“Where does the threshold live that an action necessitates some proportional reaction?” Imagine this: The US military begins tracking a mysterious spacecraft maneuvering near one of the Space Force’s missile-warning satellites more than 22,000 miles over the equator. This US satellite cost several billion dollars to build and launch.…
Clicking on the links now reveals blank pages and empty PDFs. “Intellectually, it’s not acceptable.” German physicist Max Planck was one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, earning the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of quanta. There has never been a…
It’s “an exciting advance in efforts to restock the antibiotic arsenal.” Antibiotic resistance has loomed over humans since the moment we started using antibiotics. In the 20th century, the drugs downgraded potentially life-threatening bacterial infections to mere inconveniences—a miracle of modern medicine, it seemed. But the drugs aren’t really…
Rock weathering may release or draw down carbon dioxide—it depends on the rock. Since the early 1980s, Earth scientists have understood that erosion and weathering of rock slowly removes CO2 from the atmosphere, regulating Earth’s climate on geological timescales. But recent studies have shown that erosion can also emit…
At the right point of the orbit and stellar cycle, the star’s chromosphere brightens. For most of human history, our view of “close to the Sun” was defined by the orbit of Mercury, with its 88-day orbit and barren, baking surface. But from the moment we started discovering exoplanets,…
Europeans are baking under their second heat wave of the summer. Europe is in the midst of its second big heat wave of the year, and it’s breaking more records. France just recorded its hottest day ever, with temperatures exceeding 44° Celsius in some places. Around 40 people have…
Colossal Biosciences will be biobanking tissues from all of them as well. The US Endangered Species Act compels the government to identify species at risk of extinction and devise plans to restore populations and the habitats they depend on. It has seen some spectacular successes, such as the restoration…
“There is no natural explanation,” says paleoanthropologist John Hawks. All the Homo naledi skeletons in Rising Star Cave are female, and that probably didn’t happen by accident. In 2013, a team of anthropologists led by Lee Berger unearthed the remains of more than 20 small-bodied hominins (ancient relatives of…
The small bit of air in the bottle sees oxygen and other chemicals move in and out. Most people perceive a cork in a bottle of wine as a simple plug meant to keep the liquid in and the outside world out. In the recent study published in Science…
Climate.us has now restored everything taken down by the government. Over decades, researchers in the US government and programs it sponsored built up a tremendous number of climate resources, from comprehensive analyses to massive datasets to basic explainers meant to inform the public. And people within the government built…
