Forty-four of the world’s leading climate scientists have called on Nordic policymakers to address the potentially imminent and “devastating” collapse of key Atlantic Ocean currents. In an open letter published online Monday (Oct. 21), University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann and other eminent scientists say the risks of weakening ocean circulation in the Atlantic have … Read more
Tiny photosynthetic microbes could be secretly thriving on Mars — hiding inside small bubbles of liquid water in the thin layers of dusty ice that litter the Red Planet’s surface, a new NASA-led study reveals. Researchers believe the icy patches could be among the most promising targets in the hunt for extraterrestrial life within our … Read more
In my research focused on early farmers of Europe, I have often wondered about a curious pattern through time: Farmers lived in large dense villages, then dispersed for centuries, then later formed cities again, only to abandon those as well. Why? Archaeologists often explain what we call urban collapse in terms of climate change, overpopulation, … Read more
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend a night on Mars? This excerpt from the new book “Daydreaming in the Solar System” by John E. Moores and Jesse Rogerson, takes a poetic look at what it might be like to explore the Red Planet if you were faced with the daunting … Read more
In summer 2024, several news outlets chronicled the “nightmarish” impacts Texas communities endured due to the din of noise emanating from nearby cryptocurrency mines. Residents of these communities reported that the unrelenting noise caused them to experience a range of ailments, including high blood pressure, chest pain and tinnitus. The noise levels of the cryptocurrency … Read more
Scientists estimate that the earliest biological entities began to appear on Earth more than 4 billion years ago. “There was a sort of primordial soup from which certain organic molecules were formed. These were precursors to RNA and DNA,” carbon-containing molecules which combined and organized themselves into a sequence of biological reactions, said computational biologist … Read more
Material harvested from asteroids could be used to sustain astronauts during long-duration space missions. Researchers from Western University’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration have identified a way to produce edible biomass, aka food, using microbes and the organic compounds found in asteroids. Their proposed process addresses the issue of how to pack enough food … Read more
Yoshua Bengio is one of the most-cited researchers in artificial intelligence (AI). A pioneer in creating artificial neural networks and deep learning algorithms, Bengio, along with Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun and former Google AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton, received the 2018 Turing Award (known as the “Nobel” of computing) for their key contributions to … Read more
Imagine you are in a soccer match, and it’s tied. Each team will begin taking penalty kicks. The crowd is roaring, and whether or not your team wins the game depends on your ability to hit the shot. As you imagine this scene, are you able to picture the scenario with colors and details? Scientists … Read more
In the fight against climate change scientists have invented some weird and wonderful ways to cut greenhouse gases, stop glacier melt and shade the powerful rays of the sun to reduce the planet’s surface temperature. The future of Earth relies on humankind’s ability to curb our reliance on fossil fuels — and ultimately use fewer … Read more
