Blue Origin Launches William Shatner and Crew to the Final Frontier

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October 13, 2021

Space Exploration Blue Origin Launches William Shatner and Crew to the Final Frontier The 90-year-old "Star Trek" actor is now the oldest person to fly in space By Hanneke Weitering,SPACE.com

Pollution Assessing COVID Risk and More with Air Quality Monitors The consumer devices track pollutants as well as CO2—a proxy for potentially virus-laden human breath By Starre Vartan

Astrophysics FAST, the World's Largest Radio Telescope, Zooms in on a Furious Cosmic Source China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope has detected more than 1,600 fast radio bursts from a single enigmatic system By Ling Xin

Engineering What Is 5G? Here Is a Short Video Primer You see it mentioned in countless phone commercials, and your phone might use it. But do you know how it works? By Michael Tabb,Jeffery DelViscio,Andrea Gawrylewski

Planetary Science Planetary Defense Is Good--but Is Planetary Offense Better? A new approach could mitigate the most damaging effects of an imminent asteroid or comet strike—or ensure many threatening objects never get close to striking Earth in the first place By Philip Lubin,Alexander Cohen

Anthropology Genomes Show the History and Travels of Indigenous Peoples A new study demonstrates "I ka wā mamua, ka wā ma hope," or "the future is in the past" By Keolu Fox

Pharmaceuticals How Antiviral Pill Molnupiravir Shot Ahead in the COVID Drug Hunt The Merck pill, which could become the first oral antiviral COVID treatment, forces the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to mutate itself to death By Cassandra Willyard,Nature magazine

Health Care The Smartest Way to Use Rapid At-Home COVID Tests The self-administered tests are sold over the counter, holding out the promise of safer gatherings. But interpreting results requires savvy By Tara Santora

Policy Scientists: When Talking to the Public, Please Speak Plainly Jargon is appropriate when you're speaking with colleagues, but it's a turnoff for the rest of us By Naomi Oreskes

Climate Change Beyond the Winners, Nobel Prize for Climate Science Is a Victory for Many Research in the field is more collaborative than the Nobel awards can acknowledge By Gavin Schmidt

Fossil Fuels More Countries Join Global Pledge to Cut Methane Emissions Dozens of nations, representing 30 percent of the world's emissions, have indicated support ahead of crucial climate talks By Sara Schonhardt,E&E News

Particle Physics New Universal Force Tested by Blasting Neutrons through Crystal A recent experiment has placed the best-yet limits on the strength of a long-sought fifth fundamental force By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Quantum Physics AI Designs Quantum Physics Experiments beyond What Any Human Has Conceived Originally built to speed up calculations, a machine-learning system is now making shocking progress at the frontiers of experimental quantum physics By Anil Ananthaswamy

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin Are Finally Flying to Space After nearly twenty years pursuing a lifelong dream of spaceflight, the world's wealthiest person is at last ready for lift off By Mike Wall,SPACE.com | July 2021

QUOTE OF THE DAY "That was unlike anything they described." William Shatner, actor

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