looming

On a sunny day in late September, Todd Olander was out in the fields of a 90-acre farm in Berthoud planting rows of barley. Typically, Olander would let the soil rest through the winter months, but in recent years he’s begun experimenting with new varieties of barley that have been specifically adapted to withstand cold temperatures. Growing in the winter means the crops will absorb precipitation through the spring, a vital advantage as weather in the Western U.S. continues to get hotter and drier. As the proprietor of…

As the International Space Station (ISS) nears the end of its service in low Earth orbit, NASA is grappling with the idea of a short-term gap until a commercial alternative takes its place.Inspiration Behind the Reality-TV Style for The Hunger GamesThis week, NASA officials discussed the possibility of not being able to maintain human presence in low Earth orbit as the space agency’s private partners race to build space stations to replace the ISS. “We might have to accept a gap and, personally, I don’t think that would…

I wrote off season three of Shadow and Bone months ago. Despite my hopes to see the show return (or at least give us a Six of Crows spin-off) its chances seemed less than zero a month ago. Some fresh developments raised hopes for the show’s future, however, even as two warring strikes and Netflix’s vendetta against fantasy weigh those hopes down.  The same weight is damping down hype over a number of upcoming projects, but they shouldn’t impact anything already filmed. So we’ll still be getting Good Omens 2, and even a…

Analysis of global data spanning over 30 years reveals a growing crisis of low back pain, with projections suggesting 843 million people will suffer from the condition by 2050 due to the increasing population and aging demographics.A review of more than three decades of data reveals an escalating trend in the instances of low back pain, with forecasts indicating that the condition could affect around 843 million individuals by 2050. This rise can be primarily attributed to increasing populations and their progressing…

As the United States celebrated Independence Day on July 4, the Sun put on its own spectacular firework display, heralding the arrival of two solar storms or coronal mass ejections (CMEs). NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured the incoming CME clouds, revealing their partially directed trajectory towards Earth. CMEs consist of charged solar particles and magnetic fields, with some containing up to a billion tons of plasma.NASA predicts that the impact of these ionised gas ejections, or plasma, will…

After an unremarkable weekend, solar activity is again picking up speed. Last week, we witnessed two separate radio blackout events triggered by an X-class solar flare and an M-class solar flare. While the CME escaped the Earth and no solar storms were to be seen, this week the fear is far greater. A sunspot in Earth's view named AR3340 has gone unstable and is now harboring a delta-class magnetic field, which is a big catalyst for solar flare eruptions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has…

When State Farm announced in May that the company would stop writing new homeowners insurance policies in California, it issued a two-paragraph statement by way of explanation.It listed “historic increases in construction costs,” “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market” as the culprits, adding that it needed to take this action to “improve the company’s financial strength.” Those two paragraphs sent shockwaves through the state. Coming in tandem with a similar pullback by Allstate, the…

The second half of May and the first week of June were relatively quiet in terms of solar activity. The Earth did suffer a radio blackout earlier this week when sunspot AR3327 exploded and produced an M4.6-class solar flare. The sunspot has not exploded since then and it is likely that like the other sunspots present on the Earth-facing side of the Sun, it will also dissipate. However, the next week might bring trouble for our planet as the NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has spotted a high number of…

The wait is almost over. In just a few hours from now, Apple will kick off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2023. The event will start with the keynote session hosted by CEO Tim Cook at 10:30 PM IST. The event is going to be one of the biggest in recent history with some major announcements expected including iOS 17, a new 15-inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio, the new M2 Ultra chipset, a mixed-reality headset and its accompanying operating system xrOS, and more. And that's why the excitement around the event…

While the effects of El Niño are more concentrated in the tropics, other regions will feel the heat as well. The southwestern United States tends to get more rain, while the northern parts of the country warm up. One upside: El Niño typically reduces hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. Courtesy of Christopher CallahanTropical countries tend to be the most economically vulnerable both because of their proximity to El Niño and because they often have lower GDPs than nations in Europe and other northern regions. For…