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7 articles from ScienceNOW

Hidden carbon layer may have sparked ancient bout of global warming

There is no perfect parallel in Earth’s past for present-day climate change—human-driven warming is simply happening too fast and furiously. The closest analog came 56 million years ago, when over the course of 3000 to 5000 years, greenhouse gases soared in the atmosphere, causing at least 5°C of warming and pushing tropical species to the poles. The cause of the...

Gravitational wave radar could probe deep space for tiny stellar objects

Theoretical physicists have hit on a new way to test Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, or general relativity, and—just maybe—probe the distant universe for tiny, hard to detect objects. Gravitational waves —ripples in space set off when massive objects such as black holes whirl together and collide—should bounce off other massive objects to produce echoes of...

U.S. science agencies would see budgets rise under draft budget bills

Spending panels for the U.S. House of Representatives kicked off the 2023 federal budget cycle this week by recommending healthy increases for several research agencies. In some cases, however, those increases fall below the much larger boosts President Joe Biden has requested. At the same time, lawmakers bucked that trend by adding to Biden’s meager request for the National Institutes...

U.S. universities fight Senate innovation bill targeting foreign gifts to faculty

The shape of U.S. research is at stake as Congress tries to reconcile competing versions of a massive bill, 2 years in the making, aimed at bolstering U.S. competitiveness with China in research and high-tech manufacturing. The bills would not only authorize spending hundreds of billions of additional dollars on research, but also set out new policies on...