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After 1,700 years, why did Polynesians suddenly sail east?
While ancestral Polynesians were highly adaptable and accustomed to seasonal droughts, prolonged and severe droughts during times of high population density might mean an island could no longer support its human population. Ultimately, island survival hinges on a single critical resource: rainfall. Unlocking the climate record Until recently, scientists lacked evidence from the Tonga and
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A Jupiter-size planet that escaped its star’s death
WD 1856 b is the only confirmed case of a planet that survived the death of a Sun-like star. It’s a Jupiter-size world orbiting a white dwarf—the burned-out remnant of a Sun-like star. Now, a team of astronomers has used the James Webb Space Telescope to take a closer look at this planet for the
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Is an air-conditioning revolution coming to Europe?
Lindsay Rasmussen sees the same potential. At Third Derivative, a climate-tech accelerator founded by the US nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, she works with startups such as Mimic Systems and Magnotherm on next-generation cooling. She stresses that solid-state cooling technologies are still in their early stages—promising, but unproven at scale. But “the space can move quickly
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Payloads used to dictate the terms of launch. That’s finally changing.
But flat-packed, stackable satellites allow operators to deliver more capability to orbit faster. Starship will take this to the next level with its capacity to launch SpaceX’s more powerful Starlink V3s. “On a Falcon 9, they can only launch 27 of these V2s,” Jones said. “The Starship can launch 60 of these larger V3s. What
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Newly installed monitoring system watched the seafloor spread
The researchers interpret this as a magma reservoir beneath the ridge draining. Consistent with that, the temperature of the water at the nearby instruments started rising at the same time, suggesting that magma was interacting with the seawater. That’s already a lot, but the list of events doesn’t end there. While all of this was
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NRC is (sort of) getting rid of "as low as reasonably achievable" standard
Last week, just before the US started its break for the July Fourth holiday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposed a new rule that would change how it regulated exposure to radiation. The Trump administration has been pushing to restart construction of nuclear power plants in the US, and many pro-nuclear advocates have been complaining
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The missing 500 million: Cosmic bombardment melted Earth’s first crust
The simulations that captured the localized effects of individual large impacts also produced wholesale recycling of crust back into the mantle, with material dripping down to depths of at least 600 kilometers. Johnson thinks this recycling explains why so little Hadean crust survived to the present. It also explains, he argues, the near-total absence of
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Chemical accidents rise as Trump administration proposes weakening safety rules
The new statistics released by PEER were made public as a result of a lawsuit PEER and other groups filed to compel the Chemical Safety Board to disclose industrial chemical releases as required by the Clean Air Act. A federal judge ruled in 2019 that communities have a right to know what hazardous chemicals are
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When the ability to smell goes away
About 14 years ago, Chrissi Kelly lost her sense of smell. She had traveled to the Czech Republic to visit family and caught some virus. Months later, when she still couldn’t smell, she made the rounds to doctors, including her general practitioner and an ear, nose and throat specialist, trying to find answers. She was
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Rocket Report: Indian startup nears first launch; SpaceX’s millenary milestone
Refurbishment over production… The production of 1,000 Merlin 1D engines is a remarkable milestone for any rocket engine, but it’s important to note that the Merlin 1D is reusable. The Merlin 1D has logged more than 6,000 engine flights with 1,000 units. “With Falcon’s reusability, recovering these engines has enabled continued reliability enhancements, making Merlin
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