Science
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The Cost of Lightning
Exactly how climate change will impact lightning isn’t clear, but governments, public bodies, and the military are prepping for stormier weather.
Chris Baraniuk
Crispr-Enhanced Viruses Are Being Deployed Against UTIs
With antibiotics losing their effectiveness, one company is turning to gene editing and bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—to combat infections.
Emily Mullin
Why Polio Has Reemerged in Gaza
After a quarter of a century, the disease has returned to Gaza, prompting a campaign to immunize all of the territory's children against the virus.
Lee Sherry
The Mosquito-Borne Disease ‘Triple E’ Is Spreading in the US as Temperatures Rise
Eastern equine encephalitis, which has a high mortality rate, is becoming more common in North America as climate changes expands the habitats of insects.
Zoya Teirstein
Promising Mpox Drug Fails in Trials as Virus Spreads
In a trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the drug tecovirimat, also known as TPOXX, was found to be no better than placebo at clearing mpox lesions.
Emily Mullin
What Cancún’s Tourists Don’t See Is a Sprawling Concrete Jungle
The rapid expansion of Cancún since the 1970s has created a vastly unequal city, with overpopulated neighborhoods deprived of public space propping up the city's lavish tourist districts.
Ricardo Hernández
Urban Birds Are Harboring Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
Exposure to bacteria in landfill sites and polluted rivers may explain prevalence among city-dwelling birds.
Nicola Davis
Mountain Bikers Are Rewilding Land by Paying the Government to Do It
A new nature-restoration project in Wales is being funded by an unusual source: thrill-seeking downhill lovers.
Tristan Kennedy
Polluted Lakes Are Being Cleansed Using Floating Wetlands Made of Trash
Platforms combining plants and recycled garbage could offer a cut-price solution for reviving polluted bodies of water.
Hannah Richter
Why Super Typhoons Like Yagi Are More Common Than You’d Think
Unlike in the Atlantic, there is little to stop high-intensity storms forming in Southeast Asia, and climate change is making conditions even more perilous.
Dennis Mersereau
Ski Resorts Are Stockpiling Snow to Get Through Warm Winters
Under protective coverings, piles of snow can be stored for a surprisingly long time, allowing ski resorts to mitigate some of the lack of snowfall caused by climate change.
Chris Baraniuk
Wildfires Are Contaminating Water Supplies
Wildfires don’t just destroy forest—they can increase sediment in rivers and reservoirs, spark algae blooms, and pollute watercourses with dangerous chemicals, leaving water providers to grapple with long-term consequences.
Hannah Singleton
A Rare Coincidence of La Niña Events Will Weaken Hurricane Season
The oceans have produced a rare coincidence of the Pacific and Atlantic Niñas, which will lessen the severity of the hurricane season—though 2024 still remains a highly active year.
Annalisa Bracco and Zachary Handlos
An Underwater Data Center in San Francisco Bay? Regulators Say Not So Fast
The YC-backed startup NetworkOcean plans to sink GPUs into San Francisco Bay. Multiple California regulators WIRED spoke with hadn’t heard about the test—and raised concerns about its potential environmental impact.
Paresh Dave and Reece Rogers
The US Grid Is Adding Batteries at a Much Faster Rate Than Natural Gas
The shift toward renewables is officially in high gear.
John Timmer, Ars Technica
The Green Economy Is Hungry for Copper—and People Are Stealing, Fighting, and Dying to Feed It
With the possible exception of gold, no other metal has caused as much destruction as copper. In the coming years, we’ll need more of it than ever.
Vince Beiser
The Quest to Uncover the Secrets of Gold Hydrogen
Industries want to harvest naturally occurring hydrogen as soon as possible, but scientists warn of unforeseen consequences.
Marta Abbà
Alien Spaceships Could Be Detected Using Gravitational Waves
The concept of space-time makes Star Trek-style warp drives theoretically possible, and researchers have proposed a way of detecting their use.
Katy Clough, Sebastian Khan, and Tim Dietrich
The Biggest Controversy in Cosmology Just Got Bigger
A long-awaited study of the cosmic expansion rate suggests that when it comes to the Hubble tension, cosmologists are still missing something.
Liz Kruesi
Boeing Starliner Returns Home to an Uncertain Future
NASA has three more operational Starliner missions on the books. It hasn't decided whether it will commit to any more than that.
Stephen Clark, Ars Technica
Moon GPS Is Coming
Nations and companies are ramping up their efforts to deploy the first satnav on the moon to support a flurry of planned missions there.
Becky Ferreira
Students Find New Evidence of the Impossibility of Complete Disorder
A new mathematic proof marks the first progress in decades on a problem about how order emerges.
Leila Sloman
The Quantum Mechanics of the Greenhouse Effect
Carbon dioxide’s powerful heat-trapping effect has been traced to a quirk of its quantum structure. The finding may explain climate change better than any computer model.
Joseph Howlett
So You’re Underwater: Why Do You See That Circle of Light Above You?
Snell’s window is one of the coolest phenomena in the natural world. You’ve seen it, but do you know what causes it?
Rhett Allain
The Physics of Cold Water May Have Jump-Started Complex Life
When seawater gets cold, it gets viscous. This fact could explain how single-celled ocean creatures became multicellular when the planet was frozen during “Snowball Earth,” according to experiments.
Veronique Greenwood
Elon Musk’s Neuralink Is Ready to Implant a Second Volunteer
In a livestreamed update on X, Elon Musk and Neuralink executives gave an update on the company's next study participant—and its next-generation brain implant.
Emily Mullin
Woman Who Received Pig Kidney Transplant Has It Removed
Surgeons at NYU took out the pig kidney because it wasn’t getting enough blood flow.
Emily Mullin
Gene-Edited Salad Greens Are Coming to US Stores This Fall
Biotech giant Bayer plans to distribute mustard greens that have been genetically altered to make them less bitter to grocery stores across the country.
Emily Mullin
WTF Is With the Pink Pineapples at the Grocery Store?!
Using DNA from tangerines and tobacco, food scientists have made a familiar fruit tastier—and more Instagrammable—than ever. We looked into it so you don’t have to.
Emily Mullin
The Atlas Robot Is Dead. Long Live the Atlas Robot
Before the dear old model could even power down, Boston Dynamics unleashed a stronger new Atlas robot that can move in ways us puny humans never can.
Carlton Reid
Meet the Next Generation of Doctors—and Their Surgical Robots
Don't worry, your next surgeon will definitely be a human. But just as medical students are training to use a scalpel, they're also training to use robots designed to make surgeries easier.
Neha Mukherjee
AI Is Building Highly Effective Antibodies That Humans Can’t Even Imagine
Robots, computers, and algorithms are hunting for potential new therapies in ways humans can’t—by processing huge volumes of data and building previously unimagined molecules.
Amit Katwala
This Artificial Muscle Moves Stuff on Its Own
Actuators inspired by cucumber plants could make robots move more naturally in response to their environments, or be used for devices in inhospitable places.
Max G. Levy
Scientists Are Unlocking the Secrets of Your ‘Little Brain’
The cerebellum is responsible for far more than coordinating movement. New techniques reveal that it is, in fact, a hub of sensory and emotional processing in the brain.
R Douglas Fields
Meet the Designer Behind Neuralink’s Surgical Robot
Afshin Mehin has helped design some of the most futuristic neurotech devices.
Emily Mullin
Are You Noise Sensitive? Here's How to Tell
Every person has a different idea of what makes noise “loud,” but there are some things we all can do to turn the volume down a little.
Amy Paturel
Why You Hear Voices in Your White Noise Machine
If you've ever heard music, voices, or other sounds while trying to sleep with a white noise machine running, you're not losing your mind. Here's what's going on.
Jennifer Billock
Latest
Space Oddity
Strange Noises Are Coming from Inside Boeing’s Starliner Spacecraft
Eric Berger, Ars Technica
Paralympics 2024
John McFall, the Astronaut Flag Bearer at the Paris Paralympics, Is Ready to Fly
Emilio Cozzi
Return to Sender
The Boeing Starliner Astronauts Will Come Home on SpaceX’s Dragon Next Year
Becky Ferreira
Extreme Weather
Bayesian Yacht Sinking: Climate Change Created Perfect Storm for Waterspouts
Alec Luhn
jab time
The Covid-19 Summer Wave Is So Big, the FDA Might Release New Vaccines Early
Beth Mole, Ars Technica
Three’s a Crowd
How to See the Conjunction Between Mars, Jupiter, and the Moon This August
Jorge Garay