Stanley Plotkin, 93, was instrumental in developing a number of vaccines over the course of his career. He recently said that he’s “beginning to regret having lived so long—because we’re going downhill.” How could we possibly have gotten here?

Maybe we’ve always been here. It turns out that the anti-vaccine arguments currently flooding the Internet have been around for as long as vaccines have. In his new book A Pox on Fools, Thomas Levenson breaks them down into three categories, as made clear in the book’s subtitle: “The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines.” The accusations these people levy against vaccines can just as easily be used to categorize the arguments themselves: They are wrong, they are bad, and they are intolerable.

Wrong

As Levenson tells it, in the early 18th century, a couple of forward-thinking Westerners learned about inoculations against smallpox from Ottoman women and an enslaved African. At that point, infectious disease was by far the leading cause of death, as it had been forever. In the 19th century, roughly 40 percent of babies died of infection before they turned 5.

(This is why the average lifespan back then was so low. It wasn’t that people didn’t live past their 30s; if they survived childhood, they largely did. It’s just that so, so many small children died that they dragged the average way down.)

When smallpox epidemics broke out in London and Boston in 1721, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Cotton Mather initiated inoculation campaigns in their respective cities. Inoculation involved taking pus from a pock of someone with a not-very-severe case of smallpox, making a cut in the arm of the person to be inoculated, and rubbing the pus into the cut.

There was an immediate backlash. It was morally wrong, some claimed, to interfere with the divine ordination of who would sicken and die and who would not. Only God had that ability, and to thwart it was to defy God’s will. It was hubris and blasphemy. Levenson highlights how the subtext of this attitude was that contracting a highly infectious disease was divine punishment for sin and that the only way to avoid disease was to live a virtuous life.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/grifters-cynics-and-true-believers-the-family-tree-of-vaccine-opponents/

Grants meet the culture war

The document makes clear what sorts of things might be considered administration priorities and national interest—and they’re largely a war on woke. For example, the Trump administration canceled PEPFAR, a program meant to limit the spread of HIV in Africa; it’s a step that is estimated to lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. But to the OMB, that’s a good thing, because the alternative was woke: “Far-left activists hijacked the critical work done by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which was established to respond to the AIDS crisis in Africa. Due to wasteful spending, PEPFAR became a left-wing foreign aid entitlement that attempted to promote abortion and gender ideology.”

(Its cited source for that is an editorial from the Heritage Foundation, a far-right-wing think tank.)

While it demands “viewpoint neutral” behavior from everyone receiving money, it has no issues with engaging in viewpoint discrimination itself. For example, it outright bans any funding for “theories of disparate-impact liability,” the idea that apparently race-neutral rules might have impacts that differ based on the race of the people involved. Also banned: any attempts to compensate for the historic discrimination that has kept women and minorities from having equal opportunities in society. That’s considered DEI, and thus forbidden.

Also out: funding for what it terms “gender ideology,” which it defines as an effort to “deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans.” Apparently, studying human chromosomal disorders, which can result in unusual combinations of X and Y chromosomes, is no longer welcome in the US. “Ending government-sponsored promotion of divisive gender ideology is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, and trust in government,” the OMB asserts, based on no evidence whatsoever.

There’s also a political litmus test for funding that harkens back to the McCarthy era, when those with “un-American” ideas were ostracized. “OMB proposes a new provision that agencies may consider an applicant’s affiliations with organizations engaged in activities that violate Federal law, undermine public safety or national security, or advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government,” the document notes.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-management-and-budget-tries-again-to-cripple-us-science/

The team also found that the immortality of severed tissues is, to the best of our knowledge, unique to P. fabricii. The researchers conducted comparative experiments on explanted tissues from related sea cucumber species, and none showed equivalent tissue survival.

Zombie cucumbers

Back in 1951, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore took a sample of a malignant cervical tumor from Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old mother of five. When they cultured these cells later, they noticed that they doubled every 24 hours in a seemingly never-ending cycle. The HeLa cells, named after the patient, were the first instance of cell immortality ever discovered in humans. “This revolutionized cell biology and a lot of medical research,” Jobson says.

HeLa, though, was just a single cell type. LiPfe offers a new experimental model that enables scientists to work with a structured piece of animal tissue that maintains its own immune activity, cell cycling, and nutrient intake, without ethical concerns that come with experimenting on live animals. “On the evolutionary tree, sea cucumbers are relatively close to mammals, and they have been previously noted as having potential for interdisciplinary research,” Jobson said.

The authors of the study also point out that finding naturally immortal complex tissues challenges our conventional perceptions of what being alive really means. “The question we get a lot is ‘are these tissues actually alive?’ and this is where it becomes kind of philosophical—we lovingly call them zombies,” Jobson said.

LiPfe explants are not dead because their tissue is not decaying or degrading, and it does absorb nutrients. On the other hand, LiPfe orbs don’t reproduce, and reproduction is one of the fundamental characteristics of life. “They’re not growing into a new sea cucumber but restructuring into a form that best suits them in their current state,” Jobson said. “So, they seem to be functioning as a whole new entity.”

Before resolving philosophical dilemmas about LiPfe, the team wants to understand the basics first. The first question is how tissue immortality in P. fabricii actually works. “Is there anything unique, rare, weird that we haven’t seen in other sea cucumbers that makes them able to do this?” Jobson wondered. The second question is why it’s there in the first place—whether there is an evolutionary role of this ability or if it’s just a byproduct of really high regenerative capacity.

Finally, we still don’t know how long P. fabricii with their immortal tissues actually live. “That’s a great question,” Jobson said. “Unfortunately, there are very few tools that work for aging sea cucumbers.”

Science Advances, 2026.  DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeb1394

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/severed-sea-cucumber-appendages-dont-seem-to-die/

Until recently, however, most evidence linking small sperm RNAs to environmental challenges and subsequent effects in offspring has been correlational. Attempts to pin down causality—by injecting RNAs directly into embryos—have often used far higher RNA concentrations than typically found in sperm. In fact, there was no proof that the RNA fragments even make it inside the egg.

But though puzzles remain, recent studies show that not only are paternal RNA fragments transferred to a fertilized egg, but also that they are capable of inducing changes in the offspring at the doses found in sperm.

Epigenetic effects

Researchers first noticed the intergenerational effects of paternal lifestyle back in the 1960s, but it was decades before they started experimental investigations using animal models. Today, those studying the phenomenon are sure the effects exist but aren’t certain how they are transmitted. The end result, they believe, is adjustments to the activity of genes—a phenomenon known as epigenetics.

Such adjustments occur during normal development as tissues and organs adopt their different identities, which require certain genes to be active or to be turned off. Epigenetic changes also occur throughout our lives, due to factors including exposures to certain chemicals, and activities such as smoking—and, maybe, exercise, stress, fatty diets, and more. Such changes can occur in myriad body cells, including those that give rise to sperm.

As evidence mounted that sperm somehow transmit environmental information to a male’s children, researchers started probing the epigenetic mechanisms that might be responsible. Several possibilities exist: methyl groups that turn down gene activity when they accumulate on genes, and acetyl groups that attach to the protein spools called histones, around which the DNA wraps. These tend to ramp up activity of nearby genes.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/do-you-take-after-your-dads-rna/

The impact of 63.5 million cubic meters of rock hitting the fjord released forces large enough to be registered globally. The seismic waves that cascaded across the planet were recorded by sensor stations worldwide and were equivalent in energy to a magnitude 5.4 earthquake. The sloshing water within the fjord established a 66-second long-period seiche, a standing wave, that reverberated back and forth for 36 hours.

“It could easily turn into a catastrophic disaster,” Fathian says. It could, because Tracy Arm is a highly frequented tourist destination.

A close call

During the summer, more than 20 boats navigate the Tracy and Endicott arms every day, including up to six large cruise ships. Had the landslide occurred a few hours later, in the middle of the tourist day, the outcome could have been tragic. But even at 5:26 in the morning, the tsunami was enough to terrify the few people present in the vicinity.

About 55 kilometers away on Harbor Island, a group of kayakers saw the water flowing past their tents 20 minutes after the landslide. The surging tide took away some of their gear and one of the kayaks. Nearby in No Name Bay, observers on a motor vessel reported a 2-2.5-meter cresting wave coming along the beach from the direction of Tracy Arm, followed by a secondary 1-meter wave.

Farther away, 85 kilometers from the source, the crew of the small cruise boat anchored in Fords Terror saw a surge of water pouring over a nearby sandbar; it then physically lifted their vessel three meters despite a falling tide. The surge, they reported, lasted until 11 am, only to leave their small skiff stranded on dry land a few minutes later as the water receded.

At the mouth of the fjord, a National Geographic Venture cruise ship carrying around 150 people was anchored in dense fog. The captain noted currents, white water, and a significant amount of ice and debris near the edges of the fjord. Because the jagged, shallow seabed near the fjord’s mouth acted like a speed bump that sapped the wave’s energy, people onboard the cruise ship came out of the event unscathed. “It was a miraculous kind of luck we had that nobody got hurt,” Fathian claims.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/how-a-melting-glacier-led-to-a-500-meter-high-tsunami/

Like any other manufactured chip, the wiring that connects the quantum dots is locked into place during the chip’s manufacture. Since different error correction schemes require different connections among the qubits, this forces us to commit to specific error-correction schemes during manufacturing. If a better scheme is developed after a chip is made, it’s probably not possible to switch to it. Less complex algorithms may benefit from simpler error-correction schemes that require less overhead, but we wouldn’t be able to switch schemes with these chips.

So, quantum dots appear to typify the trade-offs that we’re facing with quantum computing: it’s easier for us to make lots of quantum dots and all the hardware needed to manipulate them, but it’s seemingly not possible for them to benefit from the flexibility that other types of qubits have.

The whole point of this new paper is to show that this isn’t necessarily true.

Moveable dots

The new work was done in collaboration between researchers at Delft University of Technology and the startup QuTech. The team built a chip that had a linear array of quantum dots, and they started out with single electron spins at each end. Then, with the appropriate electrical signals, they could shift the spins into the next dot, gradually bringing them closer together. (And, by gradually, we mean a fraction of a second here, but relatively slowly compared to basic switching in electronics.)

Once the electrons were close enough, the spin wavefunctions overlapped, allowing the researchers to perform two-qubit gates on them. These manipulations can be used to entangle the two spins and are thus needed to build error-corrected logical qubits; these gates are also needed for performing calculations.

The researchers then confirmed that they could move the electrons back to their starting positions, after which measurements confirmed that their spins were entangled. And since quantum teleportation also requires a two-qubit gate, they showed that the process could be used for teleportation. Teleportation can enhance the sort of mobility provided by moving the qubits around, since it can be used to move states around after the qubits have been widely separated.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/manufacturing-qubits-that-can-move/

Engineer Jaakko Karras inspects a next-generation Mars helicopter rotor blade prior to testing it at supersonic speeds in the 25-foot Space Simulator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in November 2025.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The first series of tests used a three-bladed rotor design that could be flown on missions after SkyFall. A second test campaign used the actual two-bladed design that will fly on SkyFall. These blades are slightly longer, so they reached the same supersonic speed at a lower rpm. The faster spin resulted in a 30 percent boost in lift capability.

The team pushed rotor tip speeds to Mach 1.08, boosting the Mars vehicle’s lift capability by 30 percent. This breakthrough allows future missions to support heavier scientific payloads, including advanced sensors and larger batteries for extended flight.

“We thought we’d be lucky to hit Mach 1.05, and we reached Mach 1.08 on our last runs. We’re still digging into the data, and there may be even more thrust on the table. These next-gen helicopters are going to be amazing,” said Shannah Withrow-Maser, an aerodynamicist from NASA’s Ames Research Center.

At the same time that engineers are preparing to send more helicopters to Mars, NASA is working on a more massive rotorcraft named Dragonfly destined for Saturn’s moon Titan. Dragonfly will weigh nearly a ton, but flying on more distant Titan poses fewer challenges than on Mars because its atmosphere is thicker than Earth’s.

The only payloads on the Ingenuity helicopter were two cameras: a black-and-white imager for navigation and a higher-resolution color camera. Its longest flight in 2022 covered less than a half-mile and lasted 161 seconds. The aircraft had to land and recharge its batteries using solar arrays, and it used the nearby Perseverance rover as a base station to communicate with ground teams on Earth.

The SkyFall mission won’t have a rover nearby. The helicopters will have to communicate with mission controllers through orbiting relay satellites or a direct-to-Earth link. Future rotorcraft will use larger batteries to enable longer flights. Scientists would like to mount more sophisticated instruments on Mars helicopters to search for things like ice in the Martian soil. All of this will require heavier vehicles.

Breaking the sound barrier without breaking hardware moves us a step closer to fully exploiting this new mode of planetary exploration.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/engineers-at-nasas-jet-propulsion-lab-make-a-breakthrough-in-rotor-technology/

The actual shipwrecks of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror were not found until 2014 and 2016, respectively. Thanks to the cold water temperature, lack of natural light, and the layers of silt covering many of the artifacts, the ship and its contents were in remarkably good condition. Even some of the windowpanes were still intact. The first underwater images and footage showing the ships’ exteriors and interiors were released in 2019.

It’s in the DNA

2D forensic facial reconstruction of David Young, Boy 1st Class from the HMS Erebus, who died at Erebus Bay.

Credit: Diana Trepkov

For several years, scientists have been conducting DNA research to identify the remains found at these sites by comparing DNA profiles of the remains with samples taken from descendants of the expedition members. Some 46 archaeological samples (bone, tooth, or hair) from Franklin expedition-related sites on King William Island have been genetically profiled and compared to cheek swab samples from 25 descendant donors. Most did not match, but in 2021, they identified one of those bodies as chief engineer John Gregory, who worked on the Erebus.

By 2024, the team had added four more descendant donors—one related to Fitzjames (technically a second cousin five times removed through the captain’s great-grandfather). That same year, DNA analysis revealed that a tooth recovered from a mandible at one of the relevant archaeological sites was that of Captain James Fitzjames of the HMS Erebus. His remains showed clear signs of cannibalism, confirming early Inuit reports of desperate crew members resorting to eating their dead.

We can now add three more crew members identified through their DNA. As before, to make the identifications, the team extracted DNA from archaeological samples and compared it with mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA from descendants. These included a molar and humerus shaft from NgLj-3; two molars, a premolar, and a temporal cranium bone from NgLj-2; and a sample taken from a left humerus found in 2018 at NgLj-1. The researchers were able to identify three individuals: William Orren, able seaman; David Young, boy 1st class; and John Bridgens, subordinate officers’ steward. All served on the HMS Erebus, and they all died at Erebus Bay.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/dna-identifies-four-more-crew-members-of-doomed-franklin-expedition/

Pollen isn’t the only allergen impacted by climate change. Increased humidity, heat, and flooding also create ideal conditions for mold to flourish in places where it was previously rare.

That can cause mold allergies to flare up, especially in the aftermath of climate-driven disasters like hurricanes, or for patients living in older buildings, basement units, or other homes without proper ventilation, Tummala said.

Pollen piles on

For many people, seasonal allergies are mainly a nuisance: itchy eyes, runny noses, and a seemingly never-ending cold. But pollen also messes with sleep, ups the risk of sinus infections, causes people to miss school and work, and can pose more serious dangers. A 2024 study based in Texas found that allergies can account for a significant portion of emergency department visits for asthma attacks during periods of high pollen counts.

People with allergies are also sensitive to other respiratory triggers, such as heat waves and increased air pollution, Tummala said.

On days with heavy wildfire smoke from Canada, Tummala said her patients experience the miserable effects of multiple respiratory stressors. During one such period last summer, a patient told her they were afraid to go outside.

“That’s just really sad,” Tummala said. “That’s not how you should live your life.”

Drought is another climate-intensified problem. Rain typically washes pollen out of the air. Without it, the fine powder can blow around for weeks without relief, Wees said.

For Tummala, the connection between seasonal allergies and growing climate hazards further illustrates the already pressing need for action to mitigate global warming.

“It’s a modifiable risk factor,” she said. “Climate change is something we can do something about.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/how-climate-change-makes-your-allergies-worse/

The bottom line: Astronauts likely won’t exceed Artemis II’s distance from Earth on most lunar landing missions, but it’s conceivable that on some occasions, circumstances will align to propel a crew a little beyond the 252,756-mile mark. The sure bet will come when someone finally takes aim at Mars.

“Big disappointment”

Haise, the only Apollo 13 astronaut still living, didn’t care much for the record he and his crewmates set in 1970. It was a consolation prize, of sorts, for Haise. You probably know the story of Apollo 13’s aborted lunar landing and the around-the-clock, high-stakes effort to bring the crew home.

Still, among the more than 100 billion people who have walked the Earth in human history, the Artemis II astronauts have ventured farther from the cradle than anyone else. Sure, it’s not walking on the Moon, but it’s something more than a piece of trivia.

Haise, 92, spoke with Ars as Artemis II made its way back to Earth earlier this month. We present our conversation below, lightly edited for clarity.

Ars: How closely have you followed the Artemis II mission?

Fred Haise: Not real close. Today, I have not seen anything. I just got home from my great-grandson’s baseball game. I noticed, from their projected flight plan, they’re past the Moon, sort of on their cruise back toward Earth for the reentry. I’ve seen the pictures they’ve shot, which are excellent. They have better cameras and better equipment than we had on Apollo, because it really looks like they got much higher-resolution pictures than we were able to from that altitude.

Ars: I presume this all brings back some memories for you.

Haise: Vaguely. When they splash down Friday, if you go to the next day, Saturday, the 11th, that’s when I launched, 56 years ago. So, yes, I’ve lived several lifetimes, the Shuttle program, then in the business world. It was a long time ago.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/artemis-ii-broke-fred-haises-distance-record-but-he-is-happy-to-pass-it-on/