September 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
PSR J1637-4642's glitch count rests on 166 arrival times
Three glitches turned up in PSR J1637-4642 after 15.5 years of Parkes timing, two of them hundreds of times smaller than the first. The number that carries the result is the 166 usable arrival times behind it.
The answer to Leipzig has nine cities and a delivery date
Germany's answer to the drone at Leipzig has moved from closing two buildings to building a defence. Every part of that defence — police units in nine cities, an operator's authority to intervene, a national Cyberdome — arrives with a delivery date, and Lithuania's contract dates the same shift to the year.
The blockade now counts about 90 redirected ships, and Centcom has moved to sinking tankers
A month ago the counts Centcom published read 55 redirected, 3 disabled and 2 boarded. The number is now about 90, the disabling has become sinking, and the pressure has moved from the waterway to the barrels Iran cannot sell.
The Zaporizhzhia truce is a work order; the pause over the capitals is only a calendar
Two temporary pauses were arranged around the same war this week. The ceasefire at the Zaporizhzhia plant names a power line, a demining step and the technicians who will do the work. The pledge covering Kyiv and Moscow names three days and puts no task on anyone.
Valves ended the first flight, and valves paced Spectrum's second
Isar Aerospace reached orbit on Spectrum's second attempt. Reading the failure report alongside the reasons given for each stand-down shows where the engineering work actually sat, and what the company has still not demonstrated.
What does Lean certify when the claim is 11 days or 111 dollars?
Two Lean 4 results each carry a number the proof checker never examined: 11 days in one, 111 dollars in the other. The checker certifies the proof object in front of it. The claim attached to that object needs evidence of its own, and across these two cases that evidence is not the same.
AF3-ReD steers AlphaFold3 toward multiple protein conformations
AF3-ReD applies a repulsive bias against structures found in earlier AlphaFold3 prediction rounds, steering diffusion sampling into new regions. The method by Jun Ohnuki and Kei-ichi Okazaki can search for open, closed and intermediate protein conformations without retraining the model. Its structural diversity does not replace experimental validation or establish the true thermodynamic distribution of protein states.
AfD tops 44% in Saxony-Anhalt as its path to power hinges on the threshold
Initial projections put the AfD above 44% in Saxony-Anhalt and the CDU on 18.4%, with estimated turnout at 78%. Despite its commanding lead, whether the AfD secures an outright majority and forms the state government depends on which smaller parties clear the 5% threshold. No far-right party has governed a German state since World War II.
An hour of rain stalls Gurugram traffic as flooding spreads across key Delhi roads
An hour of intense rain dropped 36 mm on Gurugram's Sarhaul Border–Rajiv Chowk corridor and brought traffic to a standstill. In Delhi, flooding covered the NH-48 stretch between the airport and Dhaula Kuan as well as the Palam airport tunnel. Authorities warned motorists away from inundated underpasses, deployed pumps and diverted traffic through Aya Nagar and the Dwarka Expressway.
Anak Krakatau keeps erupting as the crater exclusion zone remains in place
Anak Krakatau was still erupting at midday on September 5, with an exclusion zone extending 3 kilometres around the crater. Observer Muhammad Dika Nurzaman described the latest eruptions as the year’s most intense and said some monitoring instruments may have been damaged. Indonesian authorities are investigating the source of booms heard across nearby regions. The volcano remained at alert Level III; the connection between those sounds and the eruption has not yet been confirmed.