Nominations have arrived for the 2020 Tony Awards! Tony winner James Monroe Iglehart announced the nominees live on October 15. As previously announced, the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing have revealed the ceremony will take place digitally this fall. Leading the nominations are the musicals Jagged Little Pill with 15, Moulin Rouge! with 14 and Slave Play with a record-breaking 12 nods—the most ever given to a non-musical. The 74th Annual Tony Awards will recognize achievement in Broadway productions during the 2019–20 season. Originally scheduled to be held on June 7, 2020 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and televised by CBS, the ceremony was postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
NASA has released its plan to return to the moon. In an accompanying live stream presentation, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine put to bed a story that the space agency was contemplating sending the first woman and the next man to land on the moon to one of the Apollo landing sites. The idea got a lot of negative reactions on social media. Bridenstine stated that the next moon landing will go to the lunar South Pole, full stop. The plan did not have too many surprises. Artemis 1 will be an unpiloted jaunt around the moon taking place sometime in 2021. Artemis 2 will take the first crew around the moon in 2023. Then, in 2024, NASA will mount the first moon landing since 1972, something that will be a world historic event and more than a bit of good news for a planet that has had a dearth of such in recent years.
An international team of astronomers has detected a rare chemical in the atmosphere of Venus that could be produced by living organisms, according to a study published Monday. The discovery instantly puts the brightest object in the night sky back into the conversation about where to search for extraterrestrial life. The researchers made clear that this is not a direct detection of life on Venus. But the astronomical observations confirmed the presence of the chemical phosphine in the atmosphere. The chemical, produced on Earth by bacteria, is considered a potential “biosignature” of life.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a beloved Jewish figure who helped pioneer the feminist legal field and served on the Supreme Court for more than a quarter century, died from complications of cancer on Friday at the age of 87. Ginsburg had defiantly remained on the court as she battled five bouts of cancer and numerous recent hospitalizations, for fear of leaving another vacancy for President Trump to fill with a far-right conservative. NPR reported that not long before she died, Ginsburg dictated a statement to her granddaughter: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”