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Cosmic Science

How an ancient eruption turned a victim’s brain into glass

Organic glass fragment from eruption victim's skull
This fragment of organic glass was found inside the skull of a victim of Mount Vesuvius' ancient eruption. (Credit: Pier Paolo Petrone)

Researchers say they’ve solved a nearly 2,000-year-old cold case, sparked by the catastrophic volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum: What caused a victim’s brain to fuse into bits of glass?

The victim’s remains were unearthed in the 1960s, amid the ruins of a building in Herculaneum known as the Collegium Augustalium. In 2020, researchers announced that obsidian-like glass fragments found in the victim’s skull were actually vitrified bits of brain.

Archaeologists suspect that the victim was a guard who was caught up in the aftermath of Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in the year 79. The man died instantly, but how? For years, scientists have been debating the scenarios for vitrifying the brain in a way that’s never been seen elsewhere. Now an Italian-German research team has laid out a plausible explanation in research published by Scientific Reports.

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GeekWire

Amazon Web Services aims to optimize AI in space

Illustration: D-Orbit satellite platform in orbit
Amazon Web Services tested orbital data processing in 2022 on D-Orbit’s ION satellite carrier, shown in this artwork. (D-Orbit Illustration)

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are turning into requirements for space operations, and Amazon Web Services is optimizing its products to reflect that view, according to the former Air Force major general who’s now in charge of AWS’ aerospace initiatives.

“AI, ML, generative AI have become table stakes for our future on-orbit systems and capabilities,” Clint Crosier, director of aerospace and satellite solutions at AWS, said today during Booz Allen Hamilton’s annual Space + AI Summit. “We have reached the limit of human capacity to digest petabytes and petabytes of data in real time and make any sort of intelligent decisions about them. We’ve culminated, so we must further embrace AI, ML and generative AI capabilities for the future.”

Crosier and other speakers at the summit, conducted at the headquarters of the Air & Space Forces Association in Virginia, pointed to the rapidly rising number of satellites in low Earth orbit as a major factor behind the need for more sophisticated AI tools. Over the past decade, that number has risen from about 1,300 to more than 10,000. Keeping track of all those satellites is challenging — and it’s just as challenging to send all that data down to Earth for processing.

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GeekWire

Starcloud raises another $10M for data centers in space

Illustration: Starcloud data center being assembled in orbit
An artist’s conception shows data-center spacecraft being added to an orbital array. (Starcloud via YouTube)

Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud got its start just last year under a different name — Lumen Orbit — but the newly renamed company is already filling out its seed funding round with $10 million in fresh investment for space-based data centers.

The new influx of capital comes after December’s announcement that the startup brought in $11 million from investors including NFX, Y Combinator (or YC, for short), FUSE, Soma Capital and scout funds from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia. Starcloud graduated from Y Combinator’s summer cohort last year.

The additional funding comes from previous seed investors and several new venture capital firms in the form of a simplified agreement for future equity, or SAFE. If you add up the $11 million and the $10 million, “it can be thought of as a $21M seed, which is one of the highest-ever seed rounds for a company coming out of YC,” Philip Johnston, Starcloud’s CEO and one of its founders, told GeekWire in an email. Johnston said Starcloud doesn’t intend to identify the new investors until a Series A funding round takes place.

Starcloud’s big idea is to place a network of megawatt-scale computer servers in Earth orbit, powered by grids of solar panels that could stretch as much as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in width. Such space-based facilities would offer alternatives to terrestrial data centers that are taking up increasing amounts of territory, gobbling up increasing amounts of power, and stirring up increasing levels of controversy.

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GeekWire

Blue Origin adds a bit of mystery to suborbital space trip

Blue Origin New Shepard booster descends to landing
The New Shepard booster descends to a landing at Launch Site One in West Texas. (Blue Origin via YouTube)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture sent its 10th crew on a quick suborbital ride to space today, extending its list of spacefliers to more than 50. And that list now includes the first customer who preserved a bit of his privacy as he flew.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable rocket ship rose from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 9:49 a.m. CT (7:49 a.m. PT) for a flight that lasted just under 10 minutes and rose to an altitude of 105 kilometers, or 65 miles. That’s beyond the Karman Line, the 100-kilometer level that marks the internationally recognized boundary of space.

The six spacefliers included a Spanish TV host, a media entrepreneur, a fertility-clinic founder, a hedge-fund partner and a venture capitalist who made his second New Shepard flight. And the sixth crew member? Blue Origin said it was respecting that customer’s request for privacy by not releasing his full name. “I like to think that he simply requested he remained under the radar, but over the Karman Line,” launch commentator Isabella Gillespie said.

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Cosmic Science

Archaeologists unearth a pharaoh’s lost tomb in Egypt

Artifacts from Thutmose II's tomb
Fragments of alabaster jars bearing the names of King Thutmose II and his principal wife, Queen Hatshepsut, were found within a newly explored tomb west of Egypt's Valley of the Kings. (Credit: Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities)

Archaeologists are showing off artifacts from what they say is the first royal tomb to be found in Egypt since the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s resting place in 1922.

But this tomb, located west of the Valley of the Kings, contains no solid-gold mummy case or glittering treasures. In fact, it took some effort to determine that it was made nearly 3,500 years ago for King Thutmose II, an ancestor of King Tut.

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Universe Today

Telescope tracks fireworks around our galaxy’s black hole

Flares in disk surrounding Milky Way's central black hole
An illustration shows hot spots in the disk swirling around the Milky Way's central black hole. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford / STScI)

The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy may not be as voracious as the gas-gobbling monsters that astronomers have seen farther out in the universe, but new findings from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveal that its surroundings are flaring with fireworks.

JWST’s readings in two near-infrared wavelengths have documented cosmic flares that vary in brightness and duration. Researchers say the accretion disk of hot gas surrounding the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, throws off about five or six big flares a day, and several smaller bursts in between. The observations are detailed today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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GeekWire

How digital tools can help heal political divisions

Audrey Tang flashes Vulcan salute
Audrey Tang, who served as Taiwan’s first minister of digital affairs, flashes a Vulcan greeting. (Photo © 2025 Danny Ngan / dannyngan.com)

This is a story about how digital tools helped government officials regain the trust of the electorate — but it’s not a science-fiction tale about a future Reunited States of America. Instead, it’s a story about Taiwan, as told by Audrey Tang, the country’s first minister of digital affairs and first transgender cabinet minister.

“It is not inevitable for social media to polarize people,” Tang, who now serves as Taiwan’s cyber ambassador-at-large, said this week at Town Hall Seattle. “It is a consequence of the design of the platform. So, we began bridging systems using our own pro-social media tools.”

Tang traced Taiwan’s moves toward pro-social digital governance during a Seattle Arts & Lectures presentation that also featured a follow-up fireside chat with Ted Chiang, a Seattle-area science-fiction author who has written commentaries on the social impacts of technology for The New Yorker and The New York Times.

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GeekWire

Eviation suspends work on its electric airplane project

Eviation airplane takeoff
Eviation’s Alice electric airplane takes off for its first flight test in 2022. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Arlington, Wash.-based Eviation Aircraft has laid off most of its employees and paused work on its electric-powered Alice airplane, which had its first and only flight test more than two years ago.

In an emailed statement, Eviation CEO Andre Stein said a temporary pause was necessary in order to focus on “identifying the right long-term partnerships to help us make electric commercial regional flight a reality.”

“We at Eviation are proud of what we have accomplished in advancing electric flight,” Stein said. “This decision was not made lightly.”

Stein’s statement did not refer to layoffs, but citing unnamed sources, The Air Current and The Seattle Times reported that Eviation laid off most of its staff last week as the company sought further funding to continue development of the Alice airplane. As of last month, Pitchbook reported that Eviation had 64 employees.

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Fiction Science Club

How science weighs the pluses and minuses of space sex

Illustration: Male and female astronaut floating in space and grasping for Valentine heart
The effects of the space environment on sexual intimacy have been debated for decades. (Credit: Catrin1309 / Bigstock)

You might think sex in space would be an out-of-this-world experience — but based on the scientific evidence so far, low-gravity intimacy isn’t likely to be as much of a high as it sounds. In fact, dwelling too deeply on the challenges of off-Earth sex and reproduction could be a real mood-killer.

“In one’s fantasies, or on a quick imaginary level, you think, ‘Wow, think of the possibilities,’” says Mary Roach, author of “Packing for Mars,” a book about the science of living in space. “But in fact, to stay coupled is a little tough, because … you know, you bounce apart. So, I said this to one of the astronauts at NASA, and he said, ‘Nothing a little duct tape won’t take care of.’”

Fortunately, Roach won’t be delving too deeply into the downside during her Valentine’s Day talk at Seattle’s Museum of Flight. At the 21-and-over event, she plans to focus on the lighter side of living in space — including zero-gravity sex. In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Roach provides an update on “Packing for Mars,” plus a preview of tonight’s “Mars Love Affair” presentation.

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Cosmic Science

Scientists find links between whale songs and languages

Humpback whale breaching
A humpback whale breaches in waters near Maui. (Photo by Alan Boyle)

When whales sing, what do they sing about? Researchers haven’t yet cracked that code, but they say a statistical analysis shows that those songs reflect a structure that’s similar to human languages.

Two studies, published in the journal Science and in a sister publication called Science Advances, lay out evidence that the songs of humpback whales follow long-accepted rules of efficient communication at least as well as our own spoken languages do.

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