Numlock News: November 18, 2025 • Suez, Satellites, Surrendur

Nov 18, 2025

By Walt Hickey

Thirty Meter Telescope

The Thirty Meter Telescope is one of two American land-based telescope initiatives. The other is the Giant Magellan Telescope. Since 2014, protestors have stymied the TMT’s attempts to begin construction on Mauna Kea — an astronomically remarkable spot for this kind of instrument since it sits at 4,050 meters and has incredibly light conditions. Progress has been slow, and earlier this year, the National Science Foundation decided to support only one telescope: the Giant Magellan Telescope. The Foundation chose not to back the US$4 billion TMT. This summer, though, an intriguing offer came from Spain, which proposed 400 million euros in exchange for joining the project, provided it was built on the Spanish island of La Palma. This past week, TMT staff went to Madrid to hash out the details. Spain is already home to the largest single-aperture telescope in the world and is no stranger to Big Astronomy. However, at only 2250 meters, La Palma is a less ideal site than Mauna Kea.

Daniel Clery, Science

Game Awards

Nominations for The Game Awards dropped on Monday, with “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” racking up 12 nominations. These include one for Game of the Year and three separate nominations for best performance. That is the most nominations achieved by one game in the decade-long history of the award show. Other nominees for the top prize include “Death Stranding 2: On The Beach,” “Donkey Kong Bananza, Hades II,” “Hollow Knight: Silksong” and “Kingdom Come: Deliverance.”

Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter

Giving Up

A new study published in Nature Human Behavior carried out a meta-analysis of 235 studies (featuring 1,400 findings from various disciplines) to understand how readjusting life goals made people happier. The study found that working toward unachievable goals could have a negative impact on well-being, which presents a problem for those of us who must imagine Sisyphus happy. Overall, the study found that giving up on unattainable goals led to reduced stress, anxiety and depression, despite everything that anime has taught us.

Samuel Jeremic, Curtin University

Suez

In October, 229 vessels returned to the Suez Canal, the highest monthly rate since the start of the Houthi maritime crisis in November 2023. Many of those ships have spent years rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope as vessel traffic fell 60 percent while shipping firms sought to evade violence from Houthi rebels. These ships are returning to the Suez following the Houthis’ announcement of suspending maritime operations in the Red Sea. From July to October 2025, 4,405 vessels transited the canal with a total tonnage of 185 million tons. The recovery of the Suez route still depends on a few remaining obstacles, specifically the stubbornly high marine insurance costs for vessels in the region.

Mike Schuler, gCaptain

Travel

AAA projects that 81.8 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home for Thanksgiving this year, a new record. Last year, that number came in at 80 million people. All told, most will travel by car — 73 million of them — and 6 million people will fly, with another 2.5 million traveling by bus, train or boat, which is up 8.5 percent year over year.

Bailey Schulz, Skift

Satellites

The chance that a flight gets hit by space junk is very, very small. On average, three pieces of old space equipment fall to Earth every day, according to the European Space Agency. However, that average is related to the number of satellites at the end of their lives. For the past few years, we have put a lot of satellites —12,900 today, perhaps 100,000 within the decade — that will eventually be at the end of their lives. We can expect the “three re-entries per day” number to scale up sharply. According to the Federal Aviation Administration’s early estimates, the likelihood that one plane per year will be disasterously struck by space debris is projected to rise to 7 in 10,000 by 2035.

Tereza Pultarova, MIT Technology Review

Concord Delta

Last year, the team-based shooter game “Concord” came out and bombed in a way that very few games are capable of bombing. After selling an estimated 25,000 copies across PC and PS5, Sony simply shut down the servers after just two weeks. Sony offered a full refund for the purchase, but some dedicated fans have refused to give up. They’ve attempted to revive the game with the “Concord Delta” project, which reverse-engineered a defunct server to get a playable version of the game running over the weekend. Access requires a legit PC copy of the game, but Sony still issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the fan server effort has closed access to new players.

Kyle Orland, Ars Technica

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