(NEW DELHI, India)—The devastating heat wave that has baked India and Pakistan in recent months was made more likely by climate change and is a glimpse of the region’s future, international scientists said in a study released Monday. The World Weather Attribution group analyzed historical weather data that suggested early, long heat waves that impact a massive geographical area are...

The House Intelligence Committee’s Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation subcommittee would like to make one thing very clear: They did not spend 90 minutes this morning conducting public hearings into the existence of UFOs. Yes, they were discussing unidentified objects, and yes those objects were seen to be flying, but the term for them today is...

You’d think it would be hard to overlook an object with a mass four million times greater than the sun. But when that object is a supermassive black hole like Sagittarius A*, the giant object astronomers have long believed sits at the center of our galaxy, it is, by definition, impossible to see. Black holes, after all, are collapsed objects with a gravitational pull so great that not even...

The Apollo astronauts faced a lot of challenges in their time on the moon, but having enough to eat was not among them. The longest any of the crews spent on the surface was the three days logged by Apollo 17 in 1972, and even in the astronauts’ tiny lunar module, there was enough room for the shrink-wrapped, pre-packaged provisions they’d need for such a brief camping trip. The next...

The frequency and duration of droughts will continue to increase due to human-caused climate change, with water scarcity already affecting billions of people across the world, the United Nations warned in a report Wednesday. The U.N. desertification agency, which is currently hosting a conference of parties in Abidjan in Ivory Coast, estimates that roughly one third of the world’s...

The world is creeping closer to the warming threshold international agreements are trying to prevent, with nearly a 50-50 chance that Earth will temporarily hit that temperature mark within the next five years, teams of meteorologists across the globe predicted. With human-made climate change continuing, there’s a 48% chance that the globe will reach a yearly average of 1.5 degrees Celsius...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to extend its reach—not just around the world, but into space. For that we have Dmitry Rogozin—an intemperate man in what demands to be a temperate business—to blame. Much of the world came to know Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, back in 2014, when he was deputy prime minister, and Russia had launched its first...

Children who begin identifying as transgender at a young age tend to retain that identity at least for several years, a study published Wednesday suggests. The research involved 317 youngsters who were 3 to 12 years old when they were recruited to the study. Five years later, at the study’s end, 94% were living as transgender and almost two-thirds were using either puberty-blocking...

It’s not hard to keep track of NASA’s big-ticket items—the high visibility spacecraft that generally carry equally high price tags and make very big headlines. There’s the $150 billion International Space Station; the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope; the $2.4 billion Perseverance Mars rover; and then, of course, the trouble-plagued, $4.1 billion-per-flight Space...

It’s a very good thing Carlo Rovelli did not get eaten by a bear in 1976—though even he admits it would have been his own fault. Camping alone in western Canada, he decided to save the money it would have cost him to pitch his tent in a designated area, and picked instead a wilder part of the wilderness. No sooner had he set up camp and prepared to settle in than the grizzly...

At a steel plant in Lulea, Sweden, workers make the world’s most essential construction material the old fashioned way: piling iron ore and coke, a kind of coal-derived fuel, in a huge blast furnace, heating the mixture to enormous temperatures, and then “tapping” the cauldron of molten metal, which sends a stream of white-hot pig iron—and showers of sparks—spilling...

A baby zebrafish is just half the size of a pea. A recent look inside its transparent brain, however, offers clues to the far bigger mystery of how we remember—and how we forget. In an experiment that yielded insights into memory and the brain, a team of researchers at the University of Southern California taught…

A disaster-weary globe will be hit harder in the coming years by even more catastrophes colliding in an interconnected world, a United Nations report issued Monday says. If current trends continue the world will go from around 400 disasters per year in 2015 to an onslaught of about 560 catastrophes a year by 2030, the scientific report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction...

Scientists say last summer was the hottest summer on record in Europe, with temperatures a full 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average for the previous three decades. A report released Friday by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found that while spring 2021 was cooler than average, the summer months were marked by “severe and...

It’s hard not to love Europa. It is far and away the most promising of Jupiter’s 79 moons, covered in a rind of water ice perhaps 30 km (18 mi.) thick. Beneath the ice lies a salty, globe-girdling ocean that astronomers estimate could be up to 150 km (93 mi.) deep. As its larger sister moons—Io, Ganymede and Callisto—pass by in their orbits, their gravity causes Europa to...

The Biden administration is launching a $6 billion effort to rescue nuclear power plants at risk of closing, citing the need to continue nuclear energy as a carbon-free source of power that helps to combat climate change. A certification and bidding process opened Tuesday for a civil nuclear credit program that is intended to bail out financially distressed owners or operators of nuclear power...

To the uninitiated, psilocybin—the substance that gives ‘magic mushrooms’ their psychedelic qualities—could be dismissed as a recreational drug. Like many other psychedelics, it is banned by the U.S. government as a Schedule 1 substance, meaning it supposedly has high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use in treatment. However, to many medical science...

BEIJING — Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after six months aboard their country’s newest orbital station in the longest crewed mission to date for China’s ambitious space program. The Shenzhou 13 space capsule landed in the Gobi desert in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, shown live on state TV. During the mission, astronaut Wang Yaping carried out...

It is a fact of orbital mechanics that the moon is steadily receding from the Earth. Every year the distance between the two worlds grows by 3.78 cm (1.48 in.), or about the speed at which our fingernails grow. That’s not much compared to the overall 384,472 km (238,900 mi.) average distance between the Earth and the moon, and there’s no reason to worry that the moon will be bidding...

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins was killed in an auto accident Saturday in Florida. Haskins’ agent, Cedric Saunders, told ESPN about the quarterback’s death, and the Steelers released a statement extending their condolences. “I am devastated and at a loss for words with the unfortunate passing of Dwayne Haskins,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said. “He...

The dining will be fine aboard the International Space Station (ISS) throughout the next week. Flying 408 km (254 mi.) above the Earth and clipping along at a brisk 28,000 km/h (17,500 mph), the crew will be tucking into arroz Estelle Valencia, a Spanish rice dish; secreto de cerdo with pisto—Ibérico Pork with tomatoes, onions, eggplant, and peppers; and chicken and mushroom...

Decades ago, the state of California tried to strike a major blow against climate change, and failed. The state passed an ambitious rule in 1990 mandating car companies slowly begin replacing their offerings with electric vehicles (EVs). But in 2002, the state backed off the policy. Part of the reason was political—car companies, aided by the Bush Administration, were fighting the state...

Swiss startup Climeworks AG has raised 600 million francs ($650 million) to scale up its technology that sucks carbon dioxide directly from the air. The world has to reach peak greenhouse-gas emissions before 2025 to avoid catastrophic climate change, according to a major United Nations report published Monday. But most scenarios that keep warming within 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels...

Liz Marshall’s latest release, Meat the Future, will be available for streaming April 5 on Apple TV, Amazon, and Google Play. The feature length-documentary charts the birth of a new technological innovation that grows meat from stem cells instead of animals, reducing the need for industrial agriculture and ending slaughter. She tells the story through Uma Valeti, a cardiologist-turned...