SpaceX's stock market blast-off could be Musk's biggest gamble yet
It's 07:25 am, 13 October 2024, at Starbase, near Boca Chica on the Texas side of the US/Mexico border, and on the launch pad stands the biggest rocket ever made. Its engines fire and it climbs into the skies over the Gulf of Mexico to cheers and screams in the SpaceX control room.
But the launch is not the main event. What goes up must come down – and how it comes down will become a milestone in space exploration.
Seven minutes later, the massive rocket booster that blasted the craft towards space starts falling back to Earth – until its engines reignite as planned. It slows its descent and guides itself with pinpoint precision so it can be captured by a clasp called Mechazilla, or "the chopsticks", by engineers who have achieved something that's never been done before.
Amid the whoops and high-fives in SpaceX's control room, Elon Musk tells his millions of social media followers that this is a "big step towards making life multiplanetary" - a reusable rocket that will slash the costs of launching things into orbit, to the Moon and one day to Mars.
A company with a futuristic vision, led by what some would call a maverick unconventional genius, SpaceX and Musk have drawn comparisons with Tony Stark, leader of Stark Industries and also known as Iron Man of the Marvel Comics Universe.
On 12 June, trading will begin in a chunk of shares in a company that, up to now, only Musk and a select group of rich private institutions have been able or invited to own.
It is perhaps little wonder that more than one UK stockbroker has told the BBC that there has been "a surge" in interest in signing up for the chance to buy shares in this exciting company, controlled by a talismanic individual, that has captured the world's imagination. UK retail investors are likely to be allocated around £1.5bn worth of shares and one of the UK's leading investing platforms hopes this could encourage a new generation of investo…
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Health workers at the epicenter of Congo's Ebola outbreak are laboring with little pay or rest.
AstraZeneca’s GLP-1 pill showed promise in mid-stage obesity and diabetes studies, but it may still be too early to determine how it stacks up against other oral treatments.
‘Odd’ Gulf of Mexico earthquake rattles Florida and Cuba
This earthquake may be among the biggest in the Gulf of Mexico’s history
By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Cuba in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday, with "reports of shaking across Southwestern Florida," according to a social media post from the National Weather Service’s (NWS’s) Miami office.
The quake occurred 104 kilometers (about 65 miles) northwest of Mantua, Cuba, says Robert Garcia, a warning coordination meteorologist at the NWS Miami office. It occurred at about 2 P.M. EDT and at a depth of 26 kilometers (around 16 miles) below the surface. “We have not heard any reports of damage in South Florida,” Garcia says. There is no threat of a tsunami from the earthquake at this time.
Jeff Berardelli, chief meteorologist at an NBC affiliate station in Tampa, Fla., posted on Bluesky that the earthquake was among the biggest in the Gulf of Mexico’s history. A 1959 earthquake of around magnitude 6.4 that struck near Veracruz, Mexico, is likely the “strongest known” earthquake ever recorded in the Gulf, Berardelli wrote.
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This earthquake is “odd” because it occurred in the interior of a tectonic plate, not along the edge—which is rare but not unheard of, says Wendy Bohon, an independent earthquake geologist. “This quake is in a somewhat unusual spot, and it’s pretty large,” she says, adding that no earthquakes beyond magnitude 5.0 have been recorded within 250 kilometers of this quake.
Much like the “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific, the Caribbean has its own smaller “ring” of earthquake activity, adds Susan Hough, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. That boundary generated the 2010 earthquake in …
This occurrence of aurora australis, or Southern Lights, was captured by NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.
A spectacular Southern Lights display has been captured on camera from space.
Nasa astronaut Jessica Meir filmed the timelapse from onboard the SpaceX Dragon shuttle.
The Southern Lights are just as common as the Northern Lights, and regularly take place over Antarctica, but relatively few people live in latitudes close to the South Pole, so they are not as well-known as their northern counterpart.
These lights occur near the poles because Earth's magnetic field channels charged particles from the Sun toward those regions, where they collide with the atmosphere and create shimmering waves of colour.
A volunteer diver has described shaking as he filmed his encounter with an endangered Great White shark between Tunisia and Sicily.
A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Thursday night.
In a video message from Buckingham Palace, wildlife helps the King deliver a birthday card for Sir David Attenborough.
The forest where the Sumatran orangutans live has been split by a road.
Newly released video shows the moment the hatch of Artemis II's Orion capsule is unlocked to a joyful reunion with the four astronauts.
Steve Backshall spotted two of the UK's last surviving orcas which he described as one of his "greatest British wildlife moments".
France's Eiffel Tower and Barcelona's Sagrada Família Basilica were among the famous global landmarks that went dark for an hour on Saturday night.
The 98m tall Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft made a four mile journey from their assembly building to Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Tenerife hit by snow as Storm Therese batters Canary Islands
BBC science correspondent Pallab Ghosh explains what happens if an astronaut gets ill in space.
From meteor showers to supermoons, here are some of the sights that wowed stargazers this year.
The Met Office has issued yellow severe weather warnings for both wind and rain.
Baroness Kathy Willis talks about…
Polystyrene can be upcycled into carbon sponge material.
Anthropic has warned that recursive-self-improving AI could be on the horizon, but the truth is the company is more immediately concerned with marketing itself for a blockbuster initial public offering on the stock market, says Matthew Sparkes
<p><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/05/Kvinna-mikrofon-mote-1024x576.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Kvinna vid en mikrofon" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/05/Kvinna-mikrofon-mote-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/05/Kvinna-mikrofon-mote-300x169.jpg 300w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/05/Kvinna-mikrofon-mote-768x432.jpg 768w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/05/Kvinna-mikrofon-mote-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/05/Kvinna-mikrofon-mote-850x478.jpg 850w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/05/Kvinna-mikrofon-mote-310x174.jpg 310w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/05/Kvinna-mikrofon-mote-1102x620.jpg 1102w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/05/Kvinna-mikrofon-mote.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></p>
<p>Statsvetare vid Uppsala universitet har analyserat svar från Brottsförebyggande rådets återkommande enkät Politikernas trygghetsundersökning. I enkäterna har politiker på nationell och lokal nivå svarat på frågor om de avstått från att uttala sig offentligt på grund av oro för hot eller trakasserier. Studien bygger på enkäter som genomfördes mellan 2012 och 2022. – Vi kan […]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://forskning.se/2026/06/08/radsla-tystar-kvinnliga-politiker-i-debatten/">Rädsla tystar kvinnliga politiker i debatten</a> appeared first on <a href="https://forskning.se">forskning.se</a>.</p>
The out-of-Africa migration, in which ancient humans went on to inhabit every other continent except Antarctica, may not have been one moment in time, but a long and slow process. Columnist Michael Marshall examines how archaeologists are rethinking this critical part of our history
We’ve all been there. You walk upstairs only to find yourself wondering why you bothered. You blank on an acquaintance’s name, just as you’re introducing them. Or maybe, after a frantic search, you find your car keys in the fridge of all places.
Such momentary lapses of memory can be disconcerting, but they are part and parcel of getting older, and very much to be expected. “Decline in what researchers call episodic memory – what happened, where and when – is a normal part of human cognitive ageing,” says Ulman Lindenberger , a cognitive neuroscientist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. “In most adults, decline becomes apparent in their 60s… and it affects all stages of memory, from the encoding of new events over consolidation to retention and recall.”
Read more Unprecedented insight into memory champion's brain reveals his tricks
Unprecedented insight into memory champion's brain reveals his tricks
This is largely explained by structural and functional changes to the brain that begin in middle age and accelerate from there. In a 2025 paper analysing more than 3700 “cognitively healthy” adults, Lindenberger and his colleagues found age-related memory decline tracks closely with the deterioration of connections between brain regions , itself the result of the gradual degradation of the fatty coating that insulates neurons, and shrinkage of the hippocampus – a brain region crucial in forming new memories.
This is nothing to worry about, says Lindenberger. “Learning and episodic memory are all about forming new, and remembering previously formed, associations – and the corresponding machinery of our brains becomes less reliable with advancing adult age.”
What’s more, in many cases, everyday memory failures are actually just failures of attention: if your brain never properly encoded where you put your keys because you were distracted or stressed in the moment, there isn’t much in the way of memory to retrieve later.
The…
A diverse range of bird species has been recorded at a solar park on rewetted peatland in Germany, suggesting that combining energy generation with habitat restoration could benefit biodiversity, the climate and the economy
<p><img width="1024" height="576" src="https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/06/seniorer-joggar-1024x576.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Två äldre personer joggar i lummig omgivning." decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/06/seniorer-joggar-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/06/seniorer-joggar-300x169.jpg 300w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/06/seniorer-joggar-768x432.jpg 768w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/06/seniorer-joggar-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/06/seniorer-joggar-850x478.jpg 850w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/06/seniorer-joggar-310x174.jpg 310w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/06/seniorer-joggar-1102x620.jpg 1102w, https://forskning.se/app/uploads/2026/06/seniorer-joggar.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></p>
<p>Hjärt- och kärlsjukdomar är den vanligaste dödsorsaken i världen. Ett tidigt tecken på ökad risk är att artärerna blir stelare, något som kan bidra till både hjärtinfarkt och stroke. I en studie har forskare vid Karolinska institutet undersökt om fysisk kondition tidigare i livet kan förutsäga hur elastiska blodkärlen är när människor blir äldre. Studien […]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://forskning.se/2026/06/08/bra-kondition-kopplas-till-friskare-karl/">Bra kondition kopplas till friskare kärl</a> appeared first on <a href="https://forskning.se">forskning.se</a>.</p>
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned tech firms, including Apple and Google, that they must voluntarily implement tools to stop children sharing explicit images, but experts warn this is easier said than done
Some fossilized filaments are giving Earth’s first flying vertebrates a shiny new makeover.
At least one species of pterosaur shimmered in iridescent greens and magentas , scientists report May 10 at bioRxiv.org. The discovery reshapes what we know about the fearsome flying reptiles, hinting at heightened metabolisms and hidden courtship displays.
“This is one of the most intriguing and surprising fossil discoveries of the past few years,” says paleontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved with the research.
The new work focuses on a previously unexamined specimen of Sinopterus dongi , a small pterosaur whose wingspan could reach nearly 2 meters. Found in northeast China, the fossil is more than 120 million years old and shows evidence of extraordinary soft tissue preservation, offering an unusual glimpse into how pterosaurs might have looked.
“Soft tissue preservation at this level of fidelity is incredibly rare,” says David Martill, a paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth in England who was not involved with the work.
Prior research has found that pterosaurs had pigment-containing structures known as melanosomes in their pycnofibers — small filaments of different shapes and sizes, with many similar to protofeathers found in some dinosaurs. Those findings have long led paleontologists to envision pterosaurs with colorful patterns on their crests and other body parts. But the finding that they might be iridescent is something new.
Iridescence occurs when an object reflects different colors depending on the viewing angle, creating a kaleidoscopic spectacle. It has evolved many times in the natural world — in insects, birds and even some plants and fungi. In each case, the shimmer comes from layered structures that scatter light and split it into myriad colors.
For the new study, researchers scrutinized the fossil’s microscopic structure using scanning electron microscopy and other techniques. They found that the…
The Philippines earthquake is massive, but it could’ve been bigger—here’s why
The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit the Philippines happened at a subduction zone. Such places are capable of producing the largest earthquakes possible
By Andrea Thompson edited by Claire Cameron
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck offshore of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, at 7:37 A.M. local time is the largest earthquake to hit anywhere in the world so far this year, according to U.S. Geological Survey records. But the temblor, which has killed at least 35 individuals and injured scores of people, was actually on the smaller side for the type of fault it occurred at, seismologist Lucy Jones says.
An earthquake’s size is determined by the area of the fault rupture—the larger the area, the larger the quake. The highest magnitudes only happen at plate boundaries, Jones says, “because that’s the only place you have a big enough fault.” For context, there is around one earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or higher somewhere in the world and some dozen in the range of magnitude 7.0 to 7.9 each year on average; this year there have been six of the latter so far.
Subduction zones—places where one plate is diving below another—are where the very largest quakes occur because the fault dips down at a shallow angle, creating a larger area of slip, Jones explains. In comparison, though the strike-slip faults of California can produce a magnitude 8.0 or higher earthquake, the faults there go straight down and quickly hit hotter rocks below, halting the movement and constraining the quake.
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Some subduction zones, such as one off Chile, can create the largest earthquakes ever measured because they have younger rocks that dip at a par…
<p>The answer to today’s puzzle</p><p>Earlier today I set this elegant number puzzle. Here it is again with a solution.</p><p><strong>Nose to tail </strong></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/08/did-you-solve-it-do-you-have-a-snout-for-numbers">Continue reading...</a>
This Prada-designed onesie will help keep NASA’s Artemis astronauts cool on the moon
On Sunday Axiom Space and Prada unveiled the cooling inner garment that NASA’s Artemis astronauts will wear under their space suits on the moon
NASA’s Artemis astronauts will bring high fashion to the high frontier on future missions by wearing a Prada-designed inner layer beneath their space suits when they walk on the moon’s surface. Called the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG), this futuristic onesie is riddled with tubing that can circulate cold water around the astronauts’ bodies, ensuring they won’t overheat while they gad about on the moon. And of course, it also features the signature red stripe of Prada’s activewear line on one sleeve.
The Italian fashion house has been working for years with Axiom Space, a private company commissioned by NASA to make new space suits for its astronauts to wear during upcoming Artemis missions. The cooling onesie, which was unveiled at a press event on Sunday, will be worn under the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) space suit, which is also designed in collaboration with Prada. The AxEMU is the first major upgrade to NASA’s space suits in more than 20 years. Currently, the space agency relies on a similar design to the space suits worn during the Apollo era.
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“When we unveiled the AxEMU, we announced that the collaboration between Prada and Axiom Space would continue beyond that first milestone,” said Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s group chief marketing officer and head of sustainability, in a statement.
“Today, we are proud to present a new achievement born from the unique combination of Axiom Space’s pioneering expertise and Prada’s know-how in design, patternmaking, and advan…
With automated proof-checkers, a problem can be broken up into small chunks, solved bit-by-bit, then reassembled with confidence that every piece is correct. For some, this heralds a new area in mathematical research. <p>The post <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-terry-tao-became-an-evangelist-for-ai-in-math-20260608/" target="_blank">How Terry Tao Became an Evangelist for AI in Math</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org" target="_blank">Quanta Magazine</a></p>
Over half of the planet’s freshwater reservoirs will be “functionally dead” by 2060 due to sediment build-up, a study has predicted.
Dams block silt, sand and gravel from flowing downstream, so over time this material accumulates in reservoirs, shrinking the space for water. The trapping of sediment can also compromise dam safety and have damaging impacts on downstream ecosystems.
Read more Oceans are darkening all over the planet – what’s going on?
Oceans are darkening all over the planet – what’s going on?
Kai Liu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China, and his colleagues used satellite imagery, sedimentation data and machine learning to analyse the capacity of over 550,000 reservoirs globally.
They found that the amount of water being lost annually to sedimentation is more than 36 cubic kilometres – comparable to the volume of China’s massive Three Gorges Reservoir.
According to the researchers, a reservoir is considered “functionally dead” once it is over half full of sediment.
Unmissable news about our planet, delivered straight to your inbox each month.
Australia and Spain are projected to be the worst-affected countries. Nearly 85 per cent of Australian and three-quarters of Spanish reservoirs are predicted to pass their functional lifespans by 2060.
In arid regions, nearly three-quarters of reservoirs may become functionally dead by 2060, compared with half of those in humid zones. In Namibia, over 99 per cent of dams are in danger, and along the Western Australian coast, the figure is nearly 96 per cent.
Liu and his colleagues estimate that each decade the world is losing over 7 per cent of its freshwater storage capacity, meaning that water supplies to over 2 billion people are threatened, along with more than a quarter of global irrigated land.
To address the problem, the team recommends strategies such as including upstream reforestation, land stabilisation and erosion control, which would reduce sediment flow into reservoirs. E…
<p>Trial suggests monoclonal antibody can help retain lean body mass when losing weight with GLP-1 medicines</p><p>A drug that promotes muscle growth could significantly reduce the loss of lean body mass when using slimming jabs, research suggests.</p><p>While GLP-1 based jabs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/may/17/weight-loss-drugs-altering-views-how-body-brain-work">proved highly effective</a> at helping people who are overweight or obese, experts <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2026/jun/04/ive-lost-my-butt-how-rapid-weight-loss-can-leave-you-with-less-muscle-and-more-fat">have warned</a> it is not only fat that is lost. Studies suggest 25-40% of total weight loss is down to a reduction in lean body mass – non-fat components of the body, including muscle.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/08/muscle-growth-drug-lean-body-mass-slimming-jabs">Continue reading...</a>
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When people drop weight on GLP-1 meds, they can also lose muscle. But a proof-of-concept drug might help preserve this lean tissue.
When taken at the same time as a powerful weight loss medication, the experimental antibody let patients hang on to lean body mass , scientists report June 8 in Nature Medicine .
The drug has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is available only via intravenous infusions, so it’s not something consumers are likely to get their hands on any time soon, says study coauthor Richard Pratley, a clinician and metabolic disease researcher at the AdventHealth Translational Research Institute in Orlando, Fla. But the work cracks open the door on how to save muscle that might otherwise be lost. That may be good news for GLP-1 users, but important questions remain.
Scientists don’t know if retaining lean mass like this actually translates to better health. They also don’t know the long-term effects or whether such drugs might help people beyond GLP-1 users, like older individuals whose muscles are shrinking with age. “We need to learn what these medications are capable of,” Pratley says.
GLP-1 drugs can spark drastic and rapid weight loss. But not all the weight lost is fat. Some 25 to 40 percent is lean body mass, which includes a person’s muscle, organs and blood. Though patients may lose some muscle when they drop lean mass, it may be less than people think, says Randy Seeley, an obesity researcher at University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor who was not involved with the study. Despite what you hear from social media influencers about the importance of maintaining muscle mass when taking Ozempic, he says, for most people, “this isn’t a problem that needs to be solved.”
That view is supported by clinical trials on GLP-1 drugs. For most participants, Pratley says, losing lean body mass doesn’t…
The biggest U.S. health insurer is changing how it pays for lactation counseling, and it could cut payment for many providers.
Revolution and Tango yield promising cancer results, Incyte buys bleeding disorder drug, and more biotech news
Thirteen years ago, I was on the brink of death. My nearly year-long battle with anorexia nervosa had reached a tipping point: tests showed my heart could give out at any moment, and I was rushed to the emergency room.
But I didn’t care. I only wanted to go home and celebrate my 15 th birthday with the two chocolate-covered strawberries I had allotted in my self-imposed calorie restrictions.
It wasn’t that I wanted to die. The fear of eating more and gaining weight simply felt more immediate than the reality of my heart failing. That paradox – continuing to starve yourself despite the consequences – is why anorexia nervosa remains one of the deadliest and most challenging mental health conditions to treat. Roughly a third of those affected don’t recover , even with treatment.
Read more Chronic inflammation messes with your mind. Here's how to calm it
Chronic inflammation messes with your mind. Here's how to calm it
“We could do much, much better. That is clear,” says Ulrike Schmidt at King’s College London.
She is part of a growing group of researchers who, in recent years, have turned to the brain for answers, and these efforts are finally bearing fruit. A wave of studies now suggests that anorexia nervosa alters circuits governing reward, habit and emotion – changes that may explain why eating can become so aversive, even for people who want to recover.
The latest on what’s new in science and why it matters each day.
While it is still early days, these insights are already reshaping how we think about anorexia and inspiring potential new therapies, from brain stimulation to experimental medications, that could one day shift treatment outcomes.
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterised by severe calorie restriction and an intense fear of gaining weight, typically leading to dangerously low body weight. Estimates suggest it affects up to 4 per cent of women and 0.3 per cent of men during their lifetime, though some studies indicate incidences …