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June 12, 2025—A revolutionary new space observatory is about to debut. Plus, a brain implant enables a man with a speech disability to talk again, and Senators grill the NIH director. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Electrodes implanted in the motor cortex (in orange) helped to record the speech-related brain activity of a man who could not speak intelligibly. Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo | | | | |
View of Rubin Observatory at sunset in May 2024. Olivier Bonin/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory | | | Blockbuster Eyes on the Sky | On June 23, the world will get a look at some of the first images taken by the brand new Vera Rubin Observatory perched on a 8,799-foot peak in the Chilean Andes. Its camera is the largest in the history of astronomy, with a more-than-1.5-meter lens, making this observatory a game-changer. The scope will canvas the entire sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere every three days for 10 years. In its first year, the Rubin Observatory will collect more data than has been collected from all telescopes in the combined history of humanity.How it works: The 350-metric-ton telescope will rapidly pan across seven full moons' worth of sky, stabilize and go completely still, and take two 15-second exposures before doing it all over again, all night long. These images will produce 20 terabytes of data every night, which is 350 times more than the data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope each day. Special software will compare each sky map the telescope creates, search for differences between each map and send out an alert when it spots changes between the maps; there could be as many as 10 million alerts a night. | | Summit staff install Rubin Observatory's commissioning camera (ComCam) on the telescope. Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/H. Stockebrand | | What the experts say: "The point of this project is to collect a wild amount of data," says Margaux Lopez, a mechanical engineer who has been working on Rubin's camera since 2015. "How we actually do that is to see more of the sky at once, take more images at night and get more detail in each photo—that's the trifecta." As the largest sky camera in astronomical history, the observatory is a human achievement, she adds. "Humans have always wanted to go to the top of the tallest mountain or the furthest reaches of the ocean, and this feels like one of those types of things. Let's create the coolest instrument we can to find out more about who we are." | | Plant pathologist Henry Sila Nzioki works to find a sustainable way to control a parasitic weed called Striga, which can devastate farmers' harvests in Kenya. Since 2008 he's focused on using a fungus that kills Striga without harming crops. "We still face challenges," he says. "Many seeds in Kenya are treated with fungicides that might kill our helpful fungus, and getting approval for less harmful, natural pesticides takes years. Most importantly, we need farmers to understand and accept this solution." Nature | 3 min read | | Read every article that interests you with a subscription to Scientific American. We offer special discounts for Today in Science readers! | | - A 2020 study found intestinal parasites in 85 percent of fecal samples from dogs in off-leash dog parks across the United States. Waste left on the ground to wash into the soil, whether in a neighborhood, trail or dog park, can spread life-threatening parasites not just among dogs and cats, but also to wild animals and people, writes University of Florida veterinarian Julia Wuerz. Follow her six tips for stopping the spread and contraction of harmful parasites from pets. | 5 min read
| | Astronomer Vera Rubin won the 1996 National Medal of Science for her discovery of the first conclusive evidence of dark matter's existence. But more than 50 years after that foundational discovery, scientists still do not have a definitive identity for the elusive substance. The universe is brimming with dark phenomena that are invisible to the human eye. Innovative technology is allowing us to understand some of the unseen through sidelong inference, yes, but a new kind of physics may be required to explain all the darkness we cannot see.
| | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | | |
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