Numlock News: June 8, 2026 • Mandalorian, Methalox, GPS

Jun 08, 2026

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

Mandalorian

Scary Movie made $55 million domestically in its opening weekend, beating out fellow newcomer Masters of the Universe, which made $29.3 million and came in at No. 2. This result is perhaps illustrative of what happens when you mistime your nostalgic cash-in, given that Scary Movie is the latest film in a 25-year-old franchise while Masters of the Universe is the latest from a 44-year-old franchise. By all rights, if you were trying to sell a $200 million movie to the grown-up children who watched your show (and their kids), you should have released Masters of the Universe about 20 years ago. Meanwhile, Backrooms made 2.5 times as much money as a Star Wars movie in its third weekend, if you’re wondering about the overall health of the Nostalgia Industrial Complex.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

A Different Physics Question Than Originally Planned

Last week, a New Glenn rocket from Blue Origin exploded at Cape Canaveral, Florida. While it’s going to take some time before the full analysis of the explosion is complete, the blast holds important data for an otherwise small data set of what happens when a methane/liquid oxygen (methalox) rocket explodes. After all, the only rocket larger than New Glenn to explode with a full load of fuel on or near its launch pad is a Soviet N1 rocket from 1969. For the time being, military officials are treating methalox rockets with 100 percent TNT blast equivalency, which sets a wide keep-out zone around the rocket when it’s being fueled. The Blast Danger Area for last week’s test had a diameter of 7,174 feet, and an average distance of 3,587 feet from the pad. The furthest debris found so far was half a mile away.

Stephen Clark, Ars Technica

Protein

A new blog post has sent researchers who study cancer and aging into a tizzy, following a molecular biologist’s discovery that hundreds of papers seemed to list the wrong antibody test. It comes down to confusion between antibodies recognizing p16INK4a — a tumor-suppressing protein — and antibodies recognizing p16-ARC, which shapes molecular skeletons, both of which are available to purchase from antibody sellers like Thermo Fisher Scientific. It’s not clear whether the papers contain a typo, whether the wrong antibodies were ordered in the first place or whether it’s a misprint, but the analysis checked the antibody product codes listed in 334 studies and found that in 312 of them, researchers used p16-ARC to look for p16INK4a, the wrong molecule.

Mitch Leslie, Science

El Niño

In a move to prepare for what could be a potentially gnarly El Niño season, the Panama Canal Authority is cutting the maximum authorized draft for vessels by half a foot, from 50 feet to 49.5 feet tropical fresh water. This is the first canal restriction this year, and while it’s nowhere near draft restrictions implemented during the 2023-24 drought, it’s a sign that canal administrators aren’t taking chances with another weather event that could (further) disrupt global shipping. Traffic through the canal year-to-date is up eight percent year over year, averaging 38 vessels per day, with the five weeks ending mid-May seeing transits up 16 percent year over year as demand for U.S. crude oil spiked.

Mike Schuler, gCaptain

Nothing New

Pop culture media derived from franchises is high across a number of different formats, with 35 percent of films released wide last year being part of larger franchises, up 60 percent compared to 1997, when less than 20 percent were. Songs on the Hot 100 are staying in the top 10 for 16 weeks longer than they did in 1959, and when it comes to video games, novelty among the top games are the exception. The last time there was more than one game not from a franchise in the Circana annual top 10 was 2014.

Amanda Shendruk, Not-Ship

Numbers Station

A fascinating article in Inside GNSS argues the United States Military, which operates the Global Positioning System, has used the system to quietly broadcast codes for its encryption network over a 176-bit GPS sequence labelled “Subframe 4, Page 17,” essentially openly piggybacking on GPS to deliver cryptographic keys. This conclusion resulted from analysis of open-archive Global Navigation Satellite System recordings maintained by the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences — 12 million observations of sequence “Subframe 4, Page 17,” which produced 3,994 unique 176-bit messages.

Becky Ferreira, 404 Media

Bedtime

A new study analyzing the cellphone use of adolescents found that on nights when teenagers used their smartphone for an additional 20 minutes in the hour before bedtime, they had eight to nine more minutes of late night use later that night. This makes sense; texts or posts that one sends before bed invite replies that must, by definition, come somewhat later. In general, pre-bedtime smartphone use was linked to greater late-night use; those in the study who averaged 20 minutes of pre-bedtime phone use had between 37 and 41 minutes of late night use, on average.

Hannah Miller, American Academy of Sleep Medicine

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