SpaceX received approval from U.S. air safety regulators to launch the fifth major test flight of its massive Starship rocket — a pivotal mission that will see the booster portion return from space and attempt to land upright.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses launches and reentries of rockets, granted the approval in an ...Read more

Approaching downstate Decatur by car, it’s not unusual to smell the huge Archer Daniels Midland industrial complex before seeing it. The sweet aroma of fermenting grain wafts through vehicle windows and air vents, a sign that ethanol fuel is being brewed. That process, in turn, produces carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas that ...Read more

Skygazers who have marveled at multiple displays of the northern lights in recent days have another reason to geek out over the next two weeks with the appearance of a comet in the western sky after sunset.

The comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS should come into view for skygazers beginning Saturday evening around twilight. Astronomy experts say...Read more

Stargazers will have the opportunity of a lifetime Saturday: the chance to view a newly discovered comet with the naked eye.

The visitor — an ancient dirty snowball from the Oort Cloud — was discovered last year by astronomers in China and South Africa as it approached the inner solar system, NASA said in a news release. And this truly is ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — SpaceX's plans to launch more rockets from the California coast was rejected by a state commission this week, with some officials citing Elon Musk's political posts on X and raised concerns about the billionaire's labor record at his companies.

The plan to increase the number of rocket blasts into space up to 50 a year was ...Read more

Atmospheric rivers – those long, narrow bands of water vapor in the sky that bring heavy rain and storms to the U.S. West Coast and many other regions – are shifting toward higher latitudes, and that’s changing weather patterns around the world.

The shift is worsening droughts in some regions, intensifying flooding in others, ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Backed by science and fury, Curtis Bay residents Thursday night demanded that the Maryland Department of the Environment reject a new permit for the CSX Transportation coal terminal in their neighborhood.

The agency is moving to impose stricter requirements on the railroad giant’s operations.

“There is no reasonable amount of...Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court will test how flexible the EPA and states can be in regulating water pollution under the Clean Water Act when it hears oral argument in City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency on Oct. 16, 2024. This case asks the court to decide whether federal regulators can issue permits that are ...Read more

About 23 million U.S. households depend on private wells as their primary drinking water source. These homeowners are entirely responsible for ensuring that the water from their wells is safe for human consumption.

Multiple studies show that, at best, half of private well owners are testing with any frequency, and very few households ...Read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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