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It should have been physically impossible. Millions of years ago, a white dwarf—the fading cinder of a sunlike star—was locked in a dizzying dance with a bright companion star. The two had circled each other for eons, connected by a bridge of gas that flowed from the companion onto the white dwarf allowing it to grow heavier and heavier until it could no longer support the extra weight. At this point, the white dwarf should have exploded—blowing itself to smithereens and producing a supernova that briefly shone brighter than all the stars in the Milky Way combined....

The chaotic crash-landing of a robotic spacecraft called Philae has yielded serendipitous insights into the softness of comets. In 2014, the pioneering European Space Agency (ESA) lander touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, after a ten-year journey aboard its mothership, Rosetta. But rather than fix itself to the surface, Philae bounced twice and ended up on its side under a shady overhang, cutting its mission short. After a meticulous search, an ESA team has now discovered the previously unknown site of Philae’s second touchdown—and with it an imprint that the craft left in comet ice that is billions of years old....

Nations will gather Monday in New York City for a high-profile climate summit that U.N. officials hope will lead to more aggressive carbon reductions under the Paris Agreement. The daylong summit is the brainchild of U.N. chief António Guterres, who has poured resources into the event over the last year. He’s asked nations to come ready to announce plans to reduce their emissions. At a briefing at U.N. headquarters yesterday, Guterres struck a somber tone....

Keyboard bubbles up from touch screen on demandA few weeks ago, right before the new BlackBerry 10 phones were announced, I dragged a cameraman to San Francisco’s Financial District during lunch hour and asked random strangers to name BlackBerry’s best feature. Care to guess what the results of my highly unscientific poll were? Even iPhone and Android users agreed – the famed keyboard is BlackBerry’s top trait.Increasingly, we “mobile device addicts” are favoring our smartphones and tablets over our traditional computers to meet our digital demands....

Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male. Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports....

Cannabis has been hailed as a potential magic bullet in the fight against all sorts of ills, including chronic pain and depression. But it has also been called the “devil’s lettuce,” with claims that using it will lead to laziness, insanity and even murder. These polarized views can, in part, be explained by the drug’s complexity: cannabis is not a single substance but rather a mixture of more than 500 individual chemicals whose proportions vary from one plant strain to another....

When Florida had a COVID surge, it caused a shortage of liquid oxygen for people in intensive care. Part of the supply chain for liquid oxygen was moved over to compensate for it, and that impacted about half a dozen rocket launches. Florida was the source of the need for oxygen, but it pulled resources from the entire country. We [United Launch Alliance] had a planned launch going off the West Coast, out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering lowering its threshold for elevated childhood blood lead levels by 30 percent, a shift that could help health practitioners identify more children afflicted by the heavy metal. Since 2012, the CDC, which sets public health standards for exposure to lead, has used a blood lead threshold of 5 micrograms per deciliter for children under age 6. While no level of lead exposure is safe for children, those who test at or above that level warrant a public health response, the agency says....

The tragic shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., on July 20 has reignited a long-running debate about gun control and laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons. Some argue that armed civilians in the movie theater could have mitigated Friday’s massacre, whereas others believe that more guns could have led to even more confusion and greater loss of life. In fact, more guns than ever are in citizens’ hands today....

Rising temperatures brought on by climate change disproportionately threaten pregnant women who work outdoors, who can’t access air conditioning and who are Black or Hispanic, a panel of reproductive justice experts said last week. That’s largely because these women more often experience prolonged — and unmitigated — exposure to brutal temperatures, which have been found to thwart healthy pregnancies, Linda Blount, the chief executive of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, said during a webinar Friday....

By Sruthi Gottipati NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Heavy rain triggered a landslide in rural western India that killed at least ten people and trapped up to 150 more after thick mud came crashing down on thatch huts and brick houses on Wednesday, a national disaster official said. Rescue teams and local residents pulled people out of the deep mud and put them on stretchers, television images showed. Seven teams of 42 rescue workers each arrived at the disaster site, a village 60 km (37 miles) from the city of Pune, but rain, mud and poor communications hampered efforts, Sandeep Rai Rathore, inspector general of the national disaster force, told Reuters....

Ned Ostojic’s nose has led him to sites that range from odd to repugnant. He has inhaled the air of tuna canneries in American Samoa, whiffed gooey kibble at pet-food factories in Canada and sniffed sewage tanks in Brooklyn. Worldwide, there are only a handful of people like him: experts at diagnosing offensive odors. His clients are usually desperate to eliminate a stench that bothers neighbors or presents a hazard to workers....

By Amanda Mascarelli In July, Gabriela Chavarria was named the top science adviser for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), based in Washington, D.C. Born in Mexico, she has a PhD in biology from Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and 14 years of experience with non-governmental conservation organizations, most recently the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her first big task will be presiding over the 27 September release of the service’s national climate plan, titled “Rising to the Urgent Challenge....

In the fall of 2005 the Dalai Lama delivered a lecture at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C., highlighting the areas of convergence between neuroscience and Buddhist thought about the mind. He took the opportunity to remind the audience that not only is he a Buddhist monk but that he is also an enthusiastic proponent of modern technology. [For more on the Dalai Lama’s lecture, see “Meditations on the Brain,” by R....

The Coalinga oil field in California has been pumping out crude since 1887, and the remaining oil has gotten heavier and heavier and harder and harder to extract—but it will soon get a boost from the sun. Specifically, the old field will use steam generated by concentrated sunlight to help melt the remaining heavy oils and make them liquid enough to be pumped to the surface. “It’s operating and providing the bulk of the steam generated to support enhanced oil recovery,” explains Jerry Lomax, vice president of emerging energy at Chevron, the energy company that funded the project....

The ultimatum is called the Clean Power Plan, and before it takes effect, 42 states are already reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants on their own as they move toward using less coal and more natural gas to produce electricity. Between 2008 and 2013, those states reduced greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants by an average of 19 percent, according to a report published Tuesday by sustainability advocacy group Ceres, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Bank of America and four large utilities....

She did not often have such strong emotions. But she suddenly felt powerless against her passion and the desire to throw herself into the arms of the cousin whom she saw at a family funeral. “It can only be because of that patch,” said Marianne, a participant in a multinational trial of a testosterone patch designed to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder, in which a woman is devoid of libido. Testosterone, a hormone ordinarily produced by the ovaries, is linked to female sexual function, and the women in this 2005 study had undergone operations to remove their ovaries....

It’s summertime. For Americans, that means baseball season and all the simple pleasures that the game affords — from peanuts and Cracker Jack to the seventh inning stretch and renditions of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” For many, though, the game is not the same without the opportunity to place a little (or even a big) wager on the outcome. Whether legal or not, betting is ubiquitous in baseball, and in all other sports for that matter....

On August 2, 1939, as the specter of the second World War loomed, Albert Einstein wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt a letter he knew could affect the war and the future of humanity. The subject was the possibility of developing nuclear weapons. “Certain aspects of this situation,” Einstein wrote, … seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations…....

Healthcare is changing. The drivers of reform include increased incidence of illnesses common to an aging global population, including cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. They also include the increased access and use of digital information, from portable patient health monitoring systems to new ways of sharing and learning from healthcare data. These changes must take place with a focus on value-based care, particularly as therapies move into emerging economies. And these benefits are now demanded by patients who increasingly feel empowered to request treatment that they consider best meets their needs....