Science

Doctors face-palm as RFK Jr.’s top vaccine advisor questions need for polio shot

ACIP, anti-vaccine, CDC, Kirk Milhoan, measles, polio, robert f kennedy jr, Science, vaccines / Tim Belzer / January 26, 2026

He then pondered out loud what would happen if people stopped getting vaccinated. “If we take away all of the herd immunity, then does that switch, does that teeter-totter switch in a different direction?” he asked.

Backlash

In a statement, AMA Trustee Sandra Adamson Fryhofer blasted the question. “This is not a theoretical debate—it is a dangerous step backward,” she said. “Vaccines have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated devastating diseases like polio in the United States. There is no cure for polio. When vaccination rates fall, paralysis, lifelong disability, and death return. The science on this is settled.”

Fryhofer also took aim at Milhoan’s repeated argument that the focus of vaccination policy should move from population-level health to individual autonomy. Moving away from routine immunizations, which include discussions between clinicians and patients, “does not increase freedom—it increases suffering,” she said, adding that the weakening of recommendations “will cost lives.”

Overall, Milhoan’s comments only further erode the relevance of ACIP and federal vaccine policy among the medical community and states. According to a KFF policy brief, 27 states and Washington, DC, have already announced they will not follow current CDC vaccine recommendations, which Kennedy dramatically overhauled earlier this month without even consulting the ACIP. Instead, the majority of states are relying on previous recommendations or recommendations made within states or by medical organizations.

On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced the 2026 update to its childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule, which it has held up as an alternative to the CDC’s schedule and has been widely embraced by pediatricians. In the announcement, AAP noted that 12 other medical organizations have endorsed the schedule, including the AMA, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

The AAP’s updated recommendations are largely the same as the schedule from last year, but it is significantly different from the CDC’s recommendations, which “depart from longstanding medical evidence and no longer offer the optimal way to prevent illnesses in children,” the AAP said.

“The AAP will continue to provide recommendations for immunizations that are rooted in science and are in the best interest of the health of infants, children and adolescents of this country,” AAP President Andrew Racine said in the announcement.

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Did Edison accidentally make graphene in 1879?

graphene, lightbulbs, materials science, Physics, Science, Thomas Edison / Kris Guyer / January 24, 2026

Graphene is the thinnest material yet known, composed of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. That structure gives it many unusual properties that hold great promise for real-world applications: batteries, super capacitors, antennas, water filters, transistors, solar cells, and touchscreens, just to name a few. The physicists who first synthesized graphene in the lab won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. But 19th century inventor Thomas Edison may have unknowingly created graphene as a byproduct of his original experiments on incandescent bulbs over a century earlier, according to a new paper published in the journal ACS Nano.

“To reproduce what Thomas Edison did, with the tools and knowledge we have now, is very exciting,” said co-author James Tour, a chemist at Rice University. “Finding that he could have produced graphene inspires curiosity about what other information lies buried in historical experiments. What questions would our scientific forefathers ask if they could join us in the lab today? What questions can we answer when we revisit their work through a modern lens?”

Edison didn’t invent the concept of incandescent lamps; there were several versions predating his efforts. However, they generally had a a very short life span and required high electric current, so they weren’t well suited to Edison’s vision of large-scale commercialization. He experimented with different filament materials starting with carbonized cardboard and compressed lampblack. This, too, quickly burnt out, as did filaments made with various grasses and canes, like hemp and palmetto. Eventually Edison discovered that carbonized bamboo made for the best filament, with life spans over 1200 hours using a 110 volt power source.

Lucas Eddy, Tour’s grad student at Rice, was trying to figure out ways to mass produce graphene using the smallest, easiest equipment he could manage, with materials that were both affordable and readily available. He considered such options as arc welders and natural phenomena like lightning striking trees—both of which he admitted were “complete dead ends.” Edison’s light bulb, Eddy decided, would be ideal, since unlike other early light bulbs, Edison’s version was able to achieve the critical 2000 degree C temperatures required for flash Joule heating—the best method for making so-called turbostratic graphene.

Did Edison accidentally make graphene in 1879? Read More »

This 67,800-year-old hand stencil is the world’s oldest human-made art

anthropology, Archaeology, australia, cave art, hominins, human migration, Indonesia, rock art, Sahul, Science / Paul Patrick / January 24, 2026

generative AI could never

The world’s oldest art has an unintentional story to tell about human exploration.

These 17,000-year-old hand stencils from Liang Jarie Maros, in another area of Sulawesi, bear a striking resemblance to the much older ones in Liang Metanduno. Credit: OKtaviana et al. 2026

The world’s oldest surviving rock art is a faded outline of a hand on an Indonesian cave wall, left 67,800 years ago.

On a tiny island just off the coast of Sulawesi (a much larger island in Indonesia), a cave wall bears the stenciled outline of a person’s hand—and it’s at least 67,800 years old, according to a recent study. The hand stencil is now the world’s oldest work of art (at least until archaeologists find something even older), as well as the oldest evidence of our species on any of the islands that stretch between continental Asia and Australia.

Photo of an archaeologists examining a hand stencil painted on a cave wall, using a flashlight — Adhi Oktaviana examines a slightly more recent hand stencil on the wall of Liang Metanduno. Credit: Oktaviana et al. 2026

Hands reaching out from the past

Archaeologist Adhi Agus Oktaviana, of Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency, and his colleagues have spent the last six years surveying 44 rock art sites, mostly caves, on Sulawesi’s southeastern peninsula and the handful of tiny “satellite islands” off its coast. They found 14 previously undocumented sites and used rock formations to date 11 individual pieces of rock art in eight caves—including the oldest human artwork discovered so far.

About 67,800 years ago, someone stood in the darkness of Liang Metanduno and placed their hand flat against the limestone wall. They, or maybe a friend, then blew a mixture of pigment and water onto the wall, covering and surrounding their hand. When they pulled their hand carefully away from the rock, careful not to disturb the still-wet paint, they left behind a crisp outline of their palm and fingers, haloed by a cloud of deep red.

The result is basically the negative of a handprint, and it’s a visceral, tangible link to the past. Someone once laid their hand on the cave wall right here, and you can still see its outline like a lingering ghost, reaching out from the other side of the rock. If you weren’t worried about damaging the already faded and fragile image, you could lay your hand in the same spot and meet them halfway.

Today, the stencil is so faded that you can barely see it, but if you look closely, it’s there: a faint halo of reddish-orange pigment, outlining the top part of a palm and the base of the fingers. A thin, nearly transparent layer of calcite covers the faded shape, left behind by millennia of water dripping down the cave wall. The ratio of uranium and thorium in a sheet of calcite suggests that it formed at least 71,000 years ago—so the outline of the hand beneath it must have been left behind sometime before that, probably around 67,800 years ago.

A photo of two figures on a cave wall, with the faint outline of a hand circled in black — The hand stencil is faded and overlain by more recent (but still ancient) artwork; it’s circled in black to help you find it in this photo. Credit: Oktaviana et al. 2026

That makes Liang Metanduno the home of the oldest known artwork in the world, beating the previous contender (a Neanderthal hand stencil in Spain) by about 1,100 years.

“These findings support the growing view that Sulawesi was host to a vibrant and longstanding artistic culture during the late Pleistocene epoch,” wrote Oktaviana and his colleagues in their recent paper.

The karst caves of Sulawesi’s southwestern peninsula, Maros-Pangkep, are a treasure trove of deeply ancient artwork: hand stencils, as well as drawings of wild animals, people, and strange figures that seem to blend the two. A cave wall at Liang Bulu’Sipong 4 features a 4.5-meter-long mural of humanlike figures facing off against wild pigs and dwarf buffalo, and a 2024 study pushed the mural’s age back to 51,200 years ago, making it the second-oldest artwork that we know of (after the Liang Metanduno hand stencil in the recent study).

Archaeologists have only begun to rediscover the rock art of Maros-Pangkep in the last decade or so, and other areas of the island, like Southeast Sulawesi and its tiny satellite islands, have received even less attention—so we don’t know what’s still there waiting for humanity to find again after dozens of millennia. We also don’t know what the ancient artist was trying to convey with the outline of their hand on the cave wall, but part of the message rings loud and clear across tens of millennia: At least 67,800 years ago, someone was here.

Really, really ancient mariners

The hand stencil on the wall of Liang Metanduno is, so far, the oldest evidence of our presence in Wallacea, the group of islands stretched between the continental shelves of Asia and Australia. Populating these islands is “widely considered to have involved the first planned, long-distance sea crossing undertaken by our species,” wrote Oktaviana and his colleagues.

Back when the long-lost artist laid their hand on the wall, sea levels were about 100 meters lower than they are today. Mainland Asia, Sumatra, and Borneo would have been high points in a single landmass, joined by wide swaths of lowlands that today lie beneath shallow ocean. The eastern shore of Borneo would have been a jumping-off point, beyond which lay several dozen kilometers of water and (out of view over the horizon) Sulawesi.

The first few people may have washed ashore on Sulawesi on some misadventure: lost fishermen or tsunami survivors, maybe. But at some point, people must have started making the crossing on purpose, which implies that they knew how to build rafts or boats, how to steer them, and that land awaited them on the other side.

Liang Metanduno pushes back the timing of that crossing by nearly 10,000 years. It also lends strong support to arguments that people arrived in Australia earlier than archaeologists had previously suspected. Archaeological evidence from a rock shelter called Madjedbebe, in northern Australia, suggests that people were living there by 65,000 years ago. But that evidence is still debated (such is the nature of archaeology), and some archaeologists argue that humans didn’t reach the continent until around 50,000 years ago.

“With the discovery of rock art dating to at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi, a large island on the most plausible colonization route to Australia, it is increasingly likely that the controversial date of 65,000 years for the initial peopling of Australia is correct,” Griffith University archaeologists Adam Brumm, a coauthor of the recent study, told Ars.

photo of an archaeologists studying a flashlight-lit cave wall adorned with ancient figures of animals in red — Archaeologists Shinatria Adhityatama studies a panel of ancient paintings in Liang Metanduno. Credit: Oktaviana et al. 2026

Archaeologists are still trying to work out exactly when, where, and how the first members of our species made the leap from the continent of Asia to the islands of Wallacea and, eventually, via several more open-water crossings, to Australia. Our picture of the process is pieced together from archaeological finds and models of ancient geography and sea levels.

“There’s been all sorts of work done on this (not by me), but often researchers consider the degree of intervisibility between islands, as well as other things like prevailing ocean currents and wind directions, changes in sea levels and how this affects the land area of islands and shorelines and so on,” Brumm said.

Most of those models suggest that people crossed the Makassar Strait from Borneo to Sulawesi, then island-hopped through what’s now Indonesia until they reached the western edge of New Guinea. At the time, lower sea levels would have left New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand as one big land mass, so getting from New Guinea to what’s now Australia would actually have been the easy part.

A time capsule on the walls

There’s a sense of deep, deep time in Liang Metanduno. The cave wall is a palimpsest on which the ancient hand stencil is nearly covered by a brown-hued drawing of a chicken, which (based on its subject matter) must have been added sometime after 5,000 years ago, when a new wave of settlers brought domesticated chickens to the island. It seems almost newfangled against the ghostly faint outline of the Paleolithic hand.

A few centimeters away is another hand stencil, done in darker pigment and dating to around 21,500 years ago; it overlays a lighter stencil dating to around 60,900 years ago. Over tens of thousands of years, generations of people returned here with the same impulse. We have no way of knowing whether visitors 21,500 years ago, or 5,000 years ago might have seen a more vibrantly decorated cave wall than what’s preserved today—but we know that they decided to leave their mark on it.

And the people who visited the cave 21,500 years ago shared a sense of style with the artists who left their hands outlined on the wall nearly 40,000 years before them: both handprints have slightly pointed fingers, as if the artist either turned their fingertip or just touched-up the outline with some paint after making the stencil. It’s very similar to other hand stencils, dated to around 17,000 years ago, from elsewhere on Sulawesi, and it’s a style that seems unique to the island.

“We may conclude that this regionally unique variant of stencil art is much older than previously thought,” wrote Oktaviana and his colleagues.

photo of pointy-fingered hand stencils on a cave wall — These 17,000-year-old hand stencils from Liang Jarie Maros, in another area of Sulawesi, bear a striking resemblance to the much older ones in Liang Metanduno. Credit: OKtaviana et al. 2026

And Homo sapiens wasn’t the first hominin species to venture as far as Indonesia; at least 200,000 years earlier, Homo erectus made a similar journey, leaving behind fossils and stone tools to mark that they, too, were once here. On some of the smaller islands, isolated populations of Homo erectus started to evolve along their own paths, eventually leading to diminutive species like Homo floresiensis (the O.G. hobbits) on Flores and Homo luzonensis on Luzon. Homo floresiensis co-discoverer Richard Roberts has suggested that other isolated hominin species may have existed on other scattered islands.

Anthropologists haven’t found any fossil evidence of these species after 50,000 years ago, but if our species was in Indonesia by nearly 68,000 years ago, we would have been in time to meet our hominin cousins.

Nature, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09968-y (About DOIs).

Kiona is a freelance science journalist and resident archaeology nerd at Ars Technica.

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Rocket Report: Chinese rockets fail twice in 12 hours; Rocket Lab reports setback

australia, Commercial space, Gilmour space, isar aerospace, launch, rocket report, Science, Space / Mike M. / January 23, 2026

Another partially reusable Chinese rocket, the Long March 12B, is nearing its first test flight.

An Archimedes engine for Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket is test-fired at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. Credit: Rocket Lab

Welcome to Edition 8.26 of the Rocket Report! The past week has been one of advancements and setbacks in the rocket business. NASA rolled the massive rocket for the Artemis II mission to its launch pad in Florida, while Chinese launchers suffered back-to-back failures within a span of approximately 12 hours. Rocket Lab’s march toward a debut of its new Neutron launch vehicle in the coming months may have stalled after a failure during a key qualification test. We cover all this and more in this week’s Rocket Report.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Australia invests in sovereign launch. Six months after its first orbital rocket cleared the launch tower for just 14 seconds before crashing back to Earth, Gilmour Space Technologies has secured 217 million Australian dollars ($148 million) in funding that CEO Adam Gilmour says finally gives Australia a fighting chance in the global space race, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The funding round, led by the federal government’s National Reconstruction Fund Corporation and superannuation giant Hostplus with $75 million each, makes the Queensland company Australia’s newest unicorn—a fast-growth start-up valued at more than $1 billion—and one of the country’s most heavily backed private technology ventures.

Homegrown rocket… “We’re a rocket company that has never had access to the capital that our American competitors have,” Gilmour told the newspaper. “This is the first raise where I’ve actually raised a decent amount of capital compared to the rest of the world.” The investment reflects growing concern about Australia’s reliance on foreign launch providers—predominantly Elon Musk’s SpaceX—to put government, defense, and commercial satellites into orbit. With US launch queues stretching beyond two years and geopolitical tensions reshaping access to space infrastructure, Canberra has identified sovereign launch capability as a strategic priority. Gilmour’s first Eris rocket lifted off from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland on July 30 last year. It achieved 14 seconds of flight before falling back to the ground, a result Gilmour framed as a partial success in an industry where first launches routinely fail.

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Isar Aerospace postpones test flight. Isar Aerospace scrubbed a potential January 21 launch of its Spectrum rocket to address a technical fault, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Hours before the launch window was set to open, the German company said that it was addressing “an issue with a pressurization valve.” A valve issue was one of the factors that caused a Spectrum to crash moments after liftoff on Isar’s first test flight last year. “The teams are currently assessing the next possible launch opportunities and a new target date will be announced shortly,” the company wrote in a post on its website. The Spectrum rocket, designed to haul cargoes of up to a metric ton (2,200 pounds) to low-Earth orbit, is awaiting liftoff from Andøya Spaceport in Norway.

Geopolitics at play... The second launch of Isar’s Spectrum rocket comes at a time when Europe’s space industry looks to secure the continent’s sovereignty in spaceflight. European satellites are no longer able to launch on Russian rockets, and the continent’s leaders don’t have much of an appetite to turn to US rockets amid strained trans-Atlantic relations. Europe’s satellite industry is looking for more competition for the Ariane 6 and Vega C rockets developed by ArianeGroup and Avio, and Isar Aerospace appears to be best positioned to become a new entrant in the European launch market. “I’m well aware that it would be really good for us Europeans to get this one right,” said Daniel Metzler, Isar’s co-founder and CEO.

A potential buyer for Orbex? UK-based rocket builder Orbex has signed a letter of intent to sell its business to European space logistics startup The Exploration Company, European Spaceflight reports. Orbex was founded in 2015 and is developing a small launch vehicle called Prime. The company also began work on a larger medium-lift launch vehicle called Proxima in December 2024. On Wednesday, Orbex published a brief press release stating that a letter of intent had been signed and that negotiations had begun. The company added that all details about the transaction remain confidential at this stage.

Time’s up... A statement from Orbex CEO Phil Chambers suggests that the company’s financial position factored into its decision to pursue a buyer. “Our Series D fundraising could have led us in many directions,” said Chambers. “We believe this opportunity plays to the strengths of both businesses, and we look forward to sharing more when the time is right.” The Exploration Company, headquartered near Munich, Germany, is developing a reusable space capsule to ferry cargo to low-Earth orbit and a high-thrust reusable rocket engine. It is one of the most well-financed space startups in Europe. Orbex is one of five launch startups in Europe selected by the European Space Agency last year to compete in the European Launcher Challenge and receive funding from ESA member states. But the UK company’s financial standing is in question. Orbex’s Danish subsidiary is filing for bankruptcy, and its main UK entity is overdue in filing its 2024 financial accounts. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

A bad day for Chinese rockets. China suffered a pair of launch failures January 16, seeing the loss of a classified Shijian satellite and the failed first launch of the Ceres-2 rocket, Space News reports. The first of the two failures involved the attempted launch of a Shijian military satellite aboard a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang launch base in southwestern China. The Shijian 32 satellite was likely heading for a geostationary transfer orbit, but a failure of the Long March 3B’s third stage doomed the mission. The Long March 3B is one of China’s most-flown rockets, and this was the first failure of a Long March 3-series vehicle since 2020, ending a streak of 50 consecutive successful flights of the rocket.

And then… Less than 12 hours later, another Chinese rocket failed on its climb to orbit. This launch, using a Ceres-2 rocket, originated from the Jiuquan space center in northwestern China. It was the first flight of the Ceres-2, a larger variant of the light-class Ceres-1 rocket developed and operated by a Chinese commercial startup named Galactic Energy. Chinese officials did not disclose the payloads lost on the Ceres-2 rocket.

Neutron in neutral. Rocket Lab suffered a structural failure of the Neutron rocket’s Stage 1 tank during testing, setting back efforts to get to the inaugural flight for the partially reusable launcher, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The mishap occurred during a hydrostatic pressure trial, the company said Wednesday. “There was no significant damage to the test structure or facilities,” Rocket Lab added. Rocket Lab last year pushed the first Neutron mission from 2025 to 2026, citing the volume of testing ahead. The US-based company said it is now analyzing what transpired to determine the impact on Neutron launch plans. Rocket Lab said it would provide an update during its next quarterly financials, due in a few weeks.

Where to go from here?… The Neutron rocket is designed to catapult Rocket Lab into more direct competition with legacy rocket companies like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. “The next Stage 1 tank is already in production, and Neutron’s development campaign continues,” the company said. Setbacks like this one are to be expected during the development of new rockets. Rocket Lab has publicized aggressive, or aspirational, launch schedules for the first Neutron rocket, so it’s likely the company will hang onto its projection of a debut launch in 2026, at least for now. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Falcon 9 launches NRO spysats. SpaceX executed a late night Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base on January 16, carrying an undisclosed number of intelligence-gathering satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission, NROL-105, hauled a payload of satellites heading to low-Earth orbit, which are believed to be Starshield, a government variant of the Starlink satellites. “Today’s mission is the twelfth overall launch of the NRO’s proliferated architecture and first of approximately a dozen NRO launches scheduled throughout 2026 consisting of proliferated and national security missions,” the NRO said in a post-launch statement.

Mysteries abound… A public accounting of the agency’s proliferated constellation suggests it now numbers nearly 200 satellites with the ability to rapidly image locations around the world. The NRO has dozens more satellites serving other functions. “Having hundreds of NRO satellites on orbit is critical to supporting our nation and its partners,” the agency said in a statement. “This growing constellation enhances mission resilience and capability through reduced revisit times, improved persistent coverage, and accelerated processing and delivery of critical data.” What was unusual about the January 16 mission is it may have only carried two satellites, well short of the 20-plus Starshield satellites launched on most previous Falcon 9 launches, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and expert tracker of global space launch activity.

Long March 12B hot-fired at Jiuquan. China’s main space contractor performed a static fire test of a new reusable Long March rocket Friday, paving the way for a test flight, Space News reports. The test-firing of the Long March 12B rocket’s first stage engines occurred on a launch pad at the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone at Jiuquan spaceport in northwestern China. The mere existence of the Long March 12B rocket was not publicly known until recently. The new rocket was developed by a subsidiary of the state-owned China Aerospace Science Technology Corporation, with the capacity to carry a payload of 20 metric tons to low-Earth orbit in expendable mode. It’s unknown if the first Long March 12B test flight will include a booster landing attempt.

Another one… The Long March 12B has a reusable first stage with landing legs, similar to the recovery architecture of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The booster is designed to land downrange at a recovery zone in the Gobi Desert. The Long March 12B is the latest in a line of partially reusable Chinese rockets to reach the launch pad, following soon after the debut launches of the Long March 12A and Zhuque 3 rocket last month. Several more companies in China are working on their own reusable boosters. Of them all, the Long March 12B appears to be the closest to a clone of SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Like the Falcon 9, the Long March 12B will have nine kerosene-fueled first stage engines and a single kerosene-fueled upper stage engine. Chinese officials have not announced when the Long March 12B will launch.

Artemis II rolls to the launch pad. Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward last weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad, Ars reports. The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At the end of its nearly 10-day tour through cislunar space, the Orion capsule on top of the rocket will exceed 25,000 mph as it plunges into the atmosphere to bring its four-person crew back to Earth.

Key test ahead… “This is the start of a very long journey,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “We ended our last human exploration of the Moon on Apollo 17.” The Artemis II mission will set several notable human spaceflight records. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will travel farther from Earth than any human in history as they travel beyond the far side of the Moon. They won’t land. That distinction will fall to the next mission in line in NASA’s Artemis program. This will be the first time astronauts have flown on the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The launch window opens February 6, but the exact date of Artemis II’s liftoff will be determined by the outcome of a critical fueling test of the SLS rocket scheduled for early February.

Blue Origin confirms rocket reuse plan. Blue Origin confirmed Thursday that the next launch of its New Glenn rocket will carry a large communications satellite into low-Earth orbit for AST SpaceMobile, Ars reports. The rocket will launch the next-generation Block 2 BlueBird satellite “no earlier than late February” from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. However, the update from Blue Origin appears to have buried the real news toward the end: “The mission follows the successful NG-2 mission, which included the landing of the ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ booster. The same booster is being refurbished to power NG-3,” the company said.

Impressive strides… The second New Glenn mission launched on November 13, just 10 weeks ago. If the company makes the late-February target for the next mission—and Ars was told last week to expect the launch to slip into March—it will represent a remarkably short turnaround for an orbital booster. By way of comparison, SpaceX did not attempt to refly the first Falcon 9 booster it landed in December 2015. Instead, initial tests revealed that the vehicle’s interior had been somewhat torn up. It was scrapped and inspected closely so that engineers could learn from the wear and tear.

Next three launches

Jan. 25: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-20 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 15: 17 UTC

Jan. 26: Falcon 9 | GPS III SV09 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 04: 46 UTC

Jan. 26: Long March 7A | Unknown Payload | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 21: 00 UTC

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Tiny falcons are helping keep the food supply safe on cherry farms

birds, cherries, Ecology, food supply, kestrels, raptors, Science, syndication / Kris Guyer / January 23, 2026

Campylobacter is a common cause of food poisoning and is on the rise in Michigan and around the world. It spreads to humans through food products made from, or that come into contact with, infected animals, primarily chickens and other birds. So far, only one outbreak of campylobacteriosis has been definitively linked to feces from wild birds. Still, because it causes milder symptoms than some other types of bacteria, the Centers for Disease Control considers campylobacter a significantly underreported cause of food-borne illness that may be more common than current data indicates.

“Trying to get more birds of prey would be beneficial to farmers,” Smith said. “If you have one predator, versus a bunch of prey, you have fewer birds overall. If you have a lot fewer birds, even if the ones that are there are carrying bacteria, then you can reduce the transmission risk.”

The study’s findings that kestrels significantly reduce physical damage and food safety risks on Michigan cherry farms demonstrate that managing crops and meeting conservation goals—by bolstering local kestrel populations and eliminating the need to clear wildlife habitat around agricultural areas—can be done in tandem, study authors say. They recommend farmers facing pest-management issues consider building kestrel boxes, which cost about $100 per box and require minimal maintenance.

Whether nesting boxes in a given region will be successfully inhabited by kestrels depends on whether there is an abundance of the birds there. In Michigan’s cherry-growing region, kestrels are so abundant that 80 percent to 100 percent of boxes become home for kestrels rather than other nesting birds, said Catherine Lindell, avian ecologist at Michigan State University and senior author of the study.

“It seems like this is just a great tool for farmers,” Lindell said, suggesting interested farmers “put up a couple boxes and see what happens.”

K.R. Callaway is a reporter and editor specializing in science, health, history, and policy stories. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in journalism at New York University, where she is part of the Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP). Her writing has appeared in Scientific American, Sky & Telescope, Fast Company and Audubon Magazine, among others.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

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Watch a robot swarm “bloom” like a garden

architecture, collective behavior, living architecture, robot swarms, robotics, Science, swarm intelligence / Mike M. / January 21, 2026

Researchers at Princeton University have built a swarm of interconnected mini-robots that “bloom” like flowers in response to changing light levels in an office. According to their new paper published in the journal Science Robotics, such robotic swarms could one day be used as dynamic facades in architectural designs, enabling buildings to adapt to changing climate conditions as well as interact with humans in creative ways.

The authors drew inspiration from so-called “living architectures,” such as beehives. Fire ants provide a textbook example of this kind of collective behavior. A few ants spaced well apart behave like individual ants. But pack enough of them closely together, and they behave more like a single unit, exhibiting both solid and liquid properties. You can pour them from a teapot like ants, as Goldman’s lab demonstrated several years ago, or they can link together to build towers or floating rafts—a handy survival skill when, say, a hurricane floods Houston. They also excel at regulating their own traffic flow. You almost never see an ant traffic jam.

Naturally scientists are keen to mimic such systems. For instance, in 2018, Georgia Tech researchers built ant-like robots and programmed them to dig through 3D-printed magnetic plastic balls designed to simulate moist soil. Robot swarms capable of efficiently digging underground without jamming would be super beneficial for mining or disaster recovery efforts, where using human beings might not be feasible.

In 2019, scientists found that flocks of wild jackdaws will change their flying patterns depending on whether they are returning to roost or banding together to drive away predators. That work could one day lead to the development of autonomous robotic swarms capable of changing their interaction rules to perform different tasks in response to environmental cues.

The authors of this latest paper note that plants can optimize their shape to get enough sunlight or nutrients, thanks to individual cells that interact with each other via mechanical and other forms of signaling. By contrast, the architecture designed by human beings is largely static, composed of rigid fixed elements that hinder building occupants’ ability to adapt to daily, seasonal, or annual variations in climate conditions. There have only been a few examples of applying swarm intelligence algorithms inspired by plants, insects, and flocking birds to the design process to achieve more creative structural designs, or better energy optimization.

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Macaque facial gestures are more than just a reflex, study finds

macaques, Science / Mike M. / January 20, 2026

Based on the video analysis, scientists identified three facial gestures they wanted to focus on: the lipsmack macaques use to signal receptivity or submission; the threat face they make when they want to challenge or chase off an adversary; and chewing, a non-social, volitional movement. Then, using the fMRI scans, the team located key brain areas involved in triggering these gestures. And when this was done, Ianni and her colleagues went deeper—quite literally.

Under the hood

“We targeted these brain areas with sub-millimeter precision for implantation of micro-electrode arrays,” Ianni explains. This, for the first time, allowed her team to simultaneously record the activity from many neurons spaced across the areas where the brain generates facial gestures. The electrodes went into the primary motor cortex, the ventral premotor cortex, the primary somatosensory cortex, and the cingulate motor cortex. When they were in, the team once again exposed the macaques to the same set of social stimuli, looking for neural signatures of the three selected facial gestures. And that’s when things took a surprising turn.

The researchers expected to see a clear division of responsibilities, one where the cingulate cortex governs social signals, while the motor cortex is specialized in chewing. Instead, they found that every single region was involved in every type of gesture. Whether the macaques were threatening a rival or simply enjoying a snack, all four brain areas were firing in a coordinated symphony.

This led Ianni’s team to the question of how the brain distinguished between social gestures and chewing, since it apparently wasn’t about where the brain processed the information. The answer was in different neural codes—different ways that neurons represent and transmit information in the brain over time.

The hierarchy of timing

By analyzing neural population dynamics, the team identified a temporal hierarchy across the cortex in macaques. The cingulate cortex used a static neural code. “The static means the firing pattern of neurons is persistent across both multiple repetitions of the same facial gesture and across time,” Ianni explains, and maintained their firing pattern till 0.8 seconds after that. “A single decoder which learns this pattern could be used at any timepoint or during any trial to read out the facial expression,” Ianni says.

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The fastest human spaceflight mission in history crawls closer to liftoff

artemis, artemis II, Christina Koch, human spaceflight, Jeremy Hansen, Kennedy Space Center, moon, NASA, orion, Reid Wiseman, Science, Space, space launch system, victor glover / Rejus Almole / January 19, 2026

After a remarkably smooth launch campaign, Artemis II reached its last stop before the Moon.

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket rolls to Launch Complex 39B on Saturday. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida—Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad.

The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At the end of its nearly 10-day tour through cislunar space, the Orion capsule on top of the rocket will exceed 25,000 mph as it plunges into the atmosphere to bring its four-person crew back to Earth.

“This is the start of a very long journey,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “We ended our last human exploration of the moon on Apollo 17.”

The Artemis II mission will set several notable human spaceflight records. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will travel farther from Earth than any human in history. They won’t land. That distinction will fall to the next mission in line in NASA’s Artemis program.

But the Artemis II astronauts will travel more than 4,000 miles beyond the far side of the Moon (the exact distance depends on the launch date), setting up for a human spaceflight speed record during their blazing reentry over the Pacific Ocean a few days later. Koch will become the first woman to fly to the vicinity of the Moon, and Hansen will be the first non-US astronaut to do the same.

“We really are ready to go,” said Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, during Saturday’s rollout to the launch pad. “We were in a sim [in Houston] for about 10 hours yesterday doing our final capstone entry and landing sim. We got in T-38s last night and we flew to the Cape to be here for this momentous occasion.”

The rollout began around sunrise Saturday, with NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule riding a mobile launch platform and a diesel-powered crawler transporter along a throughway paved with crushed Alabama river rock. Employees, VIPs, and guests gathered along the crawlerway to watch the 11 million-pound stack inch toward the launch pad. The rollout concluded about an hour after sunset, when the crawler transporter’s jacking system lowered the mobile launch platform onto pedestals at Pad 39B.

Hitting the launch window

The rollout keeps the Artemis II mission on track for liftoff as soon as next month, when NASA has a handful of launch opportunities on February 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11.

The big milestone leading up to launch day will be a practice countdown or Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR), currently slated for around February 2, when NASA’s launch team will pump more than 750,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket. NASA had trouble keeping the cryogenic fluids at the proper temperature, then encountered hydrogen leaks when the launch team first tried to fill the rocket for the unpiloted Artemis I mission in 2022. Engineers implemented the same fixes on Artemis II that they used to finally get over the hump with propellant loading on Artemis I.

So, what are the odds NASA can actually get the Artemis II mission off the ground next month?

“We’ll have to have things go right,” said Matt Ramsey, NASA’s Artemis II mission manager, in an interview with Ars on Saturday. “There’s a day of margin there for weather. There’s some time after WDR that we’ve got for data reviews and that sort of thing. It’s not unreasonable, but I do think it’s a success-oriented schedule.”

The Moon has to be in the right position in its orbit for the Artemis II launch to proceed. There are also restrictions on launch dates to ensure the Orion capsule returns to Earth and reenters the atmosphere at an angle safe for the ship’s heat shield. If the launch does not happen in February, NASA has a slate of backup launch dates in early March.

Ars was at Kennedy Space Center for the rocket’s move to the launch pad Saturday. The photo gallery below shows the launcher emerging from the Vehicle Assembly Building, the same facility once used to stack Saturn V rockets during the Apollo Moon program. The Artemis II astronauts were also on hand for a question and answer session with reporters.

Around the clock

The first flight of astronauts on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft is running at least five years late. The flight’s architecture, trajectory, and goals have changed multiple times, and technical snags discovered during manufacturing and testing repeatedly shifted the schedule. The program’s engineering and budgetary problems are well documented.

But the team readying the rocket and spacecraft for launch has hit a stride in recent months. Technicians inside the Vehicle Assembly Building started stacking the SLS rocket in late 2024, beginning with the vehicle’s twin solid-fueled boosters. Then ground teams added the core stage, upper stage, and finally installed the Orion spacecraft on top of the rocket last October.

Working nearly around the clock in three shifts, it took about 12 months for crews at Kennedy to assemble the rocket and prepare it for rollout. But the launch campaign inside the VAB was remarkably smooth. Ground teams shaved about two months off the time it took to integrate the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission, which launched on the program’s first full-up unpiloted test flight in 2022.

“About a year ago, I was down here and we set the rollout date, and we hit it within a day or two,” said Matt Ramsey, NASA’s mission manager for Artemis II. “Being able to stay on schedule, it was a daily grind to be able to do that.”

Engineers worked through a handful of technical problems last year, including an issue with a pressure-assisted device used to assist the astronauts in opening the Orion hatch in the event of an emergency. More recently, NASA teams cleared a concern with caps installed on the rocket’s upper stage, according to Ramsey.

The most significant engineering review focused on proving the Orion heat shield is safe to fly. That assessment occurred in the background from the perspective of the technicians working on Artemis II at Kennedy.

The Artemis II team is now focused on activities at the launch pad. This week, NASA plans to perform a series of tests extending and retracting the crew access mark. Next, the Artemis II astronauts will rehearse an emergency evacuation from the launch pad. That will be followed by servicing of the rocket’s hydraulic steering system.

The big question mark

All of this leads up to the crucial practice countdown early next month. The astronauts won’t be aboard the rocket for the test, but almost everything else will look like launch day. The countdown will halt around 30 seconds prior to the simulated liftoff.

It took repeated tries to get through the Wet Dress Rehearsal for the Artemis I mission. There were four attempts at the countdown practice run before the first actual Artemis I launch countdown. After encountering hydrogen leaks on two scrubbed launch attempts, NASA performed another fueling test before finally successfully launching Artemis I in November 2022.

The launch team repaired a leaky hydrogen seal and introduced a gentler hydrogen loading procedure to overcome the problem. Hydrogen is an extremely efficient fuel for rockets, but its super-cold temperature and the tiny size of hydrogen molecules make it prone to leakage. The hydrogen feeds the SLS rocket’s four core stage engines and single upper stage engine.

“Artemis I was a test flight, and we learned a lot during that campaign getting to launch,” said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s Artemis II launch director. “The things that we’ve learned relative to how to go load this vehicle, how to load LOX (liquid oxygen), how to load hydrogen, have all been rolled in to the way in which we intend to load the Artemis II vehicle.”

NASA is hesitant to publicly set a target launch date until the agency gets through the dress rehearsal, but agency officials say a February launch remains feasible.

“We’ve held schedule pretty well getting to rollout today,” Isaacman said. “We have zero intention of communicating an actual launch date until we get through wet dress. But look, that’s our first window, and if everything is tracking accordingly, I know the teams are prepared, I know this crew is prepared, we’ll take it.”

“Wet dress is the driver to launch,” Blackwell-Thompson said. “With a wet dress that is without significant issues, if everything goes to plan, then certainly there are opportunities within February that could be achievable.”

One constraint that threw a wrench into NASA’s Artemis I launch campaign is no longer a significant factor for Artemis II. On Artemis I, NASA had to roll the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) after the wet dress rehearsal to complete final installation and testing on its flight termination system, which consists of a series of pyrotechnic charges designed to destroy the rocket if it flies off course and threatens populated areas after liftoff.

The US Space Force’s Eastern Range, responsible for public safety for all launches from Florida’s Space Coast, requires the flight termination system be retested after 28 to 35 days, a clock that started ticking last week before rollout. During Artemis I, technicians could not access the parts of the rocket they needed to in order to perform the retest at the launch pad. NASA now has structural arms to give ground teams the ability to reach parts higher up the rocket for the retest without returning to the hangar.

With this new capability, Artemis II could remain at the pad for launch opportunities in February and March before officials need to bring it back to the VAB to replace the flight termination system’s batteries, which still can’t be accessed at the pad.

The fastest human spaceflight mission in history crawls closer to liftoff Read More »

Meet Veronika, the tool-using cow

animal behavior, animal cognition, animal tool use, animals, Biology, Science / Rejus Almole / January 19, 2026

Each time, Veronika used her tongue to lift and position the broom in her mouth, clamping down with her teeth for a stable grip. This enabled her to use the broom to scratch otherwise hard-to-reach areas on the rear half of her body. Veronika seemed to prefer the brush end to the stick end (i.e., the exploitation of distinct properties of a single object for different functions) although which end she used depended on body area. For example, she used the brush end to scratch her upper body using a scrubbing motion, while using the stick end to scratch more sensitive lower areas like her udders and belly skin flaps using precisely targeted gentle forward pushes. She also anticipated the need to adjust her grip.

The authors conclude that this behavior demonstrates “goal-directed, context-sensitive tooling,” as well as versatility in her tool-use anticipation, and fine-motor targeting. Veronika’s scratching behavior is likely motivated by the desire to relieve itching from insect bites, but her open, complex environment, compared to most livestock, and regular interactions with humans enabled her unusual cognitive abilities to emerge.

The implication is that this kind of technical problem-solving is not confined to species with large brains and hands or beaks. “[Veronika] did not fashion tools like the cow in Gary Larson’s cartoon, but she selected, adjusted, and used one with notable dexterity and flexibility,” the authors wrote. “Perhaps the real absurdity lies not in imagining a tool-using cow, but in assuming such a thing could never exist.”

DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.11.059 (About DOIs).

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Ocean damage nearly doubles the cost of climate change

climate change, ocean ecology, Science, syndication / Kris Guyer / January 18, 2026

Using greenhouse gas emission predictions, the report estimates the annual damages to traditional markets alone will be $1.66 trillion by 2100.

The study, which began in 2021, brought together scientists from multiple disciplines: Fisheries experts, coral reef researchers, biologists and climate economists. They assessed downstream climate change costs across four key sectors—corals, mangroves, fisheries, and seaports—measuring everything from straightforward market loss of reduced fisheries and marine trade to reductions in ocean-based recreational industries.

Researchers also placed a monetary figure on what economists call non-use values. “Something has value because it makes the world feel more livable, meaningful, or worth protecting, even if we never directly use it,” said Bastien-Olvera, referencing the fiscal merit of ecosystem enjoyment and the cultural loss caused by climate change. “Most people will never visit a coral reef during a full-moon spawning event, or see a deep-sea jellyfish glowing in total darkness. But many still care deeply that these things exist.”

Island economies, which rely more on seafood for nutrition, will face disproportionate financial and health impacts from ocean warming and acidification, the study said. “The countries that have the most responsibility for causing climate change and the most capacity to fix it are not generally the same countries that will experience the largest or most near-term damages,” said Kate Ricke, co-author and climate professor at UCSD’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. Including ocean data in social cost of carbon assessments reveals increased consequences for morbidity and mortality in low-income countries facing increased nutrition deficiency.

Despite the scale of the scientific discovery, Bastien-Olvera and Ricke are optimistic this data will be a wake-up call for international decision-making. “I hope that the high value of ‘blueSCC’ can motivate further investment in adaptation and resilience for ocean systems,” said Ricke, using the term of the ocean-based social cost of carbon and referencing the opportunities to invest in coral reef and mangrove restoration projects.

Meanwhile, Bastien-Olvera believes centering the framework on oceans also recognizes the longstanding conservation approaches of coastal communities, ocean scientists and Indigenous peoples. “For a long time, climate economics treated the ocean values as if it were worth zero,” he said. “This is a first step toward finally acknowledging how wrong that was.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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Managers on alert for “launch fever” as pressure builds for NASA’s Moon mission

artemis, artemis II, human spaceflight, Kennedy Space Center, moon, NASA, orion, Science, Space, space launch system / Paul Patrick / January 17, 2026

“Putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the Moon, this is going be our first step toward a sustained lunar presence,” Honeycutt said. “It’s 10 days [and] four astronauts going farther from Earth than any other human has ever traveled. We’ll be validating the Orion spacecraft’s life support, navigation and crew systems in the really harsh environments of deep space, and that’s going to pave the way for future landings.”

NASA’s 322-foot-tall (98-meter) SLS rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building on the eve of rollout to Launch Complex 39B. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

There is still much work ahead before NASA can clear Artemis II for launch. At the launch pad, technicians will complete final checkouts and closeouts before NASA’s launch team gathers in early February for a critical practice countdown. During this countdown, called a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR), Blackwell-Thompson and her team will oversee the loading of the SLS rocket’s core stage and upper stage with super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants.

The cryogenic fluids, particularly liquid hydrogen, gave fits to the Artemis launch team as NASA prepared to launch the Artemis I mission—without astronauts—on the SLS rocket’s first test flight in 2022. Engineers resolved the issues and successfully launched the Artemis I mission in November 2022, and officials will apply the lessons for the Artemis II countdown.

“Artemis I was a test flight, and we learned a lot during that campaign getting to launch,” Blackwell-Thompson said. “And the things that we’ve learned relative to how to go load this vehicle, how to load LOX (liquid oxygen), how to load hydrogen, have all been rolled in to the way in which we intend to do for the Artemis II vehicle.”

Finding the right time to fly

Assuming the countdown rehearsal goes according to plan, NASA could be in a position to launch the Artemis II mission as soon as February 6. But the schedule for February 6 is tight, with no margin for error. Officials typically have about five days per month when they can launch Artemis II, when the Moon is in the right position relative to Earth, and the Orion spacecraft can follow the proper trajectory toward reentry and splashdown to limit stress on the capsule’s heat shield.

In February, the available launch dates are February 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11, with launch windows in the overnight hours in Florida. If the mission isn’t off the ground by February 11, NASA will have to stand down until a new series of launch opportunities beginning March 6. The space agency has posted a document showing all available launch dates and times through the end of April.

John Honeycutt, chair NASA’s Mission Management Team for the Artemis II mission, speaks during a news conference at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 16, 2026. Credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

NASA’s leaders are eager for Artemis II to fly. NASA is not only racing China, a reality the agency’s former administrator acknowledged during the Biden administration. Now, the Trump administration is pushing NASA to accomplish a human landing on the Moon by the end of his presidential term on January 20, 2029.

One of Honeycutt’s jobs as chair of the Mission Management Team (MMT) is ensuring all the Is are dotted and Ts are crossed amid the frenzy of final launch preparations. While the hardware for Artemis II is on the move in Florida, the astronauts and flight controllers are wrapping up their final training and simulations at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“I think I’ve got a good eye for launch fever,” he said Friday.

“As chair of the MMT, I’ve got one job, and it’s the safe return of Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy. I consider that a duty and a trust, and it’s one I intend to see through.”

Managers on alert for “launch fever” as pressure builds for NASA’s Moon mission Read More »

Archaeologists find a supersized medieval shipwreck in Denmark

Archaeology, maritime archaeology, medieval Europe, nautical archaeology, Science, shipwrecks / Rejus Almole / January 16, 2026

the wreck and the story of the wreck

The sunken ship reveals that the medieval European economy was growing fast.

This is a replica of another cog, based on an excavated shipwreck from Bremen. Note the sterncastle. Credit: VollwertBIT

Archaeologists recently found the wreck of an enormous medieval cargo ship lying on the seafloor off the Danish coast, and it reveals new details of medieval trade and life at sea.

Archaeologists discovered the shipwreck while surveying the seabed in preparation for a construction project for the city of Copenhagen, Denmark. It lay on its side, half-buried in the sand, 12 meters below the choppy surface of the Øresund, the straight that runs between Denmark and Sweden. By comparing the tree rings in the wreck’s wooden planks and timbers with rings from other, precisely dated tree samples, the archaeologists concluded that the ship had been built around 1410 CE.

photo of a scuba diver swimming over wooden planks underwater — The Skaelget 2 shipwreck, with a diver for scale. Credit: Viking Ship Museum

A medieval megaship

Svaelget 2, as archaeologists dubbed the wreck (its original name is long since lost to history), was a type of merchant ship called a cog: a wide, flat-bottomed, high-sided ship with an open cargo hold and a square sail on a single mast. A bigger, heavier, more advanced version of the Viking knarrs of centuries past, the cog was the high-tech supertanker of its day. It was built to carry bulky commodities from ports in the Netherlands, north around the coast of Denmark, and then south through the Øresund to trading ports on the Baltic Sea—but this one didn’t quite make it.

Most cogs would have been about 15 to 25 meters long and 5 to 8 meters wide, capable of carrying about 200 tons of cargo—big, impressive ships for their time. But Svaelget 2, an absolute unit of a ship, measured about 28 meters from bow to stern, 9 meters wide, and could have carried about 300 tons. Its size alone was a surprise to the archaeologists.

“We now know, undeniably, that cogs could be this large—that the ship type could be pushed to this extreme,” said archaeologist Otto Uldum of Denmark’s Viking Ship Museum, who led the excavation, in a press release.

Medieval Europe’s merchant class was growing in both size and wealth in the early 1400s, and the cog was both a product of that growth and the engine driving it. The mere fact of its existence points to a society that could afford to invest in building big, expensive trading ships (and could confidently expect a return on that investment). And physically, it’s a product of the same trading networks it supplied: while the heavy timbers of its frame were cut locally in the Netherlands, the Pomeranian oak planks of Svaelget 2’s hull came from Poland.

“The cog revolutionized trade in northern Europe,” said Uldum. “It made it possible to transport goods on a scale never seen before.”

The super ship’s superb superstructure

For about 600 years, layers of sand had protected the starboard (right, for you landlubbers) side of the wreck from erosion and decay. Nautical archaeologists usually find only the very bottoms of cogs; the upper structures of the ship—rigging, decks, and castles—quickly decay in the ocean. That means that some of the most innovative parts of the ships’ construction appear only in medieval drawings and descriptions.

But Svaelget 2 offers archaeologists a hands-on look at the real deal, from rigging to the ship’s galley and the stern castle: a tall wooden structure at the back of the ship, where crew and passengers could have sought at least a little shelter from the elements. Medieval drawings and texts describe cogs having high castles at both bow and stern, but archaeologists have never gotten to examine a real one to learn how it’s put together or how it connects with the rest of the ship’s construction.

“We have plenty of drawings of castles, but they have never been found because usually only the bottom of the ship survives,” said Uldum. “[The castle] is a big step forward compared to Viking Age ships, which had only open decks in all kinds of weather.”

Lying on and around the remains of the cog’s decks, Uldum and his colleagues also found stays (ropes that would have held the mast in place) and lines for controlling the ship’s single square sail, along with ropes and chains that would once have secured the merchant vessel’s cargo in the open hold.

Life at sea in the Middle Ages

The cog would probably have sailed with between 30 and 45 crew members. No remains were found on the wreck, but the lost crew left behind small, tantalizing traces of their lives and their presence. Uldum and his colleagues found combs, shoes, and rosary beads, along with dishes and tableware.

“The sailor brought his comb to keep his hair neat and his rosary to say his prayers,” said Uldum (and one has to picture the sailor’s grandmother beaming proudly at that description). “These personal objects show us that the crew brought everyday items with them. They transferred their life on land to life at sea.”

Life at sea, for the medieval sailors aboard Svaelget 2, would have included at least occasional hot meals, cooked in bronze pots over an open fire in the ship’s galley and eaten on dishes of ceramic and painted wood. Bricks (about 200 of them) and tiles formed a sort of fireplace where the cook could safely build a fire aboard the otherwise very flammable ship.

“It speaks of remarkable comfort and organization on board,” said Uldum. “Now sailors could have hot meals similar to those on land, instead of the dried and cold food that previously dominated life at sea.” Plenty of dried meat and cold biscuits still awaited sailors for the next several centuries, of course, but when weather and time permitted, at least the crew of Svaelget 2 could gather around a hot meal. The galley would have been a relatively new part of shipboard life for sailors in the early 1400s—and it quickly became a vital one.

Cargo? Go where?

One thing usually marks the site of a shipwreck, even when everything else has disintegrated into the ocean: ballast stones. When merchant ships were empty, they carried stones in their holds to help keep the ship stable; otherwise, the empty ship would be top-heavy and prone to tipping over, which is usually not ideal. (Modern merchant vessels use water, in special tanks, for ballast.) But Uldum and his colleagues didn’t find ballast stones on Svaelget 2, which means the cog was probably fully laden with cargo when it sank.

But the cargo is also conspicuously absent. Cogs were built to carry bulk goods—things like bricks, grain and other staple foods, fabric, salt, and timber. Those goods would have been stowed in an open hold amidships, secured by ropes and chains (some of which remain on the wreck). But barrels, boards, and bolts of fabric all float. As the ship sank and water washed into the hold, it would have carried away the cargo.

Some of it may have washed up on the shores or even more distant beaches, becoming a windfall for local residents. The rest probably sank to the bottom of the sea, far from the ship and its destination.

Kiona is a freelance science journalist and resident archaeology nerd at Ars Technica.

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