- TIME
- 22/10/31 20:11
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and doctor Siddhartha Mukherjee on the power of cells and how they shape us
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and doctor Siddhartha Mukherjee on the power of cells and how they shape us
The completion of China’s space station, while prompting U.S. concerns, opens doors for international collaboration
FRIDAY 28. OCTOBER 2022
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,...
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...
Scientists today can link specific ecological disasters with a changing climate—and assert with confidence what future impacts will be.
As the value of voluntary carbon markets closes in on $2 billion, figuring out which projects are legitimate can be tricky.
THURSDAY 27. OCTOBER 2022
There are a lot of similar sounding ways to cut carbon pollution. From direct air capture to carbon sequestration, here’s what the various technologies mean.
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...
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...
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 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
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...
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,...
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
More and more companies are relying on regenerative agriculture—based on old farming practices—to help maintain and restore soil health
THURSDAY 20. OCTOBER 2022
At least four countries have put a price on the cost of their climate emissions on society. The Biden Administration is months overdue.
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...
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
(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
The planet’s 4 billion hectares of forest absorb a net 7.6 billion metric tons of carbon each year—about 30% of what the world emits.
MONDAY 17. OCTOBER 2022
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...
Net-zero is ideally a global goal. But a challenging one to achieve. If the equation balances worldwide, then global warming will plateau.
FRIDAY 14. OCTOBER 2022
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
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
The DART mission to knock an asteroid off course just helped make Earth a little bit safer.