Information on the web, such as scientific publications and Wikipedia, often surpasses users' reading level. To help address this, we used a self-refinement approach to develop a LLM capability for minimally lossy text simplification. To validate our approach, we conducted a randomized study involving 4563 participants and 31 texts spanning 6 broad subject areas: PubMed (biomedical scientific articles), biology, law, finance, literature/philosophy, and aerospace/computer science. Participants were randomized to viewing original or simplified texts in a subject area, and answered multiple-choice questions (MCQs) that tested their comprehension of the text. The participants were also asked to provide qualitative feedback such as task difficulty. Our results indicate that participants who read the simplified text answered more MCQs correctly than their counterparts who read the original text (3.9% absolute increase, p<0.05). This gain was most striking with PubMed (14.6%), while more moderate gains were observed for finance (5.5%), aerospace/computer science (3.8%) domains, and legal (3.5%). Notably, the results were robust to whether participants could refer back to the text while answering MCQs. The absolute accuracy decreased by up to ~9% for both original and simplified setups where participants could not refer back to the text, but the ~4% overall improvement persisted. Finally, participants' self-reported perceived ease based on a simplified NASA Task Load Index was greater for those who read the simplified text (absolute change on a 5-point scale 0.33, p<0.05). This randomized study, involving an order of magnitude more participants than prior works, demonstrates the potential of LLMs to make complex information easier to understand. Our work aims to enable a broader audience to better learn and make use of expert knowledge available on the web, improving information accessibility.

Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission's loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA's longest-lived spacecraft. The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1's ability to send back telemetry data, such as measurements from the craft's science instruments or basic engineering information about how the probe was doing. As a result, the team has no insight into key parameters regarding the craft's propulsion, power, or control systems. "It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven't given up," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars.

If the Perseverance rover finds evidence for microbes on Mars, our self-esteem will not be affected since it is obvious that we are more intelligent than they are. But if the rover bumps into the wreckage of a spacecraft far more advanced than we ever produced, our ego will be challenged. Illusory superiority and unjustified hubris are deeply rooted in human nature. They led the Nazi regime during World War II to trigger the death of more than 70 million people or 3 percent of the world population in 1940--an order of magnitude more than the death toll caused so far by the coronavirus. The miniscule genetic differences that motivated Nazism would appear laughable in the presence of a far more advanced civilization.

There are many ways to think about alien, extraterrestrial life forms. Science-fiction writers do it all the time. Scientists, more interested in nonfiction, think about how to receive signals that real aliens might send, as well as what sort of signals we might send to "them." SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, is a real, ongoing project, with a real budget overseen by real researchers. Others partner with biochemists and evolutionary biologists to investigate how life might have begun on Earth and whether, and under what circumstances, it could also exist elsewhere in the universe. But not many scientists have gone beyond to speculate on what alien life might actually, seriously, genuinely be like. One exception is Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at Cambridge University, whose recent book, The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy, might remind readers of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Zoologist's Guide, though, is definitely science and not fiction.

An Astronomer has released our best and sharpest look to date at Comet Borisov, the second ever-known interstellar object to visit our solar system, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to capture the new image. The comet was travelling at around 110,000 miles per hour when University of California Los Angeles astronomer David Jewitt studied it on October 12, 2019, when it was 260 million miles away. The comet -- which is named after the Crimean astronomer who discovered it -- will pass within around 177,000 miles (285,000 kilometres) of the Earth in early December this year. It is trailing behind it a 100,000 mile-long tail of dust, which is released as the comet melts in the Sun's glare. After this, it will head back out towards interstellar space, passing Jupiter around the middle of 2020.

Budding astronauts can take a virtual space flight to the deepest depths of our galaxy, thanks to a stunning new interactive graphic produced by Nasa. The immersive 360 visualisation depicts the heart of the Milky Way, roughly 26,000 light years (150,000 trillion miles) away from Earth. It was created using data taken by satellites, which capture light that has managed to escape the monster black hole that lies in the middle of our spiral galaxy. Powerful winds of gas streaming from the surface of these stars are carrying some of their outer layers into interstellar space. The Galactic Centre visualisation is a 360 movie that immerses a viewer into a simulation of the centre of our galaxy.

When viewed on a cosmic scale, humanity lives on a tiny grain of sand floating in an unimaginably-deep ocean. Huge expanses of space separate even the closest stars, ensuring that, should any sufficiently intelligent life form want to spread across the galaxy, it would take a momentous effort to launch across the interstellar seas. As we look toward the stars, hoping that we may visit them some day, many would argue that interstellar travel is impossible. After all, the nearest-known star system is over 4 light-years away. Let's think about that for a moment: It takes light 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the sun's surface to our planet's atmosphere.