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Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS

LA's quake mystery: 2024 brings the most seismic activity in decades. Why now?

LOS ANGELES — It's not your imagination: The ground beneath Southern California has been particularly unsteady as of late, with the region experiencing more moderate-sized earthquakes this year than it has in decades.

What precisely is fueling the sequence of shakers is not entirely clear, and officials warn that prior seismic activity does ...Read more

Evacuating in disasters like Hurricane Milton isn’t simple – there are reasons people stay in harm’s way, and it’s not just stubbornness

As Hurricane Milton roared ashore near Sarasota, Florida, tens of thousands of people were in evacuation shelters. Hundreds of thousands more had fled coastal regions ahead of the storm, crowding highways headed north and south as their counties issued evacuation orders.

But not everyone left, despite dire warnings about a hurricane ...Read more

Could natural, underground hydrogen be a gusher of clean energy in Alaska?

SEATTLE — Alaska geologist Mark Myers hopes that underground reserves of hydrogen could fuel a new state energy industry.

His dreams were launched by a well drilled in the African country of Mali that yields enough hydrogen to fuel a village electric power plant.

Myers is hopeful that hydrogen deposits also exist in Alaska in a metamorphic ...Read more

Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images North America/TNS

Northern lights may be visible in much of upper US on Thursday, Friday. Here's how to chase them

MINNEAPOLIS — Still haven’t caught a glimpse of those shimmery northern lights? Minnesotans have a good chance to snag one of those popular aurora borealis photos at the end of this week thanks to a “severe” geomagnetic storm expected to reach Earth on Thursday.

The Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a G4 (Severe) storm watch ...Read more

Seth Herald/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

Amazon unveils AI to help delivery drivers find packages faster

Amazon.com Inc. unveiled a new artificial intelligence tool designed to solve a major pain point in its quick delivery apparatus: drivers rummaging through cluttered vans at each stop searching for packages.

The technology projects a green circle on packages to be delivered at each stop and red Xs on those to be delivered later, Amazon said ...Read more

Handout/NASA/TNS

Scientists long urged NASA to search for signs of life near Jupiter. Now it's happening

In 2015, Bill Nye was on Marine One with President Obama.

The television personality and science advocate was officially there for an Earth Day event, but he took the opportunity to talk to the president about space exploration, and specifically, a mission still in its infancy at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge that ...Read more

(Focus Entertainment)/TNS

Review: ‘Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’ leverages a dark sci-fi lore with layered gameplay

The original “Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine” was forgettable. It didn’t leave a strong impression despite the rich lore that the project was embedded in, and that’s a travesty because Game Workshop’s dark sci-fi universe is one of the most fascinating and original franchises out there.

It’s filled with space orks, chaos demons ...Read more

JIM ROSSMAN/TNS

Jim Rossman: Is your login data safe with password managers?

After my recent column on password managers, I got a several emails from readers with follow up questions.

A reader asked, “If the password manager is hacked are not ALL my passwords compromised? Is it worth the risk?”

The answer is a bit complex. I’ll take 1Password as an example.

Note, I realize this is going to sound like an ad for...Read more

Handout/Capcom/TNS

Preview: ‘Monster Hunter Wilds’ takes risks in an evolutionary leap

To make noise in 2025, a game will have to be beyond good. It will have to be phenomenal. The year is expected to see the launch of “Grand Theft Auto VI,” “Death Stranding 2: On the Beach” and other high-profile titles, and to stand out, a title will have to exceed expectations.

From what I played of a Gamescom demo in San Francisco, ...Read more

Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Sammy Roth: Nobody loves Biden's Western Solar Plan. But it's what we've got

Let’s say the American West could dedicate a landmass smaller than Delaware to all of the large-scale solar farms that will be needed in this part of the country to help phase out planet-wrecking fossil fuels.

Delaware covers 1.6 million acres. An estimated 1.3 million — spanning 11 states, from California to Wyoming — could eventually be...Read more

K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS

Why are California's tech millionaires and billionaires flocking to Las Vegas?

Kent Yoshimura moved his multimillion-dollar business from Los Angeles to Las Vegas a few years ago and said he has little regrets about leaving California.

One of the co-founders of NeuroGum, which produces caffeinated gum for memory and focus, Yoshimura said access to local politicians and hiking at Red Rock Canyon are just a few of the perks...Read more

Sebastian Czapnik/Dreamstime/TNS

US says it's weighing Google breakup as monopoly case remedy

The U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge it is considering recommending that Google be forced to sell off parts of its operations to alleviate the harm caused by its monopolization of the online search market, in what would be a historic antitrust breakup.

In a court filing Tuesday, antitrust enforcers said Judge Amit Mehta could also ...Read more

Jonathan Nackstrand/Getty Images of North America/TNS

Former Caltech and Google scientists win physics Nobel for pioneering artificial intelligence

On Tuesday morning, Princeton University professor John Hopfield and University of Toronto professor Geoffrey Hinton won the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 for their foundational discoveries and inventions that pioneered modern artificial intelligence.

Hopfield joined Caltech as faculty in 1980 and, two years later, published his seminal paper in ...Read more

Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Biden EPA requires Chicago to dramatically speed up replacement of toxic lead pipes

CHICAGO — Chicago must replace every toxic lead pipe connecting homes to water mains within two decades — an aggressive deadline imposed this week by President Joe Biden after his administration initially proposed giving city officials twice as long to complete the job.

The more stringent requirement is part of a broader package of changes ...Read more

Why wildfires started by human activities can be more destructive and harder to contain

Wildfires are becoming increasingly destructive across the U.S., as the country is seeing in 2024. Firefighters were battling large blazes in several states from California to North Dakota in early October 2024, including fires burning near homes and communities.

Research shows wildfires are up to four times larger and three times ...Read more

Hurricane Milton explodes into a powerful Category 5 storm as it heads for Florida − here’s how rapid intensification works

Hurricane Milton went from barely hurricane strength to a dangerous Category 5 storm in less than 24 hours as it headed across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida.

As its wind speed increased, Milton became one of the most rapidly intensifying storms on record. And with 180 mph sustained winds on Oct. 7, 2024, and very low pressure, it ...Read more

SpaceX launches Hera asteroid mission Monday, but delays Europa Clipper because of Hurricane Milton

SpaceX returned to flight with its Falcon 9 rocket Monday sending up the Hera probe for the European Space Agency on its way to a pair of asteroids, but SpaceX and NASA have called off plans to launch the Falcon Heavy later this week on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s moon because of the approaching Hurricane Milton.

SpaceX got ...Read more

How Hurricane Helene became a deadly disaster across six states

Some hurricanes are remembered for their wind damage or rainfall. Others for their coastal flooding. Hurricane Helene was a stew of all of that and more. Its near-record-breaking size, storm surge, winds and rainfall together turned Helene into an almost unimaginable disaster that stretched more than 500 miles inland from the Florida coast....Read more

Clarence Tabb Jr./The Detroit News/TNS

Stalking a pollutant: Researchers comb river for secrets of Great Lakes microplastics

DEXTER TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Ali Shakoor took a break from his morning field work to lay two small bluegill in his palm, displaying the catch his colleagues had netted from a riffling nook of the Huron River.

The fish are opportunistic foragers. They fit squarely within the ecosystem in which Shakoor and a team Wayne State University researchers ...Read more

Jason Armond/Jim Cooke/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Valley fever is a growing risk in Central California; few visitors ever get a warning

LOS ANGELES -- When Nora Bruhn bought admission to the Lightning in a Bottle arts and music festival on the shores of Kern County’s Buena Vista Lake earlier this spring, her ticket never mentioned she might end up with a fungus growing in her lungs.

After weeks of night sweats, “heaviness and a heat” in her left lung, a cough that wouldn�...Read more