Civil Liberties

“Monkey see, monkey do” isn’t just a playground aphorism, it’s a pretty apt way of describing the behavior of us primates. Some of our contagious behaviors are involuntary; for example, if someone yawns in our vicinity, we might find ourselves also trying to suppress a yawn. Other primates, including chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), experience similar phenomena such as contagious yawning, scratching, grooming and playing.... Read Original Article

Ever since NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was launched, it’s been revealing more about the universe than even most astronomers expected. Some of the data JWST has sent back to Earth have been awe-inspiring, but some of it has been downright confusing or challenging to dominant theories in cosmology.... Read Original Article

Chetan Shetty is the executive chef at Passerine, a seasonal Indian restaurant in New York City’s fashionable Flatiron district. Before moving to the United States, however, Chef Shetty lived in Mahabaleshwar, a small town in India famous for its holy sites, majestic rivers and delicious strawberries.

Yet Shetty ruefully acknowledges that climate change has put a damper on that last part of his hometown’s legacy.... Read Original Article

According to a recent report by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), a worldwide group of scientists who study Earth’s frozen regions, the rapidly accelerating melting of all our ice is raising sea levels. Ironically, this is threatening the very industry overwhelmingly responsible: the fossil fuel industry, which will definitely feel the strain of rising sea levels, which is already impacting coastal regions across the globe.... Read Original Article

2024 was a grim milestone in the history of our planet. Not only was it the hottest year in recorded human history, for the first time Earth’s average global temperature reached 1.5º C above pre-industrial levels. While it may seem like an arbitrary number, scientists who spoke with Salon agree: This is a warning sign for humanity that will be reflected in more disasters like hurricanes and wildfires.... Read Original Article

Humans like to imagine Earth as a pristine blue marble surrounded by empty space and glowing stars. In fact, though, human space exploration and industrialization has polluted the area around our planet, with the resulting debris known as space junk. The problem is expected to only grow as the demand for satellites increases with our desire to explore our solar system, but it could get so bad that it could ground space travel indefinitely.... Read Original Article

As of Friday, the plague of wildfires in Los Angeles has consumed more than 20,000 acres, destroyed roughly 13,000 buildings, forced more than 180,000 evacuations and caused at least 11 deaths. Though this is one of the most destructive disasters in California history, some have wasted no time in leveraging the crisis to further an agenda.... Read Original Article