Sci/Tech

NASA’s Juno mission has observed mineral salts and organic compounds on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Data for this discovery was collected by the Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) spectrometer aboard the spacecraft during a close flyby of the icy moon. The findings, which could help scientists better understand the origin of Ganymede and […]

Hurricanes that rapidly intensify for mysterious reasons pose a particularly frightening threat to those in harm’s way. Forecasters have struggled for many years to understand why a seemingly commonplace tropical depression or tropical storm sometimes blows up into a major hurricane, packing catastrophic winds and driving a potentially deadly surge of water toward shore. Now […]

October 23, 2023  – A team of astronomers has found a new clue that a recently discovered near-Earth asteroid, Kamo`oalewa, might be a chunk of the moon. They hypothesized that the asteroid was ejected from the lunar surface during a meteorite strike–and they found that a rare pathway could have allowed Kamo`oalewa to get into […]

October 18, 2023 – The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be more resistant to global warming than previously thought, finds a new study published in the scientific journal Nature. An international team of scientists shows that even if critical temperature thresholds are temporarily crossed by up to 6.5 degrees Celsius until 2100, a possible […]

New research, based largely on information from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and ESA’s CryoSat satellite missions, has revealed alarming findings about the state of Antarctica’s ice shelves: 40% of these floating shelves have significantly reduced in volume over the past quarter-century. While this underscores the accelerating impacts of climate change on the world’s southernmost continent, the […]

Initial studies of the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu sample collected in space and brought to Earth by NASA show evidence of water and high-carbon content, which together could indicate the building blocks of life on Earth may be found in the rock. NASA made the news Wednesday from its Johnson Space Center in Houston where leadership […]

New research reaffirms that human footprints found in White Sands National Park, New Mexico, date to the Last Glacial Maximum, placing humans in North America thousands of years earlier than once thought. In September 2021, U.S. Geological Survey researchers and an international team of scientists announced that ancient human footprints discovered in White Sands National […]

October 6, 2023 – The absence of sexually related injuries cannot be used in court to infer that rape victims are ‘making it up’, a new study reveals. Experts analysed the last 30 years of published medical research to compare anogenital injury (AGI) in women who had been raped with those who had engaged in […]

The team, led by Imperial College London researchers, uncovered the wiring in mouse brains that leads them to begin nesting in preparation for sleep. Published in Nature Neuroscience, the study reveals that preparing properly for sleep is likely a hard-wired survival feature – one often neglected or overridden by humans. We all need to sleep, […]

Boulder, Colo. – The consequences of a warming climate frequently dominated the news this summer, from devastating wildfires and floods to deadly heat waves across the globe. Reducing harm from climate change is a challenging endeavor, and it requires comprehensive public education. Thus, the question arises: How can climate change science be made most accessible […]

September 13, 2023 – A new study updates the planetary boundary framework and shows human activities are increasingly impacting the planet and, thereby, increasing the risk of triggering dramatic changes in overall Earth conditions. For over 3 billion years, the interaction between life (represented by the planetary boundary, Biosphere Integrity) and climate have controlled the […]

September 11, 2023 – The globe was hot and humid. The sea was teeming with life. Early squids, eel-like fish and sea worms hunted smaller animals. Above ground, however, nothing stirred. The animals had not yet crawled ashore. That was what the Earth looked like about 450 million years ago at the end of the […]

The severe global threat posed by invasive alien species is underappreciated, underestimated, and often unacknowledged. According to a major new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), more than 37,000 alien species have been introduced by many human activities to regions and biomes around the world. This conservative estimate is now […]

September 5, 2023 – The US continues to face stark inequalities in preterm birth and mortality rates between mothers of differing socioeconomic status and race, finds a new report led by UCL researchers. The study, published in JAMA Paediatrics, examined data from the US National Centre for Health Statistics Birth Infant/Death Dataset, of over 12 million preterm […]

August 30, 2023 – Coastal wetlands and coral reef islands will struggle to grow fast enough to keep pace with rising sea levels driven by climate change, according to a new study published in Nature. The study was conducted by an international team that includes a Tulane University researcher. The findings show that the future of marshes […]

The monitoring of the early stages of the Ozone Hole over the South Pole during 2023 by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)has detected a slightly earlier development. Lower ozone column values in comparison to the previous 43 years of satellite observations, together with other key indicators, mark an early start to the ozone hole […]

In 2018, researchers from NOAA’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Nautilus Live observed thousands of octopus nesting on the deep seafloor off the Central California coast. The discovery of the “Octopus Garden” captured the curiosity of millions of people around the world, including MBARI scientists. For three years, MBARI and collaborators used high-tech tools […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a pair of reports that provide guidance for strengthening wildfire preparedness across the United States, including specific actions that communities can take to save lives when there is not enough time to safely evacuate all residents. NIST has also created a new website with guidance […]

Like much of the planet, Southern California is expected to experience more heat waves in the future due to Earth’s changing climate. And some of these will feel increasingly humid, as long-term forecasts call for muggy spells more typically associated with Florida or eastern Texas. To begin to understand what these changes could mean across […]