Thursday, April 16, 2026

The Artemis II crew will hold a postflight news conference today at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, following their historic 10-day lunar flyby mission that splashed down on April 10 after taking them 252,756 miles from Earth—the farthest any humans have traveled.^[1]

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science have observed electrons in graphene flowing like a nearly frictionless liquid, defying the Wiedemann-Franz law by more than 200 times and creating what they call a 'Dirac fluid'—an exotic quantum state similar to quark-gluon plasma.^[2]

Researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center have created powerful antibodies that block Epstein-Barr virus from entering immune cells, with one antibody completely preventing infection in lab models—a major advance against a virus that affects 95% of people and is linked to multiple cancers.^[3]

A Virginia Tech undergraduate has identified a new dinosaur species, Ptychotherates bucculentus, from a crushed 200-million-year-old skull found in a drawer, revealing it may have been one of the last surviving members of the early carnivorous Herrerasauria lineage.^[4]

A new study proposes detecting extraterrestrial life by looking for statistical patterns across many planets rather than focusing on single worlds, suggesting that if life spreads and alters planetary environments, it could leave behind correlations linking planets together.^[5]

Scientists have discovered a 550-million-year-old sponge fossil in China that likely lacked hard skeletal parts, helping resolve a long-standing puzzle about why molecular clock estimates date sponges to 700 million years ago but fossils from that era have been elusive.^[6]

New research indicates that a lifetime of mental stimulation—such as reading, writing, and learning new skills—may reduce Alzheimer's risk by up to 38%, with people showing the highest levels of cognitive enrichment experiencing symptoms years later than others.^[7]

The James Webb Space Telescope has detected what may be the strongest evidence yet for the universe's first 'Population III' stars, finding them clustered around a small object that formed just 400 million years after the Big Bang and emitting signatures of doubly ionized helium.^[8]

Harvard researchers have discovered that adding randomness to how robots move can prevent gridlock when large numbers of robots work together in crowded environments—a counterintuitive finding that could improve swarm robotics efficiency.^[9]

Pakistan's military chief has arrived in Tehran carrying a new message from Washington as diplomatic efforts continue to revive US-Iran talks, with a two-week ceasefire set to expire on April 22 and both sides discussing conditions for extending negotiations.^[10]