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32 articles from TIME


FRIDAY 28. OCTOBER 2022


From NASA’s Moon Program to Climate Science, Space Agency Adds Big Boost to the Economy

NASA has been asked to do a lot of things in the 64 years it’s been a federal agency, and on the whole, it’s delivered the goods. Beat the Soviet Union to the moon? Check. Build a fleet of reusable space shuttles? Check. Oversee a 15-nation collaboration that built a football-field sized International Space Station? Check. But there’s one thing NASA has never been asked to do,...

Ukraine Has Been Using Elon Musk’s Satellites And Russia Is Not Happy About It

Few people were thinking about a war in Ukraine when SpaceX began launching its constellation of Starlink satellites into space in 2019. The Starlink fleet, which now numbers more than 2,300, is designed to provide broadband connection to underserved parts of the world. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine last February, the Ukrainian army has been making use of the satellites for battlefield...


THURSDAY 27. OCTOBER 2022


You Can Now Find Out How Climate Change Is Affecting Today’s Temperature

If temperatures are soaring at the World Cup in Qatar next month, spectators and athletes will be able to look online and see if climate change is to blame. That’s thanks to the Climate Shift Index, an online tool that allows weather forecasters and residents to see how greenhouse gas emissions are affecting daily temperatures. A version of the index that tracks temperatures in the...

A New Lab-Made COVID-19 Virus Puts Gain-of-Function Research Under the Microscope

On October 14, a team of scientists at Boston University released a pre-print study reporting that they had created a version of SARS-CoV-2 combining two features of different, existing strains that boosted its virulence and transmissibility. Scientists and the public raised questions about the work, which refocused attention on such experiments, and prompted the U.S. government to investigate...

Russia’s War in Ukraine Could Jeopardize Antarctic Wildlife

Twenty-six nations are meeting in Hobart, Australia, this week to decide the future of Antarctic seas. That is, if politics don’t get in the way. The meetings come against a backdrop of ongoing Russia-Ukraine tensions. Two weeks ago a Russian bomb decimated the offices of Ukraine’s National Antarctic Scientific Center in Kyiv. This undoubtedly will set the tone for a series of...

The Problem With the Nobel Prizes

The Oscars attract huge publicity every year—and often generate controversy. Assessment of artistic merit is inherently subjective. And millions of us feel qualified to express approval or disapproval of the judges’ decision. It’s not like sporting contests, when the winner is usually clear. Every October sees the awards of “scientific Oscars”—the Nobel...


WEDNESDAY 26. OCTOBER 2022


‘More Bad News For The Planet’ As Emissions Rise to Record Levels in 2021

GENEVA — The three main greenhouse gases hit record high levels in the atmosphere last year, the U.N. weather agency said Wednesday, calling it an “ominous” sign as war in Ukraine, rising costs of food and fuel, and other worries have elbowed in on longtime concerns about global warming in recent months. “More bad news for the planet,” the World Meteorological...

Doctors Sound Alarm on Deadly Global ‘Fossil Fuel Addiction’ That Starves Millions

Extreme weather from climate change triggered hunger in nearly 100 million people and increased heat deaths by 68% in vulnerable populations worldwide as the world’s “fossil fuel addiction” degrades public health each year, doctors reported in a new study. Worldwide the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and biomass forms air pollution that kills 1.2 million people a year,...

World Set to Heat Up Above 2°C as Climate Action Moves Too Slowly, UN Report Warns

Government plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions aren’t enough to avoid catastrophic global warming, with the planet on track to heat up between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times, according to a new report from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Despite some progress in the last year, governments need to do more...


FRIDAY 21. OCTOBER 2022



THURSDAY 20. OCTOBER 2022


The Webb Telescope’s New ‘Pillars of Creation’ Picture Is Absolutely Dazzling

Few people were paying much attention to the doings at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) on the campus of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on April 1, 1995. The big news that day included the end of Major League Baseball’s 232-day players’ strike; the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Haiti, after helping to support the embattled government of President Jean-Betrand...

Speaking From Orbit, the First Native-American Woman in Space Reflects on Earth’s Fragility

Nicole Mann, a member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, has long treasured the dream catcher her mother gave her when she was a child, and does not discount the help it offered her when she flew 47 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, beginning in 2003. Earlier this month, Mann, 45, now a NASA astronaut, blasted off aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft for the International Space Station...


WEDNESDAY 19. OCTOBER 2022


Carbon Emissions Are Still Rising, But More Slowly Thanks to Renewables and Electric Cars

(BERLIN, Germany) — The International Energy Agency said Wednesday that it expects carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels to rise again this year, but by much less than in 2021 due to the growth in renewable power and electric cars. Last year saw a strong rebound in carbon dioxide emissions — the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming — after the global...


TUESDAY 18. OCTOBER 2022



MONDAY 17. OCTOBER 2022


The World’s First Space Tourist Plans a Return Trip—This Time to the Moon

Few people had heard of aerospace engineer and financial analyst Dennis Tito before 2001. That was the year Tito, then 60, became the first paying space tourist, cutting a $20 million check to Russia to fly aboard a Soyuz spacecraft and spend a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Since then, Tito has remained Earthbound, but has never quite shaken the adventuring bug. Now, he is...


FRIDAY 14. OCTOBER 2022


Here’s How The Ocean is Being Harnessed as a Climate Solution

In the battle to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and slow global warming, humans have a few natural allies. The best-known of these allies are trees, those charismatic carbon sinks that create shade and oxygen for us and our fellow landbound creatures. But land covers less than a third of the earth, and trees live on a shrinking sliver of that. The ocean covers most of the...


THURSDAY 13. OCTOBER 2022


Scientists May Have Just Cracked the Code on Fast Electric Car Charging

We’re going to need to mine a huge amount of metals like cobalt and lithium to electrify the world’s automobiles. But things would be easier if car batteries didn’t have to be so big. To a large extent, automobile makers building the next generation of electric vehicles (EVs) are competing on range, putting big, powerful batteries into their cars so they can travel farther...


WEDNESDAY 12. OCTOBER 2022