El Niño's Coming In Hot... Record-Breaking Hot, Actually!
Feeling the heat lately? It might be because of El Niño, a climate pattern characterized by unusually warm sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It can affect the trade winds. These are the permanent, normally easterly winds that flow around the Earth's equator.
When we track the water temperature using tools like satellites, buoys, and ocean floats to measure temperatures below the ocean's surface, they show a large body of unusually hot water. Way bigger than the pot of water you’re boiling for your mac and cheese. Yes, even if you’re making extra mac and cheese. This is serious business! It can cause the sea-surface temperatures in parts of the tropical Pacific to rise by more than 2°C (about 3.6°F) above average, suggesting this year's El Niño is unusually strong, and could make 2027 one of the hottest years on record.
Depending on where you are in the world, El Niño is associated with both droughts and floods. These affect the lives of people living in those places, as well as their agriculture and food production, so the whole world feels the El Niño effects.
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Sometimes a discovery doesn't happen in the field — it happens decades later, in a drawer.
In the 1980s, an Antarctic expedition recovered a fossil and recorded it simply as "vertebra of a large reptile" in a field notebook. That single line was all anyone knew about it for the next 40 years.
It wasn't until paleontologist Dr. Mark Evans revisited old research and notes that the fossil was properly identified — as the first dinosaur bone ever found in Antarctica. Its distinctive shape points to a Titanosaur, the largest dinosaur to ever walk the Earth.
The bone had been sitting in a collection the entire time. What changed wasn't the fossil — it was someone finally looking at it with the right knowledge asking the right questions.
“Shoot for the Moon — if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” won’t cut it for NASA, who says “Nah, Moon or bust.”
NASA’s got big plans, and their names are Moonbase 1, 2, and 3. They were too busy working on the science to put more into the names, okay? Moonbase 1 will be the first privately-funded lander to reach the lunar south pole, Moonbase 2 will deliver a record amount of equipment that would support astronauts at a lunar base, and Moonbase 3 will focus on gathering research and data.
But these are just glimpses of NASA’s lunar ambitions, namely to put a base on the Moon. It starts with sending dozens of rovers and lunar landers to scope out the perfect spot, followed by building small cabins for short missions, and then building larger structures sustained by nuclear power for the long term. That’s not until 2033, but NASA wants to send astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2028.
The Major Oak has finally fallen. Figuratively. The famous tree still technically stands, but has been pronounced dead after a long life of as many as 1,200 years. The massive oak tree was well-known for being central to Robin Hood folklore, but it also stood out with its formidable trunk circumference of 11 meters, or 33 feet. That’s big enough for a large African elephant to hula hoop with.
The huge tree still stands tall, looking majestic with its craggly branches and massive reach, but it’s been in decline for years. This year is the first that it hasn’t put any leaves out, so experts deemed it deceased.
While it was certainly old, its demise was likely quickened by climate change, heat waves, and damage to the surrounding soil from people coming to admire the tree. Admirers may have meant well, but decades of foot traffic compacted the soil around the tree's roots, making it harder for the tree to absorb the water, nutrients, and minerals it needed.
It may not produce lush, green leaves anymore, but fans can still pay homage to The Major Oak. It will remain in its spot to decompose (which could take more than 100 years), and the legacy of the tree lives on in the form of saplings that have been grown from acorns and cuttings.
End-to-end encryption prevents anyone from viewing online communications except the sender and the receiver. Or, it prevents anyone online from viewing it. Can’t do much about someone looking over your shoulder on the subway.
In 2019, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to roll it out across his suite of apps — you know, those Facebook and Instagram things you may have heard of? But that promise was met with mixed results. On one hand, many were happy that their private conversations could be kept, well, private. On the other hand, there was pushback from police and government groups that could use messages to catch criminals.
Implementing end-to-end encryption was a years-long process for Zuckerberg, until his platforms abandoned the concept just this year. The company tweaked their terms and conditions to suggest that not enough people were opting into the encryption, but critics have questioned that explanation, pointing out that private messaging is an important part of how platforms keep users engaged and can support their advertising business.
Sometimes a discovery doesn't happen in the field — it happens decades later, in a drawer.
In the 1980s, an Antarctic expedition recovered a fossil and recorded it simply as "vertebra of a large reptile" in a field notebook. That single line was all anyone knew about it for the next 40 years.
It wasn't until paleontologist Dr. Mark Evans revisited old research and notes that the fossil was properly identified — as the first dinosaur bone ever found in Antarctica. Its distinctive shape points to a Titanosaur, the largest dinosaur to ever walk the Earth.
The bone had been sitting in a collection the entire time. What changed wasn't the fossil — it was someone finally looking at it with the right knowledge asking the right questions.
“Shoot for the Moon — if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” won’t cut it for NASA, who says “Nah, Moon or bust.”
NASA’s got big plans, and their names are Moonbase 1, 2, and 3. They were too busy working on the science to put more into the names, okay? Moonbase 1 will be the first privately-funded lander to reach the lunar south pole, Moonbase 2 will deliver a record amount of equipment that would support astronauts at a lunar base, and Moonbase 3 will focus on gathering research and data.
But these are just glimpses of NASA’s lunar ambitions, namely to put a base on the Moon. It starts with sending dozens of rovers and lunar landers to scope out the perfect spot, followed by building small cabins for short missions, and then building larger structures sustained by nuclear power for the long term. That’s not until 2033, but NASA wants to send astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2028.
The Major Oak has finally fallen. Figuratively. The famous tree still technically stands, but has been pronounced dead after a long life of as many as 1,200 years. The massive oak tree was well-known for being central to Robin Hood folklore, but it also stood out with its formidable trunk circumference of 11 meters, or 33 feet. That’s big enough for a large African elephant to hula hoop with.
The huge tree still stands tall, looking majestic with its craggly branches and massive reach, but it’s been in decline for years. This year is the first that it hasn’t put any leaves out, so experts deemed it deceased.
While it was certainly old, its demise was likely quickened by climate change, heat waves, and damage to the surrounding soil from people coming to admire the tree. Admirers may have meant well, but decades of foot traffic compacted the soil around the tree's roots, making it harder for the tree to absorb the water, nutrients, and minerals it needed.
It may not produce lush, green leaves anymore, but fans can still pay homage to The Major Oak. It will remain in its spot to decompose (which could take more than 100 years), and the legacy of the tree lives on in the form of saplings that have been grown from acorns and cuttings.
End-to-end encryption prevents anyone from viewing online communications except the sender and the receiver. Or, it prevents anyone online from viewing it. Can’t do much about someone looking over your shoulder on the subway.
In 2019, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to roll it out across his suite of apps — you know, those Facebook and Instagram things you may have heard of? But that promise was met with mixed results. On one hand, many were happy that their private conversations could be kept, well, private. On the other hand, there was pushback from police and government groups that could use messages to catch criminals.
Implementing end-to-end encryption was a years-long process for Zuckerberg, until his platforms abandoned the concept just this year. The company tweaked their terms and conditions to suggest that not enough people were opting into the encryption, but critics have questioned that explanation, pointing out that private messaging is an important part of how platforms keep users engaged and can support their advertising business.