A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
In 2027, the Artemis III mission will practice docking the Orion spacecraft with two lunar landers in low Earth orbit. On future Artemis missions, landers will bring astronauts to the lunar surface. While Artemis III will not land on the Moon, it will test the complex capabilities we need to return humanity there — this time to stay.
NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, and Andre Douglas will join European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano on this historic mission.
Another step toward one of the most complex spaceflight missions in history, NASA provided updates on Artemis III and announced crew members for the test flight. Planned to launch in 2027, the mission will practice docking the Orion spacecraft with two lunar landers in low Earth orbit.
On future missions, including Artemis IV in 2028, landers will bring astronauts to the lunar surface. While Artemis III will not land on the Moon, it will test the complex capabilities we need to return humanity there — this time to stay.
Crew assignments are as follows:
• NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, commander
• ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano, pilot
• NASA astronaut Andre Douglas, mission specialist
• NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, mission specialist
• NASA astronaut Bob Hines, backup crew member
Both of those look good, as expected for successfull PR, but it's not all smooth flying. Artemis III depends on launches by SpaceX and Blue Origin and both are having their issues, as PBS NewHour explained in How a Blue Origin rocket explosion could impact NASA's moon mission.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded on the launchpad during a test in Cape Canaveral on Thursday. The company, owned by Jeff Bezos, said no one was injured and all personnel were accounted for. But the rocket has a crucial role in NASA’s Artemis program to return American astronauts to the surface of the moon. Amna Nawaz discussed its significance with science correspondent Miles O’Brien.
Early this January, I wrote, "Starship is running behind schedule and holding up a lunar landing, so I'm rooting for Blue Origin to either win the contract or inspire SpaceX to get its act together in time." Looks like Blue Origin has to get its act together, too.
66 million years ago a giant space rock crashed into our planet and killed the dinosaurs. In the span of just four decades, we’ve gone from not knowing there was a space rock at all to knowing exactly where that planet-killer came from.
I've been following this story for as long as I've been a geologist, but I still learned new things from this video, or at least was reminded of things I'd forgotten, like Luis Alvarez having earned a Nobel Prize in Physics. I will say I was skeptical at first, but by the time I earned my M.S., I was convinced.
A giant asteroid impact ended the age of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. How did this mass extinction play out, moment by moment? In this video we meet a geologist who has explored the asteroid crater and learn what the rocks tell us about the last days of the dinosaurs. It was pretty bad!
Not only did Dr. Joe Hanson and Sean Gulick describe the details of what we now know about the Chicxulub impact and its effects, Joe concluded with a "so what" message. Unlike the dinosaurs, we have a choice.
That's a wrap for June's blogging. Stay tuned for Canada Day to begin July.
Think dad jokes are just a phase? Well MRI scans show that becoming a father literally alters a man's neurological blueprint. On Father's Day, we explore the incredible biological upgrade that transforms men into caregivers.
Internet sensation April the Giraffe gave birth to her son, Tajiri, live online in front of millions of people this April. The baby giraffe met his father, Oliver, shortly after, but the two have not seen each other since. This week, at the Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, New York, the three were reunited. It made for a wonderfully memorable moment and delighted fans all over the world.
Tajiri may be the star, but I'm going to wish Oliver a happy Father's Day and the entire family a happy World Giraffe Day!
Next, the reason both World Giraffe Day and National Seashell Day are today, the Summer Solstice. Watch WMAR-2 News' Science with Stevie: Summer Solstice.
The sun is ready for its big moment in the spotlight! Meteorologist Stevie Daniels talks about the summer solstice in this Science with Stevie segment!
Here's to Stevie becoming a mom next month so her viewers can wish her a happy Mother's Day next year!
It was last year and I normally celebrate it that day to avoid pile-ups like today's, but I wasn't feeling it. I'm also not feeling like turning today into the Sunday entertainment feature. I'll make up for it later in the week, when I plan on sharing a particularly doomy preview of the drum corps season, which begins Friday. In the meantime, stay tuned for World Rainforest Day, Detroit-style Pizza Day, and the first of two WorldUFODays. I love holidays!
Instead of exploring fiction for today's Sunday entertainment feature, I'm celebrating the best of nonfiction in television by beginning my examination of this year's 47th News & Documentary Emmy® Awards Nominees with the nominees for Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary, as I did last year.
Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary
Critical Condition: Health in Black America NOVA | GBH [A NOVA Production | Firelight Films] The Memory of Darkness, Light, and Ice
Metamorph Films, LLC Operation Space Station
NOVA | GBH [A NOVA Production | Blink Films | France Télévisions] Sally
Muck Media [Story Syndicate | National Geographic Documentary Films] Titan: The Oceangate Submersible Disaster
Netflix [Netflix | Diamond Docs | Story Syndicate]
Sally leads this field with three nominations as the preview image shows, Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary, Outstanding Direction: Documentary, and Outstanding Art Direction / Set Decoration / Scenic Design: Documentary. The rest of the nominees for this category have only this one nomination. On this basis, I'm considering Sally to be the favorite for this award. Time to watch the trailers to see if they confirm my impression, staring with SALLY | Official Trailer | National Geographic Documentary Films.
Sally Ride became the first American woman to blast off into space, but beneath her unflappable composure, she carried a secret. Revealing the romance and sacrifices of their 27 years together, Sally’s life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, tells the full story of this complicated and iconic astronaut for the first time. From National Geographic Documentary Films, SALLY is directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Cristina Costantini.
That was inspiring. I'm looking forward to announcing any Emmy Awards it wins in June, Pride Month.
If the ice sheet covering Greenland melts, global sea levels would rise 21 feet, profoundly impacting our planet. How, why, and when could this happen? Scientists have recently found lost sediment from a forgotten secret sub-ice Cold War base in the Arctic that holds clues about a time when the Greenland Ice Sheet had receded. THE MEMORY OF DARKNESS, LIGHT, AND ICE is a 60-minute documentary film about the discovery of this precious sediment core, which holds the key to crucial science around the melting Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) and the future of sea level rise across the globe.
Watching this trailer reminds me that I showed Chasing Ice to my students last week and this is week is Earth Week, making this a good movie to recommend to my students. Welcome to blogging as professional development. It also makes me think that it's the strongest competitor to Sally. Last year, I thought that the "Hunt for the Oldest DNA" episode of NOVA on PBS had the strongest science of all the nominees, but didn't have the best chance of winning. Surprise, it won! That could happen here.
The second nominated episode of NOVA is "Operation Space Station: High-Risk Build." Watch its official promotional video from NOVA PBS Official, How Astronauts Avoided Disaster Building the International Space Station | NOVA | PBS. The field for this category wouldn't be complete without a NOVA episode, and this year's slate has two. Good showing for NOVA!
A dangerous spacewalk, a toxic leak, and a breathtaking view of Earth.
Astronauts faced a life-threatening challenge during construction of the International Space Station.
Sitting in sunlight to evaporate the ammonia serves as a good example of one of Commoner's Laws, "Nature knows best." Environmental content in space!
Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster examines CEO Stockton Rush’s quest to become the next billionaire innovator and the doomed underwater endeavor that called into question the price of ambition in the depths of the ocean.
The Titan submersible’s ill-fated journey to the ruins of the Titanic dominated headlines in June 2023, yet the shocking decisions that led to the disaster have never been revealed like this before.
This could just as easily have been nominated for business documentary as for science and technology. It's also Sally's chief competition for its journalistic value and public interest; the trailers for both have more than two million views, with Sally slightly ahead. In contrast, the trailers for the rest of the nominees have several thousand views at most. I still think Sally is the favorite, but now I have a better grasp of its chances.
Follow over the jump for Sally's other two nominations and some of the most read entries about the Emmy Awards last year.
How do we know where the moon came from? In this episode, Howtown dives into the giant impact hypothesis (the least bad theory of lunar origin) and the growing evidence that the story of Theia may be more complicated than the textbook version. We explore how scientists measure the Moon’s distance, mass, and angular momentum, why Earth’s Moon is so unusually large compared with other moons in the solar system, and how Apollo moon rocks transformed the debate over the origin of the Moon. Along the way, we unpack Robin Canup’s simulations, synestia and multiple-impact, evection resonance, and the “isotope crisis”: why Moon rocks are chemically almost identical to Earth despite models suggesting the Moon should be made mostly from an impactor. From lunar eclipses and amateur astronomy to Apollo samples, South Pole missions, Theia, Artemis, Chang’e, and the search for mantle rocks, this is a deep look at moon formation, planetary science, and how scientists reconstruct what happened more than 4 billion years ago.
The video may not be that old, but its subject matter sure is! It's also about a story I tell my students, so I consider this to be blogging as professional development.
New James Webb Space Telescope imagery of asteroid 2024 YR4 confirmed that it “will safely pass the Moon at a distance of more than 20,000 km. (~12,427 mlles),” according to the European Space Agency.
It also poses no danger to Earth[.]
As I wrote, good news!
That written, smaller objects have been plowing into Earth, or at least its atmosphere. Follow over the jump for those.
From blastoff, to the first lunar orbit in 53 years, to splashdown, CBC News breaks down the biggest moments of the historic Artemis II mission in three minutes.
Why are we going back to the moon with the Artemis Missions? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice explore the history of our trips to the moon during the Apollo Missions and why the US is finally going back.
Tyson and Nice were as entertaining as they were informative. They explained why we went to the Moon in the first place, why we're returningnow, and how both Apollo and Artemis worked. Good work and funny, too!
NASA announced plans to construct a $20 billion base on the moon’s surface over the next seven years, according to its new chief Jared Isaacman. NBC News' Brian Cheung talks to Director of Government Relations for the Planetary Society Jack Kiraly about what this plan could mean for the space industry.
The Planetary Society's Casey Dreier unpacks NASA's ambitious plans to build a permanent base on the moon and what that means for the future of space exploration.
I'm a space enthusiast, so I'm thrilled at this news. I'm also not terribly surprised. I thought space would be one of the few, if not the only, areas where Donald "Hoover Harding Cleveland" Trump would do something I agreed with and was good for the country nine years ago. He delivered, sort of, in his first administration. Just the same, I'm glad NBC and ABC had The Planetary Society comment, not NASA. I trust the civil servants there, but I'm not sure I'd trust its spokespeople, not in this administration.
All this hinges on a successful Artemis II mission, which is scheduled to happen next week. I'll be covering that. In the meantime, stay tuned for stats!
India Naftali reports from the Jaffa port, where the Indian Embassy in Israel and Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality have organized a special Holi-Purim festival to celebrate both holidays.
Early Tuesday morning, the moon will go red and we will witness a total lunar eclipse.
At around 3 a.m. on March 3, we will see March’s full moon pass through Earth’s shadow, turning it a copper color for 58 spell-binding minutes.
Shannon Schmoll, the director of Abram’s Planetarium at Michigan State University, joined Local 4 Live to talk more about the eclipse.
It might be clear enough to see the Moon early this morning. I'll probably be asleep, but if I'm up, I'll look.
What happens when a planet crosses a climate tipping point it can’t recover from? Venus may hold the answer.
Scientists think Venus once had oceans, water, and a climate that may have resembled early Earth. But something pushed the planet past a threshold. Water evaporated, greenhouse warming spiraled, and Venus became the hottest planet in our solar system.
So what was that tipping point? And could anything like it happen on Earth?
In this episode of Weathered, Maiya May explores the science behind runaway greenhouse effects, ancient volcanic carbon releases, and one of the most surprising climate wildcards scientists have discovered: the potential collapse of stratocumulus clouds.
From crocodiles in the Arctic during past hothouse climates to cutting-edge models of cloud loss under extreme CO2 levels, this episode investigates what keeps Earth’s climate stable and what could push it toward irreversible change.
Earth isn’t turning into Venus anytime soon. But Venus reveals something more important: what happens when a planet loses its brakes.
That was something I learned back in November. The new fact I learned today was about how stratocumulus clouds, which form at the top of the marine layer, work and what the model predicts would happen when carbon dioxide levels go about 1200 ppm. That makes today a good day, as any day I learn something new is a good day.
This wraps up today's evergreen educational entry. Stay tuned for an entertainment entry I will share next month. Randy Rainbow just uploaded a new song!
It's time to say goodbye to the Year of the Snake and hello to the Year of the Horse. What do you know about the Year of the Horse?
0:00 Kai Feng, reporter for ABC Chinese, explains the significance of the horse in Chinese culture and history, 0:49 why 2026 is a 'fire' year, 5:10 and how people across Asia celebrate Lunar New Year.
Not only did ABC News (Australia) explain Lunar New Year, it explained the importance of horses to humans. Bonus educational content!
In 2025, we stacked the Artemis II rocket, certified next-generation lunar spacesuits, celebrated 25 years on the International Space Station, and snapped the closest pictures ever taken of the Sun.
We’re not just going back to the Moon in 2026 – we’re paving the way to Mars, exploring the stars, and dominating the skies, setting the stage for a historic year ahead.
It’s going to be a busy year for space exploration with American Astronauts scheduled to make a return visit around the moon, traveling further than any human ever. NBC News’ Tom Costello spoke to the crew.
I wrote "I expected a space race between the U.S. and China over the U.S. returning to the Moon before the Chinese get there" five years ago, and that's exactly what's happening. This time, I'm glad I'm right, because it will get humans back on the Moon and working to get to Mars.
Starship is running behind schedule and holding up a lunar landing, so I'm rooting for Blue Origin to either win the contract or inspire SpaceX to get its act together in time.
The future of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center appears to be in jeopardy, according to a letter penned by a United States representative on Monday. In the letter, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, a ranking member on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, brought forth concerns about "disturbing reports" of a potential imminent closure at the Greenbelt campus. The letter, written to Sean Duffy, the U.S. Transportation secretary and acting administrator of NASA, said the possible closure of labs and facilities at the campus "put essential hardware and capabilities at great risk."
This is not good news for space science, including research that would help with exploring the Moon and Mars. Add this to the examples of one of 2025's science breakdowns, "Trump roils U.S. science." Ugh.
*I almost didn't because of what's happening in Venezuela. I decided to go ahead and let the late-night talk show hosts do the work for me tomorrow. Stay tuned.
NBC News recaps 2025's biggest news stories, from tariffs imposed by President Trump, the murder of political activist Charlie Kirk, Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City mayoral election and more.
It's been quite the year, as headlines from weather, space, and entertainment joined economics, politics, and general news as the highlights of 2025.*
2025 was dominated by the second iteration of the Trump administration, the release of the Epstein files, and government shakeups that ranged from the longest federal shutdown in history to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announcing her resignation. It was also a year of historic political moments — from a ceasefire in Gaza to Gen Z-led government protests abroad, and the rise of young politicians like Zohran Mamdani.
Along the way, the world got its first American pope, Labubu became a household name, and China upended the AI conversation with the introduction of DeepSeek. Amid seemingly endless government transitions, the year closed with a growing sense of unrest as the US launched new strikes in multiple countries. Let’s take a look back at the jam-packed events that defined 2025.
I don't recall NBC News mentioning Labubu, while Vox made the collectables their featured image of 2025. So did Good Morning America's 'The Year' looks at our obsessions in 2025.
Deborah Roberts takes us through a preview of the movies, TV shows, trends and more that we just couldn't get enough of this year ahead of "The Year's" premiere on Dec. 29.
That's a good summary of entertainment and pop culture beyond movies, which I already covered, as well as being a promotional announcement disguised as a news segment. As I last mentioned in Local news covers the marching bands in the 2025 Macy's Parade, "It's not just news value that's driving it."
This year, we searched for ways to rediscover, reinvent, and rethink what’s possible. See how people reimagined their worlds in 2025.
This is driven by the users, not filtered through professional expert news judgment, but it covered most of the same material. Also, it was inspiring, which is more than I can say about the rest of the videos. That makes it a fit way to end the year.
*Speaking of space, I whined about NASA not uploading a 2025 in review video on Monday. The U.S. space agency finally did yesterday, combining it with a look ahead to 2026. I plan on posting that on Saturday, January 3rd. I can at least continue one of my New Year's traditions!
2025 was a landmark year for Europe in space. From celebrating 50 years of ESA to new missions, scientific breakthroughs, the year reaffirmed Europe’s leadership in science, exploration, climate action and innovation.
At least the European Space Agency is still informing the public. I consider NASA not producing an equivalent video about 2025 for YouTube an example of one of 2025's science breakdowns.
From the 3rd interstellar object to enter our solar system, 3I Atlas, to the potential discovery of life on [M]ars, 2025 was groundbreaking year in space exploration.
This is a song about Jeff Bezos’s launch of six female celebrities into zero gravity this week, via his elite suborbital tourism outfit, Blue Origin. In lots of respects it was very slick, exciting, impressive, and a tribute to technological advances, entrepreneurial investment, and the potential of the human species to navigate new frontiers. In lots of other respects it was a bizarre, vacuous, self-indulgent, problematic, transparent PR stunt hiding behind money, reputations, weird notions of girl power, and leaving in its wake a rather foul taste and lots of environmental damage. While we have no issue with the women involved, their quest for exhilaration and a life-altering opportunity etc., we do have issues with the framing and coverage of this joyride – as many others clearly do.
If you want to celebrate women, progress, science, space travel, and the future, surely there are better models and better mechanisms out there? If you have billions of dollars, surely there are better ways you can spend it?
We chose to adapt the anthemic 2010 song “Firework” by Katy Perry – one of Bezos’s invited trail-blazing space tourists – and whatever you think about her, this is a tough song to deliver live! We shared the relentless belts between the three girls. Apologies we forgot to isolate the clicker so you may get some of that too. The original song (co-written with Ester Dean and producers Stargate and Sandy Vee) was on her biggest album Teenage Dream and is on our pump-up football playlist.
I'm not normally this cynical about space, but I couldn't resist.
That's a wrap for today's look at space. Stay tuned for more year-end retrospectives through New Year's Eve.
For decades, rising carbon emissions have accelerated climate change, but this year marked a critical turning point that could finally reverse that trend. Renewable energy has now graduated beyond the need for subsidies and incentives, emerging as a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels in many countries. News Editor Tim Appenzeller and policy expert Li Shuo describe the economic forces behind this shift, and the obstacles that remain to the continued rise of green energy.
...
1:15 The graph has mislabeled trend lines. "Other renewables" generate more energy than hydropower alone.
[C]onvincing people to be less wasteful, particularly creating less food waste and eating less meat, especially beef, would be helpful. [One] could consider that to be a technology. So is renewable energy. Between the two, it would move Earth Overshoot Day back more than a month. Progress!
Yes, it is, and it's good news I can share with my students. Welcome to blogging as professional development.
Science Magazine's video is shorter and more focused than PBS Terra's, so it's one I'm more likely to show to my students. Again, welcome to blogging as professional development.
Custom gene editing shows promise for ultrarare diseases
New weapons against a sexual scourge
Neurons make a deadly donation to cancer cells
An all-seeing eye on the sky
Face to face with a Denisovan
Large language models do science
Triumph of calculation helps resolve particle mystery
Xenotransplants set new records
Rice that beats the heat
Including the "winner," that's four health stories, two computer science stories, one of which is also a physics story, an astronomy story, an evolution story, a genetics story that touches on climate change, and an energy story that also touches on climate change. Six of these are biology in some form, so these selections please me as a biologist. One of them is also paleontology, so I'm doubly pleased as a paleontologist. All of that is on top of the good sustainability news.
Not all of 2025's science stories were good. Follow over the jump for the bad news this year.
I shared this at my DreamWidth, where I wrote "If the National Forest Service had been hiding in the bunker, the National Park Service might have been snotty to it." I know, I worked for the National Park Service.
The “big beautiful bill” is actually the ugliest piece of anti-environmental legislation and deepest cut to Medicaid in our nation’s history. Time to call our senators!
It's too late for the "Big Brutal Bill," but it's not too late to affect theshutdown. I couldn't avoid the subject entirely!
Robert is right; the original version of the riddle game in The Hobbit makes no sense given the powers and history of The One Ring and Gollum's relationship with it in The Lord of the Rings. The new version sets up the sequels. More interestingly, the original tale remains in The Fellowship of the Ring as a cover story, even after it has been replaced in the new editions of The Hobbit. I respect that clever use of the retcon. I also didn't know any of this before I watched Robert's video, so I learned something new. It's always a good day when I learn something new.
Ever wonder why fall feels so different from spring even though they're both equinoxes? Meteorologist Evan Chickvara reveals the science behind why identical daylight hours create completely different weather patterns.
Evan Chickvara does a good job of explaining why temperature lags behind hours of daylight. It takes even longer for water to warm up and cool down than ground, so seasons are even more delayed in Michigan and other parts of the Great Lakes states.
Two times a year, the sunrise and sunset perfectly align with some streets in the heart of Chicago, putting on a show between the skyscrapers. The fall equinox episode of “Chicagohenge” is about to happen, but will the weather mess up the view?
Detroit also has a lot of east-west streets, so we would see the Sun rise and set down our major streets as well, but it's raining here now, so not today. Darn.
Immediately after WWII, numerous agencies and groups within the United States recognized that space was the next frontier. Plans to conquer that frontier began to proliferate. Some ideas were promising, while others were, perhaps, little more than pipe dreams.
Listening to The History Guy talk about how inter-service rivalries influenced early plans for space and the Moon makes me wonder what the Air Force, Army, and Navy would think of SpaceForce. An idea out of science fiction, no doubt. Then again, so were their plans for space in general and the Moon in particular. Project Horizon strikes me as especially ambitious, much more so than anything proposed for Artemis, the current NASA program to build a Moon base. That, at least, would be for peaceful purposes, including supporting a crewed mission to Mars, not military ones.
The History Guy has more videos about lunar missions, which I'm saving for future posts. I'm an environmentalist; not only do I recycle, I conserve my resources.
That's a wrap for today's holiday. Stay tuned for the next installment of my examination of the Emmynominees.
Is global warming just part of Earth’s natural cycle? In this episode of Weathered, we break down why that’s not the full story. From ice ages and Milankovitch cycles to the role of CO2 and fossil fuels, today’s climate change is unlike anything in Earth’s deep past. Learn why the speed of warming matters and how we can bring our temperature down.
I have mentioned several times that I'm a paleontologist who studies Pleistocene fossils, particularly snails. What I don't mention is that I used data from the snails, clams, and plants of Rancho La Brea to reconstruct the late Pleistocene climate of southern California, so I'm quite familiar with natural climate change. That's why I was able to respond intelligently to Ed, the troll who was better than a spammer, when he snarked "Maybe you can tell us what the climate is supposed to be so we will know if it's changing too much."
Ed, actually, I can. The average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere should be almost two degrees Fahrenheit cooler than it is today based on the pre-1900 temperature trend, three degrees based on the progress of previous interglacials. If you want the reasoning and evidence, you will have to wait until I put together an entire entry with links; it will take more effort than a simple comment is worth. In the meantime, count your blessings that you stumbled onto someone who actually knows the answer to what you may have thought was a rhetorical question too hard to answer.
That was back in 2015.
I'm glad to see Maiya May and Jessica Tierney of the University of Arizona confirm both what the climate would have been doing naturally and what it's doing instead. It shows what I told Ed was (and still is) correct.
I teach Milankovitch cycles to my geology students, both on the first field trip where I ask them to describe a display at a museum which summarizes the effects as "stretch, wobble, and tilt (eccentricity, precession, and obliquity)" and in a lecture about glaciers and glacial features, where I reinforce my point with The History of Climate Cycles (and the Woolly Rhino) Explained from PBS Eons.
Throughout the Pleistocene Epoch, the range of the woolly rhino grew and shrank in sync with global climate. So what caused the climate -- and the range of the woolly rhino -- to cycle back and forth between such extremes?
I've been showing this video since just before the pandemic; I'm surprised I haven't embedded it here until now. I guess I just needed the right opportunity.
As Dr. Tierney points out, carbon dioxide is at levels not seen for 3.6 million years so the Earth is on track for much warmer temperatures even if humans stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Because of the fossil foolishness in the BigBrutal Bill, the U.S. alone will continue emitting carbon dioxide and methane for years. Worse yet, as Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth described, it will take 400,000 years for natural processes to remove the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That's four more Milankovitch cycles! Maybe that will make our distant descendants less subject to ice ages, but it's going to mess up the near future for us and progeny down to our great-grandchildren.
A ‘daytime fireball’ was caught on video in the sky over South Carolina – causing a sonic boom, according to the American Meteor Society. CNN has reached out to emergency management officials in North Carolina and Tennessee, as well as NASA for comment.
That's quite the meteor! Good thing it mostly created a natural fireworks show, maybe some property damage, and no injuries.
How did asteroid 2024 YR4 go from being the riskiest asteroid ever detected to posing no real threat? First spotted in December 2024, its impact risk initially soared to 2.8%, surpassing previous record-holder Apophis. But thanks to refined observations from our Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre and other institutions, its risk quickly dropped to just 0.001% within days. This dramatic shift follows a well-known pattern—asteroid impact probabilities often rise before plummeting as more data becomes available. Now, nearly all possible impact scenarios have been ruled out, and 2024 YR4 has been safely removed from our risk list.
