US NAS Head Pushed For Innovation

The past year has been "filled with turmoil" in science policy, National Academy of Sciences (NAS) president Marcia McNutt said last 2 June during the annual State of the Science address in Washington, D.C.

McNutt cited problems such as "uncertainty" over federal support for science, "abrupt downsizing" of science agencies, a mass exodus of federal employees and the fact that the world’s top scientific minds are leaving the U.S.

"We always were the country where STEM talent came to us," McNutt said, referring to science, technology, engineering and math fields. "Now we are exporting our science talent elsewhere." After about 10 years as president of NAS, McNutt plans to step down on 30 June.

Since President Donald Trump took office last year, U.S. science has been a target for funding cuts, firings and intense regulatory scrutiny. By one estimate, around 100,000 federal employees at scientific agencies have either been fired or left public office in his second term. The administration has also cut nearly 8,000 scientific grants, mostly from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, according to a Nature analysis published in January (some grants have since been reinstated by the courts).

And just last week, as Scientific American reported, the administration published a proposal to give political appointees final say on grant funding instead of researchers, overturning a decades-long precedent. "Now, what could possibly go wrong with that?" McNutt quipped.

"Frustrated and demoralized as many of us are right now, we must consider what is in our power, as a research community, to improve while, at the same time, pushing back against inappropriate political interference in research," she said.

To make science more "resilient" and "competitive," McNutt said that scientists should partner with industry—and that universities should support researchers who do so. And she urged scientists to train students to take science-adjacent jobs outside of academia.

Without bridging the gap between industry and science, she warned, the "best and brightest" students may "shun" careers in science, "domestic talent" will continue to seek opportunities abroad, and the economy will suffer.

The speech was met with some skepticism from scientists and science advocates who called attention to the threats facing U.S. research. "This focus on the private sector as we are facing down complete and total destruction of actual SCIENCE is unreal to me," wrote Colette Delawalla, founder and CEO of Stand Up for Science, in a post on Bluesky. "We are doing publicly-funded free training for companies ... this is the selling out of science to the Tech Bros," she added.

McNutt also recommended cutting red tape and lowering regulatory hurdles for researchers, as well as furthering reliance on artificial intelligence to "increase the rate of discovery."

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Experts Believed That Pilgrims Buried The "Diriyah Treasure"

Some archaeologists in Saudi Arabia have unearthed a clay pot full of gold, silver and gemstone-encrusted jewelry that may have been buried by an Islamic pilgrim en route to Mecca more than a millennium ago.

The team nicknamed the hoard the "Diriyah Treasure" after the archaeological site where it was discovered. Located on the outskirts of Riyadh, Diriyah was a key station on the Hajj route for Islamic pilgrims between Basra, Iraq, and Mecca, Saudi Arabia. According to archaeologists with the Saudi Heritage Commission who have been excavating Diriyah for six years, radiocarbon analysis of organic remains puts the main settlement in the period of 743 to 753.

During the recent excavation season, archaeologists discovered gypsum water basins and the walls of several residential buildings. Inside the structures, they found fragments of pottery and glass — but the buried ceramic jar containing over 100 pieces of jewelry was a surprise.

"One of the most important discoveries of this sixth season was the uncovering of the "Diriyah Treasure," which consists of a collection of gold pieces, gemstones and oxidized copper fragments," a laboratory expert with the Saudi Heritage Commission said in a translated video.

Although Diriyah is better known for being the first Saudi state and the original location of the House of Saud (the ruling family of Saudi Arabia) beginning in the 18th century, its history goes back much further.

The treasure hoard was likely buried during the early years of the Abbasid caliphate, which came to power in 750 and was destroyed by the Mongols in 1258. Named after one of Muhammad's uncles, the Abbasid caliphs helped usher in the Islamic Golden Age in which cultural and scientific activity flourished. Geographically, the Abbasid Empire stretched from North Africa to Iran but was concentrated primarily in the Arabian Peninsula and present-day Iraq, with its capital at Baghdad.

According to Islamic tradition, every adult who can afford it and is physically able to make it is supposed to make a pilgrimage — called the Hajj — to the holiest Islamic city, Mecca, at least once. During the Abbasid period, Diriyah was an important stop on the pilgrimage route between Basra, a port city in southern Iraq near the Arabian Gulf, and Mecca on the west coast of Saudi Arabia.

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NASA's Moon Base Could Be Ready In 2032

NASA has unveiled a major update on its long-term plan to build a permanent human settlement on the Moon, following the successful Artemis II mission last month. The agency said the future lunar base could eventually stretch across hundreds of square miles near the Moon’s south pole.

NASA officials described the project as a critical step toward sustained lunar exploration and future missions to Mars. The agency also confirmed new partnerships with private companies, including Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin, as it prepares for a planned crewed Moon landing in 2027.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said engineers are now entering a phase focused on understanding how humans and machines can survive on the Moon for extended periods.

"The grand return" to lunar exploration is getting closer, Isaacman said during a briefing in Washington. He added that NASA will continue "figuring out what works and what doesn’t" in one of the harshest environments humans have ever attempted to inhabit.

Isaacman said the Moon presents severe environmental challenges for astronauts and equipment. Surface temperatures can climb above 480 degrees Fahrenheit in sunlight and fall below minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit in darkness.

He also highlighted permanently shadowed craters near the lunar south pole, which scientists believe contain valuable resources and ancient material untouched by sunlight for billions of years.

"There is no atmosphere to moderate these extremes," Isaacman said. He also pointed to radiation exposure, solar particle events, and meteorite impacts as major risks for future lunar crews.

NASA officials believe those conditions make the Moon an ideal testing ground for deep-space operations before missions to Mars begin later in the decade.

NASA also announced a major procurement agreement involving Blue Origin, which will provide lunar-terrain vehicle delivery landers for the Moon Base program.

Officials described the deal as the first procurement award tied directly to the lunar base effort. Carlos Garcia-Galan, program executive for the Moon Base initiative, said NASA has already started the project’s first development phase.

Garcia-Galan said the lunar settlement could eventually cover "hundreds of square miles," giving it a footprint comparable to a large city. The base will sit farther south than any Apollo astronaut ever traveled.

NASA expects astronauts to live and work there for extended periods while conducting scientific research and preparing technologies for future Mars missions. The agency has previously estimated the broader lunar base effort could cost around US$ 20 billion.

The first mission connected to the project, Moonbase 1, will use Blue Origin’s Mark I Endurance lander. NASA currently targets a fall 2026 launch for the mission.

The spacecraft will carry multiple payloads to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge area near the lunar south pole. It will also transport two NASA science payloads and test technologies designed to reduce risks for future human landings.

"Every mission supporting the lunar base helps us learn and de-risk crewed missions," Isaacman said. He added that Blue Origin’s involvement makes the mission especially important for the Artemis campaign.

Moonbase 2 will use Astrobotic’s Griffin lander and deliver more than 1100 pounds of cargo to the lunar surface. The mission will transport Astrolab’s FLIP rover and support research into autonomous systems, logistics, and astronaut mobility.

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The Blue Micromoon Is Expected To Appear This Weekend

A blue micromoon will make a rare appearance this weekend, offering skywatchers a sight they won't have a chance to witness again until the very end of 2028.

The blue micromoon is a blue moon that's the most distant and smallest-looking full moon of the year.

In the Northern Hemisphere, people will see the upcoming spectacle occur alongside Antares, a bright star that will appear in the constellation Scorpius. The scene could be especially thrilling south of the equator and across the Pacific, as the moon will appear to cross in front of Antares and obscure it, astronomers said.

Occurring once every two or three years, a blue moon is how scientists refer to the second full moon of a single month. This month, the first full moon happened on 1 May. The last blue moon emerged in 2023, and the next one won't arrive until 31 December 2028, according to EarthSky.

Despite the name, this blue moon won't appear turquoise, sapphire or any other shade. The term simply refers to the uncommon occurrence of two full moons in one month.

Since the moon's orbit isn't a perfect circle, the upcoming full moon will be farther from Earth than usual at a distance of 252,360 miles, making it seem a bit smaller and dimmer. It's the opposite of a supermoon when a full moon comes closer to us than normal. The most recent supermoon, by comparison, was just 225,130 miles away.

Those who want to see the blue micromoon will have to intentionally go looking for it. The Virtual Telescope Project's Gianluca Masi told the Associated Press that the micromoon will appear 6 percent smaller and 10 percent dimmer, roughly, than an average full moon. Because of that, the differences "are subtle enough to likely go unnoticed by most observers."

The Virtual Telescope Project said it will stream live images of the blue micromoon, captured by its robotic telescopes.

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After Rhinos and Wolves, Scientists Wants To Create Artificial Wombs

When you look at it, the last two northern white rhinos on Earth spend their days as if they were not the last two northern white rhinos on Earth. They lumber majestically along a dun and dusty landscape, as their ancestors have done for millions of years.

They graze with dedication on tremendous amounts of grass — more than 100 pounds a day — uprooting the plant with the flat, powerful lips that evolution painstakingly bestowed. They wallow in the mud, or rest in the shade of acacia trees, or gaze, placidly, in the direction of Mount Kenya. Sometimes, they let egrets rest on their hulking, primordial backs.

Then again, as the last two northern white rhinos on Earth, Najin and Fatu have lives that are singular. Armed rangers at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy guard them from poachers every minute of every day. Buses of tourists and schoolchildren gather at the conservancy’s electric fence, angling for a glimpse of the tail ends of an evolutionary line that’s been stretching back to the time horses were the size of dogs and the continent of Australia had not yet broken free of Antarctica.

Normally, northern white rhino females would live with their young in small herds, but Najin and Fatu have only each other. The last male northern white rhino, Sudan, died in 2018. Najin and Fatu, his daughter and granddaughter, have health issues that make it impossible for them to reproduce; and so in a term both clinical and heartbreaking, the species is already considered "functionally extinct," its remaining two members living in an evolutionary twilight.

Some animals are so endangered and elusive that we don’t even know if they still exist; many extinctions happen without human awareness or acknowledgment. But we will know the exact minute when northern white rhinos go extinct. We will be able to mark the day dolefully on a calendar.

And yet. For the past 50 years, and in anticipation of their demise, scientists have been banking tissue samples of the species in repositories like San Diego’s Frozen Zoo.

For some time now, they have been retrieving eggs from Najin and Fatu and fertilizing them with sperm collected from northern white rhinos that have already perished. Thirty-nine viable embryos have been created via IVF. In 2023, scientists and veterinarians achieved the first successful IVF pregnancy in a rhino species, using both an embryo and surrogate from the relatively more plentiful southern white as proof that the technique could work. The fetus was only 70 days old when the mother died of a bacterial infection. Since then, three northern white rhino embryos have been transplanted into southern white rhinos, but none of these interspecies transfers has been successful.

In February, scientists from Colossal Biosciences reported that they were nearing a breakthrough. Colossal is a for-profit company that was co-founded in 2021 by billionaire and serial entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church with the mission of using recent scientific developments — in gene editing, in collecting and analyzing ancient DNA, in cellular biology, and in embryology, among others — to "de-extinct" lost animals.

In early 2025, the company reported the creation of 38 "woolly mice," in which gene edits had been made to replicate the long, thick fur and cold-resistant metabolism of woolly mammoths. (Though technically just a quality-control step to see how the genes would be expressed in an animal whose DNA is well understood, the mice turned out to be so freakishly adorable that people showed up at the lab trying to get their hands on one, and Colossal had to beef up its security.)

Then, in April 2025, the company announced with much fanfare that it had extracted DNA from a 72,000-year-old skull and a 13,000-year-old tooth, used computational biology to figure out which genes did what within that DNA, made 20 edits to the cells of gray wolves that would cause them to express certain phenotypes, or physical traits, created embryos from those edited cells, and then de-extincted the dire wolf.

"We are pleased to announce that, for the first time ever in history, we have successfully resurrected a prehistoric pop-culture icon," proclaimed a promotional video by Krampus director Michael Dougherty.

Artificial wombs have been on Colossal’s agenda since the company’s very earliest days, back when Lamm called up Church with a question about algae. Church is widely recognized as the father of synthetic biology and was one of the first scientists to edit the human genome with CRISPR, a technology that works like "molecular scissors" to cut DNA at precise points.

He is also a TED Talk darling with a knack for supporting scientifically plausible ideas that sound like science fiction; he has discussed editing genes to make them do such things as age in reverse, encode and store digital information like books, and be resistant to the damage caused by radiation they would be exposed to in interplanetary travel. He has applied for 170 patents. He sees himself as an intellectual provocateur.

"I think that’s probably my main role, not just in Colossal but in everything I do," Church said. "I don’t try to change opinion about things, but I do try to help people see what is possible, and listen very carefully to what society wants and doesn’t want, as it is a moving target. Almost everything that’s really cool in technology at one point somebody hated, and usually the haters are particularly loud about it."

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