Month: June 2022

Enlarge / Reading science news can get people to accept climate science, but the effect is brief. (credit: Getty Images)

For decades, the scientific community has been nearly unanimous: Climate change is real, it's our doing, and its consequences are likely to be severe. Yet even as it gets more difficult to avoid some of its effects, poll after poll shows that the public hasn't gotten the message. There's very little recognition of how strong the scientific consensus is, and there is a lot of uncertainty about whether it's our doing—and none of the polling numbers seem to shift very quickly.

Over these same decades, there have been plenty of studies looking at why this might be. Many of them have found ways to shift the opinions of study subjects—methods that have undoubtedly been adopted by communications professionals. Yet the poll numbers have remained stubborn. Misinformation campaigns and political polarization have both been blamed, but the evidence for these factors making a difference is far from clear.

A new study offers an additional hint as to why. While polarization and misinformation both play roles in how the public interprets climate science, the biggest problem may be that the public has a very short memory, and anything people learn about climate science tends to be forgotten by a week later.

Next year's Final Fantasy XVI aims to be the first mainline, numbered game in the franchise to receive an M (for Mature) rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board. That's according to producer Naoki Yoshida, who told GameSpot in a recent interview that the higher age rating is needed to tell a story with "difficult adult themes."

Responding to a question about "implied nudity" in a recent trailer for the game, Yoshida complained a bit about age ratings that he sees as "becom[ing] more and more restrictive recently regarding what can or cannot be shown." While acknowledging that those ratings are important to protect younger players, Yoshida said a lower age rating can be "somewhat of a hindrance" to storytelling.

"You find yourself changing things that you wanted to do in the game based on that rating," Yoshida said. "You wanted to show something, but because you have this certain rating that you need to go to—you need to move the camera away. And that ends up making the entire experience feel a little bit cheaper."

Enlarge / A graphic representation of the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment in orbit near the Moon. (credit: NASA)

NASA and Rocket Lab are gearing up to fly a novel mission to lunar orbit that in many ways serves as the vanguard of what is to come as the space agency and US companies ramp up exploration and development of the Moon.

The space agency is financially supporting the privately built satellite, named CAPSTONE, with a $13.7 million grant. It is scheduled to launch on an Electron rocket as early as Saturday from New Zealand. Developed by a Colorado-based company named Advanced Space, the spacecraft itself is modestly sized, just a 12U cubesat with a mass of around 25 kg. It could fit comfortably inside a mini-refrigerator.

The mission's scientific aims are also modest—primarily, the demonstration of a new system of autonomous navigation around and near the Moon. This Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System, or CAPS, is important because there is a lack of fixed tracking assets near the Moon, especially as the cislunar environment becomes more crowded during the coming decade.