Science

One sky, three verdicts: why Singapore says unhealthy and Malaysia says moderate

The same 70 micrograms of fine particulate reads 116 on Singapore's PSI, 96 on Malaysia's API and 161 on the US AQI. Almost all of the difference sits in one number — the concentration each treats as index 100 — and Malaysia's is 75.5, which is 2.16 times its own national standard and a WHO interim target rather than a destination.

4 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Science

NASA's Roman Telescope Has Hubble's Mirror and a Hundred Times the Field

Launched 30 August and en route to L2, with first images expected in early 2027. It is a survey instrument, so the output that matters is a catalogue, not a picture.

4 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Science

China's New Reusable Rocket Reached Orbit and Skipped the Recovery Attempt

Galactic Energy's Pallas-1 flew from Jiuquan on 1 September and delivered its payload. The booster came down uncontrolled, because reuse testing starts later.

4 Sep 2026 · 7 min read

Science

Your CO2 monitor's red line is a 19th-century number, and it is drifting

The 1000 ppm line is Pettenkofer's, proposed in the 19th century as a proxy for whether a room smelled stuffy. ASHRAE removed it from its standard in the 1990s and says in print that it sets no CO2 limit at all. Europe writes its criteria as ppm above outdoors instead — so as outdoor CO2 rises, the fixed line is quietly changing sides, and there is a date on it.

4 Sep 2026 · 7 min read

Science

Leap seconds end on 20 May 2027, and the Earth has already turned around

The committee that has inserted 27 leap seconds since 1972 is proposing to stop, and to let clock time drift up to an hour from solar time. We ran the projection everyone runs from the published rotation data — and then found it obsolete, because the trend it depends on reversed sign within eight months of the last usable data point.

3 Sep 2026 · 8 min read

Science

Mitochondrial DNA does not use the genetic code you were taught

Four codons differ between the standard genetic code and the one your mitochondria use, and two of them are stop signals moving in opposite directions. A mitochondrial gene read with the standard table comes out both too short and too long.

1 Sep 2026 · 6 min read

Science

Fukushima Holds 880 Tons of Debris. Crews Have Removed Under a Gram.

Two trial retrievals have brought out 0.887 grams against 880 tons of fuel debris. The grams are not the project; they are the specification for tooling nobody has built yet.

31 Aug 2026 · 6 min read

Science

Why your DNA ancestry estimate is vaguer if you are Asian

A result full of "Broadly" labels is telling you something real, but not about your ancestry. One company's own documentation puts 73 reference samples behind maritime Southeast Asia and 2,000 behind Wales.

31 Aug 2026 · 7 min read

Science

When a DNA match could be your grandparent or your half-sibling

A match sharing around 1,700 centimorgans could be a grandparent, an aunt or uncle, or a half-sibling. The averages for all three sit within eighteen centimorgans of each other, so the total cannot separate them — but the segment count can.

31 Aug 2026 · 5 min read

Science

SpaceX Is Casting Turbine Blades Because Almost Nobody Else Can

A gas turbine is mostly components any industrial economy can build. One part is not, and the queue for it has been quietly rationing how fast data centres can generate their own power.

31 Aug 2026 · 6 min read