Wiki News Live
Today:
This star has the strangest sky in the galaxy
NEWS | 05 September 2026
S301, you see, orbits Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole that inhabits the exact geometric center of our Milky Way galaxy. But then, in August 2026, that record was shattered when astronomers announced the discovery of a star they dubbed S301. And that makes the sky from S301 unlike any other known place in the galaxy. While it’s possible planets could persist with a closer orbit to S301, the star itself is so hot that they’d be cooked. At S301’s speed around the black hole, that shift is substantial, changing the perceived color of cosmic objects.

Top Stories:
Have we finally found dark matter?
NEWS | 05 September 2026
Yet the collision is also out of sync with the kind of dark matter signal they’ve been searching for. The universe we see when we look out into space is almost impossible to countenance without dark matter. This dark matter is ubiquitous and plentiful, but we have no idea what it’s made of. Detectors like LZ are predicated on a guess: that dark matter is made of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). “We shouldn’t be comfortable claiming specific things about dark matter or about new physics based on one event,” Morå says.

World:
Growth hormone peptides promise to stall aging—but does the science stack up?
NEWS | 05 September 2026
Sermorelin, tesamorelin and other growth hormone peptides are being touted as antiaging elixirs, but what evidence is behind those claims? These are the claims made by proponents of injectable peptides that promise to stimulate the body’s levels of growth hormone. But the big drop in levels with age is the entire premise behind growth hormone peptides. Complicating matters are that two of the most popular growth hormone compounds—sermorelin and tesamorelin—were created with specific people in mind. Older people taking growth hormone as well as doing strength training or taking sex steroids don’t see an additional increase in strength.

Current Events:
Top medical leaders urge Americans to get their flu and COVID shots in lieu of CDC vaccine campaign
NEWS | 05 September 2026
But leaders of some of the country’s largest medical organizations are urging Americans to get their shots to avoid serious illness. The recommendations come as an increasing number of people opt not to get themselves or their children vaccinated for various diseases. The consortium’s research review for the COVID shots finds that they cut the risk of hospitalization for adults older than age 65 by 53 percent and reduce that risk for pregnant women by 58 percent. The CDC recommends vaccinations against the flu and COVID for most Americans, including pregnant women and healthy children. “Last year Vaccines for Children covered all of the recommended vaccines that we had put in our vaccine schedule,” Racine said.

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SPONSORED | 05 September 2026
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News Flash:
What a novel about a dating app for dead bodies reveals about human connection
NEWS | 05 September 2026
That golden era of the dating app and all the downsides that came with it helped inspire today’s guest, Sarah Pierce. Her debut novel For Human Use imagines a future where efforts to optimize human connection reach an absurd and macabre conclusion: an app that matches users to dead bodies. So I wanted to ask you: What trends on dating apps do you see that inspired your interest in these larger cultural fads and how they spin out to not just a trend on a dating app anymore? But, you know, there was a period in New York, let’s call it 2015 to 2017, where dating apps were huge. It’s a book that’s interested in the psychology of “Who would interact with this, and how would they interact with it?

Latest:
U.N. admits exceeding Paris Agreement’s 1.5-degree-C warming target is ‘unavoidable’
NEWS | 05 September 2026
By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. The world is on track to exceed the Paris Agreement’s target of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming above preindustrial temperatures within the next few years, the United Nations admits in a new report. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Now the report urges the world to prepare for life past 1.5 degrees C of warming. Indeed, the U.S., the globe’s biggest historical greenhouse gas emitter, officially pulled out of the Paris Agreement in January.

Breaking:
GLP-1 weight-loss medication could slow aging and extend lifespan
NEWS | 05 September 2026
Not only that, but semaglutide outperformed dieting in terms of maintaining memory and keeping blood sugar in check. Perhaps, she reasoned, by slowing aging itself through the same calorie restriction effect, the drug would push back the diseases that aging can bring on. The overlap was significant: both calorie restriction and the GLP-1 quieted down inflammation and fat processing, and both stepped up the genes for handling blood sugar and maintaining proteins. The results suggests semaglutide mimics calorie restriction but has an additional power: the GLP-1 mice had better memory scores, curiosity levels and blood sugar. “In that sense, it’s more than just a calorie restriction,” Chen says.

Trending:
The spacecraft BepiColombo is finally nearing Mercury after 8 years in space
NEWS | 05 September 2026
By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. After an eight-year voyage in space, BepiColombo’s two component science orbiters, which will together observe Mercury, have split off from the spacecraft’s Mercury Transfer Module: the ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter were released and gave out a strong signal to Earth, according to an ESA livestream of the procedure. Now that they’ve separated from the transfer module, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter will remain joined together until November, when they’ll enter orbit around Mercury. The ESA orbiter will gather data on Mercury’s topography and interior structure and will put Einstein’s general theory of relativity to the test, while the JAXA orbiter will study the planet’s magnetosphere and magnetic field. During one such flyby in 2021, the spacecraft captured some photographs of the surface from just 199 kilometers (123 miles) away.

This Just In:
Why this Canadian island appeared to disappear
NEWS | 05 September 2026
This summer an island in Canada’s Williston Lake mysteriously appeared, vanished and then reappeared 30 kilometers away. As of August 31, the island, which likely broke off from land because of high water levels and winds, seemed to be resting against the shoreline. Earlier this summer, boaters spotted an island in Williston Lake, an artificial reservoir and the largest body of fresh water in British Columbia. "Higher reservoir levels can lift material that may have been lodged along the shoreline or in a sheltered bay, allowing it to float free." Gammer says the Williston Lake island seems to be intact and clinging to the shoreline—at least for now.

Today:
Why your ability to cope with stress changes with time
NEWS | 05 September 2026
During winter, your energy tends to dip, your immune system takes a hit and you may feel less social. Rhythms affecting stress and resilienceStress resilience is affected by several cyclical processes, ranging from individual, cellular-level mechanisms to the universal cycle of the seasons. One practical step teams can take is normalizing conversations about stress, seasonal capacity and workload management. I also recommend looking into evidence-based resources, such as the book “How to Winter” and Stanford University’s Rethink Stress online tool kit. More targeted stress regulation strategies, such as mindfulness training, are also helpful to have in your toolbox.

Top Stories:
An endangered pygmy raccoon turned trash into toys—and taught her family how, too
NEWS | 05 September 2026
Pygmy raccoons, found only on Cozumel Island, have shown evidence of “material culture”—use of objects that they pass on to others. It started when the pygmy raccoon dove into the wrong trash bin—not the bin known by her family for its tasty food scraps but the one with paper and plastic waste. Last January Nessie O’Neil, a graduate student in biology at Miami University in Ohio, watched as a young pygmy raccoon plucked a receipt from the paper trash. The raccoon used her paws to repeatedly dunk the receipt into a bowl of water (a common exploratory behavior). Soon after, the pioneering pygmy raccoon died, likely from a combination of malnutrition and toxic exposure to human trash, according to the study.

World:
Why the Grand Canyon flash flood was so devastating
NEWS | 05 September 2026
A flash flood swept through the Grand Canyon on Saturday, killing at least two people. The rains came from a typical monsoon storm; these storms rake across the Grand Canyon and the desert Southwest between June and September every year. “Flash floods are not a new thing for this canyon or for anywhere in the Grand Canyon region,” says Laura Crossey, a hydrologist at the University of New Mexico, who studies the canyon’s water. Phantom Ranch, the only lodging below the rim of Grand Canyon, also sits at the base of Bright Angel Canyon, where it meets the Colorado River. On average, the Colorado River deepens the Grand Canyon by about the thickness of a piece of paper every year.

Current Events:
Where is the Roman Telescope in space?
NEWS | 05 September 2026
The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope just launched to space Sunday morning. NASA’s newest space observatory is winging its way to a special spot in space called the second sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2. From this distance, Roman will get to work: The telescope will be able to capture broad swaths of space in one image, giving astronomers never-before-seen views of stars, galaxies and other massive structures in the universe. Matthew Twombly (graphic); Heidi B. Hammel/Shari Lifson/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (content consultants)From L2, Roman and its soon-to-be neighbor, the James Webb Space Telescope, can orbit the sun without disproportionate pull from one direction or the other. L2 offers a clear view of deep space and keeps the sun, the moon and Earth out of an observatory’s field of view.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 05 September 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here