Tag Archives: science

To live in London in 2023 is to be perpetually engulfed in a cloud of cloyingly sweet vapor. The scent of Blue Razz Lemonade replaces traffic fumes; Banana Ice covers the rancid smell of rubbish. Disposable vapes are everywhere. Sleeker-looking than their bulkier, refillable counterparts, easier to get your hands …

This story originally appeared on Yale Environment 360 and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2015 a lightning strike started what became known as the Rough Fire, which eventually burned more than 150,000 acres of forest east of Fresno and just west of Kings Canyon National Park. The …

SpaceX’s Starship failed its test flight this morning when the automated flight termination system triggered, and engineers lost contact with the craft about 10 minutes into its journey. This marks the company’s second attempt at sending a Starship on a near-orbital trip, a 90-minute voyage that would have gone almost …

Solar panels and wind turbines get all the attention, but an underappreciated device is helping slash emissions in a big way: the heat pump. Instead of generating heat by burning natural gas, like a furnace does, an electric heat pump extracts warmth from outdoor air and transfers it inside. In …

It’s hard to believe that just four decades ago, we had no idea whether planets existed outside our solar system. Scientists discovered the first exoplanet in 1992, and since then our understanding of the universe has changed irrevocably. Now, scientists estimate that there are as many planets around us as …

The US is enduring a sharp spike in cases of babies born with syphilis, an illness that not only threatens infants’ health, but also shows that the system providing healthcare for pregnant women is fracturing. Congenital syphilis has risen to its highest rate in 30 years, according to a recent …

The first medical treatment that uses Crispr gene editing was authorized Thursday by the United Kingdom. The one-time therapy, which will be sold under the brand name Casgevy, is for patients with sickle cell disease and a related blood disorder called beta thalassemia, both of which are inherited. The UK …

Popular vegan egg and lab-grown-meat company Eat Just is in deep financial trouble. A WIRED investigation bringing together court records, documents, and interviews from former employees suggests that the company frequently struggled with paying its suppliers on time. Now it is being sued by a former partner for roughly $100 …

Dr. Alison Todd describes herself as an “inventor at heart,” but she’s not the sort of inventor who tinkers with gears in a workshop. Instead, she invents new tools in medical diagnostics, developing better ways to identify gene sequences and how they impact disease. Rather than screwdrivers and hammers, her …

Late last week, on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula, a concerning sequence of earthquakes suddenly turned into a full-blown volcanic crisis. A burst of intense and frequent seismic shaking, accompanied by a convulsing crust, suggested that a huge volume of magma was rapidly burrowing its way toward Svartsengi, the site of a …