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CNN By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The vast blazes ripping through southwestern France burned so intensely they created a powerful, fire-generated thunderstorm. This rare phenomenon is sometimes seen in the kinds of megafires that afflict the US and Canada, but was unprecedented in France, until now — and it’s just one sign that Europe

By Amen Galinato, CNN July’s full moon will grace the sky this week. Called the buck moon, it will rise in the east and reach peak illumination at 10:36 a.m. ET on Wednesday, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, though the moon will still look full before and after its peak. Sky-gazers will have “flexibility

By Mindy Weisberger, CNN (CNN) — Scientists have revised the longstanding picture of “Nutcracker Man” — an extinct hominin, or human relative, nicknamed for its large teeth and powerful jaw muscles — thanks to fresh analysis of fossil footprints from a site in Kenya. Nutcracker Man, whose species is scientifically known as Paranthropus boisei, lived

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — When astrobiologist Adam Frank walked into the office of NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, he had what he believed was the weirdest question: do aliens experience climate change? It took just moments for Schmidt to out-weird him. Frank, a University of Rochester professor who looks for signs of life in

By Sneha Dhandapani, CNN Four miles from the Eiffel Tower, a photographer captured the full moon’s path over a pink Paris skyline. In China, another photographer snapped a night sky of falling stars. These are just two of the submissions short-listed in the 18th annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Organized by the Royal

By Mindy Weisberger, CNN (CNN) — How hard do you have to ram a fish to make it explode? Ask an orca. Barreling into large, heavy fish with enough force to blast them into instant chum is a previously unknown collaborative feeding strategy among orcas, scientifically called Orcinus orca, also known as killer whales. But

CNN, DR. KATHRYN AYRES, FRONTIERS OF ETHOLOGY By Mindy Weisberger, CNN (CNN) — How hard do you have to ram a fish to make it explode? Ask an orca. Barreling into large, heavy fish with enough force to blast them into instant chum is a previously unknown collaborative feeding strategy among orcas, scientifically called Orcinus

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The combined water level in two of the United States’ biggest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, has fallen to a historic low, in what experts are calling a significant moment in the Colorado River crisis — threatening a water system that supplies tens of millions. On July 12,

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — As the number of satellites orbiting Earth continues to grow, so does the risk of crashes between these spacecraft. Such collisions could create fields of debris, potentially rendering entire areas of orbit useless. Objects in space have crashed, or had near misses, in the past. But while such incidents

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Houseboats lie perched on desiccated riverbeds, receding water levels have left wide stretches of newly exposed riverbank and the shipping sector is bracing for trouble. The low-lying Netherlands is used to grappling with too much water; now it’s struggling with too little. On Thursday, the country declared an official

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — Putting your own mask on before assisting others was only supposed to be a safety instruction on an airplane, but it has applied to everyday life in the urban corridor from Washington, DC, to Boston where, for the second time in four years, smoke from wildfires in Canada turned

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Pompeii is often thought of as an undisturbed time capsule, a once-bustling port that fell silent after Mount Vesuvius erupted and blanketed the ancient Roman city with a thick layer of ash in AD 79. “It is such a great persistent narrative,” Dr. Steven Tuck, professor and head of

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — When the Eaton fire swept through the Los Angeles neighborhood of Altadena last year, it claimed 19 lives and incinerated thousands of buildings — one of which was the home of Kaitlyn Trudeau’s grandfather. His house burned to the ground; he lost everything. But while he grappled with trauma,

By Jack Guy, CNN London (CNN) — Bronze Age remains once thought to belong to a revered male metalworker are in fact female, new DNA analysis has found, calling into question long-held beliefs about ancient British society. The 4,000-year-old skeleton, which became known as the Upton Lovell Shaman, was found in a barrow, a special

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — A groundbreaking mission that explored Pluto and distant solar system objects in unprecedented detail has awakened from its longest sleep ever — and it’s 5.9 billion miles (9.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft went into a planned hibernation mode on August 7, 2025, and woke up

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — A meteorite weighing more than 2 pounds (1 kilogram) that crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home two years ago could shed light on ancient water in the solar system. Observers across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing a fireball streaking across

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Since the mysterious deaths of a husband and wife in the Medici family, a powerful Italian dynasty that ruled Florence and Tuscany almost uninterruptedly from 1434 to 1737, rumors have swirled about what led to the couple’s untimely demise. Now, scientists believe they have an answer — it wasn’t

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Astronomers have detected a natural sugar found in raspberries in clouds of interstellar dust and gas near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The sweet discovery shows for the first time that compounds that are key to life can form in the vast expanse between stars and fuels