Catch a partial lunar eclipse during September’s supermoon

Catch a partial lunar eclipse during September’s supermoon

A partial lunar eclipse is seen in Karachi, Pakistan, Oct. 29, 2023. Credit: AP Photo/Fareed Khan, File Get ready for a partial lunar eclipse and supermoon, all rolled into one. The spectacle will be visible in clear skies across North America and South America Tuesday night and in Africa and Europe Wednesday morning. A partial … Read more

One dead in Poland as storm lashes eastern and central Europe

One dead in Poland as storm lashes eastern and central Europe

Since Thursday, swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been hit by high winds and unusually fierce rains. One person has drowned in Poland and four people are missing in the Czech Republic, authorities said Sunday, as Storm Boris lashed central and eastern Europe with torrential rains and flooding. Since Thursday, swathes … Read more

Brazil vets heal burns of jaguar burned in Pantanal fire

Brazil vets heal burns of jaguar burned in Pantanal fire

Veterinarian Pollyanna Motinha (R) and a colleague treat Itapira, a young female jaguar whose paws were burned in wildfires in the Pantanal. At a shelter for big cats in Brazil, a vet gingerly dresses wounds on a jaguar that was caught in wildfires raging in the world’s largest tropical wetland. While the animal is expected … Read more

Iran says new research satellite launched into orbit

Iran says new research satellite launched into orbit

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Iran on Saturday blasted a new research satellite into orbit, state media said, in the latest such development for an aerospace program that has long faced Western criticism. “The Chamran-1 research satellite was successfully launched and put into orbit by the Ghaem-100 carrier,” state television said. The satellite, which weighs around … Read more

‘Ecocide’ on Easter Island never took place, studies suggest

‘Ecocide’ on Easter Island never took place, studies suggest

A widespread theory that the people of Easter Island caused a societal collapse is not true, new research suggests. Two recent studies have cast doubt on a popular theory that the ancient residents of Easter Island suffered a societal collapse because they overexploited their natural resources, an event often labeled one of history’s first “ecocides”. … Read more

Get set for more extreme weather across Australia this spring and summer, say meteorologists

Get set for more extreme weather across Australia this spring and summer, say meteorologists

The Bureau of Meteorology’s spring and summer climate hazards outlook. 2024-25 Higher Risk Weather Season National Preparedness Briefing. Australia is no stranger to extreme weather. From heat waves and droughts to flooding rains, hailstorms or fire weather, our continent experiences it all. To help Australians prepare for these hazards, the Bureau of Meteorology regularly briefs … Read more

Cosmology is at a tipping point—we may be on the verge of discovering new physics

Cosmology is at a tipping point—we may be on the verge of discovering new physics

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared: (Herschel) ESA/NASA/Caltech, (Spitzer) NASA/JPL/Caltech, (WISE) NASA/JPL/Caltech; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major, CC BY For the past few years, a series of controversies have rocked the well-established field of cosmology. In a nutshell, the predictions of the standard model of the universe appear to be at odds with … Read more

Exceptional new fish fossil sparks a rethink of how Earth’s geology drives evolution

Exceptional new fish fossil sparks a rethink of how Earth’s geology drives evolution

Coelacanths are deep-sea fish that live off the coasts of southern Africa and Indonesia and can reach up to two meters in length. For a long time, scientists believed they were extinct. In new research published in Nature Communications, we reveal the best-preserved coelacanth fossil ever found from the ancient period hundreds of millions of … Read more

Genomics reveals sled dogs’ Siberian lineage

Genomics reveals sled dogs’ Siberian lineage

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain New research co-led by Cornell University examines thousands of years of Arctic sled dog ancestry and reveals when and how Siberian and Alaskan sled dogs’ DNA mixed. “There was a real concern from Siberian breeders—who were mostly racing their dogs—that they were sending out their dogs’ DNA samples for analysis, more … Read more

Stephen Hawking Was Wrong—Extremal Black Holes Are Possible

Stephen Hawking Was Wrong—Extremal Black Holes Are Possible

Now two mathematicians have proved Hawking and his colleagues wrong. The new work—contained in a pair of recent papers by Christoph Kehle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ryan Unger of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley—demonstrates that there is nothing in our known laws of physics to prevent the formation of an extremal black hole. Their mathematical proof … Read more