Richard Wang is trying to bring lighter, more powerful batteries to the world. The best way to do that, he says, is by electrifying airplanes. Wang is the founder and CEO of battery startup Cuberg, which is trying to use new, advanced chemical combinations to develop better batteries than the lithium-ion cells that serve as workhorses for laptops, cell phones, and electric vehicles. There are a...

Searching for an explanation for compulsive shopping, I recently ran across the story of a woman who couldn’t stop buying rabbits. Her husband told doctors that each day, she would visit the market and return home with yet another furry creature in a compulsive habit that appeared almost like an addiction. Then she would feel guilty about all the rabbits she had purchased. The reason this...

China has made few friends lately with the serial, uncontrolled reentries of the spent first stages of its Long March 5B spacecraft, which have posed potential threats to populations on the ground. Now, as the South China Morning Post reports, a Chinese rocket has created yet another mess—this time in orbit 500 km (310 mi.) above Earth, at an altitude that could imperil SpaceX’s...

The successful liftoff of NASA’s Artemis program—which aims to have Americans back on the moon by as soon as late 2025—is at last underway.

It was more than 36 years ago that NASA suffered one of its greatest tragedies, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on a cold January morning in 1986. Yesterday, NASA reported that a piece of debris from Challenger was found off the coast of Florida by a team of divers who were filming a documentary on the loss of World War II era aircraft in the same area....

If you owned a 32-story, 2.6 million kg (5.7 million lb), $4.1 billion moon rocket, the last thing you’d think you’d want to do is leave it out in a hurricane. Well, NASA does own a 32-story, 2.6 million kg, $4.1 billion moon rocket and leaving it out in a hurricane is just what the agency did yesterday—mostly because that turned out to be the best and safest of a bad lot of...

(SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt) — The world’s burning of coal, oil and natural gas this year is putting 1% more heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air than last year, bad news for the fight against climate change but with an odd twist, according to scientists who track emissions. China’s carbon pollution was down 0.9% this year compared to 2021, while emissions in the United States...

Odds are you don’t have any plans for 4:09 a.m. E.T. on Tuesday, Nov. 8. Assuming your calendar is indeed clear, it might be worth setting your alarm for that time, because it’s then that the last total lunar eclipse until 2025 will begin—and the show should be a dazzler. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon, casting a deep shadow...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Better catch the moon’s disappearing act Tuesday — there won’t be another like it for three years. The total lunar eclipse will be visible throughout North America in the predawn hours — the farther west, the better — and across Asia, Australia and the rest of the Pacific after sunset. As an extra treat, Uranus will be visible just a...

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket has been in development for more than 18 years and has never flown so much as an inch. But that might change on Nov. 14 at 12:07 a.m. ET, when the massive 32-story machine blasts off for a 25-day mission around the moon. That mission, known as Artemis 1, will be preparatory to a similar crewed mission that could be flown as early as 2024. Twice...

There’s a lot that China would like you to pay attention to when it comes to its just completed Tiangong (“Palace in the Sky”) space station—and there’s one thing the country would very much like you to ignore. On the upside, there’s the thousand or more scientific studies that crew members hope to carry out over the decade or so the station will be in...

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

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.

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...

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...