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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 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 Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — A rocky outcrop in a remote corner of northern Quebec appears serene in its eerie isolation on the eastern shore of Canada’s Hudson Bay. But over the past two decades, this exposed remnant of ancient ocean floor, known as the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt, has been a heated scientific battleground

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 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