Laws have long been portable things. Human beings settled frontiers with tools and muscle—and too often with weapons, seizing lands that belong to others. One other thing the settlers also brought along were their legal systems, rules of the road to govern their behavior in the new communities they built. That was true when all our exploring was terrestrial, and it remained true when we...

(MOSCOW) — A trio of space travelers has launched successfully to the International Space Station, for the first time using a fast-track maneuver to reach the orbiting outpost in just three hours. NASA’s Kate Rubins along with Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos lifted off as scheduled Wednesday morning from the Russia-leased Baikonur space...

Steve Lindsay, a public health entomologist at Durham University, is midway through explaining how dogs might play a role in detecting COVID-19 infections when a decidedly less-well trained canine interrupts our conversation. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I’ve got a naughty black Labrador out in the back garden doing something it shouldn’t be doing,” Lindsay...

It’s entirely possible you missed it, but on Oct. 2 at 9:16 PM ET, you lifted off for the International Space Station. Just over two days later, you docked successfully—and it’s a good thing you did. You’ve got a spacewalk planned for later this year. O.K., technically speaking, you didn’t go anywhere at all, and unless you’re actually a highly-trained...

The moderator of Wednesday’s vice presidential debate hadn’t even brought up climate change when current Vice President Mike Pence jumped into the topic. But instead of talking about the science of the issue or offering a plan to address it, he sought to portray former Vice President Joe Biden’s climate stance as a radical ploy that would destroy the economy. “They want...

An awful lot of time elapsed between the day Roger Penrose was walking to work in 1964 and the moment his phone rang while he was in the shower on the morning of Oct. 6, 2020. Back then, his walk was interrupted by “some strange feeling of elation,” as he told the Associated Press yesterday, about the moment he had his first glimmers of insight into the equations that would...

Well, we’ve done it again. Last month was the warmest September on record, blazing past September 2019’s record global average by 0.05°C, and 2016’s by 0.08°C, according to the latest report from the European Commission-backed Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which tracks global climate trends. If you’re not surprised given past trends, you’re not...

(STOCKHOLM) — French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer A. Doudna have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a method of genome editing likened to “molecular scissors” that offer the promise of one day curing genetic diseases. The recipients were announced Wednesday in Stockholm by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. “There is enormous...

(STOCKHOLM) — Three physicists have won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics for black hole discoveries. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Tuesday that Briton Roger Penrose will receive half of this year’s prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.” Goran K. Hansson, the academy’s...

Nobody gives out awards for Worst Planet in the Galaxy—and it would be a dubious honor at best. Somewhere out there may be other garden planets like Earth. Somewhere too may be near-miss worlds like Mars. And somewhere out there are planets like 51 Pegasi b which, if it didn’t win the Worst Planet nod, would surely make it to the medal round. Located about 50 light years from Earth,...

(STOCKHOLM) — Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton won the Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a major source of liver disease that affects millions worldwide. Announcing the prize in Stockholm, the Nobel Committee noted that the trio’s work identified a major source of blood-borne...

“It’s too expensive.” Republicans have uttered this refrain time and again to reject nearly every proposal aimed at addressing climate change. It’s what drove the U.S. rejection of global climate deals in the 1990s and essentially the only context in which the Trump campaign brings up climate change today. But few Americans are buying it, a new poll shows. Nearly half of...

For months, the Trump campaign’s public statements and the President’s prepared remarks have repeated a message on climate change carefully calibrated not to alienate Republicans worried about the health of the planet: regardless of the science, Democratic plans to address the issue are too expensive. Last week, President Trump disregarded his own campaign’s meticulous...

From the bridge of the Arctic Sunrise, an old ice-breaking fishing trawler turned research vessel now plying the polar waters between Greenland and northern Norway, Laura Meller has an unparalleled view of our planet’s future. It is both gorgeous, and terrifying. The early autumn sunlight bathes the scattered icebergs in soft pink and orange hues that glimmer with the gentle swell....

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…