Featuring the latest in daily science news, Verge Science is all you need to keep track of what’s going on in health, the environment, and your whole world. Through our articles, we keep a close eye on the overlap between science and technology news — so you’re more informed.
The hyped AI-saved-my-dog story has reached its inevitable conclusion.
Astronomers warn that a recent FCC decision about mirror-equipped satellites could hinder their ability to observe the cosmos, as well as lead to permanent eye damage.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of the AI coding tool Cursor on Friday. Cursor says it’s going to work on the company’s Grok AI chatbot, which added a new AI agent feature this week.
[X (formerly Twitter)]
Virgin Galactic is running a poll to choose the name for an upcoming member of its fleet. Unfortunately, you’re limited to voting for a preselected group of four finalists: Horizon, Explorer, Ascend, and Apeiron. All appropriately boring names — no Rocket McRocketface here.
The end of USAID, which Elon Musk fed “into the wood chipper”, will cause an extra 14 million deaths through 2030, including 4.5 million in children under the age of 5. SpaceX shares are $141.10 as of this writing, above their IPO price of $135.
Correction: A previous version of this post referred to the journal article’s estimates as “new.” It was published in 2025.
A person on Reddit says their friend’s phone added craters to the Sun during yesterday’s solar eclipse. The poster doesn’t say what phone this was captured on, but it’s definitely something we’ve seen before.
TechCrunch reports that the new factory would be located 45 minutes outside of Houston:
The new factory, called Project Crystal Sun, could cost as much as $10.1 billion. Tesla has applied for tax incentives to partially offset the cost, saying that it is exploring other sites “across multiple U.S. states.” The factory would create about 9,700 full-time jobs, Tesla said.
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
Today there will be a total solar eclipse viewable from “parts of Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, the Atlantic Ocean, Spain, and a small corner of Portugal,” as well as a partial eclipse across some of the US and most of Canada, Europe, and northwestern Africa.
NASA has a livestream covering the event, and if you’re tempted to look for yourself, make sure you’re properly equipped.
The FIA has recognized the Hydromax’s Speed Week runs at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, measuring 400.623 mph and 412.135 mph for an average of 406.320 mph, as the new record for a hydrogen internal combustion-powered vehicle.
JCB makes heavy equipment and shoved two “production-based” hydrogen digger engines into a slim frame to set the record, with British driver and outright land speed record holder Andy Green behind the wheel.
The probe’s remaining science instruments will keep working for an extra year or more after NASA powered off certain devices in favor of lower-powered ones. NASA also plans to send the “Big Bang” update to the probe’s twin, Voyager 1, in the coming months.
Do not look directly at the sun during tomorrow’s total solar eclipse, the first in mainland Europe in nearly 30 years. Also, do not eat bleach, no matter the day.
Do, however, follow our advice on how to buy a pair of certified glasses, make a pinhole projector, and steps and gear needed to photograph the celestial event.
No specs or timeframe accompanied the photos, or even a justification for why you’d want satellite internet in a taxi that targets dense urban environments where cellphone signal is strong. The car certainly doesn’t need it to drive, but, as Electrek notes, it’s a nice recurring revenue stream for SpaceX, and further justification for the two companies to merge and make Richie Rich another $1 trillion richer.
An escape clause in Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay package approved last year would eliminate daunting operational targets if SpaceX were to purchase Tesla, as many expect. Under the terms, an acquisition treats those performance goals as met. Depending on the acquisition price SpaceX sets for Tesla, which Musk can heavily influence, a merger could instantly award him hundreds of millions of Tesla shares and consolidate his voting control.
The executive order backs a new childhood vaccine schedule with 11 immunizations instead of 17. As reported by The NYT, “it is unclear whether the order has any legal power,” as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sets immunization schedules based on recommendations from a committee of medical experts.
[The New York Times]
After health officials linked its lettuce to the nationwide Cyclospora outbreak, Taylor Farms is now recalling over a dozen products containing jalapeños across Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Kroger.
These products contain fresh peppers from Coast Citrus Distributors, which recently recalled its jalapeños over Salmonella contamination. Taylor Farms says it’s not “aware of any reported illnesses linked to its products containing jalapeños.”
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You gotta pay to play though.
A roughly five-ton upper stage of a discarded Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the moon on Wednesday after floating in space since its launch last year. The impact, which SpaceX says was unintentional, was too faint for ground telescopes to see, but South Korea’s lunar orbiter has now shared images of the crater it created.
A new study published in the journal Science used genome language models to produce viruses we’ve never seen before in nature. The resulting bacteriophages pose no threat to humans. The research simultaneously raises hope for medical advances, while stoking fear that AI could enable the creation of new diseases and biological weapons.
[The New York Times]
Srini Gopalan in response to SpaceX saying it plans to “acquire quite a few” of T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon’s customers by turning Starlink dishes into tiny cellular base stations using the limited spectrum it acquired from EchoStar:
You’ve got to ask the question of ‘What is the gap in the market that they’re looking to serve? I always prefer starting these conversations back from the customer: Why would a customer buy a new cellular service? Where do they go? What’s their differentiation? It’s clearly not having a broad network.
[Financial Times]
The company shared research about how its WeatherNext AI model can predict a cyclone’s track, intensity, and wind structure up to 15 days in advance, giving “forecasters an extra day’s worth of predictive accuracy.”
[Google DeepMind]
The massive $16.8 billion chip facility, which is being built by Tesla and SpaceX with help from Intel, will be located in Grimes County, population 29,268. After securing over a billion dollars in tax breaks from two rural school districts, SpaceX says it will break ground later this year. The fab will supply AI chips to power Musk’s plans to build a “robot army” that includes self-driving cars and humanoid robots, as well as for the data centers he plans on launching into space.
Despite the preferences of some, Moderna announced that after years of work, mFLUSIVA (mRNA-1010) has been approved for use in adults aged 50 to 64, with an accelerated approval for adults 65 and up as they wait for the results of a follow-up study.
While Moderna plans to roll it out by this fall, the WSJ notes it’s still unclear what RFK Jr.‘s vaccine recommendation panel will say about this use of the Nobel Prize-winning approach.
[The New York Times]
A lot of staffers subscribe just because we enjoy his work (and when he gets his vacation ruined). But today’s newsletter is about the SpaceX lockup expiring — how it should work vs what we will find out tomorrow about how it will work — and how the noted AI hedge fund Situational Awareness may have tanked the bets of noted AI hedge fund Situational Awareness.
[Bloomberg]
Elon Musk’s exploding rockets are a front for the real moneymakers.
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
One day we will have a talk with the people who don’t understand what science fiction is (writing about politics with plausible deniability). Until then, please enjoy Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” originally published in Collier’s in 1950 and taking place on April 28th, 1985. In The Martian Chronicles, the date is revised to August 4, 2026 and guess what! That’s today.
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[Library of Short Stories]
The original satellite internet company “for rural America” has filed for bankruptcy after running out of cash and hemorrhaging subscribers to SpaceX. The service will continue to operate during proceedings, but will pivot away from consumers to focus on businesses and governments. It follows EchoStar’s Dish filing for chapter 11 protection in June.
Using Antrophic’s Claude to exploit a security flaw that’s existed for decades, researchers successfully added and removed DNA profiles from files, meaning bad actors could theoretically frame an innocent person or erase a suspect. Equipment manufacturer Thermo Fisher has issued a software patch. There’s no evidence the vulnerability — which requires local lab access — had ever been exploited.
This report from The New York Times details how debris from rockets, satellites, and other space hardware falls to Earth each week — sometimes unpredictably — as the global space race heats up:
If objects are in free fall, even the best rocket scientists cannot accurately predict where they will land or whether they will fully incinerate. A one-minute error in predicting re-entry changes the landing zone by nearly 300 miles, according to the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit research group.
[The New York Times]
Applied without scary needles or noise.
Per The New York Times:
Utah became the first state to legalize plug-in solar systems last year. Nine others, including New Jersey, Virginia and Colorado, have joined it, and lawmakers in California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and several other states are considering doing so.
Here’s my review from 2024 in Europe where these so-called “balcony solar systems” have been gaining traction for years.
“Fake news,” is how he responded to a Wall Street Journal report on the possible sale of Tesla’s business in its second-largest market:
Now, some Tesla executives have been told to prepare for a separation of the China business ahead of a potential merger, a person familiar with those talks said. And Tesla advisers have discussed possible options for a separation, including a spinoff, sale or closure, another person said.
Musk responded similarly to reports of mass layoffs at Twitter, canceling the $25,000 Model 2 ... you get the idea.
The orders will cover 18 Falcon 9 missions that are expected to be finished by the end of next year. SpaceX has already gotten more than $7 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2026, according to Reuters.
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
