Fifteen people this week emerged from living in total isolation in a cave in France for 40 days as part of an experiment in "Deep Time."
Why it matters: Without smartphones and clocks the participants were forced to simply be with themselves. In doing so, they provided an object lesson for how artificially regulated our modern lives have become.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were 94% effective in preventing hospitalization for COVID-19 among adults 65 years and older, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Why it matters: The research, which studied 417 hospitalized adults in 14 states between January and March, adds real-world evidence from the clinical trials that vaccination protects against severe illness and hospitalization.
Officials are stepping up efforts to reach some of the world's most remote regions in a global vaccination drive, as the world crosses 1 billion total COVID-19 vaccines administered.
Epicurious will no longer publish beef recipes in what is being called a "pro-planet" shift, the popular digital food magazine has announced.
Driving the news: The Condé Nast-owned publication's Maggie Hoffman and David Tamarkin wrote in a post Monday that the decision was "solely about sustainability, about not giving airtime to one of the world's worst climate offenders."
NASA and SpaceX still appear to be pushing to meet the 2024 deadline to land astronauts back on the Moon first set by the Trump administration.
The big picture: In its first 100 days, the Biden administration undid many of the Trump administration's policies but President Biden has largely hewed closely to Trump-era space policies.
Astronomer Jill Tarter wants the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) to be taken seriously.
Why it matters: SETI as a scientific field has long played second fiddle to other, well-funded searches for direct and indirect signs of life — like NASA’s Mars program and the hunt for alien planets around distant stars.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is challenging NASA's decision to award SpaceX the sole contract to build a human lander system for the space agency's return to the Moon.
Why it matters: These types of big government contracts are hugely important as a source of funding for Blue Origin and SpaceX.
U.S. Air Force researchers are partnering with a quantum computing company to use its machine learning algorithms, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Quantum is the next generation of computing, and its growing adoption by the military shows the progress of the technology as it gradually moves out of the lab and into the real world.
Companies and governments around the world are racing to figure out how to clean up human-made junk that is cluttering space.
Why it matters: Trackers are seeing more and more close calls between satellites, as companies work to deploy constellations of hundreds to thousands of smallspacecraft, adding to fears that those small satellites could become junk themselves.
Marine scientists announced Monday they've uncovered at a former industrial waste site off the Southern California coast some 25,000 barrels that their research indicates contain the toxic chemical DDT.
Why it matters: Scientists had previously detected in the area near Santa Catalina Island "high levels of DDT in marine mammals including dolphins and sea lions," with exposure to DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, per a statement from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday signaled its intention to rescind Trump-era policies blocking California from setting its own vehicle carbon emissions rules.
Why it matters: The move would restore California's ability to be an environmental regulator after former President Trump stripped the state of that right.
