RTÉ Player Watch all your favourite TV shows Live or On Demand on your PC, smartphone or tablet for free.

I’m in @rteone.rte.ie’s new documentary on longevity!

It’s called Live Forever: The death of ageing?, and you can check it out on RTÉ Player here:

Now would be a great time to reconsider that 46% cut to NASA’s science budget for FY2027.

Fund Longevity Live Stream · Luma Fund Longevity – Global Live Stream A fast-paced global live stream connecting scientists, innovators, and rally organizers across 15 cities—building momentum…

…sign up to follow along on the live stream here: luma.com/b7b2d2n2

In my view, funding is the single biggest bottleneck between longevity science and saving and improving human lives. Great to see some grassroots support for it!

Fund Longevity A Global Rally for Life Extension

Anyone heading to the fundlongevity.org rallies tomorrow? I’ll be outside the German parliament here in Berlin calling for more funding for science.

There are protests in 18 other cities across the world so check out the site for your local one!

#longevity 🧪

Can’t make it? Then you might want to…

Artemis II just set a new record: the furthest any human has ever been from Earth.

But how far is that? I made a to-scale diagram of the Earth–Moon system to try to make sense of it. 🧵

Artemis II: the furthest humans have ever been from Earth – Andrew Steele NASA’s Artemis II mission just set a new record: the furthest anyone has been from the surface of the Earth in the history of our species.

Of all the humans who have ever lived, only 28 have ventured beyond that tiny shell around our planet. Seeing it to scale makes the Moon missions even more extraordinary.

More details in my blog post: andrewsteele.co.uk/blog/2026/04...

The most humbling part of the diagram is that, other than Apollo and Artemis, the furthest any human has been from Earth is 1,408 km. On the scale of the Earth–Moon distance, that's a barely visible stub—smaller than the Moon’s radius.

The Moon was similarly far away during the Apollo 13 abort which meant, despite their otherwise terrible luck, the crew held the record for furthest humans from the Earth for more than 50 years.

That meant they were able to clock in a maximum altitude of 406,771 km—just beyond the lunar apogee.

Congratulations, NASA!

The lunar apogee this month is 404,973 km from the centre of the Earth at 08:33 UTC on April 7th. Artemis II reached maximum distance from the Earth at 00:07 UTC—just a few hours earlier.

The key to understanding Artemis’s record is a quirk of the Moon’s orbit. It isn’t circular—it swings between 356,000 km (perigee) and 406,000 km (apogee). That difference matters if you want to make records.

Artemis II went ever-so-slightly higher, at 406,771 km.

But the reason why these two missions were record-setting is to do with an interesting quirk of the Moon’s orbit…

Artemis II: the furthest humans have ever been from Earth – Andrew Steele NASA’s Artemis II mission just set a new record: the furthest anyone has been from the surface of the Earth in the history of our species.

of all the humans who have existed since the dawn of history, only 28 have ventured further than that tiny shell around our home planet. Seeing this to scale only makes the Moon landings more incredible—and this new phase of lunar exploration more exciting.

Find out more at my full post, here:

The most humbling part of the diagram is that, other than Apollo and Artemis, the furthest any human has been from Earth is 1,408 km. On the scale of the Earth–Moon distance, that's a barely visible stub—smaller than the Moon’s radius.

The previous record was held by Apollo 13, the ill-fated mission where an oxygen tank exploded part-way to the Moon. They had to do an emergency loop around the far side of the Moon, taking them 400,171 km above sea level.

The Moon is REALLY FAR AWAY. Diagrams usually cheat by showing it much closer and bigger than it really is.

This one doesn’t. Everything is to scale, including the Earth, the Moon, and the distance between them.

Artemis II just set a new record: the furthest any human has ever been from Earth.

But how far is that? I made a to-scale diagram of the Earth–Moon system to try to make sense of it. 🧵

Earth from space, with a very bright arc on its bottom right edge from the sun illuminating it, and little green and red arcs of aurora at the poles.

I downloaded the high-res version of this amazing picture from the Artemis crew and did a little edit to make it look more like what the astronauts might actually see!

Enjoy the picture and then check out the thread below explaining what you’re looking at… 🧪 #artemis #artemisii #space #moon

Thank you, and yes, I agree! I don’t like to Monday-morning quarterback *literal astronauts*, but I’d have used slighty different settings. :) Maybe we’ll get the raw photos when they come back to Earth!

I had to turn the picture upside-down to see it…but I think you’re right! Amazing.

This is an absolutely gorgeous picture. And, to give a sense of scale, it was taken with a lens that’s roughly the same as most smartphones’ main cameras—imagine putting your phone to the plane window to take a picture, but IN SPACE.

On the bottom right, the incredibly bright dot is Venus, and the diffuse mist it’s surrounded by is called the ‘Zodiacal light’, which is sunlight scattered by the thin band of dust that occupies the space between planets in the Solar System. It’s only visible from the darkest places on Earth…

Green aurora!

Green, pink, purple and red aurora!

I also took a bit of artistic licence and enhanced the aurora at the top right and bottom left! The lower ones are particularly amazing: you can see not just the green curtains, but pinks and reds caused by interactions between the solar wind and gases higher in the atmosphere.

So I turned down the brightness on the disk of the Earth a bit, but left the sunlit sliver and surrounding stars bright, because the human eye has a better dynamic range than a digital camera. It also means you can see the city lights in the bottom left more clearly.

The same picture, but much brighter

This picture is from the window of Artemis and, as normally shown online, it’s confusing: it’s a picture of the *night* side of the Earth—illuminated by moonlight appropriately enough!—but it’s been taken with a super-sensitive camera that makes it look like daytime.

Earth from space, with a very bright arc on its bottom right edge from the sun illuminating it, and little green and red arcs of aurora at the poles.

I downloaded the high-res version of this amazing picture from the Artemis crew and did a little edit to make it look more like what the astronauts might actually see!

Enjoy the picture and then check out the thread below explaining what you’re looking at… 🧪 #artemis #artemisii #space #moon

Most anti-ageing peptides don’t work. But these might | BBC Science Focus Magazine Touted online as the next big cure for ageing, peptides are growing in popularity. But evidence for their efficacy, let alone safety, is shaky at best.

I spoke with BBC @sciencefocus.bsky.social about peptides:

“I am shocked by how bad the evidence is,” says Dr Andrew Steele, director of The Longevity Initiative, “I thought it was going to be shaky, but there is just absolutely nothing here.”

🧪 #longevity #peptides

ClinicalTrials.gov screenshot: # TB-500 (Thymosin Beta 4 17-23 Fragment) for Cardiovascular Biomarkers in Stable ASCVD (TBRIDGE-CV) ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT07487363 Sponsor: Hudson Biotech ## Study Overview – Brief Summary This fictional study is an example of a ClinicalTrials.gov-style record. It describes a Phase 1/2 trial evaluating the safety and tolerability of TB-500 (a 17-23 fragment of thymosin beta 4) versus placebo in adults with stable atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). Exploratory endpoints assess vascular function and inflammation biomarkers

I’m doing some research on peptides and their use for longevity.

Has anyone ever seen a ‘fictional’ clinical trial record like this before?! clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT074...

New Brexit metaphor just dropped.

I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't had any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since typical grants are for three years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.