Wiki News Live
Today:
Where is the Roman Telescope in space?
NEWS | 02 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.

Top Stories:
Why your ability to cope with stress changes with time
NEWS | 02 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.

World:
How much should a dinosaur cost?
NEWS | 02 September 2026
The price is eye-popping, but it underscores the rising value of dinosaur fossils—and the threat these prices pose to paleontologists. At least until the late 1990s, dinosaur skeletons didn’t cost more than $1 million, says Kirk Johnson, Sant director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “Gus” is the most expensive dinosaur ever sold, but the previous record holder, “Apex” the Stegosaurus, sold for around $44.6 million in 2024. Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin bought Apex and then loaned the dinosaur to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Increasingly high fossil prices are a problem for paleontology, says Kristina Curry Rogers, a vertebrate paleontologist at Macalester College, because they “encourage the perception that dinosaur fossils are investment assets rather than irreplaceable pieces of our collective natural heritage.”They also encourage fossil hunters—commercial paleontologists and hobbyists looking to turn a profit on dinosaur bones—no matter the cost to science.

Current Events:
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope launches to space
NEWS | 02 September 2026
NASA’s newest telescope is officially on its way to deep space after more than a decade of development and high anticipation. Onboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 A.M. EDT on August 30. With an initial science mission lasting five years, Roman will join NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope in revealing the universe in ways we have never seen before. Roman is also outfitted with a special instrument called a coronagraph, which will enable the telescope to observe exoplanets with unprecedented sensitivity. After the telescope reaches L2, it will need go through a series of commissioning operations to fully come online.

Sponsored:
SmartSync Data Sync App
SPONSORED | 02 September 2026
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News Flash:
Growth hormone peptides promise to stall aging—but does the science stack up?
NEWS | 02 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.

Latest:
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope could find alien Earths—but not like you think
NEWS | 02 September 2026
An image from the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission, with color added using ground-based images, provides an earlier snapshot of a region of our galaxy that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will repeatedly observe during the upcoming years. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was designed for several high-priority studies of far-distant galaxies, but one of its key tasks closer to home will be an unprecedentedly long stare into the star-packed heart of our galaxy, an area known as the galactic bulge. Anything larger would’ve been biting off more than even mighty Roman, with its panoramic field of view, could readily chew. Even so, astronomers should still discern hundreds of millions of stars within that relatively small slice of sky, explains Kristen McQuinn, leader of the Roman Space Telescope’s mission office. But Roman’s sensitivity is such that the telescope is likely to bag even planets as small as the moon.

Breaking:
Is there a ‘window of opportunity’ to prevent Alzheimer’s in women?
NEWS | 02 September 2026
In one of the studies, which was published on Wednesday in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, researchers analyzed more than 180,000 postmenopausal women in the U.K. It found that the earlier menopause set in, the more likely it was that women would experience cognitive decline later in life. Earlier menopause was also associated with earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Like the Alzheimer’s & Dementia study, these results were strongest among women who had experienced surgical menopause. Taken together, the results support the idea that preventing Alzheimer’s may start long before advanced age—offering a “window of opportunity” to intervene, Minihane says.

Trending:
Science Crossword
NEWS | 02 September 2026
This crossword is inspired by the most recent issue of Scientific American. Read it here. Print readers, check your answers by selecting “Assist” above and then “Reveal Grid” or by selecting “Print” and then “Solution.”We’d love to hear from you! E-mail us at games@sciam.com to share your experience.

This Just In:
NASA launches Roman Space Telescope to explore dark energy and distant worlds
NEWS | 02 September 2026
We’re kicking this week off by focusing on one major science news story: the launch of NASA’s next great space observatory. Early in the morning on Sunday, August 30, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. She’s here to tell us why scientists are so excited about this new space telescope and what it could teach us about the universe. There’s another reason, that it might take us a little while to get fully started on Roman science, and that’s that our data volume is huge. So a high school class in Kentucky can access new Roman data, find new Roman discoveries, at the same time as a professor in Princeton.

Today:
Electric rain can eat through metal
NEWS | 02 September 2026
These are impossible to miss, but even tiny rain droplets can become electrically charged as they fall—and this charge could be enough to eat through metal. Research, published today in Nature, shows that water droplets become electrified as they move across smooth surfaces. As the drop nears the metal, the electric field gets stronger. Charged rain is not so electric as to have any danger to humans. People have wanted to collect rain to create electricity, but that hasn’t worked on a large scale, Butt says.

Top Stories:
The brain, solved
NEWS | 02 September 2026
In comparison, the human brain has upward of 86 billion neurons, connected by some 100 trillion synapses. The brain, it turns out, is less a fixed organ than a system in constant negotiation with the rest of the body and the world around it. Sleep, for instance, isn’t downtime but active maintenance, when the brain flushes out cellular waste in ways that may help stave off dementia. But even a well-tended brain can falter, and nowhere is that more apparent than in people with Alzheimer’s. You don’t need to solve the brain to take good care of it.

World:
Dark matter experiment catches quietest neutrinos ever measured
NEWS | 02 September 2026
This photograph shows the dry interior of a large water tank, which when filled shields the massive xenon-flooded detector of the XENONnT dark matter experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. These solar neutrinos are still traveling close to the speed of light, but their energy has been too low to register on any previous experiment’s instruments. For decades, the XENON collaboration has been locked in an international race to find dark matter, which makes up an estimated 85 percent of the matter in the universe. After decades of refinement, these experiments are now so sensitive that they can witness unprecedented phenomena—such as the rarest, faintest bang of a solar neutrino. Before long, this march of technological progress will hit a wall: our observations will become swamped by solar neutrinos, making it impossible for us to pick out dark matter from their frequent background flashes.

Current Events:
How solar became the cheapest form of energy in the world
NEWS | 02 September 2026
Forty-seven years ago U.S. President Jimmy Carter stood grinning in front of a set of 32 bulky solar panels. “Solar energy will not pollute our air or water,” he said. “Today solar makes the cheapest electricity,” says Walajabad S. Sampath, site director of the Center for Next Generation Photovoltaics at Colorado State University. “Africa’s solar revolution is here,” says Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the Global Solar Council (GSC), a trade group representing the solar industry. When new coal and gas were cheaper than new solar, solar took too long to pay out, and fossil-fuel sources were still the most affordable option in developing economies.

Sponsored:
SmartSync Data Sync App
SPONSORED | 02 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