Long Reads

Deeper reporting,
thinking made visible.

Longer essays and features from Science Blog. Pieces here go through additional research and review.

In 2025, scientists drilling beneath the Atlantic off New England pumped up about 50,000 litres of remarkably fresh groundwater

Expedition 501 directly sampled freshened groundwater beneath the New England shelf, but its age, regional continuity and sustainable recoverability remain open questions.

Aug 19, 2026

Brain & Behavior

A December 2025 study of more than 30,000 older adults found that social isolation accelerated cognitive decline whether people felt lonely…

A 30,421-person study separated objective social isolation from subjective loneliness and estimated that loneliness mediated only 6 percent of isolation's cognitive effect.

Aug 19, 2026

Science

In 1991, two hikers in the Ötztal Alps found a body sticking out of the melting ice and assumed it was a recent climber, but the corpse…

In 1991, hikers in the Ötztal Alps found Ötzi, a 5,300-year-old Copper Age man with 61 tattoos, an arrowhead in his shoulder and a copper axe traced to Tuscany.

Aug 19, 2026

Brain & Behavior

Psychologists have long known that empathy without enough support can turn into emotional exhaustion

A 28,000-person assessment study found declines across eight emotional skills, while empathy research shows that perspective taking and personal distress carry different risks.

Aug 19, 2026

Space

The computer that guided Apollo 11 to the Moon had only about 4 kilobytes of working memory and a processor running at roughly 1 MHz

Apollo's 4 KB figure described erasable working memory, not its fixed program storage. The deeper comparison with chargers and phones is about purpose, timing and reliability.

Aug 19, 2026

Space

Titan is the only world beyond Earth where you could step outside without a pressure suit

Titan’s 1.5-bar atmosphere would prevent vacuum exposure, but an explorer would still need oxygen, active heating and a sealed suit against its cryogenic methane weather.

Aug 19, 2026

Technology

Singapore ranked first in Counterpoint Research’s 2025 Global AI Cities Index, ahead of Seoul, Beijing and San Francisco

Singapore topped a 100-city AI adoption index by combining government programmes, corporate density, talent and infrastructure inside an area under half Greater London’s size.

Aug 19, 2026

Brain & Behavior

The human brain is so desperate to find patterns that it will reliably see faces in clouds, hear words in static, and detect meaning in…

Our pattern-seeking brains are so hardwired for recognition that they manufacture faces from clouds, static, and toast—a quirk that once kept us alive but now plays tricks on us daily.

By Kiran Journals · Aug 19, 2026

Health

Researchers followed more than 71,000 people and found that the most optimistic were up to 70% more likely to live past 85 than the least…

Two long-running cohorts linked optimism to greater odds of reaching 85, but the widely reported 70% figure was an odds ratio that attenuated after lifestyle adjustment.

Aug 19, 2026