The auroras were photographed during a series of Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph far-ultraviolet-light observations taking place as NASA’s Juno spacecraft approaches and enters into orbit around Jupiter.NASA, ESA, and J. Nichols /University of Leicester

Since NASA’s Juno mission began orbiting Jupiter and sending data back to Earth last July, Juno scientists have all sounded pretty alike: They are very excited, and very confused.

“Almost nothing is as we anticipated,” Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton told WIRED in May. “But it’s exciting that Jupiter is so different than we assumed.”

“The data’s telling us our ideas are all wrong,” says Randy Gladstone, lead investigator of Juno’s ultraviolet spectrograph. “But that’s fun.”

“It’s a real mystery,” says Barry Mauk, lead investigator of Juno’s Jupiter energetic particle detector instrument (yes, they call it Jedi). “It’s thrilling to be part of this mission.”

What exactly is so baffling and invigorating about Jupiter? The simple answer is everything: Juno’s data has defied conventional scientific wisdom with everything from the color of its poles to the 

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Yuan-denominated gold futures have been traded on the Shanghai Gold Exchange since April 2016 as part of the country’s effort to reduce the pricing power of the U.S. dollar.
Credit: Imaginechina/AP

DENPASAR, INDONESIA — China is expected shortly to launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold in what analysts say could be a game-changer for the industry.

China’s move will allow exporters such as Russia and Iran to circumvent U.S. sanctions by trading in yuan. To further entice trade, China says the yuan will be fully convertible into gold on exchanges in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

“The rules of the global oil game may begin to change enormously,” said Luke Gromen, founder of U.S.-based macroeconomic research company FFTT.

The Shanghai International […]

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Sinclair Broadcast Group, the owner of the largest chain of television stations in the nation, in Hunt Valley, Maryland.
Credit: William Thomas Cain

Gather around, everyone, and let me tell you a story about rules. And greed and hypocrisy.

Once upon a time in America, there was something called the Fairness Doctrine.

Approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1949, this rule insisted that because the airwaves belong to all of us, every TV and radio broadcast licensee must “devote a reasonable portion of broadcast time to the discussion and consideration of controversial issues of public importance,” and allow “the expression of contrasting viewpoints.”

Translation: When you present points of view from the right on your station, it behooves you to also present views from the left — and others — so that everyone’s opinion gets a fair shake.

Members of the media raise their hands in the White House press briefing room to be called on.
Credit: AP/Andrew Harnik

The signs started popping up on the margins of social media as far back as 2010: Like-minded conspiracy theories spread by far-right sites like InfoWars and Russian government-controlled media like RT. Tweets that accused mainstream media organizations of reporting “fake news.” And later, social media networks that appeared to follow both white nationalist and Wikileaks-related accounts.

Initially, University of Washington professor and researcher Kate Starbird was studying how rumors spread on social media after disasters; they typically began with high volume after a crisis and then dissipated as news reports confirmed what happened. Then, in 2013, sorting through data after the Boston Marathon bombings, Starbird and her students noticed another kind of rumor—a kind that gained traction and volume over a longer period of time, in spite of facts confirmed in news reports. These longer-lasting rumors often intersected with politicized content. In the sustained chatter about the Boston terrorist attack, they noticed […]

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Monarch butterflies in their annual migration

Monarch butterflies west of the Rocky Mountains are teetering on the edge of extinction, with the number wintering in California down more than 90 percent from the 1980s, researchers said in a study published on Thursday.

While much is known about the black-and-orange winged insects’ decadeslong population decline in the eastern United States, scientists have been unable to track the western variety accurately until the recent development of new statistical models.

The new study, published in the scientific journal Biological Conservation, was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is considering giving monarch butterflies Endangered Species Act protections.

Monarchs, which depend on a diminishing supply of milkweed plants for reproduction and food, are arguably the most popular of North America’s butterflies and have a huge international following among students and scientists. However, the western population has fallen to about 300,000 from 10 million less than four decades ago.

“If the population continues to decline at that rate, we will lose migratory monarchs in the western […]

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