Science

The far outskirts of our galaxy are teeming with activity. Astronomers pointed the powerful James Webb Space Telescope at a distant zone dubbed the “Extreme Outer Galaxy,” and zoomed in on dense cosmic clouds containing clusters of stars. In unprecedented resolution of this region, they spotted vibrant star formation, and …

On Monday, September 16, the US Coast Guard is convening a Marine Board of Investigation hearing into the loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible in June 2023 and the deaths of the five people on board, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. It intends to use the two-week livestreamed hearing in Charleston, …

The most volcanic world in our solar system has sprouted a new volcano. And its lava flows are enormous. Jupiter’s molten moon Io has been surveyed by a number of passing spacecraft, allowing planetary scientists to see changes on the surface. Recently, NASA‘s Juno mission made the closest swings by …

This year in the United States, 14 people have tested positive for avian influenza, or bird flu. Nine of those became infected after coming into contact with poultry, and four got the virus from exposure to dairy cows. The source of the remaining, most recent case remains a mystery. The …

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan–ATLAS and considered “the comet of the century,” will appear in all its splendor in our sky during September and October 2024. Due to its characteristics, astronomers believe it will be …

For the first time in history, a private citizen has left the confines of a spaceship while flying through space — an exercise that before now was only performed by trained astronauts. The unprecedented commercial spacewalk was part of SpaceX‘s Polaris Dawn mission, which sent four civilians into orbit to …

Five years ago, in a splashy speech in Washington, DC, Jeff Bezos rolled out Amazon’s Climate Pledge, a series of commitments to show that the company was serious about addressing climate change. A core component of that pledge, one that Bezos touted in front of members of Congress during Amazon’s …

SpaceX‘s Polaris Dawn mission finally launched on Tuesday, after a series of delays pushed back its commencement date. Now the crew of the private spaceflight are scheduled to take the first ever commercial spacewalk — and the entire thing will be livestreamed so we can watch it here from Earth. …

Jay Buckey flew to space as a NASA astronaut in 1998. Decades later, he watched one of his experiments leave Earth on a SpaceX rocket. The space company’s Polaris Dawn endeavor — a private venture funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman — is a five-day mission around Earth featuring an ambitious …

Warming temperatures are making farming much more difficult in the tropics. Food systems across island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific are particularly vulnerable, being hit hard by a combination of heat waves, droughts, and unseasonal rain. And the impact of climate change in these areas is likely to increase …