Monday, August 17, 2026

A total solar eclipse crossed Europe on August 12, with millions of skywatchers in Spain, Iceland, and Greenland witnessing the first total eclipse visible from mainland Spain in over a century, while the path of totality stretched across the Northern Hemisphere.^[1]

University of Maryland astronomers have identified the first-ever "wandering" supermassive black hole lurking approximately 30,000 light-years from the center of its galaxy, revealing itself only when it tore apart a passing star in a rare tidal disruption event.^[2]

CT scans of the world's only two complete dodo skulls suggest the extinct bird may have had a stronger sense of smell, enhanced tactile perception through its beak, and a lifestyle extending into dawn and dusk, overturning centuries-old myths about the species.^[3]

Physicists have proposed using a centuries-old Cavendish test method to detect theorized millicharged particles, which carry very small electric charges and are expected to interact weakly with ordinary matter.^[4]

The James Webb Space Telescope has identified MoM-BH*-1, the earliest known "black hole star" observed at cosmic dawn, seen just 660 million years after the Big Bang as a rapidly accreting black hole embedded in dense, dust-free gas.^[5]

Water-bombing aircraft and firefighting crews are working to control Belgium's largest modern-day wildfire, which has scorched vast areas of a nature reserve near the German border.^[6]

Seoul has been named the favorite worldwide city by US travel media outlet Trazee Travel for the fifth consecutive year, becoming the first city to achieve this distinction.^[7]

Researchers have reconstructed the first scientifically accurate mounted skeleton of Deinosuchus schwimmeri, a 31-foot prehistoric crocodilian capable of attacking dinosaurs, now on display at Georgia's Tellus Science Museum.^[8]