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By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — The asteroid known as 2024 YR4 is out of sight yet still very much on scientists’ minds. The building-sized object, which initially appeared to be on a potential collision course with Earth, is currently zooming beyond the reach of telescopes on its orbit around the sun. But as scientists

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The soupy, smothering extreme heat that has scorched parts of the Northern Hemisphere this summer takes a hard toll on our bodies. It can make you feel nauseous, woozy and dehydrated. It can have pernicious health effects on multiple organs. But there’s another, less well-known, impact of extreme heat:

By Kameryn Griesser, CNN (CNN) — Paleontologists have discovered remarkable fossils in the Grand Canyon that reveal fresh details about the emergence of complex life half a billion years ago. The newfound remains of fauna from the region suggest that it offered ideal conditions for life to flourish and diversify, in a “Goldilocks zone” between

By Mindy Weisberger, CNN (CNN) — When a plant is stressed, it doesn’t keep quiet about it. You won’t hear the plant’s cry because it’s in the ultrasonic range — too high-pitched for human ears — but, for decades, scientists have been using special devices to listen in. For the first time, a team of

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The world’s highest court said polluting countries may be in breach of international law if they do not protect the planet from the “existential threat” posed by climate change, in a landmark advisory opinion issued Wednesday. It also said countries feeling the sharp end of climate change may be

By Ella Nilsen, Rene Marsh, CNN (CNN) — The Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a proposal to reverse a landmark scientific finding that planet-warming pollution from fossil fuels endangers human health, and could release that proposal as soon as this week, according to three people familiar with the plan. Known as the “endangerment finding,” the

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a medieval knight, buried under a shuttered ice cream parlor in the Polish city of Gdańsk. Experts have been working at the site in the historic Śródmieście (city center) district since 2023, and initially uncovered a medieval tombstone decorated with the carved image

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Earth is spinning faster this summer, making the days marginally shorter and attracting the attention of scientists and timekeepers. July 10 was the shortest day of the year so far, lasting 1.36 milliseconds less than 24 hours, according to data from the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — A group of 287 scientists and current and former NASA employees has issued a declaration lambasting budget cuts, grant cancellations and a “culture of organizational silence” that they say could pose a risk to astronauts’ safety. The document — titled “The Voyager Declaration” and dedicated to astronauts who lost

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — Once synonymous with leisure and reprieve, summer has increasingly become a season marked by anxiety and disruption. Fossil fuel pollution — alongside other compounding factors — has transformed these months into a time of mounting peril, punctuated by relentless heat waves, rampant wildfires and catastrophic flooding. This summer, in

By Mindy Weisberger, CNN (CNN) — Lesser known than some other beloved tales of larger-than-life heroes such as Gilgamesh, Beowulf and King Arthur, the Song of Wade is a case study in what happens when stories aren’t written down. The epic was once widely known throughout medieval and Renaissance England — so popular that it

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — A Ceratosaurus fossil that is one of only four known to exist has sold for $30.5 million at auction. The rare dinosaur fossil is “one of the finest and most complete examples of its kind ever found,” auction house Sotheby’s said in a statement published Wednesday. The specimen, which

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN (CNN) — The phrase “leave no stone unturned” has taken on new meaning for paleontologists at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science who discovered a special fossil hidden right under their noses — beneath the museum’s parking lot. The dinosaur bone came to light in January during a drilling project

By Jack Guy and Kameryn Griesser, CNN (CNN) — A meteorite that is the largest known piece of Mars on Earth has sold for a hammer price of $4.3 million to an anonymous bidder at a Sotheby’s New York auction Wednesday. Known as NWA 16788, the meteorite weighs 54 pounds (24.5 kilograms), massive compared with

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — A collision observed between two black holes, each more massive than a hundred suns, is the largest merger of its kind ever recorded, according to new research. A team of astronomers discovered the event, dubbed GW231123, when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) — a pair of identical instruments

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Scientists have recovered ancient proteins from a fossilized rhinoceros tooth, breaking new ground in the study of ancient life on Earth. The 24 million-year-old tooth, which was unearthed in the Canadian Arctic, contains proteins that are 10 times older than the most ancient known DNA. Using the sample, scientists

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The strongest nor’easters — destructive and often deadly storms that slap the US East Coast with paralyzing rain, snow and flooding — are being supercharged by the effects of climate pollution, a new study found. Nor’easters, which typically form between September and April, are fueled by the temperature contrast

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Researchers suspect that two meteorites found in the Sahara Desert in 2023 may originally have come from Mercury, which would make them the first identified fragments of the solar system’s innermost planet. The least studied and most mysterious of the solar system’s rocky planets, Mercury is so close to

By Kameryn Griesser, CNN (CNN) — An ancient Roman mystery is afoot in the rolling hills of northern Britain. Archaeologists have unearthed a stash of unusually large shoes at the ruins of a first-century military fort along Hadrian’s Wall, a 73-mile (117-kilometer) stone barrier that famously shielded the Roman Empire’s northwestern perimeter from foreign invaders.

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — Chimpanzees living in a sanctuary in Africa have developed a “fashion trend” for dangling blades of grass or sticks from their ear holes and their behinds, a new study shows. In 2010, researchers working at Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust chimpanzee sanctuary in Zambia observed how a female chimp started

By Gina Park, CNN (CNN) — Skygazers can look toward the horizon this week to catch a glimpse of the full moon around its peak illumination. This month’s full moon, also called the buck moon, will be at its fullest at around 4:37 p.m. ET on Thursday, according to EarthSky. That is, of course, during

By Issy Ronald, CNN (CNN) — When researcher Jared Towers set up his cameras underwater to observe a pair of killer whales, he saw something strange. One of the orcas, a juvenile female, “approached a camera I had in the water to film her younger brother and then opened her mouth and let out a

By Kameryn Griesser, CNN (CNN) — Hundreds of millions of flies dropping from planes in the sky might sound like a horrible nightmare, but experts say such a swarm could be the livestock industry’s best defense against a flesh-eating threat poised to invade the southwestern border of the United States. An outbreak of New World

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — A species of huge, flightless bird that once inhabited New Zealand disappeared around 600 years ago, shortly after human settlers first arrived on the country’s two main islands. Now, a Texas-based biotech company says it has a plan to bring it back. Genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences has added

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Extreme heat is a killer and its impact is becoming far, far deadlier as the human-caused climate crisis supercharges temperatures, according to a new study, which estimates global warming tripled the number of deaths in the recent European heat wave. For more than a week, temperatures in many parts

By Olivia Kemp, CNN (CNN) — An ancient Peruvian city that was a thriving hub of trade more than 3,000 years ago has been unveiled by archaeologists. Peñico is located in the Huaura province, north of the capital Lima, according to the Ministry of Culture in a press release sent to CNN. In what was

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — A galaxy that has remained unchanged for 7 billion years — a rarity in the universe — has been observed by astronomers, offering a glimpse into cosmic history and adding to an enigmatic collection of objects called relics or “fossil galaxies.” These space oddities are galaxies that, after an

CNN By Renée Rigdon, Angela Fritz, CNN (CNN) — The waterways in Texas Hill Country have carved paths over the centuries through the granite and limestone, shaping the rocky peaks and valleys that make the region so breathtaking. When too much rain falls for the ground to absorb, it runs downhill, pulled by gravity into

By Renée Rigdon, Angela Fritz, CNN (CNN) — The waterways in Texas Hill Country have carved paths over the centuries through the granite and limestone, shaping the rocky peaks and valleys that make the region so breathtaking. When too much rain falls for the ground to absorb, it runs downhill, pulled by gravity into streams,

By Andrew Freedman, Emma Tucker, Mary Gilbert, CNN (CNN) — The forces that descended upon the Guadalupe River in Texas’ Hill Country on Thursday night were a worst-case scenario. Four months’ worth of rain fell in just hours as water-laden thunderstorms stalled in place, giving rise to a wall of water that surged down the

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Stone Age humans living by a lake in what’s now Germany systematically processed animal carcasses for fatty nutrients — essentially running what scientists describe as a “fat factory” to boil bones on a vast scale, according to new research. Archaeologists uncovered the factory by analyzing some 120,000 bone fragments

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — A newly discovered object speeding through our solar system is sparking excitement among astronomers because it’s not from around here. Believed to be a comet, the object is only the third celestial body from beyond our solar system ever to be observed in our corner of the universe. This

By Ella Nilsen, Rene Marsh, CNN (CNN) — The Environmental Protection Agency has placed roughly 140 employees on administrative leave days after they signed a public letter expressing concern about the treatment of federal employees and the Trump administration’s regulations on climate and public health. The EPA is conducting an “administrative investigation” into the employees,

By Laura Paddison, Chris Liakos, CNN (CNN) — More than 200 firefighters are struggling to tackle an out-of-control wildfire on Crete — Greece’s largest island and a tourist hotspot — as authorities order mass evacuations. The fire broke out Wednesday afternoon near Ierapetra, a town on the island’s southeast coast, amid unusually high temperatures, 3

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — The visitors who trek to America’s national parks are already noticing the changes, just months after President Donald Trump took office. “I’ve been visiting national parks for 30 years and never has the presence of rangers been so absent,” one visitor to Zion National Park wrote in National Parks

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — In a long-sought first, researchers have sequenced the entire genome of an ancient Egyptian person, revealing unprecedented insight about the ancestry of a man who lived during the time when the first pyramids were built. The man, whose remains were found buried in a sealed clay pot in Nuwayrat,

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — A meteorite that is the largest known piece of Mars on Earth is expected to fetch up to $4 million. It’s up for auction at Sotheby’s. Known as NWA 16788, the meteorite weighs 54 pounds (24.5 kilograms), massive compared with most Martian meteorites, which tend to be small fragments,

By Laura Paddison, Mitchell McCluskey, CNN (CNN) — A brutal heat wave is gripping many parts of Europe, leaving millions of people struggling to adapt to punishing, record-breaking temperatures. Heat persists even at night, with temperatures in some places not dipping much below 90 degrees. There is little respite. Air conditioning is very rare in

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Around 252 million years ago, life on Earth suffered its most catastrophic blow to date: a mass extinction event known as the “Great Dying” that wiped out around 90% of life. What followed has long puzzled scientists. The planet became lethally hot and remained so for 5 million years.

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN (CNN) — Crouched low in one of the coldest, remotest places on Earth, polar explorer Alan Chambers searched for an invisible threat. Traveling with fellow former Royal Marine Dave Thomas, he had spent two long months skiing 715 miles (1,151 kilometers) — completely unassisted — from the Hercules Inlet on the

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — The Trump administration’s proposed budget seeks to shut down the laboratory atop a peak in Hawaii where scientists have gathered the most conclusive evidence of human-caused climate change since the 1950s. The Mauna Loa laboratory in Hawaii has measured atmospheric carbon dioxide, which — along with other planet-warming pollution

By Ella Nilsen, Matt Egan, CNN (CNN) — Business groups and clean-energy developers are apoplectic over a last-minute provision tucked into President Donald Trump’s spending bill that will tax the solar and wind industry, making it much harder to get new, cheap electricity onto the grid. Senate Republicans revealed an entirely new tax for renewable

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — Tech giant Google is investing money into a futuristic nuclear fusion plant that hasn’t been built yet but someday will replicate the energy of the stars. It’s a sign of how hungry big tech companies are for a virtually unlimited source of clean power that is still years away.

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Astronomers in Australia picked up a strange radio signal in June 2024 — one near our planet and so powerful that, for a moment, it outshined everything else in the sky. The ensuing search for its source has sparked new questions around the growing problem of debris in Earth’s

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Some of the most intriguing science fiction springs from eerie, real-life phenomena. Case in point, the mutant parasite in the video game series “The Last of Us.” Creators of the franchise, which includes a show on HBO, got the idea from a type of fungus that hijacks the brains

By Ella Nilsen, Soph Warnes, CNN (CNN) — Household energy bills will be higher over the next decade now that Republicans have passed their tax and spending bill, according to a new analysis. President Donald Trump and Republicans are phasing out tax credits that lower the cost to build wind and solar, which are now

By Issy Ronald, CNN London (CNN) — Scientists have discovered a new species of dinosaur — one that was dog-sized and roamed what is now the United States around 150 million years ago alongside familiar dinosaurs like stegosaurus and diplodocus. The Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae, as researchers named it, was about the same size as a Labrador

CNN By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — A private astronaut mission that just took flight has exposed a new twist in a lingering — and potentially dangerous — issue at humanity’s most frequently visited destination in space. Axiom Space Mission 4, or Ax-4, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:32 a.m.

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — A private astronaut mission that just took flight has exposed a new twist in a lingering — and potentially dangerous — issue at humanity’s most frequently visited destination in space. Axiom Space Mission 4, or Ax-4, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:32 a.m. ET

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — A glob of 99 million-year-old amber has preserved an ancient fly in horror show fashion: with the mushroom-like fruiting body of zombie fungus bursting forth from its head. The insect, along with a second specimen of a young ant infected with a similar fungus, are two of the oldest

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — A medieval sword has gone on display at a museum in the Netherlands after its chance discovery during a dredging operation on a river in the center of the country. The sword was found during routine maintenance at the Linschoten Estate on March 1, 2024, and has been donated

By Marlowe Starling, CNN (CNN) — Behavioral ecologist Michael Weiss was browsing through new drone footage of the orca pods he studies in the Salish Sea when he spotted one of the killer whales carrying something green in its mouth and noticed an unusual behavior: Some orcas were rubbing against each other for up to

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — The intensifying and expansive heat wave affecting around 150 million people in the United States from Wisconsin to Washington, DC, bears the hallmarks of human-caused global warming. Hundreds of daily temperature records are threatened during the next few days, particularly along the East Coast, and some all-time June high

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — The first test images from a groundbreaking observatory named for trailblazing astronomer Vera Rubin have captured the light from millions of distant stars and galaxies on an unprecedented scale and revealed thousands of previously unseen asteroids. While the National Science Foundation initially released only a couple of images and

CNN By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — The first test images from a groundbreaking observatory named for trailblazing astronomer Vera Rubin have captured the light from millions of distant stars and galaxies on an unprecedented scale and revealed thousands of previously unseen asteroids. While the National Science Foundation initially released only a couple of images

By Kameryn Griesser, CNN (CNN) — Whether it’s answering work emails or drafting wedding vows, generative artificial intelligence tools have become a trusty copilot in many people’s lives. But a growing body of research shows that for every problem AI solves, hidden environmental costs are racking up. Each word in an AI prompt is broken

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — Tens of thousands of years ago, our species — Homo sapiens — mingled and interbred with other prehistoric humans: our distant cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Hundreds of Neanderthal fossils give us a good idea of their appearance, lives and relationships, but so little is known about Denisovans that

By Isabelle Rodney, CNN (CNN) — The turquoise water of Hōnaunau Bay in Hawaii, an area popular with snorkelers and divers, is teeming with spiny creatures that threaten to push the coral reef “past the point of recovery,” new research has found. Sea urchin numbers here are exploding as the fish species that typically keep

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Scientists are trying to solve a decade-long mystery by determining the identity of anomalous signals detected from below ice in Antarctica. The strange radio waves emerged during a search for another unusual phenomenon: high-energy cosmic particles known as neutrinos. Arriving at Earth from the far reaches of the cosmos,

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Each year, a tiny species in Australia makes a grueling 620-mile (1,000-kilometer) nighttime migration, and it’s pulling off the feat in a way only humans and migratory birds have been known to do, a new study has found. Bogong moths looking to escape the heat travel in the spring

By Ella Nilsen, Bill Weir, CNN Chief Climate Correspondent SOUTHERN MAINE (CNN) — Colin Goodson knows more about energy than most people. The tall, bearded Mainer is an engineer on an offshore oil drilling ship in the Gulf of Mexico. But when it came time for him to build a home in Southern Maine, Goodson

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — Researchers studying the remains of a prehistoric woman who lived around 10,500 years ago in what is now Belgium have produced a reconstruction of her face using ancient DNA. A team led by scientists from Ghent University found that the woman would have had blue eyes and slightly lighter

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN (CNN) — Archaeologists have assembled the “world’s most difficult jigsaw puzzle” to reveal huge frescoes that once adorned a luxury villa in Roman London. Fragments of shattered wall plaster, which were discovered during excavations by experts from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), have been meticulously pieced together to reveal frescoes

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — An enigmatic skull recovered from the bottom of a well in northeastern China in 2018 sparked intrigue when it didn’t match any previously known species of prehistoric human. Now, scientists say they have found evidence of where the fossil fits, and it could be a key piece in another

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Rising global temperatures are set to devastate food crops across the world, with particularly alarming impacts projected for the United States, where production of key crops could plummet 50% by the end of the century, according to a sweeping new analysis. Of the many impacts of the fossil fuel-driven

By Kameryn Griesser, CNN (CNN) — Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Heat-trapping methane may be best known for the dangers it poses to humans and Earth’s atmosphere, but in the dark depths of the ocean, the greenhouse gas is a

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Astronomers have used mysterious fast radio bursts, or millisecond-long bright flashes of radio waves from space, to help them track down some of the missing matter in the universe. Dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe. Dark matter is an enigmatic substance that shapes the

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — The human fingerprint on global warming was likely evident in Earth’s atmosphere far earlier than previously thought—even before the invention of modern cars, a new study says. Using a combination of scientific theory, modern observations and multiple, sophisticated computer models, researchers found a clear signal of human-caused climate change