When asteroids slam into Earth, they can create hydrothermal vent systems ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
June 9, 2026—Knowing how AI art is made makes people like it less. Plus, lanternflies are uniquely suited to urban environments and NASA reveals the Artemis III crew.
—Andrea Gawrylewski
Chief Newsletter Editor
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Today NASA revealed the four astronauts who will crew its upcoming Artemis III mission, currently slated for 2027: NASA astronauts Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio and Randy Bresnik and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano. | 5 min read
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A 4.56-billion-year-old meteorite recovered from the Sahara Desert in 2019 probably came from the high-pressure depths of a massive, maybe moon-sized, protoplanet during the solar system’s earliest epochs. | 4 min read
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Apple's new Siri can run your digital life—executing errands across multiple apps on your behalf. But to do that, it needs access to your personal data, a line the company has never crossed before. | 4 min read
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Resistance training may boost longevity. But how much do you need? We asked the experts. | 3 min read
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The Ethics of AI Art
Many people may feel neutral about art that’s made by artificial intelligence. In fact, some AI art can be downright beautiful. But feelings change when people learn how the art was made. Psychologists showed 100 participants various pieces of art made by AI. In one experiment, half the participants looked at the art without any context, while the other half learned that the AI had been trained on a large dataset of human artists’ work and artists’ names. When people knew how the AI system operated, they perceived the images it produced as less morally acceptable.
Why this is interesting: The finding of the study was especially pronounced when the creation of these images involved financial gain and artistic acclaim on the part of the AI. But the aesthetic appeal of the images did not change, suggesting that learning how AI works made people reflect on ethics, not aesthetics.
What the experts say: “Educating audiences, artists, curators and policymakers about how technology works could shape the future of the technology in the art world,” writes Ionela Bara, a postdoctoral researcher at the Social Brain Sciences laboratory at ETH Zurich. “Artists working with AI tools can help in this effort by sharing information about the models, data or prompts they used and clarifying where their own human hand guided the process.”
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Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
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Lanternfly Evolution
Scientists gathered invasive spotted lanternflies from across the U.S., as well as from urban and rural locations in their native Shanghai, and analyzed the animals’ genes. They confirmed that the U.S. population of the bugs stems from a single introduction, as researchers had suspected. But perhaps more importantly, their analysis found certain adaptations in the bugs’ genes that helped them invade urban environments long before they came to the U.S.
Why this is interesting: Cities are natural hotspots for invasive species because so many humans and vehicles are coming and going and tracking bits of nature with them. The lanternflies in big U.S. cities are still evolving, according to some research—they are growing larger than rural ones, meaning they’re potentially able to travel farther on relatively larger energy stores, produce more offspring or better withstand hot temperatures.
What the experts say: “The fact that they landed in the largest contiguous metropolitan region in the U.S. was probably really important to their rapid spread here,” says Kristin Winchell, an evolutionary ecologist at New York University. “If you get on a train in Baltimore and take that up to Boston, there are many, many places along the way where you could hop off and you’re going to still be in the city,” she adds. “It gives them a lot more opportunities to disperse into habitats that they are adapted to.”
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Unscramble this image of our cover from the May 1922 issue. The assembled cover shows an underwater artist taking advantage of advances in waterproof materials. Using a diving suit, thick paints and a linseed-oil-covered canvas, naturalist Zarh Pritchard was able to paint sea scenes firsthand.
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When the lanternfly first arrived in the Eastern U.S., several states embarked on aggressive community stomp or squash campaigns. Populations of the bug in the New York City area are down, but it's unclear whether the decline is thanks to community kill efforts. Researchers at Rutgers University discovered that bats can feast on thousands of the insects a night. So rather than stomp, install a bat house to encourage helpful predation!
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—Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor
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