Sarah Gibbens, Nat Geo
When a U.S. Republican senator threw a snowball onto the Senate floor in late February of 2015, he used it to underscore his belief that human-made climate change was an alarmist conclusion. The snowball had been rolled from the Capitol grounds in Washington D.C., which, at the time, was experiencing an uncharacteristically cold winter.
Marcelo Gleiser, NPR
The history of science in particular the physical sciences, like physics and astronomy can be told as the incremental realization that there is large-scale coherence in the universe.By large-scale coherence, I mean that some of the same physical laws hold at scales as diverse as the atom and the galaxy, and even the universe as a whole.
Jon Cohen, Science News
A few months before completing medical school in 2003, Lukas Wartman was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a blood cancer that's particularly lethal when it strikes adults. So began a battle to stay alive that has involved more than 70 drugs, two rounds of cell transplants, and a staggering series of twists and turns.
Tim Wallace, Cosmos
Are we living in an era of biological annihilation? Determining whether our planet is entering its sixth mass extinction depends on clearly demonstrating current extinction rates are far above the background rates that have prevailed between the five previous mass extinctions.
Eric Berger, Ars Technica
After several years of secrecy, a company called Moon Express revealed the scope of its ambitions on Wednesday. And they are considerable. The privately held company released plans for a single, modular spacecraft that can be combined to form successfully larger and more capable vehicles. Ultimately the company plans to establish a lunar outpost in 2020 and set up commercial operations on the Moon.
Peter Brannen, Atlantic
Who you with?I'm a science journalist, I said, jolted from my reverie on the shoulder of I-68 in Maryland, where a crowd of geologists had gathered on a field trip to poke at some rocks revealed by the highway department's dynamite. The rocks, slate gray and studded with pebbles from a punishing ice age, spoke to a mysterious global die-off at the end of the Devonian period, hundreds of millions of years ago.
Colin Dwyer, NPR
The cholera outbreak in Yemen marked a grim milestone Monday, as the International Committee of the Red Cross announced there are now more than 300,000 suspected cases of the disease in the country.The epidemic has claimed more than 1,600 lives in roughly 10 weeks and "continues to spiral out of control," according to the agency.
Matt Williams, Universe Today
The Moon has been around since the earliest days of the Solar System. To human beings, there has never been a time when we couldn't look up in the night sky and either see the Moon hanging there, or know that it would be back the very next night (i.e. a New Moon). And thanks to the development of modern astronomy and space exploration, our understanding of the Moon has grown immensely.For instance, we know that the Moon formed early in Earth's history, and that it... Читать дальше...
Ethan Siegel, SWaB!
Jupiter is the Solar System's largest planet, with the largest continuously-raging storm ever known. Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) was discovered in 1665, raging continuously from at least 1830 until today. The spot appeared solid and larger in the early 20th century, but appeared smaller and more storm-like when Voyager 1 flew past in 1979. At its maximum, the GRS was 40,000 kilometers across: more than three Earth diameters long.
Liz Langley, National Geographic
Gray hair can be bane or beauty, depending on who you ask.It's also common among primates, leading one reader to inquire via Twitter, "What is the purpose of hair turning gray in primates and humans? Status, lack of status?We wonder about that, tooafter all, if we make it to the golden years, how come all we get is a head full of silver?
Nathaniel Scharping, Discover
It's a twist of fate that wouldn't feel out of place in a horror movie: A platoon of caterpillars, young and hungry, descend on a defenseless tomato plant to feast, but as they begin to eat something goes terribly wrong. The leaves no longer satisfy, and they turn on each other in a cannibalistic frenzy feeding wildly until just one, sated and content, remains.You can read it as a Carrie-like moral parable, perhaps, but bringing out caterpillars' carnivorous tendencies... Читать дальше...
April Reese, SM
Last month, a bioethics panel made up of experts from about a dozen perspectivesincluding an ecologist, a geneticist, a lawyer, a hunter, and a M?ori leadergathered here for the first time to discuss the ethical and social challenges to eradicating invasive predators. At the same time, a separate group of researchers is getting ready to conduct a national survey aimed at gauging the public's tolerance for novel predator control technologies.The massive eradication effortdubbed... Читать дальше...
Michael Lucy, CM
The New Horizons space probe, which made headlines around the world in 2015 when it beamed back humanity's best-ever views of Pluto, is currently hurtling through the outer reaches of the solar system on its way to a rendezvous with a lump of ice known as MU69.New Horizons won't get to MU69 for another year and a half the flyby is expected to occur on 31 December 2018 or 1 January 2019 so the spacecraft is hibernating to preserve its energy.
