Link About It: This Week’s Picks

An explosion of color in Stockholm, NASA's Mars precautions, updates to our perception of marijuana and more

NASA’s Preventative Measures Against Potential Martian Pathogens Although the risk is small that threatening organisms will make their way to Earth via the Martian rock samples currently being collected, NASA is taking precautions. These samples—set to arrive in the 2030s—will first be held in a receiving facility that’s “capable of safely containing the most dangerous pathogens known to science,” that also “prevents substances on Earth …

James Webb’s First Image of a Distant World

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken its first direct image of a distant world: a planet lying outside our solar system. The image shows the exoplanet HIP 65426 b in varying infrared light, revealing that it is a gas giant, contains no rocky surface and is thus uninhabitable. From the image, astronomers were also able to discern that the exoplanet is about six to …

Rejecting The “Lazy Stoner” Trope

Researchers at University of Cambridge have published a study in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology that firmly rejects the stereotype of the “lazy stoner,” finding that cannabis users have just as much motivation as those who don’t partake. “We’re so used to seeing ‘lazy stoners’ on our screens that we don’t stop to ask whether they’re an accurate representation,” Martine Skumlien—who is a PhD student …