The Spiky Simulator That Will Help Find Oceans in Space
The electric-blue chamber looks like a crowd of punk mohawks or the Night King’s jagged skull. In fact, this 4,306-square-foot room is where antennas are torture-tested before being launched into space. Called the Hybrid European Radio Frequency and Antenna Test Zone, or HERTZ, it’s located in Noordwijk, Netherlands. The 33-foot-high steel walls are studded with…
The Ultimate Carbon-Saving Tip? Travel by Cargo Ship
By the end of June, Kajsa Fernström Nåtby was homesick. The native Swede had just finished a 5-month internship with her country’s diplomatic office near the UN headquarters in Manhattan, darting between debates on migration and ocean plastic. Now, her parents were pleading for her to hop on an 8-hour flight across the Atlantic and…
An Equator Full of Hurricanes Shows a Preview of End Times
The map looks terrifyingly unfamiliar. Not because of the outlines of the continents; those are comforting in their hooks, tails, splotches, and whorls. It’s the storms. Across the globe’s tropics right now, seven superstorms are swirling over oceans. Hurricane Florence is butting into the Carolinas on North America’s southeastern coast. Tropical storms Helene, Isaac, and…
The Next Mass Extinction Might Be About Survival of the Laziest
Survival of the Laziest n. A theory that species with lower metabolisms are less likely to go extinct. If you are a mollusk and you’re reading these words, chances are you’re prone to idleness and sloth. Good for you! In a new study of shellfish from the past 5 million years, scientists found that species with…
The WIRED Guide to Climate Change
The world is busted. For decades, scientists have carefully accumulated data that confirms what we hoped wasn’t true: The greenhouse gas emissions that have steadily spewed from cars and planes and factories, the technologies that powered a massive period of economic growth, came at an enormous cost to the planet’s health. Today, we know that…
Here's What Astronauts See When a Rocket Aborts Mid-Flight
Nick Hague spent 20 years dreaming of getting into space, first as an Air Force test pilot, then as a NASA astronaut since 2013. He got his big chance to blast into orbit last Friday aboard a Soyuz spacecraft launching from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin were expecting a…
A SpaceX Booster Went for a Swim and Came Back as Scrap Metal
Port Canaveral, east of Orlando, was a hub of activity this past week as SpaceX officials attempted to rescue a wayward booster that had fallen into the ocean just off Florida’s space coast. A crowd of onlookers showed up day after day to glean insights into the secretive company’s recovery efforts. Some people even booked…
How to Show That the Earth Orbits the Sun
One of my favorite classes to teach is Physics for Elementary Education. It's a physics class designed to address the needs of future elementary school teachers—grades 1 through 6 or so. To guide the class, I've been using a version of Next Gen Physical Science and Everyday Thinking for a long time, maybe 13 years…
Space Photos of the Week: Dead Stars and a Cute L’il Comet
Strap in and fire up your warp drives because this week we are traversing deep space and then some. First we’re going to hang around some dead stars, but really it’s cooler than you think. When stars die they tend to leave behind evidence of their existence. Often that evidence comes in the form of…
The Triumphant Rediscovery of the Biggest Bee on Earth
For security reasons, I can’t tell you exactly where Clay Bolt rediscovered Wallace’s giant bee. But I can tell you this. With a wingspan of two and a half inches, the goliath is four times bigger than a European honeybee. Very much unlike its honey-manufacturing cousin, it’s got enormous jaws, more like those of the…