Nature, Environment, Climate Change, Ecology

Australian farmers are coming off three bumper years. Are they prepared for the sudden dry?

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 20:00:12 -0400

Beef and sheep prices have plummeted as farmers try to reduce livestock herds built up during La Niña years ahead of a dry, unproductive El Niño season

Last year was a pretty good year for Melinee Leather and her husband, Robert. Their business, the Leather Cattle Company, breeds cattle for the European market on three farms stretching over 17,000 hectares near Rockhampton in Queensland.

As the weather has turned dry earlier this year, they have started selling down their herd of 5,000 in anticipation of Australia entering an El Niño climate pattern. They watched the markets and the weather and waited. More cattle are going to the sales this week and next.

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An injured galah taught me that what makes something beautiful is also what makes it fragile | Natasha May

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 20:00:12 -0400

Perhaps it’s naive not to imagine that all of life itself is about accepting the fragility of how easily things break

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We turned off the highway, headed down the road which leads to the pub and saw the pink little fellow hovering near his mate, who was dead by the side of the road.

Having moved to the country a little over a month ago, I was still getting used to the frequency of spotting creatures on the shoulders of western New South Wales’s arteries.

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Orbit Is Curating a Series of Free Craft Talks With Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 19:00:00 -0400

Orbit Books, an imprint of Hachette, has developed a free virtual event series for aspiring science-fiction and fantasy writers. Attendees can attend any of the 14 sessions—which are spread out over six weeks in October and early November—for free. The topics range from nitty gritty advice on worldbuilding to a panel…

Universal Monsters and Blumhouse Horror Reign in These Halloween Collections

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 18:00:00 -0400

Universal Pictures has a long horror legacy that encompasses the original Universal Monsters films, Chucky, events like Halloween Horror Nights, and new Blumhouse terrors like M3GAN and the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s.

The Microplastics Are in the Clouds Now

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 17:10:00 -0400

Nowhere is safe from microplastics. Tiny plastic pieces are in waterways, in our bodies, and now researchers have found microplastics in clouds on top of Mount Fuji and Mount Oyama.

Japan's ispace Delays Lunar Lander Mission for NASA Design Update

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 17:10:00 -0400

From its new headquarters in the U.S., Tokyo-based startup ispace will develop its Apex 1.0 lunar lander to transport NASA payloads to the Moon in 2026.

Castlevania: Nocturne's Gaming Music Moment Is as Great as Its Predecessor's

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 17:00:00 -0400

Nocturne, the new successor series to Netflix’s excellent animated Castlevania adaptations, plays with its legacy in some truly smart ways—both as a successor show metatextually, and narratively as its heroes navigate being part of a generational supernatural conflict. But one of its greatest moments is a fascinating…

The Euclid 'Dark Universe' Space Telescope Is Off to a Faltering Start

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 16:45:00 -0400

The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope launched from Earth on July 1 and has since been getting set up to begin its investigation of the dark universe. But the instrument commissioning hasn’t been rainbows and butterflies, as the telescope’s engineers and scientists have worked to untangle several issues…

Social Media Users Don't Want to BeReal Anymore, Report Finds

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 16:25:00 -0400

BeReal’s active users appear to be exiting the platform in droves, with the number of active users dropping by 18% since it peaked in November of last year. The app gained a substantial number of active users in 2022 but now has a shrinking userbase that’s far smaller than its social media counterparts, according to a…

Doctor Who's New Theme Will Make a Symphonic Debut Next Month

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 16:10:00 -0400

A new era of Doctor Who means a new version of the 60-year-old series’ legendary theme song, and before fans hear it across the trio of anniversary specials set to broadcast in November, they’ll get to experience it in style... if they turn their radio on, that is.

NASA Delays Launch of Psyche Asteroid Mission Due to Thruster Issue

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 15:45:00 -0400

A week before it was set to launch to a distant metal rich asteroid, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is forced to remain grounded until the space agency resolves an issue with its thrusters.

Blue Origin and Sierra Space's Space Station Collaboration Hits Turbulence

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 15:31:56 -0400

Once among the star companies championing a deal to create a private successor to the International Space Station, talks between Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Sierra Space regarding the Orbital Reef project now appear to be souring.

Kids These Days Get 4,500 Notifications a Day and Hate Facebook, New Study Says

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 15:20:00 -0400

The kids are not all right and are being subject to a firehouse of pinging in the thick of the Information Age. A new report reveals that children are getting upwards of 4,500 notifications a day and have some predictable favorite (and least favorite) apps.

It's Not the Season You're Expecting With All the Lego Sets You Can Buy in October

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 15:15:00 -0400

The feast and famine of Lego releases continues as, after last month’s Star Wars blowout, October is looking like a quieter month in terms of sheer volume of sets to tempt your wallet. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t heavy hitters among those to come!

Hollow nanoparticles linked by DNA make unusually strong materials

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 15:00:07 -0400

Particles that are too small to be assembled into materials with conventional methods can be bound together with DNA molecules – the result is clumps of unusually strong and stiff material

Hex & Co. Built a Beloved Gaming Community—Now It's Organizing

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 14:14:00 -0400

On Wednesday, the organized workers of board game bar/cafe Hex & Co. delivered a letter to one of the owners, Dr. Jon Freeman, asserting their right to collectively bargain, and asking him—and co-owner Greg May—to voluntarily recognize the union. They have given Freeman and May until the end of the month to respond.

Letterboxd Owners Sell Out for $50 Million

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 14:00:00 -0400

Letterboxd owners sold a majority stake in their social film discussion and discovery platform to Tiny for a whopping $50 million, the company announced on Friday. Tiny, a Canadian technology investment and holding company, acquired a 60% stake in the platform, but the owners noted in a press release that they’ll…

Updated: More Disney Lorcana Stock Is on Its Way to Local Stores

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 13:48:00 -0400

The Disney Lorcana trading card game arrived with a massive splash at Gen Con this year, with people staying in line overnight to get booster packs. The high demand continued after the convention, and now a Ravensburger spokesperson tells io9 that “additional booster product” will be arriving at local gaming stores in…

10 Great New Horror, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy Films to Put on Your Radar

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 13:30:00 -0400

If you love genre films, there truly is nothing like Fantastic Fest. While most festivals play a more balanced slate of films covering all genres, this Austin, Texas-based fest plays only the good shit. Other festivals sometimes refer to them as “Midnight Movies,” but it’s always midnight at Fantastic Fest. Horror,…

Unlocking the mysteries of the body's system that lets you get high

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 13:00:42 -0400

The endocannabinoid system that helps cannabis get us high is also vital to many other aspects of our health. Now we’re finally starting to understand why – and what that means for devising new treatments

A New X-Men Movie Is in Its Very Earliest Stages at Marvel Studios

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 13:00:00 -0400

The mutants are coming! The mutants are coming! A new report suggests that now, with the writers’ strike over, Marvel Studios has put the wheels in motion to start taking meetings about an upcoming X-Men movie. This is the absolute earliest stage of the process—but it is the start of the process, and that’s saying…

The First Toxic Avenger Trailer Is a Bloody Good Mess

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 12:45:00 -0400

Break out the mops, throw on the tutus, and slide that eye down to your cheek. The first trailer for the remake of The Toxic Avenger is here and it perfectly portrays the film’s irreverent tone and gory tendencies.

We’ve just realised that a tiny West African crocodile can moo

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 12:28:17 -0400

Audio recordings reveal that the African dwarf crocodile moos like a cow – and listening out for its calls could help biologists track the species in the wild

Shell Galaxy Reveals Its Onion-Like Layers to Dark Energy Camera

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 12:10:00 -0400

Behold a galactic onion: the shell galaxy NGC 3923, spotted by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory’s Dark Energy Camera (DECam) at a distance of about 70 million light-years from Earth.

October's Huge List of New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 12:00:08 -0400

The days may be getting shorter, but October’s list of new sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books is as long as ever, with a seasonally appropriate emphasis on “horror.” There are witches, haunted houses, monsters, and more—plus celebrity cameos, like Star Trek icon Patrick Stewart, and a host of new anthologies, including…

Florida and Texas Social Media Content Moderation Bans Heading to Supreme Court

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 11:45:00 -0400

The GOP’s biggest gripes with big tech content moderation will have their day in the United States’ highest court. On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments for Florida and Texas’ big bills that have tried to stop big tech companies from moderating disinformation or other speech. The outcome has the…

Activists stage Rosebank oilfield protest outside offices of Labour frontbench

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 11:21:22 -0400

Party urged to commit to revoking licence for site in North Sea and back comprehensive Green New Deal

Young climate activists staged sit-down protests outside the offices of every member of Labour’s shadow cabinet on Friday, calling on the party to take a tougher line on the proposed new Rosebank oilfield and back a comprehensive Green New Deal.

This week the UK’s biggest untapped oilfield was given the go-ahead despite widespread opposition from scientists, poverty campaigners and climate and energy experts.

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 4 Review: E Ink and OLED Screens in a Single Laptop

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 11:15:00 -0400

The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 4 hits a couple of my soft spots. It’s a hybrid PC with an inventive, risk-taking design, and it includes an E Ink display. And not just any E Ink display, but one of the only color E Ink displays I’ve seen in the real world. The other side of the display is a 13-inch OLED panel, which…

Judge allows private prosecution of Southern Water over pollution claims

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 11:01:25 -0400

Fish Legal win permission to summon firm to face allegations linked to diesel pollution of River Test

A judge has given permission for a private prosecution to go ahead against a water company accused over the pollution of one of the UK’s most cherished fishing rivers.

Southern Water will appear in court in February to face allegations linked to diesel pollution in the River Test in Hampshire.

I’m a suburban Melbourne renter. Here’s how I weaned my home off gas and saved money on energy bills | Nelli Stevenson

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 11:00:03 -0400

After ditching central heating and focusing on power efficiency, we’ve cut our gas usage by 83% and are well on the way to paying off our new appliances

Change by Degrees is our new Saturday column offering life hacks and sustainable living tips to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

Come winter, there’s one three-letter subject that really dominates the outer suburbs of Melbourne, and if you guessed AFL, I’m afraid you’ve missed the mark.

I live in the quiet, leafy west, where houses were built cheaply and quickly, which leaves us all groaning about one thing: gas. These big spacious houses cost an absolute bomb to heat in winter.

This Prey Behind-the-Scenes Clip Explores the Predator's Weapons

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 11:00:00 -0400

Anyone disappointed that they didn’t get to see last year’s awesome Predator-prequel Prey in theaters will soon get the next best thing. The streaming title is getting its very own 4K/Blu-ray release next week and io9 has an exclusive clip from the special features.

French Authorities Reportedly Raided Nvidia Offices

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 10:50:00 -0400

French authorities reportedly raided Nvidia’s local offices this week to investigate the company’s suspected anti-competitive practices. The raid was based on a final opinion report by the Autorité de la concurrence which published a market study on cloud sector competition in June.

Biden to sell three oil and gas leases over five years, angering climate advocates

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 10:38:17 -0400

Administration releases plan, which represents lowest number of lease sales since 1980, but is still set to increase oil production

The Biden administration on Friday released a plan to sell as many as three offshore oil and gas leases over the next five years, garnering criticism from some climate advocates.

Set to govern potential sales through late 2028, the hotly anticipated plan from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a part of the interior department, includes no auctions for next year, and represents the lowest number of lease sales since the program began in 1980.

NASA’s Parker Probe Shatters Records During Latest Solar Swoop

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 10:25:00 -0400

NASA’s groundbreaking Parker Solar Probe continues to set new milestones, diving continuously deeper towards the Sun, and offering insights into the star’s enigmatic atmosphere and how it affects space weather.

Waste plastic can be recycled into hydrogen fuel and graphene

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 10:00:33 -0400

Using waste plastic to produce a combination of hydrogen and graphene could make it profitable and greener to generate hydrogen as a fuel

Updates From Loki Season 2, and More

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 10:00:00 -0400

A new Fall of the House of Usher clip introduces us to its world. Chucky makes a threat in new footage from season 3. Samara Weaving’s new sci-fi action movie finds a home.. Plus, teases for Luca Guadagnino’s take on Lord of the Flies, and even more footage from Saw X and Exorcist: Believer. Spoilers now!

The Saga of the High-Radiation iPhone 12 Is Finally Over

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 09:45:00 -0400

France may finally allow Apple to sell iPhone 12s in the country again after Apple has seemingly met the country’s electromagnetic radiation standards.

‘More than just a tree’: recollections of Northumberland’s Sycamore Gap

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 09:37:58 -0400

Readers have been getting in touch with personal memories of the felled landmark and ideas of what should come next

Share your memories and pictures of the Sycamore Gap tree

Shock, sadness and anger over the destruction of the 300-year-old Sycamore Gap tree have been expressed by readers contacting the Guardian with personal memories of its picturesque presence.

The tree meant so much to so many. A local man, Michael Palmer, summed it up: “Sycamore Gap is a Northumberland symbol, more than a piece of landscape, more than just a tree; it’s as instantly recognisable as the Palace of Westminster or the Liver Building.”

All That Could Have Been: Apple Considered Buying Bing From Microsoft

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 09:35:00 -0400

As Google faces a massive antitrust lawsuit, revelations surrounding the case have presented us with a glimpse into an alternate reality. Microsoft reportedly discussed selling Bing to Apple just a few years ago, and if the deal went through, Google would have no longer been the default search engine on iPhone.

Ohio State University Researchers Are Using AI to Understand Changing Biodiversity

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 09:15:00 -0400

A team of researchers from around the world, led by Ohio State University, will be gathering data to create artificial intelligence-informed models to better understand the long-term impact of the climate crisis on biodiversity.

How a thinktank got the cost of net zero for the UK wildly wrong

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 09:07:41 -0400

Civitas’s deeply flawed report was timed to follow the PM’s speech in which he called for an honest approach to the issue

Imagine demanding an “honest” debate over the cost of net zero in a report full of errors that even a schoolboy would be embarrassed about. Then imagine getting coverage of your report in the Sun, Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Spectator.

Sound impossible? Well, let me tell you how Civitas, one of the thinktanks housed at 55 Tufton Street in London, did exactly that, and nearly got away with it.

Students search desert for lost rocket after attempted launch to space

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 08:21:22 -0400

KSP’s chairman Shapol M says he is nervous but confident ahead of the launch. "The rocket is going together nicely, but we need to be careful with everything. We'll hopefully put in the engines soon. The best thing about Mojave is that the weather is almost always good, but we're trying to launch early in the morning before the winds pick up."

‘The dog’s very happy’: water-conscious Swedish islanders compete for ugliest lawn title

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 07:00:44 -0400

Competition aimed at encouraging Gotland residents to save water is being copied elsewhere

Dry, brown grass is no longer a source of shame on one Swedish island where residents have been competing over the “ugliest lawn” in an attempt to save water – and it seems the trend is spreading.

“It was the easiest competition to win, I didn’t have to do anything,” said this year’s winner Stina Östman, a resident of Sweden’s largest island of Gotland, who has mixed feelings about her victory. “It’s always nice to win, even if you are the worst,” she said.

Biden is right to praise the auto strike. His climate agenda depends on it | Kate Aronoff

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 06:02:40 -0400

The president has a golden opportunity to prove that green jobs will bear dividends for the working class

Joe Biden had to choose a side in the United Auto Workers’ contract fight with the “big three” American automakers, and he did. This week, he became the first US president to walk a picket line while in office when he joined strikers in Belleville, Michigan, offering enthusiastic support for their demands. Biden should be thanking the UAW for handing him a golden opportunity: to prove that the green jobs his administration is creating will be good, union jobs, too, and that climate policy will bear dividends for the working class.

Republicans cosplaying solidarity have tried to exploit the strike to score cheap political points. As Republican presidential hopefuls debated this week, Donald Trump told a rally at a non-union plant in Michigan that the strike wouldn’t “make a damn bit of difference” because the car industry was “being assassinated” by “EV mandates”. (Whether there were any union members or even autoworkers in the room isn’t clear.) Ohio senator JD Vance has similarly blamed autoworkers’ plight on “the premature transition to electric vehicles” and “Biden’s war on American cars”.

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back

Male butterflies plug attractive females’ genitals to stop them mating

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 06:00:41 -0400

Some male butterflies insert a stopper into their mate’s reproductive tract – and they use bigger, more effective plugs to stop rivals from mating with females that have a better chance of survival

Read an extract from The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 06:00:11 -0400

This intriguing extract is taken from The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks, the latest pick for our New Scientist Book Club. It sees a billionaire entrepreneur recruiting a scientist for his new project, which will have major implications for the human race

Sebastian Faulks: ‘Homo sapiens is a very odd creature’

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 06:00:02 -0400

The award-winning novelist Sebastian Faulks on how he came to set his new novel The Seventh Son – the latest pick for our New Scientist Book Club – a little way into the future

‘Nature embraces queer people’: inside the Kew show about the LGBTQ+ side of plants

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 05:00:40 -0400

Queer Nature celebrates the astonishing diversity of plants – and looks at how they have inspired LGBTQ+ groups. Our writer enters a world of bisexual flowers and asexual trees

The Ruizia mauritiana is a large green shrub with cascading leaves shaped like lovehearts. There’s one just off the main walkway through the magnificent Temperate House in London’s Kew Gardens, a Victorian marvel nearly 200 metres long. Among all the surrounding greenery, the plant looks unassuming – but examples of this specimen are extremely rare. In fact, by the mid-1990s, it was thought to be extinct in the wild. But then came some thrilling news: a 10-metre tall example had been spotted in the Mauritian highlands. And soon Kew’s scientists were wading through a guava thicket in the east African island nation to take some cuttings.

Those scientists would go on to make a remarkable discovery. Previously, the Ruizia mauritiana was thought only to grow male flowers (whose stamen produce pollen). But, during its cultivation, researchers realised that this wasn’t the case: the sex of this plant’s flowers depends on the temperature. In hot conditions, it grows male flowers. But in cooler climates, it produces female ones (whose stigmata receive pollen).

The hottest summer in human history – a visual timeline

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 03:07:19 -0400

From June to August 2023, a series of extreme weather events exacerbated by climate breakdown caused death and destruction across the globe

As the world sweltered through the hottest three month spell in human history this summer, extreme weather disasters took more than 18,000 lives, drove at least 150,000 people from their homes, affected hundreds of millions of others and caused billions of dollars of damage.

That is a conservative tally from the most widely covered disasters between early June and early September, which have been compiled in the timeline below as a reminder of how tough this period has been and what might lie ahead.

The week in wildlife – in pictures

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 03:00:37 -0400

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a hummingbird hawk moth, capybaras and a newly discovered tarantula