How to See the Perseid Meteor Shower —and Why It ’ s Special
Space is a punishing place—frigid, airless, sizzling with radiation. But for so unforgiving an environment, it does put on stunning spectacles, with its comets, eclipses and, for people with telescopes, dazzling views of exotic worlds like ringed Saturn and its litter of moons. This time of year, space regularly stages one of its most dazzling productions: the Perseid meteor shower. The brightest meteor shower of the year began on July 14 and will continue until Sept. 1, but peaks this week on Aug. 11, 12, and 13.
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The best viewing hours are from midnight to just befor...
Source: TIME: Science - August 11, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Russia Is About To Launch Its First Moon Rocket In Nearly 50 Years
The last time Russia sent a spacecraft to the moon, Gerald Ford was in the White House, Elton John’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” was the U.S.’s number one hit, and a gallon of gas cost ¢0.57. That spacecraft, Luna 24, lifted off on Aug. 9, 1976, landed in the moon’s Mare Crisium (Sea of Crisis), and returned to Earth on Aug. 22, 1976, carrying 170 gm (6 oz.) of lunar soil. Oh, and it actually wasn’t Russia that launched Luna 24 at all; it was the Soviet Union, which still had 15 years to live before its ultimate fall on Dec. 25, 1991.
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Source: TIME: Science - August 10, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Antarctica is Experiencing Extreme Climate Impacts, Say Scientists
Even in Antarctica—one of the most remote and desolate places on Earth—scientists say they are finding shattered temperature records and an increase in the size and number of wacky weather events.
The southernmost continent is not isolated from the extreme weather associated with human-caused climate change, according to a new paper in Frontiers in Environmental Science that tries to make a coherent picture of a place that has been a climate change oddball. Its western end and especially its peninsula have seen dramatic ice sheet melt that threatens massive sea level rises over the next few centuries, while ...
Source: TIME: Science - August 8, 2023 Category: Science Authors: MELINA WALLING / AP Tags: Uncategorized climate change healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news
Why Experts Are Skeptical About That Supposed Superconductor Breakthrough
On Saturday July 22, researchers in South Korea published a paper announcing the synthesis of what could be the world’s first ambient-temperature superconductor.
If their findings are genuine, then the implications are huge. But most experts are skeptical. Researchers around the world are trying to replicate and verify the Korean researchers’ findings. The most credible attempts have found that LK-99—the name the Korean researchers gave the material—is not actually superconductive at room temperatures.
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For now, the reliability of the findings...
Source: TIME: Science - August 3, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Will Henshall Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
A New Age of Water is Dawning
We’re living in a pivotal moment in history, on the cusp of either sinking into a dark period of growing poverty, accelerating ecological destruction, and worsening conflict, or moving forward to a new age of equity, sustainability, and stewardship of the only planet in the universe where we know life exists. I believe a positive future is not only possible, but inevitable, but solving our current crises and moving along the path to that desired future will require new, concerted, and sustained efforts.
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Nothing better exemplifies both the threat and the promise facing ...
Source: TIME: Science - August 3, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Peter H. Gleick Tags: Uncategorized climate change Excerpt freelance Source Type: news
In Just 7 Months, the World Used an Entire Year ’ s Worth of Planetary Resources
For most people, Aug. 2, 2023 has been a day that’s gone largely unremarked upon. But for the planet as a whole, it was a very big—and very bad—date. Aug. 2 marked this year’s so-called Earth Overshoot Day—the day on which the annual resources humanity extracts from the earth exceeds the planet’s ability to regenerate them in the same year. Haul more fish from the ocean than can breed in their place? That’s an overshoot. Pump more fresh water from a lake or river or aquifer than can be replaced by rain, snow melt, or groundwater? That’s an overshoot.
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Source: TIME: Science - August 2, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized climate change Climate Is Everything healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Here ’ s How the Stunning Supermoon Looked Around the World
The Earth and the moon snuggled up close last night—at least by cosmic standards. The two worlds were just 357,311 km (222,023 mi.) apart on the evening of Aug. 1. That represents the perigee—or low point—in the moon’s elliptical orbit around our planet. The apogee—or high point—is 405,500 km (253,000 mi.). Not only was the moon close, it was also full—a combination that gives rise to a so-called supermoon, one which appears 30% brighter and 14% larger than an ordinary full moon does at a more distant remove.
A bigger, brighter moon always brings out star gazers and photographer...
Source: TIME: Science - August 2, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Why We Must Save Ugly Bugs
If you think of insects at all, you probably see them as something to be scared of, as pests to be stomped on, or as persistent nuisances ruining a lovely afternoon picnic. For example, no-one has a good word to say about the cockroaches, flies, mosquitoes, or termites that share our homes. In several surveys, including a 2021 report commissioned by insect repellent brand Zevo and conducted by OnePoll, these creatures have been voted some of the most hated insects in America. Yet each of these bugs has a lot to teach us if we look closely enough.
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Take the hated cockroach. Su...
Source: TIME: Science - August 2, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Steve Nicholls Tags: Uncategorized freelance Source Type: news
How to Watch Tonight ’ s Supermoon —and Why It ’ s So Special
The sturgeon living in the Great Lakes don’t have a lot to do with the moon—or at least they didn’t until the Algonquin Native American tribe came along. The Algonquins discovered that sturgeon were most plentiful in the lakes in August, and so they paid a small tribute to that fact. When a full moon appeared in the sky in that month, they dubbed it a sturgeon moon. But it wasn’t just any full moon that would earn the honorific. It had to be a so-called supermoon—one of which will occur today, Aug. 1.
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Supermoons are striking cosmic spectacles, a...
Source: TIME: Science - August 1, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
What We Know —and Don ’ t Know —About UFOs After the Congressional Hearing
Jimmy Carter waited four years before he at last went public with the news that he’d seen a UFO. It was in 1969, when Carter was a private citizen—between his service as a Georgia state senator and the governor of the state—that he saw a mysteriously luminous object hanging in the sky one night after attending a Lion’s Club meeting. Carter kept the sighting to himself, deciding only in 1973 to file his report with the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma.
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The verdict? Nothing to see here. A little basic astronomical forensics revealed that what Carter...
Source: TIME: Science - July 27, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Ocean Currents Vital For Distributing Heat Could Collapse by Midcentury, Study Warns
A system of ocean currents that transports heat northward across the North Atlantic could collapse by mid-century, according to a new study, and scientists have said before that such a collapse could cause catastrophic sea-level rise and extreme weather across the globe.
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In recent decades, researchers have both raised and downplayed the specter of Atlantic current collapse. It even prompted a movie that strayed far from the science. Two years ago the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said any such catastrophe is unlikely this century. But the new study...
Source: TIME: Science - July 27, 2023 Category: Science Authors: DREW COSTLEY / AP Tags: Uncategorized climate change healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news
It ’ s ‘ Extremely Likely ’ This July Will Be the Hottest Month Ever
July isn’t even over yet and a group of scientists are saying it’s “extremely likely,” it will be the hottest month ever recorded. That’s according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the E.U.-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Already, the first three weeks of this month have been the warmest three-week stretch globally on record. Comparing that stretch of time to previous years, experts believe this July is on track to beat previous records. And the world has already been experiencing the impact of this climate-changed world—from heat waves in Europe, the U.S....
Source: TIME: Science - July 27, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Kyla Mandel Tags: Uncategorized climate change Climate Is Everything healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Hot Tub-Level Water at Tip of Florida May Be Hottest Seawater Ever Recorded
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The water temperature on the tip of Florida hit hot tub levels, exceeding 100 degrees (37.8 degrees Celsius) two days in a row. And meteorologists say that could potentially be the hottest seawater ever measured, although there are some issues with the reading.
Just 26 miles (40 kilometers) away, scientists saw devastating effects from prolonged hot water surrounding Florida — devastating coral bleaching and even some death in what had been one of the Florida Keys’ most resilient reefs. Climate change has been setting temperature records across the globe this m...
Source: TIME: Science - July 26, 2023 Category: Science Authors: SETH BORENSTEIN / AP Tags: Uncategorized climate change healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news
Scientists Link Climate Change To July Heat Waves in Europe, China, and the U.S.
The fingerprints of climate change are all over the intense heat waves gripping the globe this month, a new study finds. Researchers say the deadly hot spells in the American Southwest and Southern Europe could not have happened without the continuing buildup of warming gases in the air.
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These unusually strong heat waves are becoming more common, Tuesday’s study said. The same research found the increase in heat-trapping gases, largely from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has made another heat wave — the one in China — 50 times more likely with the...
Source: TIME: Science - July 25, 2023 Category: Science Authors: SETH BORENSTEIN / AP Tags: Uncategorized climate change healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news
The Last Time Our Planet Was This Hot, Woolly Mammoths Roamed the Earth
If you could go back to the Eemian period—from 116,000 to 129,000 years ago—you’d feel right at home. OK, the woolly mammoths lumbering about might take you aback, as might the hippopotami roaming freely across what would one day be the streets of Europe. But when it comes to climate, things would not be all that different. Mean global temperatures today are about 1ºC warmer than they were in the pre-industrial era, leading to the extreme weather and other events we’ve been experiencing: heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods, super storms, savage hurricanes, and more.
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Source: TIME: Science - July 21, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized climate change extreme weather healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
