Today: September 20, 2024
Today: September 20, 2024

Science

Science

NASA listens for Voyager 2 spacecraft after wrong command cuts contact

NASA is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after losing contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away. Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar space, Voyager 2 has been out of touch ever since flight controllers accidentally sent a wrong command more than a week ago that tilted its antenna away from Earth. The spacecraft’s antenna shifted a mere 2%, but it was enough to cut communications. Although it’s considered a long shot, NASA said Monday that its huge dish antenna in Canberra, Australia, is on the lookout for any stray signals from Voyager 2,

July 31, 2023
NASA listens for Voyager 2 spacecraft after wrong command cuts contact
Science

Australia welcomes lifting of UNESCO threat to list Great Barrier Reef as World Heritage in danger

The Australian government on Tuesday welcomed a draft UNESCO decision to a lift a threat of downgrading the Great Barrier Reef to an endangered World Heritage site. The U.N. cultural agency and the International Union for Conservation of Nature recommended in November of last year that the world’s largest coral reef system be added to the List of World Heritage in Danger due to threats including rising ocean temperatures. But UNESCO issued an updated a report in Paris on Monday that said it would be appropriate to re-evaluate whether the famed tourist attraction off Australia’s northeast

August 01, 2023
Australia welcomes lifting of UNESCO threat to list Great Barrier Reef as World Heritage in danger
Science

Gunmen open fire on police officers during anti-polio drive in southwest Pakistan, killing 2

Gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on Pakistani police escorting a team of polio workers on Tuesday during a door-to-door vaccination campaign in the southwest, killing two police officers before fleeing, police said. The polio workers were unharmed in the attack on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, local police chief Asif Marwat said. No one has claimed responsibility, but Pakistan’s anti-polio campaigns are regularly marked by violence. Islamic militants often target polio teams and police assigned to protect them, falsely claiming that the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children. Since

August 01, 2023
Gunmen open fire on police officers during anti-polio drive in southwest Pakistan, killing 2
Science

Hong Kong official vows to mull legal changes after discovery of whale carcass sparked anger

A Hong Kong government official vowed Tuesday to mull legal changes and set up protocols to better protect whales after the discovery of a carcass sparked anger on social media and speculation that sightseers had contributed to the animal’s death. Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan said it was unclear whether wounds on the whale had caused its death. But he suggested whale-watching activities could have disturbed or hurt the whale after it was first spotted in the city in mid-July. “The incident shows we might have treated wildlife in an inappropriate way,” Tse said

August 01, 2023
Hong Kong official vows to mull legal changes after discovery of whale carcass sparked anger
Science

Once nearing extinction, Brazil's golden monkeys have rebounded from yellow fever, scientists say

There are now more golden lion tamarins bounding between branches in the Brazilian rainforest than at any time since efforts to save the species started in the 1970s, a new survey reveals. Once on the brink of extinction, with only about 200 animals in the wild, the population has rebounded to around 4,800, according to a study released Tuesday by the Brazilian science and conservation nonprofit Golden Lion Tamarin Association. “We are celebrating, but always keeping one eye on other threats, because life’s not easy,” said the nonprofit’s president, Luís Paulo Ferraz. Golden lion tamarins are small monkeys with long

August 01, 2023
Once nearing extinction, Brazil's golden monkeys have rebounded from yellow fever, scientists say
Science

NASA hears signal from Voyager 2 spacecraft after mistakenly cutting contact

After days of silence, NASA has heard from Voyager 2 in interstellar space billions of miles away. Flight controllers accidentally sent a wrong command nearly two weeks ago that tilted the spacecraft’s antenna away from Earth and severed contact. NASA’s Deep Space Network, giant radio antennas across the globe, picked up a “heartbeat signal,” meaning the 46-year-old craft is alive and operating, project manager Suzanne Dodd said in an email Tuesday. The news “buoyed our spirits,” Dodd said. Flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California will now try to turn Voyager 2’s antenna

August 01, 2023
NASA hears signal from Voyager 2 spacecraft after mistakenly cutting contact
Science

Henrietta Lacks’ family settles lawsuit with a biotech company that used her cells without consent

More than 70 years after doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells without her knowledge, a lawyer for her descendants said they have reached a settlement with a biotechnology company that they accused of reaping billions of dollars from a racist medical system. Tissue taken from the Black woman’s tumor before she died of cervical cancer became the first human cells to continuously grow and reproduce in lab dishes. HeLa cells went on to become a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic

August 01, 2023
Henrietta Lacks’ family settles lawsuit with a biotech company that used her cells without consent
Science

Climate change made July hotter for 4 of 5 humans on Earth, scientists find

Human-caused global warming made July hotter for four out of five people on Earth, with more than 2 billion people feeling climate change-boosted warmth daily, according to a flash study. More than 6.5 billion people, or 81% of the world’s population, sweated through at least one day where climate change had a significant effect on the average daily temperature, according to a new report issued Wednesday by Climate Central, a science nonprofit that has figured a way to calculate how much climate change has affected daily weather. “We really are experiencing climate change just about everywhere,” said Climate Central Vice

August 02, 2023
Climate change made July hotter for 4 of 5 humans on Earth, scientists find
Science

The heaviest animal ever may be this ancient whale found in the Peruvian desert

There could be a new contender for heaviest animal to ever live. While today’s blue whale has long held the title, scientists have dug up fossils from an ancient giant that could tip the scales. Researchers described the new species — named Perucetus colossus, or “the colossal whale from Peru” — in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Each vertebra weighs over 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and its ribs measure nearly 5 feet (1.4 meters) long. “It’s just exciting to see such a giant animal that’s so different from anything we know,” said Hans Thewissen, a paleontologist

August 02, 2023
The heaviest animal ever may be this ancient whale found in the Peruvian desert
Science

Surfs up takes on new meaning as California waves get bigger as Earth warms, research finds

Giant waves, measuring as high as 13 feet (about 4 meters), are becoming more common off California’s coast as the planet warms, according to innovative new research that tracked the surf’s increasing height from historical data gathered over the past 90 years. Oceanographer Peter Bromirski at Scripps Institution of Oceanography used the unusual method of analyzing seismic records dating back to 1931 to measure the change in wave height. When waves ricochet off the shore, they collide with incoming waves and cause a ripple of energy through the seafloor that can be picked up by seismographs

August 02, 2023
Surfs up takes on new meaning as California waves get bigger as Earth warms, research finds
Science

NASA restores contact with Voyager 2 spacecraft after mistake led to weeks of silence

NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft was back chatting it up Friday after flight controllers corrected a mistake that had led to weeks of silence. Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar space billions of miles away, Voyager 2 stopped communicating two weeks ago. Controllers sent the wrong command to the 46-year-old spacecraft and tilted its antenna away from Earth. On Wednesday, NASA’s Deep Space Network sent a new command in hopes of repointing the antenna, using the highest powered transmitter at the huge radio dish antenna in Australia. Voyager 2’s antenna needed to be shifted a mere 2%.

August 04, 2023
NASA restores contact with Voyager 2 spacecraft after mistake led to weeks of silence
Science

6 months after a devastating earthquake, Turkey's preparedness is still uncertain

Dust and rubble fill the street as an excavator tears off chunks of concrete from an old apartment building. Bystanders and former residents watch from afar as construction equipment tears down the structure. Among the bystanders is Ibrahim Ozaydin, 30, a former resident. He watches the demolition not with worry, but with relief, as his building was marked by officials as unsafe months ago. Ozaydin and his family were shocked to learn that the municipality deemed his building uninhabitable. “We decided to build our own house,” he told The Associated Press as he watched his former

August 06, 2023
6 months after a devastating earthquake, Turkey's preparedness is still uncertain
Science

The EPA's ambitious plan to cut auto emissions to slow climate change runs into skepticism

The U.S. government’s most ambitious plan ever to slash planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles faces skepticism both about how realistic it is and whether it goes far enough. The Environmental Protection Agency in April announced new strict emissions limits that the agency says are vital to slowing climate change as people around the globe endure record-high temperatures, raging wildfires and intense storms. The EPA says the industry could meet the limits if 67% of new-vehicle sales are electric by 2032, a pace the auto industry calls unrealistic. However, the new rule would not require automakers

August 06, 2023
The EPA's ambitious plan to cut auto emissions to slow climate change runs into skepticism
Science

Biden will tout long-sought Grand Canyon monument designation during Arizona visit

President Joe Biden will announce a new national monument to preserve land around Grand Canyon National Park and limit it from mining, White House officials said Monday. White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi confirmed during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One that Biden will call for the designation during his visit to northern Arizona on Tuesday, making it his fifth national monument. A dozen tribes “stepped up” and asked for this monument, Zaidi added. Advocates for limiting mining around Grand Canyon National Park had expressed hope that this would be the reason behind the presidential visit.

August 07, 2023
Biden will tout long-sought Grand Canyon monument designation during Arizona visit
Science

Boeing's 1st astronaut flight bumped into next year, more repairs needed

Already running years behind, Boeing’s first astronaut flight is now off until at least next March. Problems with the parachute lines and flammable tape surfaced during final reviews in late spring, ahead of what should have been a July launch for the Starliner capsule. Boeing said Monday that it should be done removing the tape in the coming weeks. But a redesigned parachute system won’t be ready until December. If a parachute drop test goes well late this year, company officials said the spacecraft should be ready to carry two NASA astronauts to the International

August 07, 2023
Boeing's 1st astronaut flight bumped into next year, more repairs needed
Science

Even frozen Antarctica is being walloped by climate extremes, scientists find

Even in Antarctica — one of the most remote and desolate places on Earth — scientists say they are finding shattered temperature records and an increase in the size and number of wacky weather events. The southernmost continent is not isolated from the extreme weather associated with human-caused climate change, according to a new paper in Frontiers in Environmental Science that tries to make a coherent picture of a place that has been a climate change oddball. Its western end and especially its peninsula have seen dramatic ice sheet melt that threatens massive sea level rises over the next few

August 08, 2023
Even frozen Antarctica is being walloped by climate extremes, scientists find
Science

European scientists make it official. July was the hottest month on record by far.

Now that July’s sizzling numbers are all in, the European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin. July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Union’s space program, announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual. “These records have dire consequences for both

August 08, 2023
European scientists make it official. July was the hottest month on record by far.
Science

US east cleans up after deadly storms as New England braces for flooding

Crews across the eastern U.S. worked Tuesday to clear downed trees and powerlines and restore electricity following severe storms that killed at least two people, cut power to more than a million customers at their peak, and forced thousands of flight delays and cancellations. The storms that pounded a swath of the country stretching from Alabama and Tennessee to the Carolinas and New York on Monday continued to lash northern New England with wind and rain a day later. The National Weather Service confirmed that a tornado touched down in the Atlantic Coast town of

August 08, 2023
US east cleans up after deadly storms as New England braces for flooding
Science

Astronauts get first look at the spacecraft that will fly them around the moon

The four astronauts assigned to fly around the moon in another year got their first look at their spacecraft, as NASA warned Tuesday there could be more delays. They peeked into their unfinished Orion capsule, red “Remove Before Flight” tags still dangling from it, and came away impressed. “Nothing else looks like that … that’s what gave me shivers,” astronaut Christina Koch told reporters. The U.S.-Canadian crew inspected the capsule during a visit to Kennedy Space Center late Monday and Tuesday. NASA plans to send the four around the moon and back late next year.

August 08, 2023
Astronauts get first look at the spacecraft that will fly them around the moon
Science

After a glacial dam outburst destroyed homes in Alaska, a look at the risks of melting ice masses

People in Alaska’s capital have lived for more than a decade with periodic glacial dam outbursts like the one that destroyed at least two homes over the weekend. But the most recent flood was surprising for how quickly the water moved as the surging Mendenhall River devoured riverbanks, undermining and damaging homes, and prompted some residents to flee. Here are some issues surrounding glaciers and the floods that result from the bursting of snow-and-ice dams. WHAT CAUSED THE FLOODING IN JUNEAU? The water came from a side basin of the spectacular but receding Mendenhall Glacier that

August 08, 2023
After a glacial dam outburst destroyed homes in Alaska, a look at the risks of melting ice masses
Science

Scientists look beyond climate change and El Nino for other factors that heat up Earth

Scientists are wondering if global warming and El Nino have an accomplice in fueling this summer’s record-shattering heat. The European climate agency Copernicus reported that July was one-third of a degree Celsius (six-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) hotter than the old record. That’s a bump in heat that is so recent and so big, especially in the oceans and even more so in the North Atlantic, that scientists are split on whether something else could be at work. Scientists agree that by far the biggest cause of the recent extreme warming is climate change from the burning of coal, oil

August 09, 2023
Scientists look beyond climate change and El Nino for other factors that heat up Earth
Science

Millions scramble to afford energy bills amid heat waves, but federal program to help falls short

Bobbie Boyd is in a losing battle against near triple-digit temperatures in northwest Arkansas. Her window air conditioner runs nonstop and the ballooning electric bill carves about $240 out of her $882-a-month fixed income. So the 57-year-old cuts other necessities. Boyd eats one meal a day so her 15-year-old grandson, who she’s raising alone, can have two. She stopped paying car insurance and skips medical appointments. “The rent and the light bill. And I’m broke,” said Boyd, who needs the cooling to stave off her heat-induced asthma attacks. As climate change ratchets up temperatures across the U.S.,

August 09, 2023
Millions scramble to afford energy bills amid heat waves, but federal program to help falls short
Science

The Perseid meteor shower peaks this weekend and it's even better this year

The annual Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak this weekend, sending bright trails of light streaking across the night sky. With only a sliver of moon in the sky, conditions this year will be ideal for seeing lots of meteors. “If you’ve got nice clear weather and a good dark sky, you go out just before dawn and you’ll see a Perseid per minute or so,” said NASA meteor scientist Bill Cooke. “That’s a pretty good show.” Here’s how to watch the meteor shower: WHAT ARE THE PERSEIDS? The Perseids — one of the biggest meteor

August 09, 2023
The Perseid meteor shower peaks this weekend and it's even better this year
Science

Virgin Galactic all set to fly its first tourists to the edge of space

Virgin Galactic is taking its first space tourists on a rocket ship ride after years of delays, including one passenger who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean. The flight window opens Thursday morning at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert for a ride to the edge of space. If all goes well, Richard Branson’s company will begin offering monthly trips to customers on its winged space plane, joining Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the space tourism business. Virgin Galactic passenger Jon Goodwin, who was among the first to

August 10, 2023
Virgin Galactic all set to fly its first tourists to the edge of space
Science

Russia is to launch its first mission to the moon in almost 50 years

Russia is scheduled to launch its first mission to the moon in nearly 50 years on Friday, pitting it in a space race with India which is also aiming to land a lunar craft this month. The launch of the Luna-25 craft to the moon will be Russia’s first since 1976 when it was part of the Soviet Union and will be conducted without assistance from the European Space Agency, which ended cooperation with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The Russian lunar lander is expected to reach the moon on Aug. 23, about the same day

August 10, 2023
Russia is to launch its first mission to the moon in almost 50 years

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