President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing government agencies to "eliminate or expedite" environmental reviews for commercial launch and reentry licenses.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), part of the Department of Transportation (DOT), grants licenses for commercial launch and reentry operations. The FAA is charged with ensuring launch and reentries don't endanger the public, that they comply with environmental laws, and comport with US national interests.
The drive toward deregulation will be welcome news for companies like SpaceX, led by onetime Trump ally Elon Musk, which conducts nearly all of the commercial launches and reentries licensed by the FAA.
It's no secret that much of social media has become profoundly dysfunctional. Rather than bringing us together into one utopian public square and fostering a healthy exchange of ideas, these platforms too often create filter bubbles or echo chambers. A small number of high-profile users garner the lion's share of attention and influence, and the algorithms designed to maximize engagement end up merely amplifying outrage and conflict, ensuring the dominance of the loudest and most extreme users—thereby increasing polarization even more.
Numerous platform-level intervention strategies have been proposed to combat these issues, but according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv, none of them are likely to be effective. And it's not the fault of much-hated algorithms, non-chronological feeds, or our human proclivity for seeking out negativity. Rather, the dynamics that give rise to all those negative outcomes are structurally embedded in the very architecture of social media. So we're probably doomed to endless toxic feedback loops unless someone hits upon a brilliant fundamental redesign that manages to change those dynamics.
Co-authors Petter Törnberg and Maik Larooij of the University of Amsterdam wanted to learn more about the mechanisms that give rise to the worst aspects of social media: the partisan echo chambers, the concentration of influence among a small group of elite users (attention inequality), and the amplification of the most extreme divisive voices. So they combined standard agent-based modeling with large language models (LLMs), essentially creating little AI personas to simulate online social media behavior. "What we found is that we didn't need to put any algorithms in, we didn't need to massage the model," Törnberg told Ars. "It just came out of the baseline model, all of these dynamics."
OpenAI and its cofounder Sam Altman are preparing to back a company that will compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink by connecting human brains with computers, heightening the rivalry between the two billionaire entrepreneurs.
The new venture, called Merge Labs, is raising new funds at an $850 million valuation, with much of the new capital expected to come from OpenAI’s ventures team, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans.
Altman has encouraged the investment and will help launch the project alongside Alex Blania, who runs World, an eyeball-scanning digital ID project also backed by the OpenAI chief, said two of the people.
HHS is slashing hundreds of millions in funding for mRNA vaccines and infectious disease treatments, but leaving the door open to mRNA therapies for cancer and genetic conditions.
A close-up of artwork by Canadian artist, activist, and photographer Benjamin Von Wong, created for plastic pollution treaty negotiations, is seen in front of the United Nations offices in Geneva on August 12th. | Photo: Getty Images
Thousands of delegates have descended upon Geneva this week for what's supposed to be the culmination of years of negotiations that, if successful, are supposed to end in a groundbreaking global plastics treaty. They might be breathing in the very thing they're trying to clean up as they negotiate.
Greenpeace tested the air around the city just before the talks began this month and found a small amount of microplastics. It wasn't so much a rigorous study as it was a way to prove a point. Microplastics are turning up all over the place, including in the air we breathe.
That's why health and environmental advocates, as well as a coalition o …
The Starlink Mini in Denmark. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge
Starlink now charges $5 a month to pause its high-speed, low-latency internet service, a feature that used to be available for free. It affects Roam, Residential, and Priority subscribers in the US, most of Europe, and Canada with lots of exceptions.
SpaceX hilariously calls it an upgrade, but I call it a bait and switch for anyone that bought a Starlink Mini with that "pay as you go" promise.
The free pause feature has been replaced with a $5/month (or €5/month) Standby Mode that comes with "unlimited low-speed data" that's "perfect for backup connectivity and emergency use," according to the email sent to subscribers. Some early testin …
Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 now supports a 1 million token context window, enabling AI to process entire codebases and complex documents in a single request—redefining software development and enterprise AI workflows.Read More
New research reveals how OS agents — AI systems that control computers like humans — are rapidly advancing while raising serious security and privacy concerns.Read More
After more than a decade of development and testing, US military officials are finally ready to entrust United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket to haul a batch of national security satellites into space.
An experimental military navigation satellite, also more than 10 years in the making, will ride ULA's Vulcan rocket into geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. There are additional payloads buttoned up inside the Vulcan rocket's nose cone, but officials from the US Space Force are mum on the details.
The Vulcan rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 7:59 pm EDT (23:59 UTC) Tuesday. There's an 80 percent chance of favorable weather during the one-hour launch window. It will take several hours for the Vulcan rocket's Centaur upper stage to reach its destination in geosynchronous orbit. You can watch ULA's live launch webcast below.
Staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta are reeling from a deadly shooting that unfolded Friday evening.
The shooting left one local police officer dead, at least four agency buildings riddled with bullet holes, and terrified staffers feeling like "sitting ducks." Fortunately, no CDC staff or civilians were injured. But, it quickly drew a spotlight to US health secretary and zealous anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who critics accused of fueling the violence with his menacing and reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric.
Kennedy publicly responded to the shooting on social media at about 11 am Eastern Time on Saturday, roughly 18 hours after the event. Former US Surgeon General Jerome Adams subsequently slammed Kennedy's delayed response as "tepid" in a critical essay published in Stat. The news outlet separately pointed out that Kennedy had posted on his personal social media account about 30 minutes prior to his response to the shooting, in which he shared pictures of a fishing trip.
It's easier than ever to manipulate video footage to deceive the viewer and increasingly difficult for fact checkers to detect such manipulations. Cornell University scientists developed a new weapon in this ongoing arms race: software that codes a "watermark" into light fluctuations, which in turn can reveal when the footage has been tampered with. The researchers presented the breakthrough over the weekend at SIGGRAPH 2025 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and published a scientific paper in June in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics.
“Video used to be treated as a source of truth, but that’s no longer an assumption we can make,” said co-author Abe Davis, of Cornell University, who first conceived of the idea. “Now you can pretty much create video of whatever you want. That can be fun, but also problematic, because it’s only getting harder to tell what’s real.”
Per the authors, those seeking to deceive with video fakes have a fundamental advantage: equal access to authentic video footage, as well as the ready availability of advanced low-cost editing tools that can learn quickly from massive amounts of data, rendering the fakes nearly indistinguishable from authentic video. Thus far, progress on that front has outpaced the development of new forensic techniques designed to combat the problem. One key feature is information asymmetry: An effective forensic technique must have information not available to the fakers that cannot be learned from publicly available training data.
Scientists have known climate change is increasing the severity of hurricanes for years now, but new research suggests it’s also leading to tropical cyclone clusters.
Ann Hodges was hit by a meteorite inside her Alabama home in 1954. She's pictured with attorney Hugh Love (left) and the director of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, Walter B. Jones.
Courtesy University of Alabama Museums, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
In 1954, Ann Hodges, was struck by a meteorite while taking a nap in her Alabama home.
Overnight, Hodges became a celebrity as word of her strange story traveled across the country.
It's the best-known case of a person being struck by a meteorite, although a man in Georgia just had a close call.
Ann Hodges never intended to be famous, but in 1954 she found herself thrust into the national spotlight when her afternoon nap was interrupted by a falling meteorite.
The Alabama woman has the distinction of being the first documented case of a person being struck by a meteorite. She survived with a bruised hip.
In June, a man nearly joined her exclusive club when small space rocks pierced his roof in McDonough, Georgia, missing him by 14 feet, The New York Times reported. The fragments — from a meteorite that researchers say likely formed 4.56 billion years ago — dented his floor instead.
In the more than 70 years since Hodges was struck, her strange tale remains a source of fascination. Mary Beth Prondzinski with the Alabama Museum of Natural History, where the meteorite is on exhibit, told Business Insider, "It's one of those local legends that not too many people know about."
Here's what happened to Hodges and the meteorite.
The Sylacauga meteorite, which is also called the Hodges meteorite, probably broke off the asteroid 1685 Toro.
Courtesy of NASA/Newsmakers/Getty Images
1685 Toro, a mid-sized asteroid, has been classified by NASA JPL as a "Near Earth Asteroid" because of its orbit's proximity to Earth. Its size is similar to the island of Manhattan.
An asteroid is a rocky object in space that orbits the sun. When an asteroid or a piece of one enters the Earth's atmosphere, it becomes a meteor. What remains after impact is a meteorite.
On the afternoon of November 30, 1954, locals in Sylacauga, Alabama, reported a bright streak in the sky.
Jay Leviton/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images
At a time when both the threat of an atomic bomb and little green men in flying saucers invaded public fear, it was perhaps unsurprising that residents in the small Alabama town started calling 911. The Decatur Daily reported that many people thought they were witnessing a plane crash.
Ann Hodges, with her husband, rented a house in the Oak Grove community. Incredibly, across the street was the Comet Drive-In Theater, which had a neon sign depicting a comet falling through the sky, the Decatur Daily reported.
A part of the meteor crashed through the roof of Ann Hodges' home.
Jay Leviton/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images
Hodges, who was 34 at the time, had been home with her mother on the afternoon of November 30. The meteorite crashed through the roof of Hodges' home at 2:46 p.m., Slate Magazine reported.
"Ann Hodges was taking a nap on her living room couch and she was under a blanket, which probably saved her life somewhat," Prondzinski said. "The meteorite came down through the roof in the living room and it ricocheted off a stand-up console radio that was in the room and landed on her hip."
Her mother, who was in another room, ran to her daughter's assistance when she heard her scream. In the aftermath, neither Hodges nor her mother knew what had happened.
"All she knew is that something had hit her," Prondzinski said. "They found the meteorite, this big rock, and they couldn't figure out how it had got there."
It weighed around 8.5 pounds.
University of Alabama Museums, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Prondzinski said the meteorite is a chondrite or stony meteorite and composed of iron and nickel. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the meteorite is an estimated 4.5 billion years old.
When the meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere, it broke apart. One fragment hit Hodges while another was located a few miles away. A farmer, Julius Kempis McKinney, discovered the second fragment while driving a mule-drawn wagon and later sold it for enough money to buy both a house and car, the Decatur Daily reported.
Neighbors and law enforcement rushed to Ann Hodges' home.
Courtesy University of Alabama Museums, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
"Before you knew it, everyone in town was surrounding the house wanting to see what had happened," Prondzinski said.
"In those days they didn't have Facebook, but word still traveled quickly," she added.
A doctor and the police were called to the home. Prondzinski said it was Mayor Ed Howard and the police chief who discovered the hole in the ceiling where the meteorite had crashed through.
The Decatur Daily reported the impact of the meteorite left a large "grapefruit"-sized bruise on Hodges' hip.
Jay Leviton/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images
"She had this incredible bruise on her hip," Prondzinski told Business Insider. "She was taken to the hospital, not because she was so severely injured that she needed to be hospitalized, but because she was very distraught by the whole incident. She was a very nervous person, and she didn't like all the notoriety or all the people around."
Hodges' husband, Eugene, arrived home from work to find his house surrounded by a crowd of people.
Hodges' radio may have saved her from being seriously injured.
The meteorite bounced off the radio, pictured.
Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
"The fact that it came through the roof, that slowed its trajectory, and the fact that it did bounce off the radio — if she had been lying under the radio, it would have broken her leg or her back. It probably wouldn't have killed her, but it would have done a lot more damage to her," Prondzinski said.
The Air Force confiscated the meteorite so they could determine its origin.
Bettmann/Getty Images
"The Air Force looked at it because they thought it was a flying saucer and all this other wild and crazy stuff," Prondzinski said.
After it was confirmed a meteorite, the Hodgeses faced a lengthy litigation process to acquire ownership of it. Their landlord, Birdie Guy, believe the meteorite belonged to her because she owned the house.
"Suing is the only way she'll ever get it," Hodges told reporters at the time. "I think God intended it for me. After all, it hit me!"
The Decatur Daily News reported Guy wanted money to fix the house's roof. Litigation went on for a year, and Prondzinski said Guy settled the case for $500. The house eventually caught fire and was demolished to make way for a mobile home park.
Hodges became an overnight celebrity and was even featured on a game show.
CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
"She became famous for 15 minutes. She had all these photo shoots. She was invited to go to New York City to be on Garry Moore's show '["I've Got a Secret"] where the panel had to guess what's her profession or what happened to her, why she is a notable figure," Prondzinski said.
Hodges would receive fan mail from churches, children, and educators asking about the meteorite, but she never answered any of them, leaving it to her lawyer.
"She was a very quiet person. She was a very private person," Prondzinski said. "She did not like having all the notoriety."
Hodges decided to donate the meteorite to the Alabama Museum of Natural History.
Courtesy University of Alabama Museums, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
"By the time she had got the meteorite in her possession, she was so sick of the whole thing. She said, 'You can have it,'" Prondzinski said.
All Hodges asked in return was for the museum to reimburse her for her attorney fees.
Prondzinski said the meteorite created problems between Hodges and her husband, Eugene. Her husband wanted to make money off the meteorite but failed to secure a buyer. The two eventually divorced in 1964.
In 1972, aged 52, Hodges died of kidney failure in a nursing home.
Hodges is the first documented person to have been hit by a meteorite. Recently, a man in Georgia narrowly missed being hit by another.
This meteorite landed on a man's home in Freehold, New Jersey, in 2007.
New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News via Getty Images
"She's the only one who's ever been hit by a meteorite and lived to tell about it. Because of that, the meteorite has been appraised at over a million dollars," Prondzinski said.
In an interview with National Geographic, Florida State College astronomer Michael Reynolds said, "You have a better chance of getting hit by a tornado and a bolt of lightning and a hurricane all at the same time."
There have been some near misses in the years since Hodges was hit.
Most recently, on June 26, people in Southern states reported seeing a fireball fly across the sky, and pieces of a meteorite hit a house in McDonough, Georgia, with some piercing its roof, denting its flooring, and missing a resident inside. He likely heard what sounded like a gunshot.
"I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things," said Scott Harris, a researcher at the University of Georgia's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences' department of geology, the university reported. "One was the collision with his roof, one was a tiny cone of a sonic boom and a third was it impacting the floor all in the same moment.
"There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments."
Harris studied the rocks and concluded the meteorite could have formed 4.56 billion years ago, making it older than the Earth. It is still being studied at the university.
Every day, Earth is hit with more than 100 tons of space dust and debris.
Meteor Crater in Arizona is almost a mile wide.
: Marli Miller/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
According to NASA, about once a year a car-sized asteroid enters Earth's atmosphere but burns up before it can touch down.
One expert told Live Science that while it's impossible to know for sure how many asteroids hit Earth each year, he estimated "about 6,100 meteorite falls per year over the entire Earth, and about 1,800 over the land."
Most of these go undetected, but occasionally they'll capture the public's attention, like Hodges' meteorite.
For instance, in 1992 a 26-pound meteorite landed on a red Chevy Malibu in New York, and in 2013, one exploded over Russia. There has also been evidence of a meteorite killing a man and injuring another in 1888. Meteor Crater, which is almost a mile wide, in Arizona shows the impact a large meteorite can have.
Prondzinski told Business Insider that in the years since Hodges was struck, her story remains popular, and people have contacted the museum about using the story in movies, plays, and even a graphic novel.
A study of plastic bottles washed up on the Pacific coast of Latin America has identified a double problem—a mass of local waste combined with long-traveling bottles from Asia.
An aerial photo taken on Aug. 8, 2025 shows a view of the nearly exhausted Baitings Reservoir in Yorkshire, Britain. Reservoir levels recently have continued to fall as increased water use met lack of rain in Britain. | Photo: Getty Images
Can deleting old emails and photos help the UK tackle ongoing drought this year? That’s the hope, according to recommendations for the public included in a press release today from the National Drought Group.
There are far bigger steps companies and policymakers can take to conserve water of course, but drought has gotten bad enough for officials to urge the average person to consider how their habits might help or hurt the situation. And the proliferation of data centers is raising concerns about how much water it takes to power servers and keep them cool.
“Simple, everyday choices – such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails – also really helps the collective effort to reduce demand and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife,” Helen Wakeham, Environment Agency Director of Water, said in the press release.
“Simple, everyday choices – such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails – also really helps the collective effort”
The Environment Agency didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from The Verge about how much water it thought deleting files might save, nor how much water data centers that store files or train AI use in the UK’s drought-affected areas.
A small data center has been estimated to use upwards of 25 million liters of water per year if it relies on old-school cooling methods that allow water to evaporate. To be sure, tech companies have worked for years to find ways to minimize their water use by developing new cooling methods. Microsoft, for example, has tried placing a data center at the bottom of the sea and submerging servers in fluorocarbon-based liquid baths.
Generating electricity for energy-hungry data centers also uses up more water since fossil fuel power plants and nuclear reactors also need water for cooling and to turn turbines using steam, an issue that transitioning to more renewable energy can help to address.
August ushered in the UK’s fourth heatwave of the summer, exacerbating what was already the driest six months leading to July since 1976. Five regions of the UK have officially declared drought, according to the release, while another six areas are in the midst of “prolonged dry weather.”
The National Drought Group says pleas to residents to save water have made a difference. Water demand dropped by 20 percent from a July 11th peak in the Severn Trent area after “water-saving messaging,” according to the release. Plugging leaks is another major concern. Fixing a leaking toilet can prevent 200 to 400 liters of water from being wasted each day, it says.
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