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By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The catastrophic August flooding on the Nepal-China border was influenced by a complex cascade of factors, many of which were worsened by human-driven climate change, according to a new scientific analysis by more than 20 international experts. The region is still grappling with the aftermath of the devastating rock-ice
Continue ReadingBy Kate S. Petersen, CNN (CNN) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill is pushing back on a seismic shift in US environmental regulation that experts say exposes previously protected endangered species’ habitats to destruction from land use such as logging and real estate development. In July, the Trump administration repealed a 50-year-old
Continue ReadingBy Taylor Nicioli, CNN (CNN) — Scientists have suspected for nearly 60 years that Tyrannosaurus rex was warm-blooded. When a fossilized footprint of T. rex turned up in Alaska in 2022, it added to the evidence that these predators could thrive in frigid environments, where most cold-blooded reptiles could not. Now, researchers have put a
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By Molly Finlay, Charlotte Reck, CNN (CNN) — A stunning video capturing intricate cell movement in a child living with a rare genetic disorder has won the 16th annual Nikon Small World in Motion competition. Using an advanced microscopic imaging tool, Ning Xu of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, observed the abnormal beating of airway
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By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Tiny feathers encased in fossilized poop are helping scientists understand why some birds made it through the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and others did not. Unearthed in Montana, the feathery find belonged to a bird that had once been devoured and excreted by a predatory dinosaur
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By Hanna Park, Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — The United States has deployed weapons in space and will use them to defend American forces, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday. It’s the first public acknowledgment that the nation has such capabilities in orbit and a potential signal to those that could pose threats in
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By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The Trump administration has finalized the repeal of regulations that limit the amount of planet-heating pollution coal and gas-fired power plants are allowed to produce, the latest step in a sweeping effort to dismantle climate and clean air protections. The announcement was made Monday at a meeting of G20
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By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — An international team of scientists says it has detected an intriguing signal that could hint at evidence of dark matter, offering a clue that might bring the mystery of the elusive substance one step closer to a solution. Dark matter makes up about 85% of all the matter in
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By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — The prehistoric remains of two foragers found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi contain telltale signs that humans began using a mind-altering drug thousands of years earlier than known. The betel nut, a fruit seed from the areca palm, is considered the fourth most widely used psychoactive substance in
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By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — In the arid, inhospitable climate of western Iran’s Zagros Mountains, life has found a remarkable way to survive. Circling above, a bird glimpses what at first glance looks like a plump spider climbing on the rocks. But as the avian predator swoops in, it becomes the prey as something
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By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — As blistering temperatures baked London this summer, people started to notice strange things happening to their houses: zig-zagging cracks suddenly appeared across walls, doors got stuck, windows warped. Extreme heat brings many problems for a country not built for it: Schools close, train tracks buckle and — it turns
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By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Telltale wrinkles that cover Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, suggest it was once a larger world that has shrunk in size — and it may be shrinking more than scientists realized. The smallest planet in our solar system is about 36 million miles (58 million kilometers) from
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By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — Earth just had its hottest August on record and tied the benchmark for the hottest month ever recorded since at least 1940, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a European climate monitoring agency. The global average temperature during August was 62.53 degrees Fahrenheit (16.96 Celsius), which was 1.53
Continue ReadingBy Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — The United States just had its hottest summer in 132 years of recordkeeping, soundly beating the summer of 1936 — during the Dust Bowl era — as well as the summer of 2021, according to data released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Previously, those two years
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By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Archaeologists excavating a cave in southwestern China have unearthed fossilized remains that belonged to an enigmatic population of extinct hominins, revealing new details about their long-lost way of life. The new haul — which includes four teeth, part of an arm bone and two skull fragments — brings the
Continue ReadingBy Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Wildfires are ripping across parts of Indonesia, destroying precious peatland and smothering the country in a toxic smoke so thick, people are struggling to breathe. With months of wildfire season still remaining, experts warn this could end up as one of the country’s worst. Blazes have been raging for
Continue ReadingBy Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — The largest dinosaurs that ever lived were able to reproduce at high latitudes — or regions far from the equator — and came up with a clever strategy to keep their eggs warm, a study of a trove of titanosaur eggs unearthed in Argentina has revealed. Most titanosaur eggs
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By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — The sea level along California’s coast will increase by about a foot by mid-October due to the influence of El Niño, which is driving a large volume of water northward from offshore of Mexico and Central America. This water is coming in the form of a coastal “Kelvin wave,”
Continue ReadingBy Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — One company has a simple-sounding plan to help save the planet: take a food additive and the mineral that makes eggshells hard, produce tiny particles out of them, spray them into the atmosphere and cool the world. Stardust Solutions, an Israeli-US company founded in 2023 and led by two
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By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — President Donald Trump is proposing the creation of a “United States Space Academy” designed to offer the same type of tuition-free, four-year degree as US military academies. But rather than requiring active-duty military service, graduates of this federally funded university may fulfill their post-graduation obligations by working at NASA
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