Five years ago someone found a baby owl, near-death, on their lawn. The wildlife rehabber who stabilized her consulted with me because of my experience with owls and hawks. Eventually my wife and I undertook the task of conditioning “Alfie” for a soft release; waiting out a developmental delay (most of her flight feathers came abnormally late that first summer), then flight...

The world’s frogs, salamanders, newts and other amphibians remain in serious trouble. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] A new global assessment has found that 41% of amphibian species that scientists have studied are threatened with extinction, meaning they are either vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. That’s up from 39% reported in the last...

The laureates of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry have been officially announced, hours after their names were leaked in what appeared to be an inadvertently sent email. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The winners, for achievements in the field of nanotechnology, are Moungi G. Bawendi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louis E. Brus from Columbia...

(STOCKHOLM) — The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists who look at electrons in atoms during the tiniest of split seconds. Pierre Agostini of The Ohio State University in the U.S.; Ferenc Krausz of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany; and Anne L’Huillier of Lund University in Sweden won the...

A nine-mile trip from the airport in Dhaka, the bustling capital of Bangladesh, to Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed Park, near downtown, can take as long as 55 minutes, according to Google Maps. A trip of the same distance in Flint, Michigan, from the airport to the Sloan Museum of Discovery, takes about nine minutes. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] While we might expect a...

Few people take the time to give thanks to American astrologer Richard Noelle. Astrology as a whole may not have contributed much to the advancement of science, but that doesn’t mean that an astrologer’s ideas can’t have a very big impact. In 1979, Noelle had a good idea indeed, when he coined the now-ubiquitous term “supermoon.” [time-brightcove...

The rivalry between Asia’s two biggest countries has extended into outer space. After India’s landing of its Chandrayaan-3 rover on the moon last month—becoming the first country to put a spacecraft near the lunar south pole and breaking China’s record for the southernmost lunar landing—a top Chinese scientist has said claims about the accomplishment are...

(DUBAI, United Arab Emirates) — Iran claimed on Wednesday that it successfully launched an imaging satellite into space, a move that could further ratchet up tensions with Western nations that fear its space technology could be used to develop nuclear weapons. Iran’s Communication Minister Isa Zarepour said the Noor-3 satellite had been put in an orbit 450 kilometers (280...

Infrared sensors on the ground detected the heat signature of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s sample-return capsule when it slammed into the atmosphere at more than 45,000 km/h (27,650 mph), at 8:42 a.m. MDT today. The 46 kg (101 lbs.) capsule was dropped off by its much larger OSIRIS-REx mother ship as that spacecraft went whizzing briefly by Earth. The capsule hit the air off the coast...

There was no way of knowing on Aug. 8, 1975, just how many readers turned to the new paper in the journal Science by geochemist Wallace Broecker, of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. It was hardly possible to track clicks or likes nearly half a century ago, so Broecker simply had to hope his message got through. It was a pressing one, conveyed directly by its...

Stratospheric aerosol injection, the idea of spraying sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to cool the planet, is one of the most controversial topics in climate science, with scientists engaged in a fierce, yearslong debate over whether even researching such techniques poses unacceptable risks. To some people outside of that community, though, it no longer matters much what the...

The real czars may be long gone, but for decades, the White House has been doing a good job of keeping the role—or at least the honorific—alive, appointing a director to oversee a particular task or issue, and bestowing the title along with it. We’ve had the Ebola Czar, the Drug Czar, the Budget Czar, the Climate Czar, and more. Yesterday, at a press conference at...

BOSTON (AP) — Boston firefighter Daniel Ranahan had heard about colleagues getting cancer but he was stunned when doctors discovered a tumor in his chest. He was only 30 and had been in the Boston Fire Department less than a decade. But as he investigated his diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma in October 2020 and sought successful treatment, he learned he and others wore gear...

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — NASA said Thursday that the study of UFOs will require new scientific techniques, including advanced satellites as well as a shift in how unidentified flying objects are perceived. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The space agency released the findings after a yearlong study into UFOs. In its 33-page report, an independent team commissioned...

Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals (human-made compounds like...

The Mediterranean storm that dumped torrential rain on the Libyan coast, setting off flooding that’s believed to have killed thousands of people, is the latest extreme weather event to carry some of the hallmarks of climate change, scientists say. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Daniel — dubbed a “medicane” for its hurricane-like characteristics...

We all know couples who, on the surface at least, seem incompatible. One person is an introvert, the other an extravert; one likes fine wine, the other never drinks; one is deeply religious, the other doesn’t believe. It’s those pairs who give rise to the idea that opposites attract. But that notion appears to be mistaken. According to a new study in the journal Nature Human...

Back in 2014, Omar Yaghi, a chemistry professor at the University of California, noticed something unusual about a new water-absorbing material his lab was developing. Pulling water out of the air is useful for a lot of things (think about the silica beads that come in packaging to keep things dry) but drying out desiccants in order to reuse them generally means heating them to very high...

A landmark United Nations assessment of global progress on cutting emissions shows countries are largely failing to meet their commitments, putting the planet on course for catastrophic global warming. The UN’s climate change secretariat calculated the progress every country in the world has made on their pledges to reduce emissions and assessed how much it’s helping to...

A Japanese rocket bound for the moon took off early Thursday, offering relief to a battered national space program following a string of weather delays, major setbacks and high-profile failures. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s H2-A rocket lifted off around 8:42 a.m. local time from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern...

(GENEVA) — Earth has sweltered through its hottest Northern Hemisphere summer ever measured, with a record warm August capping a season of brutal and deadly temperatures, according to the World Meteorological Organization. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Last month was not only the hottest August scientists ever recorded by far with modern equipment, it was also the...

NEW DELHI — India’s moon rover has completed its walk on the lunar surface and been put into sleep mode less than two weeks after its historic landing near the lunar south pole, India’s space mission said. “The rover completes its assignments. It is now safely parked and set into sleep mode,” with daylight on that part of the moon coming to an end, the...

Lyme disease was first identified in 1975, in Lyme, Conn., but scientists still have more questions than answers about how the bacteria responsible for the condition that wreaks such havoc for some people, leaving them with debilitating symptoms for years, while causing relatively mild disease for others. Tests for Lyme have high false negative rates, especially early in the infection, so...