Monday, March 9, 2026

Scientists from Project CETI captured the first detailed video of a sperm whale birth, revealing that females from unrelated family groups work together as 'midwives' to support the mother during labor and lift the newborn to the surface—the first quantitative evidence of cooperative birth assistance among non-primates.^[1]

NASA announced a major shift in its Artemis program, pausing the planned Gateway lunar orbital space station to instead invest $20 billion over seven years in building a permanent base on the moon's surface near the south pole, with the goal of establishing sustained human presence.^[2]

Researchers discovered 24 new species of deep-sea amphipods in the Pacific's Clarion-Clipperton Zone, including an entirely new superfamily—a rare evolutionary finding that represents a new branch on the tree of life in the vast region between Hawaii and Mexico.^[3]

Astronomers using a new AI tool called RAVEN validated 118 exoplanets, including 31 newly detected planets, and identified over 2,000 additional candidates by analyzing four years of data from NASA's TESS spacecraft, with about half of the candidates never before seen.^[4]

Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine discovered that metformin, the diabetes drug prescribed for over 60 years, works partly through a previously unknown brain pathway by suppressing a protein called Rap1 in the hypothalamus—even responding to doses thousands of times lower than oral amounts.^[5]

The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade 'the gravest crime against humanity' and calling for reparations as 'a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs,' with 123 countries voting in favor while the U.S., Israel, and Argentina voted against.^[6]

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope combined observations to capture Saturn's atmosphere and rings in unprecedented detail, with Webb's infrared imaging revealing the planet's icy rings glowing brightly and distinctive grey-green polar regions that may indicate high-altitude aerosols or auroral activity.^[7]

NASA's Artemis 2 mission is preparing for an April 1 launch from Kennedy Space Center, which will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby—the first crewed mission to the moon in over 50 years since Apollo 17.^[8]

German startup Isar Aerospace is preparing to launch its Spectrum rocket from Norway's Andøya Spaceport; if successful, it will become the first rocket to reach orbit from European soil, marking a milestone for the continent's commercial space industry.^[9]