‘Here Is The Letter That Has Destroyed My Universe’ And 4 More Astrophysics Revolutions
On this day, April 25, in 1929, the world learned how astronomer Edwin Hubble had discovered that the universe was much larger than we had believed. On this day in 2025, you can preorder a book and on the 29th learn about this and four other Astrophysics discoveries that changed how we see the universe - and ourselves - in The Story of Astrophysics in Five Revolutions.
By Ersilia Vaudo, translated by Vanessa Di Stefano. If you use this link we get a penny or something.
Big Organic Continues To Oppose Food That Uses No Pesticides
I get pitches for stories every day and sometimes I want to see if the world that opposes science has made any progress now that a member of a Republican administration who was formerly one of their own, former Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is being helped by their rhetoric.So when I got a message from a PR rep for the Real Organic Project™ about their client, I wanted to know if they still oppose hydroponic food. Hydroponic food uses no soil, which means in a controlled environment it needs no pesticides. The public loves that idea. The last time a survey was done, only 7% of the public wanted to know about GMOs in their food unsolicited while over 70% wanted to know what pesticides are used in food production.(1)
No Goldilocks, Webb Telescope Didn’t Discover Life On K2-18b
K2-18b, detected in 2015, orbits a star 124 light years away. Though it is over 800% as large as Earth, its space in the habitable zone of its star, like where we are, means the possibiliy that liquid water could exist on its surface.The science community calls it The Goldilocks Zone. Like the character in the children's story who wanted porridge neither too hot nor too cold, a Goldilocks planet that might have life we could recognize would need to be in a similar narrow band.
Climate Change Is Causing More Snowflakes
In a bizarre experiment, scholars declared that survivors of one of California's annual wildfires instead suffered PTSD due to climate change.It was a small group, 27 who had been near a fire in 2018, 21 who had seen smoke, and 27 in the control group. Participants had EEG brain scans taken while they engaged in behavior which could provide monetary rewards. The scholars also subjectively scored their Win-Stay behavior, basically how often they sought the highest long-term rewards.
The Government Wants More Coal To Get Energy Costs Down – Is That Bad For The Air?
President Donald Trump is about to sign an executive order restarting coal leasing on federal lands while classifying coal as a critical mineral.Social media critics, and academics being quoted in media, are declaring the end of the world due to American pollution. Are they correct?
French Chicks Impacted Most: Activists Set Their Sights On Banning Tebuconazole
A French team conducted experiments using sparrow chicks and write in Environmental Research that their tests led to slower growth, with females impacted most.They targeted the common fungicide tebuconazole, popular on food crops because it can stop everything from necrotic ring spot to blights, mildews, and smuts. They compare it to the popular weedkiller glyphosate, which they claim has caused a decline in birds in Europe, despite scientists showing the top reason for bird population changes in various areas has been land use changes and not the use of pesticides lacking an Organic™ label.
With Fluoride Ban, Utah Sets Out To Be The California Of The Right Wing
When asked about an effort to ban fluoride in drinking water, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said, "It’s not a bill I care that much about” but he still signed it, despite the health benefits being well-established and claims of harm being the kind of slimy epidemiology that claims "risk" of BPA, weedkillers, PFAS, and too many products to count.Utah wants to be the California of the right-wing; ban things because it matches the politics of their voters and science will be marginalized.(1)
If The World Bank Stops Banning Nuclear, Boomer Environmentalism Is Over
Greenpeace is facing bankruptcy after a $667,000,000 judgment. For the first time ever, the number of U.S. federal employees declined. Democrats have begun to consider they might be wrongly defending terrorists. They even became pro-vaccine for the first time this century.The best thing President Donald Trump may have done for science and political sanity is to switch from Democrat to Republican and bring Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk along with him. It forced Democrats, who are nearly 90% of career government employees, to suddenly defend things they had opposed for decades.(1)
Like nuclear energy. Which means we could usher in a new Golden Age of Science.
Epidemiologists Blame 15th Century Science For Modern Brain Tumors
Claims about occupational hazards, chemicals correlated to disease, occur every week, from non-stick spatulas to flame-retardant couches, and the group targeted more by those efforts than pregnant women are first responders like firefighters.A new paper links gliomas in the brain or spinal cords to a specific mutation and then using epidemiological correlation to "suggest" cause from haloalkene, a common chemical in use for 600 years and in the 20th century in nearly every home with fire extinguishers, but then denying they are trying to suggest cause down at the bottom.
Trump Administration Authorizes $100 Million For New Vaccine Research
In its second year, Avian Influenza has wrecked the U.S. poultry industry and caused egg prices to rise sharply. A month into a new presidential term, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has been given $1 billion to get the problem under control.Hundreds of millions fewer chickens mean expensive eggs, and poor people who suffered through 44% food inflation were counting on lower prices.