35 articles from SUNDAY 1.9.2019

What an urban spaceman tells us about the human condition

An unusual astronaut is at the centre of a new exhibition of art and scientific artefacts designed to make us think about everything from our personal lives to the fate of humanity itself“It’s hard to think of a greater challenge to our future health than environmental breakdown,” says Clare Barlow, project curator of Wellcome Collection’s newest gallery. Opening on Thursday 5 September,...

Forget Russia: America Nearly Built Its Own 'Skyfall' Nuclear Powered Cruise Missile

After days of speculation by Western analysts that a deadly accident on August 8 that briefly spiked radiation levels in northwestern Russia was tied to tests of an exotic nuclear-powered “Skyfall” nuclear-powered cruise missile, Russian sources confirmed to the New York Times the explosion of a “small nuclear reactor.”While there’s a tactical rationale behind Russia’s development of a...

Malcolm Gladwell: ‘I’m just trying to get people to take psychology seriously’

The Canadian writer made his name bringing intellectual sparkle to everyday subjects, and his new book - about how strangers interact with each other - is no exceptionIn the flesh, Malcolm Gladwell is exactly as I imagined him to be: engaging, polite, dauntingly cerebral and supremely self-assured in that way that the exceptionally gifted often are. At 55, there is still something of the sporty,...

The Observer view on Donald Trump’s plans to militarise space | Observer editorial

Countries must join forces and sign a peace treaty or space will become a war-fighting domainThe thought of Donald Trump as space commander-in-chief, whizzing around the Milky Way, zapping alien invaders and conquering new worlds, is both comical and terrifying. Before they began exchanging love letters, the US president ridiculed his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, as “little rocket...