James' World 2

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The Trump administration’s plan to offer plutonium from dismantled Cold War–era nuclear weapons to private energy companies is drawing criticism from experts who say it makes little economic sense and presents a national security threat.

There are currently no operational nuclear reactors in the country that are built to use plutonium-derived fuel. Instead, nuclear power plants in the U.S. are powered by a mixture of two uranium isotopes. A small portion, usually around 5 percent, of that fuel is uranium 235, which can also be used to make nuclear weapons. The majority is uranium 238, which cannot sustain a nuclear fission reaction on its own. Because of that balance, if some of this fuel were to fall into the wrong hands, it would be enormously difficult to weaponize, says Scott Roecker, vice president of nuclear materials security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing nuclear catastrophe.

“The most difficult step in getting a nuclear weapon is having enough of that material,” he explains. “The U.S. government has spent probably billions of dollars over the last several decades to remove highly-enriched uranium and separated plutonium from countries that don’t need it.”

Plutonium, meanwhile, is considered a human-made element and is a by-product of the reactions that take place inside nuclear reactors. As uranium 238 is bombarded with neutrons inside the reactor, the molecules absorb some of these particles and become the heavier uranium 239, which rapidly decays and eventually becomes extremely radioactive plutonium.

That plutonium can be mixed back with uranium to be used as fuel in specific nuclear reactors called mixed oxide reactors. The U.S. abandoned mixed oxide reactors in the 1970s because they were both difficult and expensive to run. These kinds of reactors do exist elsewhere, though—in Japan, Russia, and France—but those countries have encountered their own problems with the reactors, Roecker says.

“In France, the government’s subsidizing that process,” he says. “Only I think 1 percent of the uranium that’s actually reprocessed is being reused. And in Japan, it’s cost the country billions of dollars and has still not started operation, and who knows if it actually ever will.”

The U.S. Department of Energy has defended the plan, saying the private sector could play a vital role in advancing U.S. nuclear power infrastructure. Ted Garrish, assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy, said in April that decommissioned nuclear fuel “represents an immense, untapped energy resource for the United States.”

“The Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program is anticipated to help companies unlock the next level of private funding to broaden domestic nuclear fuel supplies, spur innovation on American recycling technologies, and unlock private sector funding to fuel the nation’s nuclear renaissance,” said a DOE spokesperson in a statement, adding that five companies have been selected to take part in the program.

Aside from the concern over cost and feasibility, other experts point out that keeping plutonium secure is much more difficult than doing so with typical uranium-based nuclear fuel. Daniel Speyer, a professor of nuclear power plant systems at New York University, says he isn’t convinced that energy start-ups could properly store plutonium. Even if the material is mixed back with uranium, separating the two to isolate the highly fissile material isn’t so difficult as to be impossible, which introduces a clear security threat, he says.

“It’s not something that a small organization really probably could do, but if you give them plutonium in purer form, I think it’s almost a trivial act to make a bomb,” he says. “A simple atomic bomb is not difficult to make.”

The DOE says that any company selected to receive the Cold War–era plutonium will have to show a deep understanding of the technology involved, as well as robust security plans and regulatory compliance. The plan has also met some pushback on Capitol Hill, however. Last September, Democratic senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts and two Democratic congressional representatives sent a letter to President Donald Trump raising concerns over the risk to national security.

“The transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists,” they wrote.

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Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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I’ve been writing about travel for years, and I’ll admit to being a travel addict. The moment I set foot in an airport, I smile. As a nomad by vocation, I’ve always been aware of the formative and educational value of travel: discovering new destinations opens the mind; stimulates curiosity, creativity, and our imaginations; exposes us to different ways of life; teaches tolerance; and trains us to live lightly. When in transit, you can achieve an almost Zen-like attitude when it comes to possessions and mishaps.

But a different aspect of travel has been highlighted by several recent studies: Travel is also good for the body, according to a study published in the Journal of Travel Research, if it’s done the right way. We’re not talking about the weight-training benefits of lifting suitcases, but how travel more broadly can have a positive impact on our overall health, while preventing premature aging. In short, it’s a longevity-boosting practice that can extend our lives while benefiting our mental health. But how? And why? And are there any tips and tricks for planning and executing the perfect anti-aging trip?

A new study claims that traveling extends life

Conducted by Fangli Hu, a PhD candidate at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, the study argues that instead of retinol creams, travel may be the best way to combat premature aging.

“Tourism isn’t just about leisure and recreation,” says Hu. “It could also contribute to people’s physical and mental health.” In short, travel could become a real form of therapy. “Tourism typically exposes people to new surroundings and relaxing activities, and novel settings can stimulate stress responses and elevate metabolic rates, positively influencing metabolic activities and the body’s self-organizing capabilities. These contexts may also trigger an adaptive immune system response,” the ECU Newsroom reported in a story covering the study.

4 major longevity benefits of travel

Travel encourages socializing, which keeps our brains young

Much research regarding the Blue Zones of the world, where the social calendars of centenarians are packed, points to one conclusion: A rich social life is one of the keys to a long, healthy life. Travel provides opportunities to meet people, learn languages, and try new activities. All of this creates new pathways between the brain’s neurons, improving cerebral neuroplasticity and preventing neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia. It’s clear that these rewards are part of why many people choose to travel. According to a survey conducted by Amadeus, 41% of travelers hope to return home with a “calmer nervous system,” while others describe their goal as having a “refreshed brain.”

It offers new opportunities for physical activity

When traveling, we often try our hand at new activities: we go for walks, ski, hike, and climb mountains; at a resort, we might try aqua aerobics or yoga; at the beach, we’ll swim, stand-up paddleboard, surf, or join a windsurfing class. The combination of physical activity and being in the great outdoors gives the body a boost of vitality. Exercise also strengthens muscles that lose mass with age, helping us stay strong and flexible.

Travel strengthens the immune system and improves circulation

“Participating in [physical] activities could enhance the body’s immune function and self-defense capabilities, bolstering its hardiness to external risks. Physical exercise may also improve blood circulation, expedite nutrient transport, and aid waste elimination to collectively maintain an active self-healing system. Moderate exercise is beneficial to the bones, muscles, and joints in addition to supporting the body’s anti–wear-and-tear system,” says Hu.

Travel lowers stress (and cortisol) levels

According to the study, leisure travel can also help alleviate chronic stress, one of the key factors in premature aging. Stepping away from our usual routines in a different setting, far from our commitments and deadlines, can give us a sense of calm, detachment, and tranquility. Ideally, this will take place immersed in nature, the quintessential stress-relieving environment. In those situations, levels of stress hormone cortisol drop while those of serotonin and endorphins rise. The important thing is to be able to completely unplug, leaving worries at home. Stress-relieving travel can also slow the shortening of telomeres, one of the indicators of biological age.

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Photographed by Norman Jean Roy, Vogue, September 2012

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On Friday, a federal judge in Florida took a motion from 35 former federal judges very seriously. She ordered President Trump to respond to their request that she reopen a case the administration had used as a vehicle to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate his allies and to shield him from tax audits and liabilities.

The former judges said the asserted settlement of the case was the product of collusion and fraud. That argument has been made far and wide, but it may have taken on special force coming from people who, as they put it in their motion, “have dedicated their professional lives to the administration of justice.”

It is possible, of course, that the judge overseeing the case, Kathleen Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami, would have taken similar actions without outside prompting or spurred by someone else’s filing. But she seemed to welcome a motion from her former peers.

‘The Federal Judges Are Infuriated’

Even larger groups of former judges have filed supporting briefs in other cases.

In a Supreme Court case on protections for immigrants, more than 175 former judges filed a brief in March arguing that the court’s emergency orders do not count as precedent binding lower courts if the justices did not give reasons. Recent emergency orders have tended to come with explanations.

In May, more than 100 former judges urged the federal appeals court in Boston to address what they called a pattern of abuse by immigration officials, including moving detained immigrants around the country to thwart court challenges and “a broader pattern of disrespect by ICE for judicial process and orders.” The case is pending.

Harold Koh, a professor and former dean of Yale Law School, is among the lawyers for the former judges in the Boston case.

“I thought we’d get about 20 judges, which is still impressive, and instead we got 135,” he said, adding that the surge of interest was driven by a threat to the rule of law.

“This is no longer about ICE versus the detainees,” Professor Koh said. “It’s about ICE versus the courts. The federal judges are infuriated.”

Perhaps the most prominent of the retired judges, Michael Luttig, signed all three of those briefs. Judge Luttig was appointed to a federal appeals court by President George H.W. Bush, served for 15 years, and was considered for a seat on the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush.

He is now a harsh critic of the Trump administration, and he said current and former judges must speak up.

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President Trump at the White House last month. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Even casual basketball fans know that Victor “Wemby” Wembanyama is a phenom. At a towering seven feet, four inches tall, the San Antonio Spurs forward-center is among the National Basketball Association’s (NBA’s) top defenders at the net and a serious threat on offense—often attempting five or more three-point shots per game. His combination of height, agility, and all-around basketball prowess are so out of this world, in fact, that some fans have even taken to calling him “the Alien.”

In the ongoing playoffs, his three-point shooting has been on full display. In the first game of the best-of-seven NBA Western Conference Finals earlier this month, for instance, Wembanyama hit a deep three to tie the game against the Oklahoma City Thunder (OKC) with less than a minute remaining on the clock in overtime. Wembanyama and the Spurs won the game in double overtime.

Whichever team wins this series will take on the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals in June. Ahead of the Spurs and OKC’s Game 6 match on Thursday—which the Spurs won—Scientific American spoke with experts in physics and biomechanics about the science of Wemby’s epic shots to find out: How does the tallest player in the NBA keep hitting all those threes?

The science of Wemby

The NBA’s tallest players typically aren’t known for taking such deep shots as Wemby. “He’s just launching that thing,” says Larry Silverberg, an emeritus professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University. “It’s extremely unique,” he says.

A lot goes into making a three-point basketball shot. For one, there’s the player: their height, the size of their hands and arms and the mechanics of their movement affect the shot. There’s also the aim of the ball, as well as its backspin, speed, and angle of release, Silverberg explains. All these factors and more come together in determining the success of a shot.

All things being equal, experts say that height is typically thought of as an advantage on the court because taller players are physically closer to the basket ring, which stands at 10 feet above the ground, and they are harder for smaller players to block. In other words, If the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry, one of the best three-point shooters of all time, was seven feet, four inches instead of six feet, two inches, he’d likely have an even greater shooting advantage. A 2008 study by Silverberg and a co-author suggested that free-throw shooters who release the ball from a higher starting point likely have greater accuracy, “as long as this does not adversely affect the player’s launch consistency.”

Taller players should, in theory, be better shooters, but that doesn’t always translate in a real-life setting, says Dimitrije Cabarkapa. A former collegiate basketball player, Cabarkapa is associate director of the Jayhawk Athletic Performance Laboratory at the University of Kansas, which is part of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, a research institute dedicated to improving human health.

In part, that may be because the NBA’s so-called big guys usually aren’t encouraged to specialize in shooting threes at an early age, and sometimes it also comes down to an individual player’s coordination and mechanics, Cabarkapa says.

“Many tall players have difficulty with these shots because their long arms can make the shooting motion harder to coordinate consistently,” says Amy Pope, a principal lecturer in physics and astronomy at Clemson University.

For Wemby, that problem doesn’t appear to be an issue: “When Victor Wembanyama shoots a successful three-pointer, what stands out to me is his body mechanics,” Pope says. “His torso stays nearly vertical. Many shorter shooters need a stronger upward jump and more forward momentum to get the necessary range. Wembanyama’s release point is so high that he does not need this large boost from his legs, giving his body a straight appearance.” In fact, all he needs for the right exit velocity is “a small vertical jump,” she says.

Wemby is also notably flexible, which can be its own advantage. For the best shooting proficiency, research by Cabarkapa and his colleagues shows that three-point shooting starts from the “bottom up.” “You’ve got to put your butt closer to the ground, keep your torso in near vertical position, and make sure that your elbow is tucked under the basketball,” he says. It also helps to have greater “flexion,” or bend, in your hips, knees, and ankles.

“If somebody doesn’t have a proper range of motion in the knee or hip joint, they may not be able to achieve enough flexion in those joints, which is necessary to generate force and perform an efficient shooting motion,” he says. And some skills, of course, go beyond biomechanics.

“[Wembanyama] knows he’s seven-foot-four. He knows that people generally are not going to block him, but he goes the extra mile. He says, ‘I’m going to take it from even further out,’” Silverberg says. “Besides being tall, agile, and skilled, he’s even being a little bit creative there by deciding to work on a shot that nobody else would. I think that’s pretty neat.”

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The primal human experience of gazing into an unblemished cosmos is vanishing, being replaced by a dense, industrial field of 15,000 orbiting satellites with plans for half a million more by 2040.

A few minutes after the sun retreated behind the Olympic Mountains, we spotted our first satellite. It moved across the sky with an eerie persistence, like a car on cruise control.  

“That’s low Earth orbit. That’s pretty standard speed,” Meredith Rawls, an astronomer at the University of Washington and my stargazing guide for the night, tells me.

The primal human experience of gazing into a dark, unblemished night sky — something we’ve been doing for at least 32,000 years, since our ancestors carved Orion onto a mammoth tusk — is vanishing. That nocturnal vista is becoming a dense, industrial field of orbiting debris. 

“I tell people, go to a dark site and see the sky now, while it’s like this,” Rawls says, gesturing to the constellations above us. She lets out a laugh. “It’s like, oh my God, what are we doing?”

The scale is hard to overstate. At the turn of the century, there were just over 700 active satellites in space. Now, with plans for hundreds of thousands more satellites — going from 15,000 today to half a million by 2040 — the new space race is not just a visual nuisance, it’s a toxic threat to our existence. 

When you look up at the night sky and wonder why the stars are moving, it’s not because you’re seeing a UFO. You’re likely looking at a satellite, and two out of every three belong to Elon Musk’s Starlink. 

Starlink is capable of beaming an internet connection to a dish the size of a pizza box, virtually anywhere in the world. The company’s on track for the largest initial public offering in history, largely on the back of all those satellites cruising through the skies. 

When Starlink launched its first satellite in 2019, it kicked off a gold rush in space. Amazon plans to send up 60,000 of its own satellites, Chinese companies nearly 60,000 more. Everyone across the globe, it seems, wants a piece of the sky. Rwanda alone applied for 337,320 satellites. In January, Starlink filed for a million orbital AI data centers. 

Spacefaring countries are technically bound by the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty of 1967, but commercial enterprises are another story. And with space increasingly seen as a new theater of war, many nation-states are racing to launch their own mega-constellations.

In this article:

• 15,000 satellites: How we got here
• A million data centers in space?
• ‘The new theater of defense’
• What scientists are concerned about
• Earth’s atmosphere as a space dump
• Satellites maneuver to avoid collisions
• Space junk doesn’t always stay in space
• Taking out the orbital trash
• Wild West: Who is governing the satellite ecosystem?
• Why satellites are here to stay

The ripple effects are as far-reaching as they are uncertain. 

Satellites are expected to disrupt the migratory patterns of birds, dung beetles, and seals, which use the stars to navigate. 

Space junk from rocket launches and old satellites falls to Earth every day, increasingly through busy airspace. Last year, a piece of titanium and carbon fiber the size of a car tire landed near a school in Argentina.

Many tons of aluminum and lithium aerosols are added to the atmosphere when satellites reach the end of their lives and burn up, eating away at the ozone layer and potentially accelerating climate change.  

And, ironically, they’re also threatening to halt space exploration in its tracks, as thousands of satellites zooming at 17,000 miles per hour push us toward a chain reaction known as the Kessler syndrome, an apocalyptic feedback loop in which one collision could create thousands of pieces of debris that would then lead to more collisions.

You cannot remove all these billions of small fragments from orbit. This will basically limit our access to space forever,” says Hanno Rein, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto. “This is not going to go away. These small fragments will not necessarily deorbit quickly. They will stay there and make space inaccessible for future generations.”

As I part ways with Rawls, she seems cautiously pleased with how few satellites we saw. 

“A real takeaway from our observing session is that there are not yet an overwhelming number of bright satellites,” she says. “I hope you enjoyed your relatively pristine night sky experience.”

I get the feeling that I’m being told to enjoy it while it lasts.

15,000 satellites: How we got here

The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first satellite in 1957. It would take another 53 years before we passed 1,000 active satellites. Just 16 years after that, we passed 15,000.

Almost all of that growth is due to one company. When SpaceX launched its first batch of Starlink satellites in May 2019, there were only around 2,000 active satellites. It currently has more than 10,000 in orbit; the next closest operator is OneWeb, with 650. An average of 11 satellites have been launched every day in 2026, and with each one, the risk of collisions that generate dangerous space debris increases.

The causes for the prodigious satellite rise are complicated, but if I had to point to a single moment, I’d choose Dec. 22, 2015, the day that SpaceX landed its reusable Falcon 9 rocket for the first time.

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Tharon Green/CNET/Getty Images

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Hmmmm … By default, only so-called whites are promoted, anything to distract from Epstein!

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No female officers were included on the new one-star list, which was released publicly in late May, despite the fact that women make up about 21 percent of the active-duty Navy. The list appears to include only two nonwhite officers, even though sailors who identify as racial minorities make up about 38 percent of the active-duty Navy.

Mr. Hegseth’s removal of the officers from the one-star list is highly unusual, said the current and former defense officials. According to Pentagon rules, the defense secretary is supposed to pull officers from the list only for moral, mental, physical or professional failings that raise questions about the officers’ fitness to lead.

Mr. Hegseth’s actions are the latest in a series of firings and personnel interventions that appear to be driven by his anti-diversity politics rather than the officers’ performance. Taken together, they could reshape the military’s top ranks for years to come.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, declined to say why Mr. Hegseth pulled the officers off the Navy one-star list. “Military promotions are given to those who have earned them,” Mr. Parnell said. “The department will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.” The Navy declined to comment.

Since taking office, Mr. Hegseth has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior military officers as part of a broader campaign designed to purge the Pentagon of leaders he has disparaged as “foolish,” “reckless,” and “woke.” He has consistently refused to explain why he has chosen to fire officers or pull them from promotion lists.

His scrutiny has fallen heavily on female and minority officers, who have borne the brunt of the dismissals. Nearly 60 percent of the senior officers Mr. Hegseth has fired are female or Black, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in recent Senate testimony. Women and minorities currently account for fewer than 20 percent of all generals and admirals.

“You are hollowing out the military’s bench of experience and highest-performing senior officers, while making young officers wonder if they should continue to serve,” Mr. Reed told Mr. Hegseth at another recent hearing.

Among those dismissed were Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s removal of at least seven officers from the list appears to violate rules governing the promotion system, according to current and former defense officials. Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

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Unseasonably hot weather in Europe has already claimed at least 18 lives. And history shows more are likely on the way

Stark new data show how much the spring heat wave that has been affecting much of Western Europe has shattered temperature records. The heat has been linked to 12 deaths in the U.K. alone. Three occurred on Wednesday and Thursday, when three teenage boys died in separate water incidents while they sought reprieve from temperatures that beat the previous records by several degrees in portions of the nation.

The gravity of the situation can be seen in an image captured by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite, which is used to monitor surface temperatures, on May 26. The areas in red are indicative of temperatures well in excess of 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) and include major European cities such as Madrid and Paris.

The heat wave has broken a “remarkable number” of records for temperature, the U.K.’s Met Office said in a statement. Some 23 weather stations across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have reported temperatures exceeding the previous U.K.-wide record of 32.8 degrees C (91 degrees F), which was set in 1922 and 1944. On Tuesday, a research station in London’s Kew Gardens recorded temperatures of 35.1 degrees C (95.2 degrees F), obliterating its previous record of 29.3 degrees C (84.7 degrees F) for the month.

At least seven other deaths in France, five from drowning, have also been tied to the sweltering conditions. May 26 was the hottest May weather in the country’s history, according to Météo-France, the French national weather service, with an average temperature of 24.9 degrees Celsius (76.8 degrees F). Two days later, daytime highs peaked at almost 40 degrees C (104 degrees F) in several regions.

“Such high temperatures have never been recorded in May since records began,” Météo-France said in a French-language statement.

The heat was bad enough to affect tennis’s French Open: top-ranked player Jannik Sinner was eliminated on Thursday after he took a medical time-out for cramping that was likely caused by dehydration.

The weather is being driven by a heat dome—a block of high pressure that traps hot air—hovering over Western Europe. But even with the heat dome factored in, temperatures have hit levels that are unusual at the peak of summer in several countries.

The heat seen since May 22 across much of France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstein, Spain, Portugal, and the U.K. was likely made three to five times more likely because of the effects of climate change, according to Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index.

Recent experience suggest more deaths are likely: unlike in the U.S., where an estimated 90 percent of households are equipped with air-conditioning, Europeans lag behind at only 20 percent, according to the International Energy Agency. That can make high temperatures particularly dangerous on the continent—in 2025, a series of heat waves led to some 24,400 deaths, 16,500 of which were attributed to climate change, while more than 62,700 people died of heat-related causes the year before.

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