Sunday, July 19, 2026

India's Skyroot Aerospace successfully launched Vikram-1, making India the third country to achieve orbital launch capability through private enterprise, as the four-stage rocket deployed customer payloads into low-Earth orbit.^[1]

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured detailed images of gas feeding the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 4696, revealing a vast filament funneling material into an 800-light-year-wide spinning disk.^[2]

A team of mathematicians used whimsical "silly sprinklers" to solve Feynman's famous sprinkler problem, demonstrating that the rotation of both normal and reverse sprinklers is driven by the momentum of flowing water.^[3]

A new particle detector called PLATON could replace millions of tiny detector components with a single block of light-producing material, using a light-field camera, photon sensors, and AI to reconstruct particle paths in detailed 3D.^[4]

A major DNA study has rewritten the koala's evolutionary story, revealing that the species suffered a dramatic population collapse about 100,000 years ago—long before humans arrived in Australia—and that every living koala traces back to a small surviving group.^[5]

Scientists say new technologies have reopened the debate over whether Mars could someday be terraformed, with researchers arguing the concept has moved from science fiction to a serious topic worth exploring.^[6]

A 12-week intermittent fasting program produced weight-loss benefits that were still visible a year later, with participants who ate within an eight-hour window maintaining more weight loss than those who followed their usual eating schedule.^[7]

NASA's Dragonfly mission reached a major milestone with the delivery of its nearly 13-foot-long fuselage, as teams began integrating mechanical, thermal, and electrical systems for the rotorcraft that will fly across Saturn's moon Titan.^[8]

The UK government nationalised British Steel on Thursday, fully taking over the loss-making company from Chinese steelmaker Jingye on national security grounds, prompting China to warn it will closely monitor how Britain handles the matter.^[9]

The FCC has approved a demonstration launch for Reflect Orbital's Eärendil-1, an 18x18 meter controllable reflector satellite intended to deliver on-demand illumination comparable to full-Moon brightness over targeted areas.^[10]