Tinkerer

A scrolling desk for technology and science. Pull down to renew knowledge. Social posts are still not sources.

9 checks on the desk

  1. 22 Sep 2026/Space

    Confirmed

    A fresh impact crater on the gray lunar surface, with bright rays spreading outward.
    NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The bright rays are thrown-out dust, not an explosion.

    The largest newly found impact crater in the solar system is a 222-meter scar on the Moon.

    NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team compared images and found McGetchin crater — about 222 meters across and 43 meters deep — formed between 11 April and 22 May 2024. Two Science Advances papers call it the largest newly formed crater yet found in the solar system, a roughly once-a-century class of lunar hit.

    4 sources

  2. 21 Sep 2026/Space

    Confirmed

    A rust-colored Martian plain and low hills under a pale sky, photographed by a rover.
    NASA / JPL-Caltech, Perseverance at Jezero. Terrain, not a sign of life.

    Rocks at the rim of Jezero crater were altered by water at least three times. That is not a detection of life.

    NASA says Perseverance’s SuperCam readings of the Margin Unit show olivine-rich rock changed by carbon-dioxide-rich groundwater, possible lake water, and later hotter fluids that left calcium sulfate and fluorite. The work is in Communications Earth & Environment.

    2 sources

  3. 17 Sep 2026/Life

    Corroborated

    A small spotted wild cat walking through leaf litter in a forest.
    The tilcayo in Bolivia, published with the species report.

    A small Bolivian wild cat, Leopardus tilcayo, has been named as its own species. “First cat in a century” needs a footnote.

    A Current Biology paper used genomes from 38 Leopardus cats and split the South American tiger-cat complex into five lineages, including a previously unnamed species from Bolivia’s Yungas. Reuters, New Scientist, and Sci.News all reported the description, published 17 September 2026.

    4 sources

  4. 17 Sep 2026/Technology · Physics

    Confirmed

    A gold-patterned chip on a metal stage, with fine probes touching it in a laboratory.
    A probe station for reading quantum chips, published with the Stanford result. Not a speaker.

    Stanford physicists watched single quanta of sound jump energy states, in real time, inside a chip.

    A team led by Amir Safavi-Naeini recorded quantum jumps of phonons in a mechanical resonator and published the result in Science. Quantum jumps had been seen in trapped ions in 1986 and in photons in 2007. Sound had stayed out of reach until this resonator, which rings long enough to catch the drop from one phonon to none.

    2 sources

  5. 14 Sep 2026/Physics

    Corroborated

    The enormous cylindrical ATLAS detector in its underground cavern, with a person standing at the center for scale.
    The ATLAS detector at CERN. Photograph: Dave Gale. The instrument, not a new particle.

    ATLAS reports evidence for a very rare Higgs decay. It does not break the Standard Model, and it is not a new particle.

    The collaboration combined LHC Run 2 with early Run 3 data and measured the Higgs decaying to a virtual photon plus a photon at 1.03 ± 0.34 times the Standard Model rate. The excess is 3.4 standard deviations. In this field, that is evidence. Discovery is usually saved for about five.

    1 source

  6. 3 Sep 2026/Technology · Medicine

    Confirmed

    Surgeons in blue gowns and caps working under operating-room lights.
    Massachusetts General Hospital, from reporting on the pig-kidney program. One operating room, not a treatment you can book.

    One man lived 271 days with a gene-edited pig kidney, then received a human one. It is a case report, not a treatment you can book.

    Mass General Brigham reports that Tim Andrews, 66 at the January 2025 xenotransplant, stayed off dialysis for 271 days before a human donor kidney in January 2026. The case is published in The Lancet. The New York Times describes it as the first known bridge from a pig kidney to a human kidney.

    2 sources

  7. 22 Sep 2026/Climate

    Corroborated

    A globe colored by sea-surface height, with a red band of warmer water along the Pacific equator.
    NASA sea-surface height during an El Niño. A visualization of the pattern, not the 22 September index chart.

    This El Niño just set a late-September heat mark in the key Pacific region. “Hottest of our lives” is a scientist’s judgment, and the season is not over.

    Scientific American reports sea-surface temperatures in the monitoring region 3.05°C above usual — the highest anomaly since 3.02°C in 2015 — and quotes climate scientist Daniel Swain calling it probably the superlative El Niño of our lives so far. In August, the same magazine quoted the UK Met Office expecting an event near 3°C if the forecast holds.

    2 sources

  8. 22 Sep 2026/Space · Physics

    Emerging

    The Andromeda galaxy as a purple and blue disk of stars and X-ray light against black space.
    Andromeda seen by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The hypersoft sources are too faint to pick out here.

    Astronomers report 84 “hypersoft” X-ray sources in six galaxies. They do not yet know these are one kind of object.

    Sci.News reports a Nature Astronomy paper that mined archival Chandra observations: very low-energy X-ray sources in Andromeda, Messier 101, and four elliptical galaxies, sitting both in star-forming regions and among older stars. Some are extremely energetic even though they look faint in ordinary X-ray bands.

    1 source