To go to Venus is to go to hell. One of the most brilliant and beautiful objects in the night sky, Venus is a near twin of Earth in size and mass but it is radically different in almost every other way. Its surface temperature averages 470º C (880º F), or hot enough to melt lead. Its atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide, with a ground-level pressure 90 times greater than that on...

If you pick up the newspaper these days, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the headlines: historic wildfires, a deadly pandemic and an impending U.S. election unlike any in recent memory. When you take a step back, it seems a bit like the fabric of society is fraying. Climate change isn’t entirely responsible for any of these problems, but there is a growing body of literature...

Astronomers have found a potential sign of life high in the atmosphere of neighboring Venus: hints there may be bizarre microbes living in the sulfuric acid-laden clouds of the hothouse planet. Two telescopes in Hawaii and Chile spotted in the thick Venutian clouds the chemical signature of phosphine, a noxious gas that on Earth is only associated with life, according to a study in...

The first successfully cloned endangered Przewalski’s horse was born on Aug. 6 in a veterinary facility in Texas, San Diego Zoo Global announced on Friday. The horse was cloned from DNA of a male Przewalski’s horse cryopreserved by the zoo in 1980. Przewalski’s horses are “critically endangered” animals that are found in Mongolia, per Smithsonian’s National...

What might cause someone to fight, die—or kill—for their beliefs?

I am behind the wheel of a Nissan Leaf, circling a parking lot, trying not to let the day’s nagging worries and checklists distract me to the point of imperiling pedestrians. Like all drivers, I am unwittingly communicating my stress to this vehicle in countless subtle ways: the strength of my grip on the steering wheel, the slight expansion of my back against the seat as I breathe, the...

I was about a month into raising a new border collie puppy, Alsea, when I came to an embarrassing realization: my dog had yet to meet a Black person. This was worrying for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it forced me to admit I have next to zero Black…

Professor Zhang Yongzhen is seeking to set the record straight about his work in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak

This summer has been a cruel one in the American Sunbelt. In our hospitals, pain, fear and death abound because of COVID-19. Outside, a mass of restive, unemployed workers face down deadly heat waves, swiftly rising sea levels and the peak of hurricane season. But even if the viral hardship feels wanton, it doesn’t have to be without purpose. In South Florida, Phoenix and the Rio Grande...

Sunday Creek begins around Corning, a small town in southeastern Ohio, before snaking down 27 miles to connect with the Hocking River. Like much of Appalachia, the creek’s watershed was historically home to communities of coal miners, but the mines have since closed, leaving only their runoff: nearly 1,000 gal. a minute of water so…

Jon Paul was leery entering his first wildfire camp of the year late last month to fight three lightning-caused fires scorching parts of a Northern California forest that hadn’t burned in 40 years. The 54-year-old engine captain from southern Oregon knew from experience that these crowded, grimy camps can be breeding grounds for norovirus and a respiratory illness that firefighters call...

The list of guidelines to allow students to go to school safely is long and complicated: new classroom designs to protect students, flexible school calendars to prepare for the unpredictable and additional teachers standing by in the event that a large number of them become incapacitated, to name just a few. This agenda could easily be part of a plan to reopen schools in the middle of the...

Failed leadership, a distrust of scientists, and cultural attitudes have combined to result in an inadequate response

There are a lot of ways to try to capture grim milestone the world crossed Monday night when it recorded its 20 millionth case of COVID-19. It’s two Swedens, four Irelands, 10 Slovenias. It’s greater than the entire population of the state of New York. The outbreak that began in Wuhan, China in December 2019 has now spread to 188 countries and regions, touching every continent but...

Much of Canada’s remaining intact ice shelf has broken apart into hulking iceberg islands thanks to a hot summer and global warming, scientists said. Canada’s 4,000-year-old Milne Ice Shelf on the northwestern edge of Ellesmere Island had been the country’s last intact ice shelf until the end of July when ice analyst Adrienne White of the Canadian Ice Service noticed that...

In recent decades, tens of thousands of people around the globe have died as the result of extreme heat, and yet the phenomenon of deadly heat would be easy to miss. That may not be true much longer. A new analysis published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that, if left unchecked, climate change could drive temperatures up to the point where they would lead to 85...

Dark images from the screening room of your brain

(BERLIN) — British scientists say there are more emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica than previously thought based on evidence of bird droppings spotted from space. A study published Wednesday by scientists at the British Antarctic Survey counted 61 emperor penguin colonies dotted around the southernmost continent, 11 more than the number previously confirmed. Scientists used images...

The coronavirus pandemic has worn out its welcome on Earth. Just try and find someone who’s not sick and tired of working from the basement, wearing a mask, bumping elbows in greeting or simply living with the worry of themselves or their family getting sick. And these inconveniences pale in comparison to the pain many have suffered from sickness or the loss of loved ones. If we could have...

(ORLANDO, Fla.) — Sorry, boomers. Millennials and their younger siblings and children now make up a majority of the U.S. population. A new analysis by the Brookings Institution shows that 50.7% of U.S. residents were under age 40, as of July 2019. The Brookings’ analysis of population estimates released this summer by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the combined millennial,...

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Two NASA astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday in a dramatic, retro-style splashdown, their capsule parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico to close out an unprecedented test flight by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company. It was the first splashdown by U.S. astronauts in 45 years, with the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to carry people to and from...

If there were any intelligent beings on Mars, they’d likely be confused by a little plaque recently added to the side of the SUV-sized Perseverance Mars rover, which lifted off at 7:50 AM local time on Thursday morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida and is set to reach Mars in February. Nobody had planned any late additions to the rover—but no one had planned on a lot of things this...

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — The biggest, most sophisticated Mars rover ever built — a car-size vehicle bristling with cameras, microphones, drills and lasers — blasted off Thursday as part of an ambitious, long-range project to bring the first Martian rock samples back to Earth to be analyzed for evidence of ancient life. NASA’s Perseverance rode a mighty Atlas V rocket into...

(BOISE, Idaho) — The U.S. wants to build nuclear power plants that will work on the moon and Mars, and on Friday put out a request for ideas from the private sector on how to do that. The U.S. Department of Energy put out the formal request to build what it calls a fission surface power system that could allow humans to live for long periods in harsh space environments. The Idaho National...