Air conditioning and other cooling systems are widely recognized as integral to protecting people from the sometimes deadly impacts of extreme heat, which are intensifying in step with climate change. Yet according to a study, published yesterday in Nature Sustainability, there remains a “global blind spot” when it comes to handling the already exorbitant demand for cooling […]
Tempers are running hot in science (as they are in the U.S. at large) as the field embarks on a long-overdue conversation about its treatment of women and people of color. In June, for example, thousands of researchers and academics across the globe—as well as the preeminent journals Science and Nature—stopped work for a day […]
For the first time ever, a NASA probe has performed a sample-snagging operation on an asteroid in deep space. The agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spiraled down to the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu this afternoon (Oct. 20) to grab material that mission team members hope harbors clues about the solar system’s early days and the rise of life on […]
Life’s up and downs may seem as inevitable as gravity, but somehow 2020 feels worse than usual. Just as a thought experiment, what if this year actually did get so weird that it even ushered in a change in how gravity affects our material universe? In the video Did the Universe Have to Be the […]
A psychotic Black woman admitted to a psychiatric emergency room is discharged “to the streets,” despite being pregnant and disorganized. Several white health care providers, noting her history of methamphetamine use, joke “she’s always like this” and claim she is “at baseline,” suggesting she is inherently inferior and unworthy of treatment. They make no effort […]
In the 1800s, many rivers in the American West were diverted for irrigation or dammed for generating electricity. So rapidly expanding cities began tapping into groundwater. Add climate change into the mix, and you can see how an already arid desert can become even more parched. The banks of the Santa Cruz River, in southeastern […]
Scientists predicted climate change would fuel the kind of devastating wildfires that California has seen this year. Except it wasn’t expected to happen for decades. A major analysis by state researchers projected that the amount of area burned by wildfire could jump 77% by the end of the century. Another study by UCLA warned that […]
The search for extraterrestrial life is one of the most exciting frontiers in astronomy, and the recent detection of a potential biosignature in the atmosphere of Venus has now raised the possibility that life might exist on the nearest planet to Earth. Absorption of light at millimeter wavelengths by phosphine molecules has been identified […]
Recently, thousands of migratory birds suddenly dropped dead across New Mexico. Sparrows, warblers and swallows that normally wheel across New Mexico’s iconic landscapes as they fly south for the winter instead fell lifeless across the land, weakened by extreme conditions. While scientists are still working to conclusively explain this tragedy, their initial findings clearly indicate […]
This month I learned that senior editor Jen Schwartz is an evil genius at media manipulation. She produced our cover package about misinformation, including a story about her own role in an Election Day drill in which she demonstrated how easily bad actors can disrupt honest news coverage. It’s funny and chilling and a little […]