So many things launched into space this year: Six humans traveled aboard commercial crew vehicles, three spacecraft began journeys to Mars and several hundred distractingly…
News published in “Science”
To say that 2020 was challenging is an understatement. A world laid low by a pandemic. Racial inequities laid bare through social protests. Regions laid…
In August, a massive wildfire tore through the San Lorenzo Valley north of Santa Cruz, Calif., destroying almost 1,500 structures and exposing many others to…
Discoveries about the cosmos and ancient life on Earth tantalized scientists and the public in 2020. But these big claims require more evidence before they…
The best way to know a world is to touch it. Scientists have observed the planets and moons in our solar system for centuries, and…
Coronavirus infections in part of the United Kingdom have rapidly taken center stage in the COVID-19 pandemic after researchers identified a variant of the virus…
Today, airplanes pump a lot of climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But someday, carbon dioxide sucked from the atmosphere could be used to power…
As if 2020 needed an extra disaster, the year also brought us “murder hornets.” When two Asian giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia) were spotted in Washington…
Humankind’s growing need for food is running up against thousands of other species’ need for space. By 2050, humans may need to clear an additional…
2020 was a year of unremitting extreme climate events, from heat waves to wildfires to hurricanes, many of which scientists have directly linked to human-caused…