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Past Presentation | A Mirror of the Cosmos is a sci-fi experimental documentary which explores the first ecosystem in Europe to gain legal rights: the Mar Menor lagoon. Opening with a conversation between the moon and the sea about environmental violence, the film explores how the unlikely relationships between paradise, invasive blue crabs, nitrates, and mining deposits in Mar Menor deeply intertwine to tell the larger story of capitalism’s extractive, cumulative effects on the environment over time, combined with record-setting temperatures and monsoon-like storms. The lagoon is a microcosm of the so-called Anthropocene, or ‘the Age of Man’. Ultimately, it asks what kinds of futures are possible, and can we adapt? A film by Isabelle Carbonell www.amirrorofthecosmos.com

While the International Space Station (ISS) was traveling more than 262 miles over the South Atlantic Ocean, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft autonomously docked to station’s...

Now Playing | In the field, we accompany a biologist responsible for the implementation of renaturation solutions, the most coherent with the activities already present. A series of hedgerows planted to ensure bocage continuity is a typical means of providing food and shelter for small mammals involved in an ecosystem that includes cultivated fields and wild lands. Compromises are made to allow continued passage with farm machinery. The viewer discovers that it is possible to observe significant changes in biodiversity if one is attentive to the smallest phenomena, such as the return of butterflies that had disappeared. Through the testimonies of involved farmers, we learn that synergies between animals, plants and farms increasingly make it possible to do without chemical substitutes, those that have long accompanied the productivist approach on which agriculture is still largely dependent. From the scouting in the middle of winter, to the informal meetings between participants discussing in the middle of the heat wave, the film shows from the inside an experience of active awareness but not without its paradoxes. How to reconcile issues as remote as profitability and biodiversity.

Past Presentation | GSLV Mark3 is a two point of view narration told from a girl and also the ISRO team who wants to launch their GSLV mark 3 satellite into space. There is a beautiful connection between the girl and the rocket which is about to launch.

Now Playing | An individual who is suffering from the obsessive-compulsive disorder and forced to migrate to outer space, he misses his mother and homeland. However, the only response to his calling his mother is an endless busy tone.

Get the best space heaters to keep you warm in any room of your home! Don't go another moment without these portable, personal heaters. The post The best space heaters in 2024 appeared first on Popular Science.

The list of Most Innovative Companies in space for 2025 reflect global efforts over the last year diversify and secure launch and orbital services, which are increasingly seen as critical components of national security. SpaceX, the number-one U.S. launch company and satellite operator, demonstrated dazzling technical achievement with the successful launch of its Starship and the “chopstick catch” landing of its Super Heavy booster stage. But New Zealand- and U.S.-based Rocket Lab is playing an agile game of catchup, sending 12 of its Electron rockets into space last year—making it the number three launch provider globally—and inking major contracts with commercial and government customers. In Europe, French company Arianespace, a subsidiary of Ariane Group, successfully test-launched its new Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket, operated on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA), marking a significant step toward independent European access to space. And Iceye, headquartered in Helsinki and Irvine, California, expanded its constellation of Earth-monitoring synthetic aperture radar (SAR) microsatellites, providing night and day high-res coverage of critical locations for customers including reinsurance giant Swiss Re, NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Ukraine. Other advances across the space ecosystem include the successful deployment of a next-generation satellite “bus” by Apex, and the successful launch of cutting-edge weather-monitoring satellites by Muon Space. Questek engineered novel “superalloys” critical to For SpaceX’s Super Heavy boosters, while Stardog’s “hallucination-free” AI helped to advance key programs for NASA. Skylo introduced seamless, accessible satellite connectivity for some of the world’s biggest cellular providers, including Verizon, Qualcomm, and Google, ensuring the ability  to send an emergency text from anywhere. And in the “big audacious goals” category, in February 2024, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, became the first private company to land an unmanned craft on the Moon’s surface.1: Rocket LabFor keeping the space race competitiveYou might not know it from the constant flow of SpaceX headlines, but there is another key company when it comes to space launches. In 2024, Rocket Lab sent 12 missions into space, breaking the company’s record of 10 launches set in 2023, and making the company the no. 2 U.S. launch provider.Rocket Labs’ agility and precision made them the chosen partner to launch NASA’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission, designed to study heat lost to space from the Earth’s polar regions, which will improve climate models to better predict ice, sea level, and weather changes. This mission involved launching four small cube satellites into criss-crossing polar orbits, on two separate launches within just 11 days of each other. For Astroscale Japan, Rocket Lab launched an experimental debris-observation satellite last February to intersect the orbit of a spent rocket section. To make the rendezvous, Rocket Lab had just 20 days to prepare the launch parameters—and one day’s notice of the exact takeoff time, which had to be precise within 30 seconds.  The company also has a growing business building satellites and small spacecraft, with four already built and launched, and some 40 more under constructions, including two for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars, to study the planet’s magnetosphere. In December, Rocket Lab inked a $515 million contract with the U.S. Space Development Agency to build 18-satellites for a planned constellation of 90 that will provide voice- and data-transmission service for military personnel in the field. The company’s next chapter hinges on its second rocket, the medium-lift, semi-reusable Neutron, which it plans to test launch later this year. With a larger capacity than Electron, the Neutron would compete directly with SpaceX’s Falcon and help Rocket Lab to serve a broader range of customers and ultimately to launch its own satellite constellations.Read more about Rocket Lab, honored as No. 9 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025.2: IceyeFor making high-resolution, high-impact imagery accessible as quickly as possible.With the launch of 9 satellites in 2024, Finnish space startup Iceye now has the world’s largest commercial constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, which can see through cloud, darkness, and even tree cover and deliver remarkably crisp and detailed mages of virtually any spot on Earth, several times a day.With a relentless focus on miniaturization—which brings down costs—and precision, the company, which closed a $93 million financing round in April and secured another $65 million in December, has scaled the production of its small satellites, which offer cutting-edge high-resolution imagery that is relied upon by partners including the U.S. Department of Defense, FEMA, NASA, and the nation of Ukraine.While Iceye has built several satellites for commercial and state customers, the greater part of its business is selling data as a service from its own constellation of roughly 20 satellites. This provides a remarkable level of Earth coverage—Iceye can image anywhere in the world as often as every two hours, providing near-real time pictures of things like illegal logging and natural disasters. (Some insurance companies are now using data from Iceye to issue automated payments to customers in areas confirmed to be impacted by flooding, for example.)But defense is what’s driving business for the moment. Iceye has played a key role in the “space defense” of Ukraine in its war against Russia. In November, it signed a contract with German defense company Rheinmetall to provide Ukraine with additional high-resolution satellite imagery under German funding. Rheinmetall will also integrate Iceye’s capabilities into its next-generation battlefield systems. With vertically integrated manufacturing in Finland, a U.S. facility in Irvine, and a European-North American supply chain with no rare materials, Iceye aims to launch more than 20 satellites in 2025 and subsequent years.Read more about Iceye, honored as No. 20 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025.3: SpaceXFor catching a rocket with a pair of chopsticksIn a spectacular feat of engineering, this year SpaceX successfully demonstrated the ability to launch—and then catch—a rocket. On October 13, the company’s reusable Starship megarocket launched on its fifth test flight. About seven minutes after liftoff, the vehicle’s first-stage booster, which is about 233 feet tall and weight about 440,000 pounds when it came back to Earth, was caught in midair by two mechanical “chopstick” arms, while the upper stage of splashed down in the Indian Ocean as planned.Along with that major accomplishment, SpaceX has kept up the pace of launches and innovative new rockets that push the boundaries of the space industry. After moving its headquarters from California to Texas, SpaceX has successfully launched 128 rockets in 2024, including 123 launches of Falcon 9s, two Falcon Heavys, and three of its new Starships (after the first three, launched in 2023, blew up).That far outpaces the launch cadence any domestic or international competitor. In September 2024, SpaceX operated the Polaris Dawn mission on behalf of Shift4, whose all-private crew of astronauts flew a SpaceX CrewDragon spacecraft in an elliptic orbit that took them 870 miles away from Earth (the farthest anyone has been since NASA’s Apollo program) to conducted a space walk.4: Intuitive MachinesFor making the moon its missionIn February 2024, the Odysseus lander— a hexagonal cylinder shape that’s roughly the size of an old British telephone booth—touched down on the surface of the moon. When it did, it became the first privately built and operated spacecraft to achieve a lunar landing. But that remarkable achievement was just the first step for the company behind it, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which now aims to become a moon-landing powerhouse, providing everything from landers to communications and navigation services to buggies.The Odysseus hitched a ride toward the moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in February 2024. Once in space, it set off toward the moon on its own and landed on the Moon’s south pole region, marking the United States’ first return since Apollo 17. And although Odysseus ended up on its side after touching down on the Moon’s surface in February, the mission was deemed a success by the company and, perhaps more importantly, by NASA. Odysseus had carried six payloads from the space agency, and it has received data from five of its active payloads. (A sixth payload, a laser retroreflector, will be tested in the coming months.) A second lunar lander, which landed in March, 2025, also ended up on its side before it could gather any data.But these missions are just the start of what could be a long run of supporting lunar exploration: In August, NASA awarded Intuitive a $116.9 million contract to deliver six more science and technology payloads, including one from the European Space Agency, to the Moon’s south pole. This mission will deploy a range of equipment for prospecting on the Moon, including a drill, a hopper, and a rover. In September, the company—which reported nearly $60 million revenue last quarter—was the sole awardee of a contract with NASA valued at up to $4.82 billion over the next decade, to deploy a constellation of lunar data relay satellites around the Moon. The company is also one of top competitors bidding on a Moon moon terrain vehicle—a prototype of its fully electric crab-walking motorized vehicle is currently being evaluated at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.5: ArianespaceFor expanding European space launch capacity with a more cost-efficient heavy rocketin July 2024, French aerospace company Arianespace, a subsidiary of Ariane Group, successfully launched the new Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket,  operated on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA). The launch marked a significant step towards securing Europe’s independent access to space—a pressing concern since the war in Ukraine cut off access to Russia’s Soyuz rockets—allowing nations on the continent to launch their satellites and payloads without relying solely on offshore commercial providers, namely SpaceX.Ariane Group served as lead contractor and design authority for the Ariane 6, coordinating more than 600 companies in 13 European countries that contributed. The Ariane 6 is intended to replace the Ariane 5, which had its final launch on July 5, 2023. The Ariane 5’s high production costs made it uncompetitive with commercial launch providers.The Ariane 6 is designed to cut launch costs in half compared to its predecessor. The demo mission was a partial success, accomplishing the launch and deployment of three of its five payloads into orbit. But a technical failure left the upper stage in orbit instead of returning to Earth. (The company says a software fix will prevent this problem in the future.)A second Ariane 6 launch is planned for late February 2025 [NEW]. It will be the rocket’s first commercial mission, carrying the CSO-3 reconnaissance satellite into orbit for the French military. In December 2024, Arianespace successfully launched a new version of its Vega rocket, intended for lighter loads than the Ariane 6, capable of transporting more than two tons and putting satellites into orbits at different altitudes. Four launches with Vega-C are planned for next year, followed by five more in 2026.6: QuesTek InnovationsFor making the materials that power space explorationThis Evanston, Illinois-based materials engineering firm, a specialist in high- performance metal alloys, has worked with NASA for two decades and last year played an essential role in constructing the latest launch vehicles produced by private space companies. QuesTek developed a top-secret superalloy for SpaceX that is more resilient and heat resistant than anything previously launched into space and is critical to the Raptor engines of the Starship’s Super Heavy booster.Last summer, QuesTek announced it had worked to develop two new superalloys for use in 3D printing of reusable rockets with space equipment manufacturer Stoke Space. The alloys will sharply reduce the amount of material used in rocket building, decreasing rocket weight and lowering the cost of launches while allowing for rapid design changes without the need for retooling7: Muon SpaceFor creating satellites that measure clouds and fight firesSilicon Valley-based end-to-end space systems provider Muon Space aims to design, build, and operate low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations designed for specific commercial and government projects.Less than a year after the June 2023 launch of its first satellite Muon Halo, this March the company successfully deployed a prototype weather satellite designed to capture cloud data for the the U.S. Air Force. The military is actively seeking so-called “cloud characterization data” and weather imagery to supplement data collected by its own sensor satellites to help its operations. Detailed cloud data is essential for more accurate weather prediction, as clouds control solar radiation, precipitation, and wind patterns, directly impacting temperature regulation and forecast accuracy.In addition raising a $56 million Series B round in August, Muon received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant through the U.S. Space Force in December. The award will help accelerate Muon’s development of its commercial wildfire monitoring mission, FireSat, a constellation of small satellites designed to spot wildfires, in partnership with the nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance (whose backers include Google Research and the Environmental Defense Fund).By evolving the FireSat’s infrared detection abilities, Muon’s satellites will be able to monitor cloud cover as well as wildfires, serving both civil and defense uses. Muon Space plans a 2026 launch of its first three FireSat constellations, which will have the ability to observe every point on Earth twice a day.8: StardogFor giving NASA a voice assistant that speaks the truthStardog deploys “100%-hallucination-free” generative AI, powered by proprietary organization “knowledge graphs” for enterprises and government agencies including NASA and the US Department of Defense. In 2024, it rolled out its Voicebox AI data assistant for defense and intelligence customers. The system uses a “semantic parsing layer” on top of its generative AI to filter out AI “lies,” showing end-users results that are only tied directly back to an organization’s own data.The Stardog co-founders began their relationship with NASA when they custom-built data analytics applications for the agency in 2006. They were instrumental in development of “Concourse”, an application that facilitates avionics software assessments in support of the Artemis Orion Spacecraft certification, in 2021.Now, to support NASA’s Gateway program, which is building a lunar-orbit space station, Stardog integrated the “knowledge graph” it had created for NASA—which connects all data sources within the organization—with data from NASA’s Cross-Program Hazard System, to improve safety and give NASA a better decision-making process around risk, enabling the agency to respond quickly with critical fixes and interventions.9: ApexFor helping satellites and other spacecraft get exactly where they need to goIn March 2024, Apex successfully deployed Aries SN1, the company’s first production model of an off-the-shelf satellite bus for “secondary payloads”—that is, moving satellites and other spacecraft into precise positions after their initial launch.The Aries can be manufactured in various preconfigurations designed for diverse mission needs, leveraging the benefits of serial production to help drive down the costs of these types of missions.The first 220-pound Aries, which can carry payloads of up to 330 pounds, was used to move satellites as part of a strategic partnership with defense contractor Anduril. In 2025, Anduril will launch its own self-funded mission, also powered by Apex’s Aries bus, featuring upgraded mission data processing and new infrared imaging capabilities, marking the next phase of their collaboration. Apex, which raised $95 million in series B funding in summer 2024, has said it expects to deliver its next vehicle, the Nova, a satellite bus that can host payloads from about 400 to 1,100 pounds, next year.10: SkyloFor making “out of service range” a thing of the pastThanks to Skylo, cellphone customers will no longer be out of luck when they’re out of range. The company’s service network enables phones and other connected devices to seamlessly switch from cellular to satellite connectivity without requiring any expensive satellite components. It is a major leap forward in terms of continuous, comprehensive, and affordable connectivity. As a result of this innovation, users no longer have to worry if they are in cellular coverage range in order to make an emergency call or text.The Mountain View-based company, founded in 2017 by a team from Stanford University’s space lab, doesn’t own spectrum or satellites of its own. Rather, it works with satellite operators with “bent pipe” networks, in which satellites essentially bounce signals originating on Earth back down to company ground stations (rather than sending cellular frequencies from space), allowing smartphones and IoT cellular devices to connect directly over existing satellites. That means the satellites can handle all kinds of transmission technologies, including narrow band IOT, which uses a single narrowband radio frequency to connect devices over long distances, even in remote areas.Qualcomm is already using Skylo technology in its advanced IoT chips, and in August 2024, Verizon announced it was partnering with Skylo to offer its customers satellite-based messaging and location-sharing services, starting this fall. The carrier also announced that starting next year, thanks to Skylo, users will be able to text anywhere via satellite.Explore the full 2025 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 609 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the companies making the biggest impact across 58 categories, including advertising, applied AI, biotech, retail, sustainability, and more.

Japan’s LignoSat will test wood’s resilience in space and could lead to a new era of more sustainable, less polluting satellites

NASA and the agency’s international partners are sending scientific investigations to the International Space Station on the 30th SpaceX commercial resupply services mission, including tests...

The tangle of greenery along railway lines, flowers growing on vacant lots, or unmown grassy patches under power lines, it turns out people in cities engage with nature in all these spaces.

The SWOT satellite, a collaborative effort between NASA and CNES, is revolutionizing flood prediction by providing comprehensive data on water heights across nearly all water...

By Denise Maher HealthDay ReporterSATURDAY, Jan. 11, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- Want to help your child cut back on their screen time?Make sure you...

SpaceX has filed a request with the Federal Aviation Administration to determine whether the company can resume launches of its recently grounded workhorse rocket

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Research showed truck-related releases of nitrogen dioxide, which can cause asthma, concentrated around some 150,000 warehouses nationwide.

An unprecedented marine expedition in Latin America took place on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, collecting data and samples for an international study that aims to detect red tides using satellite technology. Red tides are harmful algal blooms that can significantly impact marine ecosystems, public health, fisheries, and tourism. Their sudden appearance and unpredictable […] The post NASA and Costa Rica Unite to Track Red Tides from Space appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

There are thousands of disused graveyards that could provide crowded cities with essential public green space.

New STUDIO.nano supports artistic research and encounters within MIT.nano’s facilities.

NASA’s Zero-Boil-Off Tank experiments address the challenge of managing cryogenic propellants in space, crucial for future Moon and Mars missions, with potential Earth-bound benefits in...

The overly sterile environment of the International Space Station is missing important microbes, a new detailed map shows. If we want to live off Earth, we may need to take more of our bacterial friends with us

A recent study using satellite data shows that the global coverage of greenhouses has expanded to over 13,000 square kilometers, with the largest growth occurring...

Past Presentation | How many times do you wonder if what you do makes a difference in the world? Inspiring stories illustrating the ripple effects of our actions in an interconnected world. Like “What the Bleep Do We Know” meets “Cosmos” with Carl Sagan, the film unpacks what the Butterfly Effect really means. Even though a metaphor, it actually depicts how small actions can indeed have large effects. Would we act differently if we understood the interconnectedness at play all around us?

Now Playing | Plans to build the Thirty Meter Telescope on the summit of the sacred Mauna Kea sparks another battle in a decades-long struggle between Indigenous Hawaiians and astronomers.

Now Playing | Humans have exploited Earth to the point where it is no longer possible to live on it. Their only option is to relocate to Mars. When the last group of people has boarded the spaceship for the red planet, the Earth can finally breathe easy. Like an expressionist painting, Reboot depicts a world in which the absence of our species is the only chance nature has to recover its lushness and flourish once more.

Just like an impromptu hangout can be as fun as a formal gala, even an informal green space can provide the benefits you’d get from an official park.

Observations of SN 2023ixf in 2023 led to surprising findings regarding cosmic ray production by supernovae, with potential implications for understanding cosmic ray origins and...

Now Playing | Follow Dark Sky Defender Sriram Murali on a journey into the Western Ghats of India, in quest of the stars. From the Fireflies to the Great Hornbills, a naturally dark place is also a naturally wild place. In Search of the Stars explores the profound relationship between the night skies, wildlife and humans.

New missions backed by Google, NASA and other groups will monitor the planet's worsening wildfire activity from outer space.

The Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary covers 2.5 million acres in the southeastern part of the state

Now Playing | Water drops turning to the starry night. I found two words 'spontaneously' and 'simultaneously' alongside one another in a vocabulary notebook and thought it seemed to be wonderful that the meanings of the two words conjoined. I embody the idea by using a turntable with a running mirror under the photo panel, and it could imply how I and others relate across the media symbolically. Consequently water turns into the starry night, like howling dreams come true.

Past Presentation | They weave a tapestry that draws together scientific discoveries in astronomy, geology, biology, ecology, and biodiversity with humanistic insights concerning the nature of the universe. Using his skills as a masterful storyteller, Swimme connects such big picture issues as the birth of the cosmos 14 billion years ago – to the invisible frontiers of the human genome – as well as to our current impact on Earth’s evolutionary dynamics. From the Big Bang–to the epic impact humans have on the planet today–this film is designed to inspire a new and closer relationship with Earth in a period of growing environmental and social crisis.

A new paper reveals how Aboriginal people changed the landscape by burning, demonstrating how similar practices could help manage modern bushfires

Past Presentation | In the summer of 1988 dry lightning sparked a fire in the parched and drought ridden landscape of Yellowstone Park, igniting a blaze that would scorch over 1.5 million perimeter acres of the park. Song of Fire, a narrative poem, guides the animation of YELLOWSTONE 88 telling the story of this conflagration that raged unabated for months until a snow of such intense severity extinguished the flames. That winter surviving Fauna, exhausted from fire and weakened by hunger, die in greater numbers than those claimed by the fire. The cosmos turns from one season to another and another and life in the park begins anew.

Now Playing | Planet Earth - a brief history - depicting the evolution of the planet from the Hadean period to the Anthropocene period. An evolutionary history of life on Earth. The Earth has undergone constant change in its 4.54 Billion year history with life evolving in response to those changes - in particular to the changing atmospheric compositions of carbon dioxide and oxygen. Species extinction has been a natural part of the evolutionary process of the planet however there are now thought to have been at least 8 mass extinction events in the history of the Earth - each of major consequence to life on the planet and of import to our modern understandings of climate change. This 6 minute animation has been created by paleoartist Bruce Currie and has been commissioned by the Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum – Bathurst.

Both Texas and federal officials have reportedly found that SpaceX violated environmental regulations discharging wastewater at its Starbase facility. SpaceX responded to the reports, saying that state and federal regulators gave it permission to continue operating its deluge system while it worked toward getting the appropriate permits. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had not confirmed waiving the permit requirements as of press time. The latest development in SpaceX’s long-running struggle with environmental regulations at its Boca Chica launch site was first reported by CNBC. SpaceX purchased land on the Gulf of Mexico in 2014 and has developed it to host the development and launch of Starship, its next generation rocket. Why wastewater matters SpaceX won approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for regular launches from the site in 2023—so long as the company met standards set out by various agencies, including rules designed to limit the environmental impact of launches. After Starship’s first test flight in April 2023 damaged the launch pad, SpaceX built a deluge system that dampens the energy from Starship’s 33 Raptor engines, releasing 422,000 gallons of water per flight, much of which is immediately vaporized. Monday’s news suggests more delays ahead as the company seeks to win approval not just for its next launch, which was expected as soon as September, but also for a higher launch cadence. Yesterday, the FAA suddenly postponed a series of public meetings to discuss increasing launches and landings at Boca Chica. “The FAA is seeking additional information from SpaceX before rescheduling the public meetings,” the agency told Payload in a statement. SpaceX says The company posted a statement on social media that stressed the company’s efforts to comply with environmental rules, including only using clean water in the system. However, SpaceX filings say ablation of its launch structure can contaminate the water, and a Texas ecologist told CNBC that mercury measurements by the company concerned him. SpaceX submitted its request for an individual permit to the TCEQ on July 1, about a year after installing the deluge system. This story originally appeared on Payload and is republished here with permission.

The majority of 25 surveyed developments around New Zealand lacked healthy, ecologically meaningful vegetation. Applying biodiversity targets for medium-density housing could turn this around.

Methane levels in the atmosphere are rising. An armada of satellites could help identify leaks from oil fields, landfills, and animal feed operations.

Six ways to take back your space after a breakup.

The world's largest coral has been found in the southwest Pacific Ocean, and scientists say the massive organism is visible from space.The big picture: The "mega coral" near the Solomon Islands that's believed to be about 300 years old and measures 105 feet long by 111 feet wide was discovered by the National Geographic Pristine Seas team, per an emailed statement from the group.Enric Sala, National Geographic explorer in residence and founder of Pristine Seas, said in a statement it's "a significant scientific discovery, like finding the world's tallest tree," but added "this coral is not safe from global warming and other human threats" despite its remote location.The discovery was announced Wednesday as world leaders gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the United Nations climate summit, COP29.Driving the news: The team that were studying the health of the Solomon Islands' ocean environments amid the threat of climate change in partnership with the island nation's government and others initially thought they'd spotted a shipwreck in the Three Sisters island.Underwater cinematographer Manu San Félix dived closer and found a it was an "exceptionally big" Pavona clavus, a species of colonial stony coral, which is mostly brown with splashes of bright yellows, blues and reds. according to the statement. Photo: Manu San Felix/National Geographic Pristine SeasFun fact: The gigantic organism that scientists say is bigger than a blue whale is a complex network of coral polyps, tiny creatures, rather than a reef — which is a network of many coral colonies.It "provides essential habitat, shelter and breeding grounds for an array of species from shrimp and crabs to fish," per the statement."To the naked eye, it may look like an immense rock just beneath the surface of the ocean."Zoom out: Scientists realized after examining satellite images that the coral is so large, it's "possible to see it from space," per CNN.State of play: The world is experiencing a fourth global coral bleaching event that NOAA says is the largest on record.The global bleaching event began in January 2023, when global ocean temperatures first surged to record levels during a strong El Niño in the tropical Pacific.Long-term, human-caused climate change has also played a significant role in boosting those temperatures, Axios' Andrew Freedman notes. Photo: Manu San Felix/National Geographic Pristine SeasZoom in: The Solomon Islands hosts the second-highest coral diversity on Earth, with over 490 known species, which the statement notes are both hard and soft. Eric Brown, coral scientist for the Pristine Seas expedition to the Solomon Islands said in a statement that while the nearby shallow reefs the researchers assed "were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope."What they're saying: David Baker, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies coral reefs, told NBC News the "fact that this coral has persisted through significant environmental change is a testament to its adaptability" as well as excellent conditions."The existence of large and old corals is a sign of hope — that it's not too late to protect, conserve and restore the oceans while fighting against climate change," added Baker, who noted the coral's vulnerability to climate change.Go deeper: Global coral bleaching event is a warning, "not certain death"

Low-income urban residents get rats and pigeons. But when the wealthy move in, they get species like rabbits and flying squirrels. As gentrification displaces lower-income people from American neighborhoods, the animal populations in the areas they're leaving behind are shifting toward local species less typically associated with city environments, a new study has found. The findings, published Monday...

Some nonprofits are teaming up to build new green spaces in Mississippi's capital city of Jackson

“What would a world without police look like?” In 2017, when I was 23 years old, I found myself in a room full of other Black and Brown Buffalonians who were part of a collective discussing this question. We held political education meetings to develop a shared language and political vision so as a collective we could alter policing in Buffalo, NY, and beyond. While others found themselves able to imagine what the world would look and feel like, if policing, surveillance and militarization disappeared, I struggled. To read a version of this story in Spanish click here. Haz clic aquí para leer este reportaje en español. The knot in my stomach came from the fact that I come from a family of cops – my mom, my grandfather, my cousins, my uncles – all were or still are cops. As you can imagine, me, the grand-daughter and daughter of former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers, found it difficult to answer this question. Growing up in a family connected to the NYPD, I wasn’t taught to question how policing came to be, let alone what a world without it would look like. For most of my life I took it as something that could not be changed; as well as something that was a public good. But in 2012, during my senior year of high school, Trayvon Martin was murdered. His murder challenged the idea that my neighborhood, the suburbs of Long Island, or even my class status would keep me safe. Then in college Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and Alton Sterling were murdered. Each time I learned about another Black person being killed by the police, their deaths chipped away at what I had been told about policing in the United States. While I learned more about the harms of policing after each of these murders, I had never considered what a world without police would look like until that day in 2017. Agents of Change in Environmental Justice · Greer Hamilton on arts-based environmental justice research Seven years later, I am still thinking about this question, especially in the way it connects to the relationship between policing and our surroundings, both natural and built. If you think about it, throughout history policing has shaped people’s relationships to different environments. From loitering laws to practices barring people from accessing certain establishments because of identities they hold, policing can be understood not just as an institution, but as a set of practices that reinforce inequalities. In this sense, there is a more subtle and nefarious form of policing that everyday people engage in: citizen-based policing. It relies on the use of emergency (9-1-1) and non-emergency (3-1-1) phone calls to try and reduce behaviors a group of people believe to be unfit, often in public spaces like parks and the outdoors. In New York City, researchers have found that wealthier, white residents moving into majority non-white neighborhoods are likely to call 3-1-1 to complain about loud music or noise. Media narratives and people choosing to physically occupy the space can reinforce it. These calls can result not only in citations, but also increase the presence of police in a neighborhood. The over policing of non-white communities can lead to fines or summons’, arrest, but also as we have vividly seen over the past 12 years or so, death. I’ve come to believe that to fully engage with the question of a world without police, we need to address the social ways we police and patrol our neighbors and greenspaces. While we all can engage in citizen-based policing, historically citizen-based policing has been used by white people to limit the access of Black and Brown people to public parks and other greenspaces, cutting them off from the mental, social and spiritual wellbeing green spaces provide. This way of policing perpetuates a history of exclusion of Black and Brown people from the outdoors. A brief history of citizen-based policing and public parksThere is a longstanding and well-documented history of citizen-based policing in and around urban public parks in the United States. For decades, urban public parks were built to materialize the ideals and needs of white, upper-class people. For example, the social elites behind the creation of Central Park wanted a greenspace that would not only increase the value of their properties near the park but would provide a dedicated recreation and leisure space for white, wealthy people in the area. Long before Central Park was even an idea, Dutch settlers had the Lenape people removed from the area in 1626. Then in 1857, to realize the goal of a large, urban public park, the City of New York used its power to take control of private property for the purposes of public use to dismantle the Black settlement Seneca Village, a neighborhood that offered Black residents a refuge from discrimination. Many parks in bustling industrial cities like Chicago or Baltimore followed the same process of removing people from an area to make way for parks that were meant to reinforce the white dominant class ideals. Often, these processes contributed to Black and other oppressed communities losing access to greenspaces, creating what researchers have called a “nature gap”, a term that describes how low income and communities of color lack access to nature-based spaces. This has health and civic engagement implications for people. Despite this unjust exclusion, parks such as Washington Square Park (New York City) have been a site for protest dating as far back as 1834. Similarly, the People's Park at UC Berkeley has been home to anti-war rallies and demonstrations since the 1960s. Unfortunately, the same process of denying low income and communities of color from these spaces continues today through citizen policing. In 2018, a news story broke about Jennifer Schulte, a white woman who became known as “BBQ Becky”, who called the police on Black men barbecuing at a park in Oakland, California, because she believed that they were doing something inappropriate. Two years later, Amy Cooper, a white woman falsely accused Christian Cooper (not related), a Black birdwatcher, of threatening her life when he asked her to leash her dog in an area of Central Park where dogs are required to be leashed. Researchers of Chicago’s efforts to “revitalize parks” have found that youth of color living near the 606, an urban greenway, were often monitored by white residents to control their behaviors. In all of these examples, citizen-based policing pretends to reinforce public parks as “white spaces”, which leads to non-white people having to prove that they are credible enough to use and enjoy the space.The case of La Salle ParkIn my own research, I have learned firsthand from residents of Buffalo, NY, how the redevelopment of an urban public park can lead to increased policing and citizen policing. The 77-acre park where I develop my research includes baseball fields, soccer fields and picnic areas, and was built in 1932 on a former industrial lot. While originally named Centennial Park to celebrate Buffalo’s Centennial Celebration in 1932, the park would later be renamed after René-Robert Cavalier de La Salle (a French settler) but to this day is lovingly known as the “People’s Park,” as it was a gathering place for all people in the city for decades. Cultural events held at the park like the Puerto Rican Day parade or World Refugee Day reinforced it as a place that brought many kinds of people together as it is surrounded by mixed income and migration status neighborhoods. Even after the City’s Master Plan to reconfigure the park to include sports fields in 1998, it remained used and loved by the community.This began to change in 2019. That year, the City of Buffalo received approximately $50 million dollars from Ralph Wilson Jr. Foundation to turn LaSalle Park into a “destination park”, or a park that usually has features such as playgrounds and trails that make someone want to travel to it.For my study, I talked to seven long-time residents of the West Side of Buffalo who often frequented LaSalle Park. They recounted how the redevelopment led to an increased presence of the Buffalo police department. One of my study participants told me that “as a Black man, I actually feel really uncomfortable with the amount of police that I see trafficking along that area,” he said. “I don't necessarily know the history of violence in LaSalle Park or what that looks like if that is a thing. But I know that I often feel just really uncomfortable, whenever me and my friends are down there. It feels like we're being watched.”The seven people I talked to for hours also believed that redevelopment led to the arrival of white, suburban residents who brought different ideals about public space. This led them to retreat from the park that they loved so much out of fear for their safety. As one of the residents said, “… it feels weird because I look at them looking at me like, ‘what am I doing here’?”These experiences are sadly not unique to the residents of Buffalo who participated in my study. Urban public parks being redeveloped or in changing neighborhoods have been found to become visible representations of gentrification, as they are made in the image of those they want to attract, rather than the current users. As a result, the new park users monitor the behaviors and leisure of people they deem to not be of the community or engage with the space in the way that they agree, like “BBQ Becky”.In recent years, much has been written about communities of color lacking access to public greenspaces. This work has highlighted how not having access to greenspaces such as parks can impact people’s health and well-being, linking access to parks is with improved mental health, reduced obesity, and lower blood pressure. But I think we need to transcend this research, and think about how greenspaces are related to citizenry, to a person’s right to be a participatory member of a community. Parks have been spaces for activism and spaces for social gatherings and celebrations, which means they’re places where political and cultural rights are realized. Even when people can access a park, if we are not attuned to the history of the place and the ways that parks are designed to reinforce oppressive ideals, potential social and political interactions are lost.I am still developing my understanding of what a world without policing would look and feel like. What I do know is that green spaces such as public parks are not void of power, but rather are one manifestation of it. While we challenge the institution of policing, we must also interrogate the ways that we – yes, you and even me– can contribute to the policing of others. As scary as it may be, considering what a world without police would look like would mean bringing about a world that not only removes the physical police forces we have, but the social ways we police and patrol.This essay was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship, a partnership between Environmental Health News and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.

Past Presentation | The last indigenous people of Mentawai, a small archipelago south-west of Sumatra, are fighting with creative resistance to preserve their ancient culture and rainforest. A culture on the verge of extinction - with the latest geopolitical developments, the destruction of their habitat reaches the point of no return. Smashing the hopes of thirty years of democratization in Indonesia, Jakarta in relapse to authoritarian rule is enforcing deforestation in Mentawai. In collaboration with investigative journalist Febrianti and indigenous foundations, our film portrays indigenous culture, history and resistance up to the most recent developments in geopolitical of Indonesia's growing environmental degradation. Connect with all your heart and senses: see, feel, touch, smell life in the jungle. The cinematic and compassionate camera conveys an intimate and sensual experience of the indigenous life on Mentawai with its beauty and vulnerability. Three shamans are the main characters in the film, hunter-gatherers in a culture predating even traditions of weaving or pottery, archaic traditions with their own complexity. The film portrays daily life of the indigenous tribe, their spiritual cosmos and their commitment to preserving their own culture and natural habitat. Logging companies threaten the fragile eco-system of the islands. Rare historic footage and archive materials tell the story of decades of oppression of the indigenous culture – but also of the resilience of our main characters and the last tribes living in the jungle. The main character, Father Laulau had been a leader in this struggle for decades, meeting the governor on Sumatra in a key point of history. The latter part of the film explores the geopolitical context and shows a new generation joining our main characters in the fight for the preservation of both their environment and culture – as part of a larger movement in Indonesia. The project started by indigenous initiative: Martison Siritoitet from Indigenous foundation Suku Mentawai (http:/sukumentawai.org) invited director Joo Peter to Mentawai and a long-term collaboration started including also Mentawai Indigenous Education Program (http://IEFprograms.org) The film is one of a planned series of films celebrating the diversity and richness of the Indonesian indigenous culture.

From a solar eclipse to a dolphin-like nebula, these otherworldly sights are captured in sharp detail by astrophotographers from around the world

EPFL engineers have designed a flexible swimming robot capable of maneuvering effortlessly through congested water surfaces. Inspired by marine flatworms, this groundbreaking device opens new avenues for environmental monitoring and ecological research. Swimming robots are essential for mapping pollution, studying aquatic ecosystems, and monitoring water quality in sensitive areas such as coral reefs and lake [...]

As climate anxiety grows, Americans are finding comfort and community in climate cafes, spaces dedicated to discussing the emotional toll of environmental change.Lola Fadulu and Emily Schmall report for The New York Times.In short:Climate cafes are emerging nationwide, offering a platform for individuals to express their fears and grief about the climate crisis.These gatherings, inspired by the concept of death cafes, aim to help participants appreciate life while acknowledging environmental challenges.Facilitators trained by the Climate Psychology Alliance lead discussions, emphasizing the mental health impacts of climate change and strategies for emotional resilience.Key quote:"I can’t buy into the narrative anymore that there’s no choice in how this ends and that major corporations have complete control over my future."— Sheila McMenamin, Brooklyn residentWhy this matters:In a world grappling with the realities of climate change, climate cafes provide a unique space for emotional support and collective action. For years Americans have been warned about the dangers of pollution and climate change but one effect is neglected: impacts to our brains.

Just six miles away from the mega-rocket's fifth test flight, the noise level was equivalent to a rock concert, researchers found

From handheld to space-based, new methane detectors are making it easier to track the greenhouse gas.

The photo taken by Bill Anders is one of the most famous images ever snapped in outer space.

Rio Grande Valley groups are accusing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in a lawsuit of bypassing state regulations by allowing SpaceX to temporarily discharge industrial water at its South Texas launch site without a proper permit

Archaeoastronomers piece together how people understood the heavens thousands of years ago.

Air pollution is worsening near massive e-commerce warehouses as a result of constant traffic around these hubs, a new study found. The new study was led by researchers at The George Washington University and published in the Nature Communications journal on Wednesday. The researchers used satellite observations to measure traffic-related pollutant nitrogen dioxide across nearly 150,000...

In the lawsuit, the groups accuse TCEQ of exceeding its authority by allowing the discharges.

Egg cartons are labeled with all sorts of descriptors, making grocery shopping a confusing experience. Experts tell us what these labels mean and how to shopShopping for eggs at the grocery store can be a confusing experience. Cartons are labeled with all kinds of descriptors – natural, organic, cage-free, free-range – and some cost more at checkout. But what do they actually mean, and for ethically minded consumers, are they actually worth the money?Protein-packed eggs are linked to relatively low carbon emissions compared with other land-based animal protein sources, but not all eggs are created equal when it comes to the environment, health or animal welfare, experts say. Continue reading...

Poisoning has emerged as one of the most common tools used to target wolves in Oregon. Roblyn Brown, wolf program coordinator with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, talked on Beat Check about the poisonings, the state's stagnant wolf population and how to bridge the divide between people who love wolves and those who want them gone.

Imagine you live in a town where everyday essentials like work, food, school, health care, and cultural activities all lie within a quick walk or bike ride from people’s homes. Your city has reduced residents’ reliance on car travel, freed you from your hellish commutes, and reconnected communities with one another. Public transit is reliable, concrete expanses have been transformed into lush green space, and carbon emissions are plummeting.This was the idea sketched by Carlos Moreno, the Sorbonne University professor who pioneered the “15-minute city.” A computer scientist by training, Moreno spent the mid-2000s designing digital energy-management platforms to address urban sustainability. But he became convinced that tech-centered approaches would not solve cities’ problems. He began developing the 15-minute city idea, introducing it at the United Nations’ COP21 Climate Conference in 2015, and working with city leaders to test practices that could bring people closer to their needs and help improve environmental outcomes. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought a flood of high-profile attention to the 15-minute city. A group of nearly 100 mayors committed to implementing it in some form as a means toward a climate-friendly recovery from the crisis. At COP26 in 2021, architects put the strategy at the center of discussions of sustainable city development goals. The World Economic Forum released slick videos and articles endorsing the 15-minute city. It’s probably no wonder, then, that the 15-minute city eventually penetrated the tinfoil hats of the far right. In 2023, climate deniers, QAnon types, radical libertarians, anti-vaxxers, and white supremacists seized on the World Economic Forum’s elite support for the idea. Fringe narratives made it synonymous with “climate lockdowns” and the “great reset,” in which governments would confine residents to open-air prisons, restricting and surveilling their movements (and perhaps forcing them to eat bugs). Online conspiracists compared the 15-minute city to the Warsaw Ghetto. Reactionary self-help author Jordan B. Peterson called it a scheme by “idiot tyrannical bureaucrats” to tell you where you’re allowed to drive. Moreno, in the normal course of events, became a lightning rod for insane abuse and death threats.Conspiracists have little to fear, as Moreno’s resolutely non-sinister new book, The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our Planet, makes plain. To the decades of poor urban planning that have hastened climate emergency and caused dire “fragmentation,” Moreno poses a utopian solution: “happy proximity.” “We seek to foster mixed-use urban neighborhoods and living spaces that build strong links between people, strengthen social cohesion, and promote a better quality of life,” he writes. The book outlines a moderate program for a sustainable urban future, in which city officials enact incremental policy changes—more bike paths, better public transit, broader green space—that largely rely on private capital and pose little threat to the political status quo. But the thinking behind these features also evokes a more radical egalitarian vision, one that could decentralize work, improve neighborhood solidarity, and help end exploitative economic relationships, expanding our free time and reducing neighborhood displacement along the way. Our current predicament owes, in part, to the planning principles of the twentieth century. The Athens Charter, a 1933 document published by renowned architect Le Corbusier and the International Congress of Modern Architecture, promoted the “radiant city,” an idealized plan that would zone urban areas for distinct uses: high-rise residential districts surrounded by green space, with separate industrial and commercial zones, all connected by high-speed transportation infrastructure. This aim to rationalize modern cities became enormously influential in postwar planning worldwide.But the radiant city had its discontents. The construction of highways in places like New York and Paris wiped out whole neighborhoods, separated communities, and damaged the environment. Residential areas sprawled into the suburban outskirts. Car dependency and long commutes to work became the norm, eating into people’s precious free time. (Later came gentrification, as affluent suburbanites returned to the urban core.) “This expansion,” Moreno writes, “has occurred at the expense of proximity, community, and the traditional activities of city life, such as local markets, walks, and urban nature.” Some modern thinkers fought to preserve more traditional neighborhood cohesion. In the midcentury, activist Jane Jacobs and her neighbors shot down a proposed highway that urban planner Robert Moses aimed to build through Lower Manhattan, and residents of Amsterdam kept their city bike-friendly by rejecting a destructive development plan. Meanwhile, some workplaces tried teleworking as early as the 1970s as a means of reducing commutes—it was an attempt at “bringing work to the worker”—but neither the tech nor the incentives for employers were strong enough to sustain it. Today, Moreno argues, we must again take up Jacobs’s call for cities that operate at a “human scale.”In order to foster greater proximity, Moreno favors the idea of the “neighborhood unit,” in which cities are divided into autonomous, self-sufficient areas that provide residents with access to all essentials. He promotes no single model—no “magic copy-and-paste”—to achieve this end. Instead, buttressed by manifesto-like questions and kooky PowerPoint-style infographics, Moreno encourages broad measures: moving away from rigid zoning rules that separate city functions and toward greater versatility of uses. These changes, he claims, will advance more equitable cities, combat gentrification, and improve sustainability. “Our radical rethinking of our urban present is a crucial step toward transforming our cities into more balanced and fulfilling living spaces,” he writes.There is, of course, a limit to how “radical” any policy can be when rammed through the meat grinder of liberal urban politics. One useful thing about the 15-minute city, as an idea, is that it asks planners to actually plan: to make thoughtful decisions about the entire urban ecosystem, what it contains, and for whom. The 15-minute city asks planners to actually plan: to make thoughtful decisions about the entire urban ecosystem, what it contains, and for whom.Yet city planning today is hamstrung by fiscal austerity and obsessed with economic growth. So much of it is outsourced to the private sector. Cities can try to diversify uses by reforming zoning, discouraging car use, and greening their concrete wastelands, but it’s largely up to developers where things like housing and health clinics and grocery stores go. Typically, they are built where there’s capital to extract—and not, for example, in poor communities of color. “There are aspects of this for which we do not have a solution,” Moreno told Politico in 2022, “because it’s a matter that’s up to private enterprise to change.”Still, many cities are making changes under the banner of the 15-minute city, mostly for the good. Mayors of the C40 Cities, a climate leadership organization, have been marketing the approach as an environmental remedy since at least 2015, when more than 1,000 gathered for the Paris climate summit. Since 2017, Paris itself has been working with Moreno’s research team to implement some version of the 15-minute city. In the time since then, the city has created 746 miles of protected bike paths, transformed highways along the Seine into pedestrian spaces, and established new community meeting places on school grounds. It has also redeveloped former industrial sites into multipurpose areas that include educational facilities, public housing, and vegetable gardens.In 2020, the C40 cities officially adopted the 15-minute city as a strategy for managing the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, and many have tried some of its tenets. Cleveland, a onetime automotive town hit hard by deindustrialization and the subprime mortgage crisis, committed in 2022 to investing $3.5 million into safety improvements for cyclists and pedestrians, greening streets, and changing the zoning code to require public transit options with new development instead of off-street parking. Buenos Aires, Argentina, home to suffocating car traffic and rising heat waves, recently replaced swathes of pavement with vegetation and changed the building code of its central business district, where many office buildings now sit empty, to encourage mixed-use development. Busan, a tech-sector stronghold in South Korea, promised a 15-minute city initiative that will launch new living facilities focused on walking, competitions to design pedestrian-friendly environments, and pilot sites where public-private partnerships will help develop parks and infrastructure. These changes are positive, if relatively modest. Moreno offers them, alongside other happy examples—from Portland, Oregon, to Tunisia to Melbourne—as evidence that the 15-minute city has become a “global movement.” “With proximity at its heart,” he writes, “it mobilizes a vast amount of creative energy to achieve a balance previously thought impossible: reconciling the fight against climate change with economic development, while promoting the social inclusion of the inhabitants of our towns and cities.” At the same time, it’s unclear whether these initiatives are measurably improving people’s experiences of walkability, services, or local ecology—let alone how, in the absence of tenant protections, they might accelerate gentrification. As yet, the record is short on evidence and long on breathless public statements from mayors bedazzled by a new urbanist buzzword.It’s easy to see why the 15-minute city has captured the imagination of both liberal policymakers and right-wing conspiracists who are leery of their authority. From one perspective it’s a slick advertisement for the modern city-as-commodity, while from the other it conceals a perfect authoritarian plot. In Oxford, an English city that introduced some 15-minute planning concepts in 2022—such as traffic controls that would limit car congestion—thousands of protesters filled the streets, calling the change “dystopian.” Some demonstrators were arrested. Local media figures and the 1990s pop band Right Said Fred warned residents of dire threats to their “personal freedom.” The protesters, as one local representative said, seemed to overestimate officials’ competence to carry out malevolent plans. Frankly, they may also overestimate officials’ desire to carry out benevolent plans as well.From one perspective it’s a slick advertisement for the modern city-as-commodity, while from the other it conceals a perfect authoritarian plot. Beneath these ludicrous confrontations lie more consequential ones. Pollution from urban areas is damaging not only to the natural environment but to residents’ health and well-being, as The 15-Minute City notes. Cities are responsible for more than 70 percent of global carbon emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, contributing to rising global temperatures and declining air quality. Increasingly, cities relegate working people of color to the outlying sprawl, imposing long trips to work and even to buy groceries. But bringing decentralizing workplaces closer to homes, increasing access to urgent needs, and reducing car dependency are long-term projects, ones that will undoubtedly face resistance from developers, auto manufacturers, and the fossil fuel industry. Moreno has little to say about how residents themselves might direct these changes. But it’s clear that it will require community-led action to meaningfully disrupt powerful interests. In a recent video essay about 15-minute cities on the Radical Planning YouTube channel, the urban planner host notes that leftist activists in Barcelona, inspired by the lack of car traffic and improved air quality during the pandemic, wrote a public manifesto in 2020 demanding a reorganization of the city that would encourage equity, affordability, and climate remediation. Their ideas included investing in free bike and public transit infrastructure, expanding tree canopies and green space, building public housing to reduce displacement, and curbing tourism to rein in harmful forms of economic growth. These demands would apply differently in different cities, but they give a taste of what a more fully realized 15-minute city, directed by popular appetite and opposed to limitless extraction, could encompass. “​​The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies, and aesthetic values we desire,” wrote urban geographer David Harvey in 2008, in the wake of the last global crisis. “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization.” Today, our cities are organized around the profit-seeking of elites, who believe that the city is their right. It’s this arrangement that’s truly unsustainable. In the years to come, as we face down radical climate change, it will take just such an exercise of collective power to reshape our cities in ways that serve a common right of urban well-being for all. As an expression of this collective “right to the city” for ordinary people, we could do much worse than the 15-minute ideal.

Certification awarded for 2.5m acres offering pristine views of night sky, with hopes for expansion to 11m acresWith clear skies and sparse trees, the Oregon outback has long been regarded as a stargazers’ paradise. Now the region is home to the world’s largest dark sky sanctuary, offering pristine views of the night sky across 2.5m acres.The Oregon outback international dark sky sanctuary received the certification this week, becoming the largest of 19 sites around the world with the same designation. The sanctuary covers Lake county in south-eastern Oregon, a remote area roughly half the size of New Jersey, and could eventually expand to include more than 11m acres. Continue reading...

Scientists are tagging sharks to map Pacific migration routes in a bid to expand marine reserves before more of these endangered species fall prey to illegal industrial fishingIt’s a three-person job to land a 2-metre shark: two to wrap ropes around its thrashing tail and midriff, a third to clamp shut its powerful jaws. Hanging over the side of the Sea Quest fishing skiff, the crew work quickly to minimise any distress to the animal, a female silky shark. Once onboard, a hose attached to a saltwater pump is placed in her mouth, to irrigate her gills.Catching and tagging sharks is contentious among some researchers, who say it is harmful. But for Alex Hearn, a professor of biology at Quito’s Universidad de San Francisco in Ecuador, who has studied sharks for two decades, it is critical to understanding behaviour that could better protect one of the most endangered group of vertebrates on the planet. Continue reading...

New research indicates that birds are not alone while migrating—and sharing space with other species may even help them on the journey