Author: Seth Borenstein
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Looking for signs of global warming? They’re all around you
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save GOTHIC, Colo. — David Inouye is an accidental climate scientist.More than 40 years ago, the University of Maryland biologist started studying when wildflowers, birds, bees and butterflies first appeared each spring on this mountain. These days, plants and animals are arriving at Rocky Mountain Biological…
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Antarctica melting at rapid speed, raising sea levels
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save WASHINGTON — The melting of Antarctica is accelerating at an alarming rate, with about 3 trillion tons of ice disappearing since 1992, an international team of ice experts said in a new study. In the…
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The heat is back on high: May smashes US temperature records
WASHINGTON — Record heat returned to the United States with a vengeance in May. May warmed to a record average 65.4 degrees in the Lower 48 states, breaking the high of 64.7 set in 1934, according to federal weather figures released Wednesday. May was 5.2 degrees above the 20th century’s average for the month. Weather…
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Hawaii volcano could spew boulders the size of refrigerators
PAHOA, Hawaii— If Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano blows its top in the coming days or weeks, as experts fear, it could hurl ash and boulders the size of refrigerators miles into the air, shutting down airline traffic and endangering lives in all directions, scientists said Thursday. “If it goes up, it will come down,” said Charles…
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Hawaii volcano could spew boulders the size of refrigerators
PAHOA, Hawaii — If Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano blows its top in the coming days or weeks, as experts fear, it could hurl ash and boulders the size of refrigerators miles into the air, shutting down airline traffic and endangering lives in all directions, scientists said Thursday. “If it goes up, it will come down,” said…
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Cool jazz: Bowhead whales improvise when singing, study says
WASHINGTON — Some whales are taking jazz riffs to new depths. For the first time, scientists have eavesdropped year-round on the songs of bowhead whales, the little-heard whales that roam the Arctic under the ice. They found that bowheads — the bigger, more blubbery cousins of the better known humpbacks — are more prolific and downright jazzier…
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Study finds false stories travel way faster than the truth
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save WASHINGTON — Twitter loves lies. A new study finds that false information on the social media network travels six times faster than the truth and reaches far more people. And you can’t blame bots; it’s…
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Astronomers glimpse cosmic dawn, when the stars switched on
WASHINGTON — After the Big Bang, it was cold and black. And then there was light. Now, for the first time, astronomers have glimpsed that dawn of the universe 13.6 billion years ago when the earliest stars were turning on the light in the cosmic darkness. And if that’s not enough, they may have detected…
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Trump aims for moon, pulls back on space station, telescopes
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The Trump administration wants NASA out of the International Space Station by 2025, and private businesses running the place instead. Under President Donald Trump’s 2019 proposed budget released Monday, U.S. government funding for the space station would end by 2025. The government would set aside $150 million to encourage commercial development…
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Fossil shows modern humans left Africa earlier than thought
WASHINGTON — A fossil found in Israel indicates modern humans may have left Africa as much as 100,000 years earlier than previously thought. Scientists say that an ancient upper jawbone and associated stone tools could also mean that Homo sapiens — modern humans — arose in Africa far earlier than fossils now show. And it…