Arstechnica

Netflix has a mixed track record when it comes to adapting beloved Japanese anime series into live action formats. I liked 2021's Cowboy Bebop more than most diehard fans—just for the pitch-perfect casting alone, despite the fact that the fight choreography left a lot to be desired. It was certainly better than the live-action versions of Fullmetal Alchemist (another of my personal anime faves), but Netflix opted not to renew Cowboy Bebop. So we'll never know if it would have worked out its issues, although the cameo appearance tacked onto the finale of a particularly grating version of Radical Ed didn't bode well.

Given that checkered history, one could be forgiven for feelings of trepidation about the streaming platform's forthcoming live-action series adaptation of One Piece, a hugely popular manga and anime series created by Eiichiro Oda. Who doesn't love pirates? The first trailer debuted at San Diego Comic-Con, and honestly, the live-action series looks great. Then again, so did the trailers for Cowboy Bebop.

The original One Piece manga debuted in 1997, following the adventures of one Monkey D. Luffy, who heads a motley crew called the Straw Hat Pirates. There's swordsman Roronoa Zoro, thief and navigator Nami, sniper and compulsive liar Usopp, and a cook named Sanji. They're searching for the legendary One Piece, a mythical treasure that would make anyone who possesses it King of the Pirates. Monkey wants to be the Pirate King, but so do a host of other pirates with their own ships and crews.

Enlarge / Water and sediment pour off the melting margin of the Greenland ice sheet. (credit: Jason Edwards/Getty Images)

About 400,000 years ago, large parts of Greenland were ice-free. Scrubby tundra basked in the Sun’s rays on the island’s northwest highlands. Evidence suggests that a forest of spruce trees, buzzing with insects, covered the southern part of Greenland. Global sea level was much higher then, between 20 and 40 feet above today’s levels. Around the world, land that today is home to hundreds of millions of people was under water.

Scientists have known for awhile that the Greenland ice sheet had mostly disappeared at some point in the past million years, but not precisely when.

In a new study in the journal Science, we determined the date, using frozen soil extracted during the Cold War from beneath a nearly mile-thick section of the Greenland ice sheet.

Enlarge / Artist's illustration of Amazon's Kuiper satellite processing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. (credit: Amazon)

Within a few years, Amazon hopes to be building and launching up to 80 satellites per month to populate the company's Kuiper constellation, a $10 billion network that is similar to fleets already operated by SpaceX and OneWeb providing Internet connectivity around the world.

In the next six months, Amazon plans to begin production of operational Kuiper satellites at a new 172,000-square-foot factory in Kirkland, Washington. On Friday, officials from Amazon and the Florida government announced that a 100,000-square-foot facility under construction at NASA's Kennedy Space Center will serve as a satellite processing facility dedicated to the Kuiper program.

Inside this facility near the old space shuttle landing strip, engineers will mount Kuiper satellites onto huge orbital deployer mechanisms standing several stories tall, then encapsulate the structure inside the nose cones of their rockets. The fully integrated payload compartments will then move out to launch pads operated by United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin—the space company established by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a few miles away.