Technologies

First moon samples in over 40 years may alter lunar history

«Our current views need readjustment» about how long our beloved white globe remained warm and volcanically active, says a researcher.

In late 2020, a Chinese space capsule delivered fresh moon samples to Earth for the first time in about four decades, and these precious lunar rocks just revealed a new detail about our planet’s glowing companion: Its volcanoes were alive and active considerably longer than scientists thought.

«All our experience tells us that the moon should be cold and dead 2 billion years ago. But it is not, and the question is, ‘Why?'» said Alexander Nemchin, a professor of Geology at Australia’s Curtin University and author of the analysis published Thursday in the journal Science.

Alongside an expansive and international team of researchers, Nemchin discovered that some of the newly transported moon rocks contain lunar fragments from later days of the white orb’s timeline. Dated about two eons ago, these fragments are relatively young. But here’s the kicker: Those same pieces are also remnants of a volcanic eruption.

Connecting the dots, the team members realized they were looking at solid confirmation that the lunar surface was alive pretty late in the game.

«We need to dig deeper with this,» Nemchin remarked. «We are highlighting that our current views need readjustment — further research will tell how dramatic this readjustment should be.»

Welcome back, lunar research

The saga began last year in December, when China’s Chang’e 5 mission sent a spacecraft to scrape the surface of the moon and collect a variety of rock and dust samples for Earth-based analysis. It returned with about 4 pounds (2 kilograms) of extraterrestrial material.

The year 1976 marks the last time lunar samples were brought down to our home planet, an achievement of the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission. But before that, NASA’s Apollo missions were running the course from Earth to the moon several times — the crusades returned photographs, moon rocks and personal anecdotes of astronauts.

«There was some need and drive to do this 50 years back,» Nemchin explained. «Then, priorities changed and everybody moved to something else.» But now, he says, «we have the moon back in the focus.»

He notes lunar research is important not only from an astronomy perspective, but also because any effort to travel to the moon — or really, any space exploration — tends to expedite technologies that ultimately benefit us on Earth.

One example of such serendipitous tech comes from Australian physicists’ research in the ’90s. They developed a highly complex mathematical tool hoping to detect smeared signals of black holes that vanished in the cosmos. Unfortunately, they never found any — but their invention paved the way for modern-day Wi-Fi.

Moon rock science

«Every new sample gives us a big boost in understanding what is happening, simply because we still have so few of them,» Nemchin remarked. «Apollo samples have been worked on for the last 50 years and are still actively investigated.»

While analyzing the rocks brought back by Chang’e 5, Nemchin and fellow researchers first checked out what types were present. In particular, they were after basalt fragments, which are correlated with volcanic activity.

«We needed to get an idea about chemical composition of the fragments to be able to compare [them] to the large basaltic field visible from the orbit,» he said. «And, make sure [those] fragments represent this field of basalts and do not come from somewhere else.»

Then, the scientists confirmed specific ages of the pieces of interest. Validating that these fragments are young was one of the main goals of the mission. That’s how the team members expected to prove their hypothesis of the moon having active volcanoes more recently than textbooks suggest.

«All basalts we had before are older than 3 billion years,» Nemchin said. «We also had a few very young points determined from material ejected by very young impacts — impact melts — but nothing in between. Now we have a point right in the middle of the gap.»

Such age determinations are called crater counting, something the team hopes to continue doing in the future in order to attain the full array of rocks to map out each generation of the moon. Nemchin also notes that a few interesting chemical features were found in the basalt samples, including high iron content, which isn’t present in any other retrieved pieces of the lunar surface.

Further chemical research on the rocks, he says, will help answer new questions introduced by the team’s novel findings, such as searching for the source of heat that led to lunar volcanic activity a couple of billion years ago.

And at the end of the day, the Australian geologist emphasizes that «what is important for me in all this is that we managed to bring a large international group of people to work on the sample.»

«Somehow,» he added, «In the current situation when international travel is still rather restricted, I had more interaction with different people than in the previous years when we could move around any way we liked.»

Technologies

Google, Meta and Amazon Join Global Pact to Fight Rising Online Scams

The companies will share fraud intelligence and coordinate responses as AI makes scams faster, cheaper and harder to detect.

Modern online scams operate across multiple platforms, perhaps spanning social media, messaging apps, email and online marketplaces. Google, Meta and Amazon are among 11 tech, retail and payments companies that have signed a new agreement to combat online scams by sharing threat intelligence across platforms, Axios first reported Monday.

The initiative, called the Industry Accord Against Online Scams & Fraud, is designed to improve how companies detect and respond to fraud that spans multiple services. Participants say they will exchange signals, such as scam-linked accounts and fraudulent domains, and coordinate enforcement actions.

By sharing intelligence in near real time, companies hope to identify these scams earlier and stop them before they spread.

The effort reflects how modern scams operate. A victim might encounter a fake celebrity investment ad on social media, move to a messaging app where the scammer builds trust, then faces prompts to send money through a fraudulent website, payment app or crypto wallet — spanning multiple companies’ ecosystems.

Google said it now blocks hundreds of millions of scam-related results every day using AI, underscoring how both attackers and defenders are increasingly relying on the same technology. Meta removed more than 159 million scam ads in 2025 and is expanding AI tools to detect impersonation and warn users.

Online scams are growing rapidly, in part because generative AI has lowered the barrier to entry. AI can be used not only to produce realistic phishing emails but also to clone voices and deepfake videos that impersonate executives, public figures and even family members.

The agreement is voluntary and doesn’t create new legal obligations, but it comes after regulators’ increased pressure on tech platforms to address fraud more aggressively. The companies say they will begin building frameworks for reporting and intelligence-sharing, though it’s not yet clear how quickly those systems will be deployed or how effective they will be in practice.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, March 18

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 18.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I thought it was a fairly easy one, but read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Word before «card,» flood» or «photography»
Answer: FLASH

6A clue: Joust weapon
Answer: LANCE

7A clue: Brain, heart or lungs
Answer: ORGAN

8A clue: «Frozen» reindeer
Answer: SVEN

9A clue: What can be found on frozen roads or frozen margaritas
Answer: SALT

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Follow a dentist’s recommendation
Answer: FLOSS

2D clue: Baby bug
Answer: LARVA

3D clue: Shape made in the snow
Answer: ANGEL

4D clue: Very little
Answer: SCANT

5D clue: Egg layer
Answer: HEN

Technologies

Amazon Speeds Up Delivery Even More With 1- and 3-Hour Options

The retailer says the one-hour option is available in hundreds of cities, with discounted shipping for Prime members.

Same-day delivery apparently isn’t fast enough for some Amazon shoppers. The retail giant said on Tuesday it’s adding new shipping options that will get products to front doors within a one- or three-hour window.

The company said in its announcement that the one-hour option is available in hundreds of cities across the US, while the three-hour option is now live in more than 2,000 areas. Amazon’s web page at amazon.com/getitfast shows whether those options are available to shoppers for their location. More than 90,000 products will be available for those shipping windows, the company said.

For those who can’t get those services (including the author of this post, who lives between Austin and San Antonio in Texas), a message will display: «3-hour delivery is currently unavailable. Check back at a later time or shop products with Same-Day delivery below.»

Pricing for the faster delivery options is not cheap: It’ll cost you $20 for one-hour delivery and $15 for three-hour delivery for those without an Amazon Prime account, or $10 and $5 for customers who subscribe to Prime.

Last year, the company rolled out faster Amazon delivery options to 4,000 additional areas.

In a video of the podcast Learn and Be Curious with Doug Herrington, hosted by Amazon’s CEO of worldwide stores, Kandace Kapps, the director of the company’s same-day strategy team, spoke in more detail about the challenges of fast shipping. Kapps discussed shifts in customer buying habits over the last few years, such as more people buying household essentials like toilet paper on Amazon.

She said that Amazon can deliver so quickly by placing same-day delivery hubs close to customers in metro areas and by getting products ready to ship within 15 minutes, aided by warehouse robots.

«I think customers are going to continue to get magically surprised by how fast we can deliver to their doorstop,» Kapps said.

Herrington said fast shipping increases sales: «When we speed up the service, the probability that somebody buys a product from us goes up.»

Other retailers, including Walmart, have been adding same-day delivery options or exploring other ways to speed up shipping times to compete with Amazon.

Removing buyers’ moments of hesitation

Part of Amazon’s strategy, which has involved a massive buildout of locations, deployment of thousands of trucks, deals with other delivery services and investment in logistics software, is actually pretty simple: being there when people need last-minute items or make impulse buys.

«It’s about removing the last moment where you would’ve reconsidered the purchase,» said Stephanie Carls, retail insights expert at coupon and promotional-code website RetailMeNot, a sibling site of CNET. «It changes how you shop, not just how fast you get things.»

Carls said that Amazon’s super-fast delivery is removing the timeframe when people might change their minds about a purchase.

«There used to be a gap between deciding to buy something and actually having it. That’s when you’d price check, rethink it, or decide you didn’t need it after all,» she said. «This closes that gap.»

The retail expert said that competitors, including Walmart and Target, have been speeding up delivery times in some markets. Still, they’re not matching Amazon’s scale or product range at those speeds or levels of consistency.

«And that’s what starts to make everyone else feel slow,» Carls said. «Amazon’s advantage is how tightly connected its technology, inventory and delivery networks are, which makes this level of speed more repeatable.»