Science

BuzzRAG Science Desk — 2026-07-18

Space innovations, Mars discoveries, and cosmic phenomena headline today's science updates.

Project Pele: The Pentagon's Portable Nuclear Reactor

The Pentagon's Project Pele aims to power remote military bases with a containerized nuclear reactor. Here's what the technology promises—and what it can't yet answer.

Ancient Egyptian Princesses Were Trained Weapon Users

New skeletal analysis of five Middle Kingdom mummies reveals ancient Egyptian princesses used bows and daggers — and a bias that buried that fact for decades.

SpaceX Starship Flight 13 Aborts at Launch

SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 aborted at the last second when engines failed to ignite. What the scrub reveals about iterative testing, redundancy, and real stakes.

Hannah Cairo Disproved a 40-Year-Old Math Conjecture at 17

At 17, Hannah Cairo overturned the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture using a hypercube and a coin diagram. Here's what she actually did—and why it matters.

Do DMT Entities Point to Alien Consciousness?

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman claims DMT entities may be real alien minds. The math is real. Whether it proves anything about consciousness is a different question.

Solar Cycle 25 Was Twice as Strong as Predicted

Solar cycle 25 peaked at nearly double forecast levels. Here's what the Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter, and a flawed forecasting system revealed about our star.

How Language Shapes Thought, According to Lera Boroditsky

Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky explains how the language you speak shapes memory, color perception, and thought—and what's lost when languages disappear.

Marine Geology: What Lives on the Ocean Floor

From hydrothermal vents to the Challenger Deep, marine geology shapes ecosystems, climate, and our best guesses about where life can exist.

Viking Landers and the Unsolved Mars Life Debate

Fifty years after Viking landed on Mars, one experiment's positive result remains unexplained. Here's what the science actually shows—and what we've learned since.

The Physics of Flight Most Passengers Never Notice

Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down the engineering and physics hiding in plain sight on every commercial flight—from cabin pressure to wing geometry.

Ten Surprising Biological Facts About the Human Body

From ancient viral DNA to self-digesting stomachs, these ten well-established biological facts reveal a body far stranger than most people imagine.

Anil Menon Reaches the ISS on His First Spaceflight

NASA astronaut Anil Menon launched to the ISS on July 14 aboard Soyuz MS-29. His eight-month mission raises questions about what space cooperation looks like next.

Ontario Wildfire Smoke Chokes Cities Across North America

Roughly 100 uncontrolled Ontario wildfires are sending smoke 1,000 miles into the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, ranking Toronto worst air quality globally.

What the Dinosaur Asteroid Actually Did to Earth

New research reframes the Chicxulub impact—not just as a mass extinction event, but as a creative force that may have built the Amazon rainforest.

Space Stations Beyond the ISS: A Forgotten History

From a Cold War spy base to a Soviet ice rescue to China's chicken-wing oven in orbit — the real history of space stations is wilder than you think.

Curiosity at Sol 4948: Reading Mars Like a Genome

Curiosity Rover hit Sol 4948 in Gale Crater. What its mineralogy tells us about Mars' chemical autobiography—and why that question is getting urgent.

CERN's LHC and the Search for Hidden Dimensions

Inside CERN's Large Hadron Collider: how 600 million proton collisions per second could reveal dark matter, extra dimensions, and the Higgs boson.

Hawking Radiation and the Ghost Light of Dead Universes

Hawking radiation may be the mechanism that erases one universe and seeds the next. Here's what the physics actually supports—and what it doesn't.

SpaceX Hits 600 Falcon 9 Booster Reuses

SpaceX reached 600 flight-proven Falcon 9 booster launches on July 13-14, 2026. Here's what that number actually means for spaceflight economics.