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By that time, the seasons and stars had been a central force in human lives for thousands of years, spurring religious traditions and scientific inquiry, and shaping artistic impulses. Ancient farmers prayed to their gods for a good harvest. The oldest known almanacs—sage advice chiseled in stone—date back almost 4,000 years, to the advent of astronomy. And many a Shakespearean plot is driven by alterations in the natural world, from titular tempests to the romance of spring....

This thought might not be too far from the truth. A recent study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials found that when four different types of post-consumer microplastics collected from the waters of the North Pacific Gyre were placed under a solar simulator, they dissolved into organic carbon. Currently, scientists predict that 5 trillion plastic items, most of which are teensy microplastics, are currently floating around in the world’s oceans, weighing over 250,000 tons....

The US aid package also includes 20 million rounds of ammunition, grenades, and mortar rounds, as well as the 25,000 sets of body armor with matching helmets. As for those 100 Switchblades, here’s everything to know about these drone-like missiles. How does a Switchblade work? The Switchblade is a flying camera robot with an explosive inside. These all-electric machines are weapons that will help find or attack nearby enemies, not far-away ones....

The drop in airline operations across the US and around the world has had an impact on weather reporting, particular with the input flight crews make to the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Observing System, part of the World Weather Watch program. The WMO provides part of the architecture through which 193 member countries can build weather forecasts as well as monitor atmospheric and climate conditions. According to a press release from the WMO, “some parts of the observing system are already affected....

Fact: The banana was introduced to the United States as a luxury item, wrapped in tin foil, and eaten with a knife and fork. By Claire Maldarelli Everyone is entitled to their own dietary preferences, but my favorite fruit, by far, is the banana. It comes with its own biodegradable wrapping, it’s easy on the stomach, and it even has gut-healthy fiber. Today, bananas can be purchased at any grocery store, by the bundle, often for only a few dollars....

Fact: You can mummify yourself to death By Rachel Feltman A recent trip to Northern Germany—and the bog bodies at Schleswig-Holstein Landesmuseum—got me thinking about mummification in general. I knew how Ancient Egyptians did it, and I knew that bodies could wind up mummified without outside help, but how exactly does the whole process work? Well, it turns out I had a lot to learn even about Ancient Egyptian mummification, which may have been quite different from the laborious process most of us learn about in school (at least sometimes)....

As it turned out, the soft-spoken 52-year-old chemist was a few weeks away from joining the leadership panel of the Joint Investigative Mechanism, a kind of elite international Justice League established in 2015. Formed through a partnership between the United Nations Security Council and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons—the independent intergovernmental body created to oversee compliance with 1997’s Chemical Weapons Convention—the team was tasked with identifying the perpetrators, organizers, and sponsors of chemical attacks in the Syrian conflict....

This torturefest is called the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra, and its participants find pleasure in the hardship. At 4:30 p.m. they jiggle their legs and apply insulating tape to their cheeks and noses while the organizers give a prerace pep talk. Of sorts. “No one died last year,” says Jamison Swift, deadpanning. “Let’s keep it going.” He soon passes the stage to Lisa Kapsner-Swift, his co-organizer and wife, who talks about what the racers can do if they feel like they’re coming down with the winter-ultra baddies: trench foot, frostbite, hypothermia....

Food The festive meal is arguably the most important part of Thanksgiving. Here’s how to cook that turkey—and a few classic side dishes—to perfection. Cooking is all about chemistry. So in this guide, we put together some scientific tricks for making your bird tender yet crispy, your mashed potatoes ultra-fluffy, and your pie crust perfect. The article includes cooking tips and advice for turkey, potatoes, and sweet potato pie, as well as a recipe for a cranberry sorbet so tangy and refreshing, you’ll banish the gloopy canned sauce from your table forever....

In the shadow of Alaska’s Kuskokwim Mountains, nestled in a valley along the banks of a winding river, there’s a town called Takotna with a population of a mere 49 hearty souls. Each March, this cozy hamlet doubles its numbers as mushers racing the Iditarod Trail come here for their mandatory 24-hour rest. On a course that traverses just under a thousand brutally cold and snowy miles from Anchorage to Nome, the racers and their dog teams have gone about a third of their journey when they reach Takotna....

Majungasaurus lived in what is now Madagascar, in a world populated by giant crocodilians with heads shaped like toilet bowls, long-necked herbivorous sauropods, and hundreds of birds. “It was a fairly harsh environment at times,” says paleontologist Andrew Farke of the Alf Museum of Paleontology, who was not involved in the study. Late Cretaceous Madagascar had pronounced wet and dry seasons, leading to periods of feast or famine. Somehow, in this world, it made sense to lose your teeth every two months—at least for Majungasaurus....

Follow all of PopSci’s COVID-19 coverage here, including how to make your own face masks, how to make your own hand sanitizer, and the latest stats of the sanitary crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Protection has encouraged people to wear masks at all times while indoors, even if you’re vaccinated. Besides keeping away from other people, they are “one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the [COVID-19]....

Unity is not much different from her predecessor. But one of the ship’s key improvements will prevent another disaster like the November 2014 accident that killed pilot Michael Alsbury. At the time, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that Alsbury deployed a feathering re-entry system too early, and that Virgin Galactic hadn’t planned ahead for such human errors. The new spaceplane has safeguards in place to make sure that doesn’t happen again, and the company is emphasizing a renewed commitment to careful testing....

The Shepard scale is a set of tones each separated by an octave. When played continuously, with the notes either ascending or descending in pitch, the progressions make the sounds seem as if they are rising—or dropping—­endlessly. Director Christopher Nolan has used them to build suspense in many of his films, from The Dark Knight to Dunkirk. I began researching this illusion after seeing curious reports on a website dedicated to the phenomenon....

“I remember being attached to a rope with my hands sticking out on the precipice, trying to collect a mushroom that was growing on a little outcrop where you couldn’t possibly walk,” Garbelotto said in a press release by University of California, Berkeley, where he is the director of the Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab. This hard-to-reach mushroom was just one of hundreds of fungi Garbelotto and UC Berkeley researchers plucked from plants, trees, and soil across the French Polynesian island of Mo’orea in the South Pacific....

Can I Have A Pet Fox? “Privacy Visor” Protects You From Facial Recognition Machines What Beatboxing Looks Like In An MRI Scan Is That A UFO In This Timelapse Video Of A Meteor Shower? Harvard Professor Seeks ‘Adventurous’ Human Woman To Birth A Neanderthal Baby (Update) And don’t forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week: In An Era Of Climate Change, Where Will The Fish, And The Money, Go?...

A dazzling new image is one of the first medium-deep wide-field images of the cosmos and accompanies a paper published Wednesday in the Astronomical Journal. It features a region of the sky called the North Ecliptic Pole and comes from the Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science (PEARLS) program. PEARLS’ main goal is to study, “galaxy assembly, AGN growth, and First Light,” using the data from JWST. The term medium-deep refers to the faintest objects that can be seen within this image, and they are roughly 29th magnitude (1 billion times more faint than the unaided eye can see)....

If you tend not to cook, but still aim to make healthy food choices, the Vitamix A2500 is a great choice, because it comes with tons of different options for nutritious meals that don’t require extensive prep time. The different settings let you chop, grind, and blend ingredients to make salsa, soup (it will blend as well as heat up your soup), ice cream, or sorbet, and of course, smoothies....

The case is one of the biggest so far to affirm queer rights, and is the first major transgender rights case to make it through the Supreme Court. SCOTUS declared that the phrasing for discrimination “because of sex” extends to sexual orientation and gender identity—a decision that experts say can be used to fight against other discriminatory policies, including in health care. The ruling came right off the back of the Trump administration’s announcement on Friday, June 12, the anniversary of the Pulse mass shooting, that discrimination “because of sex” in health care would no longer apply to queer or trans individuals....

A study led by Kling, published on April 27 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines how wind patterns affect the exchange of DNA between populations of trees. Their findings suggest that factors such as wind strength and direction can help mold the genetic makeup of forested landscapes. As the climate heats up, some plants won’t thrive as well in their current environments, and will need to be in historically cooler locations to stay within a comfortable temperature range, says Kling (for many plants, this is already happening)....