A rocky planet held onto its air, and ancient princesses turn out to be archers

Astronomers led by Collin Cherubim at Harvard had a hunch that it should still have air, so they built a model predicting exactly how much helium ought to be leaking off it into space, then pointed the WINERED spectrograph on the Magellan Clay Telescope in Chile at the planet as it crossed its star 732. They caught a lucky break: a neighboring planet crossed the same night with no such signal, giving them a clean comparison. LHS 1140 b showed the helium clearly, the first confirmed atmosphere ever detected on a rocky planet sitting in another star's habitable zone, one that has apparently survived for more than three billion years 32. Even David Charbonneau, one of the study's senior scientists, admitted he doubted the idea until the numbers came back what he called "statistically rock solid" 32.

Clinical psychologist Pim Cuijpers at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam decided to solve that by pooling a large set of randomized controlled trials into one meta-analysis, published in World Psychiatry, mapping the actual shape of recovery over time instead of the usual rough buckets of "short-term" and "long-term" 34. The result is the clearest picture yet that talk therapy, whether cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, or behavioral activation, keeps paying off well past the last session, not just holding steady but continuing to help people years down the line.

A 512-unit condo tower in Honolulu created at least 557 vacancies in older, cheaper apartments across the city within three years of opening. In Helsinki, researchers tracking geo-coded population data found that every 100 new market-rate units built in the city center freed up roughly 60 units in the bottom half of the city's income neighborhoods. A multi-decade study across all of Sweden concluded that new homes, even ones that start out full of rich people, produce real trickle-down benefits for poorer residents, and a 2021 study found new market-rate construction in San Francisco actually lowered the risk of eviction for people in rent-stabilized housing nearby 65.

Three solid-fueled stages fired in sequence, then a small liquid-fueled fourth stage with a 3D-printed engine pushed the rocket to orbital velocity, roughly 17,000 miles per hour. The only hiccup was a spent stage lingering a bit too close during separation, but it caused no damage. Vikram-1 settled into an orbit about 280 miles high, very close to what Skyroot had predicted, and U.S. military tracking data confirmed it made it 70.

A*STAR's Institute of Materials Research is transforming spent coffee grounds into phase change materials that keep cold-chain shipments at a steady temperature, aiming to match the performance of petroleum-based paraffin wax. And Ferm2Farm is fermenting vegetable peels into food flavorings, protein-rich animal feed, and crop fertilizer 91.

Princess Ita, who died between 28 and 34, had strong upper-body muscle attachments consistent with regular use of a mace or dagger. Princess Itaweret, 20 to 34 at death, had survived broken ribs and foot fractures, and her skeleton shows the wear pattern of a skilled archer 105.