For the last 22 years, one of the most bizarre true crime stories ever to grace the program Unsolved Mysteries has confounded amateur investigators and spawned hundreds of pages of online speculation. Who was behind the decade-long torment of Bill and Dorthy Wacker in the 80s and 90s, which included allegations of stalking, robberies, and even assaults?

While any internet true crime enthusiast knows Unsolved Mysteries frequently left out interesting details that can create a rabbit hole of alternative explanations, in this case, the show has been the sole source of information, with no other known period news coverage of the harassment.

That is, until recently, when this author acquired the original police records, spanning almost 100 pages of material, while researching for my podcast, Cease to Exist. The records reveal a wealth of new information, including potential leads on suspects, and answers to questions true crime fans have speculated about for years.

Unsolved Mysteries

In the Unsolved Mysteries season 6 two-hour finale, airing in the spring of 1994, the public met Bill and Dorthy Wacker, an elderly couple from Massillon, Ohio, who claimed to be victims of a bizarre string of harassment stretching back years. Since then, their story has been the subject of considerable speculation, with some believing the whole affair was so unbelievable that the Wackers must have been making it up. On the other hand, Dorothy herself did seem to bear injuries consistent with the couple’s claims. Without any further information, true crime fans dissected every available scrap of evidence, including the accuracy of the reenactments, for possible clues.

“The Wackers are quiet, unassuming people who tend to mind their own business. Hardly the type to draw the wrath of an unseen enemy,” Unsolved Mysteries host Robert Stack said at the beginning of the segment.

The scene then opens with the couple returning to find their home ransacked on January 16, 1985. This was the third claimed incident, but according to the program, the first that was reported.

“After nearly 10 years, Dorothy and Bill Wacker still wonder who and why,” Stock intoned.

The Wacker’s Story

In interview footage with the couple, Bill speculates that someone may be attempting to force the couple to move, although why that would be was unclear, and refers to the perpetrator as “a kook,” which becomes a bit of a meme in online discourse about the case.

Six months after the previous break-in, Dorothy was home alone recovering from heart surgery when she heard a knock at the door. She found a young man who claimed his car had broken down and that he needed to use her telephone. Although she didn’t see a car anywhere, she let the polite stranger in. He made a call, thanked her, and appeared to leave.

Before she knew what had happened, Dorothy awoke tied up on her kitchen floor after having been struck in the head. A neighbor heard her cries through an open window and came to her aid. Although Dorothy’s injury was not serious, there were two strange elements to the crime. First was the graffiti “cheaper, but will do,” shown in the reenactment as having been left on the kitchen wall. Second was the variety of items stolen from the home, including a gun and radio receiver, which were later returned to the Wackers’ porch. Police were baffled by the return of a stolen gun and distributed fliers featuring a sketch of the suspect, but no identification was ever made.

Harassment continued with a series of threatening phone calls that persisted even after the family changed their number, according to Dorothy and her daughter Peggy Hoover. Additionally, nocturnal banging on the outside of the house began, which led the couple to install lights. The only result was a strange note on the front porch reading “your lights are a laugh,” and subsequent notes such as “you scum I’ll get even,” with a backside reading “this time ha ha.” The police never found any fingerprints on the notes and suggested they may have been made by someone using their opposite hand to disguise their handwriting.

Second Attack and Stake Out

The most dramatic events yet occurred in the fall of 1993. Dorothy was walking her dog outside of their home on October 27th when she was attacked again. The segment claimed she suffered “skull lacerations” and was taken to the hospital, but there were no witnesses to the event. 

Notably, Sheriff Bruce W Umpleby says that after interviewing neighbors, no one had any information that led them to believe there was a person there. He continued that most crimes have simple motives and there has never been one identified for the strange periodic flurries of activity around the Wackers.

Things reached a climax when the family conducted a stakeout, hoping to finally capture the stalker one November evening. Bill hid inside a trailer in the driveway, while Dorothy and their daughter Cathy stayed inside the home. Across the street, their sons-in-law Dan and Clay sat in a vehicle in a neighbor’s driveway. After almost four hours, they decided to end the stakeout around 10:30 p.m., when they heard a loud bump on the porch. Incredibly, the stalker had apparently evaded the surveillance and thrown a rock onto the Wackers’ front porch with a note reading “get the message.”

At the conclusion of the segment, Bill says he hopes whoever is responsible is caught soon because, if the Wackers were no longer the targets, he feared the individual would simply target someone else.

Unsolved Mysteries Online Speculation

Besides noting that the sheriff’s department had asked Dorothy after the second attack whether Bill could have been the attacker, the series plays the events fairly straight, without directly questioning the couple’s story. The eerie music and Stack’s gravelly voice convey a feeling of serious menace. True crime fans are more divided, with some arguing that the events were too implausible to be real, while others find it unlikely that an elderly couple would fabricate such a wild tale. Notably, another popular Unsolved Mysteries segment, involving the stalking of Cindy James, is also widely believed to have involved a hoax.

Unfortunately, Newspapers.com’s archive of the local paper, The Massillon Independent, has a large gap between the early 1970s and the 2020s. The only other known media appearance by Bill Wacker before his death was in an unrelated citizen-reaction piece about Connie Chung interviewing Newt Gingrich’s mother in the Akron Beacon Journal, although he is wearing an Unsolved Mysteries hat in the picture. The only other items recovered were obituaries stating that Bill had died in 1999 at age 79 and Dorothy in 2020 at age 83. This left armchair sleuths to rely primarily on what appeared in the episode itself, which does raise questions.

One notable detail is that, in the reenactment, Dorothy’s dog doesn’t bark to alert her to the intruder, which seemed uncharacteristic of a small dog. People debated whether this was merely a quirk of the reenactment or reflected how the event actually occurred, with some questioning whether this provided evidence that Bill was behind the assault. Additionally, some found it odd that the stakeout was called off at the relatively early hour of 10:30 p.m. and found the return of stolen items completely unbelievable. Another oddity was the wording of the letters, with phrases like “you scum” and “no junk,” which sounded to some like older adults attempting to mimic the speech of teenagers while using outdated phraseology.

Among those who believe the Wackers, suspicion has frequently fallen on the daughters, who would presumably inherit the home and were not mentioned as suspects in the episode. Particular suspicion has fallen on Peggy, who was not present for the stakeout. Some have also pointed to the phone calls continuing after the Wackers changed their number as possible evidence of an inside job.

One Redditor, sovietbabyy, claimed to be a relative of the Wackers who stumbled upon the case, although they were too young to have ever met Bill and Dorothy themselves. They claimed Bill and his siblings were all dead but asked other family members for more information and were told that the extended family believed the story and that Bill was usually secluded but would help anyone in need. Five years later, a poster using the screen name goawaycommies followed up, claiming to be the same person. In these new posts, the author claimed that Stark County was a high-crime area and that the police were known to be ineffective; therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that no one was caught.

While it could be debated whether these two posters are actually the same person, the goawaycommies post provided one essential detail that led to a major breakthrough: the Wackers’ address.

Finding the Wackers

In late December, I wrote to the Massillon County Sheriff requesting any files they had on the Wackers. They granted my request in early January, providing 94 pages of documents. Follow-up requests to the North Lawrence Fire Department, who responded to the assaults, as well as inquiries to two of the responding officers and Ricky Lee Pegido, were fruitless. The Sheriff’s office maintains that these documents are all that were found in the file, despite some appearing to be missing, such as a cover sheet without a report and references to a “phone trap” that is not followed up on.

While the officers may not have wanted to talk about these events, what was contained inside was fascinating, providing the names of suspects, neighbors’ opinions on the Wackers, incidents that were not included in the Unsolved Mysteries segment, and another 90s-era “classic” addition: records involving consultation with a psychic about the crimes.

The Reports

Right from the beginning, the documents tell a slightly different story from the television segment. Instead of waiting until the third event, in January 1985, to call police, there was a report concerning the initial August 1984 break-in. This one was different from the others, with gold and diamond jewelry stolen that was not returned and police noting that a credit card may have been used to force the lock.

The police report for the January 1985 break-in contained two notable details: the method of entry and the first-named suspect. Despite having their locked home broken into previously, the Wackers had left a side door unlocked, allowing the burglar to gain entry. Additionally, the report lists a “Randy” as a possible suspect, a young man whose aunt had previously cared for Mrs. Wacker’s elderly mother in the home.

Next, the first assault report appears, which is similar to what was shown in the episode, except that “CHEAPER, BUT WILL DO” was written in a bathroom instead of the kitchen. Additionally, a basement window was cut, through which the perpetrator may have escaped. The man who came to her aid is named here as Jim Pedigo, who says he and his brother had been working in their backyard all morning without seeing or hearing a thing until Dorothy’s cries became evident. In this report, the name is given as “Pedigl,” and it switches back and forth between that and “Pedigo” in the reports (the name “Pedigo” appears in print as a family name in the area in obituaries). When Bill returned, he found items that appeared to have been staged to be taken later from the robbery around the perimeter of the house.

Following this, there is a series of minor reports of items being stolen and returned—oddly, with the Wackers still not locking their doors, despite the first report indicating that had been their former habit.

The Second Assault

The report of the second assault does closely match the program, even down to the controversial dog not barking when the assailant came after Dorothy. Although the Wackers claimed the dog normally ignored its surroundings as it relieved itself, the officer noted on a follow-up visit to the residence that the dog barked when he arrived, which he found suspicious. In the report, Dorothy claimed she had to crawl to the back door to get help from Bill after the attacker fled, which was supported by dirt and scratch marks on her forearms noted by the officer. The officer gave Bill some suggestions, such as installing a light on that side of the house and trimming some trees to remove hiding places.

A lengthy segment of the report regarding the Sheriff’s canvassing of the neighborhood provides some interesting insight into the Wackers’ relationship with their neighbors. This portion notes that:

The neighbors collectively agreed that none of them have had any type of problems. Nor, have they seen or heard any form of disturbance in the area. In fact, several of the neighbors stated that they don’t even lock their doors. Further stated by the neighboring community, most of the neighbors stay to themselves, however, ‘the Wackers bring most of their problems on themselves.’ Apparently the Wackers aren’t the most congenial of persons in the neighborhood, especially with the Shillings and Maddox’s.

The Maddox family is the same household as the Pedigo family, a notable change of relations since Jim Pedigo aided Dorothy. On the other hand, another couple in the neighborhood stated that they regularly played cards with the Wackers, providing a nuanced image of them as people who got along with some but not others.

Suspects Not Named on Unsolved Mysteries

Following this event, both of the daughters began continually contacting the Stark County Sheriff’s office, demanding more attention be paid to their parents’ harassment. One of the items introduced here, but oddly never followed up on, is a “phone trap” put on the Wackers’ phone by their telephone company, Ameritech, to monitor all incoming calls. Although the reports say this is activated, there is no information on whether any claims of harassing calls were ever compared against the phone trap.

There appears to be a missing report explaining where the tip originates from, but officers speak with the son residing at the Maddox/Pedigo residence, Ricky Lee Pedigo, about whether he is aware of an individual by the name of “Shriner” on his mother’s side of the family, which he was not. When they later return to speak with his mother, Barbara Maddox, she claims she is not related to anyone by that name and flippantly remarks that the composite of the suspect in the first attack on Dorothy looks like a young dick Van Dyke, but no one she’s ever seen before.

Next, officers follow up on a tip from daughter Peggy Hoover that a woman named Debbie Shriver’s (not Shriner) ex-husband may be the suspect. After tracing this woman through a former landlord and then her own father, Debbie, now going by Debbie Pedigo, agrees to speak with the Stark County Sheriff’s. She says the composite bears no resemblance to her ex-husband, James Shriver.

Peggy then returns with another tip that a psychic told her the suspect lives within a twelve-mile radius of the Wacker home.

Finally, Peggy provides one last suspect: Barbara Maddox’s stepson, Johnny Lee, whom she says may be because her parents didn’t pay enough attention to him as a boy. At this point, Barbara Maddox has had enough, saying that her stepson hasn’t been to visit in years, and she is going to put up a privacy fence to keep away from the Wackers.

Final Events

From this point on, the banging and rocks being thrown at the home continued. At one point, the Wackers claimed someone had tried to gain entrance to their locked home, but the police report casts suspicion on this. The appraisal was that it appeared as though someone was attempting to make it look like the house was being broken into without causing too much damage, and it was inconsistent with typical burglary techniques.

The final report is from October 1997, when Dorothy heard a loud banging on the house while seated in the living room. An officer responded but could find no damage.

All the reports are bizarre. The daughters appear to be very invested in the case, yet Peggy ultimately seems to be throwing around claims that don’t add up to anything. Was she letting her imagination run away with her, using the events as a cover to harass people she had personal grievances against, or was she really on to something? The “Shriner/Shriver” discrepancy speaks to a minor issue prevalent in the police’s investigations: not confirming the spelling of names, which also occurs with “Pedigl/Pedigo.” Does this indicate the sheriff’s department is generally performing sloppy work, as the Reddit poster implied? While there is room to speculate here, the constantly changing accusations may have undermined Peggy’s credibility with law enforcement.

One possible conclusion is that the very earliest break-in was real, since the stolen items were not returned and the report is consistent with a typical forced entry. Perhaps after that, the Wackers developed a taste for the excitement and attention and hoaxed the rest of it. This would explain the incongruities of items being returned, no one ever seeing anything, their continuing to leave their doors unlocked, and the strange attempt to create the appearance of a forced entry without damaging the home.

But then again, officers reported witnessing injuries to Dorothy after both assaults. Could she have been willing to take things that far? Could the couple have truly been victims? Could one of the children be behind it? Was Bill assaulting her?

None of these questions can clearly be answered from the available evidence; and so, decades after the strange story of the Wackers first came to public attention, the case rests—and another relic of the 1990s remains an unsolved mystery.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

Giovanni Kanter goes to at least one art museum whenever he visits a new city. That’s on top of his regular exploration of galleries in New York, where the 25-year-old ICU nurse lives and studies. He typically discovers new artists and gallery openings through word of mouth, though he has recently started curating his social media feed to serve relevant content (he’s currently in what he terms a “surrealism phase”).

He was raised on visual art; he's the son of painter Marianne Gargour and nephew of mixed-media artist Heather Hutchison and painter-printmaker Mark Thomas Kanter. His “exposure-oriented education” featured childhood visits to galleries and shows in and around Dallas, where he grew up, and in France, where he spent time with his grandparents.

But Kanter is an exception. Many other young people have a less immersive artistic education, perhaps shaped by occasional school trips or family visits to museums. If they haven’t internalized an instinct for what Kanter calls “moving through the art and absorbing it,” the museum experience is central to how they learn about and understand art.

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What can some neon trapped in a chunk of rock tell us about Earth’s formation and the protosolar nebula? Quite a lot, as detailed in a recent study in The Planetary Science Journal.

Noble Mysteries

By analyzing rocks pulled from mid-ocean ridges, geologists have concluded that there are tiny amounts of noble gases in the deep interior of Earth. That’s a strange statement upon reflection: how did these gases, which are famously apathetic to essentially all other elements, end up embedded within rocks thousands of kilometers underground? Since their passivity rules out the potential of a chemical reaction that formed them in place, they must have been in the mantle since the very beginning of Earth’s history.

There are a few scenarios for how this could have happened. Though it’s possible that these inert species were delivered to the early Earth encapsulated within primitive meteorites or in solids contaminated by ions from the solar wind, at least some fraction of these elements likely came directly from the gaseous nebula that surrounded the earliest protoplanets.

That last option is especially exciting to present-day planetary scientists interested in constraining Earth’s formation history because it requires some very specific conditions. Since light noble gases like neon don’t dissolve well in seawater, they must have dissolved into a magma ocean — meaning the nebula was still around when Earth was large enough to have a molten surface. That already restricts us to a very specific time in the solar system’s history, but it doesn’t say much about the specific size of the proto-Earth other than “big,” and it doesn’t say much about the state of the nebula other than “it existed.” Recently, Vincent Savignac and Eve Lee (University of California, San Diego; McGill University) successfully refined these constraints to pin down information about both the early Earth and the nebula that surrounded it.

Infant Earths

Savignac and Lee began by growing a grid of infant Earths on their computers via models of gas accretion and atmosphere–magma interactions. Each simulation started with a different proto-Earth mass and nebular density, and each one yielded a different amount of neon in Earth’s deep interior. Excitingly, only a small handful of the scenarios tested ended up with values similar to those observed.

On the mass axis, the team found a narrow range of acceptable conditions. If a proto-Earth was less than about 20% of Earth’s present-day mass, it couldn’t accrete much gas. This let it cool rapidly, freezing the magma ocean and shutting down neon dissolution before too much could be trapped inside. On the other hand, if a proto-Earth was more than about 40% of Earth’s present-day mass, it would accrete too much gas, stay molten for too long, and be left with too much neon. On the density axis, the researchers found that when the nebula accreted on to the proto-Earth, it must have been fairly depleted compared to its initial density. This implies that the whole process happened at the end of the nebula’s life, just before it was completely blown away by the proto-Sun.

Savignac and Lee demonstrated that these constraints are robust against the later stages of Earth’s evolution. In its later years, Earth either suffered or benefited from a giant impact, depending on your feelings about the Moon, but the researchers showed that this event doesn’t pose a problem for their models. Overall, this study builds a delightful link between rocks from our deep oceans and the particulars of Earth’s formation, demonstrating the unique power of planetary science to tie together different scientific fields.

Citation

“Constructing the Earth’s Formation History Using Deep Mantle Noble Gas Reservoirs,” Vincent Savignac and Eve J. Lee 2026 Planet Sci. J. 7 135. doi:10.3847/PSJ/ae64f7

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Emergency SOS via satellite is now available in Andorra and Iceland, according to an updated Apple support document.

Available on the iPhone 14 and newer and the Apple Watch Ultra 3, Emergency SOS via satellite allows you to text emergency services when you are in a supported area without Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity. The feature requires iOS 26.4 and watchOS 26.4 or later in Andorra and Iceland.
This article, "Emergency SOS via Satellite Expands to Two More Countries" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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I wanted a clock that, annoyingly, didn't seem to exist.

Since childhood, my bedside clocks have been a series of red, seven-segment LED clock-radio specials from Walmart or Target. They are invariably cheap, simple, and long-lived—but they require manual intervention at the start and end of Daylight Saving Time and whenever the power flickers. After a recent power flicker, as I found myself standing by the sideboard holding down "TIME" and mashing the "HOUR" button, frustration boiled over, and I thought to myself, "We're a quarter of the way through the 21st century. There has to be a better way!"

My perfect clock would be self-setting. It would offer auto-DST adjustment (or not, depending on how this bill fares!). It would manage drift and always show the exact sub-second time. It would show that time on a red seven-segment display—not blue, not green, not yellow, and absolutely not white. And I shouldn't have to install any privacy-destroying garbage apps to make it work.

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Researchers have detected molecules containing rings and chains of carbon atoms in the vicinity of a rare pair of quasars. The trends in the distribution of these molecules are unexpected, suggesting that more work is needed to understand the conditions surrounding active supermassive black holes.

Infrared Eyes on Molecules in Space

Across the universe, atoms are combining to form molecules, and our ability to study molecules in distant realms has never been better. JWST is particularly attuned to emissions from molecules engaged in a kind of chemical yoga, stretching their bonds and flexing the angles between their atoms.

JWST’s sensitive infrared eyes have allowed researchers to study the distribution, creation, and destruction of both aromatic (containing one or more rings of carbon atoms in which certain electrons spread out within the ring) and aliphatic (containing chains of carbon atoms) hydrocarbons. These molecules have been spotted in a wide array of environments, and now, astronomers are finding them in more distant and more extreme environments than ever before.

Distant Discovery

SDSS J074922.96+225511.7, or J0749+2255 for short, is a quasar pair seen 3 billion years after the Big Bang. The two feasting supermassive black holes are roughly 12,000 light-years apart, giving researchers a glimpse into the late stages of a galaxy merger and a harsh environment in which to study the survival and destruction of molecules.

Researchers studying J0749+2255 with JWST have previously reported the detection of a 3.3-μm emission feature from aromatic molecules. Now, C. E. Mentzer (University of Missouri), Aigen Li (University of Missouri), and Xuejuan Yang (Xiangtan University) have analyzed JWST spectra of J0749+2255 and found not just widespread aromatic emission at a rest-frame wavelength of 3.3 μm, but also aliphatic emission at 3.4 μm, which they attribute to carbon chains branching off from the aromatic molecules. This likely makes J0749+2255 the most distant galaxy in which both aromatic and aliphatic emission has been detected.

Unexpected Trends

Mentzer, Li, and Yang subdivided the observations into 47 regions and measured the strength of the 3.3- and 3.4-μm features in each region. This analysis found strong aromatic emission nearest the quasars and showed that the fraction of carbon atoms bound up in aliphatic chains is highest close to the quasars.

Both of these findings are unexpected: the harsh radiation environment near the two active black holes is thought to break apart chains of carbon atoms attached to aromatic rings (which should decrease the 3.4-μm emission) and possibly destroy small aromatic molecules (which should decrease the 3.3-μm emission) — yet both of these features are strongest near the quasar cores where the radiation should be most capable of molecular destruction.

The authors speculated that the analysis regions centered on the quasars are large enough that they contain gas that hasn’t been pummeled by the quasars’ intense radiation and outflows, leaving molecules intact and able to produce the observed emission. However, this doesn’t explain the trend of stronger 3.3- and 3.4-μm emission closer to the quasars — necessitating further research into the emitting behavior of aromatic and aliphatic molecules under the extreme conditions of a dual quasar’s neighborhood.

Citation

“Widespread Detection of Aromatic and Aliphatic Emission in the Dual Quasar J0749+2255 at Cosmic Noon,” C. E. Mentzer et al 2026 ApJL 1005 L38. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ae7e86

The post Researchers Spot Hydrocarbons Surprisingly Close to a Quasar Pair appeared first on AAS Nova.

Ontem, falamos aqui sobre o rumor de que a Apple estaria prestes a lançar, nos Estados Unidos, um programa de assinatura de iPhones, iPads, Macs e Apple Watches, dando aos consumidores mais formas de acessar seus dispositivos.

Logo depois, o 9to5Mac encontrou, no código da beta do iOS 27, menções a um novo framework que serviria para gerenciar dispositivos alugados por meio de assinaturas como essa.

Chamado App Managed Features, ele permitirá, ao que tudo indica, que um aplicativo autorizado de financiamento ou de prestação de serviços — e não apenas o “Apple Upgrade”, como a solução proprietária está sendo chamada — registre um iPhone e realize verificações contínuas de status.

Caso haja algum problema com o registro (como pagamentos atrasados), o iPhone será colocado automaticamente em um estado intitulado “Restricted Mode” (“Modo Restrito”, em tradução livre), que bloqueia o acesso a uma série de apps do iOS, incluindo:

• Leitor de Acessibilidade (Accessibility Reader)
• App Store
• Saúde (Health)
• Lupa (Magnifier)
• Telefone (Phone)
• Relógio (Clock)
• Ajustes (Settings)
• Carteira (Wallet)
• Senhas (Passwords)
• A interface do “Restricted Mode” em si

Como é possível notar, alguns apps mais “críticos”, como o Mensagens (Messages) e o Casa (Home), poderão continuar disponíveis mesmo quando esse bloqueio estiver ativo. Segundo o 9to5Mac, no entanto, o provedor do aparelho será capaz de escolher quais apps ficarão (ou não) de fora dessa lista.

Embora restrinja o acesso aos apps do aparelho, o recurso não parece modificar assinaturas da App Store, o que significa que o usuário continuará sendo cobrado pelos seus apps e serviços mesmo após ter sido colocado no “Restricted Mode”.

Além disso, o código do iOS 27 não lista um número limite de pagamentos atrasados como condição para o bloqueio dos apps, o que significa que ficará a cargo dos serviços de assinatura decidir quando impor essas restrições de acordo com os seus termos e condições.

Há, no entanto, menções a um novo tipo de Bloqueio de Ativação (Activation Lock) chamado “Partner Finance Lock”, criado com o objetivo de impedir que usuários apaguem, vendam ou desmontem um aparelho alugado para revender suas peças.

Ainda segundo as informações, o App Managed Features faz parte do app Buscar (Find My), embora o provedor não tenha acesso à localização do dispositivo. Ao que tudo indica, essa integração existe apenas para garantir que o bloqueio continue de pé mesmo que o usuário apague ou redefina o aparelho.

Embora essas referências não tenham sido encontradas na versão Release Candidate (RC) do iOS 26.6, é possível que elas sejam adicionadas à versão final do sistema, já que, segundo a Bloomberg, o “Apple Upgrade” será anunciado na semana que vem.

Safari Notify Me gives Apple’s browser a useful new role in online shopping: watching a product page after the shopper has closed it. Instead of repeatedly returning to check whether an item is available or whether its price has changed, users can ask Safari to monitor the page and send an alert when the requested update appears.

The feature arrives as online shopping becomes increasingly fragmented. Prices can change several times during a promotion, popular items disappear within minutes and retailers often require shoppers to join separate mailing lists for availability alerts. Dedicated tracking apps can help, but each adds another account, extension or subscription.

Safari Notify Me places the monitoring tool inside the browser already being used to view the product. It is simple enough for occasional purchases while potentially useful for expensive electronics, limited releases, event registrations and products that move in and out of stock.

Safari Notify Me Watches the Page for You

Safari Notify Me is designed to monitor changes on a specific webpage. The user identifies what should be watched, such as a lower price, a product returning to stock or registration becoming available. Safari then checks the page and sends a notification after detecting the relevant change.

Apple has presented price changes and product restocks as central examples, though the feature is not restricted to shopping. It may also help with reservations, ticket availability, enrollment openings or other pages where one detail changes over time.

For shopping, the advantage is immediate. A customer can leave the product page without relying on memory, leaving dozens of tabs open or refreshing the site throughout the day.

The browser becomes temporarily responsible for the follow-up.

This differs from a retailer’s own email alert. Store notifications usually depend on the business offering the feature, and they may focus only on inventory. Safari can monitor the page according to the user’s request, potentially covering price and availability without requiring another marketing subscription.

How Safari Price Alerts Help

Online prices are rarely as stable as the label suggests. Retailers adjust discounts, respond to competitors, launch short promotions and change prices according to stock levels.

A shopper interested in a Mac accessory, appliance or expensive display may not want to purchase immediately at the listed price. Checking the page every day is inefficient, while joining a store mailing list can produce far more promotional email than useful information.

Safari price alerts create a quieter alternative. The user can identify the product and wait for the browser to report a meaningful change.

The feature does not replace price history. Safari may detect that the amount has dropped, but that does not necessarily prove the new price is the lowest offered during the year. Dedicated price-tracking services may still provide charts, comparisons and retailer-specific history.

Safari Notify Me is better understood as a page-change assistant. It tells the shopper that something requested has happened. The decision to purchase remains with the user.

Restock Alerts May Be Even More Useful

Restock monitoring may become the feature’s strongest shopping use. Limited products can return without warning and sell out before a retailer’s email reaches every subscriber.

This often happens with game consoles, graphics hardware, collectibles, seasonal products, concert merchandise and popular configurations of newly released devices. Size and color variations can also return separately, making a general product alert less useful.

Safari restock alerts can focus on the page the user is already viewing. A notification provides a reason to return without requiring the tab to remain open.

The browser cannot reserve the item or guarantee that inventory will remain available. A notification may also arrive after other buyers have begun ordering. Safari removes the repeated checking, but it does not control the retailer’s inventory system.

That limitation is reasonable. Notify Me helps users notice the opportunity; it does not turn Safari into an automated purchasing bot.

Using Safari Notify Me

The feature is intended to require little setup. Users begin on the relevant product or registration page and tell Safari which change they want it to watch.

To create a Safari Notify Me alert:

Open the webpage in Safari > Select Notify Me > Describe the price, availability or page change to monitor > Allow Safari notifications when requested

The exact options shown may depend on the device, webpage and software version. Apple is introducing the feature with its new operating-system releases, and availability may vary by language or region.

A useful request should be specific. Asking Safari to report when the item returns to stock is more actionable than asking for any page change. For price monitoring, the user may request a reduction or watch for a particular target when the page supports enough information.

Once the alert is active, there is no need to keep the product page open. Safari sends a notification after detecting the requested update, allowing the user to return directly to the page.

A Better Use for Apple Intelligence

Safari Notify Me is a practical example of Apple Intelligence operating as an assistant rather than a writing tool. It interprets what the user wants, watches for a future condition and reports back when that condition appears.

The feature does not need to generate a long answer or place a chatbot beside every shopping page. Its value comes from removing a repetitive task.

That restrained approach fits Safari. The browser already manages passwords, private browsing, tab organization, Reader and tracking protections. Monitoring a page extends that utility without turning Safari into a retailer or shopping marketplace.

It may also reduce the need for third-party extensions among casual users. Someone who occasionally watches one product does not necessarily need a dedicated deal platform with wish lists, affiliate links and account registration.

Specialized services will remain useful for serious bargain hunting. Safari covers the simpler request: tell me when this exact page changes in the way I care about.

Notifications Need Restraint

Any feature built around alerts can become noisy when used too freely. Monitoring every product considered during casual browsing could fill Notification Center with price changes and restocks that no longer feel relevant.

Safari Notify Me works better when reserved for purchases with genuine intent. A few focused alerts are easier to understand and act upon than dozens of loosely defined page watches.

Users should also remove alerts after buying the item or losing interest. A notification for a product purchased weeks earlier adds clutter without saving time.

Safari notifications can be managed through the device’s normal notification settings. Disabling all Safari alerts may also silence other useful browser notifications, so reviewing individual watches inside Safari is preferable when available.

Price Is Not the Only Shopping Decision

A lower price can encourage a quick purchase, but shoppers should still review the seller, return policy, warranty and delivery estimate. Notify Me reports a page change; it does not evaluate whether the store is reliable or whether the offer has hidden conditions.

A product may return through a third-party marketplace seller at a higher price. A discount may apply only after a membership, coupon or trade-in. Limited inventory can also create pressure to buy before reading the terms.

Safari’s privacy protections and fraud warnings remain relevant, but users should confirm that the page belongs to the intended retailer before entering payment information.

The alert is a starting signal, not an endorsement.

Safari Becomes More Useful After the Tab Closes

Browsers traditionally stop being helpful once users leave a page. Safari Notify Me changes that relationship by allowing selected pages to remain useful without remaining visible.

For shoppers, that means fewer repeated searches, fewer forgotten products and less dependence on promotional email. Price and restock alerts can operate quietly until there is a reason to return.

The feature will not replace advanced shopping trackers, and it cannot guarantee inventory. Its appeal is that most users do not need those larger systems for every purchase.

Sometimes the entire shopping problem is waiting for one price to fall or one button to change from unavailable to buy. Safari Notify Me allows the browser to handle that wait.

The post Safari Notify Me Makes Online Shopping Easier appeared first on AppleMagazine.

EU tech regulation, Digital Markets Act, Apple Europe sales, Apple regulation, European Union, Siri AI, iPhone features, device interoperability, App Store changes, alternative marketplaces, iPhone Mirroring, AirPods translation, Apple privacy, iPhone security, app sideloading, platform competition, DMA compliance, Apple Intelligence, European technology, government control

EU tech regulation is no longer limited to App Store payment rules or competition disputes hidden from ordinary consumers. It is beginning to determine which features reach European devices, how quickly they arrive and how deeply third-party companies can interact with the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

The Digital Markets Act was designed to reduce the control of large technology platforms over software distribution, payments, browsers, digital assistants and connected hardware. For Apple, compliance has already produced alternative app marketplaces, web distribution, third-party payment options, additional default-app controls and expanded access to iPhone technologies.

The next phase reaches much deeper into the operating system. European regulators want competing accessories, cloud services and AI assistants to receive access to capabilities traditionally reserved for Apple’s own products.

Apple argues that some of those demands could weaken privacy and security. The European Commission says the company is responsible for creating compliant systems that preserve both competition and user protection.

Between those positions sits a large and commercially significant group of customers. Europe generated $28.06 billion in Apple sales during the quarter ending March 28, 2026, up from $24.45 billion one year earlier. Six-month European sales reached $66.20 billion, compared with $58.32 billion during the same period of fiscal 2025.

Europe therefore represented more than one-quarter of Apple’s latest quarterly revenue. It is too valuable to leave behind, but increasingly difficult to serve with the same software experience available elsewhere.

EU Tech Regulation Is Splitting Feature Availability

Regional differences once centered mainly on language support, licensing agreements or local services. EU tech regulation is creating a more structural divide.

Apple has blamed Digital Markets Act requirements for delaying Siri AI across the European Union. The company says regulators expect competing AI assistants to receive extensive access to personal information, apps and device actions before Apple can reserve those capabilities for its own assistant.

The disagreement concerns more than answering questions. Siri AI is designed to read personal context, understand onscreen information and complete actions across apps. That may include finding messages, accessing files, making purchases or sending information on the user’s behalf.

Opening those capabilities to outside AI systems requires new permission structures, technical interfaces and safeguards. Apple says it cannot release its assistant first and add competing access later without risking regulatory action. The Commission says Apple had sufficient time to design an interoperable solution.

Other delayed European features have included iPhone Mirroring on Mac, Live Translation through AirPods and certain location-based Maps capabilities. Each feature touches a different part of the ecosystem, but all depend on privileged communication between Apple devices, software and services.

The consequence is becoming visible at purchase. Two customers can buy the same iPhone model at similar prices and receive different capabilities because one lives inside the European Union.

Feature Adoption Becomes Slower and Less Predictable

Delayed availability can weaken the adoption of new hardware features even when the devices themselves continue selling well.

Siri AI is intended to become a central part of newer iPhones, iPads and Macs. Buyers who cannot access it lose part of the justification for newer chips, additional memory and on-device AI processing. Developers also face a smaller addressable audience for apps built around the new assistant.

AirPods Live Translation presents a similar problem. A feature designed to demonstrate the combination of iPhone processing, microphones and wearable audio becomes unavailable in a region built around dozens of languages and frequent cross-border travel.

iPhone Mirroring affects the relationship between iPhone and Mac. Users outside the EU can interact with the phone from macOS, while European users may receive notifications without gaining the complete experience.

These differences do not necessarily stop hardware sales. Apple’s newest results show strong European demand despite years of regulatory conflict. They can, however, reduce the speed at which customers use the ecosystem’s newest capabilities.

The effect may grow as software becomes a larger part of hardware differentiation. A faster processor has limited emotional value when the feature designed to demonstrate it is unavailable.

Apple Sales Show Why Europe Cannot Be Ignored

Apple does not report European Union revenue separately. Its Europe segment also includes countries outside the bloc, along with India, the Middle East and Africa. The official segment remains the best regularly published measure of the region’s commercial weight.

European sales rose approximately 15% year over year in Apple’s latest reported quarter. During the first six months of fiscal 2026, the segment expanded by roughly 14%.

Those figures weaken the argument that regulation is already driving customers away from Apple hardware. Demand remains strong, supported by the iPhone 17 family, Mac sales, services and the company’s installed base.

The financial risk is more gradual. Regional software fragmentation can raise engineering costs, delay launches and make European devices less competitive against products able to offer complete feature sets.

Apple must maintain separate distribution rules, payment systems, browser options and eligibility checks. Developers must decide whether alternative stores, external payments or EU-specific business terms justify additional work. Support teams must explain why features differ between countries using the same operating-system version.

A market responsible for more than $28 billion in one quarter can absorb considerable compliance expense. It can also influence Apple’s global product decisions when regulators demand interfaces that cannot be restricted to Europe easily.

A Slow Transfer of Ecosystem Control

The escalating regulatory environment also creates a more fundamental concern: control over complex technology ecosystems can gradually move away from the companies that designed them and toward government committees, regulatory bodies and administrative processes.

That transfer rarely happens through one dramatic order. It develops through repeated obligations covering app distribution, payment systems, browser engines, digital assistants, hardware access, data portability and interoperability. Each requirement may appear narrow when considered alone. Together, they can redefine who determines how the ecosystem operates.

Apple built its platform around tight integration between hardware, software, services and security. Regulators increasingly treat parts of that integration as market power that must be opened to competitors. The danger is that an ecosystem designed as one coordinated environment becomes subject to decisions made by committees that do not carry direct responsibility for product quality, reliability or long-term maintenance.

This can become a slow trap. Once a platform is required to expose one layer, regulators may use that access as the basis for demanding another. A payment exception can be followed by alternative app stores. Alternative stores can lead to broader installation rights. Device interoperability can expand into access for AI assistants, personal data and system actions.

The boundaries of the platform are then set less by engineering judgment and more by regulatory negotiation.

Government agencies have legitimate authority to address competition and consumer harm. The concern appears when regulation shifts from preventing abusive conduct to directing product architecture. At that point, public authorities begin influencing feature design, release timing, software permissions and the relationship between first-party and third-party services.

That creates consequences beyond Apple. Any company considering a tightly integrated product may decide that deep integration invites intervention. Businesses could avoid building ambitious ecosystems if successful coordination later becomes grounds for forced access.

Innovation then becomes shaped by what regulators are likely to permit rather than by what engineers believe will produce the safest or most coherent experience.

Competition Gains Come With Real Consumer Choices

EU policy has produced benefits that Apple rarely emphasizes. Users can install apps through alternative marketplaces or directly from authorized developers. Developers can offer external payment methods, promote different prices and avoid relying entirely on Apple’s distribution system.

Alternative browser engines can compete with WebKit, while users have more control over default apps. Contactless payment access has expanded beyond Apple Pay, allowing competing wallet providers to use the iPhone’s NFC technology under approved conditions.

Interoperability requirements could also improve third-party accessories. Smartwatches, headphones and other devices may gain better notification access, background connectivity and proximity pairing with the iPhone.

These changes can increase competition and reduce the advantage Apple gives its own services and accessories. A third-party smartwatch should not become artificially less useful simply because it was not made in Cupertino.

The difficulty is separating legitimate platform access from unlimited access. A notification interface is one thing. An autonomous AI assistant capable of reading messages, accessing files and acting across apps introduces a different level of sensitivity.

Privacy and Security Risks Are Not Theoretical

Alternative app distribution increases user choice, but it also moves some responsibility away from the App Store. Apple continues to notarize apps distributed through approved alternative channels, checking for known malware and severe fraud. That process is narrower than a complete App Store review.

Purchases made outside Apple’s payment system also fall outside its normal refund and billing support. Users may need to resolve disputes directly with the developer or payment provider.

A malicious marketplace, deceptive payment page or compromised developer account can create opportunities for fraud. Enterprise users face additional concerns when employees install software from sources their organization has not approved.

The AI question reaches further. A third-party assistant may need permission to access messages, photos, calendars, documents and app controls. Even a reputable provider can collect more information than the user expects or introduce vulnerabilities through poorly designed integrations.

Apple can build permission prompts, app isolation and revocation controls, but technical access always creates some exposure. Security depends on how narrowly permissions are defined, how visibly they are used and whether the operating system can stop unauthorized actions.

The Commission maintains that interoperability and privacy can coexist. Apple maintains that regulators are demanding access before adequate protections are ready. Both positions contain a legitimate concern: dominant platforms should not block competition, and competition should not require users to surrender control of personal data.

Government-Controlled Architecture Creates Accountability Gaps

When regulators require a company to alter its architecture, responsibility can become blurred.

Apple remains the company customers blame when an iPhone feature fails, a third-party marketplace distributes a harmful app or an outside assistant misuses personal data. Regulators may have required the access, but they do not operate the device, provide technical support or repair the damage to the platform’s reputation.

This creates an accountability gap. Government committees can mandate openness without assuming the commercial and security consequences of that openness. Apple must comply, maintain the system and explain the outcome to users.

The same problem applies to delayed features. Regulators may argue that Apple chose not to release a service, while Apple may argue that the required conditions made the launch unsafe or technically impractical. Customers are left with less functionality and no simple way to determine who caused the delay.

Over time, the ecosystem can become a negotiated compromise rather than a product with one coherent direction. That may satisfy formal compliance while producing a weaker experience for everyone involved.

The risk is not that governments will literally operate Apple’s software. It is that committees increasingly define the conditions under which Apple can design, connect and release its own features. Control shifts through constraints.

The Industry Will Follow Europe’s Experiment

The consequences extend beyond one company. Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and other platform operators face related European obligations. Hardware makers must consider whether ecosystem advantages can survive when core services are required to support rivals.

Smaller developers may gain new distribution and payment choices, but they may also inherit more compliance, customer-service and security responsibilities. Accessory companies could compete more effectively while becoming accountable for handling sensitive device data.

Other governments are watching. Rules introduced in Europe can influence legislation elsewhere, particularly when companies decide that maintaining one global technical framework is easier than operating several regional versions.

Apple is unlikely to abandon Europe or stop adapting its products. Its sales provide too much evidence of the region’s importance. The company will continue negotiating, appealing decisions and building compliance systems while withholding features it considers unsafe under current demands.

European customers may receive more app stores, payment choices and accessory compatibility. They may also wait longer for headline features included with the same hardware elsewhere.

The deeper consequence may be a technology industry that becomes more cautious about building tightly integrated products. Companies may design around anticipated regulatory demands from the beginning, limiting exclusive features, reducing private-system integration or avoiding innovations that depend on controlled access.

EU tech regulation began as an effort to constrain dominant platforms. Its long-term effect may be to transfer part of the power to shape those platforms from companies and users to regulatory institutions.

That shift deserves scrutiny equal to the market power it is intended to correct. Competition rules can restrain abuse. They can also become a slow mechanism for placing product design, security choices and ecosystem evolution under government supervision.

Shady Control and Bureaucracy

The danger grows when regulatory discretion becomes buried beneath permits, approvals, negotiations and technical committees that operate beyond meaningful public scrutiny.

The more power officials hold over which features, contracts or technologies may proceed—and when—the greater the opportunity for lobbying, favoritism and selective enforcement to influence outcomes. What begins as oversight can gradually become a system in which delay itself is leverage, while responsibility disappears inside layers of administration.

For the technology industry, that risks replacing transparent product decisions with political access, negotiated exceptions and regulatory influence exercised far from the consumers expected to live with the consequences.

The post EU Tech Regulation Creates a Costly Split for Apple appeared first on AppleMagazine.

The iconic disks of spiral galaxies are well known across the local universe and now far beyond. A recent study looks at the Milky Way to determine when its own disk emerged.

Spinning into Spirals

The Milky Way, a grand spiral galaxy with stars and gas rotating in a disk, did not always look this way. Galaxies begin as chaotic clumps of gas and stars inside a knot of dark matter, and at some point in time, spiral galaxies must transform into the flat rotating disks we observe them as today. Recent JWST observations have uncovered disk galaxies emerging much earlier in the universe than previously thought, shifting our understanding of how quickly spiral galaxies come together and settle into disks. While we cannot study the detailed assembly history of these very distant galaxies, we can dissect galaxies in the local universe to build a better timeline of galaxy evolution.

Looking as close to home as possible, astronomers have used the kinematics and chemical makeup of stars in our own Milky Way to trace the moment when the galaxy started to host a rotating stellar disk. This period, known as the “spin-up,” marks when the bulk kinematic signature of the galaxy transitioned from one dominated by random motions to one dominated by a rotating disk.

Stars hold on to the kinematic and chemical information they are born with, so stars of different ages and metallicities across the galaxy should trace the development of the disk. Because stellar ages have been difficult to constrain observationally, studies of galactic spin-up have typically relied on readily available metallicity measurements as a proxy for age; however, metallicity is not a clear-cut age indicator, making it difficult to truly distinguish different stellar populations across the Milky Way’s disk. Luckily, new major surveys have recently provided stellar databases adding the stellar age measurements necessary to pin down when the Milky Way spun up.

Dawn of the Galactic Disk

Sofia Feltzing (Lund Observatory) and collaborators used a catalog of over 300,000 subgiant stars from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope with metallicities, kinematics, and crucial stellar ages to determine when the Milky Way began to host a stellar disk. After making quality cuts to ensure they included only the most robustly measured stars, the authors divided the sample into two distinct stellar populations that settled into the Milky Way’s disk differently: older stars with a high abundance of α elements (like oxygen, magnesium, and silicon) relative to iron and younger stars with low α-element abundances.

With these star samples, Feltzing and team analyzed how both stellar rotational velocity and age varied with metallicity to determine when the Milky Way spun up. They found that high-α stars clearly move from having random motions to being rotationally supported over a short range of metallicities about 12.5 billion years ago, while the low-α stars seem to begin in a rotating disk and stay there. When varying their selection criteria and looking at the full sample, the authors determined that the Milky Way spin-up happened between 12.1 to 12.5 billion years ago — the first time Milky Way spin-up has been age-dated in this way.

These results imply a rapid chemical evolution and change in kinematic properties as stars went from randomly orbiting to rotating in an ordered disk in the Milky Way. The authors suggest that future studies should focus on lower-metallicity stars to better disentangle stars in the disk from stars in the halo, which will lead to a more precise determination of the Milky Way’s spin-up. Upcoming large-scale surveys will make this possible and allow astronomers to build a better picture of galaxy formation in the early universe.

Citation

“Dawn of the Milky Way Disk: Determination of When a Rotationally Supported Disk Appears and Dating the Spin-up of the Disk,” Sofia Feltzing et al 2026 ApJL 1004 L28. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ae6f14

The post Dating the Dawn of the Milky Way Disk appeared first on AAS Nova.

When Lucid introduced the Air electric sedan in late 2021, the first Air Dream Edition I tested packed over 1,100 hp (820 kW) and carried a $180,000-plus window sticker. It's easily the most powerful street car I've tested; the only vehicle I've driven with more power was a purebred race car with a third the mass, and it was on a proper track. Its combustion engine was also about 1,000 times louder than the Air, helping to remind us that "combustion" really does mean explosion after explosion.

For Lucid's second act, the company debuted the Gravity electric SUV last year, and I've just tested the 2026 Gravity Touring, which starts at about $82,000 in the US, including the required destination charge.

My test model carried a bevy of options, including a 22-speaker audio system, the Comfort and Convenience package, third-row seating, a Dynamic Handling package (combining rear-wheel steering and three-chamber air suspension), a luxury seating package (bundling Nappa leather and massaging and ventilated front seats), and special metallic paint.

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© Jim Resnick

White dwarfs often show signs of metals in their spectra, providing evidence that these evolved stars have accreted planetary material. Could white dwarf spectra also provide evidence for technological activity in these star systems?

A Record of Planets Past

When a Sun-like star reaches the end of its hydrogen-burning lifetime, it first puffs up into a red giant before exposing its white-hot core, which evolves into a white dwarf. This dramatic transition shakes up any planets that happened to be orbiting the star, and some close-in planets may end up crumbling apart, their rubbly remains peppering the surface of the white dwarf.

So far, astronomers have found hundreds of white dwarfs that appear to be polluted with heavy elements from their destroyed planets. These observations provide a valuable look into the bulk compositions of planetary materials outside our solar system. They may also provide a way to detect patterns of chemical abundances that are not natural, resulting from technological processes like industrial refining or the creation of alloys — in other words, a technosignature that is evidence of not just life, but technologically advanced life.

Seeking Signs of Technology

A team led by Bo-Lun Huang (黄博伦) from Beijing Normal University recently investigated whether there is evidence for chemical technosignatures in the current sample of polluted white dwarfs. Huang and collaborators began their investigation with a catalog containing 697 measurements of white dwarfs with metals in their spectra. They applied Bayesian statistical methods to weigh the hypothesis that the chemical makeup of these white dwarfs is entirely natural against the possibility that they contain a blend of natural and technologically altered material.

The team used thousands of chemical abundance measurements from meteorites as a reference for the natural bulk composition of planetary material. For the mixture of natural and processed material, they combined the meteorite reference material with a template that is metal-rich and silicate-poor, with enhanced amounts of iron, nickel, chromium, and manganese.

No Strong Evidence, but a Path Forward

Ultimately, Huang’s team found that strong statistical support for the existence of technological processes was uncommon, though there were certain measurements in their sample of white dwarfs that were difficult to reconcile with a solely natural model.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the team also found that the quality of the chemical abundance measurements affected the constraining power of the observation; some white dwarfs had upper limits for just a few elements, while others had definitive detections of many elements. They found that the most discerning observations recorded iron, magnesium, chromium, and titanium, plus either nickel, silicon, or sodium.

While this work didn’t dredge up firm evidence for technological activity, it provides a jumping-off point for future searches. The handful of white dwarfs in this sample that were fit poorly by a purely natural model could be compared against other technosignature models or targeted with high-resolution spectroscopy. Future measurements of iron and magnesium in polluted white dwarfs may be useful as a preliminary screening tool, helping to pick out intriguing targets for follow-up observations.

Citation

“A Calibrated Bayesian Search for Potential Chemical Technosignatures in Polluted White Dwarfs,” Bo-Lun Huang et al 2026 ApJ 1006 9. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae742c

The post Seeking Technosignatures in Polluted White Dwarfs appeared first on AAS Nova.

SpaceX has pinned the bulk of its future value on orbital data centers. Not rockets. Not spacecraft.

Instead, it envisions launching and maintaining a constellation of 1 million satellites capable of generating 120 GW to power tens of millions—and potentially up to 100 million—frontier-class GPUs for data center services.

The company's founder, Elon Musk, revealed plans for this massive constellation months ago, but until recently, the scope of the individual satellites was largely unknown. That changed in June, when Musk and Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering for SpaceX, spoke in a promotional video about the company's plans to develop the first iteration of an orbital data center, called an AI1 satellite. The video finally provided the company's numbers about the satellite's size and power capabilities.

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© Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

SpaceX has pinned the bulk of its future value on orbital data centers. Not rockets. Not spacecraft.

Instead, it envisions launching and maintaining a constellation of 1 million satellites capable of generating 120 GW to power tens of millions—and potentially up to 100 million—frontier-class GPUs for data center services.

The company's founder, Elon Musk, revealed plans for this massive constellation months ago, but until recently, the scope of the individual satellites was largely unknown. That changed in June, when Musk and Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering for SpaceX, spoke in a promotional video about the company's plans to develop the first iteration of an orbital data center, called an AI1 satellite. The video finally provided the company's numbers about the satellite's size and power capabilities.

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© Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Deep within the world’s remaining equatorial forests, the last uncontacted Indigenous peoples continue to live in near-total isolation. They represent humanity’s final societies that have consciously chosen to remain beyond the reach of the modern world. Their existence is extraordinary not only because of who they are, but because of what their survival reveals about ourselves.

For decades, however, governments found it politically and economically convenient to pretend that many of these people did not exist.

That chapter is, thankfully, drawing to a close. Today, Peru, Brazil, and other South American nations officially recognize the existence of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. Yet the history of denying their existence remains one of the most revealing episodes in the modern relationship between development, politics, and human rights. It reminds us that before forests are exploited, the people living within them are often rendered politically invisible.

The lesson extends far beyond the Amazon.

Throughout history, governments have rarely denied the existence of people simply because evidence was lacking. In colonial times, the existence of indigenous societies and cultures had no bearing on European immigrant expansion. Their cultures were considered primitive, and civility and religion would be the great benefits of settler expansion. In the 20th and 21st centuries, denial served a more practical purpose. If no one officially occupied a forest, there were no communities whose rights required protection. No Indigenous reserves needed to be established. Logging concessions could be issued, roads extended, mines approved, and oil exploration expanded with fewer legal obstacles. Recognition would carry consequences.

Once governments acknowledge uncontacted peoples, they assume obligations under national constitutions, international human rights law, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and, in many countries, ILO Convention 169. Suddenly, economic development must coexist with human rights.

For years, this tension played out repeatedly in the Peruvian Amazon.

As proposals emerged to establish reserves for Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation, regional politicians and government officials questioned whether these communities existed at all. They argued there was insufficient evidence despite decades of documentation by anthropologists, Indigenous organizations, and conservation scientists. Shelters, cultivated gardens, footprints, arrows, abandoned camps, aerial observations, and repeated eyewitness accounts painted an increasingly compelling picture. Yet recognition often lagged precisely where logging, oil, gas, or mining interests sought access.

In retrospect, this was never simply an anthropological debate. It was an economic one.

The existence of uncontacted peoples transformed forests from potential commercial assets into protected Indigenous territories. Recognition restricted extraction. Denial facilitated it.

Fortunately, much of that official denial has now ended. Governments increasingly recognize that uncontacted peoples do exist and deserve legal protection. Yet the episode leaves behind an important lesson: political narratives often reflect competing economic interests as much as objective evidence. The question is no longer whether uncontacted peoples exist. The question is whether governments possess the political will to protect them.

The irony is profound. The same territories that some once wished to portray as empty are now recognized as among the most important ecosystems on Earth.

Study after study demonstrates that Indigenous territories, particularly those occupied by peoples living in voluntary isolation, experience significantly lower rates of deforestation than surrounding forests. These landscapes contain extraordinary biodiversity, protect countless species yet to be documented by science, regulate regional rainfall, and store immense quantities of carbon essential to moderating global climate change.

Protecting uncontacted peoples, therefore, serves two inseparable purposes.

It safeguards fundamental human rights while simultaneously protecting some of humanity’s greatest environmental assets. In the western Amazon, where I have spent time working, these realities become impossible to separate.

This region contains the greatest concentration of uncontacted peoples anywhere on Earth. It is also among the richest expressions of biological diversity on the planet. Yet it remains under relentless pressure from illegal logging, mining, expanding road networks, narcotics trafficking, and land speculation. While Peru and Brazil have established large protected Indigenous territories, enforcement has weakened in many areas as criminal organizations and commercial interests increasingly penetrate previously inaccessible forests.

Every encounter between outsiders and uncontacted peoples carries enormous risk.

Centuries of violence, exploitation, and disease can be compressed into a single unexpected meeting. Illegal miners, loggers, and land invaders increasingly enter territories occupied by isolated peoples, provoking confrontations that neither side seeks. Fatal encounters have occurred involving both Indigenous defenders protecting their ancestral lands and outsiders venturing into territories they had no right to enter.

I experienced something that profoundly altered my appreciation of this reality.

On a recent expedition, I awoke before dawn to a river wrapped in mist beneath a pale orange sky. Overnight storms had left the air heavy with humidity as I walked along a stretch of exposed sand. Through the haze stood a man. Barely clothed, carrying what appeared to be a weapon of some form, he remained motionless for only a few seconds before silently disappearing back into the forest.

The encounter was brief, but penetrating. Ten thousand years faded away.

We were outside any officially protected Indigenous territory and had taken every precaution to avoid contact. Yet there he was, undeniably real. His footprints remained impressed in the wet sand long after he disappeared.

They reminded me that debates over whether isolated peoples exist are ultimately settled not by ideology, but by reality itself. These communities continue to live within forests that many outsiders still view primarily through the lens of economic opportunity.

Throughout the Americas, first contact repeatedly brought catastrophic epidemics, displacement, exploitation, and cultural destruction. Peoples living in voluntary isolation possess little immunity to common infectious diseases carried unknowingly by outsiders. Even a well-intentioned contact can prove devastating.

Some argue that continued isolation is no longer realistic—that climate change, expanding infrastructure, and globalization make eventual integration inevitable.

I believe this misunderstands both ethics and history.

It assumes that outside society possesses the right to determine other people’s future. It repeats the paternalism that has accompanied Indigenous dispossession for centuries. Respect requires something more difficult. It requires restraint.

The greatest lesson we should draw from the period when governments denied the existence of uncontacted peoples is not simply that denial was wrong. It is that economic convenience can shape political reality in dangerous ways. When forests are viewed primarily as timber, minerals, or agricultural land, it becomes remarkably easy to overlook the people who stand in the way of exploitation.

Today, official denial has largely given way to official recognition.  That represents genuine progress. But recognition alone is insufficient if protections exist only on paper while illegal logging, mining, and organized crime continue to erode Indigenous territories on the ground.

Over the years, I have seen echoes of this same struggle elsewhere. In the highlands of Papua New Guinea, where stone tools were still in use, communities sought to preserve traditions against an advancing modern world. On India’s Andaman Islands, members of the Jarawa halted a military convoy I was travelling with, bows drawn, defending the integrity of their homeland. Across continents, the underlying question remains remarkably consistent: can modern societies respect the right of other cultures not to become like us?

The uncontacted peoples of this world challenge our assumptions about progress itself. Their existence reminds us that development is not the only measure of a society, and that autonomy sometimes means choosing a different path altogether.

Their territories also remind us that some of the world’s most effective conservationists have never described themselves as environmentalists. By simply defending their lives and territory, they have preserved ecosystems that benefit every person on Earth.

The people governments once pretended did not exist have become some of the planet’s important guardians. Protecting them is no longer only about correcting historical injustice. It is about recognizing that human rights, biodiversity, and climate stability are inseparable. Their silence in the forest is not absence. It is sovereignty.

Yet the story of the uncontacted has another, profound consideration for our era that extends far beyond remote forests. The history of the uncontacted tells us that for years, some governments denied the existence of people who were demonstrably there because acknowledging them carried political and economic costs. As we search for life beyond Earth, humility demands that we distinguish between what has not yet been confirmed and what may simply remain beyond our present ability—or willingness—to acknowledge.

History repeatedly warns against confusing the limits of our knowledge with the limits of reality.

Kerry Bowman, PhD, is a Canadian bioethicist and environmentalist. An instructor at the University of Toronto, he currently holds an academic appointment in the Faculty of Medicine and School of the Environment.  Bowman’s recent work includes two major conservation projects in the Western Amazon and the Eastern Congo, focusing on the intersection of human health with factors such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, and emerging zoonotic diseases.

Many observations of solar flares suffer from saturation and blooming, causing crucial information to be lost. Researchers recently validated a technique for retrieving information from saturated flare images, unlocking a treasure trove of powerful solar flares for examination.

Solutions for Saturation

Since 2010, the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been capturing nearly continuous extreme-ultraviolet images of the Sun’s disk, revealing our star’s dramatic high-energy behavior. Though SDO/AIA’s observations have transformed our understanding of the Sun’s activity, they have limitations: powerful solar flares can saturate the detector, spilling charge into nearby pixels.

This saturation and overflow compromises our ability to study the most energetic solar flares — but the “lost” information may actually be recoverable. When light from an intense flare enters SDO’s instruments, not all of it pools in the saturated region of the detector: some of the light is diffracted by the optics, and by mathematically inverting this pattern of diffracted light, researchers can attempt to extract the encoded information about the saturated region. Researchers have used this technique for more than a decade, but options for validating the results were limited until now.

Solar Orbiter Lends a Hand

Launched almost 10 years to the day after SDO, the Solar Orbiter spacecraft provides an excellent opportunity to test inversion techniques for recovering information from saturated solar images. Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager snaps brief photos of the Sun at a rapid cadence, and its images remain unsaturated even when faced with energetic solar flares.

As described in a recent research article by Sabrina Guastavino (University of Genoa; Italian National Institute for Astrophysics) and collaborators, the ideal setup for testing the inversion technique arose on 19 March 2024, when SDO and Solar Orbiter both viewed a solar flare while separated by just 1 degree in longitude.

Guastavino’s team aligned and reprojected the data, accounting for the slightly different viewing angles of the two spacecraft, then applied an algorithm called Adaptive SE-DESAT to reconstruct the flux within the saturated portion of the SDO image. The team compared the desaturated SDO images to the unsaturated Solar Orbiter images over the course of the flare, finding the same flare morphology and similar time evolution between the two data sets.

A Treasure Trove of Desaturated Data

Overall, these results demonstrate the effectiveness of the inversion technique, though Guastavino and coauthors noted that improvements could be made during the impulsive phase of the flare, when the emission is increasing. The team identified several reasons why the results may not match during this phase, including rapid evolution of the flare during individual exposures.

Despite these areas that require further attention, the validation of this technique unlocks 16 years of solar flare observations from SDO. This especially enhances our sample of powerful solar flares, increasing the available records of the most energetic solar flares by orders of magnitude.

Citation

“Validation of an Extreme-Ultraviolet Desaturation Technique for the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on Board the Solar Dynamics Observatory Using Observations from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on Board Solar Orbiter,” Sabrina Guastavino et al 2026 ApJL 1005 L50. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ae7d2e

The post When the Spacecraft Align: Rescuing Saturated Images of Solar Flares appeared first on AAS Nova.

NASA is once again sending scientific missions to the Moon. But under the new commercial framework for getting there, researchers need to invent a new method for how to pick where to land.

A New Process for Picking Sites

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is a bold innovation in organizing robotic missions to the Moon. Under this model, rather than keeping the mission process entirely in-house, the agency selects the scientific mission they want to support then simply buys a ride to the lunar surface from a commercial vendor. But, how do you pick a landing site before you know exactly how you’re getting there?

The Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer (Lunar-VISE) mission, set to launch in mid-2028, was one of the first programs to go through this new landing site selection process. After being officially selected in 2022, the team had just nine months to nail down exactly where their mission should touch down. A recent article led by Jean-Pierre Williams (University of California, Los Angeles) detailed exactly how the team accomplished this task and presented some lessons they learned along the way.

No Parking Lots on the Moon

Picking a landing site is no small task: for context, selecting the landing sites for each of the most recent Mars rovers took five years and multiple community workshops. The Lunar-VISE team therefore took a streamlined and logic-driven approach. They started by explicitly laying out their science objectives: Lunar-VISE’s purpose is to investigate some strangely silicate-rich volcanic formations called the Gruithuisen domes, so they had to land either on or near those. They also had to have access to boulders that were excavated from deep within the domes during a crater formation event, so they had to pick a spot with boulders relatively nearby.

In addition to objectives, they also laid out a slew of constraints. Although they needed boulders nearby, they couldn’t have too many boulders, or any particularly large boulders, since those could pose hazards for landing. There also couldn’t be any steep slopes in the field. Most of the area had to maintain a line of sight with a supporting orbiter for communications, so they couldn’t set down near any ridges. Also, they had to consider how the terrain would cast shadows as the lunar day progressed, since they didn’t want their mission cut short by freezing temperatures and a lack of solar power. As the team quipped, “many interesting, high-science value locations on the Moon may not be in proverbial ‘parking lots.'”

By combing through archival data and working with the team that operates the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, a key asset for making detailed maps of the Moon, the researchers found the perfect spot: alongside a 190-meter-diameter crater named Mareta. This feature is named after Mareta West, one of the first female planetary geologists at the United States Geological Survey and the scientist who selected the landing site for Apollo 11’s historic touchdown.

In addition to presenting their landing site, the researchers offered a handful of lessons to others who may someday be in the fortunate and thrilling position of needing to pick a landing spot on the Moon. For one, they urged teams to coordinate with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter specialists as early as possible, since processing the imaging data for lander-quality maps is a specialized and intensive task. For another, they recommended that all of the software tools used be made publicly available so that future missions don’t need to duplicate their work.

As this article laid out, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and Lunar-VISE take us one step closer to making missions to the Moon routine — but we’re still figuring out exactly how to do that.

Citation

“Lunar-VISE Landing Site Selection and Characterization at Mons Gruithuisen Gamma,” Jean-Pierre Williams et al 2026 Planet. Sci. J. 7 161. doi:10.3847/PSJ/ae7d2c

The post Putting the Landing Site Before the Lander appeared first on AAS Nova.

It wasn't easy to find anyone outside of SpaceX clamoring for a rocket like Starship just 10 years ago. Today, the space industry can't wait for Starship to finally deliver.

With a payload capacity of more than 100 metric tons (220,000 pounds) to low-Earth orbit, SpaceX's new rocket is changing the thinking of just about everyone in the space industry. With the unrealized but potentially game-changing benefits of refueling, Starship could carry the same amount of payload to higher orbits, the Moon, or Mars.

It's important to note that Starship is still very much in its experimental phase, far from proving Elon Musk's loftiest claims about what it can do. Still, NASA and the US military are considering novel ways to use Starship to fly to the Moon or transport cargo to far-flung war zones. Scientists are eager to use its enormous volume to launch giant space telescopes. Competitors are taking notice. China, the strongest strategic adversary America has ever faced, is looking for its own Starship. Now, some US satellite manufacturers are adapting for the substantial capacity of the world's most powerful rocket.

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