Tag: Science

A new paper published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters warns of an emerging global threat posed by salt contamination of water supplies in tidal rivers worldwide. The paper, co-authored by David Ralston, Department Chair in the Applied Ocean Physics & Engineering Department in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, along with an international team of partner institutions, highlights how a combination of climate change impacts—including prolonged drought and rapid sea-level rise—along with localized human activities, are intensifying the increase in salt in vital freshwater sources.

An international team of astronomers has employed NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory to perform the most detailed study of a supergiant star known as Wd1-9, which yielded important insights into the properties and nature of this star. The new findings are presented in a paper published July 23 on the arXiv preprint server.

Decades ago, archaeologists discovered a sticky substance in a copper jar in an ancient Greek shrine. Until recently, the identity of the residue was still murky—is it a mixture of fats, oils and beeswax or something else?

University of Queensland researchers have developed an affordable, open-source DNA measurement tool that can be built using a home 3D printer.

Penn materials scientist Shoji Hall and colleagues have found that manipulating the surface of water can allow scientists to sustainably convert carbon monoxide to higher energy fuel sources like ethylene.

When it comes to meteor showers, the Perseids pop. It's not just about the quantity of meteors (as many as 100 per hour) and their showy quality but also their superb timing.

Off the western coast of the United Kingdom, conservationists attached some bait to an underwater camera, dropped the contraption to the seabed and waited. When they eventually watched the footage, it left them stunned.

Using China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), researchers have uncovered new magnetic field structures in a rare class of binary star systems known as spider pulsars, offering valuable insights into their evolution and the mechanisms behind mass loss in their companion stars.

In a recent study published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, Dr. Dean Arnold and his colleagues, Joseph Ball, Laure Dussubieux, and Jennifer Tachek, examined 17 samples of Maya Blue from pottery sherds dated to the Late-Terminal Classic Period (AD 680–860) at Buenavista del Cayo, Belize. Maya Blue was a unique pigment made by combining organic indigo with inorganic palygorskite.

Understanding the effects of social class on people's attitudes, thoughts, feelings and behaviors could have valuable implications, as it could help to tailor social and behavioral interventions around the unique psychological characteristics of target populations. Past studies have introduced and tested various theoretical predictions related to the psychology of social class, yielding a wide range of interesting findings.

Successful applicants will be invited to the November event to present details of their project.

Whether you’re single, dating, married or somewhere in between, our love lives are increasingly mediated by technology.

In this time of profound global refugee crisis, the Moomins feel like appropriate – if unexpected – heroes for the modern age.

The professor of literature and crime novelist will be in London on July 11 for a special Q&A on his new novel – with appropriate food and drink available.

A conversation with young people and experts about the issues affecting young men and women.

The Conversation audio team celebrates success at the Publisher Podcast Awards.

Surprising discoveries from marine science – a BBC collaboration with The Conversation.

Professor Paul Whiteley, University of Essex, is the winner of the 2024 Sir Paul Curran award, which we recognised at a reception celebrating our authors’ work.

We’re celebrating 80 years of the Moomins with a special film screening and a panel discussion.

How a three-year investigation into chemical pollution began.

On 28 July, more than 170 researchers sent a letter to National Science Foundation leaders and Congress, urging them to reconsider the decision to terminate the lease of the Nathaniel B. Palmer, the United States’ only Antarctic research vessel-icebreaker (RVIB) and a key part of science operations around the White Continent.

New satellite technology has revealed that the Southern Ocean is getting saltier, an unexpected turn of events that could spell big trouble for Antarctica.

Es momento de aceptar que el almacenamiento duradero de carbono en el subsuelo, junto con la reducción de emisiones, debe ser parte del plan para mitigar los efectos del cambio climático, y las geociencias deben desempeñar un papel central.

Scientists find that water stress drives the connection between surface temperature and crop yield loss, providing information to help improve predictions of agricultural productivity under climate change.

Read about how 12 Earth and space scientists found paths in academia, business, government, and nonprofits.

Letting opportunities take you on paths unknown can get you to where you were meant to be.

A geoscientist and illustrator finds artistic inspiration in plate tectonics and geodynamics.

A generalist at heart, this geochemist is unraveling the mysteries of the ocean’s chemical cycling.

This atmospheric scientist digs into the details of storms to help keep people safe.

This earthquake enthusiast and science communicator wants you to know that a “whole ecosystem” of scientific careers exists outside of academia.

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is the greenhouse effect still debated among climate scientists? There has been broad agreement about the greenhouse effect for over a century. In 1824, Joseph Fourier calculated that Earth ought to be much colder given its distance from the sun, and theorized that the atmosphere acts as a blanket, trapping heat and keeping the planet warmer than it would be ot

This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler We’ve been posting a lot recently about how renewables lower electricity costs. Last week, Zeke posted about the impact of renewables on U.S. electricity prices. In response to that, several people pointed us to a figure that seems to show something different:

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 20, 2025 thru Sat, July 26, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (7 articles) This renowned climate scientist says this is the most difficult time for climate science he’s ever seen Benjamin Santer received enormous pushback when he authored one of the first reports on the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change. Today, he says, the reaction to climate research is far worse. FastCompany, Annabelle Choi, June 17, 2025.

Open access notables Calculating the Temperature Trend Bias Induced by Inhomogeneities Into Climate Data Without Running a Homogenization Algorithm, Lindau, International Journal of Climatology Inhomogeneities are known to induce sudden jumps into the time series of climate stations. If these jumps tend to be upwards, a spurious positive trend will be inserted into the data, which would falsify the true climate trend. The classic method to identify such biases is to run a homogenisation algorithm and to assess the statistics of the found jump heights. However, in the past it was shown

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink There is a persistent argument in certain circles that renewable energy is associated with higher costs than fossil fuels, and that states who have build lots of renewables (California is often brought up in this regard) are paying for it in the form of higher electricity prices. Variable renewable energy – wind and solar – are fundamentally fuel-saving resources. They are effectively zero marginal cost to run when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, and can reduce the need to run costly gas and coal capacity. As utility scale battery storage scales up, some fossil plants may be fully retired, though much of our current gas capacity will 

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is climate science a high-paying profession? Climate scientists are paid for their work, but grants primarily fund research expenses, not personal gain. The field offers modest salaries relative to other accessible professions. Scientific research is expensive and competitive. Grants fund equipment, lab space, travel, data collection, and salaries for entire te

This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). As our climate changes and our world heats, that's turbo charging extreme weather disasters - from floods to wildfires. These disasters are claiming lives. And now a group of researchers have studied a recent extreme weather event - a heatwave across Europe - to see just how much more deadly it became, due to climate change. This first of its kind study reveals just how dangerous global warming already is today. But it doesn't need to be this way. Because there's plenty we can do to protect ourselves from the heat - now and in the future. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 13, 2025 thru Sat, July 19, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (7 articles) Dangerous weather predictions will get tougher after these Trump administration actions The decision by the Department of Defense to stop providing data to NOAA is just the latest challenge for the agency this year. USA Today, Dinah Voyles Pulver, July 10, 2025. US State D

Open access notables Climate change has increased the odds of extreme regional forest fire years globally, Abatzoglou et al., Nature Communications Regions across the globe have experienced devastating fire years in the past decade with far-reaching impacts. Here, we examine the role of antecedent and concurrent climate variability in enabling extreme regional fire years across global forests. These extreme years commonly coincided with extreme (1-in-15-year) fire weather indices (FWI) and featured a four and five-fold increase in the number of large fires and fire carbon emissions, respectively, compared with non-extreme years. Years with such extreme FWI metrics are 88-152% more likely acros

The videos include personal musings and conclusions of the creators climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy and geologist Dr. Rachel Phillips. They are presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video descriptions for references (if any). Adam Levy and Rachel Phillips collaborated on two videos for their respective Youtube channels explaining the study A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature published by Emily J. Judd and colleagues in 2024. Today's climate is changing. Fast. But what has happened in our planet's past? Have climate changes taken place long ago? In fact, there have been huge shifts in the planet's climate over the past hundreds of millions of years - from ice ages to temperatures far ho