Tag Archives: science

In an update released late Friday evening, NASA said it was “adjusting” the date of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft’s return to Earth from June 26 to an unspecified time in July. The announcement followed two days of long meetings to review the readiness of the spacecraft, developed by Boeing, to …

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. Summer arrives, and with it comes an arachnophobic furor—frantic reports about the intrusion of recluse spiders into our homes. Also known as fiddlebacks or violin spiders, these are arachnids of the genus Loxosceles. They’re found in …

THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. When summer starts with a stifling heat wave, as many places are seeing in 2024, it can pose risks for just about anyone who spends time outside, whether they’re runners, people who walk or cycle to work, outdoor …

This story originally appeared on Slate and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If you’re one of the millions of Americans worried about your pocketbooks and the general cost of living, you might have picked up on some good news recently: Inflation has really been cooling off this summer, …

In 2010, two famous economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, released a paper confirming what many fiscally conservative politicians had long suspected: that a country’s economic growth tanks if public debt rises above a certain percentage of GDP. The paper fell on the receptive ears of the UK’s soon-to-be chancellor, …

In 1996 the United States hit peak potato. Americans were eating 64 pounds of the vegetables each year—more than at any point since modern records began in 1970. A record-breaking harvest had flooded the country with so many spuds that the government had to pay farmers to give them away. …

In 2024, fusion technology will finally make the transition from basic research to commercial application. The reason for that will be the construction and completion of the first commercial fusion demonstrators. These cutting-edge facilities are smaller than fusion power plants. For instance, a laser-based fusion demonstrator might use five to …

Rising sea levels, biodiversity collapse, extreme weather—these are the grisly horsemen of climate apocalypse. But don’t forget the fretting loan officers. A study published earlier this year found that US mortgage approvals tend to dip following periods of hotter-than-normal weather. For every 1 degree Celsius that temperatures rise above average, …

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Moore’s law is already pretty fast. It holds that computer chips pack in twice as many transistors every two years or so, producing major jumps in speed and efficiency. But the computing demands of the deep-learning era are growing even …

This story originally appeared in Hakai Magazine and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A new video appears on the social media network Telegram: footage of the smoking area aboard a large vessel. The curtains are ripped, the lights are broken, and ash and glass litter the floor. “This …