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Space Astronomy Mars
Martian Fatty Acids

NASA Running Out of Non-Life Explanations for What Its Rover Found on Mars​

Yet another tantalizing clue.

By Victor Tangermann
Published Feb 14, 2026 7:30 AM EST

NASA
Last year, NASA’s Curiosity rover made a fascinating discovery after boring into a suspected ancient lake bed on Mars: long-chain organic molecules, called alkanes, that could serve as a potential chemical relic of ancient life on the Red Planet.

The molecules, researchers suggested at the time, could have derived from fatty acids, which are common building blocks of cell membranes on Earth, once again strengthening the case that Mars could’ve been teeming with life billions of years ago.

It was just another tantalizing clue in our search for extraterrestrial life, not the smoking gun we’ve all been waiting for.

Nonetheless, scientists continue to be fascinated by the finding. In a paper published in the journal Astrobiology last week, a team led by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Alexander Pavlov argues that the presence of these molecules — despite the millions of years of destructive radiation that pummeled the Martian surface after it lost much of its atmosphere — “cannot be readily explained” by non-biological processes alone.

One theory is that carbon-rich dust particles and meteorites could have deposited these long-chain organic molecules on the surface, with the ancient Martian atmosphere allowing the organics to accumulate billions of years ago.

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However, Pavlov and his colleagues aren’t convinced. After studying how 80 million years’ worth of pelting radiation could have affected these molecules, they concluded that prior to the loss of the planet’s atmosphere, the concentration of these alkanes was likely much higher than previously thought. To help explain their findings, they took into account other non-biological processes in an attempt to arrive at their inferred original abundance — but couldn’t, even after combining all of them.

In other words, biological processes like the ones observed on Earth are still a leading theory, even after researchers’ best efforts to find a non-life explanation.

“We argue that such high concentrations of long-chain alkanes are inconsistent with a few known abiotic sources of organic molecules on ancient Mars,” they wrote.

Nonetheless, they stopped well short of making any definitive statements about life on the Red Planet. After all, there could be still-unknown, non-biological processes we don’t know about that could have resulted in the observed concentration of long-chain carbon molecules on Mars.

“We agree with Carl Sagan’s claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and understand that any purported detection of life on Mars will necessarily be met with intense scrutiny,” they concluded in their paper. “In addition, in practice with established norms in the field of astrobiology, we note that the certainty of a life detection beyond Earth will require multiple lines of evidence.”

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Nonetheless, it’s a tantalizing waypoint in our longstanding efforts to determine whether Mars, a planet that was once covered in huge oceans, rivers, and lakes, could have supported life.

Pavlov and his colleagues are now calling for further research into how radiation degraded these intriguing molecules under Mars-like conditions to shed more light on the matter.

More on Mars: Scientists Find Evidence of Ancient Tropical Oasis on Mars

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Victor Tangermann​

Senior Editor​

I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.

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Nasa targets early March to send humans back around the Moon​

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Rebecca Morelle,Science Editor,
Alison Francis,Senior Science Journalistand
Greg Brosnan,Senior Science Journalist
Shutterstock
The astronauts will begin their journey on Nasa's Space Launch System rocket
Nasa is targeting early March to launch a crew around the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, in what would be humankind's furthest trip into space.
The Artemis II mission will see four astronauts embark on a 10-day journey around the far side of the Moon and back to Earth, paving the way for a future lunar landing.
Nasa set the earliest launch date of March 6 (early on March 7 in the UK) following a successful "wet dress rehearsal" - a critical pre-launch test where the rocket is filled with fuel and taken through the countdown sequence.
It was the Artemis team's second attempt at a practice run at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

When does the Nasa Moon mission launch and who are the Artemis II crew?​

Nasa's mega Moon rocket arrives at launch pad for Artemis II mission​

"Every night I look up at the Moon and I see it and I get real excited because I can feel she's calling us and we're ready," Nasa's Lori Glaze told a news conference on Friday.
"The excitement for Artemis II is really, really starting to build, we can really start to feel it. It's coming."
The first rehearsal, which took place at the beginning of February, ended early because of a hydrogen fuel leak at the launch pad.
Glaze said issues including with seals and filters had now been remedied.
"Yesterday we were able to fully tank the SLS rocket within the planned time line […] we also succesfully demonstrated the launch countdown," she said.
Three Americans - Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch - and one Canadian, Jeremy Hansen, make up the Artemis II crew.
Glaze said the crew were excited following the successful rehearsal and would go into quarantine later on Friday.
They'll begin their journey on Nasa's mega Moon rocket: the 98m-tall (322ft) Space Launch System, or SLS.
It's only flown once before in November 2022 for the Artemis I mission, but this was with no people onboard.
The crew will be strapped into the Orion capsule, which is located at the top of the rocket.
The inside of their spacecraft is about the size of a minibus, and it's where the four will live, eat, work and sleep during the 10-day mission.
The first day of their journey will be spent in orbit around the Earth, then if all systems are working well, the astronauts will head towards the Moon.
The voyage takes about four days, and the crew will travel around the far side of the Moon, which is the side we never see from Earth.
They'll be at a distance of 6,500-9,500km (4,000 to 6,000 miles) above the lunar surface, and will have several hours dedicated to studying and taking images of the Moon.
After the fly by, the astronauts will begin their four-day journey home. They will end the mission with a splash down in the Pacific Ocean.


NASA
Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt visited the Moon in 1972
The mission, if successful, will pave the way for Artemis III, which will see astronauts set foot on the lunar surface.
The last time humans visited the Moon was in 1972 for the Apollo 17 mission.
Nasa says the landing will happen by 2028, but this is a very ambitious timescale.
Elon Musk's SpaceX company has a contract to build the lander for Artemis III - which will be flown to the Moon on a SpaceX Starship rocket. But delays to the Starship rocket have led Nasa to ask SpaceX for a new streamlined plan to speed a return to the Moon.
Nasa has also asked rival company Blue Origin - which is owned by Jeff Bezos - to come up with an accelerated lunar plan for Artemis III.
As the tech billionaires battle it out, the US is under pressure to return to the Moon. China is aiming for a lunar landing by 2030, and has been making steady progress towards this.
Both nations are planning to land at the Moon's south pole - and are competing for the best spots to build their lunar bases.

This...

@Stroller and other Guinness drinkers...

Steelmonkey said:

@Stroller and other Guinness drinkers...

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That adds at least 30 seconds to the time you get your pint. No.

sb_73 said:

That adds at least 30 seconds to the time you get your pint. No.

Click to expand...

order 30 seconds earlier

Artemis II: Inside the Moon mission to fly humans further than ever​

By Rebecca Morelle, Alison Francis, Paul Sargeant and the Visual Journalism team23 March 2026Science
For the first time in more than 50 years, humanity is returning to the Moon - travelling further from Earth than anyone has ever been before.

Four astronauts will take a trip of more than half a million miles around our celestial neighbour and back home in a mission filled with wonderment, but also danger.

Nasa’s Artemis II mission - which is scheduled to launch as soon as 1 April - will bring us stunning views of the Moon and a new understanding of the lunar environment.

It will also pave the way for a landing and, eventually, a Moon base - our first step in learning how to live on another world.

But the voyage comes with serious risks - the crew will fly in a spacecraft never used by humans before.

And there will be personal challenges: the astronauts will spend 10 days cramped together in a spacecraft the size of a minibus.

So how will this high-stakes mission work?

Mission commander
"It is a test mission and we are ready for every scenario…It's going to be amazing"

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Reid Wiseman
Mission commander

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Lift off for the Moon​

The astronauts will start their journey on Nasa’s mega Moon rocket, the Space Launch System.

It is the most powerful rocket the US space agency has ever built and will blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Standing 98m tall (322ft) the SLS has flown only once before, launching in 2022 for Artemis I without astronauts onboard.
It has two huge rocket boosters and four engines that provide the power to get off the ground.
The orange core stage is essentially a giant fuel tank - containing more than three million litres of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
The job of the SLS is to carry the Orion spacecraft - which sits at the top of the rocket with the astronauts onboard - to space.
If anything did go wrong during the early stages of the launch, the Launch Abort System, at the very top of the rocket, would propel the astronauts to safety.

The launch is one of the most dangerous parts of the mission - everything has to go perfectly.

All of the astronauts say they sat down with their families to talk about the risks involved.

Mission pilot
“We've all got someone, an astronaut, that is going to be with our family members when they're watching launch, which can be this terrific and terrifying moment all at the same time.”

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Victor Glover
Mission pilot

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The astronauts​

Glover is one of four astronauts - three Americans and one Canadian - who have been training for Artemis II for more than two years. They have decades of experience between them - although one has never been to space before.

Reid Wiseman​

Role | Commander
Background | Navy veteran
Astronaut experience | 16 years
Time spent in space | 6 months

Reid says he has a lifelong love of flying, but on the ground he’s afraid of heights.

Victor Glover​

Role | Pilot
Background | Former test pilot
Astronaut experience | 12 years
Time spent in space | 6 months

While in the military, Victor’s call-sign was IKE, which stands for I Know Everything.

Christina Koch​

Role | Mission specialist
Background | Electrical engineer
Astronaut experience | 12 years
Time spent in space | 1 year

Christina made history taking part in the first all female spacewalk while on the ISS.

Jeremy Hansen​

Role | Specialist
Background | Fighter pilot
Astronaut experience | 16 years
Time spent in space | None

The Canadian will be taking maple syrup and maple cookies on his lunar voyage.

When you see them together, it is clear how well they know - and like - each other. Commander Reid Wiseman has said the quartet have spent so much time with each other, they are now totally in sync.

Nasa

Mission commander
"You get to that point where you do not have to communicate any longer - you're just listening to everything happening, and all four of us are watching each other and the mission, and we do not need to speak - we just know."

Reid Wiseman
Mission commander

Click to expand...

Life onboard the Orion spacecraft​

The astronauts will spend their 10-day mission crammed inside the Orion crew capsule - which is about 5m wide by 3m high (15ft x 9ft).

To get used to living in such a confined space, the crew has been spending as much time in each others' company as possible. There have even been some Artemis sleepovers.

Nasa

Mission specialist (6ft 2in tall)
"I’m getting a little bit conscious about my size. Canada did get more than its fair share of the volume of the mission by assigning me."

Jeremy Hansen
Mission specialist (6ft 2in tall)

Click to expand...

The crew module has similarities to the ones used for the Apollo missions 50 years ago, but the interior is very different.
Inside this compact living space, the four will work, exercise, eat and sleep.
There are four seats for the launch - once in orbit the crew will pack them away to make more room.
The weightless environment means all surfaces are accessible, so this control panel can be on the 'ceiling'.
There is a water dispenser, for drinking water and to rehydrate food.
Each astronaut has chosen their favourite meals for the journey.
A step, just beneath the hatch, doubles up as a flywheel exercise machine.
The astronauts pull on the cable for 30 minutes of cardiovascular and resistance training each day.

But possibly the most important piece of equipment is tucked away under the floor.
It is a toilet - something the Apollo astronauts didn’t have 50 years ago.
It has been specially designed to overcome the challenges of going to the bathroom in space.
But it’s not very private.

Mission specialist
"On the International Space Station, the loo is much more separated. Our loo... it's in the floor. We're all cramped in there, so any noise that it makes, everyone's going to be hearing. So, yeah, it's different."

Christina Koch
Mission specialist

Click to expand...

The journey​

The mission to the Moon and back will last 10-ish days - the “ish” is because it depends on the exact timing of the launch, and the relative positions of the Earth and the Moon.

For the first day of the mission, the astronauts will orbit the Earth. They will be high above it - about 70,000km (45,000 miles) up. To put that into perspective the International Space Station is about 400km (250 miles) above our planet.

They will have to get used to the weightless environment, and for space rookie Jeremy Hansen it will be a steep learning curve.

“I do think it is going to be a bit of an adjustment for us when we get up there… I'll be learning how to float and fly - and bumping into stuff. And I'll need a little help, probably,” - Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist.
The astronauts will also be checking the spacecraft’s vital life-support systems - and this includes the onboard toilet.

The astronauts will also have the chance to take Orion for its first test drive.

About three hours into the flight, the upper stage of the rocket - called the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) - will detach from the Orion spacecraft.

The crew will then manually fly Orion, approaching and backing away from the ICPS, to see how Orion handles. It is a chance to practise for docking in future missions.
Now the Artemis team has to make a major decision.

While the astronauts are close to Earth, getting back is relatively straightforward if there are any issues that cannot be fixed.

So mission control has to be absolutely certain before they give the go-ahead for a critical manoeuvre called the trans-lunar injection burn.

This is when Orion fires its main engine to blast free of Earth’s gravity and set a path to the Moon.

Once they are on their way, coming home will not be easy or quick - the astronauts are now committed to their long journey around the Moon and back.

During this time, the crew will continue to evaluate the spacecraft systems, but the astronauts themselves will also be evaluated and monitored.

It is an opportunity to use the crew as guinea pigs - experiments on board will reveal how their bodies are affected this far out in space.

Radiation is a key concern, as the Sun can hurl out damaging, high-energy particles.

The astronauts will carry a device called a dosimeter to see how much radiation they are exposed to. They will also practise using their radiation shelter, which is under the floor of the spacecraft.

The crew need to know how to get into it quickly if a solar storm was coming their way.

Another practice session to help prepare for the unexpected will involve the astronauts climbing into their bright orange spacesuits, called the Orion Crew Survival System (OCSS).

These suits are worn to protect the crew during launch and re-entry, and also act as vital protection if there is a problem with the capsule.

The suit is like a mini-wearable spacecraft, pressurised with inbuilt life-support systems.

In the event of an emergency on their way to or from the Moon, the astronauts would quickly suit up – the spacesuit is designed to keep them alive for up to six days as they make their way back to Earth.

The crew will also take part in tests to study their balance and muscle performance and changes in their microbiome, as well as eye and brain health.

Samples of their saliva, blotted on to special paper, will also be taken before, during and after the mission to analyse their immune systems, which can become weakened in space.

Mission specialist
“A fascinating thing about the space environment is it actually changes the immune systems of our bodies, and that's really important to us and our friends. Many of us have experienced those things when we went to the ISS, and we're going to really have to have a handle on that for long duration missions.”

Christina Koch
Mission specialist

Click to expand...

Face-to-face with the Moon​

Now is the moment that the world has waited more than half a century for: humanity’s return to the Moon.

The astronauts will fly around its far side - the side we cannot see from Earth - at a distance of between 6,500 and 9,500km (4,000-6,000 miles) from the lunar surface.

Orion will point towards the Moon for the best views. The crew will have three full hours devoted to lunar observation - to look, take images, and learn more about its geology, which will help to plan and prepare for a future landing.

Mission specialist
"Depending on the time that we launch, depending on the illumination of the far side of the Moon… we could see parts of the Moon that never have had human eyes laid upon them before. And believe it or not, human eyes are one of the best scientific instruments that we have."

Christina Koch
Mission specialist

Click to expand...

From this vantage point, they will be able to see the Earth and the Moon together from Orion’s windows, with the Moon close up in the foreground and the Earth distant in the background.

Each astronaut has been allowed to bring special items on board for this special moment in their mission. For Victor Glover, it is a Bible and some family heirlooms; for Christina Koch, it is handwritten notes from loved ones, and Jeremy Hansen is bringing some Moon pendants that belong to his wife and three daughters.

Reid Wiseman has chosen something very simple.

“I have a blank piece of paper and a pen pencil, and I can't wait to write some thoughts on that. I don't know what to expect, and I don't want to go in with to go in with any preconceived notions.” Reid Wiseman, Mission commander.

But while the astronauts get to stare in awe and wonder during their lunar fly-by, it will be a tense time for mission control as well as everyone following the mission at home.

As the astronauts fly behind the Moon, they will lose communication with the Earth for between 30 and 50 minutes.

“While we cannot talk to the planet and our friends that are even in space on the International Space Station, I would love it if the entire world, those eight billion people, could come together and just be hoping and praying for us to get that acquisition of signal and be back in touch with everybody.” - Victor Glover, pilot.

Once mission control can breathe a collective sigh of relief and when contact is re-established, it will be time for the astronauts to begin their journey back home.

The risky return​

The return will take another four days. But this last part of the mission is one of the riskiest.
For this final manoeuvre, the crew module will separate from the rest of the spacecraft, and the capsule will turn so its heat shield can bear the brunt of the fiery temperatures generated on re-entry and keep the astronauts safe inside.

The spacecraft will hurtle through Earth’s atmosphere at 25,000mph, enduring temperatures of about 2,700C - that is half as hot as the surface of the Sun.

Nasa
There has been a great deal of focus on the heat shield - it was badly damaged during the first uncrewed Artemis mission. But by adjusting the angle of the re-entry, the engineers are confident they have fixed the problem.

Once the spacecraft is safely through, a series of parachutes will be deployed to slow it down.

The astronauts will make a gentle splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, where a recovery team will be waiting.

The capsule can land upright, upside down or on its side, and bright orange airbags will inflate to help turn it upright so the crew can safely exit.

Victor Glover says coming home is the part of the mission he is most excited about.

Nasa

Pilot
“I am really looking forward to seeing those three beautiful parachutes and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. I know that that's when my wife will have her first real, true exhale, and that means a lot to me. This is really challenging on the families, and so I know that's a moment that's going to be really special for her, and that makes it special for me.”

Victor Glover
Pilot

Click to expand...

With their mission complete, the astronauts will be flown back to land. It will be their first chance to walk on solid ground again, and reflect on their journey of a lifetime.

They will have joined an elite group - only 24 astronauts have ever flown around the Moon.

But this is just the start of the Artemis missions. The data and science collected will be pored over, because the next steps will be even more challenging: returning humans to the lunar surface, but this time to stay.

'A succulent Chinese meal' - iconic Australian quote immortalised in national film archive​

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Tiffany Wertheimer
Seven
“Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest” is now one of the most famous quotes in Australian pop culture
A famously theatrical monologue, given by a man as police arrested him at a Chinese restaurant in Australia, has officially been preserved by the country's National Film and Sound Archive.

The 1991 clip of Jack Karlson's arrest in Brisbane became an internet sensation when it was rediscovered in 2009.

"What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal" Karlson – born Cecil George Edwards – dramatically shouted, while resisting the officers.

"Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest" and "get your hand off my penis" were among his other, now immortalised, phrases that have been officially recognised by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) for their cultural significance.

The moment, now known as Democracy Manifest, became one of the most viral videos in Australia's history, and inspired thousands of memes, musical remixes, merchandise and even an orchestral piece.

Describing his protest as "dramatic, indignant and unexpectedly articulate", NFSA said that "Karlson's words became shorthand for irreverent Australian humour".

"The recording demonstrates how voice and performance can transform an everyday news event into a lasting piece of cultural folklore," it wrote.

Jack Karlson died from prostate cancer in 2024, aged 82.


Months earlier, he had reunited with one of the policemen in the video, Stoll Watt, to announce an upcoming documentary into his obscure and eccentric life.

Although he was a convicted criminal and had reportedly broken out of jail three times, Karlson had always maintained that the 1991 incident was a case of mistaken identity.

There are two main schools of thought on this, the NFSA says - one that he had been confused for a Hungarian chess player known for dine-and-dash attempts in Australia at the time.

"They thought I was some international gangster," he said during one interview.

The other theory is that credit card company American Express had reported him to the police for using stolen credit cards, the national archive writes.

NFSA releases its Sounds of Australia "capsule" every year, to recognise recordings that have had lasting impacts and shaped cultural moments.

Its 2026 capsule also includes Missy Higgins' 2004 hit Scar, celebrated for a chorus that "defined a generation of Australian pop"; and the beeping of the country's pedestrian crossings, which had "reshaped how Australians move through cities and suburbs".

If you are on an Internet server based in the US, Google Maps will tell you that the body of water south of Texas/Louisiana is called the Gulf of America.

If you are in Mexico, the same app owned by the same company will call it the Gulf of Mexico.

Anywhere else (same app, same company) it’s the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)

For the United Nations it’s the Gulf of Mexico. This is the political source most reputable cartographers will use.

If you use Google Maps, or just Google, to search for Google’s spine, there is no result.

sb_73 said:

If you are on an Internet server based in the US, Google Maps will tell you that the body of water south of Texas/Louisiana is called the Gulf of America.

If you are in Mexico, the same app owned by the same company will call it the Gulf of Mexico.

Anywhere else (same app, same company) it’s the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)

For the United Nations it’s the Gulf of Mexico. This is the political source most reputable cartographers will use.

If you use Google Maps, or just Google, to search for Google’s spine, there is no result.

Click to expand...

If you look at the Straits of Hormuz it just says "Trump is a ****"...and that's the political correct way to look at it

End of ‘The Line’: A timeline of Saudi Arabia’s failed rendering city
The horizontal skyscraper sci-fi dream is now just a colossal crater in the desert.



End of ‘The Line’: A timeline of Saudi Arabia’s failed rendering city
[Illustration: FC]

BY Jesus Diaz


Saudi Arabia has halted construction on The Line, the over-hyped megacity that was supposed to slice through the sand like a mirrored sword, until 2030—LOL!—after multiple delays and downsizings. Anyone with two functioning eyes and three ounces of brain tissue could have predicted this spectacular crash. The concept blatantly defied basic physics and economics. It was a sci-fi fever dream doomed the second it left the rendering farm.

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Rendering ca. 2024. [Image: Neom]
The Line began as a supernova of corporate promotion. In 2021, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman officially launched the enterprise as the utopian cornerstone of Vision 2030, a $500 billion national program meant to modernize the country and wean it off oil. He intended the project to be a car-free smart city capable of housing nine million residents within two parallel mirrored groundscrapers measuring 105 miles long, 1,640 feet high, and 656 feet wide. The Line, like the rest of the architectural and engineering development projects in the Tabuk Province, in Saudi Arabia, is managed by Neom, a state-owned company that claims it “is building the foundations for a new future.”

Urban planning skeptics immediately pointed out that building a massive linear city was a patently absurd proposition, citing historical precedent, the laws of physics, and economics that simply do not support a massive, sideways skyscraper — much less one stretching across a barren desert. Yet, the kingdom pushed forward, digging giant holes in the middle of nowhere until the sheer magnitude of the idiocy became impossible to ignore.

The pivot to practicality
The utopian glass house finally shattered under the weight of financial reality. Saudi spending, which grew astronomically under MBS, is actively being redirected toward immediate, practical infrastructure to weather a growing national deficit exacerbated by a weaker economy and the economic fallout of the Iran war.

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Vanity projects aren’t making the cut. According to a strategic review led by Neom’s chief executive, Aiman al-Mudaifer, the linear city was previously expected to cost more than $1 trillion. The Saudi public investment fund has mandated that the newly scaled-down enterprise must generate actual financial returns rather than just consume capital.

Instead of focusing on an inland desert city, the kingdom’s priorities have shifted to the coast. There, Saudi Arabia still intends to invest about $3 billion in Oxagon, an industrial zone with a port on the Red Sea that has gained strategic importance for trade planning following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This is where the government is expanding its capacity to deliver water, electricity, and digital connectivity.

It’s a practical move. The Oxagon upgrades are meant to attract artificial intelligence companies to build data centers. The utilitarian rationale for this coastal shift is pretty simple, okay? Data centers need water for cooling and Oxagon is on the coast.


Top: a rendering of the planned Oxagon development. Bottom: Satellite view of the early development of Oxagon, Neom’s planned octagonal industrial city on Saudi Arabia’s northwest Red Sea coast, October 2025. [Images: Neom, Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2025]
At the same time, plans for other Neom projects are crumbling. Red Sea tourism sites have been deferred until after 2030, and the Trojena mountain resort—once expected to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games—will not receive fresh investment before 2031.

“If we announce something and we need to adjust it, accelerate it and make it a priority more than others, or defer or cancel it, we will without blinking,” Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan says. The Crown Prince also echoed this, claiming that they “will not hesitate to cancel or make any radical amendment to any programs or targets if we find that the public interest so requires.”

Timeline of a failure
The unraveling of this architectural hallucination happened in slow motion over several years.

OCTOBER 2017: The Vaporware Genesis
The saga began when the Crown Prince officially launched Neom as the cornerstone of “Saudi Vision 2030,” a massive national reconversion program designed to transform the kingdom into a modern society and reduce its economic reliance on petroleum. The promise was a sprawling 105-mile strip of high-density living in the desert.


Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman answers questions during a press conference to announced his economic reform plan known as “Vision 2030” in Riyadh, on April 25, 2016. [Photo: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images]
JANUARY 2021–AUGUST 2022: The Sci-Fi Fever Dream
Saudi Arabia proposed “The Line,” presenting glossy renderings of a mirrored dual-skyscraper cutting straight through the desert. Pitched as a “civilization revolution,” it was designed as a car-free smart city capable of housing 9 million residents.


Rendering ca. 2022 [Image: Neom]
APRIL 2024: Physics and Economics Breach the Walls
The utopian timeline quietly started to implode. Planners were forced to significantly slash the initial phase of The Line down to a laughable 1.5 miles by 2030. Consequently, the projected population for the end of the decade plummeted from earlier internal expectations of 1.5 million down to 300,000. Saudi officials initially dismissed the rumors, but the structural scaling back had already begun.


Satellite view of construction progress at the Western portion of Neom, The Line, Saudi Arabia. [Photo: Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2023]
LATE 2024: Palaces, Audits, and Executive Chaos
While public infrastructure stalled, satellite imagery revealed that construction resources were diverted to build a massive royal palace complete with 16 buildings and a golf course. Internally, an audit discovered that project leaders intentionally manipulated accounting numbers to hide escalating expenses. The estimated total cost to complete the full project eventually reached $8.8 trillion—more than 25 times the annual national budget of Saudi Arabia.

This chaos culminated in the abrupt departure of former chief executive Nadhmi al-Nasr amid allegations of workplace mistreatment. Furthermore, a television documentary reported that tens of thousands of workers died during the construction of Vision 2030 projects, with laborers forced to work 16-hour shifts for consecutive weeks.


Rendering ca. 2024. [Image: Neom]
JULY 2025: Hitting the Brakes on the Hype Train
Facing tightening liquidity and oil prices plummeting to roughly $71 a barrel, the national sovereign wealth fund paused operations. Saudi Arabia hired external consultants to evaluate whether the linear city concept was actually feasible, a necessary recalibration as the kingdom faced strict financial deadlines to prepare for hosting both the 2030 Expo and the 2034 World Cup (there’s one stadium that was supposed to be built on top of The Line).


Rendering ca. 2025 [Image: Saudi 2034]
EARLY 2026: The AI Pivot
The glossy vertical forests dissolved into a pragmatic attempt to salvage sunk costs. Under new CEO Aiman al-Mudaifer, the Neom enterprise was officially gutted. As the reality of the failure set in, early reports indicated the remaining physical infrastructure of the project itself was being repurposed into data centers, a purely utilitarian move to bolster the national government’s expansion into artificial intelligence.

MAY 2026: The Final Halt
The definitive death knell arrived. Following Al-Mudaifer’s strategic review, Saudi Arabia officially halted work on The Line until after 2030, capping its target population at a maximum of 100,000 residents. The broader shift toward practical planning saw the kingdom maintain its intention to keep investing in the Oxagon port to build out AI server farms.

The “civilization revolution” that they tried to sell us, however, has crashed leaving behind a massive trench in the sand and a financial crater to match.

The final extended deadline for Fast Company's Brands That Matter Awards is this Friday, May 29, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jesus Diaz is a screenwriter and producer whose latest work includes the mini-documentary series Control Z: The Future to Undo, the futurist daily Novaceno, and the book The Secrets of Lego House. More

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DESIGN

Chicago just built the largest magic venue in the world—take a peek inside
With 35,000 square feet and $50 million in funding, The Hand & The Eye is a big bet that is anything but an illusion.


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Chicago just built the largest magic venue in the world—take a peek inside
[Photo: Matthew Reeves/courtesy The Hand & The Eye]

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BY Mark Wilson

The last time I set foot in this historic Chicago mansion built in the heart of Michigan Avenue, I’d been served one less-than-generous slice of lukewarm prime rib. This is back when it was a Lawry’s steakhouse. I remember white tablecloths, silver serving trays, one decent staircase, and just the stodgiest of old rooms that felt less like I was in the Gilded Age than at a funeral parlor.

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Now, when I step inside the lobby, a large wooden door slides open in front of me. I enter a room with a ringing telephone. And when I pick it up, my journey begins . . .

With the help of the architecture firm Rockwell Group and the design firm Pentagram, the McCormick mansion has been transformed into The Hand & The Eye, the largest magic venue in the world at 35,000 square feet.


[Photo: Matthew Reeves/courtesy The Hand & The Eye]
The overall vision—and $50 million investment behind it—comes from Glen Tullman, who is both a Chicago-based venture capitalist and a lifelong magic enthusiast. His bet is that locals and tourists will spend $225 for a three-hour, no-cameras-allowed experience (with $75 in credits for food and drink) as they bounce from intimate rooms to larger theaters—seeing more magic at every turn in a setting that’s as much of a spectacle as the illusions themselves.

“We built this to be a 100-year venture from every little aspect of what we’ve done,” says Tullman, as he excitedly gives me a tour through the space. “We built it to be for the performers and for the guests. We didn’t build it to say, ‘Let’s maximize profits.’ [Though] sometimes when you do that, you actually maximize profits, because people say, ‘This is so special.’”


[Photo: courtesy Pentagram]
What is The Hand & The Eye?
The Hand & The Eye is a theater, club, school, and networking spot for the magic-inclined. But ultimately, it’s an ode to mid-century Chicago-style magic: point-blank, reality-shattering card tricks that filled the city’s taverns as magicians walked from table to table, casually blowing people’s minds with nothing more than 52 small pieces of waxed paper.

The mansion is designed to transport you out of any particular place and time, with a mishmash of motifs pulled from the 1870s to 1930s, the golden age of magic. Rich wallpapers, marble bars, careful carpentry, custom brass plaques, and copious amounts of fringe and velvet serve as a baseline across a space where no two rooms are alike. And since the mansion has few windows, it feels like a permanent 10:30 p.m. inside. I can see how the environment could make time disappear.

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By Space Daily Editorial Team · Editorial process

Published May 27, 2026

There is a spot in the South Pacific so far from any coastline that when the International Space Station passes overhead, the nearest human beings may be the astronauts in orbit — not anyone on land.
There is a location in the South Pacific so far from land that, for stretches of any given day, the closest human beings to it are not on the Earth’s surface at all. They are the crew of the International Space Station, passing roughly 400 kilometres overhead. The nearest land is about 2,688 kilometres away, and no one lives on it.



The place is called Point Nemo, and the coincidence is not only a curiosity. The same emptiness that puts the station’s crew nearer than anyone on land is the reason space agencies have been steering spacecraft into the water there for more than fifty years.

Where Point Nemo is, and why it is empty
Point Nemo is the oceanic pole of inaccessibility: the single point in the ocean farthest from any land. It sits at 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W, in the South Pacific roughly between New Zealand and southern Chile. Three small, uninhabited pieces of land lie almost equidistant from it, each about 2,688 kilometres away. Ducie Island, in the Pitcairn group, lies to the north. Motu Nui, an islet near Rapa Nui, lies to the northeast. Maher Island, off the Antarctic coast, lies to the south.

The point was not found by an expedition.

It was calculated. In 1992 the Croatian-Canadian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela worked it out with a geospatial program, modelling the curvature of the Earth to find the spot at maximum distance from any coastline. Lukatela never went there. By his own account it is possible that no one has ever passed through the exact coordinates. The figure for Point Nemo is described well by the entry for the oceanic pole of inaccessibility in Encyclopaedia Britannica.



The water is around 4,000 metres deep. The point lies inside the South Pacific Gyre, a slow rotating system of currents that keeps nutrient-poor water moving through the region, which leaves marine life sparse. It is also well outside commercial shipping lanes.

Why spacecraft are brought down there
Not everything that comes back from orbit burns up.

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Large structures, dense components, fuel tanks and pressure vessels can survive the heat of reentry and reach the surface as debris. For a controlled deorbit, an agency wants that wreckage to land where it can injure no one. Point Nemo, and the wider area around it, answers that requirement better than anywhere else on the planet.



Space agencies refer to the region formally as the South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area. The informal name is the spacecraft cemetery. It has been used for controlled disposals since 1971. By one widely cited count, more than 260 spacecraft were brought down in the region between 1971 and 2016, most of them Russian Progress cargo freighters, along with Japanese and European resupply craft and several space stations.

The largest object deliberately deorbited there so far is Mir. The Russian station made its final descent in March 2001, breaking up over the South Pacific after about fifteen years in orbit. It remains the heaviest single spacecraft brought down at Point Nemo.

+ EDITOR'S PICK
Zealandia, the submerged continent geologists confirmed in 2017, is 94 percent underwater and stretches nearly two million square miles beneath the South Pacific, yet its modern name was quietly proposed by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk in 1995



The ISS is a different size of problem
Mir’s record is expected to be broken by the International Space Station. The ISS is several times heavier, with a mass of roughly 420 tonnes, and its main truss runs about 109 metres end to end. Letting a structure of that size come down on its own is not a workable option. An uncontrolled reentry would scatter surviving debris along a long and unpredictable ground track.

NASA’s plan, developed with the station’s international partners, is a controlled deorbit at the end of the station’s operational life, currently set at around 2030. In June 2024 the agency awarded SpaceX a contract worth up to 843 million US dollars to build the United States Deorbit Vehicle, a spacecraft based on SpaceX’s Dragon but heavily modified, carrying far more propellant and power than the cargo version. Unlike Dragon, the deorbit vehicle will be owned and operated by NASA rather than by SpaceX.




The sequence is staged. The station’s orbit is allowed to decay. The final crew departs. The deorbit vehicle, already docked, then fires to drive the station down on a steep, deliberate path aimed at the empty water near Point Nemo, so that whatever survives the breakup comes down far from anyone.

What is still unsettled
Two parts of this plan are worth watching. The first is timing. The 2030 retirement date appears throughout NASA’s budget documents, but it is not fixed. Members of the United States Congress have pressed to keep the station flying longer, and the deorbit vehicle contract itself includes the option to store the spacecraft on the ground into the mid-2030s if operations are extended. Russia has committed to the station only through 2028. The schedule is a stated plan, not a settled date.



The second is the disposal itself. The spacecraft cemetery lies in international waters, beyond the jurisdiction of any single country, which means it operates with relatively little formal oversight. Researchers have raised questions about the longer-term effect of decades of metal, composite material and propellant residue accumulating on the deep seabed. The volume is small set against the size of the ocean, and protecting people on land is exactly what the site is designed to do. The longer environmental account is less well understood.



The next deorbit into that water will be the largest ever attempted. When it happens, and whether the 2030 date holds, is still being decided.

About this article

This article is for general information and reflection. It is not professional advice. For your specific situation, consult a qualified professional.



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Space Daily articles are produced with AI assistance and reviewed by editorial staff before publication. See our editorial standards and masthead.


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Space Daily Editorial Team
The Space Daily Editorial Team produces content across our two editorial pillars: space industry news and Mind & Meaning. We cover launches, missions, satellites, defense, and the technology of getting humans to space, alongside the psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes. Articles reflect our team's collective editorial process, source verification, drafting, technical review, and editing, rather than a single writer's work. Space Daily takes editorial responsibility for content under this byline. For more on how we work, see our editorial policy.

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By Space Daily Editorial Team · Editorial process

Published May 31, 2026

Zealandia, the submerged continent geologists confirmed in 2017, is 94 percent underwater and stretches nearly two million square miles beneath the South Pacific, yet its modern name was quietly proposed by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk in 1995
The Interislander ferry between Wellington and Picton carries tourists, freight trucks, and commuters across a stretch of the Cook Strait most of them assume is just water between two New Zealand islands. It is not. The cliffs on either side are the exposed peaks of a continent, and the three-hour crossing passes over a shallow gap in a landmass nearly the size of the Indian subcontinent. Almost no one on board knows they are crossing it. For most of human history, no one knew it existed at all.



Zealandia, as geologists now call it, covers about 4.9 million square kilometres (1.9 million square miles) of the South Pacific. Roughly 94 to 95 percent of it sits below sea level, in places under a kilometre or more of water. New Zealand’s North and South Islands, plus New Caledonia and a scattering of seabird-covered rocks, are the only parts that breach the surface. Everything else, including the Lord Howe Rise, the Challenger Plateau, the Campbell Plateau, and the Chatham Rise, is the drowned body of a continent that broke off Gondwana around 80 million years ago and slowly sank.



The strange thing about Zealandia is not that it is underwater. It is how long it took the people who study Earth’s crust to call it what it is.

A name, and then two decades of silence
Bruce Luyendyk, a geophysicist at the University of California Santa Barbara with deep ties to New Zealand’s scientific community, proposed the name in 1995. He was not arguing that the region qualified as a full geological continent. He was pointing out that the rocks beneath the waves were clearly built from the same ancient slab and needed a single label. The continental crust under New Zealand did not stop at the country’s shoreline. It extended outward across the surrounding ridges in the shape of a long, drowned wing.



The name stuck within a small circle of marine geologists. Outside that circle it went nowhere. Continents, in the public imagination, are the seven you learn in primary school. Adding an eighth, mostly underwater and visible only as a pair of islands and a few rocks, was not the kind of revision that travelled fast.

It took twenty-two years for someone to make the bigger claim.

The moment it became a continent
In 2017, GNS Science geologist Nick Mortimer and ten coauthors published the case in GSA Today, the journal of the Geological Society of America. Their argument was procedural rather than dramatic, which was part of the point. Geologists already had four working criteria for what makes a continent: elevation above the surrounding ocean floor, a distinctive range of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, thicker crust than the abyssal basins around it, and well-defined limits over a large enough area to count as more than a microcontinent. Zealandia, the team showed, satisfied all four.

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The crust beneath it runs 10 to 30 kilometres thick, against roughly 7 for the oceanic crust around it. The submerged plateau sits one to two kilometres higher than the surrounding seafloor. The rocks dredged from its ridges are granite, schist, and sandstone, the standard continental assemblage. The boundaries enclose a coherent block about the size of the Indian subcontinent.

Calling it a continent was not, in their phrasing, a sudden discovery. It was the recognition of something that had been mapped piece by piece for half a century. The Mortimer paper credited Luyendyk explicitly. The name introduced in 1995 became the natural label for the continent they were now formally describing.

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How a continent goes underwater
Zealandia’s submersion is a story of stretching. Around 105 million years ago, the eastern edge of Gondwana, the southern supercontinent that once included Australia, Antarctica, South America, India, and the future Zealandia, began to pull apart. A 2025 reconstruction by Luca Dal Zilio and colleagues described the rifting as a flood of fire, with massive volcanic activity accompanying the tear.

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As the crust stretched, it thinned. Thinner crust sits lower. By 80 million years ago, Zealandia had fully separated, and its surface, once mountainous and forested, began to sink. By around 23 million years ago, most of it lay underwater. Whether any part of it stayed continuously above the waves is still debated, and the answer matters: it determines whether the tuatara, the kiwi, and the kauri trees of northern New Zealand are the survivors of a continuous lineage that rode Zealandia down, or later arrivals that dispersed across the ocean to a re-emerged island.

Mapping the invisible
Most of what is now known about Zealandia’s shape comes from bathymetry, the underwater equivalent of topography, gathered over decades of ship surveys and satellite passes. GNS Science and collaborators have since released what they described as the first complete map of the continent, revealing the geology of the northern two-thirds in detail that had not existed before, including a long-suspected belt of subduction-zone rocks running through the submerged interior. Modern bathymetric surveys now combine lidar, sonar, and uncrewed surface vehicles to chart depths that, for most of human history, were measured with a lead weight on a rope.

Each survey added a few percent more detail. The continent did not appear in any single moment. It accumulated, the way scientific consensus usually does, by the slow piling up of data until a name proposed in 1995 by one geophysicist became unavoidable to eleven of his successors.

Stunning rocky coastal formations with waves crashing against them on a sunny day.
What recognition looks like
The 22-year gap between Luyendyk’s suggestion and Mortimer’s confirmation is itself a small lesson in how earth science works. Continents are not discovered the way islands are. There is no moment when a sail crests a horizon. There is only the accumulation of soundings, dredge samples, gravity readings, and sediment cores, until the shape of something becomes impossible to deny. The 2017 paper did not find Zealandia. It declared, on behalf of a discipline that had been quietly mapping the thing for fifty years, that the evidence was now sufficient.

Even so, school maps and atlases have not caught up. As one summary of the discovery put it, the landmass is Earth’s missing eighth continent, hiding in plain sight under a relatively shallow stretch of the Pacific.

From the deck of the Interislander, the cliffs on either side are not the edge of an island chain. They are the exposed peaks of a continent confirmed by eleven scientists in 2017, named by one in 1995, and mapped in full only a few years ago. The South Island’s Southern Alps, rising above 3,700 metres at Aoraki Mount Cook, are the highest point of a landmass whose average elevation is more than a kilometre below sea level. Below the hull, the rest of it stretches for nearly two thousand kilometres in every direction, dark and granite and, until very recently, nameless.

About this article

This article is for general information and reflection. It is not professional advice. For your specific situation, consult a qualified professional.

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Space Daily articles are produced with AI assistance and reviewed by editorial staff before publication. See our editorial standards and masthead.


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Space Daily Editorial Team
The Space Daily Editorial Team produces content across our two editorial pillars: space industry news and Mind & Meaning. We cover launches, missions, satellites, defense, and the technology of getting humans to space, alongside the psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes. Articles reflect our team's collective editorial process, source verification, drafting, technical review, and editing, rather than a single writer's work. Space Daily takes editorial responsibility for content under this byline. For more on how we work, see our editorial policy.

More from this author →
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The Moon looks white in the night sky, but its surface is closer in color to a worn asphalt road — and it appears bright enough to read by on a clear night not because the surface is bright, but because the Moon is so close and fully sunlit that even a surface reflecting just 12 percent of incoming light becomes one of the brightest objects in the sky

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The leading explanation for how the Moon was born is that a world the size of Mars called Theia slammed into the young Earth and flung out the debris that became the Moon, and recent research suggests Theia itself never fully left, with two continent-sized blobs buried near our planet’s core possibly being the last remains of the world that struck us.
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A team led by Nick Mortimer at GNS Science in New Zealand spent two decades mapping the basalt and granite floor of the Tasman region before formally naming Zealandia in a 2017 paper, ending more than a century of arguments about whether a submerged landmass could still count as a continent.
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