At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Smithsonian paleontologist Doug Erwin took the podium to address a ballroom full of geologists on the dynamics of mass extinctions and power grid failures—which, he claimed, unfold in the same way.

Scientists in Australia have developed a solar paint capable of pulling water molecules from the air and splitting them into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which can be stored for use as fuel.

The dust surrounding active, ravenous black holes is much more compact than previously thought, it has been found by researchers at the University of Texas-San Antonio using observations from NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA.

As the universe expanded after the Big Bang, galaxies spread out too, and many of them grouped together in gigantic clusters that can be thought of as “urban centers” of the cosmos.

Scientists now say that it’s more likely than not a that an extraterrestrial civilization generated a signal from deep space detected in 1977.

A global warming research study in Canada has been cancelled because of “unprecedented” thick summer ice.

Naturally, the scientist in charge has blamed it on ‘climate change.’

Scientists have discovered a population of “super corals” that appear to have become resistant to extreme environmental conditions—being able to survive and thrive in hot, acidic and low-oxygen waters.

Satellites can predict when massive swarms of desert locusts will form in Africa, according to a Tuesday statement by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Over the past century, the frequency of both very hot and very cold days has plummeted in the U.S.

Artificial intelligence may be one of the technology world’s current obsessions, but many people find it scary, envisioning robots taking over the world.

An Arizona company, World View Enterprises, plans to send tourists on balloons into the stratosphere, high enough to see the curves of Earth and the blackness of space.

Now that the idea of a global warming Red Team approach to help determine what our energy policy should be is gaining traction, it is important that we understand what that means to some of us who have been advocating it for over 10 years — and also what it doesn’t mean.

At last, the New York Times publishes a letter from an informed climate change skeptic. Alexander McKay’s letter (6/11/17) was a breath of fresh air in the otherwise stale regurgitations of environmental propagandists that usually appear in the Times. 

The Closing of the Scientific Mind is a plea for scientists to celebrate and enhance humanity rather than belittle human life.  Author David Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale. His book Subjectivism: The Mind from Inside will be published by Norton later this year.  Excerpts below.

The probability of El Nino, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific, developing this year has been downgraded by U.S. government forecasters as sea surface temperatures and wind speeds in the area remain close to their long-term averages.