Icons from the original series are “boldly going” into deep space for a permanent space burial — including show creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel (Christine Chapel), Nichelle Nichols (Nyota Uhura), DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy), and James Doohan (Montgomery “Scotty” Scot).
Their remains are aboard the ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket that successfully launched at 2:18AM ET last night.
In May, we wrote that New York City is sagging by about 1–2mm per year, per a US Geological Survey study. That’s not all.
The so-called subsidence rate of the whole East Coast is as high as 5mm a year, according to a study published in PNAS Nexus and cited by Ars Technica this morning.
Even the very levees meant to protect people from worsening storm surges and climate change-induced sea level rise are sinking, say the researchers.
Consumer Reports is back with another sobering investigation into the bisphenols and phthalates — chemicals known as plasticizers — in common supermarket and fast foods. CR found that despite growing evidence that these chemicals ain’t too great for your health, they were found “in almost every food” at high levels.
The report is a good read into how these chemicals get into our food, what it means, and what’s being done about it. Personally, I’m mourning that Wendy’s crispy chicken nuggets have a whopping 33,980 phthalates per serving.
[Consumer Reports]
Often the strongest of the year, at its peak, the Quadrantid meteor shower can produce over 100 meteors per hour. It should peak at 4AM ET on Thursday, but NASA predicts it’ll be most visible around midnight — specifically, about an hour or two before 2:29AM ET when the moon rises.
Alternatively, you can watch a livestream of the meteor shower from the Subaru telescope — if the weather permits, of course.
Six of the 21 new Starlink satellites launched last night support the company’s new Direct to Cell service announced in 2022. SpaceX will now test the service with ordinary 4G LTE-compatible phones on T-Mobile in the US before the text messaging service goes live in multiple countries this year. Voice and data (and IoT devices) will be added in 2025 as more D2C satellites come online.
