Richard Branson became the first billionaire in space after Virgin Galactic, which he owns, launched a supersonic space plane with him onboard. The passengers spent a few minutes enjoying weightlessness over fifty miles from the Earth’s surface. Jeff Bezos hopes to be the second billionaire in space who travels on a ship developed by his own company. […]
China-based gaming company Tencent announced facial recognition software will prevent minors from playing video games past 10:00pm. Chinese law calls for no more than 90 minutes of gaming each day, and no gaming between 10:00pm and 8:00am. There’s also a limit on the amount minors can spend on in-game microtransactions. It may seem odd that a company […]
Construction of a $600 million luxury superyacht called Somnio is already underway in Norway. At 728 feet long, it will beat the current longest yacht by over a hundred feet. The yacht will have 39 apartments, each costing $11 million. Each apartment will have its own gym, kitchen, library, and terrace. The yacht will also offer access […]
In what seems like a nightmare built from a dad joke, residents in Texas discovered their home’s thermostat was raised without their knowledge. The family was napping when they woke up sweating. Afterward, they received an alert about the temperature change—it was part of an energy-saving event. Along with installing the smart thermostat, the family also […]
Lake Mead, the body of water created by the Hoover Dam, is at its lowest point since it was made in 1935. The lake is on the border between Nevada and Arizona and was last full in 2000. The water currently sits 143 feet below the max fill line, leaving a ring of white minerals […]
A paper out of Russia’s Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science describes a microscopic animal waking up after thousands of years in Siberian permafrost eleven feet below the surface. After the tiny animal woke up, it reproduced by cloning itself. The animal, a bdelloid rotifer, is a microscopic animal found in freshwater habitats. They’re known […]
Nineteen million years ago, shark populations declined by 90%, and nobody knows why. A scientist from Yale discovered the unknown extinction event while studying fossilized teeth and scales. The data revealed that both total population and species diversity plummeted about 19 million years ago. There was a 90% abundance reduction and a 70% diversity reduction. The problem? […]
The findings from a study out of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany “suggest that the better your body is at regulating iron levels, the longer you are likely to live.” Researchers looked at a large dataset and studied the individual’s parents’ lifespan, predicted longevity, and years spent in good health, […]
A 16th-century letter from the conquistador Hernan Cortes was listed for sale by Swann Galleries before academic sleuths discovered it had been stolen from Mexico’s national archive. The letter is signed “El Marques,” a hereditary ruling title granted to Cortes by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1529. The letter is from 1521—the same year as the fall […]
Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, fired five court justices and the country’s attorney general. The justices had said Bukele overstepped his authority, and the attorney general was investigating possible corruption. Bukele’s next move? A tweet celebrating his actions. The international community has condemned the power grab, but Bukele still maintains a 90% approval rating […]
