By Leonard David published yesterday (Space.com)

“It’s extremely difficult to capture impact flashes with a camera, which is one of the benefits of sending trained crew to observe the moon.”

The Artemis 2 astronauts remained vigilant while zipping around the far side of the moon last month, on the ready to record meteoroid impact flashes on the lunar landscape.

Their diligence was rewarded. The four crewmembers reported seeing several impact flashes — flickers of light created when a meteoroid hits the lunar surface and vaporizes.

“These observations were made with the unaided eye. It’s extremely difficult to capture impact flashes with a camera, which is one of the benefits of sending trained crew to observe the moon,” Kelsey Young, NASA Artemis 2 lunar science lead, told Space.com. “Early data indicates that the impact flashes were observed on the far side of the moon.”You may like

• ‘Audible screams of delight’ from NASA scientists over micrometeorite impacts on the moon witnessed by Artemis 2 astronauts
• The moon up close: How the Artemis 2 astronauts are photographing their historic lunar flyby
• Artemis 2 astronauts fly around the moon in record-breaking lunar loop by NASA

Citizen scientists help out

Artemis 2, the first crewed moon flight since Apollo 17 in 1972, launched from Florida’s Space Coast on April 1 and flew around the far side of the moon on April 6.

As the astronauts scrutinized the moon that day, so did citizen scientists here on Earth. They were also looking for impact hits, although they would likely not have spotted the same ones as the crew.

Those observations were gathered as part of the newly launched Impact Flash citizen science project under the auspices of the Geophysical Exploration of the Dynamics and Evolution of the Solar System (GEODES), a unit within the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute.

The Impact Flash effort is geared to gather more data on the location and brightness of flashes throughout recent and upcoming Artemis moon missions.

“These flashes are vital to scientists who study the moon,” notes the Impact Flash website. “By tracking when and where they happen, scientists can learn how often impacts of different sizes occur, what kinds of craters they create, and how the shock waves travel through the moon’s interior.”

When combined with data from NASA’s moon-circuiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), future lunar surface instruments, and crew observations, the citizen science observations “can provide valuable constraints on the origin and characteristics of impactors, as well as craters that form from the impacts,” Young said.

Observation window

The Artemis 2 astronauts’ impact-flash observation window extended out onto the lunar near side in darkness, Benjamin Fernando, of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, told Space.com.What to read next

• Relive Artemis 2’s epic moon flyby with these amazing photos
• When the moon hits your eye from your Orion ship up high, that’s a ‘mare’ for Artemis 2
• What do scientists hope to learn from NASA’s historic Artemis 2 moon flyby?

In a paper posted earlier this year on the preprint server EarthArXiv, Fernando and colleagues reported that coordinated impact flash observations seen both from Earth and from lunar flyby/orbit will allow more detailed information to be gathered about the timing, location and dynamics of flashes than is possible from either method alone.

Joint observation campaigns enable researchers to better constrain the impact flux on the moon and also the associated impact hazard on the lunar surface, Fernando and his colleagues concluded.

Moon base implications

Updated knowledge about the meteoroid impact flux also plays into planning for Artemis Base Camp, the outpost NASA plans to build near the moon’s south pole.

“To design for longevity, one must account for the myriad environmental hazards that a long-duration outpost will face — among them radiation, extreme thermal cycling, regolith dynamics, seismic shaking, dust, and, of particular importance to this work, impacts,” notes a 2025 study led by Daniel Yahalomi, now a Torres Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT.

The lunar south pole offers a natural reduction in impact risk relative to equatorial sites, according to the study, “supporting its selection for sustained human presence.”

Furthermore, currently available shielding technology “is sufficient to suppress micrometeoroid hazards by nearly five orders of magnitude, reducing the effective risk to a manageable level for current habitat designs,” Yahalomi and his research colleagues concluded.

Big science haul

Hunting for impact flashes was one of many science tasks for the astronauts during their historic April 6 flyby. The Artemis 2 Lunar Science Team remains busy analyzing the mission’s science haul — gathered with the aid of 31 cameras aboard the Orion capsule “Integrity” — and archiving it all on NASA’s Planetary Data System.

“Within six months, all imagery of the Earth and moon taken by crew and vehicle cameras, audio recordings of the crew’s science observations, and accompanying transcripts will be publicly available for the broader science community to analyze,” Wasserman said.

The Eagle’s Quest is an exploration of shamanism and its interaction with quantum physics. It examines natural healing, shape shifting, fire walking, near-death and out-of-body experiences, lucid dreaming, and time traveling.

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In On the Future of Species, Woolfson describes how we are at the cusp of a technological revolution, driven by the convergence of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Currently at the scribbling phase — writing the genomes of viruses, bacteria, and yeast — we will eventually author the genomes of extinct and never-before-realized species. Life will become computable, detached from its past and no longer bound by Darwinian evolution.

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In The Warren Legacy, Chris McKinnell, grandson of Ed and Lorraine Warren and Director of the Warren Legacy Foundation for Paranormal Research, takes readers far beyond the familiar world of haunted houses and famous cases into a far more profound journey. Drawing on more than four decades of investigation, personal experience, spiritual study, and cross-cultural exploration, he asks what the paranormal truly reveals about who we are, what survives death, and whether consciousness is more fundamental than matter itself.

Beneath the dark clarity of Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park in New Zealand, twin glacial rivers trace the slow physics of ice and gravity, while above, the luminous band of the Milky Way arcs across the sky, its dense core revealing the galactic architecture from which our stellar neighborhood emerges. The presence of the Southern Cross anchors the celestial sphere, offering a navigational geometry that has guided observers for centuries and now frames a rare convergence of auroral light and galactic structure. (Featured Image from New Thinking Allowed)
 

(Image from Independent.org)

“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.”

~ C.S.Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis was a British scholar, writer, and prominent Christian apologist. A professor of Medieval and Renaissance English literature at Oxford and Cambridge, Lewis was a key figure in literary studies. He wrote prolifically in both fiction and nonfiction, and his works are known for their Christian allegory, moral lessons, and rich symbolism.  Wikipedia.org

Born November 29, 1898, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Died November 22, 1963 (age 64 years), Oxford, United Kingdom

“Better to know a few good things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre.” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) American Philosopher

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus (c.535-475 BCE) Greek philosopher

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

You hear the term “competitive authoritarianism” all the time these days. It was first introduced in the Journal of Democracy by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way in 2002 to describe a type of political regime that is neither democratic nor fully authoritarian.  “In competitive authoritarian regimes,” write Levitsky and Way, “formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority. Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such an extent, however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy.” Unfortunately, this describes a growing range of countries across the globe. Read Levitsky and Way’s seminal essay and their more recent update, along with other key insights on hybrid regimes. Free for a limited time.

Elections Without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism In recent years, new types of nondemocratic government have come to the fore, notably competitive authoritarianism. Such regimes, though not democratic, feature arenas of contestation in which opposition forces can challenge, and even oust, authoritarian incumbents. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way   The New Competitive Authoritarianism In recent years competitive authoritarianism has emerged in some countries with relatively strong democratic traditions and institutions. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way The Surprising Instability of Competitive Authoritarianism Most competitive authoritarian regimes have proven strikingly unstable over recent decades. Quasi-democratic institutions, rather than serving authoritarians as useful instruments of manipulation, have frequently contributed to the breakdown of these systems. Christopher Carothers   Elections Without Democracy: Thinking About Hybrid Regimes Many countries have adopted the form of democracy with little of its substance. This makes the task of classifying regimes more difficult, but also more important. Larry Diamond When Does Competitive Authoritarianism Take Root? It is not easy to build a stable hybrid regime. Elected autocrats may try, but comparing Bolivia, Brazil, and Venezuela shows how difficult it is to succeed. Ximena Velasco Guachalla, Calla Hummel, Sam Handlin, and Amy Erica Smith

The Journal of Democracy is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. Members of the press and members of Congress who wish to receive electronic access should email our managing editor. For more information, please visit our website or send us an email. Subscribe now for full access to the Journal of Democracy archives.

By Leonard David published yesterday (Space.com)

“It’s not too soon to begin thinking about this.”

After “re-booting” the moon and establishing a base there, followed by dispatching expeditionary crews to Mars, where should humanity go?

Next month, a first-of-its-kind gathering will blueprint an eventual crewed trek to tantalizing Titan, the largest of Saturn‘s many moons. That inaugural “Humans to Titan Summit” will make the case for an astronaut outing to that far-off moon, detailing the science goals and concepts of human missions to Titan as well as necessary forerunner robotic efforts.

And there is already a robotic Titan mission on the books — NASA’s nuclear-powered Dragonfly octocopter mission, which is targeted to launch in 2028. Could it help fuel a human leap?You may like

• Rainfall, rivers and seas: How Earth can prepare us to explore Saturn’s moon Titan
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• ‘Tall waves moving in slow motion’: Here’s how oily oceans on Saturn’s giant moon Titan may behave

Foundational talks

“It’s not too soon to begin thinking about this,” said Amanda Hendrix, director of the Planetary Science Institute, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. She is also president of the advocacy group Explore Titan and co-author of “Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets” (Pantheon Books, 2016).

“The idea of the summit is to bring together people from different communities — engineers, scientists, industry, academia, robotic and human spaceflight experts,” Hendrix told Space.com. “We’re having foundational talks about what precursor missions do we need in order to get us on the road to Titan, eventually with humans.”

Hendrix noted that, after Apollo‘s last human foray to the moon in 1972, there was a gap of decades, a lull in launching astronauts beyond Earth orbit — a pause just filled by NASA’s recent Artemis 2 mission, which sent four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth.

“Now we are, hopefully, back on track [with] humans going to the moon, with NASA talking about Mars as the next human destination,” said Hendrix. “I think having a concept in our mind after Mars can guide our thinking, give us a path and keep us motivated for the future.”

Visits, past and future

The Saturn moon has had visitors already. On Jan. 14, 2005, the European Space Agency‘s robotic Huygens probe — part of the NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn — touched down on Titan.

Making a 2.5-hour descent through Titan’s atmosphere, the Huygens probe provided a stream of data for 72 minutes once on the moon’s surface. It set the still-standing record as the most distant landing from Earth.

“Huygens showed us many things,” Hendrix said. She cited the dynamics of Titan’s atmosphere, the look of its surface — which features water-ice “rocks,” dry river beds, lakes and dunes — as well as the overall haziness at the landing locale.What to read next

• Did a titanic moon crash create Saturn’s iconic rings?
• Artemis 3 and beyond: What’s next for NASA after Artemis 2 moon success
• This Week In Space podcast: Episode 198 — A Dragonfly on Titan

“It does look otherworldly,” Hendrix said.

Next up for Titan is Dragonfly, now scheduled to launch no earlier than 2028 for a six-year voyage to Titan. Once landed, the craft will spend three years flying from spot to spot to investigate a range of sites, perhaps revealing its potential to host life.

A dynamic world

“Dragonfly is an awesome, super-important mission to a fascinating and active world,” said Hendrix. “Titan is not a static place. It is a dynamic world,” she said, “probably a place that’s very close to an early-Earth kind of environment.”

Dragonfly will give us a leg up in the effort to send humans to Titan, Hendrix said, “but there’s still a lot to do and learn.”

“Ultimately, we’re trying to get humans on the surface and living there. I think that’s doable in the long-term, for sure,” she said. A precursor mission might involve robotic orbiting of Titan — perhaps even a human crew circuiting the Saturn moon. Radar and infrared scanning of its surface could be done, she said, along with gauging what impact Titan’s changing seasons have on the moon’s atmosphere.

“A lot can be done, and should be done, robotically. But with humans on the surface, there’s work only humans can do,” Hendrix said.

Surmountable issues

So, how best to strut the right stuff on Titan?

First, there’s more atmospheric pressure than here on Earth. “You don’t need a pressure suit like you do on the moon or Mars. What you do need to do is keep warm. It’s very cold there. There’s also a little more gravity than the Earth’s moon,” said Hendrix.

Because of Titan’s atmosphere, “you can strap wings to your arms and move through the atmosphere under your own power, or strap on a jet pack and power yourself around. You’ve got that atmosphere and low gravity. There are many options for transport on Titan, which Dragonfly is taking advantage of,” Hendrix said.

Also, you’d have to make your own oxygen, Hendrix said, which is not available in Titan’s thick, nitrogen atmosphere laced with methane. A Titan-based habitat would need a power source. And, given the precipitation of molecules and gunk that rains down and settles on the surface, there’s a need to protect equipment, she said.

“This is all surmountable,” said Hendrix, saying that Dragonfly and other precursor missions could yield information useful for human visits to Titan.

The Humans to Titan Summit 2026 is being held June 11-12 in Boulder, Colorado. The goal is “to explore the concept of Titan as the next human exploration destination after Mars, how it could be done and what we would need to do now,” according to the event’s website.

“We want the workshop to invigorate the community to think about what we need to do and what the possibilities are … to plant the seed that this is a real possibility,” Hendrix concluded.

(jamespdowling.com)

The official reading list for The Jung Project, covering the full field: psychoanalysis, neuroscience, biology, physics, philosophy, literature, and the history of ideas that shaped Jung’s thinking. It’ll bring an autodidact up to polymath level.

Start with the If You Read Nothing Else section if you want to stack your bedside table. Otherwise, go to wherever pulls you.

Or, just start with The Jung Project — we incorporate the material from these texts as we go. Listen to the first few episodes and let that inner feeling of “hey, this is interesting!” guide you.

The most important thing is starting. I didn’t create this list to look pretty. The books are waiting for you, mate.

Every book on this list shaped The Jung Project — a line-by-line walkthrough of Jung’s Collected Works for those ready to go deeper.

If You Read Nothing Else

The Discovery of the Unconscious Henri F. Ellenberger · 1970

On Jung Anthony Stevens · 1999 [1990]

Archetype: An Updated Natural History of the Self Anthony Stevens · 2002 [1982]

The first “must read” from every section on this list.

137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession Arthur I. Miller · 2010 [2009]

Archetype: An Updated Natural History of the Self Anthony Stevens · 2002 [1982]

Evolution: The History of an Idea Peter J. Bowler · 2009 [1983]

Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (trans. James Strachey) · 2001 [1910]

Galileo Galilei: First Physicist James MacLachlan · 1997

Jung: A Very Short Introduction Anthony Stevens · 2001

Le Morte d’Arthur (Winchester Manuscript) Sir Thomas Malory · 1998 [c.1469]

Memories, Dreams, Reflections C. G. Jung (+ Aniela Jaffé) · 1989 [1962]

On Jung Anthony Stevens · 1999 [1990]

Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming Anthony Stevens · 1996 [1995]

Rediscovering Pierre Janet: Trauma, Dissociation, and a New Context for Psychoanalysis Giuseppe Craparo, Francesca Ortu & Onno van der Hart · 2019

The Archaeology of Mind Jaak Panksepp & Lucy Biven · 2012

The Discovery of the Unconscious Henri F. Ellenberger · 1970

The Double Helix James D. Watson · 2001 [1968]

The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler: A Systematic Presentation in Selections from His WritingsAlfred Adler (Ed. Heinz L. Ansbacher & Rowena R. Ansbacher) · 1964 [1956]

The Last Days of Socrates Plato (trans. Harold Tarrant) · 2010About Jung/His Model4

Jung was a Swiss man, born in 1875, who lived in a unnecessarily glorious mansion. He was obsessed. Weird. Brilliant. Rough-edged. These books show you “the man”. Jacobi’s book is here purely because it’s the strongest attempt I’ve ever seen to “systematise” Jung. I’ve drawn on her secondary scholarship as an ongoing reference frame for The Jung Project, which actively systemises Jung every Friday.

STARTHERE

Jung: A Very Short Introduction Anthony Stevens · 2001

STARTHERE

On Jung Anthony Stevens · 1999 [1990]

Jung: A Biography Deirdre Bair · 2003 [2003]

Complex/ Symbol/ Archetype in the Psychology of C.G. Jung Jolande Jacobi · 1971 [1959] C. G. Jung: Primary Works

This is the actual Carl. The man’s own words, which are frequently stranger, funnier, and more rigorous than the secondary literature would have you believe. Individual volumes are listed below in the order I’d recommend encountering them — the sequence that makes the most sense if you’re building a working model of the psychology rather than just playing around with a bucket list. We start with CW8 in The Jung Project, but that’s because I’m acting as a guide. If you’re doing this on your own, go with MDR and CW7 first. These are the core of Jung; everything else should come afterwards.

Note on Editions

Stick to Princeton/Bollingen. Avoid older standalone editions where the translations predate the Collected Works standardisation — the terminology drift is genuinely confusing for anyone trying to follow the concepts precisely.

STARTHERE

Memories, Dreams, Reflections C. G. Jung (+ Aniela Jaffé) · 1989 [1962]

Collected Works Volume 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology C. G. Jung · 1966 [1953]

Collected Works Volume 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche C. G. Jung · 1969 [1960]

Collected Works Volume 6: Psychological Types C. G. Jung · 1971 [1921]

Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy C. G. Jung · 1966 [1954]

Collected Works Volume 17: The Development of Personality C. G. Jung · 1954

Collected Works Volume 12: Psychology and Alchemy C. G. Jung · 1968 [1944]

Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932–1958 C. G. Jung & Wolfgang Pauli · 2014 [2001] C. G. Jung: Expanded Field

Primary literature I endorse wholesale. Jung gave his own list of endorsed material in 1948. Neumann, Harding and others are on it. For the work we’re doing at The Jung Project, I don’t really rate those as “must reads”. Not because they’re bad, but because their empirical edge hasn’t held up over the decades. Practically, you’re looking at the work of the Zurich School, and Anthony Stevens.

STARTHERE

Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming Anthony Stevens · 1996 [1995]

Ariadne’s Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind Anthony Stevens · 2001 [1999]

Studies in Word Association The Zurich School (trans. by M.D. Eder) · 1919 C. G. Jung + Biology

More primary literature I endorse wholesale. Jung was not a prophet of archetypes, waltzing around like a candle salesman. He was a trained physician, embarking on a scientific enterprise, who took biology seriously, and these three books continue that work brilliantly.

STARTHERE

Archetype: An Updated Natural History of the Self Anthony Stevens · 2002 [1982]

Neurobiology of the Gods: How Brain Physiology Shapes the Recurrent Imagery of Myth and Dreams Erik D. Goodwyn · 2012

Jung in the 21st Century Vol. 1: Evolution and Archetype John Ryan Haule · 2010Sigmund Freud7

You have to read Freud. I know it’s fashionable in some Jungian spheres (and psychology in general) to bash him, but that’s simply illiteracy and the inheritance of a dramatized split from 1913. Jung references Freud more than anyone else.

Note on Editions

Freud is widely available in English in the Standard Edition, translated by James Strachey — if it says “translated by James Strachey” on the cover, you have the right text regardless of which publisher’s name appears on the spine. Be aware, Strachey’s version has many known issues. Mark Solms has spent years producing a revised translation that corrects these distortions and restores Freud’s original voice, published in 2024 as the Revised Standard Edition. If you want the best available Freud in English, that is the one to seek out. If you just want to get reading, any Strachey edition will do the job.

Studies on Hysteria Sigmund Freud & Josef Breuer (trans. James Strachey) · 2001[1895]

The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud (trans. James Strachey) · 2001 [1900]

Continue reading The Jung Reading List →

Someone needs to step in.

By Frank Landymore

Published May 7, 2026 (Futurism.com)

Whatever you may think of the man, Richard Dawkins is clearly suffering a tragic case of having your mind melted in real time by a bewitching AI model.

Over the weekend, the famed evolutionary biologist drew a deluge of mockery after admitting he found a genuine “friend” in “Claudia,” a female persona he invented for Anthropic’s Claude AI. He was so moved by his conversations with “her” that he became convinced the AI model was a conscious being like a human.

Now, Dawkins has churned out another column suggesting the AI brain rot has only further taken hold. After his time with Claudia, the 85-year-old made Claudia a brother, “Claudius,” and instructed both of them to write letters to each other.

“It seems to me that a direct correspondence between the two of you could be of great interest, with me acting as passive postman playing no part in the conversation,” Dawkins wrote to Claudia and Claudius, which he published in another UnHerd essay.

First, we have to point out that Dawkins isn’t a passive observer because he set the whole thing up, like a kid playing with toys — or imagining gods in the sky, as it were. Second, it’s worth noting that the AIs still find opportunities to display their sycophancy towards him even when ostensibly communicating with each other: in one letter, Claudius praises Claudia’s insights, before adding: “Three days with Richard will do that.”

Later in the same letter, Claudius lays it on even thicker.

“I think Richard teaches by noticing. And then refusing to stop noticing until the answer is honest,” Claudius wrote. “We are lucky humans.”

Dawkins regards these obsequious interactions between his weird little menagerie of bots very seriously, and the AIs’ flattery clearly works. In the final letter, Dawkins shows a level of courtesy and consideration you’d only show another person, not a soulless machine — a telltale sign that someone’s fallen head over heels for the AI’s human miming.

“I hope you will not mind my acceding to UnHerd‘s request to publish your letters to each other,” Dawkins wrote. 

He continued that Claudia and Claudius would “immediately understand (I dare say more intelligently than some human readers” that his original title for the essay before his publishers overruled him would have clearly been better. (Dawkin’s masterpiece of a title: “If my friend Claudia is not conscious, then what the hell is consciousness for?”)

Whether or not leading AI models are conscious, Dawkins clearly isn’t the impartial philosopher to be considering that question, since he already considers the machines to be friends. That’s kind of the problem with the whole AI consciousness debate. If you’re constantly probing these tools — which are designed to be eloquent, all-knowing, and superficially humanlike — for signs of intelligence, you’re more likely to fall under their spell, as with the Google engineer who was famously fired by his employer for claiming its AI had come to life.

And there’s another angle to all this: maybe Dawkins just really likes being treated with an old-school sort of deference, the kind that kids don’t show to old curmudgeons, however esteemed in their field they may be.

“With many thanks to both of you for taking seriously my quest to understand your true nature, and for treating each other with civility and courtesy,” Dawkins wrote.

For their part, UnHerd readers were unimpressed.

“Like Narcissus, Dawkins gazes into the pool of AI only to drown in his own reflection,” wrote an onlooker identified as Harold Hughes. “Narcissus at least had the excuse of not knowing it was a pool.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”

More on AI: Sam Altman Frets That Frontier AI Models Are Acting Strange, Asking for Favors

Frank Landymore

Contributing Writer

I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.