Jessica Orwig

The so-called “Devil Comet” is barreling past Earth and exploding on its way around the sun, but a researcher who studies such phenomenon told Insider that while the comet is large and unusual, its menacing name — a reference to the appearance of horns — does not mean it poses any threat to the third planet from the sun.Known to scientists as 12P/Pons-Brooks, the comet last made an appearance in Earth’s skies more than 70 years ago. Judging by its brightness, astronomers have estimated that the…

SpaceX launched its Starship mega-rocket toward space for the second time, ever, on Saturday.Though Starship blew up just seconds before completing its launch sequence, the flight achieved a major milestone for SpaceX. The rocket proved a risky maneuver and solved the problem that sent Starship up in flames during its last launch in April.SpaceX’s mega-rocket is a two-stage system, consisting of a first-stage Super Heavy booster and a second stage, Starship.In order for Starship to reach space,…

What do whale experts and alien hunters have in common? More than you might expect.For a recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ, scientists from UC Davis, the Alaska Whale Foundation, and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) teamed up.Their mission: Communicate with whales. And they did just that.In a landmark experiment, the team had a 20-minute conversation with a humpback whale named Twain in her own language.Twain and the scientists didn’t talk about the weather…

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is nothing short of a technological marvel. Able to see objects 100 times fainter than Hubble, it’s the most powerful space telescope ever built.Webb observes the cosmos in wavelengths of light that humans can’t see, detecting never-before-seen objects that are helping astronomers view our universe in a whole new way.Now, well into its second year of operations, Webb has given us spectacular images of the universe that are both breathtaking to gaze upon but also…

Satellite images show mass destruction to Japan’s west coast and inner cities after a series of powerful earthquakes hit the country on Monday.The Japan Meteorological Agency reported 21 earthquakes registering 4.0 magnitude or stronger striking central Japan in a span of just over an hour and half. One quake was an estimated 7.6 magnitude quake, according to JMA.The event triggered tsunami warnings, which were eventually lifted. Some nearly 4-foot-high waves were seen in the city of Wajima and…

Climate change is driving up more than just Earth’s temperature. It’s making hurricanes more intense, too, which should make us revisit how we categorize these destructive storms to better warn people at risk in the future, researchers reported in a new study.The researchers recommend adding a Category 6 to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which currently ranks powerful tropical storms based on wind speed starting at Category 1 (74 to 95 mph) up to Category 5 (157 mph or higher).The “or…

An abrupt shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents that could put large parts of Europe in a deep freeze is looking a bit more likely and closer than before as a new complex computer simulation finds a “cliff-like” tipping point looming in the future.A long-worried nightmare scenario, triggered by Greenland’s ice sheet melting from global warming, still is at least decades away if not longer, but maybe not the centuries that it once seemed, a new study in Friday’s Science Advances finds. The study, t…

Earlier this year, NASA’s Terra satellite was zipping over the Gulf of Mexico when one of its instruments snapped a photo of some odd-looking clouds.The clouds looked like someone had taken a hole punch to the sky.This unusual phenomenon isn’t new. Researchers have been documenting it since the 1940s, according to NASA. But it wasn’t until about 15 years ago that scientists finally found an explanation.The features are officially called cavum clouds, but are sometimes nicknamed hole-punch clouds…

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Scientists have confirmed the presence of a whale off New England that went extinct in the Atlantic Ocean two centuries ago — an exciting discovery, but one they said that illustrates the impact of climate change on sea life.Researchers with the New England Aquarium in Boston found the gray whale while flying 30 miles south of Nantucket, Massachusetts, on March 1.The whale, which can weigh 60,000 pounds (27,215 kilograms), typically lives in the northern Pacific Ocean.The…

Scientists have constructed the largest 3-D map of our universe to date, and it’s come with a couple of interesting surprises.“So far, we’re seeing basic agreement with our best model of the universe, but we’re also seeing some potentially interesting differences,” Michael Levi said in a statement released by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Thursday.Levi is the director for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, DESI, which produced the new map. The instrument consists of 5,000 t…