Space & Physics: Watch SpaceX's Starship fly!

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May 21— This week, our top stories include coverage of SpaceX’s latest high-stakes Starship test flight, NASA’s detailed plans for nuclear power on the moon, the biggest math breakthrough yet from AI and much more. Enjoy! Thoughts? Questions? Let me know via e-mail (lbillings@sciam.com), X or Bluesky. —Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Physical Sciences

Top Stories

Watch SpaceX launch Starship V3—the tallest and most powerful rocket yet Thursday's flight could be the most pivotal test of the Starship megarocket Claire Cameron

OpenAI announces AI’s biggest math breakthrough yet A chatbot’s result for the 80-year-old “unit distance” conjecture is the first AI proof that would likely be published in math’s top journal if humans had done it alone Joseph Howlett

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Why NASA wants to build a nuclear reactor on the moon To build its moon base, NASA needs a lot of power Robin George Andrews

Quantum computing is reaching its make-or-break moment Will computers based on quantum physics really change the world? Adam Becker

What’s a quantum computer good for, anyway? Quantum computing could lead to revolutions in cryptography, materials design and telecommunications. But fulfilling those promises could be many years away Zeeya Merali

What we know—and what we don’t—about NASA’s Artemis III mission NASA is starting to paint in some of the details of its planned 2027 Artemis III mission, but key questions, such as who its astronauts will be, are yet to be answered Claire Cameron

The million-dollar math problem hardly anyone is trying to solve The intimidating legacy of the scariest problem in mathematics Joseph Howlett

Are astronomers ignoring some of the cosmos? There are parts of the universe, and of the electromagnetic spectrum, that we’re not covering with our telescopes—but not as many as you might think! Phil Plait

This startup wants to make drugs in orbit. If it succeeds, it could transform the space economy Varda’s plan to develop medicines in microgravity has its advantages, but it requires a big up-front cost Ramin Skibba

‘Sensational’ proof topples decades-old geometry problem The sudden resolution of a well-known conjecture highlights the growing adoption of AI as an assistant in high-level mathematics Joseph Howlett

War is getting harder to hide from space Commercial satellites can now watch much of Earth in near-real time. Militaries are learning new ways to fool them Sarah Scoles

NASA’s Psyche captures gorgeous Mars crescent photo on way to asteroid NASA’s Psyche snapped images as it flew by Mars last week. The spacecraft used the planet’s gravity to give itself a boost on its journey toward its target asteroid Adam Kovac

Can math predict the end of humanity? This eerily simple math says our days are numbered—and nobody can agree why it’s wrong Jack Murtagh

What We're Reading

Famously secret about its finances, SpaceX opens its books for the first time | Ars Technica This Moon of Neptune Might Have Survived a Wrecking-Ball Event | The New York Times The Distant World That Is Our Best Hope for Finding Alien Life | New Scientist

From the Archive

What is the Kardashev scale, and can we climb it? The Kardashev scale is an interesting but flawed gauge of a civilization’s growth Phil Plait

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