Skywatchers can spot all planets in the solar system during November, with Daylight Saving Time ending Nov. 1 giving earlier sunsets and more viewing time before bedtime. Mercury becomes easier to see after reaching western elongation on Nov. 20, while Venus grows more visible as it moves farther from the sun throughout the month. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn remain visible nightly, with Jupiter, Mars and the star Regulus forming a notable trio in the eastern sky.
cnet.com
· 2026-10-31
European crematoria, including one in Redditch, England, have been capturing waste heat from cremation furnaces and piping it to nearby facilities such as swimming pools. In Redditch, a heat exchanger captures heat from the crematorium's flue gases—already filtered to remove mercury vapor—and sends it via an underground water loop roughly 200 meters to the local pool, a system running since 2013 after initial public backlash in 2011.
wired.com
· 2026-10-30
Cecilia Berdichevsky, a Polish-born Argentine computer scientist, began working in 1961 on the country's first Ferranti Mercury computer, known as Clementina, at the University of Buenos Aires. She had trained in mathematics after a career as an accountant, encouraged by fellow computer scientist Rebeca Guber. Her academic career was disrupted by the 1966 Argentine coup, which led to the violent eviction of university staff known as the Night of the Long Batons.
en.wikipedia.org
· 2026-10-21
Inception Labs released Mercury 3, a text-diffusion large language model it says outperforms GPT-6 Luna and Claude Haiku 5.5 on various benchmarks while generating over 1,000 tokens per second. The model supports a 1-million-token context window, up from 260K in Mercury 2.5, and is priced at $0.20 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens, discounted 50% at launch. Early-access partners are reportedly using it for chat support, tutoring, data engineering, and web-browsing agents.
inceptionlabs.ai
· 2026-10-19
A 1936 control room built by Swedish firm Asean to manage electricity on the Southern Rail network survives in Woking, featuring an oval white-domed room with a central switchboard and ornate copper light fixtures. It operated until 1997, when a newer substation took over its functions, and is now Grade II listed, with offices in the building still in use.
darbiansphotography.com
· 2026-10-02
Skywatchers can spot every planet in the solar system at some point during October, according to CNET's monthly sky guide. Mercury's best viewing falls around Oct. 12 during its elongation, while Venus becomes visible after sunset only by Oct. 31. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus are visible on most or all nights throughout the month.
cnet.com
· 2026-09-29
Mercury 2.5, a text-only large language model with a 260k token context window, has been benchmarked at 770 tokens per second on Artificial Analysis's testing. It scored 12 on the Intelligence Index, below the median of 13, while using fewer tokens (35M vs a median 85M) to complete the evaluation. Pricing sits at $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens, close to category medians.
artificialanalysis.ai
· 2026-09-23
The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo probe separated from its propulsion module on September 3, completing the final phase before entering low orbit around Mercury. The mission, delayed nearly a year after a thruster malfunction forced a slower trajectory, has traveled roughly 9.9 billion kilometers using nine gravity-assist maneuvers around Earth, Venus and Mercury.
wired.com
· 2026-09-21
Researchers analyzing Mercury's surface features have found that the planet has been shrinking at a faster rate than earlier models suggested, as its interior cools and contracts. The findings come from renewed analysis of geological formations like fault scarps that record the planet's contraction over billions of years.
nature.com
· 2026-09-17
German Aerospace Center researchers report that Mercury's diameter has contracted by up to 14.5 miles since its formation, 10 to 30 percent more than earlier estimates suggested. The team says debris from impact craters had masked the true extent of this shrinkage, which stems from the planet gradually losing internal heat.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-14
Researchers analyzing data from NASA's Messenger spacecraft now estimate Mercury has contracted up to 14 miles in diameter as its interior cooled over billions of years, roughly 30% more shrinkage than previously calculated. The findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggest the planet's cratered, debris-strewn surface had obscured the true scale of this shrinkage.
science.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-12
Researchers recalculated how much Mercury's radius has contracted over its history and found the planet has shrunk 10% to 30% more than earlier studies indicated. The updated figures come from reassessing surface features like fault scarps that record the planet's cooling and contraction over billions of years.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-09-10
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