Science

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Webb Space Telescope has found no evidence of an atmosphere at one of the seven rocky, Earth-sized planets orbiting another star.

Scientists said Monday that doesn’t bode well for the rest of the planets in this solar system, some of which are in the sweet spot for harboring water and potentially life.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists have discovered a new and renewable source of water on the moon for future explorers in lunar samples from a Chinese mission.

Water was embedded in tiny glass beads in the lunar dirt where meteorite impacts occur.

NEW YORK (AP) — Keep an eye to the sky this week for a chance to see a planetary hangout.

Five planets — Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and Mars — will line up near the moon.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An overheated rocket engine nozzle caused last year’s Blue Origin launch failure that has grounded flights for six months, the company said Friday.

DUNNIGAN, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom ended some of the state's water restrictions on Friday because a winter of relentless rain and snow has replenished the state's reservoirs and eased fears of a shortage after three years of severe drought.

MOSCOW (AP) — Two cosmonauts and an astronaut who were supposed to leave the International Space Station this month will be brought back to Earth in late September, doubling their time aboard the orbiting laboratory to more than a year, Russia's space agency announced Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Our capacity to care about others may have very, very ancient origins, a new study suggests.

It might have been deep-rooted in prehistoric animals that lived millions of years ago, before fish and mammals like us diverged on the tree of life, according to researchers who published their study Thursday in the journal Science.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A rocket made almost entirely of 3D-printed parts made its launch debut Wednesday night, lifting off amid fanfare but failing three minutes into flight — far short of orbit.

NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly 200 years after Ludwig van Beethoven's death, researchers pulled DNA from strands of his hair, searching for clues about the health problems and hearing loss that plagued him.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico acknowledged Saturday it faces sanctions from the international wildlife body known as CITES for not doing enough to protect the vaquita marina, a small porpoise that is the world’s most endangered marine mammal.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An asteroid big enough to wipe out a city will zip harmlessly between Earth and the moon's orbit this weekend, missing both celestial bodies.

Saturday’s close encounter will offer astronomers the chance to study a space rock from just over 100,000 miles (168,000 kilometers) away.

JERUSALEM (AP) — One of the oldest surviving biblical manuscripts, a nearly complete 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible, could soon be yours — for a cool $30 million.

The Codex Sassoon, a leather-bound, handwritten parchment tome containing almost the entirety of the Hebrew Bible, is set to go on the block at Sotheby’s in New York in May.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A 5,000-mile seaweed belt lurking in the Atlantic Ocean is expected in the next few months to wash onto beaches in the Caribbean Sea, South Florida, and the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A magnitude 6.5 earthquake rattled much of Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday, sending panicked residents fleeing from homes and offices and frightening people in remote villages. At least nine people died in Pakistan and two in Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday

Residents of a Louisiana parish located in the heart of a cluster of polluting petrochemical factories filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday raising allegations of civil rights, environmental justice and religious liberty violations.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Conservationists are pushing for the Venus fly trap to be South Carolina's official carnivorous plant, joining other official items such as the state bird (Carolina Wren), state opera (Porgy and Bess) and the state snack (boiled peanuts).

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Tuesday he is establishing national monuments on more than half a million acres in Nevada and Texas and creating a marine sanctuary in U.S. waters near the Pacific Remote Islands southwest of Hawaii.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The number of monarch butterflies wintering in the mountains of central Mexico dropped 22% from the previous year, and the number of trees lost from their favored wintering grounds tripled.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The European Union has warned Spain that it won’t tolerate renewed plans by regional politicians in the country’s south to expand irrigation near the prized Doñana wetlands, which scientists and ecologists say are in danger of drying up.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — No one really knows how much snow fell on the infamous Donner Party when the pioneers were trapped atop the Sierra Nevada for months and dozens died near Lake Tahoe in the winter of 1846-47.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to test for radioactive contamination at a suburban St. Louis park that sits along a notoriously toxic creek, a Corps official said Tuesday.

The Corps of Engineers is seeking permission from St.

BERLIN (AP) — Senior government officials at a climate meeting in Copenhagen gave a muted response Tuesday to calls from the head of the United Nations for countries to show greater ambition when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — African countries saddled with debt and ravaged by losses and damages from weather events like cyclones, drought and extreme temperatures have agreed to consider swapping debt to invest in climate action in a meeting of finance ministers in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

BERLIN (AP) — Humanity still has a chance, close to the last, to prevent the worst of climate change's future harms, a top United Nations panel of scientists said Monday.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The federal government ruled Monday that the last wild Atlantic salmon in the country can coexist with hydroelectric dams on a Maine river, dealing a blow to environmentalists who have long sought to remove the dams.

NEW YORK (AP) — Spring has sprung!

Monday marked the spring equinox — at least for those in the Northern Hemisphere.

BANGKOK (AP) — Thai officials said Monday they have traced to a recycling foundry a metal cylinder with radioactive contents that was discovered earlier this month missing from a power plant, but advised that there appeared to be no public health hazard.

SINIYAH ISLAND, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Archaeologists said Monday they have found the oldest pearling town in the Persian Gulf on an island off one of the northern sheikhdoms of the United Arab Emirates.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A new report says an estimated 43,000 people died amid Somalia's longest drought on record last year and half of them likely were children under 5 years old.

BERLIN (AP) — Governments gave their blessing on Sunday to a major new U.N. report on climate change, after approval was held up by a battle between rich and developing countries over emissions targets and financial aid to vulnerable nations.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Millions of fish have washed up dead in southeastern Australia in a die-off that authorities and scientists say is caused by depleted oxygen levels in the river after recent floods and hot weather.

Minnesota regulators knew four months ago that radioactive waste had leaked from a nuclear power plant in Monticello — but they didn’t announce anything about the leak until this week.

BEIJING (AP) — Genetic material collected at a Chinese market near where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA comingled with the virus, adding evidence to the theory that the virus originated from animals, not from a lab, international experts say.

For the first time, scientists have created baby mice from two males.

This raises the distant possibility of using the same technique for people – although experts caution that very few mouse embryos developed into live mouse pups and no one knows whether it would work for humans.

NEW YORK (AP) — Microsoft is infusing artificial intelligence tools into its suite of office software, including Word, Excel and Outlook emails.

The company said Thursday the new feature, named Copilot, is a processing engine that will allow users to do things like summarize long emails, draft stories in Word and animate slides in PowerPoint.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Record snowfall and rain have helped to loosen drought’s grip on parts of the western U.S. as national forecasters and climate experts warned Thursday that some areas should expect more flooding as the snow begins to melt.

As river water gushed through a broken levee, thousands of people in a California farming town were forced to evacuate as their homes were flooded and businesses destroyed.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Biden administration’s approval this week of the biggest oil drilling project in Alaska in decades promises to widen a rift among Alaska Natives, with some saying that oil money can't counter the damages caused by climate change and others defending the project as economically vital.

LONDON (AP) — Virgin Orbit said Thursday it is pausing all operations amid reports that the company is furloughing almost all its staff as part of a bid to seek a funding lifeline.

The California-based satellite launch company confirmed it's putting all work on hold, but didn't say how long for.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Doug Whitney inherited the same gene mutation that gave Alzheimer’s disease to his mother, brother and generations of other relatives by the unusually young age of 50.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California’s 11th atmospheric river left the storm-soaked state with a bang Wednesday, bringing flooded roadways, landslides and toppled trees to the southern part of the state as well as drought-busting rainfall that meant the end of water restrictions for nearly 7 million people.

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP) — Brazilian federal agents aboard three helicopters descended on an illegal mining site on Tuesday in the Amazon rainforest. They were met with gunfire, and the shooters escaped, leaving behind an increasingly familiar find for authorities: Starlink internet units.

GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) — Dozens of bison from a mountain park outside Denver were transferred Wednesday to several tribes from across the Great Plains, in the latest example of Native Americans reclaiming stewardship over animals their ancestors lived alongside for millennia.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — For the two weeks that the Hackneys’ baby girl lay in a Pittsburgh hospital bed weak from dehydration, her parents rarely left her side, sometimes sleeping on the fold-out sofa in the room.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Webb Space Telescope has captured the rare and fleeting phase of a star on the cusp of death.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Moonwalking astronauts will have sleeker, more flexible spacesuits that come in different sizes when they step onto the lunar surface later this decade.

Climate change attacked crucial Arctic sea ice thickness in two sudden big gobbles instead of steady nibbling, a new study says.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — For the two weeks that the Hackneys’ baby girl lay in a Pittsburgh hospital bed weak from dehydration, her parents rarely left her side, sometimes sleeping on the fold-out sofa in the room.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The Biden administration’s approval of a massive oil development in northern Alaska commits the U.S.

BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) — The devastating Tropical Cyclone Freddy which has ripped through southern Africa in a rare second landfall has killed at least 219 people in Malawi and Mozambique since Saturday night, with the death toll expected to rise.

Climate change worsened flooding from a tropical cyclone that shut down much of New Zealand last month in one of the country's costliest disasters, scientists said, but they couldn't quite calculate how much it magnified the catastrophe.

BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) — An unrelenting Cyclone Freddy that is currently battering southern Africa has killed at least 56 people in Malawi and Mozambique since it struck the continent for a second time on Saturday night, authorities in both countries have confirmed.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A coalition representing the Maine lobster industry is suing an aquarium on the other side of the country for recommending that seafood customers avoid buying a variety of lobster mostly harvested in their state.

NEW YORK (AP) — You can see right through this little aquarium fish from Thailand: Its skin is almost completely transparent. But when the light hits it just right, its body flickers with shimmering rainbow colors.

The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Water. These aren’t merely tough weather events, they are leading to extremes such as crop failure, infrastructure damage, even humanitarian crises and conflict.

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Record-breaking Cyclone Freddy made its second landfall in Mozambique on Saturday night, pounding the southern African nation with heavy rains and disrupting transport and telecommunications services.

NEPTUNE, N.J. (AP) — Coastal communities around the world are adding a tropical twist to shoreline protection, courtesy of the humble coconut.

From the sands of the Jersey Shore to the islands of Indonesia, strands of coconut husk, known as coir, are being incorporated into shoreline protection projects.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Four space station astronauts returned to Earth late Saturday after a quick SpaceX flight home.

Their capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast near Tampa.

HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii's second-largest volcano is not erupting, scientists said in an update to a previous warning.

The U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement late Saturday that seismic activity beneath the summit of Kilauea “has returned to background levels, ground deformation has stabilized, and no lava has been observed at the surface.”

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A rocket made almost completely of 3D-printed parts came within a half-second of blasting off Saturday on its debut flight, but remained grounded after back-to-back launch aborts.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — U.S. health agencies have sent a letter to Florida's surgeon general, warning him that his claims about COVID-19 vaccine risks are harmful to the public.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon lawmakers are aiming to make the state the second in the nation to mandate climate change lessons for K-12 public school students, further fueling U.S.

MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s Mount Merapi erupted Saturday with avalanches of searing gas clouds and lava, forcing authorities to halt tourism and mining activities on the slopes of the country’s most active volcano.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan on Saturday marked the 12th anniversary of the massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster with a minute of silence, as concerns grew ahead of the planned release of the treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant and the government's return to nuclear energy.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Not one but two volcanoes on the same island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain were rocked by earthquakes on Friday, prompting concerns about a possible eruption.

Elevated earthquake activity was reported at both Tanaga and Takawangha volcanoes on uninhabited Tanaga Island, hundreds of miles (kilometers) from Anchorage.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A swarm of earthquakes occurring over the past few weeks has intensified at a remote Alaska volcano dormant for over a century, a possible indication of an impending eruption.

BEIJING (AP) — China on Friday condemned a Japanese plan to release treated radioactive wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, demanding that Tokyo first receive the approval of neighboring countries.

La Nina seemed to treat Louisiana and the rest of the Southeast United States like a punching bag. Its three-year barrage of body blows has come to an end, but left behind a lot of scars from hurricanes and tornadoes among other weather disasters.

BEIJING (AP) — Skyscrapers in Beijing disappeared into the haze and air quality plummeted as China’s capital was enveloped in a dust storm and heavy pollution on Friday.

Concentrations of the tiny PM2.5 particles that can reach deep into the lungs and bloodstream entered a dangerous range on air quality monitoring sites, with the IQAir website showing an air quality index of 1,093, a “hazardous” level, many times higher than what are considered “unhealthy” levels.

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Surrounded by miles of dried land and what remains of his famished livestock, Daniel Lepaine is a worried man. Dozens of his goats in Ngong, a town in southern Kenya, have died after three years of harrowing drought in the east and Horn of Africa.

OKUMA, Japan (AP) — Twelve years after the triple reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan is preparing to release a massive amount of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea.

WASHINGTON (AP) — After three nasty years, the La Nina weather phenomenon that increases Atlantic hurricane activity and worsens western drought is gone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.

Even if you haven’t tried artificial intelligence tools that can write essays and poems or conjure new images on command, chances are the companies that make your household products are already starting to do so.

Magdalena Cruz grew up knowing she owed her very life to a horrid crime.

She was born in 1986 to a mom who couldn't care for her, or for herself. For a decade, Cruz’s mother had been a resident of a state facility for severely disabled people in Rochester, New York.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A rocket made almost entirely of 3D-printed parts remained on the pad Wednesday after its debut launch attempt was aborted at the last minute.

California-based Relativity Space was attempting to launch the rocket to orbit from a former missile site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne's endorsement of an artificial intelligence essay-writing product is raising questions about whether college athletic programs should provide clearer ethical guidelines for athletes earning money from name, image and likeness contracts.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Scandinavian scientists said Wednesday that they have identified the oldest-known inscription referencing the Norse god Odin on part of a gold disc unearthed in western Denmark in 2020.

HONOLULU (AP) — The latest eruption at Kilauea’s summit on Hawaii's has paused after 61 days of volcanic activity.

U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientists said Tuesday lava was no longer flowing on the crater floor of Halemaumau, where all recent volcanic activity had been confined, Hawaii News Now reported.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — The second astronaut from the United Arab Emirates is still adjusting to life off the planet, after rocketing to the International Space Station last week.

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Still recovering from the effects of the first battering, the southeastern African nation of Mozambique is bracing for a rare second hit by long-living Tropical Cyclone Freddy late on Friday night, a regional weather center said Tuesday.