Tag: Science

The extraction, transportation and burning of planet-heating fossil fuels have a huge impact on people's health that starts before they are born and lasts until they die, a report warned Tuesday.

An international team led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), including scientists from the National Center of Competence in Research PlanetS, the University of Warwick, and the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics, has launched an ambitious program to map exoplanets located around the Neptunian Desert. The goal: to better understand the formation and evolution of planetary systems.

If you think a galaxy is big, compare it to the size of the universe: it's just a tiny dot which, together with a huge number of other tiny dots, forms clusters that aggregate into superclusters, which in turn weave into filaments threaded with voids—an immense 3D skeleton of our universe.

As the Perseverance rover traversed an ancient river valley in Mars' Jezero Crater back in July 2024, it drilled into the surface and extracted a sample from a unique, striped rock called Cheyava Falls. The rover's instruments then analyzed the sample, which is called Sapphire Canyon, and surveyed the surrounding rock.

A new study has successfully demonstrated the confinement of terahertz (THz) light to nanoscale dimensions using a new type of layered material. This could lead to improvements in optoelectronic devices such as infrared emitters used in remote controls and night vision and terahertz optics desired for physical security and environmental sensing.

In two new studies, scientists at Oregon Health & Science University have uncovered detailed blueprints of how certain molecular "gates" in human cells work—findings that could open doors to new treatments for conditions ranging from certain cancers and brain diseases to hearing loss and atherosclerosis, or plaque build-up in the arteries.

The sun has become increasingly active since 2008, a new NASA study shows. Solar activity is known to fluctuate in cycles of 11 years, but there are longer-term variations that can last decades. Case in point: Since the 1980s, the amount of solar activity had been steadily decreasing all the way up to 2008, when solar activity was the weakest on record. At that point, scientists expected the sun to be entering a period of historically low activity.

Once again, an endangered orca in Washington state has been seen carrying her dead newborn calf in an apparent effort to revive it.

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes, but by culture.

This is what fun looks like for a particular set of theoretical chemists driven to solve extremely difficult problems: Deciding whether the electromagnetic fields in molecular polaritons should be treated classically or quantum mechanically.

A series of lectures on decolonisation sheds new light on contemporary conflicts.

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.

A new study examines 10 million years of sea surface temperature data to offer predictions about how future warming may unfold.

Stronger and more frequent El Niño events are contributing to a decline in arthropod diversity and population, as well as to a reduction in the ecological services the animals provide.

A method combining three different approaches to the processing and analysis of GRAIL data from the Moon defines areas of sharply contrasting densities beneath Aristarchus Crater.

The EPA proposed today that approximately 8,000 polluting facilities, including oil refineries, power plants, and steel mills, should no longer be required to report their greenhouse gas emissions.

Although they would likely impede the warm currents that melt glaciers, such walls would also likely block fish migration and nutrient upwelling, harming marine ecosystems and Greenland fisheries.

Shiny-shelled diatoms make a remote part of the Southern Ocean appear especially reflective in satellite imagery.

Laboratory earthquakes shed new light on energy partitioning during earthquakes, which is allocated to seismic radiation, creation of new surfaces, and heat dissipation.

An analysis of 20 years of health data in eight Amazonian countries, published today in Communications Earth and Environment, shows that protecting Indigenous-managed forests may help reduce various kinds of disease, including fire-related respiratory diseases and illnesses spread by animals.

A detailed numerical model shows how sediment particles experience wave-driven shear stress inside and above a sea bed with sand ripples.

Humans acutely experience climate change when they encounter extreme environmental conditions, but scientific definitions of “extreme” often don’t reflect communities’ complex lived experiences.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Daisy Simmons Is AI saving the world or breaking it? As the era-defining technology leapfrogs from what-if to what-next, it can be hard for us humans to know what to make of it all. You might be hopeful and excited, or existentially concerned, or both. AI can track Antarctic icebergs 10,000 times faster than humans and optimize renewable energy grids in real time – capabilities that could help us fight climate change. But it also consumes incredible amounts of energy, and ever more of it, creating a whole new level of climate pollution that threatens to undermine those benefits. All that dizzying transformation i

A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 7, 2025 thru Sat, September 13, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (9 articles) Chevron’s Boss Says the World Will Need Oil for a ‘Long, Long Time’ "Mike Wirth, who has seen many booms and busts over the more than 40 years he has been with the energy giant, said that 'when the world stops using oil and gas, we’ll stop looking for it'." US Economy, The New York Times, Q&A by Jordyn Holman, Aug 31, 2025.

Open access notables Wild, scenic, and toxic: Recent degradation of an iconic Arctic watershed with permafrost thaw, Sullivan et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Science The streams of Alaska’s Brooks Range lie within a vast (~14M ha) tract of protected wilderness and have long supported both resident and anadromous fish. However, dozens of historically clear streams have recently turned orange and turbid. Thawing permafrost is thought to have exposed sulfide minerals to weathering, delivering iron and other potentially toxic metals to aquatic ecosystems. Here, we report stream water metal concentrations throughout the federal

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler My last post described our 450-page response to the DOE Climate Working Group report. This DOE report seems designed to muddy the waters about climate science — it’s a new iteration of the Merchants of Doubt. We found the report used selective misquoting of the scientific literature (cherry picking), omission of contrary results from the scientific literature, and simple errors due to a lack of understanding of the science to reach its conclusions. Further commentary of the process is in this post. A reporter asked me for a comment on a post on Dr. Judy Curry’s blog about our review of the DOE Climate Working Group report. In her post, she said:

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. Has Arctic sea ice recovered? Arctic sea ice, in both extent and volume, continues to decline. The only fair comparison for Arctic sea ice is to a full 12 months prior, as ice accumulates each winter and melts each summer. By that metric, Arctic sea ice extent set a record low maximum in March 2025, the month when ice is at its highest. Arctic sea ice vo

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler If you don’t follow climate policy closely, you may not know that the Trump administration is launching an effort to overturn one of the most fundamental pillars of American climate policy: the scientific finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health and welfare (the so-called “Endangerment Finding”). If successful, this move could unravel virtually every U.S. climate regulation on the books, from car emissions standards to power plant rules. To support this effort, the Department of Energy 

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 31, 2025 thru Sat, September 6, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles) How to organize a peaceful and effective climate protest "Are you ready to organize your first event on behalf of the planet? Here are some ideas and tips on how to make it successful." Yale Climate Connections, Colleen M. Crary, Aug 28, 2025. Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s

Open access notables Special: The Practice and Assessment of Science: Five Foundational Flaws in the Department of Energy's 2025 Climate Report, AMS Council, American Meteorological Society Here we identify five foundational flaws in the Department of Energy’s (DoE’s) 2025 Climate Synthesis report

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 the northern hemisphere experiences summer, we have also been experiencing the disastrous impacts of climate change - extreme weather like heatwaves droughts; records being smashed time and time again; and wildfires raging through our cities and our forests. But despite the fact that we're seeing unprecedented conditions, some are still claiming that all this can be explained by simply saying "It's Called Summer". But this form of climate denial - that today's conditions are normal summer, rather than a symptom of a changed climate - is surprisingly widespread... despite also being nonsensical. In this video, I get into why this kind of argument holds back climate action. Su

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 global warming actually happening? Multiple indicators show Earth is warming rapidly. Global surface temperatures are now about 1.47°C (2.65°F) above the 19th century average, with the past ten years the warmest on record. Surface temperatures are measured by thousands of land weather stations and weather balloons, along with ships, ocean buoys, an