In late December, scientists in California began searching coronavirus samples for a fast-spreading new variant that had just been identified in Britain. They found it, though in relatively few samples. But in the process, the scientists made another unwelcome discovery: California had produced a variant of its own. That mutant, which belongs to a lineage […]
Science
Science
Court Voids a ‘Tortured’ Trump Climate Rollback
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the Trump administration’s plan to relax restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, paving the way for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to enact new and stronger restrictions on power plants. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia called the […]
Finally in 3-D: A Dinosaur’s All-Purpose Orifice
The world’s oldest known all-purpose orifice sits in a fossil display case in the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, so close to the glass that enshrines it that you can “put your face up to it, like this,” said Jakob Vinther, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England, holding his hand […]
A Surprise in a 50 Million-Year-Old Assassin Bug Fossil: Its Genitals
Much less is known about the lifestyle of assassin bugs of yore, of which only 50 or so species have been unearthed in fossil form. The newcomer to the bunch, named Aphelicophontes danjuddi, is one of the most intact to date. The fossil was first pried from a wreath of rock in Colorado’s Green River […]
Supreme Court Case Could Limit Future Lawsuits Against Fossil Fuel Industry
Baltimore’s acting city solicitor, Dana P. Moore, said that the city filed its lawsuit in the state courts “because that is the appropriate forum for seeking accountability for localized harms.” She called the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to move the case to federal court “a delay tactic.” Baltimore’s suit, initially filed in July 2018, argues […]
A Bitter Archaeological Feud Over an Ancient Vision of the Cosmos
The disk is small — just 12 inches in diameter — but it has loomed large in the minds of people across millenniums. Made of bronze, the artifact was inlaid in gold with an ancient vision of the cosmos by its crafters. Over generations, it was updated with new astronomical insights, until it was buried […]
Missing: One Black Hole With 10 Billion Solar Masses
Two of the knots, they concluded, were probably small galaxies with small internal motions being cannibalized by the big galaxy. Measurements of the third knot had such large error bars that it could not yet be ruled in or out as the black hole’s location. The fourth, very compact knot near the bottom edge of […]
Martinus Veltman, Who Made Key Contribution in Physics, Dies at 89
Martinus J.G. Veltman, a Dutch theoretical physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for work that explained the structure of some of the fundamental forces in the universe, helping to lay the groundwork for the development of the Standard Model, the backbone of quantum physics, died on Jan. 4 in Bilthoven, the Netherlands. He was […]
Businesses Aim to Pull Greenhouse Gases From the Air. It’s a Gamble.
“It’s a chicken-or-egg problem,” said Nan Ransohoff, head of climate at Stripe, an online payments company based in San Francisco. “The best way to bring down the cost is to start deploying these technologies at scale. But until there are actual customers, no one’s going to build them.” To help break the impasse, Stripe announced […]
Twins with Covid Help Scientists Untangle the Disease’s Genetic Roots
What Ms. Burkett and Ms. Miller experienced wasn’t the norm. Many of the conditions that can raise a person’s risk for severe Covid — excess weight, heart disease, diabetes, smoking — are highly influenced by environment and behavior, not just genetics. A person’s history of fighting off other coronaviruses, like those that lead to common colds, might […]