Wiki News Live
Today:
Will NASA’s SkyFall Mars helicopter fleet sink science at the Red Planet?
NEWS | 23 June 2026
SkyFall is “a demonstration mission; it’s not really a science mission,” says Vicky Hamilton, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. “It’ll do some science,” she adds, but “it’s not what we’d intended.” Worse yet, SkyFall could be actively detrimental to Mars science. None of these are the type of meaty science mission that Mars researchers have become accustomed to. “I hope SkyFall doesn’t become ‘Well, okay, that’s your Mars mission for the decade’—that would be too bad,” Christensen says. SkyFall, she fears, “is basically going to eat the entire Mars Exploration Program budget for the foreseeable future.”

Top Stories:
Got a tick bite? Here’s what to do and when to seek treatment
NEWS | 23 June 2026
I recently had a tick bite and wasn’t sure what to do. “Knowing the type of tick, the likely tick infection rate in the region, and how long the tick was attached and feeding are all critical details for making tick bite management decisions,” according to the University of Rhode Island’s TickEncounter resource center. In New England, where I live, four tick species are well established: the brown dog tick, American dog tick, black-legged tick (also known as the deer tick) and the lone star tick; Gulf Coast ticks occur in smaller numbers in the southern part of the region. In North America, it is transmitted exclusively by the black-legged tick and the Western black-legged tick. Not every tick is infected, and not every tick bite results in disease.

World:
Ebola outbreak latest, World Cup heat risks and dad brains
NEWS | 23 June 2026
Speaking of the world at large, and on a somewhat lighter note, the FIFA Men’s World Cup is now in full swing. And frankly, that’s something we all have to worry about, even if we're not lucky enough to be watching a World Cup game in person. Andrea Thompson: Thanks for having meFeltman: So the World Cup is generally a summer thing. The World Cup in Qatar was actually held in the winter for that reason, if I’m remembering correctly. We’ll have a link to our World Cup landing page in today’s show notes.

Current Events:
America’s compact between science and politics is broken
NEWS | 23 June 2026
DOGE’s cuts sliced through American research grants like a thresher, “but this was much murkier,” Reynolds says. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health are awarding three quarters of their usual number of grants. Now, to be sure, the end product of science is supposed to be science, not grants or tenure. And in 1980 Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, moving ownership of the results of government-funded university research from the government to the universities. What if, the team members asked, the NIH research budget had been 40 percent smaller for the past few decades?

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 23 June 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

News Flash:
J. Craig Venter’s last interview—on AI, risk-taking and immortality
NEWS | 23 June 2026
Five years later, using a whole-genome shotgun-sequencing method that he developed, Venter and the government-backed Human Genome Project announced the first fully sequenced human genome. It may be a little bit overhyped, but it’s certainly affecting how people think about the future of science. All these people who are talking about how AI is going to design new genomes, design whole new things—it can’t make things outside of its repertoire. Things seem bleak, but currently we’re still hanging on, maybe by a tooth, to leading the world in science. It’s been more than 25 years since we sequenced the first human genome, and we now have whole new tools to start it over again the right way.

Latest:
Alan Lightman on his childhood in science
NEWS | 23 June 2026
The body of the rocket, I built out of an aluminum tube. On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. In high school I built many other science projects. In addition to my science projects, I read a lot and wrote short stories and poetry. The arts and humanities tell us how to live in that world, the world of people.

Breaking:
Science is under pressure again. Here’s what that means for young researchers
NEWS | 23 June 2026
Scales is one of thousands of early-career researchers in the U.S. trying to make sense of how the current tumult in American science will shape their professional paths. For example, in an echo of today, Nixon imposed widespread cuts to research funding while redirecting money to his chosen science projects. In 2024 federal research dollars went mostly to federal agencies and certain public-private research partnerships (43 percent), then universities (31 percent) and businesses (19 percent). Yet science funding in the U.S. has long been a political pinball. The proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 asks to reduce the amount earmarked for nearly every federal science agency, including a 55 percent cut to the NSF.

Trending:
Atul Gawande explains why U.S. leadership in global health matters more than ever
NEWS | 23 June 2026
He previously served as assistant administrator for global health at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and as co-founder and chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health-systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Gawande has written four best-selling books: Complications (2002), Better (2007), The Checklist Manifesto (2009) and Being Mortal (2014). We’re recognized as the place to go if you want to do cutting-edge science, make discoveries and make a difference. It’s present in our technology sector in many ways, where the U.S. is driving leadership in the world. There’s a lot we can bring to the world in solving problems, from finishing the job on polio, HIV, tuberculosis and malaria to advancing our public health systems and primary care systems.

This Just In:
U.S. scientists are being lured abroad—and they aren't looking back
NEWS | 23 June 2026
According to polls, application numbers and anecdata, many young American scientists are considering such moves. Nature’s poll went out in the midst of significant threats to the American research enterprise. The government also proposed large future cuts to the research agencies that award scientists research grants. “If they think about relocation, they don’t really think Finland first.”So now representatives backed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment are telling them why they should think of Finland. In some ways American researchers’ desire to leave is also not new or unique to this presidential administration.

Today:
Inside U.S. labs at a moment of fear—and unexpected promise
NEWS | 23 June 2026
Even while sharing success stories or excitement, respondents were all careful to acknowledge the ongoing uncertainty about federal funding. The administration has pushed thousands of federal scientists to quit or take early retirement, including at the NIH. Protein research sits at a fruitful nexus between health and AI, which are both noted as Trump administration priorities. Yet protein research is going strong, even when it is being used to develop vaccines for ailments old and new. And private donors, though valuable, can’t make up for billions of dollars in federal funding that support science every year.

Top Stories:
Distrust in science thrives on dangerous stereotypes
NEWS | 23 June 2026
In a 50-year career spent writing about science, I have interviewed hundreds of scientists, from young postdocs to elderly laboratory directors, including several Nobel Prize winners. On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. And they prevent young students from seeing science as a future that might include them. According to the latest available statistics from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, approximately nine million individuals worldwide engage in scientific research. That’s not to say they have no other creative outlets or hobbies; rather science is one of them.

World:
The new story of the Milky Way's surprisingly turbulent past
NEWS | 23 June 2026
Astronomer Bob Benjamin has spent more than 20 years trying to figure out what the Milky Way looks like. They’d seen other galaxies merging with one another and looking unkempt, but they didn’t know whether an earlier Milky Way might have done the same. “It’s been shocking.”In short, the maps show not the Milky Way in static equilibrium, as researchers expected, but the galaxy’s departure from it. The maps show not the Milky Way in static equilibrium, as researchers expected, but the galaxy’s departure from it. By 2023 astronomers had mapped only about two billion of the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 23 June 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

Current Events:
Why we'll never live in space
NEWS | 23 June 2026
Just how profoundly difficult would it be to live beyond Earth—especially considering that outer space seems designed to kill us? Medical researcher Sonja Schrepfer of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has dug into two of the conditions that afflict space explorers. Their book on the modern space economy, Space to Grow, was published in 2025. “I inevitably encountered the same argument: space travel represents humanity’s destiny,” he says of the impetus for writing his essay “The Case against Space.” Space explorers are often portrayed as braver and better than those who remain on their home planet: they’re the ones pushing civilization forward. NASA’s Scientific Visualization StudioIn some ways, the desire for simpler living is part of what motivates space explorers.