Failed on first, second, third and fourth tasks, but succeeded on fifth.

The primary task of a submersible is to not implode. The second is to reach the surface, even if the pilot is unconscious, with oxygen to spare. The third is for the occupants to be able to open the hatch once they surface. The fourth is for the submersible to be easy to find, through redundant tracking and communications systems, in case rescue is required. Only the fifth task is what is ordinarily thought of as the primary one: to transport people into the dark, hostile deep.

Possible paywall....

Einstein's prediction and then some. 

After the historic first detection of the space-time rattles in 2015 using ground-based detectors, researchers could have now rediscovered Albert Einstein’s waves with an entirely different technique. The approach tracks changes in the distances between Earth and beacon stars in its Galactic neighbourhood called pulsars, which reveal how the space in between is stretched and squeezed by the passage of gravitational waves.

Someone got to SCOTUS and it was probably some billionaires concerned about losing both houses next term.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices said states' election laws can be challenged in court — a rebuke to a burgeoning conservative movement that has sought to block the courts from hearing such cases.

The question remains unanswered: from where does consciousness arise?

In 1998, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that by 2023 researchers would have discovered how the brain produces consciousness. There are two leading hypotheses on consciousness: one proposes that it’s a ‘structure’ in the brain formed by a specific type of neuronal connectivity; the other suggests it arises when information is broadcast to areas of the brain through an interconnected network. Results from six independent laboratories didn’t perfectly match either hypothesis.

But the philosopher is one point ahead in this bet.

Study finds urban Californians and rural (Hadza people of Tanzania) gut biomes to be vastly different on a scale of 2x as many gut microorganisms. Elsewhere (recent Guardian article), I also learned that "more than 90% of human DNA is doing nothing very useful, and large stretches may be no more than biological baggage that has built up over years of evolution, Oxford researchers claim."   

The human gut is teeming with trillions of microbes, but most studies of this vast community have focused on people living in urban regions. Now, a team of researchers has sequenced gut microbiomes from Hadza people — members of a hunter-gatherer society in northern Tanzania — and compared them with those from people in Nepal and California. The study has found not only that the Hadza tend to have more gut microorganisms than people in the other groups, but that a Western lifestyle seems to diminish the diversity of gut populations.