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Pope Leo XIV receives gifts from visitors from all over the world every year, but a newly identified insect may be the first papal tribute of its kind. In the journal Nota Lepidopterologica, entomologists describe a striking moth species recently discovered on the rocky Mediterranean island of Crete. With its royal color scheme and ecological significance, the winged insect lives up to its scientific name—Pyralis papaleonei, or the Pope Leo moth.

“The Pontiff is a strong advocate of climate and environmental protection, and we hope that his voice may serve as an example for humanity,” the study’s authors wrote.

P. papaleonei is the latest in a series of taxonomic revisions within the Peralis regalis species group. Although common across Europe, their widespread presence has proven a liability for entomologists. Recent re-evaluations have uncovered multiple unique subspecies among these often overlooked moths. P. papaleoni represents the newest addition to the family, after researchers from Austria’s Tyrolean State Museum, the Finnish Museum of Natural History, and the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology analyzed numerous specimens from the White Mountains located in the western region of the Greek island of Crete.

With a roughly 0.75 inch wingspan, the Pope Leo moth is a moderately sized insect within its group. Its particularly distinctive features include purple forewings accented by multiple white bands and deep orange spots. Molecular analysis showed about a six percent genetic divergence from the next closest relative—more than enough to earn it a new species classification.

For now, researchers know little else about the Pope Leo moth’s lifecycle and biology, although they seem most active around the month of June and appear endemic to Crete. That said, a single specimen observed in October suggests either a prolonged flight season or possible multiple generations over the course of a few months.

About 700 moth species are discovered every year, although most are located in tropical habitats. This makes the Pope Leo moth’s identification particularly noteworthy, but also serves as a vital reminder of the planet’s precarious ecological health.

“We are facing a global biodiversity crisis, yet only a fraction of the world’s species has been scientifically documented,” explained Peter Heumer, the former head of Tyrolean State Museums’ natural science collections and a study co-author. “Effective conservation of biodiversity requires that species are first recognized, described, and named.”

Heumer’s comments echo the Pope Leo moth’s namesake. While speaking at a global church summit on climate change last year, the pope urged a societal transition, “from collecting data to caring, and from environmental discourse to an ecological conversion that transforms both personal and communal lifestyles.”

The post New moth species named for Pope Leo appeared first on Popular Science.

For years, cybersecurity experts have been warning about the chaos that highly capable hacking bots could usher in. … Claude Mythos Preview appears to represent not an incremental change but the beginning of a paradigm shift. … Perhaps more concerning than the reported capabilities of Mythos Preview is that other companies are not far behind. (More)

Finding bugs was also hard, so the worst flaws stayed hidden, sometimes for decades. It wasn’t a great system. But the difficulty on both sides created a kind of détente that held. Now, thanks to new A.I. tools, anyone can write code. Soon, bad actors could use those same tools to find out what’s wrong with code. The détente is over. (more)

Use strong passwords that are unique across every site, preferably through a trusted password manager. Better yet, when a site offers a passkey, take it. … For accounts without passkeys, use an authenticator app for two-factor authentication, not text messages. Always keep all your software up to date, and uninstall unnecessary apps. (more)

OK, I’m a few weeks late to this party, but not too late to give many of you news: We may soon face a period (a few years?) of greatly reduced software availability.

For many decades, we have known how to write pretty secure software. It takes a bit longer, and security considerations must be central to early design efforts, but it is possible. However, developers have usually been in too much of a rush to market to do this. So most software systems today are riddled with security holes. What has saved them so far is that it takes humans a lot of work to find and exploit such holes.

However, there now exist powerful AI systems that are far better at finding and using such holes. Soon (within a year or two?) many AI firms will have such tools, and they will spread to be widely available. Yes, such AI systems can also work to patch such holes, but computer security experts tell me that the nature of insecure systems is to make it much easier to find and use than to patch such holes. Attack beats defense.

Software firms would then more eagerly rewrite their code to use more secure designs, and AI could help them to do this. But this takes time, and as there isn’t a lot of secure software out there now, AI hasn’t had big datasets ready to help them learn how to do this well. So it will take some time to replace weak with strong software.

So there may soon be a period, starting within a few years, maybe lasting a few years, when most actual software systems can cheaply be hacked. This will make such software firms vulnerable to ransomware, and make customers wary of using their products. Customers, firms, and App stores, will respond by cutting back on what software systems they offer, and by simplifying them by dropping many features.

As our world has come to rely on software for a great many things, it seems quite concerning that we might soon have to make do with substantially less software. How vulnerable are crucial systems like electricity, cars, traffic lights, voting systems, and payment systems? I don’t think we know. Beware the coming Hackastrophe.

Note: such an event would likely make the public much more willing to regulate AI. And if credit card firms get overwhelmed with false sales, that could make crypto more attractive.

There are three pipelines operating now to take oil around the Hormuz blockage. The East-West Crude Oil Pipeline (Petroline) in Saudi Arabia, and the UAE’s ADCOP pipeline and the Iraq Kirkuk–Ceyhan (Turkey) Pipeline. The Iraq Turkey pipelin is at an initial ~250k bpd but could ramp over the next month or two to 400k-650k bpd. ...

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Cambridge, MA, 5th May 2026, CyberNewswire

This colorful cloud over Jonggol, Indonesia, is not a portal to the land of Oz. Or the rainbow road into Asgard from Norse mythology. Or even an AI-generated image. They are iridescent clouds, a rare type of cloud that appear when raindrops interact with sunlight. 

According to WABC meteorologist Lee Goldberg, the small water droplets or ice crystals inside of the cloud scatter sunlight, diffracting the light into a spectrum of colors. The rainbow effect is most visible when the sun is partially blocked by something like a mountain or thicker clouds.  

“These vibrant displays usually appear near the sun and can last for only a few moments—making them a truly magical sight for anyone lucky enough to catch them,” Goldberg writes.

Ida Pramuwardani, Acting Director of Public Meteorology at the Indonesian climate agency BKMG, told Detik News that the cloud in the video taken over the city southeast of Jakarta is a towering cumulus cloud blocking part of the rainbow.

“At the same time, there are towering cumulus clouds that can cover part of the rainbow, so that the shape looks incomplete or looks like a ‘rainbow cloud’,” Pramuwardani said in a translated interview. 

These clouds are also not a direct sign that a storm is coming in. Instead, rainbow clouds indicate that convective clouds are growing and that there is the possibility that rain will start to fall soon. 

Understandably, the beautiful sight reportedly stopped traffic, as onlookers rushed to capture footage of these candy colored clouds.  

The post No, these rainbow clouds over Indonesia are not AI appeared first on Popular Science.

We all know the feeling—a throbbing in your throat that won’t go away. Coughing offers only a momentary respite as your sore throat worsens throughout the day. At times like these, many of us reach for a soothing lozenge to calm the irritation and provide some relief, at least for a short while.

But what about when the tickle comes back and you reach for another throat lozenge? How many cough drops is too many cough drops? And what’s the worst that can happen if you go overboard?

Dr. Kait Brown, clinical managing director at America’s Poison Centers, assures that dangerous cough drop overdoses are extremely rare. But that doesn’t mean we should pop them like candy.

“What we get concerned about is the menthol within the cough drops, and rarely there may be some that have benzocaine, which is a local anaesthetic,” she says. In very high doses, these ingredients can cause symptoms, including vomiting, dizziness, and even seizures.

Menthol-based cough drops can soothe but also irritate

Menthol is an organic compound derived from peppermint or eucalyptus oils. In moderate doses, it acts as a counterirritant, producing a cooling and numbing effect on the inner throat. But if used to excess, the same compound can start to irritate the body’s mucus membranes.

One study by the Wisconsin Research and Education Network found that high menthol consumption was associated with longer-lasting coughs. Although more research is needed, this could suggest that irritation from cough drop overuse can prevent a cough from healing.

Extreme menthol overuse can also produce acute symptoms. “With larger doses, which is rare, we can see early symptoms that are more gastrointestinal in nature, so some nausea or vomiting,” Dr Brown says. “That’s from irritation of the stomach mucus membrane when you swallow those cough drops.

If these early symptoms are ignored, menthol’s pleasant numbing sensation can become dangerous.

“At really high doses it can affect neural transmission from those receptors, which could then result in neurological symptoms,” Brown explains. “Severe symptoms of a large menthol overdose would include things like confusion or changes in mental state, getting a little more sleepy or dizzy. And really severe cases would be things like seizures.”

It’s very, very hard to overdose on cough drops

Thankfully, it is not easy to consume enough cough drops to put you at risk of menthol toxicity.

A typical cough drop contains five to 10 mg of menthol. Toxicologists consider a lethal dose of menthol to be 50 to 150 mg per kilogram of body weight, although some estimates put the figure as high as 1,000 mg per kilogram.

This means that an adult weighing 170 pounds would have to eat 400 menthol-rich cough drops in a sitting to reach even the lowest threshold for a lethal dose. Considering that there’s usually only 20 to 30 cough drops in a standard bag, that’d be the equivalent of going through at least 13 full bags of lozenges.

Most cough drops, including Ricola, contain menthol. Menthol can be lethal at extremely high doses, but that doesn’t mean you have to likely curb your cough drop use. Image: MaxBaumann / Getty Images MaxBaumann

Reported deaths from menthol overdose are extremely rare. One of the only cases in the medical literature involved a worker in India who died suffering from seizures and kidney failure ten days after cleaning a tank in a peppermint factory. 

Another extreme case involved an 86-year-old man who was found unconscious by neighbors and rushed to the emergency room suffering from weakness, muscle ache, disorientation, ulcers, and heartburn. He admitted to consuming two bags of cough drops a day for twenty years, suggesting potential risks from chronic overuse.

Although some unpleasant side effects could be expected at much less excessive doses, most adults are unlikely to reach this level just to get them through a cold or flu.

“There’s a relative margin of safety with the menthol-based cough drops,” Brown says. She prefers not to estimate a safe quantity, for fear of promoting unhealthy usage, but stresses that “if you follow the instructions on the packet, you’re going to be within a window of safety.”

Why benzocaine makes cough drops more dangerous

Brown cautions that particular care is necessary if using cough drops containing benzocaine or other local anaesthetics.

“We don’t largely see benzocaine in these preparations anymore because of the risk of overdose associated with it,” she says. 

“You can get a condition called methemoglobinemia, which changes the capacity of your blood to carry oxygen. You can end up having too little oxygen delivered to your cells and that can result in things like bluing of the lips and hands and can be life-threatening.”

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What to do for a cough drop overdose

If anyone is worried that they’ve overused cough drops, Brown recommends contacting the America’s Poison Centers helpline at 1-800-22-1222. This is a national nonprofit service that advises Americans worried about exposure to common toxins. 

“There are healthcare professionals with extra toxicology training that can walk you through that specific scenario,” Dr Brown explains. “They can recommend that you stay home, or they’ll let you know if you need to seek a higher level of care.”

During her work at America’s Poison Centers, she says she has received many calls about cough drops, mostly from people reporting mild symptoms or just wanting to discuss incidents of potential overuse.

“It’s children we get most concerns about, because they’re most likely to use the product inadvertently,” she says. Although it is rare for children to consume enough cough drops to cause acute symptoms, she advises always leaving the product out of reach of children—and sometimes adults as well.

“When people are sick, maybe they don’t have the energy to think as clearly as they normally would,” she says. 

“We caution people that if you know you’re going to be using cough drops all day, take out the allotted amount that the package says you can have. That way you know you’re not exceeding the quantity you can safely use.”

But if you do have a few extra drops, there’s no need to panic—you’ll probably be just fine.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Can you overdose on cough drops? Short answer: Yes. appeared first on Popular Science.

Life at high altitudes is unforgiving. The thin air and atmosphere make breathing and other bodily functions difficult—especially for humans. However, a cave over 7,000 feet above sea level in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain is forcing archaeologists to rethink how often our prehistoric ancestors made use of these heights. 

A team found a cave in Spain full of hearths, jewelry, and human remains, indicating that people may have been living at this incredibly high altitude as long as 5,500 years ago. A child’s finger bone and a baby tooth discovered among the rock also means this cave may have been a burial site. The cave and its findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.

For decades, archeologists believed that high-mountain environments like these were places that prehistoric communities only passed through occasionally. Cave 338 is 7,332 feet above sea level in Spain’s Núria Valley. The team dug through four distinct rock layers, with the oldest dating back 6,000 years ago. The most recent layer was thin, indicating that it was not frequently used. 

But layers two and three had plenty of surprises. The team found 23 hearths, all with crushed, burned green mineral fragments. The green fragments resemble malachite, a mineral that is rich in copper. From these preliminary clues, the team suspects that Cave 338 was a high-altitude mining camp between 3,000 and 5,500 years ago. 

Fragments of malachite, a mineral rich in copper, recovered during the excavations at Cave 338. Image: Maria D. Guillén / IPHES-CERCA.

“Many of these fragments are thermally altered, while other materials in the cave are not, which clearly suggests that fire played an important role in their processing and that there was a deliberate intention behind it,” Dr. Julia Montes-Landa, a study co-author and archaeologist and archaeometallurgist at the University of Granada in Spain, said in a statement. “In other words, they weren’t burned by accident.” 

The hearths also cut across each other, indicating that the visitors to the cave reused it frequently. They are also distinct, showing their visits were separated by a good chunk of time.

In the third rock layer, the team found a finger bone and a baby tooth belonging to at least one child who died around the age of 11. This could mean that more human remains are buried deeper within the cave, but there is currently not enough evidence to determine a cause of death or if the bone and tooth belong to the same child. 

However, two pendants found in the second layer offered more information about the possible remains. One pendant is made from a shell and the other a brown bear tooth and dates to around the second millennium BCE. 

A pendant made from a bear incisor was recovered during the excavations at Cave 338. Image: IPHES-CERCA.

“The shell pendant is interesting because it has parallels in other sites in Catalonia, which suggests shared traditions or connections between different communities,” Dr. Carlos Tornero, a study co-author and zooarcheologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, said in a statement. “The bear tooth pendant is much less common. That might point to something more specific or symbolic, possibly linked to the local environment.” 

While Cave 338 was not a full-time home, those who came here must have found their trips up the mountain valuable enough to keep returning for thousands of years. 

“We can’t say exactly how long people stayed each time, but the repeated use of the space and the density of remains suggest occupations that were short to medium in duration, but happening again and again over long periods of time,” Torneo added. 

The team still has numerous questions about how and when humans used the cave and hope to get a definitive answer on the chemical composition of the mysterious green mineral during upcoming field work this summer. 

The post Prehistoric child’s finger bone, bear tooth pendant, and more discovered in Spanish cave appeared first on Popular Science.

Starlink supplier projects 100M starlink high speed internet terminals 2028 and 200 million 2030. This is inline with my projections from last week based on looking at customers and price points. I divided up countries into high speed internet subscription tiers. And I have project may ten Starship launches in 2026 and 100 in 2027 ...

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During a high-volume deluge test on the new Orbital Launch Pad 2 one of the methalox gas generators that supplies high-pressure nitrogen for the deluge system exploded. The explosion sent roof panels and debris flying. There was the target launch of May 12 for the 12th SpaceX Starship flight. This could be delayed by 1-2 ...

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Tesla has added another 7 unsupervised robotaxi in Austin, Dallas and Houston. There are hundreds parked and ready to be added. This is likely an undercount because the crowdsourcwed robotaxitracker.com miss over half of the supervised vehicles for Tesla and Waymo. Just getting Dallas and Houston to the Austin level with population and other adjustments ...

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The key innovation that has powered the modern era is: organizations. We solve a great many problems by creating an org, setting it tasks, giving it powers and resources, and putting some key “masters” in charge.

Besides participating as suppliers, customers, employees, or targets of such orgs, there are two other key ways we engage such orgs: politics and governance. In politics, we take sides among the different alliances of masters and tasks, struggling for who will dominate. In governance, we try to hold masters accountable for achieving tasks, and seek new better ways to choose, reward, and monitor them.

Low status folks have long been advised to keep their head down and stay out of both politics and governance. Higher status folks, in contrast, are somewhat encouraged to do politics, if they are willing to risk suffering repression when their allies lose. We like democracy as more of us can more safely be political, and thus see ourselves as high status, though politics becomes less safe as political polarization rises.

However, most folks are well advised to stay out of governance, at least when that involves any substantial chance of holding masters more accountable, and thus cutting into their spoils. Masters coordinate to block cuts to their spoils. (Yes, some spoils come via achieving promised tasks, but most don’t.) In contrast, masters don’t mind and even like governance changes that don’t risk stronger accountability. Such as making it more popular, inclusive, decentralized, more intensive participation, etc.

How much should you fear masters displeased by your meddling in governance? Greatly! Org masters, and their allies and wannabes, are the fiercest predators of our world. Smart, energetic, and well-connected, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing, smiling broadly, speaking gently and grandly, but holding their fangs and claws ready in shadows to strike when ready.

Alas, our world has long suffered from poor governance. So much so that for most problems we know how to solve, we don’t actually solve them. We got better enough at governance to allow the modern world to have big orgs, but just barely.

Today, our civilization faces problems so huge that we will mostly likely fall, as did the Roman Empire, to be replaced by insular fertile cultures like the Amish and Haredim. Better governance seems our best hope here, and promising alternatives do exist, ones that can be tested at small scales before deploying on larger scales. Alas such efforts are mainly blocked by spoil-protecting masters. Will enough of us risk their displeasure to force such innovation experiments in time?

We vary in our motives and priorities in thinking. For example, some try to impress, some try to sell others on pre-existing positions, some try to show loyalty and support to teams, and some try to figure stuff out. As we have norms against the other motives, when asked, many of us claim to have this last widely admired motive.

Yet, strikingly, few in public discussions present themselves as trying to figure things out together with their convo partners. Such as by posing problems and questions, reframing these to avoid sloppiness, offering alternative options and answers, noting puzzling or contrary consequences, and admitting when one’s prior convo moves are undermined by new points made.

Yes, presenting a figuring-stuff-out-together convo persona often imposes some costs relative to other possible personas. But the more eager that we are to suppress other possible interpretations of their motives, the more eager we should be to pay such costs, to assert our preferred persona.

I have to conclude that while we usually don’t want to directly admit that we seek to impress, sell, or support, we don’t actually much mind observers inferring such motives in us. Few actually have that much respect for people those who try to figure stuff out together.

Granular Unit Economics per MW Cruseo CEO Lochmiller broke down the inputs/outputs with high precision (April 2025 contract pricing and the talk) Upfront capex is ~$59M per MW of developed capacity. Roughly half (~$30M) is IT (GPUs, CPUs, networking, storage, etc.). The rest covers data center build, power plant/generation, and other infrastructure. Annual revenue (pure ...

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SpaceX Starship Flight 12 is scheduled to launch May 12, 22:30 UTC / 17:30 CDT An advisory has appeared on the CADENA Operational Information System. – NEW Trajectory – Afternoon Launch Window.

Semianalysis AI Value Capture – The Shift To Model Labs Anthropic is now making $44 billion per year run rate and this is heading to $100 billion per year by the end of 2026. As of today, Memory SOCAMM contract pricing paid by Nvidia at ~$8/GB in 1Q26, a sharp step-up from 4Q25 to 1Q26. ...

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SpaceX Starlink can get a billion customers. Their total market is not only 50 million or their current 12 million. They can get 100X as many customers. This will drive more customers, revenue and profits. For the poorest people in rural India and Africa, SpaceX can match the $5 per month charge for a few ...

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The S&P Dow Jones Indices has officially proposed rule changes where megacaps like SpaceX will be included into the index in 6 months instead of 12 months. This would align also with the unlocking of shares of many SpaceX SPV investors after 6 months. When Tesla was included into the SP500 the shares went up ...

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Torrance, United States / California, 1st May 2026, CyberNewswire

Tesla and Elon have huge partnerships to deliver a surge in tens of millions of chips needed for AI domination. They also have increased their AI and model competitiveness. Tesla and SpaceX tying up with Intel for the most advanced 14nm process chips. This will deliver AI6 and AI7 chips. Tesla TERAFAB and TERALAB will ...

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In a world first, Apple’s commercially lackluster Vision Pro virtual reality headset was successfully used to help perform a cataract surgery. New England-based surgeon Dr. Eric Rosenberg of SightMD claims he used the $3,499 device alongside a custom-built app called ScopeXR to assist with a surgery in October 2025. Dr. Rosenberg claims he’s used the device to help with hundreds of other patients ever since. The app allows for remote collaboration, so  additional doctors, consultants, or even medical students in other rooms or cities can beam in and observe every cut and stitch, as if through his eyes.

“We are now able to bring the world’s best surgeon into any operating room, at any hour, from anywhere on the planet,” Dr. Rosenberg said in a press release. “From residents performing their first cases to surgeons facing unexpected complications, this technology democratizes access to expertise and that will save vision.”

Tuning into a surgery 

Apple’s Vision Pro headset is officially considered to be mixed reality because it incorporates elements of both virtual and augmented reality. That makes it a particularly attractive option for medical applications, where there’s a wealth of important contextual information relevant to surgeries or observation that could benefit from a visual representation. And while medical professionals previously tried to use older headsets like Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens in medical settings, those reportedly fell short due to their limited resolution. Apple’s headset, by contrast, has a best-in-class resolution.

But the hardware is only half of the equation. In order for this to work in real-world surgeries, Dr. Rosenberg had to co-develop specially designed software, which he refers to as a “mixed reality surgical platform.” The app takes data feeds from 3D digital microscopes and other equipment in the operating room and sends it directly to the Vision Pro. The surgeon can then view their operating area in stereoscopic 3D. The headset’s augmented reality feature lets the surgeon overlay relevant data directly on the patient or workstation.

3D imaging is useful, but the most important benefit provided by the system lies in its potential for collaboration. In theory, multiple surgeons  could all tap into the same first-person video feed and provide assistance for a surgery from anywhere in the world with internet access. Apprentices or medical students could also review footage from operations and use that to provide a more first-hand visual aid for their training.

“This isn’t just about a new device, it’s about reimagining what the operating room of the future looks like,” Rosenberg added.

Vision Pro gets a new life in medicine 

Apple released its first Vision Pro in February 2024 to much fanfare, but the device has largely failed to meet those expectations. Sales for the Vision Pro were meager compared to other groundbreaking Apple products, and some once excited owners reportedly expressed a feeling of “total regret” after watching their expensive toys gather dust. More recent reports suggest that Apple teams once dedicated to  the headset are now moving away from it to focus on other devices. 

But despite that commercial flop, the Vision Pro has seen some surprise success among a handful of professional industries. In September 2024, Dr. Santiago Horgan, a surgeon at UC San Diego Health in California, was reportedly the first person to complete an operation using the headset. He completed the initial paraesophageal hernia repair, and went on to use the device in dozens of more surgeries in the following weeks. Since then, the Vision Pro has been used in hundreds of different operations, including some intended to treat acid reflux and obesity.

Ironically, part of its growing appeal in medicine is the price. While the $3,500 price tag sounds unattainable for most consumers, it’s actually quite affordable compared to other medical equipment. The price point and its adaptability and ease of connecting to devices, has made the Vision Pro  increasingly attractive for medical professionals, especially those in regional or community hospitals where budgets are tighter.

The post Surgeon wears Apple Vision Pro to fix cataract in medical first appeared first on Popular Science.