June 13, 20256 min readAir-Conditioning Can Surprisingly Help the Power Grid during Extreme HeatSwitching on air-conditioning during extreme heat doesn’t have to make us feel guilty—it can actually boost power grid reliability and help bring more renewable energy onlineBy Johanna Mathieu & The Conversation US Imagedepotpro/Getty ImagesThe following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.As summer arrives, people are turning on air conditioners in most of the U.S. But if you’re like me, you always feel a little guilty about that. Past generations managed without air conditioning – do I really need it? And how bad is it to use all this electricity for cooling in a warming world?If I leave my air conditioner off, I get too hot. But if everyone turns on their air conditioner at the same time, electricity demand spikes, which can force power grid operators to activate some of the most expensive, and dirtiest, power plants. Sometimes those spikes can ask too much of the grid and lead to brownouts or blackouts.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Research I recently published with a team of scholars makes me feel a little better, though. We have found that it is possible to coordinate the operation of large numbers of home air-conditioning units, balancing supply and demand on the power grid – and without making people endure high temperatures inside their homes.Studies along these lines, using remote control of air conditioners to support the grid, have for many years explored theoretical possibilities like this. However, few approaches have been demonstrated in practice and never for such a high-value application and at this scale. The system we developed not only demonstrated the ability to balance the grid on timescales of seconds, but also proved it was possible to do so without affecting residents’ comfort.The benefits include increasing the reliability of the power grid, which makes it easier for the grid to accept more renewable energy. Our goal is to turn air conditioners from a challenge for the power grid into an asset, supporting a shift away from fossil fuels toward cleaner energy.Adjustable equipmentMy research focuses on batteries, solar panels and electric equipment – such as electric vehicles, water heaters, air conditioners and heat pumps – that can adjust itself to consume different amounts of energy at different times.Originally, the U.S. electric grid was built to transport electricity from large power plants to customers’ homes and businesses. And originally, power plants were large, centralized operations that burned coal or natural gas, or harvested energy from nuclear reactions. These plants were typically always available and could adjust how much power they generated in response to customer demand, so the grid would be balanced between power coming in from producers and being used by consumers.But the grid has changed. There are more renewable energy sources, from which power isn’t always available – like solar panels at night or wind turbines on calm days. And there are the devices and equipment I study. These newer options, called “distributed energy resources,” generate or store energy near where consumers need it – or adjust how much energy they’re using in real time.One aspect of the grid hasn’t changed, though: There’s not much storage built into the system. So every time you turn on a light, for a moment there’s not enough electricity to supply everything that wants it right then: The grid needs a power producer to generate a little more power. And when you turn off a light, there’s a little too much: A power producer needs to ramp down.The way power plants know what real-time power adjustments are needed is by closely monitoring the grid frequency. The goal is to provide electricity at a constant frequency – 60 hertz – at all times. If more power is needed than is being produced, the frequency drops and a power plant boosts output. If there’s too much power being produced, the frequency rises and a power plant slows production a little. These actions, a process called “frequency regulation,” happen in a matter of seconds to keep the grid balanced.This output flexibility, primarily from power plants, is key to keeping the lights on for everyone.Finding new optionsI’m interested in how distributed energy resources can improve flexibility in the grid. They can release more energy, or consume less, to respond to the changing supply or demand, and help balance the grid, ensuring the frequency remains near 60 hertz.Some people fear that doing so might be invasive, giving someone outside your home the ability to control your battery or air conditioner. Therefore, we wanted to see if we could help balance the grid with frequency regulation using home air-conditioning units rather than power plants – without affecting how residents use their appliances or how comfortable they are in their homes.From 2019 to 2023, my group at the University of Michigan tried this approach, in collaboration with researchers at Pecan Street Inc., Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.We recruited 100 homeowners in Austin, Texas, to do a real-world test of our system. All the homes had whole-house forced-air cooling systems, which we connected to custom control boards and sensors the owners allowed us to install in their homes. This equipment let us send instructions to the air-conditioning units based on the frequency of the grid.Before I explain how the system worked, I first need to explain how thermostats work. When people set thermostats, they pick a temperature, and the thermostat switches the air-conditioning compressor on and off to maintain the air temperature within a small range around that set point. If the temperature is set at 68 degrees, the thermostat turns the AC on when the temperature is, say, 70, and turns it off when it’s cooled down to, say, 66.Every few seconds, our system slightly changed the timing of air-conditioning compressor switching for some of the 100 air conditioners, causing the units’ aggregate power consumption to change. In this way, our small group of home air conditioners reacted to grid changes the way a power plant would – using more or less energy to balance the grid and keep the frequency near 60 hertz.Moreover, our system was designed to keep home temperatures within the same small temperature range around the set point.Testing the approachWe ran our system in four tests, each lasting one hour. We found two encouraging results.First, the air conditioners were able to provide frequency regulation at least as accurately as a traditional power plant. Therefore, we showed that air conditioners could play a significant role in increasing grid flexibility. But perhaps more importantly – at least in terms of encouraging people to participate in these types of systems – we found that we were able to do so without affecting people’s comfort in their homes.We found that home temperatures did not deviate more than 1.6 Fahrenheit from their set point. Homeowners were allowed to override the controls if they got uncomfortable, but most didn’t. For most tests, we received zero override requests. In the worst case, we received override requests from two of the 100 homes in our test.In practice, this sort of technology could be added to commercially available internet-connected thermostats. In exchange for credits on their energy bills, users could choose to join a service run by the thermostat company, their utility provider or some other third party.Then people could turn on the air conditioning in the summer heat without that pang of guilt, knowing they were helping to make the grid more reliable and more capable of accommodating renewable energy sources – without sacrificing their own comfort in the process.This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

June 13, 20255 min readFive Climate Issues to Watch When Trump Goes to CanadaPresident Trump will attend the G7 summit on Sunday in a nation he threatened to annex. He will also be an outlier on climate issuesBy Sara Schonhardt & E&E News Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | The world’s richest nations are gathering Sunday in the Canadian Rockies for a summit that could reveal whether President Donald Trump's policies are shaking global climate efforts.The Group of Seven meeting comes at a challenging time for international climate policy. Trump’s tariff seesaw has cast a shade over the global economy, and his domestic policies have threatened billions of dollars in funding for clean energy programs. Those pressures are colliding with record-breaking temperatures worldwide and explosive demand for energy, driven by power-hungry data centers linked to artificial intelligence technologies.On top of that, Trump has threatened to annex the host of the meeting — Canada — and members of his Cabinet have taken swipes at Europe’s use of renewable energy. Rather than being aligned with much of the world's assertion that fossil fuels should be tempered, Trump embraces the opposite position — drill for more oil and gas and keep burning coal, while repealing environmental regulations on the biggest sources of U.S. carbon pollution.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Those moves illustrate his rejection of climate science and underscore his outlying positions on global warming in the G7.Here are five things to know about the summit.Who will be there?The group comprises Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States — plus the European Union. Together they account for more than 40 percent of gross domestic product globally and around a quarter of all energy-related carbon dioxide pollution, according to the International Energy Agency. The U.S. is the only one among them that is not trying to hit a carbon reduction goal.Some emerging economies have also been invited, including Mexico, India, South Africa and Brazil, the host of this year’s COP30 climate talks in November.Ahead of the meeting, the office of Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney, said he and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva agreed to strengthen cooperation on energy security and critical minerals. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump would be having "quite a few" bilateral meetings but that his schedule was in flux.The G7 first came together 50 years ago following the Arab oil embargo. Since then, its seven members have all joined the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. The U.S. is the only nation in the group that has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, which counts almost every country in the world as a signatory.What’s on the table?Among Canada’s top priorities as host are strengthening energy security and fortifying critical mineral supply chains. Carney would also like to see some agreement on joint wildfire action.Expanding supply chains for critical minerals — and competing more aggressively with China over those resources — could be areas of common ground among the leaders. Climate change is expected to remain divisive. Looming over the discussions will be tariffs — which Trump has applied across the board — because they will have an impact on the clean energy transition.“I think probably the majority of the conversation will be less about climate per se, or certainly not using climate action as the frame, but more about energy transition and infrastructure as a way of kind of bridging the known gaps between most of the G7 and where the United States is right now,” said Dan Baer, director of the Europe program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.What are the possible outcomes?The leaders could issue a communique at the end of their meeting, but those statements are based on consensus, something that would be difficult to reach without other G7 countries capitulating to Trump. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that nations won’t try to reach a joint agreement, in part because bridging gaps on climate change could be too hard.Instead, Carney could issue a chair’s summary or joint statements based on certain issues.The question is how far Canada will go to accommodate the U.S., which could try to roll back past statements on advancing clean energy, said Andrew Light, former assistant secretary of Energy for international affairs, who led ministerial-level negotiations for the G7.“They might say, rather than watering everything down that we accomplished in the last four years, we just do a chair's statement, which summarizes the debate,” Light said. “That will show you that you didn't get consensus, but you also didn't get capitulation.”What to watch forIf there is a communique, Light says he’ll be looking for whether there is tougher language on China and any signal of support for science and the Paris Agreement. During his first term, Trump refused to support the Paris accord in the G7 and G20 declarations.The statement could avoid climate and energy issues entirely. But if it backtracks on those issues, that could be a sign that countries made a deal by trading climate-related language for something else, Light said.Baer of Carnegie said a statement framed around energy security and infrastructure could be seen as a “pragmatic adaptation” to the U.S. administration, rather than an indication that other leaders aren’t concerned about climate change.Climate activists have lower expectations.“Realistically, we can expect very little, if any, mention of climate change,” said Caroline Brouillette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada.“The message we should be expecting from those leaders is that climate action remains a priority for the rest of the G7 … whether it's on the transition away from fossil fuels and supporting developing countries through climate finance,” she said. “Especially now that the U.S. is stepping back, we need countries, including Canada, to be stepping up.”Best- and worst-case scenariosThe challenge for Carney will be preventing any further rupture with Trump, analysts said.In 2018, Trump made a hasty exit from the G7 summit, also in Canada that year, due largely to trade disagreements. He retracted his support for the joint statement.“The best, [most] realistic case outcome is that things don't get worse,” said Baer.The worst-case scenario? Some kind of “highly personalized spat” that could add to the sense of disorder, he added.“I think the G7 on the one hand has the potential to be more important than ever, as fewer and fewer platforms for international cooperation seem to be able to take action,” Baer said. “So it's both very important and also I don't have super-high expectations.”Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

June 13, 20253 min readCould Iran Have Been Close to Making a Nuclear Weapon? Uranium Enrichment ExplainedWhen Israeli aircraft recently struck a uranium-enrichment complex in the nation, Iran could have been days away from achieving “breakout,” the ability to quickly turn “yellowcake” uranium into bomb-grade fuel, with its new high-speed centrifugesBy Deni Ellis Béchard edited by Dean VisserMen work inside of a uranium conversion facility just outside the city of Isfahan, Iran, on March 30, 2005. The facility in Isfahan made hexaflouride gas, which was then enriched by feeding it into centrifuges at a facility in Natanz, Iran. Getty ImagesIn the predawn darkness on Friday local time, Israeli military aircraft struck one of Iran’s uranium-enrichment complexes near the city of Natanz. The warheads aimed to do more than shatter concrete; they were meant to buy time, according to news reports. For months, Iran had seemed to be edging ever closer to “breakout,” the point at which its growing stockpile of partially enriched uranium could be converted into fuel for a nuclear bomb. (Iran has denied that it has been pursuing nuclear weapons development.)But why did the strike occur now? One consideration could involve the way enrichment complexes work. Natural uranium is composed almost entirely of uranium 238, or U-238, an isotope that is relatively “heavy” (meaning it has more neutrons in its nucleus). Only about 0.7 percent is uranium 235 (U-235), a lighter isotope that is capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction. That means that in natural uranium, only seven atoms in 1,000 are the lighter, fission-ready U-235; “enrichment” simply means raising the percentage of U-235.U-235 can be used in warheads because its nucleus can easily be split. The International Atomic Energy Agency uses 25 kilograms of contained U-235 as the benchmark amount deemed sufficient for a first-generation implosion bomb. In such a weapon, the U-235 is surrounded by conventional explosives that, when detonated, compress the isotope. A separate device releases a neutron stream. (Neutrons are the neutral subatomic particle in an atom’s nucleus that adds to their mass.) Each time a neutron strikes a U-235 atom, the atom fissions; it divides and spits out, on average, two or three fresh neutrons—plus a burst of energy in the form of heat and gamma radiation. And the emitted neutrons in turn strike other U-235 nuclei, creating a self-sustaining chain reaction among the U-235 atoms that have been packed together into a critical mass. The result is a nuclear explosion. By contrast, the more common isotope, U-238, usually absorbs slow neutrons without splitting and cannot drive such a devastating chain reaction.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.To enrich uranium so that it contains enough U-235, the “yellowcake” uranium powder that comes out of a mine must go through a lengthy process of conversions to transform it from a solid into the gas uranium hexafluoride. First, a series of chemical processes refine the uranium and then, at high temperatures, each uranium atom is bound to six fluorine atoms. The result, uranium hexafluoride, is unusual: below 56 degrees Celsius (132.8 degrees Fahrenheit) it is a white, waxy solid, but just above that temperature, it sublimates into a dense, invisible gas.During enrichment, this uranium hexafluoride is loaded into a centrifuge: a metal cylinder that spins at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute—faster than the blades of a jet engine. As the heavier U-238 molecules drift toward the cylinder wall, the lighter U-235 molecules remain closer to the center and are siphoned off. This new, slightly U-235-richer gas is then put into the next centrifuge. The process is repeated 10 to 20 times as ever more enriched gas is sent through a series of centrifuges.Enrichment is a slow process, but the Iranian government has been working on this for years and already holds roughly 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235. This falls short of the 90 percent required for nuclear weapons. But whereas Iran’s first-generation IR-1 centrifuges whirl at about 63,000 revolutions per minute and do relatively modest work, its newer IR-6 models, built from high-strength carbon fiber, spin faster and produce enriched uranium far more quickly.Iran has been installing thousands of these units, especially at Fordow, an underground enrichment facility built beneath 80 to 90 meters of rock. According to a report released on Monday by the Institute for Science and International Security, the new centrifuges could produce enough 90 percent U-235 uranium for a warhead “in as little as two to three days” and enough for nine nuclear weapons in three weeks—or 19 by the end of the third month.

June 5, 20254 min readThe Trump-Musk Fight Could Have Huge Consequences for U.S. Space ProgramsA vitriolic war of words between President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk could have profound repercussions for the nation’s civil and military space programsBy Lee Billings edited by Dean VisserElon Musk (left) and President Donald Trump (right) seemed to be on good terms during a press briefing in the Oval Office at the White House on May 30, 2025, but the event proved to be the calm before a social media storm. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesFor several hours yesterday, an explosively escalating social media confrontation between arguably the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and the world’s most powerful, President Donald Trump, shook U.S. spaceflight to its core.The pair had been bosom-buddy allies ever since Musk’s fateful endorsement of Trump last July—an event that helped propel Trump to an electoral victory and his second presidential term. But on May 28 Musk announced his departure from his official role overseeing the U.S. DOGE Service. And on May 31 the White House announced that it was withdrawing Trump’s nomination of Musk’s close associate Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. Musk abruptly went on the attack against the Trump administration, criticizing the budget-busting One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now navigating through Congress, as “a disgusting abomination.”Things got worse from there as the blowup descended deeper into threats and insults. On June 5 Trump suggested on his own social-media platform, Truth Social, that he could terminate U.S. government contracts with Musk’s companies, such as SpaceX and Tesla. Less than an hour later, the conflict suddenly grew more personal, with Musk taking to X, the social media platform he owns, to accuse Trump—without evidence—of being incriminated by as-yet-unreleased government documents related to the illegal activities of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Musk upped the ante further in follow-up posts in which he endorsed a suggestion for impeaching Trump and, separately, declared in a now deleted post that because of the president’s threat, SpaceX “will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.” (Some five hours after his decommissioning comment, tempers had apparently cooled enough for Musk to walk back the remark in another X post: “Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”)Dragon is a crucial workhorse of U.S. human spaceflight. It’s the main way NASA’s astronauts get to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and also a key component of a contract between NASA and SpaceX to safely deorbit the ISS in 2031. If Dragon were to be no longer be available, NASA would, in the near term, have to rely on either Russian Soyuz vehicles or on Boeing’s glitch-plagued Starliner spacecraft for its crew transport—and the space agency’s plans for deorbiting the ISS would essentially go back to the drawing board. More broadly, NASA uses SpaceX rockets to launch many of its science missions, and the company is contracted to ferry astronauts to and from the surface of the moon as part of the space agency’s Artemis III mission.Trump’s and Musk’s retaliatory tit for tat also raises the disconcerting possibility of disrupting other SpaceX-centric parts of U.S. space plans, many of which are seen as critical for national security. Thanks to its wildly successful reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the company presently provides the vast majority of space launches for the Department of Defense. And SpaceX’s constellation of more than 7,000 Starlink communications satellites has become vitally important to war fighters in the ongoing conflict between Russia and U.S.-allied Ukraine. SpaceX is also contracted to build a massive constellation of spy satellites for the DOD and is considered a leading candidate for launching space-based interceptors envisioned as part of Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile-defense plan.Among the avalanche of reactions to the incendiary spectacle unfolding in real time, one of the most extreme was from Trump’s influential former adviser Steve Bannon, who called on the president to seize and nationalize SpaceX. And in an interview with the New York Times, Bannon, without evidence, accused Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen, of being an “illegal alien” who “should be deported from the country immediately.”NASA, for its part, attempted to stay above the fray via a carefully worded late-afternoon statement from the space agency’s press secretary Bethany Stevens: “NASA will continue to execute upon the President’s vision for the future of space,” Stevens wrote. “We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President’s objectives in space are met.”The response from the stock market was, in its own way, much less muted. SpaceX is not a publicly traded company. But Musk’s electric car company Tesla is. And it experienced a massive sell-off at the end of June 5’s trading day: Tesla’s share price fell down by 14 percent, losing the company a whopping $152 billion of its market value.Today a rumored détente phone conversation between the two men has apparently been called off, and Trump has reportedly said he now intends to sell the Tesla he purchased in March in what was then a gesture of support for Musk. But there are some signs the rift may yet heal: Musk has yet to be deported; SpaceX has not been shut down; Tesla’s stock price is surging back from its momentary heavy losses; and it seems NASA astronauts won’t be stranded on Earth or on the ISS for the time being.Even so, the entire sordid episode—and the possibility of further messy clashes between Trump and Musk unfolding in public—highlights a fundamental vulnerability at the heart of the nation’s deep reliance on SpaceX for access to space. Outsourcing huge swaths of civil and military space programs to a disruptively innovative private company effectively controlled by a single individual certainly has its rewards—but no shortage of risks, too.

June 5, 20253 min readNew Hires Will Still Leave the NWS Dangerously Understaffed, Meteorologists SayNearly 600 employees left the National Weather Service or were fired in recent months. Meteorologists say 125 expected new hires will still leave the agency dangerously understaffedBy Chelsea Harvey & E&E News A tornado struck communities in Somerset and London, Ky., on May 16, 2025, leaving 19 dead and more injured. Michael Swensen/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | New hiring efforts at the National Weather Service won’t be enough to overcome staffing shortages and potential risks to human lives this summer, meteorologists warned Wednesday at a panel hosted by Democratic Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell.NOAA will hire around 125 new employees at the NWS, the agency said in an announcement first reported Monday by CNN. But nearly 600 employees have departed the NWS over the last few months, after the Trump administration fired probationary federal employees and offered buyouts and early retirements.That means the new hires will account for less than 25 percent of the total losses.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“A quarter of the staff are not going to do the job when, let’s just say, both hurricane and fire risks are increasing,” Cantwell said during Wednesday’s panel. “[The Trump administration’s] approach in response to this has been a flimsy Band-Aid over a very massive cut.”Cantwell added that the National Hurricane Center is not fully staffed, as NOAA officials suggested last month when announcing their predictions for the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season outlook. The NHC has at least five vacancies, she said, representing meteorologists and technicians who help build forecasts for tropical cyclones in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.Meanwhile, NOAA is predicting above-average activity in the Atlantic this hurricane season. Updated fire maps also suggest that nearly all of Cantwell’s home state of Washington, along with Oregon and large swaths of California, will experience an above-average risk of wildfires by August.Kim Doster, NOAA’s director of communications, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on NOAA’s staffing shortages or the NHC’s vacancies.Three meteorologists speaking on the panel echoed Cantwell’s concerns, suggesting that staffing shortages at weather offices across the country risk forecasting errors and breakdowns in communication between meteorologists and emergency managers.At least eight local weather offices across the country are currently so short-staffed that they can no longer cover their overnight shifts, said Brian LaMarre, a former meteorologist-in-charge at the NWS office in Tampa Bay, Florida. Some of these offices may have to rely on “mutual aid,” or borrowed staff, from other NWS locations to cover their shifts during extreme weather events.But Cantwell and other panelists expressed concern that staff-sharing across the NWS could erode the accuracy of forecasts and warnings for local communities.Cantwell pointed to the meteorologists that specialize in fire weather forecasts. NOAA typically deploys those experts to provide forecasts and recommendations to firefighters on the ground when wildfires strike.“If you think you're gonna substitute somebody that’s gonna be somewhere else — I don’t know where, some other part of the state or some other state — and you think you're gonna give them accurate weather information? It just doesn't work that way,” she said.Washington state-based broadcast meteorologist Jeff Renner echoed her concerns.“The meteorologists that respond to [wildfires] have very specific training and very specific experience that can’t be easily duplicated, particularly from those outside the area,” he said.Meanwhile, LaMarre’s former position in Tampa is vacant, and around 30 other offices across the country are also operating without a permanent meteorologist-in-charge.“That person is the main point of contact when it comes to briefing elected officials, emergency management directors, state governors, city mayors, parish officials,” LaMarre said. “They are the individual that’s gonna be implementing any new change that is needed for hurricane season, blizzards, wildfires, inland flooding.”The NWS suffered from staffing shortages prior to the Trump administration. But LaMarre said he never saw such widespread vacancies, including offices unable to operate overnight, in his 30 years at the agency.He emphasized that NWS meteorologists will do whatever it takes to ensure accurate forecasts when extreme weather strikes. But too many gaps at local offices mean that some services will inevitably suffer, LaMarre added.“Whenever you look at an office that is short-staffed, that means a piece of that larger puzzle is taken away,” he said. “That means some outreach might not be able to occur. Some trainings might not be able to occur. Some briefings to officials might not be able to occur.”Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

June 3, 20255 min readAre We Ready for Death in Space?NASA has quietly taken steps to prepare for a death in space. We need to ask how nations will deal with this inevitability now, as more people start traveling off the planetBy Peter Cummings edited by Lee Billings SciePro/Science Photo Library/Getty ImagesIn 2012 NASA stealthily slipped a morgue into orbit.No press release. No fanfare. Just a sealed, soft-sided pouch tucked in a cargo shipment to the International Space Station (ISS) alongside freeze-dried meals and scientific gear. Officially, it was called the Human Remains Containment Unit (HRCU). To the untrained eye it looked like a shipping bag for frozen cargo. But to NASA it marked something far more sobering: a major advance in preparing for death beyond Earth.As a kid, I obsessed over how astronauts went to the bathroom in zero gravity. Now, decades later, as a forensic pathologist and a perennial applicant to NASA’s astronaut corps, I find myself fixated on a darker, more haunting question:On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.What would happen if an astronaut died out there? Would they be brought home, or would they be left behind? If they expired on some other world, would that be their final resting place? If they passed away on a spacecraft or space station, would their remains be cast off into orbit—or sent on an escape-velocity voyage to the interstellar void?NASA, it turns out, has begun working out most of these answers. And none too soon. Because the question itself is no longer if someone will die in space—but when.A Graying CorpsNo astronaut has ever died of natural causes off-world. In 1971 the three-man crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 mission asphyxiated in space when their spacecraft depressurized shortly before its automated atmospheric reentry—but their deaths were only discovered once the spacecraft landed on Earth. Similarly, every U.S. spaceflight fatality to date has occurred within Earth’s atmosphere—under gravity, oxygen and a clear national jurisdiction. That matters, because it means every spaceflight mortality has played out in familiar territory.But planned missions are getting longer, with destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. And NASA’s astronaut corps is getting older. The average age now hovers around 50—an age bracket where natural death becomes statistically relevant, even for clean-living fitness buffs. Death in space is no longer a thought experiment. It’s a probability curve—and NASA knows it.In response, the agency is making subtle but decisive moves. The most recent astronaut selection cycle was extended—not only to boost intake but also to attract younger crew members capable of handling future long-duration missions.NASA’s Space MorgueIf someone were to die aboard the ISS today, their body would be placed in the HRCU, which would then be sealed and secured in a nonpressurized area to await eventual return to Earth.The HRCU itself is a modified version of a military-grade body bag designed to store human remains in hazardous environments. It integrates with refrigeration systems already aboard the ISS to slow decomposition and includes odor-control filters and moisture-absorbent linings, as well as reversed zippers for respectful access at the head. There are straps to secure the body in a seat for return, and patches for name tags and national flags.Cadaver tests conducted in 2019 at Sam Houston State University have proved the system durable. Some versions held for over 40 days before decomposition breached the barrier. NASA even drop-tested the bag from 19 feet to simulate a hard landing.But it’s never been used in space. And since no one yet knows how a body decomposes in true microgravity (or, for that matter, on the moon), no one can really say whether the HRCU would preserve tissue well enough for a forensic autopsy.This is a troubling knowledge gap, because in space, a death isn’t just a tragic loss—it’s also a vital data point. Was an astronaut’s demise from a fluke of their physiology, or an unavoidable stroke of cosmic bad luck—or was it instead a consequence of flaws in a space habitat’s myriad systems that might be found and fixed? Future lives may depend on understanding what went wrong, via a proper postmortem investigation.But there’s no medical examiner in orbit. So NASA trains its crews in something called the In-Mission Forensic Sample Collection protocol. The space agency’s astronauts may avoid talking about it, but they all have it memorized: Document everything, ideally with real-time guidance from NASA flight surgeons. Photograph the body. Collect blood and vitreous fluid, as well as hair and tissue samples. Only then can the remains be stowed in the HRCU.NASA has also prepared for death outside the station—on spacewalks, the moon or deep space missions. If a crew member perishes in vacuum but their remains are retrieved, the body is wrapped in a specially designed space shroud.The goal isn’t just a technical matter of preventing contamination. It’s psychological, too, as a way of preserving dignity. Of all the “firsts” any space agency hopes to achieve, the first-ever human corpse drifting into frame on a satellite feed is not among them.If a burial must occur—in lunar regolith or by jettisoning into solar orbit—the body will be dutifully tracked and cataloged, treated forevermore as a hallowed artifact of space history.Such gestures are also of relevance to NASA’s plans for off-world mourning; grief and memorial protocols are now part of official crew training. If a death occurs, surviving astronauts are tasked with holding a simple ceremony to honor the fallen—then to move on with their mission.Uncharted RealmsSo far we’ve only covered the “easy” questions. NASA and others are still grappling with harder ones.Consider the issue of authority over a death and mortal remains. On the ISS, it’s simple: the deceased astronaut’s home country retains jurisdiction. But that clarity fades as destinations grow more distant and the voyages more diverse: What really happens on space-agency missions to the moon, or to Mars? How might rules change for commercial or multinational spaceflights—or, for that matter, the private space stations and interplanetary settlements that are envisioned by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other tech multibillionaires?NASA and its partners have started drafting frameworks, like the Artemis Accords—agreements signed by more than 50 nations to govern behavior in space. But even those don’t address many intimate details of death.What happens, for instance, if foul play is suspected?The Outer Space Treaty, a legal document drafted in 1967 under the United Nations that is humanity’s foundational set of rules for orbit and beyond, doesn’t say.Of course, not everything can be planned for in advance. And NASA has done an extraordinary job of keeping astronauts in orbit alive. But as more people venture into space, and as the frontier stretches to longer voyages and farther destinations, it becomes a statistical certainty that sooner or later someone won’t come home.When that happens, it won’t just be a tragedy. It will be a test. A test of our systems, our ethics and our ability to adapt to a new dimension of mortality. To some, NASA’s preparations for astronautical death may seem merely morbid, even silly—but that couldn’t be further from the truth.Space won’t care of course, whenever it claims more lives. But we will. And rising to that grim occasion with reverence, rigor and grace will define not just policy out in the great beyond—but what it means to be human there, too.

June 3, 20258 min readWhite House Budget Plan Would Devastate U.S. Space ScienceScientists are rallying to reverse ruinous proposed cuts to both NASA and the National Science FoundationBy Nadia Drake edited by Lee BillingsFog shrouds the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in this photograph from February 25, 2025. Gregg Newton/AFP via GettyLate last week the Trump Administration released its detailed budget request for fiscal year 2026 —a request that, if enacted, would be the equivalent of carpet-bombing the national scientific enterprise.“This is a profound, generational threat to scientific leadership in the United States,” says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a science advocacy group. “If implemented, it would fundamentally undermine and potentially devastate the most unique capabilities that the U.S. has built up over a half-century.”The Trump administration’s proposal, which still needs to be approved by Congress, is sure to ignite fierce resistance from scientists and senators alike. Among other agencies, the budget deals staggering blows to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which together fund the majority of U.S. research in astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, heliophysics and Earth science —all space-related sciences that have typically mustered hearty bipartisan support.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The NSF supports ground-based astronomy, including such facilities as the Nobel Prize–winning gravitational-wave detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), globe-spanning arrays of radio telescopes, and cutting-edge observatories that stretch from Hawaii to the South Pole. The agency faces a lethal 57 percent reduction to its $9-billion budget, with deep cuts to every program except those in President Trump’s priority areas, which include artificial intelligence and quantum information science. NASA, which funds space-based observatories, faces a 25 percent reduction, dropping the agency’s $24.9-billion budget to $18.8 billion. The proposal beefs up efforts to send humans to the moon and to Mars, but the agency’s Science Mission Directorate —home to Mars rovers, the Voyager interstellar probes, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Hubble Space Telescope, and much more —is looking at a nearly 50 percent reduction, with dozens of missions canceled, turned off or operating on a starvation diet.“It’s an end-game scenario for science at NASA,” says Joel Parriott, director of external affairs and public policy at the American Astronomical Society. “It’s not just the facilities. You’re punching a generation-size hole, maybe a multigenerational hole, in the scientific and technical workforce. You don’t just Cryovac these people and pull them out when the money comes back. People are going to move on.”Adding to the chaos, on Saturday President Trump announced that billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman was no longer his pick for NASA administrator—just days before the Senate was set to confirm Isaacman’s nomination. Initial reports—which have now been disputed—explained the president’s decision as stemming from his discovery that Isaacman recently donated money to Democratic candidates. Regardless of the true reason, the decision leaves both NASA and the NSF, whose director abruptly resigned in April, with respective placeholder “acting” leaders at the top. That leadership vacuum significantly weakens the agencies’ ability to fight the proposed budget cuts and advocate for themselves. “What’s more inefficient than a rudderless agency without an empowered leadership?” Dreier asks.Actions versus WordsDuring his second administration, President Trump has repeatedly celebrated U.S. leadership in space. When he nominated Isaacman last December, Trump noted “NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration” and looked to a future of “groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology and exploration.” More recently, while celebrating Hubble’s 35th anniversary in April, Trump called the telescope “a symbol of America’s unmatched exploratory might” and declared that NASA would “continue to lead the way in fueling the pursuit of space discovery and exploration.” The administration’s budgetary actions speak louder than Trump’s words, however. Instead of ushering in a new golden age of space exploration—or even setting up the U.S. to stay atop the podium—the president’s budget “narrows down what the cosmos is to moon and Mars and pretty much nothing else,” Dreier says. “And the cosmos is a lot bigger, and there’s a lot more to learn out there.”Dreier notes that when corrected for inflation, the overall NASA budget would be the lowest it’s been since 1961. But in April of that year, the Soviet Union launched the first human into orbit, igniting a space race that swelled NASA’s budget and led to the Apollo program putting American astronauts on the moon. Today China’s rapidprogress and enormous ambitions in space would make the moment ripe for a 21st-century version of this competition, with the U.S. generously funding its own efforts to maintain pole position. Instead the White House’s budget would do the exact opposite.“The seesaw is sort of unbalanced,” says Tony Beasley, director of the NSF-funded National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). “On the one side, we’re saying, ‘Well, China’s kicking our ass, and we need to do something about that.’ But then we’re not going to give any money to anything that might actually do that.”How NASA will achieve a crewed return to the moon and send astronauts to Mars—goals that the agency now considers part of “winning the second space race”—while also maintaining its leadership in science is unclear.“This is Russ Vought’s budget,” Dreier says, referring to the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an unelected bureaucrat who has been notorious for his efforts to reshape the U.S. government by weaponizing federal funding. “This isn’t even Trump’s budget. Trump’s budget would be good for space. This one undermines the president’s own claims and ambitions when it comes to space.”“Low Expectations” at the High FrontierRumors began swirling about the demise of NASA science in April, when a leaked OMB document described some of the proposed cuts and cancellations. Those included both the beleaguered, bloated Mars Sample Return (MSR) program and the on-time, on-budget Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the next astrophysics flagship mission.The top-line numbers in the more fleshed-out proposal are consistent with that document, and MSR would still be canceled. But Roman would be granted a stay of execution: rather than being zeroed out, it would be put on life support.“It’s a reprieve from outright termination, but it’s still a cut for functionally no reason,” Dreier says. “In some ways, [the budget] is slightly better than I was expecting. But I had very low expectations.”In the proposal, many of the deepest cuts would be made to NASA science, which would sink from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion. Earth science missions focused on carbon monitoring and climate change, as well as programs aimed at education and workforce diversity, would be effectively erased by the cuts. But a slew of high-profile planetary science projects would suffer, too, with cancellations proposed for two future Venus missions, the Juno mission that is currently surveilling Jupiter, the New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto and two Mars orbiters. (The Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan would survive, as would the flagship Europa Clipper spacecraft, which launched last October.) NASA’s international partnerships in planetary science fare poorly, too, as the budget rescinds the agency’s involvement with multiple European-led projects, including a Venus mission and Mars rover.The proposal is even worse for NASA astrophysics—the study of our cosmic home—which “really takes it to the chin,” Dreier says, with a roughly $1-billion drop to just $523 million. In the president’s proposal, only three big astrophysics missions would survive: the soon-to-launch Roman and the already-operational Hubble and JWST. The rest of NASA’s active astrophysics missions, which include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), would be severely pared back or zeroed out. Additionally, the budget would nix NASA’s contributions to large European missions, such as a future space-based gravitational-wave observatory.“This is the most powerful fleet of missions in the history of the study of astrophysics from space,” says John O’Meara, chief scientist at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and co-chair of a recent senior review panel that evaluated NASA’s astrophysics missions. The report found that each reviewed mission “continues to be capable of producing important, impactful science.” This fleet, O’Meara adds, is more than the sum of its parts, with much of its power emerging from synergies among multiple telescopes that study the cosmos in many different types, or wavelengths, of light.By hollowing out NASA’s science to ruthlessly focus on crewed missions, the White House budget might be charitably viewed as seeking to rekindle a heroic age of spaceflight—with China’s burgeoning space program as the new archrival. But even for these supposedly high-priority initiatives, the proposed funding levels appear too anemic and meager to give the U.S. any competitive edge. For example, the budget directs about $1 billion to new technology investments to support crewed Mars missions while conservative estimates have projected that such voyages would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more.“It cedes U.S. leadership in space science at a time when other nations, particularly China, are increasing their ambitions,” Dreier says. “It completely flies in the face of the president’s own stated goals for American leadership in space.”Undermining the FoundationThe NSF’s situation, which one senior space scientist predicted would be “diabolical” when the NASA numbers leaked back in April, is also unsurprisingly dire. Unlike NASA, which is focused on space science and exploration, the NSF’s programs span the sweep of scientific disciplines, meaning that even small, isolated cuts—let alone the enormous ones that the budget has proposed—can have shockingly large effects on certain research domains.“Across the different parts of the NSF, the programs that are upvoted are the president’s strategic initiatives, but then everything else gets hit,” Beasley says.Several large-scale NSF-funded projects would escape more or less intact. Among these are the panoramic Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scheduled to unveil its first science images later this month, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope. The budget also moves the Giant Magellan Telescope, which would boast starlight-gathering mirrors totaling more than 25 meters across, into a final design phase. All three of those facilities take advantage of Chile’s pristine dark skies. Other large NSF-funded projects that would survive include the proposed Next Generation Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New Mexico and several facilities at the South Pole, such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.If this budget is enacted, however, NSF officials anticipate only funding a measly 7 percent of research proposals overall rather than 25 percent; the number of graduate research fellowships awarded would be cleaved in half, and postdoctoral fellowships in the physical sciences would drop to zero. NRAO’s Green Bank Observatory — home to the largest steerable single-dish radio telescope on the planet — would likely shut down. So would other, smaller observatories in Arizona and Chile. The Thirty Meter Telescope, a humongous, perennially embattled project with no clear site selection, would be canceled. And the budget proposes closing one of the two gravitational-wave detectors used by the LIGO collaboration—whose observations of colliding black holes earned the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics—even though both detectors need to be online for LIGO’s experiment to work. Even factoring in other operational detectors, such as Virgo in Europe and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan, shutting down half of LIGO would leave a gaping blind spot in humanity’s gravitational-wave view of the heavens.“The consequences of this budget are that key scientific priorities, on the ground and in space, will take at least a decade longer—or not be realized at all,” O’Meara says. “The universe is telling its story at all wavelengths. It doesn’t care what you build, but if you want to hear that story, you must build many things.”Dreier, Parriott and others are anticipating fierce battles on Capitol Hill. And already both Democratic and Republican legislators have issued statement signaling that they won’t support the budget request as is. “This sick joke of a budget is a nonstarter,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, in a recent statement. And in an earlier statement, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations, cautioned that “the President’s Budget Request is simply one step in the annual budget process.”The Trump administration has “thrown a huge punch here, and there will be a certain back-reaction, and we’ll end up in the middle somewhere,” Beasley says. “The mistake you can make right now is to assume that this represents finalized decisions and the future—because it doesn’t.”

June 2, 20253 min readThe World Isn’t Ready for the Mental Health Toll of Extreme HeatTemperatures are rising, and so are mental health risksBy Madhusree Mukerjee edited by Dean VisserA man walks with an umbrella to protect himself from the heat as a yellow alert is issued by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) due to increasing temperatures in London, United Kingdom on June 25, 2024. Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu via Getty ImagesThe coming summer is forecast to be a scorcher across the U.S. And climate scientists predict that at least one of the next five years will beat 2024 as the hottest year ever recorded globally. As heat waves are getting more intense and prolonged, their effect on the mind and body are also becoming more dire. Children and older people, as well as those who work outdoors, are most at risk. So are those with mental health disorders.Heat waves are the single highest cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S., where an estimated 1,300 fatalities from heat stroke and other temperature-related complications occur every year. Even those who survive a period of extreme heat may suffer serious neurological or other mental-health-related disorders.A new study published in Current Environmental Health Reports finds that the world is startlingly unprepared to deal with the mental health consequences of climate change. Of 83 action plans for heat-related health problems that were reviewed for the study, fewer than a third acknowledged the mental health effects of extreme or prolonged high temperatures. And only a fifth of these plans outlined specific actions to deal with contingencies such as increased hospitalizations for mental health disorders.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.How does extreme heat affect the brain?The human body operates optimally at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius). If a person doesn’t drink enough water when the weather is hot and dry, the body becomes dehydrated, the blood thickens, and the heart may not be able to pump enough oxygen to the brain. Additionally, the human brain burns up 20 percent of the body’s energy and therefore needs to dissipate heat efficiently. In hot and humid conditions, sweating cannot cool the body and brain enough. This can lead to heat exhaustion, which has symptoms such as weakness, dizziness and headaches and, in extreme cases, heat stroke—which can then trigger delirium and loss of consciousness. A significant fraction of heat stroke survivors suffer neurological complications.Exposure to extreme heat can also increase the risk of suicide and can worsen schizophrenia, epilepsy, anxiety, depression, substance use disorder, neurodegenerative disorders (such as Alzheimer’s disease) and negative emotions such as fear and anger. It may worsen sleep, which, in turn, can increase fatigue and impair cognition. Alcohol and recreational drugs, as well as certain medications used to treat mental illness, such as antidepressants, tranquilizers and antipsychotics, also appear to increase mental health vulnerability to heat.Studies find an increased risk of suicide and epileptic seizures during heat waves, as well as an increase in hospitalizations and emergency-room visits for mental health disorders. Heat can also disorient thinking, making people slow to realize that they need to seek shelter or help.Who is most at risk?The most vulnerable are those with existing mental health disorders. Disturbingly, prolonged heat waves also appear to worsen the risk among young children—and even the unborn—of developing mental health ailments in the future. Older people may also be particularly affected, such as by accelerated dementia and Alzheimer’s.At particular risk are vast populations around the world who live without air-conditioning, including poor or homeless people and those who work outdoors, such as on farms.What can be done?The authors of the new Current Environmental Health Reports study point to interventions at several levels to help communities and individuals most at risk of climate mental health impacts. These can include public awareness campaigns, such as warning people about the mental health risk of consuming alcohol or other drugs during heat waves. Other interventions include establishing community cooling shelters for heat emergencies and increasing monitoring of mental health patients during heat waves. Extreme heat is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. We need to prepare people and communities to reduce the risk of mental health emergencies.IF YOU NEED HELPIf you or someone you know is struggling or having thoughts of suicide, help is available. Call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or use the online Lifeline Chat.

May 29, 20255 min readSpaceX’s Starbase Is Officially a City. Some Neighbors Aren’t ThrilledStarbase, SpaceX’s launch site turned company town in South Texas, faces local opposition from residents outside the city limitsBy Paola Rosa-Aquino edited by Lee BillingsSpaceX rockets stand near the end of a neighborhood street in the company’s Starbase launch complex in this photograph from October 2021. Starbase was officially incorporated as a city of Cameron County, Texas in May 2025. Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBefore SpaceX’s Starship lost control and exploded over the Indian Ocean during its ninth test flight, the 400-foot-tall megarocket blasted off from Texas’s newest city.Starbase, situated on 1.5 square miles of the Lone Star State’s southernmost tip in the Rio Grande Valley, is mostly made up of SpaceX employees living on company-owned property and abuts a habitat for endangered wildlife, as well as a public beach.Starbase serves as the main testing and launch location for Starship, SpaceX’s planned fully reusable spacecraft, which is meant to revolutionize human and uncrewed space travel with its gargantuan payload capacity and rapid-fire flight cadence. If Starship’s development proceeds as planned, the megarocket could soon be ferrying crew and cargo alike to multiple otherworldly destinations—such as the lunar surface, for NASA’s Artemis program, and Mars, in fulfillment of SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s long-stated dream. But nearby residents worry about less glamorous local effects, fearing that a town built around the space company could continue SpaceX’s alleged pattern of polluting the area and blocking access to the nearby beach and other open public spaces.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“SpaceX has already proven itself to be an extremely bad neighbor,” says Christopher Basaldú, an anthropologist and environmentalist and co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, who lives in nearby Brownsville, Tex. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Long before it was Starbase, the area’s beaches, tidal flats and wetlands were of great significance to the Indigenous Carrizo/Comecrudo people (or Esto’k Gna in their own language). Many of them still live nearby as members of the modern-day Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. Today the area is largely Latino and among the poorest in the country. Musk’s space company began buying up property there in 2012; ever since company housing and rocket-related infrastructure have steadily sprouted.“We’ve grown quite a bit just in the last couple of years. It’s a couple hundred employees [and] their families, living amongst actual rockets,” said Daniel Huot, a SpaceX communications manager, during a company livestream before Tuesday’s Starship test flight.Huot added that the move to incorporate what was formerly Boca Chica Village as Starbase will help the company “scale more quickly [to] try to build out the best community possible for all the people that are building the future of humanity’s place in space.”Even before SpaceX began launching rockets at the site, neighbors complained about potential environmental woes stemming from the company’s operations. In a 2018 press conference, Musk dismissed such concerns, saying “We’ve got a lot of land with no one around, and so if [a rocket] blows up, it’s cool.”The first launch of the 40-story-tall Starship vehicle in April 2023 didn’t entirely proceed as planned—it blew up the concrete launch pad and left a literal crater behind. Particulate debris, as well as concrete and steel shrapnel from the botched launch, scattered far and wide across the surrounding landscape, igniting fires and slamming into protected habitats and public beaches. Ash, dust and sand grains hurled aloft by this first Starship flight test rained down as far out as Port Isabel, Tex., about five miles from the launch site.Local environmentalists have also sounded the alarm on how the company’s activities at Starbase could increase chemical and sonic pollution that puts migratory birds and other vulnerable endangered species in the area at greater risk.Despite these brewing tensions, Starbase was incorporated in early May, making it the first new city in Cameron County, Texas, in 30 years.Only people who live in the immediate area—almost all of them SpaceX employees—were eligible to vote for the new city. Residents voted 212 for and six against. The city’s mayor and commissioners—all current or former SpaceX employees—ran unopposed. “Now [SpaceX has] stolen away not only a neighborhood but the land around it, which had been basically environmentally untouched areas,” says Basaldú, who is a member of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe.Starbase’s boundaries snake along State Highway 4, which provides the only access to both Starbase and the open-to-the-public Boca Chica Beach. A bill pending in the Texas Legislature would shift control over weekday closures of the beach and nearby roadways from the county commissioners to Starbase city leaders now that Starbase is a municipality under law.“As a community, we were there first,” says Suquiery Santillana, a resident of nearby Brownsville, Tex., who has visited Boca Chica Beach since childhood. “I’m almost 50, and now my grandkids are going.” Her family’s trips to the isolated shoreline now include wide-eyed roadside spectators from all across the country who want to catch a glimpse of the SpaceX launch site. While Santillana is happy that SpaceX has brought jobs to the area, she would like the company to communicate more about upcoming closures and launch plans with locals.Members of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe also trace their creation story to this once-pristine beach. The intermittent access restrictions imposed by SpaceX’s launches, some tribe members say, limit them from freely participating in traditions such as fishing and tribal ceremonies that have been taking place on their ancestral land for thousands of years.Activity at the site could soon ramp up even more. On May 22 the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it had granted approval for SpaceX to increase the annual number of Starbase launches from five to 25. Eventually, Starship flights from the site could far exceed that because the vehicle is designed for very fast turnaround times and an unprecedentedly high launch cadence. Starship’s sheer size, coupled with more frequent launches, could balloon Starbase’s overall environmental footprint while also essentially shutting down Highway 4 for much of the year. The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.For now, Starbase is poised to continue its rapid development and expansion, with plans in the works for more housing, offices and rocket launch facilities. Jim Chapman of the local environmental justice nonprofit Save RGV (Rio Grande Valley) worries that Starbase’s incorporation could allow SpaceX to skirt important regulatory hurdles. “[SpaceX has] fewer layers of bureaucracy that [it has] to go through and get approval from,” he says. “But on the other hand, I haven’t really seen the county denying [it] anything.”As SpaceX vies to fly ever more powerful rockets in pursuit of Musk’s interplanetary aspirations, local residents also fear that the company’s launch activity and its proximity to new natural gas projects could pose grave threats to Rio Grande Valley communities. One such project currently under construction is less than six miles from the launch site—too close for comfort, some critics say, given the possibility of volatile explosions sparked by showers of fiery rocket debris.If Musk’s latest projections are to be trusted (he often overpromises and underdelivers on meeting ambitious rocketry deadlines), additional Starship test flights will blast off from Starbase every few weeks for the rest of the summer. Time will tell if the company will be mindful of those who live next door.

May 30, 20252 min readLawmakers Form First Extreme Heat Caucus, Citing ‘Deadly Risk’The House of Representatives’ first caucus to address extreme heat is being launched by a Democrat from the Southwest and a Republican from the NortheastBy Ariel Wittenberg & E&E News A construction worker in Folsom, Calif., during a July 2024 heatwave that brought daytime highs of 110 degrees Fahrenheit. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | An Arizona Democrat and a New York Republican are teaming up to form the Congressional Extreme Heat Caucus in an attempt to find bipartisan solutions for deadly temperatures.“We hope this caucus can make sure the United States is better prepared for the inevitable increase in temperatures, not just in Arizona and the Southwest but all across the country,” Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton (D) said in an interview.He's creating the caucus with New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a moderate Republican who bucked his party last year by expressing support for the nation's first proposed regulation to protect workers from heat by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“Extreme heat kills more Americans each year than any other weather event — over 1,300 lives lost, including 570 in New York alone — and it’s a growing threat to the Hudson Valley,” Lawler said in a statement. “That’s why I’m co-chairing the Heat Caucus to drive real solutions, raise awareness, and protect our communities from this deadly risk.”Stanton said he was excited to team up with Lawler, who understands that heat jeopardizes health even in northern climates.“He is from New York and I’m proud he recognizes how heat is important for workers,” he said.The caucus will be open to House lawmakers who have bipartisan ideas for addressing extreme heat. Noting that many Republicans have slammed OSHA's proposed heat rule, Stanton said the caucus doesn't have to find consensus on every policy, but members should be willing to search for common ground."It is important to have that conversation on what we can come together and agree on because that's how we get legislation passed in this town, even if we don't agree on how far to go," he said.Lawler and Stanton teamed up earlier this spring to protest workforce reductions at the Department of Health and Human Services that could degrade heat-related programs.In April, the pair wrote a letter to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., protesting layoffs that purged the entire staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice as well as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps families pay for heating and cooling.“As we head into another summer — with projections suggesting 2025 will rank again among the warmest years on record, we cannot afford to limit our ability to counter the impacts of extreme heat,” they wrote in April with nine other lawmakers.Among the caucus' priorities is making LIHEAP funding more evenly distributed to southern states to help pay for cooling assistance. The program was initially created to help low-income families pay their heating bills during winter, and the majority of its funding still goes toward cold-weather states.“We have had too many deaths of people in their homes because they are unable to access programs that would help them access air conditioning,” Stanton said.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

May 30, 20253 min readWhat Causes Glaciers to Collapse like the Event That Buried a Swiss Village?Climate change and thawing permafrost play a role in destabilizing glaciersBy Jen Schwartz edited by Dean VisserThe small village of Blatten in the Swiss Alps was largely destroyed by a landslide that occurred as a result of the partial collapse of the Birch Glacier on May 28, 2025. Alexandre Agrusti/AFP via Getty ImagesAn unstable glacier in the Swiss Alps collapsed this week, sending a deluge of rock, ice and mud through the valley below and burying the village of Blatten almost entirely. Scientists had warned about the possibility of a dangerous event related to the glacier, and village residents had been evacuated days earlier—but the glacier’s near-total breakup came as a surprise. One person is reported missing. Government officials initially estimated the debris deposit to be several dozen meters thick and approximately two kilometers long. Making matters worse, the collapse of the glacier, called the Birch Glacier, blocked the flow of the Lonza River, which runs through the valley. As a result, a newly created lake upstream from the debris field flooded an area that has now overflowed into the deposit zone, which could cause a debris flow downstream. As of Friday afternoon local time, officials have reported that the water flow is approaching the top of the scree cone, which is the accumulation of loose, rocky debris.Why did the glacier break apart?The glacier’s collapse and the subsequent landslide—which was so intense that it corresponded to a magnitude 3.1 earthquake captured by the Swiss Seismological Service—likely arose from a series of rockfalls that occurred above the glacier over the past couple of weeks. The rocks, dislodged because of high-altitude snowmelt, exerted significant pressure on the relatively small glacier, according to officials. Experts are looking into longer-term factors that may have weakened the glacier’s stability even before those rockfalls. Christophe Lambiel, a glaciologist who also specializes in high-mountain geology at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, said on RTS Swiss Television that the rockfalls were linked to climate change. “The increase in the falling rocks is due to the melting permafrost, which increases instability,” Lambiel said, as reported on NPR.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.How would climate change lead to a glacier’s collapse?New research published on Thursday in Science finds that, under current climate policies, more than three quarters of the world’s glacial mass could disappear by the end of this century. In this scenario, almost all small and relatively low-elevation glaciers, like the one in Switzerland, would be wiped out. In a 2024 article for Scientific American, journalist Alec Luhn explained that “the deterioration of ice and snow is triggering feedback loops that will heat the world even further. Permafrost, the frozen ground that holds twice as much carbon as is currently found in the atmosphere, is thawing and releasing these stores.” Thawing permafrost is not just dangerous because it creates instability, as in the case of Birch Glacier. As Luhn wrote, “Research has revealed that the permafrost zone is now releasing more carbon than it absorbs, heating the planet further.”Who is at risk from disintegrating glaciers?It’s clear that the weakening of Switzerland’s Birch Glacier was at least partially caused by rockfall. There are other ways in which changes to glaciers are causing risk—and occasional devastation—to people, communities and infrastructure. As a 2023 E&E News article explained, “At least 15 million people worldwide live in the flood paths of dangerous glacial lakes that can abruptly burst their banks and rush down mountainsides.” These so-called glacial lake outburst floods can be fatal and cause catastrophic damage. “The deterioration of the planet’s snow and ice regions,” wrote Luhn in his 2024 article, “is costing the world billions of dollars in damages,” according to a 2024 State of the Cryosphere report What can be done to preserve glaciers—and protect communities?Giant plastic blankets, gravity snow guns and painted rocks are all potential strategies to slow ice melt in the world’s mountain regions. The sound that glaciers make when water is coursing through their icy cracks can be used to predict glacial lake outburst floods—and thus to save lives. There’s also a growing sense of reckoning with the fate of the world’s glaciers. An essay about the Global Glacier Casualty List, which documents glaciers that have melted or are critically endangered, was also released on Thursday in Science. In it, Rice University anthropologists Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer write, “The world’s first funeral for a glacier was held in Iceland in 2019 for a little glacier called ‘Ok….’ Since then, memorials for disappeared glaciers have increased across the world, illustrating the integral connection between loss in the natural world and human rituals of remembrance.”

May 30, 20252 min readSahara Dust Clouds Are Heading to Florida and BeyondClouds of dust blown off the Saharan Desert into the southeastern U.S. could affect local weather and make sunrises and sunsets particularly vividBy Meghan Bartels edited by Dean VisserEach year, seasonal winds carry tens of millions of tons of Saharan dust across the Atlantic and beyond. On February 18, 2021, NOAA-20’s VIIRS captured a dramatic display of airborne dust. NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting PartnershipClouds of dust drifting from the Sahara Desert over the Atlantic Ocean could make for unusual-looking sunrises and sunsets, as well as potentially drier weather, over Florida and parts of the southeastern U.S. in the coming days.What’s HappeningBetween late spring and early fall, dust from the Saharan gets blown out over the Atlantic Ocean every three to five days. When conditions are right, air masses that are filled with this dust can make it across the thousands of miles required to reach North America. Meteorologists call this type of air mass the Saharan Air Layer, or SAL.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Currently, on Friday, a thin SAL is dispersing over Florida, says Ana Torres-Vazquez, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Miami office, who adds that this could interfere with some storms carried into the peninsula by a cold front on Saturday. Another layer of dust—this one thicker and denser—may then blow in next week, although that forecast is currently less certain, Torres-Vazquez notes.It’s worth noting that the Atlantic hurricane season officially begins on June 1. In general, the SAL tends to dry the atmosphere it drifts through—so some scientists think these dust clouds may actually impede hurricane development. For now, however, forecasters aren’t expecting any tropical storms to develop in the Atlantic within the coming week.Sunrise, SunsetThe effect that will be most noticeable to local residents as the dust lingers might be unusual sunrises and sunsets.“When you have Saharan dust or any other kind of particulate, if the sun is coming in at an angle, like during sunrise or sunset,” Torres-Vazquez says, “it can hit those particulates that are close to the ground just right and result in those different, kind of orangey-reddish colors.”Other parts of the country might also see enhanced sunrises and sunsets during the coming days from a different kind of particulate—wildfire smoke. Canada is experiencing yet another brutal year for wildfires, with nearly 700,000 hectares, or more than 2,500 square miles, burned to date.Right now fires are particularly bad in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in part because of high temperatures stuck over central Canada. Smoke from these blazes is expected to reach U.S. states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan, in the coming days.Depending on how close the dust and smoke get to Earth’s surface, these kinds of particulate matter can be harmful to people’s health, particularly for people who are very young or very old and those who have asthma or heart or lung disease. The Air Quality Index can help you gauge whether you should take any precautions.

May 30, 20255 min readWhy This Hurricane Season Has Experts on EdgePredictions for an above-average number of storms, communities that are still recovering and cuts to the National Weather Service have meteorologists and other experts worried about this hurricane seasonBy Andrea Thompson edited by Dean VisserCategory 4 Hurricane Florence as seen from the International Space Station in 2018. ESA/NASA–A. GerstJune 1 marks the official start of the hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean—and once again, the season looks like it will be busy.Though it is impossible to tell this far in advance exactly when storms will form and where they might hit, the presence of hurricane-friendly environmental conditions this season—along with the federal government cuts and policy chaos—have experts worried about the accuracy of forecasts and the resulting safety of communities. Scientific American asked several forecasters and hurricane researchers what they were most concerned about this year.Warm oceans may mean a busy hurricane seasonOn supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Seasonal forecasts—including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s—put the odds in favor of having more storms than average this season, which will last until November 30. NOAA predicts 13 to 19 named storms, meaning those of tropical storm strength (with winds of 39 to 74 miles per hour) or higher. Of those, six to 10 are expected to become hurricanes (with winds of more than 74 mph). And among those hurricanes, three to five are expected to reach major hurricane status—meaning they will have winds that will fall within Category 3 (those of 111 to 129 mph) or a stronger category on the Saffir-Simpson scale.The expectations of an active season arise from a combination of a favorable atmospheric environment and abundant ocean heat to fuel storms. For one thing, there’s no El Niño in place right now to influence winds in a way that tends to shred storms apart, says Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, whose team releases its own seasonal forecast each year.And waters in the Gulf of Mexico are extremely warm right now, providing ample fuel for the convection that drives tropical cyclones. “Over 60 percent of the Gulf is at record or near-record warmth for the time of year, and waters east of Florida and around the Bahamas are as warm as we’ve seen them for the start of any hurricane season in the satellite era,” says Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist at WPLG Local 10 News in Miami. Warm ocean water in these areas can cause storms to rapidly intensify right before landfall, giving communities less time to prepare for the onslaught. This is a major concern for Jill Trepanier, a hurricane researcher at Louisiana State University. “That is just a devastating situation when it occurs,” she says.It’s a situation that has played out many times in recent years, including with Hurricanes Beryl and Milton last season. “The sticky heat of the Gulf is a worrisome trend that’s undoubtedly fueling the spate of big hurricane hits along the Gulf Coast over the past decade or so,” Lowry says. “This is consistent with recent research that suggests the Gulf has seen a significant increase over the past 42 years in the number of days where it can support high-end hurricanes.”Because of that abundant hurricane fuel, “I would not be surprised if we see early-season activity well ahead of the peak” of activity in September, says Marshall Shepherd, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Georgia.Several experts noted that this year’s conditions have some slight differences from the most recent seasons. For one, “the waters of the deep tropical Atlantic east of the Caribbean—often a bellwether for overall hurricane season activity—are the coolest we’ve seen them to start a hurricane season since 2021,” Lowry says. But, he adds, they are “still plenty warm ... and forecast to remain so, which should favor above-average activity.”Though the overall message is that this will be a busier-than-normal season, it is not predicted to be quite as busy as those of the past few years. Klotzbach is worried that could lead to complacency. “My biggest concern is that, because the seasonal forecasts are a bit less aggressive than last year..., people may tend to let their guard down,” he says.Communities are still recoveringInevitably, each time a new hurricane season begins, some communities are still reeling from storms from the previous year—and often even further back in time. This year “places in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas are still recovering from Helene, Milton and Debby,” Shepherd says, citing three of the worst storms of the 2024 season.An aerial view of destroyed houses in Port St Lucie, Fla., after a tornado hit the area and caused severe damage as Hurricane Milton swept through on October 11, 2024.Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty ImagesA National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report released last year warned that the Gulf Coast in particular risked being in “perpetual disaster recovery” mode. The report noted that seven hurricanes struck the region in 2020 and 2021 alone.It’s entirely possible that some of the communities pummeled in recent years could face hurricane peril again this year. “With projections of average to above-average activity, all it takes is one storm to compound an already bad situation for many people,” Marshall says.NWS and FEMA cutsPiled atop these concerns is the situation within the federal government, with substantial budget and staffing cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “It remains to be seen what the impacts of reduced staffing across relevant NOAA offices and agencies will be,” says Brian McNoldy, a tropical storm researcher at the University of Miami. “But any loss of expertise, data collection capabilities and around-the-clock monitoring is troubling during critical, high-impact situations.”Though the National Hurricane Center (NHC) monitors the development of tropical storms and hurricanes and produces the main forecasts, local NWS offices still play a crucial role in providing more localized warnings about storm surge, flooding and winds. Many offices in hurricane-prone areas are understaffed, says Jeff Masters, a writer at Yale Climate Connections and a former Hurricane Hunter at NOAA. Among those, the NWS’s Houston and Miami offices are suffering the largest staff shortages. The NWS has asked staff from other offices to move into some of these open slots.Lowry and Masters also point out that the cuts have reduced the number of weather balloons launches. Balloon data are crucial for understanding the larger atmospheric patterns that determine where a hurricane will go—and who might need to evacuate or take other precautions.There is one positive note: “I was very pleased to see the Hurricane Hunters reinstated,” Trepanier says, referring to three of the meteorologists who fly specialized, equipment-laden planes directly into storms to gather data that significantly improve forecasts. “Though it isn't enough to offset the concern, it is a move in a good direction.”James Franklin, former chief of the NHC’s Hurricane Specialist Unit, says he is concerned about trainings for emergency managers that were canceled earlier this year Their absence could leave areas less prepared and less able to know what decisions to make based on forecasts. “When training has to be cut down…, it just makes those kinds of mistakes on the emergency management side more likely to occur,” he says.Finally, another big worry is simply the government’s ability to respond with help for victims when a storm hits. Masters’ biggest worry is that FEMA won't “be capable of managing a major disaster right now.”Reports by CNN and other news outlets have cited internal FEMA memos that report the loss of 30 percent of full-time staff. “I wrote the plan FEMA uses to respond to hurricanes,” says Lowry, a former employee of both the NHC and FEMA, “and it’s hard to imagine the agency will be able to meet its mission-critical functions this season with such depleted staffing and without a fully revised plan.”

May 30, 20256 min readInside the Lifesaving Power of Doppler Weather RadarDoppler radar is one of the most revolutionary and lifesaving tools of modern meteorology, which has experts worried about outages because of recent staffing cuts and conspiracy theoriesBy Andrea Thompson edited by Dean Visser Mfotophile/Getty ImagesOutside every National Weather Service (NWS) office around the U.S. stands what looks like an enormous white soccer ball, perched atop metal scaffolding several stories high. These somewhat plain spheres look as ho-hum as a town water tower, but tucked inside each is one of modern meteorology’s most revolutionary and lifesaving tools: Doppler radar.The national network of 160 high-resolution radars, installed in 1988 and updated in 2012, sends out microwave pulses that bounce off raindrops or other precipitation to help forecasters see what is falling and how much—providing crucial early information about events ranging from flash floods to blizzards. And the network is especially irreplaceable when it comes to spotting tornadoes; it has substantially lengthened warning times and reduced deaths. Doppler radar has “really revolutionized how we’ve been able to issue warnings,” says Ryan Hanrahan, chief meteorologist of the NBC Connecticut StormTracker team.But now meteorologists and emergency managers are increasingly worried about what might happen if any of these radars go offline, whether because of cuts to the NWS made by the Trump administration or threats from groups that espouse conspiracy theories about the radars being used to control the weather. “Losing radar capabilities would “take us back in time by four decades,” says Jana Houser, a tornado researcher at the Ohio State University. If they go down, “there’s no way we’re going to be effective at storm warnings.”On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.How Doppler radars workThe NWS installations form a network called the Next Generation Weather Radar, or NEXRAD. Inside each giant white sphere is a device that looks like a larger version of a home satellite TV dish, with a transmitter that emits pulses in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Those pulses bounce off raindrops, snowflakes, hailstones—what meteorologists collectively call hydrometeors—and back to the dish antenna. (The pulses also sometimes bounce off bats, birds and even moving trains, which yield characteristic radar patterns that experts can usually identify.)Amanda MontañezThe power of the returning signals lets experts create a picture of size, shape and intensity of any precipitation—and this is what you see on a phone app’s radar map or a TV broadcast.But NEXRAD can do much, much more than show how hard it’s raining. Within its sphere, each unit rotates and scans up and down through the sky, helping forecasters see what is happening at multiple levels of a storm system. These vertical profiles can show, for example, whether a tornado is forming or a storm is creating a downburst—a rapid downward blast of wind. “Doppler radar basically allows us to see in the clouds,” Hanrahan says.And then there’s the “Doppler” part itself. The name refers to a phenomenon that’s familiar to many, thanks to the electromagnetic waves’ acoustic counterpart. We’ve all experienced this, often most obviously when we hear an emergency vehicle siren pass nearby: the pitch increases as the car gets closer and decreases as it moves away. Similarly, the returning radar bounce from a rain droplet or piece of tornadic debris that is moving toward the emitter will have a shorter wavelength than the pulse that was sent out, and the signal from an object moving away from the radar will have a longer wavelength. This allows the radar to efficiently distinguish the tight circulation of a tornado.These two images show how dual-polarization helps NWS forecasters detect a tornado that is producing damage. The left image shows how the Doppler radar can detect rotation. Between the two yellow arrows, the red color indicates outbound wind, while the green color indicate inbound wind, relative to the location of the radar. The right image shows how dual-polarization information helps detect debris picked up by the tornado.NOAAThe nation’s radar system was upgraded in 2012 to include what is called dual polarization. This means the signal has both vertically and horizontally oriented wavelengths, providing information about precipitation in more than one dimension. “A drizzle droplet is almost perfectly spherical, so it returns the same amount of power in the horizontal and in the vertical,” Hanrahan says, whereas giant drops look almost like “hamburger buns” and so send back more power in the horizontal than the vertical.Are Doppler radars dangerous? Can they affect the weather?Doppler radars do not pose any danger to people, wildlife or structures—and they cannot affect the weather.Along the electromagnetic spectrum, it is the portions with shorter wavelengths such as gamma rays and ultraviolet radiation that can readily damage the human body—because their wavelengths are the right size to interact with and damage DNA or our cells. Doppler radars emit pulses in wavelengths about the size of a baseball.Amanda MontañezBeing hit by extremely concentrated microwave radiation could be harmful; this is why microwave ovens have mesh screens that keep the rays from escaping. Similarly, you wouldn’t want to stand directly in front of a radar microwave beam. Military radar technicians found this out years ago when working on radars under operation, University of California, Los Angeles, climate scientist Daniel Swain said during one of his regular YouTube talks. They “had experiences like the candy bar in their pocket instantly melting and then feeling their skin getting really hot,” he said.Similar to how a microwave oven works, when the microwave signal from a radar hits a hydrometeor, the water molecules vibrate and so generate heat because of friction and reradiate some of the received energy, says Cynthia Fay, who serves as a focal point for the National Weather Service’s Radar Operations Center. But “microwave radiation is really not very powerful, and the whole point is that if you stand more than a couple dozen feet away from the dome it's not even really going to affect your body, let alone the global atmosphere,” Swain adds.At the radar’s antenna, the average power is about 23.5 megawatts (MW) of energy, Fay says. (A weak or moderate thunderstorm may generate about 18 MW in about an hour.) But the energy from the radar signal dissipates very rapidly with distance: at just one kilometer from the radar, the power is 0.0000019 MW, and at the radar’s maximum range of 460 kilometers, it is 8.8 x 10–12 MW, Fay says. “Once you’re miles away, it’s just really not a dangerous amount” of energy, Swain said in his video.A supercell thunderstorm that produced an F4 tornado near Meriden, KS, in May 1960, as seen from the WSR-3 radar in Topeka (left). A supercell thunderstorm that produced an EF5 tornado in Moore, OK, in May 2013, as seen from a modern Doppler weather radar near Oklahoma City (right).NOAAAnd Doppler radars spend most of their time listening for returns. According to the NWS, for every hour of operation, a radar may spend as little as seven seconds sending out pulses.The idea that Doppler radar can control or affect the weather is “a long-standing conspiracy [theory] that has existed really for decades but has kind of accelerated in recent years,” Swain said in his video. It has resurfaced recently with threats to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration radar system from an antigovernment militia group, as first reported by CNN. The Washington Post reported that the group’s founder said that its members were carrying out “attack simulations” on sites in order to later destroy the radars,—which the group believes are “weather weapons,” according to an internal NOAA e-mail. NOAA has advised radar technicians at the NWS’s offices to exercise caution and work in teams when going out to service radars—and to notify local law enforcement of any suspicious activity.“NOAA is aware of recent threats against NEXRAD weather radar sites and is working with local and other authorities in monitoring the situation closely,” wrote a NWS spokesperson in response to a request for comment from Scientific American.What happens if weather radars go offline?NOAA’s radars have been on duty for 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year since 1988 (with brief downtimes for maintenance and upgrades). “It’s amazing what workhorses these radars have been,” Hanrahan says.The image on the left shows a reflectivity radar image of a supercell thunderstorm that produced several tornadoes on April 19, 2023, near Oklahoma City, OK. The hook shape present often indicates rotation within the storm. The image on the right show velocity information that corresponds to the reflectivity image. Very strong inbound winds (green colors) are next to very strong outbound winds (bright red/yellow colors). This very strong inbound/outbound “couplet” indicates the very strong rotation of a tornado.NOAABut they do require that periodic maintenance because of all the large moving parts needed to operate them. And with Trump administration cuts to NOAA staffing and freezes on some spending, “we just got rid of a lot of the radar maintenance technicians, and we got rid of the budget to repair a lot of these sites,” Swain said in his video. “Most of these are functioning fine right now. The question is: What happens once they go down, once they need a repair?”It is this outage possibility that most worries weather experts, particularly if the breakdowns occur during any kind of severe weather. “Radars are key instruments in issuing tornado warnings,” the Ohio State University’s Houser says. “If a radar goes down, we’re basically down as to what the larger picture is.”And for much of the country—particularly in the West—there is little to no overlap in the areas that each radar covers, meaning other sites would not be able to step in if a neighboring radar is out. Hanrahan says the information provided by the radars is irreplaceable, and the 2012 upgrades mean “we don’t even need to have eyes on a tornado now to know that it’s happening. It’s something that I think we take for granted now.”

May 28, 20257 min readWhy Is NASA Shuttering This Iconic Institute in New York City?Since 1966 NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been at the forefront of Earth and planetary science from its location in upper Manhattan. Now a Trump administration directive is ejecting its scientists to parts unknownBy Christopher Cokinos edited by Lee BillingsPhoto of the building housing NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, at the corner of Broadway and West 112th Street in New York City. Cirofono via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)In the early 1980s, then real estate developer Donald Trump famously tried to evict a group of New York City residents from a rent-controlled building that he wanted to replace with a luxury high-rise. The tenants eventually beat back the plan.Today President Trump is having more luck with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).Ensconced on six floors of a building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, GISS has been a small-but-mighty source of world-changing scientific research for more than a half-century. NASA scientists first moved into the building, which another federal agency leases from GISS’s institutional partner, Columbia University, in 1966. Last month, at the behest of the Trump administration, NASA officials told GISS it had to move out before the end of May. In response, more than 100 staffers have abandoned the facility, leaving its tastefully decorated halls and offices littered with boxes, papers and packing tape.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Although it may be best known to the public indirectly (its building often appeared in the hit sitcom Seinfeld as the site of “Monk’s Café”), GISS has been a leader in Earth science and climate research for decades. The work within its halls was crucial for sparking broader public awareness of anthropogenic climate change in the 1980s and has contributed to cutting-edge weather forecasting and multiple interplanetary missions, as well as the underpinnings of the past, present, and future habitability of Earth and other worlds.Yet now that rich legacy and prospects for further breakthrough research are at risk, GISS personnel say, jeopardized by the White House’s demands for notionally better government efficiency. Ironically, however, the effective eviction of GISS may well result in more costs to taxpayers rather than less.A Federal Mandate to “Institutionally Couch Surf”GISS itself has not been disbanded. But without a physical home and under the looming threat of a White House–proposed 50 percent cut to the entirety of NASA’s science for the 2026 federal fiscal year, the Institute’s future can only be called uncertain. Many of its staff are now operating as academic nomads—working remotely and scrambling to secure office space at other locations in the city.“We’re being told to institutionally couch surf,” says one senior GISS researcher, who, like many others in this story, asked not to be identified because of the possibility of reprisal.In April Makenzie Lystrup, director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which technically includes GISS, e-mailed GISS personnel about the eviction, explaining it was part of White House efforts to review government leases.Sources familiar with the situation, however, tell Scientific American the termination was specifically set in motion earlier this spring by an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service (a newly minted federal entity that was, until recently, led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk). That employee, the sources say, approached NASA administrators, who ultimately agreed to the move out of fear of losing their jobs.A GISS scientist recounts the sudden events: “On Wednesday afternoon of April 23, NASA GISS workers were informed that there would be an all-hands Thursday morning meeting (the next day) with folks from HQ ... the topic of which was not mentioned,” the scientist says. “The next morning, we were promptly told ... the decision was made to vacate our building by the end of May and that the decision was made as part of a broader DOGE assessment of federal leased spaces. They also mentioned that this decision was made by NASA within just a few days.” According to this scientist, the move deadline changed several times. This account is supported by others who spoke to Scientific American.Multiple GISS personnel consulted for this story say there will be no cost savings because the $3-million-per-year lease on the space remains in place through 2031. That lease is between Columbia and the General Services Administration (GSA), a federal agency that is tasked with providing workspace for some governmental employees. Even if a new tenant is found, the lease is likely to remain in force because terminating it will result in major financial penalties per the leasing agreement. The lease, they say, is about half the current commercial rate in New York City, and for now, the GSA continues to pay rent.“Columbia is fully committed to our longstanding collaboration with NASA and the scientific research at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies,” said Millie Wert, a spokesperson for the university, when reached for comment for this article.The suddenness of the move has stunned GISS researchers and personnel, one of whom calls the decision “idiocy.”“One hundred and thirty scientists must move all their books and office equipment,” the senior researcher told Scientific American shortly after GISS received the eviction notice. “A library and $400,000 in tech must be moved out. We also have historical items here: Where are we supposed to put them?” Much of this material is reportedly going into storage at warehouse space in New Jersey.Another staffer adds that “we have no information about what will be discarded.... Ironically, many of us decided not to accept new furniture [recently] because our existing 1950s furniture is perfectly good—and that would save the taxpayer money.”As GISS employees packed their belongings, they saw workers dismantling a recently renovated conference room and a brand-new security system, according to documents obtained by Scientific American from the departing staff. The documents also note that computers and servers are “at risk of damage while being moved in haste.”Two protest letters against the eviction that were sent from the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers (IFPTE) to particular congressional representatives and senators, respectively, noted that a recent renovation of GISS is nearly complete at a cost of more than $6 million. In the letter to members of the House of Representatives, IFPTE called the dispersal of staff and equipment “blatantly wasteful financially.”An Institutional “Diaspora”GISS is globally renowned for tracking and predicting climate conditions with GISTEMP (GISS Surface Temperature Analysis), along with other datasets and modeling that involve planetary science beyond Earth and that are focused on weather, fire and agriculture on our world. GISS also has played roles in missions across the solar system, the discovery of the big bang’s all-sky afterglow, and more.According to firebrand climate researcher and former GISS director James Hansen, now retired from NASA, the institute was deliberately located in New York City because physicist Robert Jastrow, its founder, wanted a NASA center that was not a closed campus. Being in the heart of a city with academia and industry outside the door has been an asset to GISS, according to Hansen and others. The process of developing GISS began modestly, with “Jastrow ... interviewing people in an office over a furniture store in Silver Spring, Md.,” Hansen says. “The ‘GISS Formula’ ... was to have a minimum government staff, which allowed the research focus to change with time as the need dictated.”One such focus was the high levels of carbon dioxide on Venus, which Hansen was studying decades ago. That led to his trailblazing work on what was then called “the greenhouse effect,” including his famous testimony before Congress on human-driven climate change in 1988.Climate modeling, says a different senior GISS researcher, “is what drove the development of supercomputing, [and] we continue to use the same Earth climate modeling to understand Venus and Mars and constrain their potential habitability.” From climate feedback loops to ocean heat transport, GISS is at the center of important science, its researchers say.But the GISS dispersal, along with other disruptions, such as frozen grants and proposed science budget cuts at NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other agencies, “represent a monumental step backwards,” a GISS scientist says, “not just for understanding a climate that will still change due to human activities ... but also for operational weather prediction that saves lives due to forecast and warnings, pollution and contamination assessments.”GISS’s current director Gavin Schmidt tells Scientific American that “the issue of whether to do something with the GISS lease goes back a year or two due to a shift in how these things are paid for at NASA.... [The agency] commissioned an external panel to look at [this], and they concluded (last year) that the status quo was the most efficient plan. I am not privy to who decided to raise that idea again in recent weeks.”Other GISS researchers complain that, to their knowledge, no administrators above Schmidt went to bat for keeping the institute in its building.“I think there was pushback initially at HQ,” Schmidt says, “but by the time we were told at GISS, it was a done deal.”Concerns now include the lack of in-person interaction and a general loss of support for postdoctoral researchers. “It’s pretty dire,” one scientist says.“I’m now watching people who have dedicated their entire careers to understanding the most pressing issues of our time deciding whether they might have to leave the place they’ve built their life around,” says Alessandra Quigley, an early-career scientist, who is affiliated with GISS. “This is the only positive takeaway I can find: the fact this administration cares so much about ending climate science just demonstrates how important [this science] is, and I hope the public comes to see that, too.”While Lystrup called GISS’s work “critical” and promised support during the transition in her e-mail, which was obtained by Scientific American , Schmidt says that “people are shell-shocked and anxious—and that is not conducive to doing high-quality science.”He adds that “we will nonetheless push through and try and make the GISS diaspora function as well as it can. We have been contacted with many offers to help.”Asked for comment by Scientific American, a NASA spokesperson referred to the situation as “part of the administration’s government-wide review of leases to increase efficiency.” While NASA “seeks and evaluates options for a new space for the GISS team,” the spokesperson added, the institute’s work remains “significant” and “critical.”But at least one GISS researcher isn’t convinced. Angry that the agency didn’t do more to stop the eviction and even had tasked officials with frequent check-ins to ensure the move was underway, the researcher says, simply, “NASA is the new thug.”

OpinionMay 26, 20257 min readScientific Strategies to Help Kids Meet the Challenges of a Cruel WorldResearch has shown ways parents can help children cope with the stressors of modern lifeBy Clara Moskowitz Mary Long/Getty ImagesBetween climate change, economic anxiety and political turmoil, the world can feel like a scary place, especially for kids. Today’s young people have already been through a deadly global pandemic, they regularly drill to prepare for school shootings, and they must learn to navigate an age of misinformation and danger online. These stressors seem to be taking a toll; measurements show anxiety and sleep deprivation among adolescents are rising, and even teen suicide attempts are increasing.To parents, the situation can feel overwhelming. The good news is, there’s a lot parents can do to help their kids meet the challenges of the world we live in, writes parenting journalist (and frequent Scientific American contributor) Melinda Wenner Moyer. In her new book Hello, Cruel World! Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times (Penguin Random House, May 2025) Moyer surveys scientific research on kids’ mental health and ways to improve it.Moyer divides her book into three sections focused on evidence-backed tips for helping young people cope with challenges, connect to others, and cultivate strong characters. Scientific American spoke to her about how to shield kids from online misinformation, nurture self-compassion and get your children to open up with you.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]The concept of the book, this “cruel world,” resonates so much with me as a parent, and I'm sure with so many people. Tell me a bit more about how you started feeling like the world is becoming a really tough place for kids.I have had this growing anxiety and angst as a parent, just thinking about the world that my kids were coming into and that they were going to inherit from us. There are so many things looming, you know, climate change and disinformation. I was also getting so many comments from parents saying, “I'm just so scared on behalf of my kids, and I don't know what I can do to prepare them and help them get them ready for this world that we're going to hand them.” And I'm always trying to think of solutions and trying to figure out ways to reassure both myself and my readers. We do have some control here. And so I started researching, what are the key skills that we know can help kids get through all this? I was really trying to come up with concrete strategies that I could communicate to parents to help them feel a little less worried, a little more in control, and feel like they really could do something as parents, because I think parenting is a form of activism. We are raising the next generation of kids, and through our parenting, we can change the world.In what specific ways do you think there are challenges that kids are facing today that previous generations haven't really had to face before?We know from the research that there are a lot of tweens and teens who are struggling with mental health issues. Whether or not you think that the statistics are as bad as they seem, there seems to be a signal there that we should pay attention to. And so a big part of the book is about: How can we help kids cope? What are the things we can do to help them manage their emotions in healthy ways, rather than unhealthy ways?Another big one is technology. Every generation panics about technology, and so the question is, well, how much different is our situation today than it was when the TV came out, or the printing press—these were all big changes at the time. But I think this is certainly the first generation where kids have a handheld connection to technology, potentially at all times. That does feel momentous.One message in the book that really spoke to me was that helping our kids is also about helping ourselves—that we can’t teach kids things like self-compassion, or balancing work and leisure, or all these other lessons, until we can embody them ourselves.I do think a really overlooked aspect of child health and development is: How are the parents doing? What’s their mental health like? What are the skills that they have or don't have? Because we are teaching our kids so much through the choices we make. You know, are we beating ourselves up when we burn dinner? Are we constantly putting ourselves down? Our kids are learning from that and thinking, okay, I should be doing this too. I think we do overlook the role of our own well-being. This is really important because our kids are watching us.I want to be careful too: I’m not saying this to put more pressure on parents. We already have so many expectations of ourselves to ensure that our kids are succeeding at everything they do, that they're comfortable all the time, that they’re protected all the time, that they’re happy all the time. We have these expectations about what we should be doing as parents that are both unrealistic and unhelpful. When we overprotect, when we over-coddle, that actually undermines the development of key skills for them. Problem solving and resilience and emotional regulation, these are all skills that kids learn through practice. They need to be sad, they need to be disappointed and frustrated. They need to fail and experience what that is and understand that that’s part of the process of learning. So a lot of what I'm trying to do is give parents permission to step back a little bit and to relax.You write in the book a lot about connection—how a strong connection between parents and kids is important for their mental health and is protective against some of the things we worry about, such as bad influences from social media. How do you make sure your connection is strong?If you're worried you’re not connecting enough with your kids, then there are things you can do. I was really surprised at the power of listening to our kids—like really listening. I think we hear a lot about talking to your kids. And I think sometimes that can be misinterpreted as, lecture to your kids, you know, tell them not to do this and not to do that, and set rules and communicate the rules. But it’s also really listening to them in a respectful way, and being willing to consider their perspective, which you may not always agree with.And when they open up to you, drop everything. It’s impossible sometimes, but when they are opening up to you, even if it’s in a very inconvenient time, try to allow it and stop what you’re doing. Kids often like to connect right before bedtime, which is the most frustrating time ever, right? But we should really allow the connection to happen on their terms, because that’s a form of giving our kids some autonomy. If you’re getting from your kids some willingness to be vulnerable with you, I think that that is a really good sign.There’s a relationship between feeling listened to and being willing to be self-reflective and also intellectually humble, which I think is really interesting. So when we feel heard, when we feel safe and not threatened, we’re much more willing to consider what we don’t know, and to acknowledge uncertainty within ourselves.What can parents do if we’re worried about the information, the bad actors, the scary, negative stuff that our kids are coming across online? What can we do to help them tell the difference between misinformation, lies and reality online?There’s very little media literacy education happening in schools. It really helps if the parent has some of those skills already, because then they can model media literacy and information literacy a little better for kids. So I encourage parents to try to learn about media literacy.One thing that every media literacy expert said to me was to ask your kids open-ended questions about what they’re seeing and hearing in the media. It’s such a beautifully simple approach, but apparently it’s very, very powerful. So this could be anything, like with little kids, asking: What do you like about this show? Or why do you think that character just did what they did? It could also involve talking about how movies and cartoons are made. And when kids get older, you can ask even bigger questions, like: Who made this? Why was it made? Why is it being presented this way? What or who is missing from this? Who might benefit from this? Who might be harmed by it? Getting kids to think about these big-picture questions about the media can be super helpful in fostering this sort of curiosity and this questioning perspective in kids.These are some really wonderful tips, and I’m going to try to put them into practice. As a parent, I'm always reading and trying to learn how to be the best parent I can be. But sometimes I wonder how much it really matters what we do and how we parent. How much of who our kids are and who they’re going to turn out to be, is completely out of our control anyway?People still debate this. We know genetics, of course, really matter. We know that temperament and personality, these are not things that we’re probably going to be able to shift in our kids. But we also do know that a lot of what we’re passing on to our kids is through the relationships we build with them, through the conversations we’re having with them to help them understand how the world works, to help them understand what they can do to build stronger relationships, how they can interact with people. They really do learn a lot from our modeling, in terms of how to behave, how to manage conflict, how to think about different situations. We know that there are a lot of skills that kids learn through observing others, through the conversations they have with others, through the opportunities they’re given to develop skills.A big example is resilience. We know that kids who are overprotected, prevented from failing, from experiencing challenges, that those are kids who are going to grow up not knowing how to problem solve and not knowing how to deal with feelings of frustration. They haven’t been given opportunities to develop emotional regulation skills and they will really suffer for that when they get older. So I feel like we do have a lot of power in terms of the perspective that we help kids develop about the world, about why it looks the way it does. We can give them the opportunities at a young age to develop skills that will serve them the rest of their lives.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

OpinionMay 26, 20254 min readThe Applause for Jaws, Despite FlawsFifty years ago, the movie Jaws scared beachgoers and demonized sharks. Now, however, sharks, the public and our beaches are all evolving to a better understandingBy Chris Pepin-Neff Universal Pictures/Courtesy of Getty ImagesThe motion picture Jaws deserves another round of applause on its 50th birthday, despite its flaws. Released on June 20, 1975, this classic invented the summer blockbuster genre, made sharks a familiar (if demonized) foe, and gave a visceral picture to the words “shark attack.”But today, humanity has grown to have a better appreciation for all sharks, even those that swim near the beach. We owe some of the public sentiment that it’s “safe to go back in the water” to Jaws.Initially, the movie’s biggest impact was to portray shark bites as intentional "attacks" on swimmers. The fictional story of the human-shark relationship (and human-ocean relationship) that humans are on the menu—has been one of the most successful Hollywood narratives in motion picture history. More movies, sequels and spin-offs have created a lasting narrative and industry of “rogue” sharks, rabid dogs, territorial bears, hungry crocodiles, and other animals that intentionally and sometimes hysterically attack innocent people in classic “Sharknado” style.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The public believed this story of intentionality so completely that every shark bite was essentially a murder, and every shark a potential murderer, and the beach was the scene of a crime by a deviant monster against innocent beachgoers. Importantly, the rogue narrative of sharks gaining a taste for human flesh pre-dated Jaws, and was invented largely by an Australian surgeon, Sir Victor Coppleson, in the 1950s. Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel, Jaws, and the movie blockbuster provided the justification for, and weakened push-back against, all the anti-shark public policies that followed, including revenge shark hunts, shark derbies, changes to fishery laws that classified sharks as waste fish, delays in enacting shark conservation and the placement of lethal shark nets on some international beaches.Another piece of the Jaws story was its portrayal of an innocent coastal community being preyed upon. Here, beachgoers were not large land animals entering into the foreign domain of a dynamic marine ecosystem, but they were cast as property owners and recreational water users who had the right to expect nature to behave in a domesticated manner. This misperception that the beach is safe introduced as big a misconception and falsehood on the public, as the idea that sharks are all dangerous. The ocean is constantly in flux, and the direct opposite to "shark bites are intentional attacks" is a much less Oscar-worthy story about the beach as a wild, dynamic and active ocean environment.In 2014, I proposed the “Jaws Effect” in the Australian Journal of Political Science, in which I argue that politicians use familiar fictional films and movies as the basis for explaining real-life events. The Jaws Effect can be seen as a political instrument that uses films to reinforce three themes: “that sharks are intentionally hunting people, that shark bites are fatal events and that killing individual sharks will solve the problem.”Following a terrible fatal shark bite in Western Australia in 2000 and subsequent shark bites and encounters, the West Australian premier Colin Barnett repeatedly used the term “rogue sharks” the he said were returning to the beach to attack swimmers, so there needed to be a law to help the government kill specific target sharks that were intent on haunting the local beach community.During this period, Benchley wrote an open letter to Western Australia about the case and the political directive to hunt down the shark responsible. He wrote, “This was not a rogue shark, tantalised by the taste of human flesh and bound now to kill and kill again. Such creatures do not exist, despite what you might have derived from Jaws.”The Jaws Effect, however, continues in Australia today. In 2024, the District Council of Elliston passed a motion to allow fisheries officers in South Australia to kill great white sharks following shark bites in that area, which stated, “Sharks are capable of learned behavior. The purpose of terminating the shark responsible for an attack is to prevent that shark from using that behavior to harm another person.”Yet, at 50 years old, Jaws is also a celebration of sharks, creating a fascination that helped lead to more than two generations of new shark researchers. Indeed, some of the people who have done the most for shark conservation worked on Jaws. Valerie Taylor help collect footage of sharks that was used in Jaws and was one of the leaders in New South Wales on conservation laws to protect the Grey Nurse Shark, which in 1984 became the first protected species of shark. As well, Leonard Compagno, who was a scientist and consultant on Jaws, also led the effort to protect White Sharks in South Africa. The idea that Jaws led to bad public relations is too simple a story. Our reading of the movie, real-life sharks, the public and our beaches are all evolving. Jaws is better at 50, sharks are seen more positively in 2025, and the public is more engaged in shark conservation and beach safety. There’s even a “Jawsie” Award in Australia, given yearly to the most outlandish reports of shark attacks and meant to spur real beach safety awareness.I would be remiss if I did not note the connection between Jaws, the false rogue shark theory, and current debate over orcas ramming into yachts off the Strait of Gibraltar. Both National Geographic and the BBC, for example, have run headlines about such “rogue” orcas. In the mix of stories to explain this behavior, one that claimed that it was an “orca scorned” type situation where a female orca had been traumatized by a boat previously and was now training her young to attack boats in revenge. Very Jaws, or perhaps Jaws 3, but there will be no awards for this fish story.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

May 23, 20253 min readNew Contacts Let You See Infrared Light—Even with Your Eyes ClosedStraight out of science fiction, these contact lenses convert infrared light into visible light that humans can seeBy Elizabeth Gibney & Nature magazine People who tested a new type of designer contact lens could see flashing infrared signals from a light source. Yuqian Ma, Yunuo Chen, Hang Zhao (CC BY SA)Humans have a new way of seeing infrared light, without the need for clunky night-vision goggles. Researchers have made the first contact lenses to convey infrared vision — and the devices work even when people have their eyes closed.The team behind the invention, led by scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, gave the lenses their power by infusing them with nanoparticles that convert near-infrared light in the 800–1,600-nanometre range into shorter-wavelength, visible light that humans can see, in the 400–700-nanometre range. The researchers estimate that the lenses cost around US$200 per pair to make.The technology, which was detailed in Cell on 22 May, “is incredibly cool, just like something out of a science-fiction movie”, says Xiaomin Li, a chemist at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. It opens up “new possibilities for understanding the world around us”, he adds.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Pros and consNear-infrared light sits just outside the range of wavelengths that humans can normally detect. Some animals can sense infrared light, although probably not well enough to form images.Night-vision goggles enable humans to see infrared radiation, but they are bulky and require a power source to work. The new lenses avoid these limitations while also offering richer, multi-coloured infrared images that night-vision goggles, which operate on a monochrome green scale, typically do not.However, the lenses do have their own shortcomings. Because the embedded nanoparticles scatter light, the images the lenses create are blurry. The team partially corrected this by putting the technology into glasses with additional lenses that redirect the light. Moreover, unlike night-vision goggles, which amplify light to detect low-level infrared signals, the lenses allow users to see only intense infrared signals, such as those emitted by light-emitting diodes (LEDs).For these reasons, some critics don’t think the lenses will prove useful. “I cannot think of any application that would not be fundamentally simpler with infrared goggles,” says Glen Jeffery, a neuroscientist at University College London who specializes in eye health. “Evolution has avoided this for a good reason.”Nevertheless, the authors think that their lenses can be further optimized and foresee several possible uses for the invention. For instance, wearers would be able to read anti-counterfeit marks that emit infrared wavelengths but are otherwise invisible to the human eye, says co-author Yuqian Ma, a neuroscientist at the USTC.Li, who was not involved in the work, offers another possibility: the lenses might be worn by doctors conducting near-infrared fluorescence surgery, to directly detect and remove cancerous lesions “without relying on bulky traditional equipment”.‘An exhilarating moment’To create the contact lenses, the scientists built on previous research in which they gave mice infrared vision by injecting nanoparticles into the animals’ retinas. This time, they took a less invasive approach and added nanoparticles made of rare-earth metals including ytterbium and erbium to a soup of polymer building blocks to form the soft lenses, and then tested them for safety.The main challenge, Ma says, was to pack enough nanoparticles into the lenses to convert sufficient infrared light into detectable visible light, while not otherwise altering the lenses’ optical properties, including their transparency.Tests in mice showed that animals wearing the lenses tended to choose a dark box that was considered ‘safe’ over one lit up by infrared light, whereas mice without the lenses showed no preference for either box. Humans wearing the lenses could see flickering infrared light from an LED well enough to both pick up Morse code signals and sense which direction the signals were coming from. The lenses’ performance even improved when participants closed their eyes, because near-infrared light easily penetrates the eyelids, whereas visible light, which could have interfered with image formation, does so to a lesser degree.“Witnessing people wearing contact lenses and successfully seeing infrared flashes was undoubtedly an exhilarating moment,” Ma says.The team now plans to find ways to cram more nanoparticles into the lenses and hopes to develop particles that can convert light with higher efficiency, to improve the technology’s sensitivity. “We have overcome the physiological limitations of human vision, as if opening a brand-new window onto the world,” Ma says.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on May 22, 2025.

May 23, 20255 min readNOAA Says It’s Ready for Hurricane Season, but Weather Experts Are WorriedAs hurricane season approaches, thousands of weather and disaster experts have raised concerns about NOAA and NWS budget cuts and staffing shortagesBy Chelsea Harvey & E&E News The remnants of Hurricane Helene begin to dissipate over the United States in this NOAA satellite from Sept. 27, 2024. Space Image Archive/Alamy Stock PhotoCLIMATEWIRE | The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration insists it’s ready for the above-average hurricane season that meteorologists expect this summer.But scientists across the country are sounding the alarm about personnel shortages and budget cuts, which they say could strain the agency’s resources and risk burnout among its staff.The tension was on display Thursday as NOAA officials announced the agency’s annual Atlantic hurricane season outlook.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.This year’s projection suggests a 60 percent chance of an above-average season, with anywhere from 13 to 19 named storms and three to five major hurricanes. That’s compared with the long term average of 14 named storms and three major hurricanes in a typical season.NOAA hosted this year’s announcement in Gretna, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans, in a nod to the upcoming 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city in 2005. The agency has made significant strides in hurricane forecasts and warnings over the past two decades, officials said — including life-saving improvements in hurricane track and intensity predictions and new forms of modeling, radar and observation technology.“These improvements and collaborative efforts demonstrate that NOAA is now more prepared than ever for what hurricane season may bring,” said NOAA chief of staff Laura Grimm.But reporters at the briefing pushed back on that certainty, noting that recent cuts have eroded some of the agency’s observation capabilities and left dozens of local National Weather Service offices understaffed.Thousands of scientists have raised the same concerns over the past few months, as the Trump administration has reduced NOAA staff by more than 2,200 people, or around 20 percent of its former workforce. The administration also has proposed a plan to dramatically reorganize the agency and effectively eliminate its climate research operations.The National Weather Service alone has lost around 550 staff members since January, leaving the agency scrambling to fill at least 155 key job openings at regional offices around the country; some include top positions such as meteorologist-in-charge.At least 3,300 scientists have signed an open letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who leads the department that oversees NOAA, warning that cuts to the agency could have “dire consequences for American lives and livelihoods.”And earlier this month, five former National Weather Service directors published an open letter warning that the recent cuts mean NWS staff members face “an impossible task” when it comes to maintaining their usual level of service.Volunteers work to remove debris and mud from a flooded home on Edwards Avenue in Beacon Village neighborhood after a catastrophic flooding caused from Hurricane Helene caused the Swannanoa river to swell to record levels October 5, 2024 in Swannanoa, North Carolina.Steve Exum/Getty Images“Some forecast offices will be so short-staffed that they may be forced to go to part time services,” the letter warned. “Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”NOAA officials sidestepped these worries at Thursday's presentation, insisting the National Hurricane Center’s headquarters is fully staffed and prepared for the upcoming season.“We had some folks go,” said National Weather Service director Ken Graham. “But we’re gonna make sure that we have everything that we have on the front lines. Every warning’s gonna go out.”It remains unclear how the agency plans to address the dozens of vacancies at local offices across the country, including some hurricane-prone areas along the East and Gulf coasts. Lawmakers have reported that NOAA managers are encouraging staff members to pursue reassignments to understaffed offices, while the former NWS directors noted that staff members have been known to sleep in their offices to avoid gaps in coverage.That scenario played out recently at a regional office in Jackson, Kentucky, that is so understaffed that it’s no longer able to regularly operate overnight. When deadly tornadoes struck the region earlier this month, meteorologists there made the decision to call all hands on deck to staff the overnight shift and ensure the quality of forecasts and warnings, CNN reported.But experts say it’s an unsustainable system, which could lead to burnout this summer when disasters like hurricanes, floods and wildfires are at their peak.“It’s not sustainable if we have multiple high-impact weather events,” said Brian LaMarre, a former meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service’s Tampa Bay Area office and founder of the weather consulting service Inspire Weather. “It doesn't matter if we’re forecasting above normal or below normal, it only takes that one storm to truly make a significant impact.”Risks rise with global temperaturesMeanwhile, Atlantic hurricane seasons are expected to grow more intense as global temperatures rise.This year’s projections for an active season are partly linked to above-average ocean temperatures, which help fuel the formation of tropical cyclones. This year’s temperatures aren’t as warm as they were the past two seasons, when ocean waters broke daily records for more than a year. But they’re still warm enough to cause concern.Natural climate cycles play a part in each year’s hurricane outlook. Every few years, the planet shifts between El Niño and La Niña events, which cause temperatures in the Pacific Ocean to grow periodically warmer and cooler. These events influence weather and climate patterns around the globe, with El Niño typically associated with below-average Atlantic hurricane activity and La Niña contributing to more active seasons.This year, the planet is in a neutral phase, meaning Pacific Ocean temperatures are close to average. With no El Niño event to hinder the formation of tropical cyclones, warmer-than-average Atlantic temperatures are likely to fuel an active season.Climate change is partly to blame. Scientists warn that greenhouse gas emissions and continued global warming are gradually raising sea surface temperatures across much of the world. Studies suggest that hurricanes are intensifying faster and growing stronger as a result, leading to a greater risk of major storms striking the United States.Last year’s Atlantic hurricane season was a stark reminder of the growing dangers.Hurricane Beryl smashed records in July as the earliest Atlantic hurricane to achieve a Category 4, before eventually expanding to a Category 5. Hurricane Milton rapidly intensified into the season’s second Category 5 storm — and although it weakened to a Category 3 before making landfall, it dropped historic rainfall and spawned dozens of tornadoes along the Florida coast.And Hurricane Helene made history as an unusually large and fast-moving storm, hitting Florida as a Category 4 and barreling inland, where it carved a path of destruction through Appalachia. It became the deadliest storm to strike the mainland U.S. since Hurricane Katrina.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

May 23, 20257 min readWhat FDA’s Planned Limits on COVID Vaccinations Mean for HealthDespite the fact that vaccines against COVID have already undergone strict safety reviews and that people continue to die from the disease, Trump’s FDA is moving to reduce access to annual COVID boosters for healthy AmericansBy Stephanie Armour & KFF Health News aire images/Getty ImagesLarry Saltzman has blood cancer. He’s also a retired doctor, so he knows getting covid-19 could be dangerous for him — his underlying illness puts him at high risk of serious complications and death. To avoid getting sick, he stays away from large gatherings, and he’s comforted knowing healthy people who get boosters protect him by reducing his exposure to the virus.Until now, that is.Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.The FDA will encourage new clinical trials on the widely used vaccines before approving them for children and healthy adults. The requirements could cost drugmakers tens of millions of dollars and are likely to leave boosters largely out of reach for hundreds of millions of Americans this fall.Under the new guidance, vaccines will be available for high-risk individuals and seniors. But the FDA will encourage drugmakers to commit to conducting post-marketing clinical trials in healthy adults when the agency approves covid vaccines for those populations.For the past five years, the shots have been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for everyone 6 months and older. They have been available each fall after being updated to reflect circulating strains of the virus, and the vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in clinical trials.Vinay Prasad, who leads the FDA’s division overseeing vaccines, cited “distrust of the American public” as he announced the new guidelines at a May 20 briefing.“We have launched down this multiyear campaign of booster after booster after booster,” he said, adding that “we do not have gold-standard science to support this for average-risk, low-risk Americans.”The details were outlined in a May 20 article in The New England Journal of Medicine, written by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. He and Prasad later followed up with the briefing, which appeared the same day on YouTube.The added limits on access aren’t the result of any recent data showing there are new health risks from the covid vaccines. Instead, they reflect a different regulatory stance from Kennedy, who has a history of anti-vaccine activism, and Makary, who has questioned the safety data on covid mRNA shots.Announcing a major regulatory change in a medical journal and YouTube video is a highly unusual approach that still leaves many questions about implementation unanswered. It remains unclear when the changes will go into effect or whether there will be any public comment period. The changes were announced by the administration before an FDA advisory committee meeting on May 22 to consider the 2026 covid vaccine formula.It’s a sharp reversal from the first Trump administration, which launched Operation Warp Speed — the effort that led to the development of the covid shots. Trump called the vaccines the “gold standard” and a “monumental national achievement.”Concerns About Higher TransmissionThe announcement is rattling some patient advocacy groups, doctors, nursing home leaders, and researchers who worry about the ramifications. They say higher-risk individuals will be more likely to get covid if people who aren’t at risk don’t get boosters that can help reduce transmission. And they say the FDA’s restrictions go too far, because they don’t provide exceptions for healthy individuals who work in high-risk settings, such as hospitals, who may want a covid booster for protection.The limits will also make it harder to get insurance coverage for the vaccines. And the FDA’s new stance could also increase vaccine hesitancy by undermining confidence in covid vaccines that have already been subject to rigorous safety review, said Kate Broderick, chief innovation officer at Maravai Life Sciences, which makes mRNA products for use in vaccine development.“For the public, it raises questions,” she said. “If someone has concerns, I’d like them to know that of all the vaccines, the ones with the most understood safety profile are probably covid-19 vaccines. There is an incredible body of data and over 10 billion doses given.”Some doctors and epidemiologists say it could leave healthy people especially vulnerable if more virulent strains of covid emerge and they can’t access covid shots.“It’s not based on science,” said Rob Davidson, an emergency room doctor in Michigan and executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, which works to expand health care access. “It’s what we were all worried would happen. It risks peoples’ lives.”Current federal regulators say there is no high-quality evidence showing that vaccinating healthy people, including health workers who are near or around immunocompromised people, provides an additional benefit.“It is possible, actually, that such approvals and strategies provide false reassurance and lead to increased harms,” Prasad said.The covid vaccines underwent clinical trials to assess safety, and they have been subject to ongoing surveillance and monitoring since they obtained emergency use authorization from the FDA amid the pandemic. Heart issues and allergic reactions can occur but are rare, according to the CDC.On a separate track, the FDA on May 21 posted letters sent in April to makers of the mRNA covid vaccines to add information about possible heart injury on warning labels, a move that one former agency official described as overkill. The action came after the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, held a hearing on alleged adverse events associated with covid vaccines.Limiting boosters to healthy people goes against guidance from some medical groups.“The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, and the best way to protect children,” Sean O’Leary, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in an email. “Young children under 5 continue to be at the highest risk, with that risk decreasing as they get older.”Unsupported Claims About mRNA VaccinesThe covid booster clampdown is supported by many adherents of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which casts suspicion on traditional medicine. Some opponents of covid mRNA vaccines say without evidence that the shots cause “turbo” cancer, are genetic bioweapons, and cause more heart damage than the covid virus.There is no evidence the shots lead to rapid and aggressive cancers. Cancer rates decreased an average of 1.7% per year for men and 1.3% for women from 2018 to 2022, according to the National Institutes of Health. The covid vaccines debuted in 2021.Federal regulators say narrowing who can get the boosters will align the U.S. with policies of European nations. But other countries have vastly different economic structures for health care and approaches to preventive care. Many European countries, for example, don’t recommend flu shots for the entire population. The U.S. does in part because of the financial drain attributed to lost productivity when people are sick.They also want more information. “I think there’s a void of data,” Makary told CBS News on April 29. “And I think rather than allow that void to be filled with opinions, I’d like to see some good data.”A massive five-year study on covid vaccine safety by the Global Vaccine Data Network, involving millions of people, was underway, with about a year left before completion. The Trump administration terminated funding for the project as part of cuts directed by the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, and work on the study has stopped for now.There are a multitude of studies, however, on the vaccines’ effectiveness in preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death.Limiting boosters for healthy people can be risky, some doctors say, because people don’t always know when they fall into higher-risk categories, such as individuals who are prediabetic or have high blood pressure. The covid vaccine restrictions could deter them from getting boosted, and they might experience worse complications from the virus as a result. For example, about 40% of people with hepatitis C are unaware of their condition, according to a study published in 2023.The number of people getting covid vaccines has already dropped significantly since the height of the crisis. More than half of the more than 258 million adults in the U.S. had gotten a covid vaccination as of May 2021, according to the CDC. In each of the past two seasons, less than 25% of Americans received boosters, CDC data shows.While deaths from the virus have dropped, covid remains a risk, especially when cases peak in December and January. Weekly covid deaths topped 2,580 as recently as January 2024, according to CDC data.Some high-risk individuals are worried that the new restrictions are just the first salvo in halting all access to mRNA shots. “The HHS motivation really is hidden, and it’s to dismiss all mRNA technology,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.Officials at the NIH have told scientists to remove references to mRNA in grant applications. HHS also announced plans in May to develop new vaccines without mRNA technology, which uses messenger RNA to instruct cells to make proteins that trigger an immune response.Rose Keller, 23, is concerned about future access to covid shots. She would be eligible under the current announcement — she has cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic condition that makes the mucus in her lungs thick and sticky, so covid could land her in the hospital. But she is concerned the Trump administration may go further and restrict access to the vaccines as part of a broader opposition to mRNA technology.“I’ve had every booster that’s available to me,” said Keller, a government employee in Augusta, Maine. “It’s a real worry if I don’t have the protection of a covid booster.”KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.