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Tibetan people can live at altitudes above 4,000 metres where many humans struggle with thin air, and one of the genetic tricks that helps them do it did not arise in Tibetans alone: a 2014 Nature study found that a key high-altitude variant near EPAS1 was inherited from Denisovans, an extinct group of archaic humans who interbred with our ancestors.
Tibetans have lived for thousands of years on a plateau that averages above 3,500 metres, with many communities settled higher than 4,000, in air thin enough to leave most lowland visitors short of breath and prone to altitude sickness.
Space Industry
Researchers at the University of California Riverside found in May 2026 that living systems distribute their amino acids more evenly than non-living chemistry does — a statistical pattern subtle enough that it went unnoticed for decades and powerful enough to work on data already being collected by current space missions
A study published in May in Nature Astronomy proposes a way to separate biological chemistry from non-biological chemistry that does not depend on finding any particular molecule.
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Mind & Meaning
The psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes — and what frontier life teaches us about being human.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station can see flashes of light even with their eyes closed — not from light entering the eye, but from high-energy space particles passing through their body and triggering the retina or visual pathway directly.
Tibetan people can live at altitudes above 4,000 metres where many humans struggle with thin air, and one of the genetic tricks that helps them do it did not arise in Tibetans alone: a 2014 Nature study found that a key high-altitude variant near EPAS1 was inherited from Denisovans, an extinct group of archaic humans who interbred with our ancestors.
Researchers at the University of California Riverside found in May 2026 that living systems distribute their amino acids more evenly than non-living chemistry does — a statistical pattern subtle enough that it went unnoticed for decades and powerful enough to work on data already being collected by current space missions
Europa’s surface is almost too clean. In a Solar System full of impactors, an icy moon should accumulate scars for billions of years — yet Europa has very few. The simplest explanation is also the strangest: the surface we see is young, constantly rewritten by forces rising from beneath the ice.
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Science
Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe.
A Russian cosmonaut named Sergei Krikalev has physically travelled further into the future than almost any other human being in history — across six spaceflights and 803 cumulative days at orbital velocity, Einstein's theory of special relativity has made him approximately 0.02 seconds younger than other people his age
Webb found a planet stretched into a lemon shape around a pulsar, with an atmosphere of carbon that seems to rule out every way we know of forming it
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station can see flashes of light even with their eyes closed — not from light entering the eye, but from high-energy space particles passing through their body and triggering the retina or visual pathway directly.
Tibetan people can live at altitudes above 4,000 metres where many humans struggle with thin air, and one of the genetic tricks that helps them do it did not arise in Tibetans alone: a 2014 Nature study found that a key high-altitude variant near EPAS1 was inherited from Denisovans, an extinct group of archaic humans who interbred with our ancestors.
About Space Daily
Space, science, and the human side of the frontier. Since 1995.
Space Daily is an independent publication covering three connected beats: the space industry, the science behind it, and the psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes. Founded in Tokyo in 1995, we’ve built a thirty-year archive of rigorous reporting on the people, missions, and ideas pushing humanity outward — and on the human dynamics shaped by frontier life. The same ambitions, pressures, and patterns of mind that drive humanity to the stars also shape how we live on Earth. We employ modern AI technologies to support our editorial workflows; every published piece is editorially directed and reviewed.
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