On Oct. 7, 1492, Christopher Columbus, aboard his ship the Santa María, had been at a complete standstill for 21 days, trapped in a very strange sea which he would later name the Sargasso Sea—sargazo in Spanish meaning “gulfweed.” Today, the Sargasso Sea—an elliptical expanse in the southwestern Atlantic at the center of which lies Bermuda—is six times the...

If you attend a college-level earth science class in Ohio in the coming years, you might learn about how climate change is causing heat waves, flooding, and record storms, and how humanity has a shrinking window to drastically cut emissions and forestall the worst effects. But your instructor could also be forced to spend a big chunk of time talking about how a few largely discredited...

History does not record who the weeping woman was who joined the giant crowd at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Feb. 4, 1962. But she was inconsolable. “I know it’s silly to carry on this way,” she said with a hitching breath to a reporter from the Griffith Observer magazine. “But I can’t help myself.” The cause of her profound distress: On that...

Step aside, rat poison. A new oral contraceptive for rodents may be the answer to the world's infestations.

Keep an eye to the sky this week for a chance to see a planetary hangout. Five planets—Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, and Mars—will line up near the moon. Where and when can you see the 5 planets? The best day to catch the whole group is Tuesday. You’ll want to look to the western horizon right after sunset, said NASA astronomer Bill Cooke. The planets will stretch from the...

Among many well-intentioned people working on the uneasy border between climate action and consumption-based capitalism, there’s long existed a consensus that consumers of everything from coffee to dry shampoo are basically rational creatures. If you can label which particular brand of toilet paper isn’t destroying the planet, you’ll help that bath tissue win in the...

The world faces an incredibly tricky land crunch over the coming decades. On the one hand, we want to protect more wildlife, having realized the critical role nature plays in limiting climate change and sustaining human life. On the other hand, we want to generate more energy than ever before for fast-developing countries in the Global South, and transition the entire world to renewables....

The astronomers operating the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the island of Maui were not expecting to hit cosmic paydirt on Oct. 19, 2017—but they did. On what was otherwise an ordinary night of skygazing, they suddenly spotted what is easily the oddest comet ever detected. Its high speed—87 km per second (54 mi. per second)—and highly elliptical angle indicated that it originated...

The scariest part of a landmark new report on the science of climate change may be what scientists don’t know. On Monday, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N.’s climate–science body, released the final volume in a series of reports outlining experts’ latest understanding of the science of climate change. The report declared the science of climate...

Venus had a lot going for it. Roughly the same diameter and density as Earth, it orbits in the solar system’s habitable zone—just the right distance from the sun for liquid water to exist. But the planet’s biological prospects were long ago wrecked by a runaway greenhouse effect that left it with an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide, and 90 times the pressure of...

Geoengineering our atmosphere to cool the planet has long been a taboo subject. But as the earth keeps heating up, that may now be changing.

A new dog breed has waddled its way into Americans’ hearts. While Labrador retrievers were the most popular purebred dog for a record 31 years, French bulldogs—or “frenchies” as they’re called by enthusiasts—took the top spot in 2022 for the first time, the American Kennel Club announced on March 15. But the selection doesn’t come without some...

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed limiting the amount of harmful “forever chemicals” in drinking water to the lowest level that tests can detect, a long-awaited protection the agency said will save thousands of lives and prevent serious illnesses, including cancer. The plan marks the first time the EPA has proposed regulating a toxic group of compounds that are...

Many residents of East Palestine, Ohio, are suspicious of the environmental contractor Norfolk Southern has brought in to measure chemical exposures following last month’s massive train derailment, toxic spill, and chemical burn off. Over the last decade, the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH) has become the go-to contractor for corporations looking to follow up on...

Sixty-six years ago, there was just a single human-built object in Earth orbit. It was Sputnik, the Soviet Union’s—and the world’s—first satellite, launched on Oct. 4, 1957. Now take a moment and try to guess how many objects—including active satellites, defunct satellites, and bits of debris from all of that space traffic—are currently circling the planet....

Chances are, you haven’t yet made your plans for Valentine’s day 2046. But just in case you’re thinking about it, you may want to make sure you spend the day indoors. That, at least, is the take home message from NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which earlier this week sounded the alarm via Twitter that in just under 23 years, a newly discovered asteroid...

The pandemic created a window for many to re-evaluate their attitudes toward time itself. Now we’ll find out if what we learned will stick.

It’s no secret that air pollution is a serious problem facing the world today. Just how serious? A new study on global daily levels of air pollution shows that hardly anywhere on Earth is safe from unhealthy air. About 99.82% of the global land area is exposed to levels of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) — tiny particles in the air that scientists have linked to lung cancer and heart...

Greenhouse gas emissions from the way humans consume food could add nearly 1 degree of warming to the Earth’s climate by 2100, according to a new study. Continuing the dietary patterns of today will push the planet past the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) limit of warming sought under the Paris climate agreement to avoid the worst effects of climate change, according to the...

If you haven’t heard the name Alex Murdaugh over the course of the past few months, you may just not have been paying attention. The disgraced South Carolina attorney was convicted yesterday of the murder of his wife and son, following a six-week trial that was must-watch TV for much of the nation. Cable news carried Murdaugh’s testimony live and uninterrupted as it unfolded. In its...

In case you’re counting, the average American will go through 26 kg (57 lbs) of toilet paper in a single year. Multiply that by the 332 million people in the U.S. and you get more than 19 billion pounds of waste paper being flushed away annually. All by itself that represents a massive disposal and sanitation challenge. But now, according to a paper just published in Environmental Science...

When most people think about the jet stream, if they think about it at all, it’s usually in the context of the high-altitude, fast moving wind currents of the northern hemisphere that enable speedy west-to-east long-haul flights. But the polar jet stream also plays a major role in our daily lives: the weaker it gets, the wackier our weather is, from the Texan deep freeze of 2021 to the...

Having systematically colonized the ranks of government, academia, and media—including malleable-minded climate writers like yours truly—the dark legions of the World Economic Forum (WEF) have reportedly gotten around to their real work: employing their techno-fascist designs on traffic patterns in Oxford, U.K. Or that’s what some people on the internet are saying, anyway. A...

Debates over the benefits and pitfalls of different diets have been around as long as, well, the diets themselves. Is the ketogenic diet a good way to lose weight, or a carb-free trip to bad health? Are vegetarians missing out on vital vitamins? What, exactly, is the omnivore’s dilemma? Can vegans eat sugar? And do paleo adherents actually know what our ancient ancestors ate? A study...