1+ hour, 15+ min ago (280+ words) The science museum in Golden Gate Park is popular with Bay Area school children and international tourists, and many kids over the years have ended their visits clutching a mini Claude stuffed animal to take home. As an unofficial mascot of the museum and the city, Claude appeared in a children's book and in ads at bus and light-rail stations. The rare alligator icon had a "quiet charisma" that captivated hearts in his 17 years in San Francisco, the museum said in a statement. "Claude showed us the power of ambassador animals to connect people to nature and stoke curiosity to learn more about the world around us," it said. Claude hatched in 1995 at an alligator farm in Louisiana, and came to live at the Academy in 2008. He was born with albinism, a genetic mutation that made him appear white. His…...

1+ hour, 23+ min ago (659+ words) A rare confluence of factors makes the Atacama an ideal home for some of the world's biggest ground-based astronomical projects " dry climate, high altitude and, crucially, isolation from the light pollution of civilization. "It's a perfect cocktail for astronomy," said Daniela Gonz'lez, executive director of the Skies of Chile Foundation, a nonprofit that defends the quality of the country's night skies. But that may not be the case for much longer, a group of leading scientists warned in an open letter to Chile's government released Tuesday. A private company is pressing ahead with plans to construct a giant renewable energy complex in sight of one of Earth's most productive astronomical facilities " the Paranal Observatory, operated by an international consortium known as the European Southern Observatory, or ESO. In the letter, 30 renowned international astronomers, including Reinhard Genzel, a 2020 Nobel laureate in…...

2+ hour, 56+ min ago (766+ words) The city of San Francisco on Tuesday sued 10 major food companies, alleging that they marketed and sold ultraprocessed foods that they knew were harmful to human health and had been designed to be addictive. The lawsuit argues that the foods have contributed to a public health crisis in San Francisco and across the nation, saddling cities and other governments with medical costs associated with the consequences of diets high in processed food. It's a first-of-its-kind attempt to hold food conglomerates accountable for the proliferation of these foods and their established health risks. "We have reached a tipping point in the scientific research about the harm of these products," said David Chiu, the city attorney for San Francisco, in a news conference Tuesday morning. He added that "these products in our diets are deeply linked to serious health conditions, imposing enormous…...

6+ hour, 41+ min ago (629+ words) Sick young ants release a smell to tell worker ants to destroy them to protect the colony from infection, scientists said Tuesday, adding that queens do not seem to commit this act of self-sacrifice. Many animals conceal illness for social reasons. For example, sick humans are known to risk infecting others so they can still go to the office " or the pub. Ant colonies, however, act as one "super-organism" which works to ensure the survival of all, similar to how infected cells in our bodies send out a "find-me and eat-me" signal, according to an Austria-led team of scientists. Ant nests are a "perfect place for a disease outbreak to occur because there are thousands of ants crawling over each other," Erika Dawson, a behavioral ecologist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and lead author of a new…...

9+ hour, 2+ min ago (328+ words) A geomagnetic storm watch has been issued after a powerful solar flare over the weekend. The solar flare peaked at 9:49 p.m. EST on Sunday, November 30, said NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which constantly monitors the sun. The flare was classified as X1.9 flare, the space agency said. X-classes are the most intense kind of flare. The eruption came from a newly emerging sunspot region. The flare briefly knocked out radio communications across Australia and parts of southeast Asia on Tuesday, Space.com reported. A coronal mass ejection, or CME, also occurred. During CMEs, solar material and magnetic fields erupt from the sun. CMEs and solar flares are similar, but they are distinct phenomena, NASA said. Flares and CMEs can impact radio communications, power grids and navigation signals, NASA said. They can also pose a risk to spacecraft and astronauts. When CMEs reach Earth,…...

10+ hour, 41+ min ago (961+ words) On Feb. 22, 2020, "Mad" Mike Hughes towed a homemade rocket to the Mojave Desert and launched himself into the sky. His goal? To view the flatness of the Earth from space. This was his third attempt, and tragically it was fatal. Hughes crashed shortly after takeoff and died. Hughes" nickname " Mad Mike " might strike you as apt. Is it not crazy to risk your life fighting for a theory that was disproven in ancient Greece? But Hughes" conviction, though striking, is not unique. Across all recorded cultures, people have held strong beliefs that seemed to lack evidence in their favor " one might refer to them as "extraordinary beliefs." For evolutionary anthropologists like me, the ubiquity of these kinds of beliefs is a puzzle. Human brains evolved to form accurate models of the world. Most of the time, we do a pretty…...

20+ hour, 1+ min ago (1005+ words) A growing exotic pet trade has conservationists calling for stronger regulations to protect the reptiles, birds and other animals in the wild that are increasingly showing up for sale on internet marketplaces and becoming popular on social media. The two-week Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora is scheduled to run through Friday in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Several proposals related to the pet trade will be considered Tuesday. Participants have proposed tighter regulations or complete bans on the trade of several species including iguanas from the Galapagos Islands, more than a dozen species of Latin America tarantulas and an odd-looking turtle from Africa. "What we're seeing is the pet trade much more looking at reptiles, amphibians. People want rare species and they don't have to go into a pet shop," said Susan Lieberman, vice president for…...

1+ day, 5+ hour ago (1032+ words) Ski season is here, but while the eastern half of the U.S. digs out from winter storms, the western U.S. snow season has been off to a very slow start. The snowpack was far below normal across most of the West on Dec. 1, 2025. Denver didn't see its first measurable snowfall until Nov. 29 " more than a month past normal, and its latest first-snow date on record. But a late start to snow season isn't necessarily reason to worry about the season ahead. Adrienne Marshall, a hydrologist in Colorado who studies how snowfall is changing in the West, explains what forecasters are watching and how rising temperatures are affecting the future of the West's beloved snow. It's still early in the snow season, so there's a lot of uncertainty in the forecasts. A late first snow doesn't necessarily mean a low-snow year. But there…...

1+ day, 10+ hour ago (395+ words) Africa's forests have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source, according to research that underscores the need for urgent action to save the world's great natural climate stabilizers. The alarming shift, which has happened since 2010, means all of the planet's three main rainforest regions " the South American Amazon, Southeast Asia, and Africa " have gone from being allies in the fight against climate breakdown to being part of the problem. Human activity is the primary cause of the problem. Farmers are clearing more land for food production. Infrastructure projects and mining are exacerbating the loss of vegetation and global heating " caused by the burning of natural gas, oil, and coal " thereby degrading the resilience of ecosystems. Scientists found that between 2010 and 2017, African forests lost approximately 106 million tons of biomass per year, which is equivalent to the weight of about…...

1+ day, 10+ hour ago (359+ words) BEIJING, Dec 1 (Reuters) - China's first crewed spacecraft to be ruled unfit to fly in mid-mission will be sent "back to Earth for experts to assess the damage it sustained more closely, "state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday. On November 5, the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft was meant to bring its crew back to "China just after finishing a six-month stay aboard Beijing's permanently inhabited space station Tiangong. But after the Shenzhou-20 crew discovered a crack in the window of the vessel's return capsule right before takeoff, the return mission was delayed - a first in China's human spaceflight program." The vessel's crew was forced "to return to Earth in a different spaceship nine days later, temporarily leaving Tiangong and its remaining trio of resident astronauts without a flightworthy vessel. China's "space-industrial complex raced to remove that risk by working overtime to execute its first…...