3 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Science Archive

Archives for October 2025

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
Apple plans to bring more renewable energy to Europe and China.

It’s supporting new solar and wind farms across Greece, Italy, Latvia, Poland, and Romania that are supposed to add 650 megawatts of renewable energy capacity to local power grids.

The company also shared that its suppliers jointly launched a new $150 million investment fund to support renewable energy infrastructure in China.

Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
NASA lays off another 550 staff.

The reduction — in the works before the government shutdown — comes from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Reuters reports is “NASA’s only federally funded research and development center.” The layoffs affect roughly a tenth of the JPL’s workforce, who will find out if they’re affected or not today.

JPL Workforce Update

[NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)]

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Scientists may have spotted ‘wind’ blowing from the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole.

Most supermassive black holes don’t just swallow up matter, they eject it, sometimes in spectacular jets of super heated plasma. Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy has seemed oddly quiet, though. But scientists believe they’ve finally found evidence this plasma wind, in the form of a cone-shaped gap in the gas surrounding the black hole. It’s not quite as dramatic as Centaurus A, but it has it’s own galactic charm.

Image: Mark D. Gorski, Lena Murchikova
Justine Calma
Justine Calma
Trump hit the Environmental Protection Agency again.

With the government still shut down, the Trump administration announced more layoffs across the already decimated federal workforce. That includes EPA employees who worked on battery recycling and safety, plastics reduction, recycling and composting programs, and collecting solid waste data, according to the EPA union.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Tell us how you’re managing your kids’ screen time.

The Pew Research Center published a study of how parents are managing their kids’ screen time. Which got us wondering: how are you, dear reader, managing your kids’ screen time? Do you have time limits for video games? A “kid-safe” phone like Gabb? Do you let your eight-year-old talk to ChatGPT? Let us know in the comments.

Poll showing what percentage of parents know their children interact with various technologies:90% - TV68% - Tablet61% - Smartphone50% - Gaming device39% - Desktop or laptop37% - Voice-activated assistant11% - Smartwatch8% - AI chatbots
Pew Research Center
Justine Calma
Justine Calma
Electricity costs are up to 267 percent higher than they used to be in communities near data centers.

That’s according to a recent Bloomberg analysis of wholesale electricity prices across the US, which has more data centers than any other country.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
SpaceX “obviously” has Chinese investors.

In unsealed testimony, SpaceX investor Iqbaljit Kahlon says that some Chinese investors are “directly on the cap table.” This may raise some national security concerns, depending on how much information about SpaceX — which is deeply involved with the US defense department — gives to its investors.