Science & Earth

A drive-through recycling roundup will be held April 11 at Nissan's Franklin headquarters in partnership with the Tennessee Environmental Council, accepting hard-to-recycle items and marking the fifth year of the event.

Researchers used data from about 800,000 wells and a machine-learning model to produce the most detailed national map and estimate of U.S. groundwater, finding roughly 250 billion acre-feet across the country.

Invivyd said its Phase 3 DECLARATION trial was upsized by about 500 subjects after a pre-specified sample size re-estimation, which is expected to move top-line timing to the third quarter of 2026, and the company announced discovery and IND-enabling steps for a half-life–extended measles monoclonal antibody candidate, VMS063.

The I.U.C.N. updated its Red List to classify emperor penguins as Endangered, citing population declines linked to retreating sea ice; Antarctic fur seals were also listed as endangered and southern elephant seals as vulnerable.

A female manatee rescued in Cape Coral in March later died from injuries after a reported boat collision, and Florida officials say at least 31 manatees have been killed in collisions so far this year.

During their closest approach on April 6, the Artemis II crew announced proposed names for two previously unnamed lunar craters: "Carroll" to honor Commander Wiseman's late wife and "Integrity" for their spacecraft.

Solar generation in Britain hit new highs of 14.1GW and 14.4GW on consecutive days, and the government approved the Springwell solar farm in Lincolnshire, projected to supply the equivalent of about 180,000 homes at peak.

Researchers at Rothamsted Research used CRISPR to cut free asparagine in wheat during two years of field trials, and bread and biscuits made from the edited grain showed substantially lower acrylamide while yields were maintained.

The government said the Environment Agency will act as lead environmental regulator to speed planning for the Sizewell C nuclear project and a Teesside sustainable aviation fuel plant, and said environmental checks will still be coordinated with other agencies.

Since September, Rwanda has been mapping agricultural land and using satellite imagery to track development and encroachment, while city officials are promoting urban farming methods such as vertical farms and hydroponics to increase production on smaller plots.

NASA's Artemis 2 Orion capsule is on course to splash down off the coast of San Diego at about 8:07 p.m. ET after completing a lunar flyby, reentering at roughly 25,000 miles per hour.

NASA Mission Control played Mandisa and TobyMac's 2011 song 'Good Morning' as a wake-up track for the Artemis II crew, and NASA has been using wake-up songs for astronauts since 1965.

Federal officials have months to decide how to divide Colorado River flows that supply about 40 million people, and the article reports rising water demand from hyperscale data centers alongside large agricultural water use in Colorado.

During an April 6 check-in on the Artemis II lunar-orbit mission, pilot Victor Glover told his wife and their daughters, 'I love you from the moon.' NASA reports Glover and his wife have been married for more than two decades.

NASA is evaluating key design choices for Artemis III while Artemis II is returning to Earth; officials are debating whether Artemis III should rendezvous in low-Earth orbit or high-Earth orbit and which human landing systems will be involved.

Christina Koch told colleagues on the International Space Station that viewing Earth from the Artemis 2 lunar flyby emphasized its beauty and the blackness around it; Artemis 2 is scheduled to splash down April 10 after the mission's moon flyby.

India's Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at the Kalpakkam Nuclear Complex reached first criticality on April 6, 2026, and is reported to mark entry into the second stage of the country's three-stage nuclear program.

Naturalist Bill Volkert told a public audience about long-distance bird migration and said that storms, wildfires and hurricanes can reduce local bird numbers.

Kaveh Madani, director of the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and 2026 Stockholm Water Prize laureate, says a UN-linked report he authored shows 'water bankruptcy'—where use exceeds natural renewal and systems lose the ability to recover—is occurring across all inhabited continents, and that global freshwater is being depleted at scale.

U.S. News lists 39 Johns Hopkins graduate programs among the top 10 nationally, including eight No. 1 rankings and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at No. 1 overall.

A pooled analysis of more than 500 fMRI scans from studies of five psychedelics reports increased communication between sensory-processing and higher-order brain regions, and the results were published in Nature Medicine.

About 7,000 Indigenous people from roughly 200 groups are gathered in Brasilia for the 22nd Free Land encampment, and government representatives said they will take part in hearings at the event during the week.

While orbiting the moon the Artemis II crew proposed names for two lunar craters and shared an emotional group hug on a livestream, including a proposal to name one crater 'Carroll' in honor of commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife.

A robotic float operating in the North Pacific returned a three-year chemical dataset that revealed dynamic nitrogen cycling in oxygen minimum zones, researchers report in Communications Earth & Environment.

Kerbal Space Program reached a peak of 11,890 concurrent players on April 5, the highest since its 1.0 release in 2015, and the article reports that player counts began rising around the Artemis II launch on April 1.

Artemis II's Orion crew is flying farther from Earth than any humans have gone to observe the Moon's far side, with 10 science objectives and 35 targets to photograph; they may also look for a 2022 double crater linked to a Chang'e 5‑T1 rocket impact.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge report a lab method that uses spent acid from car batteries and a resilient photocatalyst to break down plastic waste into intermediates and then, under sunlight, produce hydrogen and acetic acid; the catalyst remained active for about 264 hours in tests.

A TikTok clip shows a quality engineer who worked on the RS-25 engine becoming visibly emotional while watching the Artemis II launch on April 1; the mission is NASA's first crewed Artemis flight and will loop the Orion spacecraft around the Moon over about 10 days.

Researchers at the University of Oulu used an ultrafast MRI sequence (MREG) alongside DC-EEG and near-infrared tracking to observe faster vasomotor and bidirectional cerebrospinal fluid pulses during sleep, and they reported increased movement of sodium and potassium ions in that fluid.

Venus will be prominent in the west-northwest soon after sunset through April, and the Lyrid meteor shower is expected to peak the night of April 21 into early April 22. A faint comet, C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS), is due to appear in the evening sky late in the month.