World’s Largest Airplane’s First-Ever Flight

Weighing 500,000 pounds and boasting two fuselages and a wingspan of 385 feet, Stratolaunch‘s behemoth of a plane—which will launch rockets into Earth’s orbit—took flight for the first time ever this past weekend. Taking off from the Mojave Air and Space Port, the Stratolaunch ascended to 15,000 feet, reaching speeds up to 175 MPH, before landing successfully two hours later. “It was an emotional moment …

First-Ever Photo of a Supermassive Black Hole

Truly a quantum leap, astronomers have “seen the unseeable” and captured an image of a supermassive black hole—a “smoke ring framing a one-way portal to eternity,” Dennis Overbye writes for the New York Times. A planet-sized network of eight radio telescopes—called the Event Horizon Telescope—peered through interstellar dust and gas to reveal the black hole, located in a galaxy called Messier 87, which exists some …

Study Reports Americans Are Having Less Sex

With analysis drawn from the General Social Survey‘s latest round of data, Americans have once again reported that they’re having less sex. This three-decade trend is led by young people (men in particular) aged 18 to 29 years old. Previously, “20-something men and women reported similar rates of sexlessness,” says the Washington Post. Since 2008, however, there’s been a steep distancing. Factors include live-in relationships, …