Near Dark

Roughly 85% of the matter in the universe has never been directly detected, as it does not interact with standard scientific instruments. UCLA astrophysicist Alvine Kamaha and the LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration are working to change that, operating a detector nearly 1.6 kilometres underground in South Dakota to catch rare particle interactions from dark matter.

A Quebec coroner has concluded that a trailer detached from a trucker's vehicle was practically invisible, in the death of Maxime Rouillard, who stopped to help in darkness near Saint-Majorique. Separately, French reports cover a man building a home on a rusty trailer for about 13,000 euros, and a haulage firm fined 26,000 euros on a Normandy motorway.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured a HiRISE image showing dark sand dunes sweeping across the floor of Schaeberle Crater. The Seti Institute highlighted the picture, noting the crater spans nearly 159 kilometers in Mars' southern hemisphere and that its floor preserves evidence of very different past environmental conditions on the red planet.

A24 is developing a television series based on 'Near Dark', Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 vampire western that became a cult classic. News of the project, reported exclusively by entertainment outlets, has prompted discussion among horror fans about how the stylish, gritty film will translate to the small screen and what the studio's involvement means for the property.

Roughly 85% of the matter in the universe has never been directly detected, a missing mass known as dark matter. UCLA astrophysicist Alvine Kamaha and the LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration are working to change that, operating a detector nearly 1.6 kilometres underground in South Dakota to catch rare particle interactions. The experiment is one of the leading efforts to observe dark matter particles directly for the first time.

Maritime tracking data from September 29 shows 17 vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz over 24 hours, with 11 outbound and 6 inbound. Seven of them, all tankers, switched off their transponders and travelled "dark," and one was flagged as high risk. The pattern is drawing attention given the strait's central role in global oil shipments.

A Colorado electrical substation lost power twice in two days after two squirrels contacted unprotected equipment. Nearly all of the facility's components were fitted with wildlife guards, but the animals reached the parts that were not covered. The first outage cut electricity to 4,400 customers for more than two hours; the second affected 1,300 customers for about 40 minutes.

A newly developed deep-sea robot is designed to dive nearly 15,000 feet, allowing researchers to explore and study ocean regions far beyond the reach of most equipment. The machine is intended for ocean exploration tasks at depths where pressure and darkness make human operations impossible.