Sunday Special: Bombardier's jet smashes another speed record

Welcome back, Superhuman. Orcas are called killer whales for a reason. Marine researchers have filmed the ocean’s apex predator using a highly coordinated and clever hunting strategy unlike anything previously recorded. Meanwhile, near-supersonic flight is inching remarkably close to real-world use, as the Bombardier’s Global 8000 jet shattered another speed record this week.

1. The world's fastest business jet breaks speed record ahead of debut: Bombardier's Global 8000 flew from LA to Farnborough in under 9 hours, setting a new city-pair record at Mach 0.93 despite challenging wind conditions along the route. The flight marked the jet's debut at the 2026 Farnborough International Airshow. With a top speed of Mach 0.95 and 8,000-nautical-mile range, Bombardier is positioning the jet as the benchmark for ultra-long-range business aviation since the Concorde retired.

2. Scientists capture high-quality photo of one of the world’s rarest animals: Mãhina, a two-year-old all-white humpback whale, has been captured on camera swimming alongside her mother. The white humpback is one of the rarest animals in the world: only one in 40,000 humpback whales is born without normal pigmentation. The image won the 2026 World Nature Photographer of the Year prize for its clarity, becoming one of the most striking wildlife photos of the year. You can check it out here.

3. Footage shows orcas using an undocumented, clever hunting strategy: Off the coast of Baja California, a group of orcas has developed a highly coordinated technique for hunting ocean sunfish, the world's largest bony fish. Rather than biting through their thick skin, the orcas ram into them at high speeds, fragmenting the carcass into edible pieces. Scientists believe the behavior may be culturally transmitted. You can check the footage out here.

4. Scientists put a number on the maximum human lifespan possible: A new mathematical model suggests that even if every reversible cause of aging were eliminated, humans could live no longer than around 156 years. Neurons and heart cells, which cannot divide or replace themselves, tend to accumulate irreversible DNA damage over time. Organs that regenerate, like the liver, could theoretically survive for thousands of years, but the brain and heart set the hard ceiling on human longevity.

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✈ Lost n’ Found: It's been sitting silently on the ocean floor for over seven decades. Now, explorers have identified the wreck of a Pan Am passenger plane that disappeared in 1952, using an advanced autonomous underwater sonar drone. Get the first real sight of the wreckage, more than seven decades after it vanished.

👶 Baby Bryan: Anti-aging entrepreneur Bryan Johnson claims he’s cloned himself “as a newborn” to one day provide him with replacement organs on demand. Though it isn’t a real baby, the strange experiment has generated significant buzz online. Read about it here.

👀 Look Again: A new billboard near Meta's London headquarters isn't what it first appears to be. A clever optical illusion is turning the company's latest AI smart glasses campaign into a pointed privacy critique using lenticular imaging.

🐲 Double Take: Glasgow residents woke up to what appeared to be a giant 'dragon' soaring across the dawn sky. The real story behind the viral footage is almost as impressive as the illusion itself.

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Hands Free: San Francisco-based Augmental Technologies just launched the MouthPad, a Bluetooth device that fits over the upper teeth like a retainer and lets users control computers using tongue gestures, for $1,400 in the US. One user achieved cursor-control speeds matching today's implanted brain-computer interfaces without needing surgery. For people living with mobility challenges, it could be the most powerful hands-free computing tool ever made available noninvasively. See how the tool works here.

Drug Reset: Vancomycin is one of the most powerful antibiotics we have, but bacteria like the drug-resistant E. faecium have learned to defeat it. Now, scientists have found a way to revive it, pairing the antibiotic with a small molecule called pghi-4 that blocks a key bacterial enzyme linked to resistance. In lab tests, the combination restored vancomycin's ability to kill drug-resistant bacteria entirely. Scientists believe the model could rescue other failing antibiotics as well.

Weather Watch: Current weather forecasting struggles to predict large thunderstorm systems more than a week out. A new US Department of Energy project is testing whether deep learning can extend that window to six weeks, giving utilities, insurers, and communities significantly more time to prepare. The approach pairs AI with existing physics-based models rather than replacing them, looking for patterns that human forecasters and traditional systems consistently miss at the subseasonal scale.

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Zain, Faiq, and the Superhuman AI team