-driven component shortage.

The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Science Foundation's $368 million Ocean Observatories Initiative, a network of more than 900 deep-sea instruments used to monitor ocean currents, marine ecosystems, carbon absorption, heat waves, fisheries, coastal flooding, and climate change. The NSF said it would send ships in June to begin the removal of the instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea. The New York Times reports: The ocean observation system began operating in 2016 and was expected to continue for 25 years. Jim Edson, a marine meteorologist who led the Ocean Observatories Initiative, called it "the world's most advanced continuously operating ocean observing systems." When it was first proposed, the science foundation said it was important to have a long-term presence at scientifically important sites in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Removing the instruments could take 15 months. Seismic instruments positioned around an active underwater volcano off Oregon will continue operating until 2028.

Each observation station consists of several moorings that secure long arrays of devices connected to wires. The devices measure ocean currents as well as chemical and biological conditions from the water's surface down thousands of feet. The instruments were hardened to resist the pressure of the deep ocean, corrosive seawater as well as marine plants and animals that can foul electronics. Remotely controlled robotic vehicles and gliders around the moorings collect and transmit data to research laboratories.

It cost $48 million annually to operate the network. The Trump administration repeatedly tried to shutter it, proposing to cut its funding by 80 percent in both 2025 and again in 2026. Congress pushed back, restoring the money. To try to reduce costs, managers turned off some of the instruments and collected less data, according to a December 2025 presentation about the observatories at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, a nonprofit organization of scientists. Still, the science foundation moved ahead to decommission the observatory network.

ScienceAlert reports: In the molten ocean of iron churning in Earth's outer core, a section deep beneath the Pacific Ocean suddenly reversed direction and started moving eastward against the planet's usual westward flow. This happened in 2010, according to satellite measurements of Earth's magnetic field, and scientists are still trying to figure out what caused it... [I]t seemed to have a large, wave-like structure — as though a chunk of molten core material suddenly thought better of where it wanted to go, surging in the other direction... This finding suggests that there are processes that can influence it strongly enough to alter its behavior in bulk — and that our planet's interior may be more dynamic and variable than we thought.
A new analysis captures what we know so far — and "It's from the roiling, molten, conducting metal at Earth's heart that the planetary magnetic field is generated... vital to our continued existence. It helps keep the atmosphere we breathe in and harmful cosmic radiation out."

Almost a fifth of the earth's population lives in Africa. And Africa's next generation of power projects "is increasingly being built around solar and wind power and battery storage," reports the Associated Press, "as governments and investors shift away from coal and large hydropower dams in search of cheaper, faster and more reliable electricity." The shift is visible in a $1.5 billion energy agreement between China and Zambia announced in early May that includes three separate 300-megawatt projects spanning solar, wind and coal-fired power. While the inclusion of coal underscores the continent's continuing need for stable baseload electricity, African countries facing rising fuel import bills as a result of the Iran war, unreliable grids and growing industrial demand are increasingly turning to renewable energy projects that can be deployed faster and more cheaply than traditional plants.

Of the 322 energy projects announced across Africa in 2025, 173 were solar projects, followed by hydropower at 46, wind at 34, gas at 22 and hybrid energy projects at 14, according to the energy research firm Electron Intelligence... Utility-scale solar power costs have dropped by nearly 90% globally since 2010, while onshore wind costs have fallen around 70%, making renewables the cheapest source of new electricity generation in many African markets...

Much of the growth is through distributed solar and battery systems installed directly in mines, factories, telecom towers and homes. "Most official statistics still measure the energy transition the old way, by counting megawatts connected to national grids," [said Matt Tilleard, CEO of CrossBoundary Energy, which invests in renewable energy in Africa]. "But solar and batteries don't need central utilities." Data from the Africa Solar Industry Association shows 23.4 gigawatts of operational solar projects had been tracked across Africa by the end of 2025. But Chinese export figures indicate 58.1 gigawatts of solar panels have been shipped to African countries since 2017, suggesting solar adoption may be growing far faster than official figures capture.
Investor Tilleard says "Renewable energy is now unequivocally the fastest, cheapest, and most bankable way to connect people, companies and economies to the megawatts they need to grow."

And the article also includes this quote from Mugwe Manga, climate finance lead at FSD Kenya. "Africa is not on the periphery of the global energy transition, it is sitting at its center. The continent holds the world's best renewable resources, and the economics have now decisively turned in favor of clean energy."

Researchers have identified a ring of minerals around the largest basin in the northern hemisphere of Mars (which past research suggests held a large body of water). Phys.org says the research provides new clues on when life may have been possible on Mars — and how future astronauts could make oxygen: Manganese oxides and hydroxides (collectively written as manganese (hydr)oxides) can act as geological proxies for past oceans... The team involved in the new study analyzed short-wave infrared (SWIR) data from China's Zhurong rover, ESA's OMEGA orbiter and NASA's CRISM orbiter to identify and quantify manganese (hydr)oxides... The team says the placement of the ring indicates that the ring formed during the Hesperian epoch — a geologic period on Mars that occurred roughly 3.7 to 3.0 billion years ago. The Hesperian epoch marked the transition from the warmer, wetter, and volcanically active Martian world to a cold, dry, and dusty planet... [when "the potential for further prebiotic evolution on the surface was significantly reduced."]

"This yields a final estimated duration of 0.8-1.5 million years for the presence of stable aqueous conditions in Utopia Planitia. This timescale significantly exceeds what is typically expected for transient surface water activity on Mars, suggesting that Utopia Planitia hosted a long-lived and evolving aquatic system during the Hesperian epoch, rather than a short-lived or rapidly evaporating water body," write the study authors. The researchers say that although this does not provide direct evidence of early life, it does suggest that Mars may have provided an environment conducive to initiating early forms of life. The timeline of the ocean matches the minimal timescale required for prebiotic chemistry, and also temporally overlaps with the period on Earth in which scientists believe the earliest forms of life first arose, approximately 3.4 billion years ago. The study authors also note that the conditions for life may have also extended into the next Amazonian period on Mars. They write, "If MnOx formation or redistribution occurred during the Amazonian, this would suggest that Mars may have maintained episodic or localized liquid water environments significantly later than traditionally assumed."

Interestingly, the authors also bring up the potential for future human habitation on Mars. They suggest that oxygen can be produced by using the manganese (hydr)oxides for water-splitting reactions that generate oxygen through photocatalysis, potentially supporting human activities or even terraforming. Of course, this would be a long way off.

NASA has outlined a three-phase plan to build a lunar base at the moon's south pole. The first phase, from 2026 to 2029, will focus on robotic missions, landers, rovers, reactors, satellites, and Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance test. Later phases will add habitats, power systems, communications, cargo logistics, and rotating crews. Wired reports: According to a recent press conference, phase one will be particularly active: at least 25 missions and 21 surface landings. Without detailing specific dates, the agency said that over the next three years it will send rovers, including manned models for future mobility, drones, surface reactors, new-generation satellites, and payloads to prepare the ground.

One of the first key missions will be the test of the Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance module in fall 2026. Its purpose is to evaluate conditions for a controlled descent and validate navigation and positioning technology. It will not carry astronauts. If the mission is successful, Blue Origin plans a manned version around 2028, possibly with Blue Moon Mark 2. Moon Base II and III missions are also part of the program's 2026 startup. One will send rovers and payloads to evaluate more complex rover operations; the other will carry scientific instruments to study the behavior of materials and systems under extreme lunar conditions.

Phase two, starting in 2029, marks the beginning of semipermanent infrastructure assembly and first occupancy operations. NASA plans to install advanced energy systems, including surface reactors, initial habitat elements, and more robust communication networks. Up to 60 tons of cargo will be delivered in 24 missions during this period.

Phase three is for scale-up. The infrastructure in place will be strengthened and expanded to form durable centers with constant turnover of personnel. NASA envisions a lunar south pole with habitable modules, reliable power systems, logistics networks for cargo and crew transportation, and the shipment of about 38 tons of cargo annually for maintenance and expansion. "Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable," said administrator Jared Isaacman in a NASA statement. "We will go for the science, for all we stand to gain from an economic and technological perspective, for the innovations that will make life better here on Earth, and to prepare for where we will inevitably go next."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Elon Musk's Starlink and Amazon's low-earth-orbit satellite business may be able to acquire some European mobile satellite spectrum next year, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday. But they said two-thirds of the satellite spectrum that allows mobile devices and vehicles to communicate seamlessly even in remote locations, would be reserved for European companies.

U.S. companies Viasat and EchoStar hold licenses that are due to expire in May 2027 and the European Commission has been considering how to allocate future spectrum at the same time as the bloc pushes to reduce reliance on U.S. tech. The European Union's IRIS2 multi-orbit array of 290 satellites, a response to Starlink, will be among the European companies to receive some spectrum, the sources said. British and Norwegian companies can also bid for a license, the people said. Details of the proposal, set to be announced on Wednesday, could still change at a meeting of commissioners on the day, one of the sources. Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said EU-wide satellite connectivity was "synonymous with resilience, security, and capability" given the current geopolitical context.

"Satellite connectivity is a key piece of our technological sovereignty, our security, and our defense, as also highlighted by IRIS2," he added.

"The expansion of SpaceX's Starlink network of internet relay satellites continued Monday with a Memorial Day launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station," reports Spaceflight Now. The mission added another 29 Starlink satellites to more than 10,000 already in low Earth orbit: This was SpaceX's 60th orbital flight of the year, consisting of 59 Falcon 9 rockets and one Falcon Heavy rocket...

Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, [Falcon 9 first stage] B1078 landed on the drone ship, 'A Shortfall of Gravitas,' positioned in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina. This was the 151st landing for this vessel and the 614th booster landing to date for SpaceX.

Meanwhile, the second stage shut down eight minutes and 39 seconds into flight and entered a coast phase, before short second burn at T+52 minutes. The stack of Starlink satellites deployed 61 minutes and 26 seconds after launch.
On X.com SpaceX shared footage of the booster rocket landing, and a longer video showing Starship's 12th test flight Friday.

Citing new research, the Associated Press reports that "modest gains in the fight to curb climate change have dialed back the most catastrophic of future heating."

That's the good news. But the same research "also confirmed that there's no chance to limit warming to the international goal set in 2015." Researchers' new list of seven plausible carbon pollution scenarios for the future are pushing aside two staples of climate policy: the extremes on either end. The extremes have become less probable in the past several years because of how we power our world. Carbon dioxide, released from the burning of gas, oil and coal, is chiefly responsible for warming. Increasing use of green energies, like solar, wind and geothermal, which don't emit carbon dioxide, have lowered top end carbon pollution projections. However, because those changes haven't been fast enough, the bottom end projections have risen.

The Paris climate agreement in 2015 set a goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, or the mid-1800s, giving rise to the mantra "1.5 to stay alive," but now scientists say that even their best case scenario still shoots past that signature temperature mark. On the other end, those same new scenarios no longer include the coal-heavy future that would lead to 4.5 degrees Celsius (8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by 2100, a scary scenario that many scientific studies used in their future projections.

The new proposed worst case scenario has an end-of-the-century warming of about 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit), a full degree (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) less than the old scenario, while the updated best case future is a couple tenths of a degree Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than previously theorized, squeezing past the Paris goal, said climate scientist Detlef Van Vuuren of Utrecht University, lead author of a recent study laying out future scenarios. "There is kind of a narrowing of the futures. It cannot be as bad as we thought, but it cannot be as good as we hoped," said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

The scenarios include a "middle" one where by the end of the century the world warms 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, which is roughly the path society is currently on, scientists said... Because carbon pollution keeps rising globally and stays in the atmosphere for about century, the best case scenario is for warming to shoot past the 1.5 degree mark, peak at 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) for maybe as long as 70 years, and eventually somehow come back down below 1.5 degrees if a technology can be designed to remove massive amounts of carbon from the air, said nine of the 10 scientists interviewed for this article. The world is warming at a pace of a tenth of a degree Celsius (nearly 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit) every five years, they said.

SpaceX's upgraded Starship V3 launched today from Starbase, Texas, for the first time, successfully deploying 22 dummy Starlink satellites and completing a planned fiery splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Reuters reports: The towering vehicle, consisting of the upper-stage Starship astronaut vessel stacked atop a Super Heavy booster rocket, blasted off at about 5:30 p.m. CT on Friday (2230 GMT) from SpaceX facilities in Starbase, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville. A live SpaceX webcast of the liftoff showed the rocketship, more than 40 stories tall, climbing from the launch tower as the Super Heavy's cluster of Raptor engines thundered to life in a ball of flames and billowing clouds of vapor and exhaust. The test ended about an hour later when the Starship vehicle made it through a blazing re-entry through Earth's atmosphere and splashed down into the Indian Ocean, nose up as planned, as SpaceX employees who gathered to watch a live webcast of the flight cheered. The lower-stage Super Heavy came down separately in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after blast-off.

The launch marked SpaceX's 12th Starship test flight since 2023 and the first ever for the V3 iteration of both the cruise vessel and its Super Heavy booster, as well as the first blast-off from a new launch pad designed for the more powerful rocket. During its suborbital cruise phase, Starship successfully released its payload of 20 mock Starlink satellites one by one, plus two actual modified satellites that scanned the spacecraft's heat shield and transmitted data back to operators on the ground during the vehicle's descent. Starship made it to its cruise phase despite the loss of one of its six upper-stage engines, and mission controllers opted not to attempt an inflight re-ignition of the engines before re-entry. But the vehicle did execute a return-landing burn at the very end of its flight, along with several aerodynamic maneuvers deliberately intended to place the spacecraft under maximum stress, and Starship completed those moves intact for its controlled final descent. You can watch a recorded livestream of the launch on YouTube.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says he expects China to fly taikonauts around the moon in 2027, "ratcheting up perceptions of a space race between China and the United States," reports SpaceNews. He is using that prospect to argue for a revamped Artemis strategy and an accelerated path toward a U.S. lunar return. From the report: "The next time the world tunes in to watch astronauts fly around the moon, which will likely be sometime in 2027, they will be taikonauts, and America will no longer be the exclusive power to send humans into the lunar environment," he said. While Isaacman has frequently discussed a race with China to be the next to land humans on the moon, this was one of the first times he predicted a 2027 Chinese crewed circumlunar mission. He repeated the comments later in the day at an industry reception.

China has not publicly announced plans for such a mission, which, as Isaacman described it, would likely be similar to NASA's Artemis 2 mission in April. There have been rumors of a mission along those lines, though, and an expectation of a roadmap of missions leading to a Chinese crewed landing by the end of the decade. So far, all the crewed missions to fly around, orbit or land on the moon have been flown by NASA: nine Apollo missions from 1968 to 1972 and Artemis 2. All the astronauts on those missions have been Americans except for Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on Artemis 2.

Isaacman has used the threat that China could land astronauts on the moon before NASA returns there as a rationale for revamping the Artemis lunar exploration program. In February, he announced that Artemis 3, which was to be a lunar landing attempt in 2028, will instead be a test flight in low Earth orbit in 2027, followed by a landing on Artemis 4 in 2028. In March, he changed other elements of Artemis at the agency's Ignition event, including effectively canceling the lunar Gateway to focus resources instead on a lunar base, while calling for a much higher cadence of robotic lander missions.

The 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is facing backlash after several winning entries were accused of being AI-generated, with one Caribbean winner's story flagged as fully AI-written by a detector that WIRED says it independently confirmed. From the report: Each year, the Commonwealth Foundation, a nongovernmental organization in London, awards its short story prize to one writer in each of five regions: Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. One overall winner is then selected from that short list. Regional winners take home [about $3,350], while the top winner, to be announced next month, claims [about $6,700]. On May 12, the respected UK literary magazine Granta published the top five 2026 entries -- all previously unpublished, per the rules of the contest -- on its website. (It has hosted the winning submissions for the prize since 2012.) Within days, however, one entry aroused suspicion. "The Serpent in the Grove," a story by Jamir Nazir of Trinidad and Tobago, which had taken honors for the Caribbean region, struck a few people as bearing the stylistic tells of AI-generated text.

"Well, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize," wrote researcher and entrepreneur Nabeel S. Qureshi, a former visiting scholar of AI at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a post on X on Monday. "'Not X, not Y, but Z' sentences everywhere, the 'hums' trope, and plenty of other obvious markers of AI writing. A major milestone for AI, at any rate..." "They say the grove still hums at noon," Nazir's mysterious and atmospheric tale begins. In his screenshot of the opening paragraphs, Quereshi highlighted the second line as what he considered to be a signature example of AI syntax: "Not the bees' neat industry or the clean rasp of cutlass on vine, but a belly sound -- as if the earth swallows a shout and holds it there."

As the literary community undertook a closer read of Nazir's story, many criticized its language and metaphors as nonsensical, wondering how the Commonwealth judges could have seen any merit to them. Others shared screenshots showing that the AI-detection tool Pangram flagged "The Serpent in the Grove" as 100 percent AI-generated, a result that WIRED independently confirmed. (While no AI-detection software is perfect, third-party analysis has consistently determined Pangram to be the most accurate, with a near-zero rate of false positives.)

[...] Besides Nazir, two more winning authors have drawn allegations of using AI in their work. Pangram finds that "The Bastion's Shadow," by Maltese writer John Edward DeMicoli, winner for the Canada and Europe region, is fully AI-generated; it scans "Mehendi Nights," by Indian writer Sharon Aruparayil, winner for the Asia region, as partly AI-generated. Neither DeMicoli nor Aruparayil immediately returned requests for comment when reached through their respective social media accounts. The other two short-listed stories, by Holly Ann Miller of New Zealand and Lisa-Anne Julien of South Africa, deliver "fully human-written" results from Pangram. Wired also reports that one of the judges for the prize has been "accused of using AI to craft her descriptive blurb that accompanied the listing of 'The Serpent in the Grove' as a regional winner.'" Pangram labels the text as "AI-assisted."

Europe is testing laser-based satellite communications through a new mountaintop ground station in Greece, aiming to deliver faster, more secure links than traditional radio systems as bandwidth demand grows. The Register reports: Lithuanian space and defense biz Astrolight says that it has commissioned a new optical ground station in Greece that will support ESA-backed CubeSat missions testing laser-based communications between satellites and Earth. The Holomondas Optical Ground Station was built through the PeakSat project, led by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with backing from the European Space Agency and Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance. Its job is to receive data from satellites via infrared laser links rather than the radio systems that space operators have relied on for decades.

PeakSat and ERMIS-3, two Greek CubeSats launched in March under ESA's wider Greek IOD/IOV mission program, both carry Astrolight's ATLAS-1 optical communication terminal. Astrolight also built the ground segment, giving the project a fully integrated end-to-end optical communications setup. [...] The company says the station uses an 808-nanometer laser beacon and an optical C-band receiver capable of receiving data at up to 2.5 Gbps. Unlike traditional RF systems, optical links use tightly focused infrared beams that are harder to intercept or jam while also supporting significantly higher throughput.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The World Health Organization declared on Saturday that the spread of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda was a global health emergency. The announcement was made a day after Africa's leading public health authority reported that an outbreak in a province in the northeast of the country was linked to dozens of suspected deaths. By Saturday, cases had also been confirmed in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, the W.H.O. said.

In Congo's Ituri province, where the outbreak was first identified, 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths attributed to the virus had been reported, although only eight cases had been definitively linked to the virus through laboratory testing. There is no approved vaccine and no therapeutics for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the outbreak, according to the W.H.O. The scale of the outbreak could be far larger than has been detected and reported, the W.H.O. said in declaring a "public health emergency of international concern." It added that there were "significant uncertainties" about the precise number of people infected and the "geographic spread."

The W.H.O.'s declaration signals a public health risk requiring a coordinated international response, and is intended to prompt member countries to prepare for the virus to spread and to share vaccines, treatments and other resources needed to contain the outbreak. [...] The risk of the outbreak spreading is exacerbated by a humanitarian crisis, high population mobility and a large network of informal health care facilities in the area, the agency said. Containing an Ebola outbreak depends on the speed and scale of the public health response. The virus is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, putting family members and caregivers at particular risk. Tracing people who may have come into contact with sufferers, isolating and treating victims promptly and safely, and burying the dead properly are all viewed as critical steps.

"Most of the plastic waste in California is about to lose the recycling symbol," writes the Washington Post's "climate coach." The "chasing arrows" symbol, created in 1970 by a college student inspired by the burgeoning environmental movement, has been stamped indiscriminately on plastic bottles, clamshell takeout containers, chip bags and more for decades. The majority of the items emblazoned with the mark have been virtually impossible to recycle for most people. California lawmakers say they want to end the charade: Under what's known as the Truth in Recycling law, plastics cannot use the symbol if they aren't collected by curbside programs serving 60% of Californians and sorted by facilities serving 60% of the state's recycling programs (with some additional requirements). If the law goes into effect as scheduled on October 4, more than half of the types of plastic packaging and products sold in the state can no longer carry the chasing arrows logo. That will affect plastic films, foam, PVC and mixed plastics...

Food and packaging groups have sued the state of California, calling the law a form of censorship whose vague restrictions violate the First Amendment and due process rights.... Advocates of the law counter that corporations deliberately misled the public by turning the recycling symbol into a marketing device that masks the fact that only a small fraction of plastic packaging is ultimately recycled... The mark was originally intended to informwaste processors what polymers a plastic item was made from. But the public reasonably assumed anything stamped with the symbol was recyclable. Millions of tons of worthless plastic trash have since poured into recycling facilities unable to process it....

States are now taking action. Seven have passed laws shifting the cost of recycling onto packaging makers. Oregon and Washington have lifted requirements that plastic containers carry the chasing arrows symbol.
The article notes that Norway already recovers 97% of beverage bottles, while Slovakia recycles 60% of plastic packaging. "But the U.S. only recovers about a third of its PET and HDPE bottles, and just 13% of plastic packaging, according to U.S. Plastics Pact, an industry-led forum.

"It won't be easy for the U.S. to reach higher levels of recycling: The necessary infrastructure and incentives are chronically underfunded, no federal mandate exists for minimum-recycled-content that would create demand and a mix of mostly unrecyclable hydrocarbons still dominates the waste stream."