Science & Earth

Mayor Karen Bass released a Climate Action Plan that calls for doubling local solar power by 2030 and sets targets on emissions, water use and heat resilience.

A German study raised nearly 15,000 hibernating bees and wasps from over 160 Bavarian sites and found warmer spring temperatures caused earlier emergence and, for some species, substantial body-mass losses.

Astronomers measured jets from Cygnus X-1 moving at about half the speed of light and carrying energy roughly equivalent to 10,000 suns, using combined radio-telescope images to track the jets' wobble.

A Project CETI and UC Berkeley study found that sperm whale codas include two click types with distinct resonance patterns resembling human vowel contrasts, and recordings from different pods show variation that may indicate regional accents.

Volunteers clearing crab traps in Biscayne Bay in summer 2025 found a juvenile green sea turtle entangled in fishing gear; veterinarians later diagnosed and treated fibropapillomatosis, and the turtle was released in February 2026.

Horticulture experts say gardeners can cut costs and reduce work by starting plants from seed, making or sourcing compost, using soaker hoses, and propagating divisions and cuttings instead of buying new plants each year.

NASA is relying on SpaceX and Blue Origin to deliver lunar landers for an Artemis III test flight, and the agency has added a 2027 docking test with a goal of returning astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028.

Apollo historian Andrew Chaikin watched the Artemis 2 lunar flyby and wrote that crew audio and images from the Orion spacecraft Integrity revived a sense of wonder and a feeling that human deep-space exploration is beginning anew.

Linh Mai, an Asian elephant calf at the National Zoo, has made a public debut after a five-day member preview; she has grown from about 306 pounds at birth to more than 460 pounds.

San Diego's water authority is exploring agreements to trade surplus desalinated water from its Carlsbad plant with Arizona and Nevada as the Colorado River faces major shortages.

Astronaut Christina Koch posted a Flight Day 8 video from inside the Artemis II Orion capsule showing the crew sharing a meal, playing music and completing final emails with loved ones before preparations for splashdown.

The NASA-led Artemis II mission has returned successfully and resonated with Generation X, recalling Apollo-era memories and later setbacks such as the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

Artemis II reached about 252,760 miles from Earth and logged 695,081 miles on its nearly 11-day mission; by contrast, Apollo 17 recorded about 1,484,934 mission miles and the continuously crewed ISS accumulates roughly 18.76 billion miles when Earth’s orbital motion is included.

The U.S. Coast Guard said four people, including a child, were hoisted from an ice floe about 10 miles west of Chefornak and returned to the village with no reported injuries.

A community-built Local Distance Network measured the local Hubble constant at 73.50 km/s/Mpc with a 1.09% uncertainty and found the discrepancy with early-universe CMB measurements (about 67–68 km/s/Mpc) still persists.

After Artemis II's Pacific splashdown, officials said Artemis III is being prepared and will rehearse docking an Orion capsule with a commercial lunar lander in Earth orbit next year.

The DESI Collaboration completed a five-year survey and published a high-resolution 3D map after recording more than 47 million galaxies and quasars and about 20 million nearby stars, covering roughly 11 billion years of cosmic history.

Netflix's four-part series The Dinosaurs pairs photoreal CGI with nature footage to trace dinosaurs' rise and extinction, and the article argues the show frames that history as a narrative of conquest rooted in western visual and imperial traditions.

Synchrotron X-ray CT scans revealed a 250-million-year-old fossilized egg containing a curled Lystrosaurus embryo, offering direct evidence that mammal ancestors laid eggs. The specimen appears to have held a large, leathery egg with a relatively undeveloped embryo, which researchers link to yolk-rich development and more mature hatchlings.

PBS's NOVA documentary 'Return to the Moon' reviews the Artemis II mission, emphasizing its technical accomplishments and its role as a rehearsal for planned Artemis III and IV lunar landings.

Rivers in parts of Michigan and eastern Wisconsin are at or forecast to reach major flood stage, and officials say significant evacuations may be needed as additional rain is expected.

About 11,000 pounds of supplies arrived at the ISS aboard Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL, including a Petri Pod carrying C. elegans worms; the University of Exeter-led experiment will expose the worms to microgravity and space radiation for about 15 weeks while researchers record images and environmental data.

HBO's four-episode docuseries The Dark Wizard premiered April 14 and profiles climber Dean Potter, who died during a wingsuit flight in Yosemite in 2015.

Archaeologists located a Roman merchant shipwreck in Lake Neuchâtel with cargo dated to about 20–50 A.D.; hundreds of ceramic vessels, amphorae and other items were recovered and appear to have remained clustered near the sinking site.

A study of 530 dog owners and 117 non-owners found many people miss subtle signs that dogs are in pain, such as yawning, increased blinking and lip or nose licking. The article reports that recognising these signals is important and that the authors note veterinary advice is often recommended when pain is suspected.

A Texas landowner marks the one-year anniversary of severe local floods and argues that reshaping private land to slow and capture runoff can turn flood risk into groundwater recharge, though cost and coordination remain barriers.

Amazon agreed to acquire Globalstar for about $11 billion, while SpaceX continues frequent launches and extensive Starlink deployment.

Super Typhoon Sinlaku strengthened into the strongest storm this year and is forecast to approach the Northern Mariana Islands, with typhoon warnings in effect for Rota, Tinian and Saipan.

A camera trap in Honduras' Sierra del Merendón captured a young male cloud jaguar at more than 2,000 meters after the species had not been seen there for over ten years; conservation and reforestation efforts are reported to have helped restore habitat.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it is difficult to determine the causes of climate change during remarks at the IMF–World Bank spring meetings, comments that contrast with the broad scientific consensus that recent warming is driven mainly by human fossil-fuel emissions.