Science

Mara Johnson-Groh, 33, a freelance science writer in British Columbia, Canada, lost her fingerprints about a decade ago when she started rock climbing—particularly her middle and ring fingers, where a lot of pressure is exerted on the rock. She says she regularly hears stories of fellow climbers having problems trying …

Have you ever had an eight-day road trip turn into an eight-month excursion? Nope? Well, consider yourself fortunate that you’re not one of the astronauts currently stranded in space. The two astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who blasted to the International Space Station (ISS) in a Boeing Starliner are …

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1896, the Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius realized that carbon dioxide (CO2) traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere—the phenomenon now called the greenhouse effect. Since then, increasingly sophisticated modern climate models have verified Arrhenius’ central conclusion: that every time the CO2 …

Our Milky Way galaxy is a cannibal. It has grown by consuming other galaxies. Yet, it too, may be destined to collide and merge with an even bigger galaxy: Andromeda. Though galaxy collisions are normal events and NASA suspects this collision is inevitable (in billions of years), new research argues …

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. No matter where you live, extreme weather can hit your area, causing damage to homes, power outages, and dangerous or deadly conditions. If you’re on the coast, it may be a hurricane; in the Midwest or …

THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. With the Olympic torch extinguished in Paris, all eyes are turning to Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics. The host city has promised that the next Summer Games will be “car-free.” For people who know Los Angeles, this …

During a solar storm, the sun unleashes a torrent of radiation into space. If you’re on Earth, the planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field shield you against the most harmful health impacts. But if you were on Mars some 140 million miles away, how those gusts of energy would affect you …

NASA has announced that astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams will return to Earth next February aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. The announcement at a press conference today caps off months of speculation about the best plan to safely bring the astronauts home after malfunctions with their ride, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, …

Have you ever sat on the bottom of a swimming pool and pondered your watery ceiling? Most of the surface is a sheet of light blue, and you can't see through it, even though the water is clear. But right above you, there's a round window of transparency. And here's …

Amid a summer surge of Covid-19 infections, the US Food and Drug Administration just approved updated mRNA vaccines that more closely target the currently circulating variants of the coronavirus. The updated vaccines, from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, target a variant of Omicron called KP.2, one of the several so-called FLiRT variants …