Numlock News: July 17, 2026 • Aurora, Amber, Odyssey

Jul 17, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Have a great weekend!

Northern Lights

Soon, a $65 million next-generation radar system called EISCAT_3D will go live in northern Scandinavia, enabling researchers to study auroras at a level of detail never before achievable. It will offer panoramic views of the ionosphere, and the timing couldn’t be better; barring any as yet unforeseen complications, the system will begin monitoring the Earth’s layer of electrically charged plasma just as we enter the tail end of the most active phase of the 11-year solar cycle. It’s been an exciting time in aurora studies, as online communities of aurora fans have been able to spot new aurora forms ranging from the string of mauve light termed STEVE to the rapidly moving green streaks termed the “Picket Fence.”

Richard Stone, Science

Amber

There’s a new record for the oldest chemically verified amber, a specimen that is 385 million years old, or 140 million years before the first dinosaurs. That beats out the previous mark for oldest amber, which was a 320-million-year-old sample from the late Carboniferous. The researchers were collecting bulk coal samples to study the fossilized plants of the Middle Devonian, and had found the amber by accident when they hit the coal with light from a UV flashlight. Overall, they extracted 241 amber pieces, mostly less than half a millimeter across, from about 10 kilograms of coal.

Paul Arnold, Phys.org

Unemployment

While the overall unemployment rate is at 4.2 percent, the long-term unemployment numbers are showing some warning signs. As it stands, people who were out of work for 27 weeks or more make up 27.3 percent of all unemployed people in the United States in June, which is up four percentage points from a year ago, and May saw the highest level of long-term unemployment since 2021, when the labor market was recovering from Covid-19’s reverberations.

Harriet Torry, The Wall Street Journal

Distinguished Competition

The revival of DC Comics sales has put it over Marvel Comics as the top publisher in the comic book direct market. DC hopped Marvel in the last quarter of 2025 after years as the second banana in the comic book industry, with sales buoyed by its Absolute Initiative that launched new, reimagined modern versions of its superheroes. DC had 31.9 percent of the market, Marvel had 28.3 percent, Image had 15.3 percent and no other publisher cracked four percent. In the same quarter of last year, Marvel was sitting pretty at 36.5 percent of the comic market to DC’s 25.5 percent.

Brigid Alverson, ICV2

T. rex

A new study published in Biology looked at baby Tyrannosaurus rex fossils and determined that they were likely born ready to run and feed themselves. Baby T. rex likely weighed less than five pounds and were about the size of a house cat. The study estimated that a T. rex laid 15 to 30 eggs per clutch, but that it’s entirely possible that clutches of 50 to 100 eggs existed. The study argues that this kind of dinosaur was a bit of a middle between reptiles (which lay lots of eggs and don’t really care for their babies) and birds (which lay comparatively fewer eggs and care for their young a lot).

Paul Arnold, Phys.org

Odyssey

The Christopher Nolan adaptation of The Odyssey is projected to open to $90 million to $100 million in North America, which would be the largest opening weekend of any Nolan movie since The Dark Knight Rises. That would be a terrific opening weekend for a project that is, technically speaking, based on an audiobook IP that had great word of mouth. It’s important to view the film as the auteur intended: at the largest screen available, having successfully smuggled a bunch of loukoumades and baklava past the ticket taker by stuffing them in the Trojan horse commemorative popcorn bucket.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Speed Limits

A new study published in Communications Sustainability found that by simply abiding by posted speed limits, drivers would save 6.7 million gallons of fuel, averting 57,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of taking 5.5 million passenger vehicles off the road. Furthermore, based on the data from 120 million vehicle trips, given an average daily driving distance of 28.6 miles, driving at or below the posted limit would have added just 54 more seconds of driving per day. In 43 percent of studied trips, there was at least one incident of speeding.

Alexa St. John, The Associated Press

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Numlock News is written each day by Walt Hickey. Email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Every post is entirely by a human; SEN corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. If you enjoy Numlock, tell a friend, word of mouth is the only way that independent publications like this one grow.

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