A nine-mile trip from the airport in Dhaka, the bustling capital of Bangladesh, to Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed Park, near downtown, can take as long as 55 minutes, according to Google Maps.

A trip of the same distance in Flint, Michigan, from the airport to the Sloan Museum of Discovery, takes about nine minutes.

While we might expect a slower drive in a metropolitan area of 20 million vs. a regional city of just 400,000, the difference in travel time isn’t due just to traffic or congestion, according to a new study that measures traffic speed around the world. Even at midnight, with few cars on the road, the trip in Dhaka—the slowest city in the world—is still 30 minutes, or three times as long as the trip in Flint, the world’s fastest.

According to the study, published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the speed of travel in a city is only partially related to the amount of traffic on its roads. Other factors, such as the layout and quality of a city’s roads and natural obstacles like hills and rivers, play a significant role in how fast cars can drive. As a result, the study’s authors make a distinction between travel speed, a measure unaffected by traffic, and congestion, which is the interaction of speed and traffic.

“The slowest cities aren’t necessarily the most congested, and most congested aren’t the slowest,” says Prottoy Akbar, an economist at Aalto University in Finland and the lead author of the paper.

Akbar and his fellow researchers used data from Google Maps to analyze traffic in more than 1,000 global cities with populations over 300,000. Their data set excluded China and South Korea, because the app can’t collect data in those countries, while a few other cities, like Pyongyang, North Korea, were dropped because of unreliable data. They devised representative trips travelers would take in those cities—a commute from downtown to residential neighborhoods, for example, and or trips along the periphery from a home to a restaurant—and in 2019 ran millions of trips on the app, at different times of day and week. In India, for example, they collected data for 66 million trips; in the U.S. it was 57 million.

After crunching all that data, they found the biggest predictor of travel time in any given city isn’t the size or age of the city, but the wealth of the country in which it’s located.

The fastest cities, according to the paper, are almost all mid-sized municipalities in the U.S.—like Flint, Memphis, and Wichita, Kans.—where highways are wide and plentiful. Of the 100 fastest cities in the world, 86 are in the U.S., including 19 of the top 20 (the exception is Windsor, Ontario, across the Canadian border from Detroit). Even relatively poor cities in wealthy countries are fast.

The slowest cities, like Dhaka, Lagos, and Manila, are almost all in the developing world where infrastructure hasn’t kept up with population. 

“All cities with the fastest speed or uncongested speed are in rich countries, and all the slowest cities are in poor countries,” the authors write. 

Congestion, however, is less straightforward. The most congested cities come from a range of rich, poor, and middle-income cities, and while they include urban centers in the developing world like Bogata and Mexico City, they also include New York City and London. What they all have in common is size: very large cities, unsurprisingly, have more cars on the road.

But it’s also possible to be a congested city with relatively fast travel speed, Akbar says. Nashville, Austin, Tampa, Houston, and Atlanta are among the 25% most congested cities in the world, but are all in the top 10% for travel time.

A major takeaway from the study, Akbar says, is that different cities need different prescriptions to improve travel times. In Dhaka, where Akbar grew up, the municipal government spent a lot of energy trying to reduce the numbers of cars on the road, regulating things like the hours restaurants could be open and banning slower vehicles like bicycle rickshaws from highways. But “that just means that you could, at best, make the speeds in the middle of the day look like speeds in the middle of the night,” he said. “Those sort of adjustments can only help so far.”

Often, Akbar says, city planners in developing countries will rely on traffic studies commissioned for cities in countries like the U.S. and France, where the needs and solutions may be much different.

He also notes that fast travel doesn’t necessarily make a city more attractive or desirable, and it could be a result of over-investment in infrastructure relative to its needs. Flint, the fastest city in the world, has lost half of its population since 1950. “The fastest city in the world is not the city to envy,” he says.

Few people take the time to give thanks to American astrologer Richard Noelle. Astrology as a whole may not have contributed much to the advancement of science, but that doesn’t mean that an astrologer’s ideas can’t have a very big impact. In 1979, Noelle had a good idea indeed, when he coined the now-ubiquitous term “supermoon.”

Prior to Noelle’s brainstorm, the common descriptor for a full moon that occurs at the low point, or perigee, in its orbit around the Earth was a “perigean full moon,” a turgid bit of phrasing not remotely in keeping with the loveliness of the phenomenon. This year has been a good one for supermoons, with three occurring already—on July 3, Aug. 1, Aug. 30—and a fourth one teed up to appear in the eastern sky just after sunset on Sept. 28. September’s supermoon will reach its brightest illumination at 5:58 a.m. ET on Sept. 29, and set shortly after. 

During the time the supermoon is riding across the sky there will be plenty to see. For one, the moon will not make its appearance alone. About an hour before it becomes visible, Saturn will rise and precede the moon across the sky throughout the night. Jupiter will then appear, about 90 minutes after the moon does, and similarly fly in tandem with it.

Then there’s the spectacular sight of the moon itself. The average distance between the Earth and the moon is 384,400 km (238,855 mi.). But that figure has a lot of wiggle room. The moon’s path around the Earth is elliptical; at its most distant point, or apogee, it is 405,500 km (253,000 mi.) away; at its perigee, it is just 363,300 km (226,000 mi.) from us.

A full moon during such close approaches appears to be as much as 14% larger than an ordinary full moon. Not everyone is impressed by this. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), in 2017, astrophysicist, author, and television personality Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote: “If last month’s Full Moon were a 16.0 inch pizza, then this month’s ‘Super’ moon would be 16.1 inches. Just saying.” In a follow-up post, he added: “If a 16.1 inch pizza is ‘super’ to you, compared with a 16.0 inch pizza, then we have an issue of vocabulary.”

But the visual impact a supermoon can make is powerful—especially when it has just risen or is about to set, thanks to the straightforwardly named “moon illusion.” When the moon is in the sky but hugging the horizon, there are lots of relatively small surface features like trees and houses in the foreground. The farther away from us those objects are, the smaller they seem to be. The occipital lobe and other sight-processing centers of the brain act in error on this information, comparing the apparent size of the moon to the apparent size of the little objects and concluding that the moon must be huge to dwarf them so easily. It then serves up a perception in keeping with that conclusion. That makes the 14% edge a supermoon has over a standard issue full moon seem even larger. As Tyson points out, the illusion is especially pronounced in cities, because skyscrapers provide the same point of reference as houses and trees, and they do so even when the moon is well above the horizon.

(In case you want to shatter the moon illusion, NASA has a way. When the full moon is near the horizon, extend your arm and raise your index finger. The moon will appear to be about the same size as your fingernail. Now repeat the comparison when the moon is high in the sky; the fingernail and the moon will still be of equivalent sizes.)

Read more: How the Blue Supermoon Looked Around the World

If you feel like you’ve been hearing more about supermoons lately, you’re not wrong. Supermoons have become more common than they used to be—but not because the moon has gotten any closer to the Earth. Rather, it’s that astronomers, as well as NASA, have, since at least 2001, changed the standards of what constitutes a supermoon, defining it as a full moon that comes within 90% of perigee, rather than requiring it to reach that closest 226,000 mi. approach. That new standard has slowly caught on over the years with more and more moons earning the “super” label.

September’s supermoon, like all supermoons, will go by a nickname. A full moon in early July was dubbed a Buck Moon by Native Americans because it appears at the same time male, adult deer begin to grow new antlers. Early August brought us the Sturgeon Moon, another legacy from Native Americans, who chose the name because August is the peak fishing month for sturgeon in the Great Lakes. The supermoon that appeared in late August was known as the Blue Supermoon. The “blue” part was a gift not from Native Americans, but from amateur astronomer Hugh Pruett, who in 1946 wrote an article for Sky & Telescope magazine, and, for reasons never quite clear, chose the color blue to describe the second full moon in a month. Supermoons occur every three or four months, but a Super Blue Moon is much less common—happening, on average, just once a decade. The upcoming super moon on Sept. 29 is known as the Harvest Moon, a name conferred by both Native American and Colonial planters because that was the month in which they reaped their crops. The first use of “Harvest Moon” has been traced to 1706, when the Oxford English Dictionary published the name.

After this Harvest Moon passes below the horizon, the curtain will come down on all supermoons in 2023. The sky shows will resume next year, with three supermoons in succession: on Feb. 9, March 10, and April 8. They’re worth waiting for. Supermoons are stunning, fun, and entirely free—a little cosmic dance the Earth and moon have been performing for more than four billion years now.

The rivalry between Asia’s two biggest countries has extended into outer space.

After India’s landing of its Chandrayaan-3 rover on the moon last month—becoming the first country to put a spacecraft near the lunar south pole and breaking China’s record for the southernmost lunar landing—a top Chinese scientist has said claims about the accomplishment are overstated.

Read More: How India Became First to Reach the Moon’s South Pole

Ouyang Ziyuan, lauded as the father of China’s lunar exploration program, told the Chinese-language Science Times newspaper that the Chandrayaan-3 landing site, at 69 degrees south latitude, was nowhere close to the pole, defined as between 88.5 and 90 degrees.

On Earth, 69 degrees south would be within the Antarctic Circle, but the lunar version of the circle is much closer to the pole.

“It’s wrong!” he said of claims for an Indian polar landing. “The landing site of Chandrayaan-3 is not at the lunar south pole, not in the lunar south pole region, nor is it near the lunar south pole region.”

The Chandrayaan-3 was 619 kilometers (385 miles) distant from the polar region, Ouyang said.

India’s space agency didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. 

After the Chandrayaan-3 landing, the Communist Party’s Global Times quoted Pang Zhihao, a Beijing-based senior space expert, as saying that China had much better technology.

China’s space program “has been capable of sending orbiters and landers directly into Earth-Moon transfer orbit since the launch of Chang’e-2 in 2010, a maneuver that India has yet to deliver given the limited capacity of its launch vehicles,” the newspaper said. “The engine that China used is also far more advanced.”

Read More: China’s Space Ambitions Are Fueling Competition and Collaboration

Still, the Chandrayaan-3 went much farther south than any other spacecraft. Russia’s attempt to land a spacecraft near the lunar south pole ended in failure last month when it crashed into the moon.

China’s Chang’e 4, the first to land on the far side of the moon in 2019, touched down 45 degrees south. An uncrewed NASA probe, Surveyor 7, reached the moon at about 41 degrees south in 1968. 

Getting close to the lunar south pole is important not just for bragging rights. Scientists think the region may have ice reserves that could potentially be valuable for long-term stays.

The U.S. and China are both looking to the area for their upcoming plans to send astronauts to the moon for the first time since NASA’s Apollo program ended a half century ago.

—With assistance from Daniela Wei, Linda Lew and Ragini Saxena.

(DUBAI, United Arab Emirates) — Iran claimed on Wednesday that it successfully launched an imaging satellite into space, a move that could further ratchet up tensions with Western nations that fear its space technology could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran’s Communication Minister Isa Zarepour said the Noor-3 satellite had been put in an orbit 450 kilometers (280 miles) above the Earth’s surface, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. It was not clear when exactly the launch took place.

There was no immediate acknowledgment from Western officials of the launch or of the satellite being put into orbit. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Iran has had a series of failed launches in recent years.

Zarepour said the aerospace arm of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has had success in launching satellites in the past, had carried out the most recent launch.

Authorities released footage of a rocket taking off from a mobile launcher without saying where the launch occurred. Details in the video corresponded with a Guard base near Shahroud, some 330 kilometers (205 miles) northeast of the capital, Tehran. The base is in Semnan province, which hosts the Imam Khomeini Spaceport from which Iran’s civilian space program operates.

The Guard operates its own space program and military infrastructure parallel to Iran’s regular armed forces and answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It launched its first satellite into space in April 2020. But the head of the U.S. Space Command later dismissed it as a “tumbling webcam in space” that would not provide vital intelligence. Western sanctions bar Iran from importing advanced spying technology.

The United States has alleged that Iran’s satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution and has called on Tehran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community’s 2022 threat assessment claims the development of satellite launch vehicles “shortens the timeline” for Iran to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile because it uses similar technology.

Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons, and says its space program, like its nuclear activities, is for purely civilian purposes. U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency say Iran abandoned an organized military nuclear program in 2003.

Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space. The program has seen recent troubles, however. There have been five failed launches in a row for the Simorgh program, another satellite-carrying rocket.

A fire at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport in February 2019 killed three researchers, authorities said at the time. A launchpad rocket explosion later that year drew the attention of then-President Donald Trump.

Tensions are already high with Western nations over Iran’s nuclear program, which has steadily advanced since Trump five years ago withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers and restored crippling sanctions on Iran.

Efforts to revive the agreement reached an impasse more than a year ago. Since then, the IAEA has said Iran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons grade levels to build “several” nuclear weapons if it chooses to do so. Iran is also building a new underground nuclear facility that would likely be impervious to U.S. or Israeli airstrikes. Both countries have said they would take military action if necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran has expressed willingness to return to the 2015 nuclear deal, but says the U.S. should first ease the sanctions.

Infrared sensors on the ground detected the heat signature of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s sample-return capsule when it slammed into the atmosphere at more than 45,000 km/h (27,650 mph), at 8:42 a.m. MDT today. The 46 kg (101 lbs.) capsule was dropped off by its much larger OSIRIS-REx mother ship as that spacecraft went whizzing briefly by Earth. The capsule hit the air off the coast of California, aiming for a parachute landing in the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range southwest of Salt Lake City. Even before the capsule landed, four search helicopters scrambled to meet it, and the people at NASA waited anxiously to hear that it had returned safely.

It had. The capsule thumped down at 8:55 a.m. MDT and the helicopter crews scooped it up and whisked it to a clean-room on the military base, preparing to send it off to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The scientists there will have a lot to look at. Sealed inside the capsule are 250 gm (8.8 oz.) of rock and dust from the asteroid Bennu—a 4.5 billion-year-old fossil of the ancient solar system that NASA has spent more than $800 million and seven years working to explore. The return of the sample made OSIRIS-REx only the third spacecraft—and the first American one—to pull off the asteroid-spelunking trick, after Japan’s Hayabusa and Hayabusa 2 managed it in 2010 and 2020 respectively. Understand the chemistry and history of Bennu’s dust and you can understand the chemistry, history, and even origins of the solar system and the Earth—as well as the life that calls our planet home.

“It sort of speaks to the reasons people explore,” says Rich Burns, the OSIRIS-REx project manager. “We can learn about the evolution of the solar system, why the Earth exists in its present state, why it’s special. We can get at the question of where we come from.”

Collecting that Bennu sample was not easy. It was on Sept. 8, 2016, that OSIRIS-REx (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) lifted off from Cape Canaveral in a round-about pursuit of Bennu. The asteroid is a small target—just 492 m (1,614 ft.) across—and circles the sun in more or less the same orbit as the Earth. At its most remote, it is about 300 million km (186 million mi.) from us. The most direct way to reach it would be to cut across the solar system in an as-the-crow-flies pursuit, intercepting Bennu on the other side of the sun. But that would have seen the spacecraft approaching the rock at a 90-degree angle, blazing past it at 19,300 km/h (12,000 mph). That’s fine for the kind of brief, photographic flybys the Voyager spacecraft conducted of the outer planets in the 1970s and 1980s; the OSIRIS-REx mission, however, called for the spacecraft not just to fly past Bennu, but to enter a lazy orbit around it. To do that, the ship had to make two complete circuits around the sun, slowly catching up to the asteroid and matching its speed and trajectory. During that time, OSIRIS-REx put more than 2 billion km (1.24 billion mi.) on its odometer.

On Dec. 3, 2018, the spacecraft at last caught up with Bennu and fired its thrusters to enter orbit around the rock. It took barely a puff of propellant to do that, and it would take just as little to pull away: Bennu’s gravity—to the extent that it has any at all—is 100,000 times less powerful than that of Earth. Settled into the asteroid’s tenuous gravitational grip, the spacecraft began a remote surveying campaign, using its multiple on-board instruments—including three cameras, an infrared spectrometer, an X-ray imaging spectrometer, and a laser altimeter—to study Bennu’s mineral and elemental makeup. It also exhaustively mapped the asteroid’s surface, looking for a place to collect its sample. At some points, OSIRIS-REx flew at altitudes as low as 1.6 km (0.99 mi.) above Bennu—the closest any spacecraft has ever gotten to any body it was orbiting.

Read more: Scientists Solve the Mystery Behind the Oumuamua ‘Alien Spacecraft’ Comet

Drawing so close came with perils. Bennu rotates on its axis once every 4.3 hours—giving it 2.15 hours of sun-facing day, and 2.15 hours of space-facing night. During those transitions, the temperature on any given spot on the rock swings from 116°C (240°F) to -73°C (-100°F) and back again. All those changes in thermal pressure make for a lot of expansion and contraction of the rocks and other rubble on the surface—enough to make them, effectively, leap off Bennu’s surface.

“It ended up looking like popcorn,” says Dante Lauretta, professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona and principal investigator on the OSIRIS-REx mission. “Every time we looked we saw stuff exploding off the surface. We were saying, ‘Oh man, this could be a hazardous environment for the spacecraft. We might have to back away and redesign the whole encounter.’” Ultimately the team concluded that that wouldn’t be necessary. It doesn’t take much energy for small rocks to pull free from Bennu’s microgravity grip, so even if the rubble struck the spacecraft it wouldn’t be packing any meaningful wallop. 

All of the up-close orbital scrutiny the rock got paid off: just a week after the spacecraft arrived at Bennu, NASA announced that it had discovered the presence of hydrated—or chemically water-logged—minerals mixed in with the soil. With no atmosphere and its mere whisper of gravity, Bennu could not harbor any deposits of pooling liquid, but the finding of even traces of water does suggest that the rock was once part of a much bigger mass—perhaps even a moon or planet—that did have muscle to hang onto its water.

“The thinking,” says Burns, “is that Bennu was part of a larger parent body that had a collisional event.”

It wasn’t until Oct. 20, 2020, nearly two years after OSIRIS-REx arrived at Bennu, that the spacecraft began the capstone maneuver of its mission—descending that last mile to collect its sample. NASA had narrowed the potential collection sites down to four candidates that it dubbed Sandpiper, Osprey, Kingfisher, and Nightingale—choosing those because they had the fewest rocky obstacles for the spacecraft’s descent, as well as abundant loose soil to collect. Ultimately NASA determined that Nightingale—located in a crater high in Bennu’s north—was the best of that group. 

Taking the sample required the spacecraft to land briefly on Bennu, in a maneuver NASA named TAG, for touch-and-go. In the 16 seconds OSIRIS-REx was on the surface, it extended its 3.3 m (10.8 ft.) robotic arm, which was equipped with a collection chamber at the end. At that point, nitrogen bottles in the arm fired, blowing soil and loose pebbles into a chamber. The lid to the chamber was then sealed and the precious sample transferred to the return capsule. On May 10, 2021, after completing nearly seven more months of orbital surveying, OSIRIS-REx at last peeled off and headed back for Earth.

Read more: NASA Tried To Knock an Asteroid Off Course—And Succeeded Wildly Beyond Expectations

With the Bennu sample now on the ground, more than 200 scientists from around the world will set to work studying it. The most intriguing questions they’re trying to answer concern the role incoming asteroids may have played in seeding the Earth with water, nitrogen, carbon, and other ingredients necessary for life to take hold. 

The moon is believed to have formed close to 4.5 billion years ago, when a Mars-sized planetesimal collided with Earth, throwing up a cloud of debris that coalesced into a brand new body. Any oceans, much of the atmosphere—and any potential earthly biology—that may have existed on our planet would have been wiped out in the violence. “We think the surface was completely sterilized,” says Lauretta. For life to reemerge, it would take asteroids crashing into Earth and resupplying it with the necessary chemistry. Studies of Bennu’s soil and rocks will help show if asteroids indeed carry sufficient quantities of those raw materials in the first place.

And as for OSIRIS-REx itself, which did not even pause in this morning’s flyby of Earth? Originally, the spacecraft’s mission was supposed to end after the sample-return capsule was released. In April 2022, however, NASA announced that it had other plans for the ship, and would be sending it off for a second orbital rendezvous, this time with the asteroid Apophis, after the 340-meter (1,100 ft.) rock makes a close approach by Earth in 2029. OSIRIS-Rex will spend about 18 months at Apophis—and some members of the team are dreaming that it may not be finished even then.

“Never say never,” says Lauretta. “I’m stepping down as the principal investigator and one of my mentees is taking over. I told her, ‘Don’t break the spacecraft. It might have a third asteroid in it.’”

There was no way of knowing on Aug. 8, 1975, just how many readers turned to the new paper in the journal Science by geochemist Wallace Broecker, of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. It was hardly possible to track clicks or likes nearly half a century ago, so Broecker simply had to hope his message got through. It was a pressing one, conveyed directly by its headline: “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”

The headline marked the first time the term “global warming” is known to have appeared in print, according to NASA. Though Broecker, who died in 2019 after devoting decades to studying and writing about climate change, might have hoped for more from his ground-breaking article, there was barely a whisper from the press or the public: The full-text database and search engine LexisNexis turns up only two uses of “global warming” in the five years that followed the Science piece—both of them in the magazine The Economist, during the blistering summer of 1977, when a heat wave led to a 24-hour blackout in New York City, resulting in 3,700 arrests, damage to 1,600 stores, and at least 1,000 fires.

Today, of course, things are much different. As we reach the official end of the hottest summer on record, our vocabulary is filled with different terms to describe the phenomenon that is causing all of the suffering: global warming, climate change, climate crisis, climate breakdown. On Sept. 6., United Nations Secretary General António Guterres used a different, more ominous term: climate breakdown. A week later, a team of Danish researchers published a piece in Science that framed the problem in a different way. “Earth,” they wrote, “is now well outside the safe operating space for humanity.” During New York Climate Week, on Sept. 20 Guterres took it one step further saying the climate impacts showed that “humanity has opened the gates to hell.”

Most planet-wide emergencies are not accompanied by all this linguistic shifting. People may have argued about how best to respond to the explosive emergence of COVID-19, but the overwhelming majority of us did agree that we were in a pandemic. Climate change, however, has had a host of labels since 1975—sometimes because our understanding of the science shifted, sometimes in the hope of arriving at just the right term so that climate deniers could be persuaded, and at other times in an attempt to convey urgency.

“What science is trying to do is draw our attention to the ways in which climate change is happening and the effects of that change,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communications and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “I think what we’re going to see is a deepening of the existing vocabulary.”

Just how quickly that deepening happens—how long it takes a new term describing a new crisis to seep into popular use—depends on the nature of the term, the nature of the crisis, and, often, the nature of the surrounding politics. Discussions of climate change began even before Broecker’s paper, without any of the white-hot rhetoric that has characterized much of our approach to the issue since. In 1973, a team of environmental scientists published a paper in MIT Press under the title “Study of Man’s Impact on Climate.” They labeled that impact “inadvertent climate modification.” The phrasing, while accurate enough, never caught on. NexisLexis counts just 11 uses of the term from 1968 to 2023, with the earliest occurring on Feb. 9, 1988, on a PBS program about math and science education.

“The first test when you’re speaking in a scientific voice is: Is it accurate? Does it encapsulate the science?” says Jamieson. Inadvertent climate change might do a good enough job of that, but it also may have come before its time. In 1971, the public wasn’t yet feeling the effects of climate change, and nobody was looking for a new term to describe something they didn’t know existed in the first place.

Read more: The Language Of Climate Change Just Changed in a Major Way

Next up was Broecker’s “global warming” formulation—and it too got off to a slow start. There were just two citations of it in the media in the 1973 to 1978 window, and two from 1978 to 1983. As temperatures rose in the mid-to-late ‘80s use of the term crept up—to 301 uses from 1983 to 1988. Then everything changed. On June 23, 1988, NASA physicist and astronomer James E. Hansen testified before the Senate about global warming and its dangers, and made his points emphatically.

“The first five months of 1988 are so warm globally that we conclude that 1988 will be the warmest year on record unless there is a remarkable, improbable cooling in the remainder of the year,” he said. “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”

Hansen may not have changed a lot of minds in Congress or in industry—climate denialism was just getting started and it has slowed efforts to shut off greenhouse gas emissions ever since—but the scientist’s words did resonate elsewhere. From 1988 to 1993, LexisNexis records more than 10,000 uses of the term in the media—a pace it has kept up in every five-year span since. Jamieson attributes a lot of that to the fact that the world had by then begun to heat up noticeably, and people could feel the change in real time.

“The speed with which the public can learn a vocabulary that is necessary to understand something salient to it is actually rapid,” she says.

Read more: We Analyzed 300 Companies’ Financial Documents to Find Out How Concerned They Are About Climate Change

Next out of the language gate was “climate change.” Broecker might have used a variation of the term—”climatic change”—in his 1975 study, but it wasn’t until 1979, when a group of meteorologists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., published an influential paper known as the Charney Report, that the term went wide. Led by MIT meteorologist Jule Charney, the authors opted for the new phrase because it better captured the range of problems beyond warming that greenhouse gasses could cause, including, droughts, floods, superstorms, wildfires, loss of sea ice, and more.

“Climate change” caught on slowly—with only 46 citations from 1978 to 1983—likely due to the fact that it is less specific than global warming. “It’s about relevance, it’s about comprehensibility, it’s about how visual the language is,” says Jamieson. Still, as more and more scientists began to use “climate change,” so did the press and the public. From 1983 to 1988, there were 2,889 mentions of it in the media. Ever since, it has leapt to the same 10,000-plus level as global warming. Use of the term got a boost just before the midterm elections in 2002, when Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrote a memo to party leaders, urging candidates to address the environment because it was important to voters, and to use the term climate change instead of global warming. “While ‘global warming’ has catastrophic communications attached to it,” he wrote, “‘climate change’ sounds more controllable and less emotional.”

Read more: The IPCC Is Finally Using the Right Words to Talk About Climate Change Inequality and Justice

Decidedly more emotional is Guterres’s recent use of “climate breakdown.” He is widely credited with the term’s popularization, but it had actually already been in circulation, with 10,000-plus mentions in the 2018 to 2023 time frame. Still, when a term pops out of the mouth of the U.S. Secretary General it has a particular influence; 567 media uses of “climate breakdown” have been recorded since Gutteres’s remarks roughly two weeks ago. “Climate crisis” has also been at large for a while, but it was little used—in single and triple digits until 2003. Since then, however—as the situation has begun to look and feel crisis-like—it at last vaulted to the 10,000-plus range. “Global weirding,” coined by environmentalist and author Hunter Lovins, in 2007, to better capture the upside down nature of climate change—with snow where it should be hot and heat where there should be snow—has never gathered much momentum, with uses just in the triple digits in every five-year window after Lovins first spoke the words. While “weirding” is playful, it lacks the comprehensibility and specificity Jamieson says is necessary for scientific language to go wide.

Ultimately, what we call climate change doesn’t matter. The storms and volatility, extreme weather and temperature creep that are characteristic of it have been with us for more than five decades now. Words didn’t cause the problem and words won’t clean it up. That’s a job for all of us.

Stratospheric aerosol injection, the idea of spraying sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to cool the planet, is one of the most controversial topics in climate science, with scientists engaged in a fierce, yearslong debate over whether even researching such techniques poses unacceptable risks. To some people outside of that community, though, it no longer matters much what the academics think. “Can we just disagree and move on?” Andrew Song, the co-founder of controversial geoengineering startup Make Sunsets, said in February, as he and his business partner Luke Iseman drove to the Reno, Nev., site of their first stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) test on U.S. soil. He described one email chain in which academics argued over how to categorize the technology. “This thread is 50 messages long in this debate,” Song said. “Like, who gives a fuck?”

For many observers, though, the heated petitions and articles on either side of the issue are deadly serious. Supporters of researching solar geoengineering techniques like SAI say it could serve as a critical tool to save lives from some of the worst effects of climate change; opponents say that even researching the subject risks legitimizing a solution with potentially catastrophic risks. Yet to some extent, for better or worse, the argument among researchers may soon be moot: the geoengineering horse might have left the stable. The Make Sunsets experiments in the U.S. and Mexico are just one indicator. Last year, the U.S. Congress mandated that the White House start looking at how the U.S. might research the technology. And the European Union earlier this year called for high-level talks on how to research and govern the practice.

This realignment became yet more clear on Sept. 14, when a group of prominent figures in climate policy published a new report calling for continued research into SAI and another geoengineering technique known as marine cloud brightening (artificially producing extra cloud cover to reflect the sun’s energy back into space) along with supporting further discussion between governments about the rules of the road. The group, dubbed the Climate Overshoot Commission by its organizers at the Paris Peace Forum, a non-profit focused on global governance issues, also calls for a moratorium on large-scale real-world geoengineering experiments.

Perhaps just as notable as its recommendations is the body’s composition: primarily former politicians, government ministers, diplomats, and NGO leaders. This 12-member group doesn’t directly have any policymaking authority, but its recommendations may carry weight for government leaders looking for a sparknotes primer on geoengineering policy.

And the fact that the commission took up the issue at all, much less recommended research despite warnings from a sizable section of the scientific community, may serve as an important signal that—as in last century’s debate over building atomic weapons—the deliberations over whether and how to use geoengineering are shifting out of scientists’ purview, and into the hands of political leadership.

“This discussion will happen, and in my view, the worst case scenario is that every country does what it sees fit,” says Laurence Tubiana, president of the European Climate Foundation and a member of the commission. “You cannot have only a scientific discussion at the moment where there may be a lot of pressure to really test.”

Read more: Inside a Controversial Startup’s Risky Attempt to Control Our Climate

In general, opponents of geoengineering research remain skeptical of any attempt to take geoengineering out of scientists’ purview. Some former participants with the Commission have expressed worry that the drafters of the report, some of them politicians with little background in atmospheric science, were being “instrumentalized” by the group’s organizers in order to create a global sense of normalcy around discussion of solar geoengineering, according to Climate Home. The opposition to studying geoengineering among scientists isn’t universal, though. In March 2021, the U.S.’s National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, recommended that scientists “cautiously pursue” solar geoengineering research and establish governance frameworks to protect against risks.

It’s almost undisputed, even among those that want to study it, that solar geoengineering is very scary, and that use of it could potentially be catastrophic for human civilization. Weather pattern changes caused by releasing large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, for instance, could cause new natural disasters or global famine. Tinkering with the climate could create new geopolitical risks: what if one nuclear-armed country wants to alter the atmosphere and another does not? And, among policymakers and international businesspeople, the perception that humanity indeed does have another option, however dangerous, could siphon away initiative to pursue the zero-risk climate policy that scientists have been asking for for years: cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s really dangerous, and I’m very troubled that [solar geoengineering] has gotten mainstreamed to the extent that it has,” Jennie Stephens, a professor of sustainability science and policy at Northeastern University told TIME in March. “There’s only a handful of people who have made it their life’s mission to do this, and they’ve gotten philanthropists and billionaires on their side.”
The risk that a country—or one of those billionaires—might unilaterally employ geoengineering has grown more urgent as the world fails to address climate change at the scale necessary to avoid its worst effects. Geoengineering techniques like SAI are relatively easy and inexpensive to deploy, and could conceivably be done at scale by many different countries. For some of the most vulnerable, geoengineering could seem like a low-cost solution to stave off urgent damages. The Overshoot Commission frames itself as a way to get ahead of those actions and to cut through the scientific debate to offer actionable guidance to policymakers.

The report offers a range of suggestions about how to govern solar geoengineering research. It calls for an expert assessment body housed at an institution like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to assess current scientific understanding of the research and for U.N.-coordinated engagement between countries. The report calls for the expansion of research partnerships between countries in the Global North and Global South and for regulatory guidelines on where outdoor experiments might be conducted.

Read more: A Controversial Technology Is Creating an Unprecedented Rift Among Climate Scientists

Ultimately, those recommendations will only have weight if the world listens—and lots of politicians, billionaires, and philanthropies may have their own ideas. That’s especially concerning given that researchers have estimated that deploying solar geoengineering could cost only a few billion dollars—a relatively small sum for many countries and even some individuals. Last year, a report from the U.S. intelligence community identified ongoing solar geoengineering research programs in Australia, China, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. It warned that worsening climate change was making it more likely that countries would unilaterally deploy solar geoengineering projects.

Speaking in Nevada in February, Iseman and Song mentioned the possibility of performing their own experiments from international waters if governments banned their work. “I’ve worked with PhDs before, and I get what they do,” Song said, in the lead up to their experiment. “They’re very intelligent. They can look very far into the future. But at the end of the day, when the rubber meets the road, they need someone like me to actually implement it.” Then he and Iseman pulled up to a Reno-area dog park, filled up three balloons with helium and sulfur dioxide, and let them go.

The real czars may be long gone, but for decades, the White House has been doing a good job of keeping the role—or at least the honorific—alive, appointing a director to oversee a particular task or issue, and bestowing the title along with it. We’ve had the Ebola Czar, the Drug Czar, the Budget Czar, the Climate Czar, and more. Yesterday, at a press conference at NASA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, the space agency gave the old role a new look, appointing the country’s, and indeed the world’s, first-ever UFO Czar. Only NASA didn’t use either one of those terms.

For starters, fewer and fewer people—or at least those who want to be taken seriously—talk about UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, anymore; there’s too much of a Big Foot, Loch Ness Monster, moon-landings-were-faked feel to the label. The preferred term now is UAP, for unidentified anomalous (or, variously, aerial) phenomenon. And NASA didn’t use the label czar either—another too-loose term for work that the space agency wants to keep solemn and serious. Instead, the full name for the new job is director of UAP research, and the man tapped to do the work is Mark McInernay, a former Pentagon liaison for NASA, who, for the better part of 25 years, has been on the government science beat, serving in multiple positions at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; the National Hurricane Center; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

It will be McInernay’s job to study the sightings, advancing science if the vehicles are confirmed to be extraterrestrial, and protecting national security if they’re of international military origin. He’ll have a lot to work with. Over the past 20 years, there have been more than 120 sightings of objects that often appear to be flying with no identified means of propulsion, and maneuvering in quick, head-snapping, often stop-and-start ways that no conventional machines can manage. It helps that the sightings have been called in by witnesses most people think of as unimpeachably reliable: U.S. military pilots.

“Look at that thing, dude!” one pilot shouted, in a cockpit video recorded in 2015 and released by the Department of Defense in 2020. “Oh my gosh. There’s a whole fleet of them. They’re going against the wind! The wind’s 120 knots [135 mph] west!”

The official interest in UAPs goes back a long way. In 2007, Congress established the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program Task Force to look into the phenomena. The group reached few conclusions, however, and was disbanded in 2012 due to lack of funding. But the sightings kept coming in, and in June 2020, as part of a sprawling COVID-19 relief bill, then-President Donald Trump called on the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to have their staff collaborate on a study of their own. Their report landed just under a year later, and again the findings were unsatisfying—at least for people looking for intelligent life off the planet. There was no evidence that the objects were extraterrestrial in origin but no proof that they weren’t either. The idea that they were friendlies—classified U.S. military vehicles out for a beta-test spin—was ruled out, though if they were indeed classified, it’s unlikely that the chiefs of intelligence and defense would spill the beans. It was possible, the analysis concluded, that the vehicles were either Russian or Chinese, as both countries are known to be experimenting with hypersonic technology, but that was little more than a guess. The unidentified objects thus remained just that—unidentified.

So it fell to NASA. In October 2022, the space agency independently announced it was establishing its own UAP study team, charging the group not with figuring out what the flying objects are, but rather, with establishing some kind of research and reporting program going forward. Three months later, the names of the panel’s 16 members were announced—including retired astronaut Scott Kelly, who in 2015 and 2016 spent nearly a year aboard the International Space Station; Anamaria Berea, a research affiliate with the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif.; and David Grinspoon a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.

Yesterday, before the press conference, the team released its 33-page report. Among other things, the report called on NASA to work together with other branches of government, using its expertise in space technology to help determine what both previously seen and future UAPs are. The panelists also recommended leaning on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and satellite observations to better look for—and explain—the objects. The report did call for the selection of a single person at NASA to oversee all this work, and NASA agreed, announcing that a director of UAP research had indeed been tapped, but conspicuously declining to release his name—at least at first—out of concern for his safety.

“One of the bigger things that happened during our study [was that people] harassed some of our panel members and that is very inappropriate behavior,” said David Spergel, the chairman of the study and the head of the Simons Foundation, a New York-based group that funds work in mathematics and the basic sciences. “Sadly, I think it’s part of a deeper problem…on the web on social media.” But the secret couldn’t stay a secret. Repeatedly pressed by reporters during the media event, NASA decided within 24 hours to release McInernay’s name. 

The fact that we are here at all—with the world’s most accomplished space agency undertaking investigations that could eventually, at least in theory, point toward the discovery of intelligent alien life—is not as improbable as it seems. For years, brand names in the world of politics have been stepping forward to admit that there is something head-scratching about all that mysterious atmospheric traffic. In 2021, Harry Reid, who was Majority Leader of the Senate in 2007 when the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program Task Force was established, told The Guardian: “I believe it’s just as if we were starting airplanes. Airplanes were not understood very quickly. UFOs fascinate people who are pilots, physicists, because they can’t understand how these UFOS have no vapor trail, no lights on them, yet they can go so fast, so quickly.”

During her 2016 presidential campaign, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded to a question from a reporter about what she would do to investigate UAPs if she were elected. “I want to open the files as much as we can,” she answered. “There’s enough stories out there that I don’t think everybody is just sitting in their kitchen making them up.” For this bit of candor, she was dubbed “the first E.T. candidate” on social media. In 2021, former President Barack Obama was asked about UAPs by talk show host James Corden and responded, “What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are.”

Given cover by those big names, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson yesterday stepped up to offer his view of the possibility of life in space without even having to be asked by the press. “There’s a global fascination with UAP,” he said. “Now, NASA has a statutory authority to look for life in the universe. Do I believe there’s life in a universe that is so vast that it’s hard for me to comprehend how big it is? My personal answer is yes.”

Whether his answer is the right answer is unknown for now—but NASA is on the case. The same agency that, in 1961, was given nine years to put boots on the moon and stuck the landing in 1969, has an open door and no deadline this go-round. An abundance of time—and an abundance of possible E.T. evidence—could lead to extraordinary findings. 

BOSTON (AP) — Boston firefighter Daniel Ranahan had heard about colleagues getting cancer but he was stunned when doctors discovered a tumor in his chest.

He was only 30 and had been in the Boston Fire Department less than a decade. But as he investigated his diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma in October 2020 and sought successful treatment, he learned he and others wore gear that contained the toxic industrial compound PFAS.

“You always hear about the dangers. You just never think it’s going be you,” said Ranahan, who stopped working due to the cancer and is among thousands of firefighters nationwide who sued PFAS manufacturers and companies that make firefighting gear and foam, seeking damages for their exposure.

“These guys put this on day in and day out to protect neighborhoods and wherever they are working,” he said. The Associated Press was not given access to his doctors due to the ongoing litigation, making it difficult to independently verify his claims.

The multi-layered coats and pants worn by firefighters have become the latest battleground over PFAS, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances. It’s found in everything from food packaging to clothing and is associated with health problems including several types of cancer. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency for the first time proposed limits on the chemicals in drinking water.

The news that PFAS compounds are in their gear — primarily meant to repel water and contaminants like oil and prevent moisture-related burns — is worrisome to firefighters.

The International Association of Fire Fighters or IAFF says that cancer has replaced heart disease as the biggest cause of line-of duty deaths. Firefighters have been shown to be at higher risk than the general population of getting several types of cancer.

Firefighters are exposed to a laundry list of carcinogens coming from fires burning hotter and faster than ever before — often due to increased petroleum products in homes. But as they learn more about PFAS, firefighters have grown suspicious that their personal protective equipment or PPE is sickening them.

“We had no idea that the gear that we were putting on every day was essentially loaded with PFAS,” said IAFF General President Edward Kelly, who was elected in 2021 on a campaign in part to address dangers of PFAS in gear.

Sam Dillon, president of Boston Firefighters, Local 718, said the union had to act.

“When we break it down, the problem to us becomes very simple,” he said. “There is proven science that PFAS is a known carcinogen. There is also proven science that PFAS is in protective gear that firefighters wear. So when its brought to our attention that there is a known carcinogen in the protective ensemble that our members wear, it is grave concern to the union and it’s our job to address that issue.”

One defendant in the lawsuits, 3M Co., said in a statement that it “manufactures a variety of personal protective equipment products that meet nationally recognized standards to help protect first responders facing high-hazard environments.” Last year, the company announced it would stop manufacturing PFAS by the end of 2025 and would work to discontinue using the chemicals in its products.

Another defendant, W. L. Gore & Associates, says the PFAS compound PTFE used in its clothing is nontoxic and safe.

“Based on the body of available and reliable science, Gore concludes its firefighting products are not the cause of cancers impacting firefighters, who by the nature of their important work are sometimes exposed to cancer-causing chemicals from fires,” said company spokesperson Amy Calhoun.

The American Chemistry Council said in a statement that “PFAS-based materials are the only viable options for some key equipment that meet the vital performance properties required for firefighting gear.”

Heightened concerns about gear

The PFAS has been in the gear for decades. But the wife of retired Worcester, Massachusetts fire lieutenant Paul Cotter who had cancer raised concerns about PFAS in gear in 2016. Until then, many firefighters had not heard of PFAS or did not know it was in their gear.

Gear makers told Diane Cotter there were only trace amounts of PFAS and it was safe. “I was attacked by firefighters when discussing the idea that chemicals in the gear could be causing cancer,” she said.

Cotter sent patches of gear to Graham Peaslee, a University of Notre Dame professor who studies PFAS, for testing.

“It was loaded with PFAS. That was the first eye opening moment that there may be more than just trace amounts,” said Peaslee, who also found the chemicals on gloves and in firehouse dust.

“They come off and they pose risks,” he said.

Courtney Carignan, an exposure scientist and epidemiologist at Michigan State University, said she found PFAS at twice the levels of the general population in the blood of more than half of the 18 firefighters she tested in Nantucket and Fall River, Massachusetts. She also found PFAS in gear was transferred to the skin of firefighters.

But Carignan is still investigating how much the gear contributed to increased levels of PFAS in the blood and whether PFAS exposure may be causing or contributing to cancer.

“Even though we know PFAS is in the gear, we still don’t know how much exposure that is,” she said.

Firefighters take action

The revelation of PFAS in the gear sparked a campaign by firefighters to find safer alternatives and to hold companies responsible.

Lawsuits on behalf of firefighters argue they were exposed to significant PFAS levels and companies knew the gear contained PFAS and that it can cause serious health problems. The suits also allege companies misrepresented their products as safe.

The IAFF, which represents more than 340,000 U.S. and Canadian firefighters, decided in 2021 to no longer accept sponsorships or advertising from the chemical industry and to oppose PFAS in turnout gear. A Congressional bill introduced in July would accelerate the search for safer alternatives and support firefighter training to reduce exposure from existing gear.

Seven states including Washington, New Hampshire and New York passed bills requiring companies to disclose PFAS in their gear, according to Safer States, a coalition of environmental health groups. Several more states introduced or enacted bills this year that provide funds to purchase PFAS-free gear or prohibit manufacture or sale of gear containing the chemicals, according to Emily Sampson, an environment policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

No easy fix

For most fire departments, there is no easy fix. Replacing gear is expensive — one set can cost upwards of $4,000 — and finding alternatives has proven challenging. Some companies are promoting a PFAS-free outer layer but that doesn’t solve the problem because the other two layers still contain PFAS, the IAFF said.

Among the hurdles, according to a IAFF lawsuit filed in March, is that the National Fire Protection Association or NFPA standard for gear can only be met with PFAS-infused material. The suit accuses the NFPA of working with several gear makers to maintain that requirement. It seeks damages and an end to the standard.

Chris Dubay, NFPA vice president and chief engineer, said in a statement that the standard “does not specify or require the use of any particular materials, chemicals or treatments for that gear.” He said the group has no “special agreements or relationships with any company or organization” in development of standards.

“The manufacturers who are producing this gear owe it to the fire service to come up with an alternative,” Brockton Fire Chief Brian Nardelli, who has heard of companies promoting gear with less PFAS but is reluctant to buy it for his 231-member department without more proof.

Instead, his department tries to limit firefighter exposure to gear that’s been integral to firefighter identity. They would take it everywhere, including charity events. Now, Brockton discourages firefighters from wearing turnout gear in living quarters and encourages them to wash it after fires. It’s stored on trucks and is only to be worn for serious calls like fires and car accidents.

“Guys have seen everyone who has gotten cancer, guys dying from cancer,” said William Hill, the president of the Brockton Fire Fighters Local 144 who was successfully treated for testicular cancer. “Being told that PFAS is in the gear, guys don’t want to take the chance of being overexposed.”

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — NASA said Thursday that the study of UFOs will require new scientific techniques, including advanced satellites as well as a shift in how unidentified flying objects are perceived.

The space agency released the findings after a yearlong study into UFOs.

In its 33-page report, an independent team commissioned by NASA cautioned that the negative perception surrounding UFOs poses an obstacle to collecting data. But officials said NASA’s involvement should help reduce the stigma around what it calls UAPs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the agency wants to shift the conversation about UAPs “from sensationalism to science.” Nelson added the panel found no evidence that UAPs had extraterrestrial origin.

The 16-member panel noted that artificial intelligence and machine learning are essential for identifying rare occurrences, including UFOs.

“NASA will do this transparently,” Nelson said.

At the one and only public meeting earlier this year, the independent team selected by the space agency insisted there is no conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial life associated with UFOs.

No top-secret files were accessed by the scientists, aviation and artificial intelligence experts, and retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, the first American to spend nearly a year in space. Instead, the 16-member group relied on unclassified data in an attempt to better understand unexplained sightings in the sky.

NASA said there are so few high-quality observations that no scientific conclusions can be drawn.

The government refers to unexplained sightings as UAPs versus UFOs. NASA defines them as observations in the sky or elsewhere that cannot be readily identified or scientifically explained.

The study was launched a year ago and cost under $100,000.

Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said.

Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals (human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste) are all out of whack, a group of international scientists said in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances. Only the acidity of the oceans, the health of the air and the ozone layer are within the boundaries considered safe, and both ocean and air pollution are heading in the wrong direction, the study said.

“We are in very bad shape,” said study co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “We show in this analysis that the planet is losing resilience and the patient is sick.”

In 2009, Rockstrom and other researchers created nine different broad boundary areas and used scientific measurements to judge Earth’s health as a whole. Wednesday’s paper was an update from 2015 and it added a sixth factor to the unsafe category. Water went from barely safe to the out-of-bounds category because of worsening river run-off and better measurements and understanding of the problem, Rockstrom said.

These boundaries “determine the fate of the planet,” said Rockstrom, a climate scientist. The nine factors have been “scientifically well established” by numerous outside studies, he said.

If Earth can manage these nine factors, Earth could be relatively safe. But it’s not, he said.

Read more: Where We’ll End Up Living as the Planet Burns

In most of the cases, the team uses other peer-reviewed science to create measurable thresholds for a safety boundary. For example, they use 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air, instead of the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5 degrees (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times. This year carbon in the air peaked at 424 parts per million.

The nine factors are intermingled. When the team used computer simulations, they found that making one factor worse, like the climate or biodiversity, made other Earth environmental issues degrade, while fixing one helped others. Rockstrom said this was like a simulated stress test for the planet.

The simulations showed “that one of the most powerful means that humanity has at its disposal to combat climate change” is cleaning up its land and saving forests, the study said. Returning forests to late 20th century levels would provide substantial natural sinks to store carbon dioxide instead of the air, where it traps heat, the study said.

Biodiversity – the amount and different types of species of life – is in some of the most troubling shape and it doesn’t get as much attention as other issues, like climate change, Rockstrom said.

“Biodiversity is fundamental to keeping the carbon cycle and the water cycle intact,” Rockstrom said. “The biggest headache we have today is the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis.”

University of Michigan environmental studies dean Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn’t part of the study, called the study “deeply troubling in its implications for the planet and people should be worried.”

“The analysis is balanced in that it clearly sounds a flashing red alarm, but it is not overly alarmist,” Overpeck said. “Importantly, there is hope.”

The fact that ozone layer is the sole improving factor shows that when the world and its leaders decide to recognize and act on a problem, it can be fixed and “for the most part there are things that we know how to do” to improve the remaining problems, said Carnegie Mellon chemistry and environment professor Neil Donahue.

Some biodiversity scientists, such as Duke’s Stuart Pimm, have long disputed Rockstrom’s methods and measurements, saying it makes the results not worth much.

But Carnegie Mellon environmental engineering professor Granger Morgan, who wasn’t part of the study, said, “Experts don’t agree on exactly where the limits are, or how much the planet’s different systems may interact, but we are getting dangerously close.”

“I’ve often said if we don’t quickly cut back on how we are stressing the Earth, we’re toast,” Morgan said in an email. “This paper says it’s more likely that we’re burnt toast.”

The Mediterranean storm that dumped torrential rain on the Libyan coast, setting off flooding that’s believed to have killed thousands of people, is the latest extreme weather event to carry some of the hallmarks of climate change, scientists say.

Daniel — dubbed a “medicane” for its hurricane-like characteristics – drew enormous energy from extremely warm sea water. And a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor that can fall as rain, experts said.

It’s difficult to attribute a single weather event to climate change, “but we know there are factors that could be at play” with storms like Daniel that make it more likely, said Kristen Corbosiero, an atmospheric scientist at the University at Albany.

Medicanes form once or twice a year in the Mediterranean, and are most common from September to January. They’re not generally true hurricanes, but can reach hurricane strength on rare occasions, said Simon Mason, chief climate scientist at the Columbia Climate School’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society.

Daniel formed as a low-pressure weather system more than a week ago and became blocked by a high-pressure system, dumping extreme amounts of rain on Greece and surrounding areas before inundating Libya.

Warming waters also are causing cyclones to move more slowly, which allows them to dump much more rain, said Raghu Murtugudde, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and emeritus professor at University of Maryland.

What’s more, he said, human activity and climate change together “are producing compound effects of storms and land use.” Flooding in Greece was worsened by wildfires, loss of vegetation, and loose soils and the catastrophic flooding in Libya was made worse by poorly maintained infrastructure.

Dams that collapsed outside Libya’s eastern city of Derna unleashed flash floods that may have killed thousands. Hundreds of bodies were found Tuesday and 10,000 people reported still missing after floodwaters smashed through dams and washed away entire neighborhoods of the city.

But the warm water that allowed Daniel to intensify and and fed the exceptional rainfall are a phenomenon being observed around the globe, said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center.

“Nowhere is immune from devastating storms like Daniel, as demonstrated by recent flooding in Massachusetts, Greece, Hong Kong, Duluth, and elsewhere,” said Francis.

Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist and meteorologist at Leipzig University in Germany, cautioned that scientists haven’t had time yet to study Daniel, but noted that the Mediterranean has been 2 to 3 degrees Celsius warmer this year than in the past. And while weather patterns that formed Daniel would have occurred even without climate change, the consequences probably wouldn’t have been as severe.

In a cooler world, Daniel probably “wouldn’t have developed as quickly and rapidly as it did,” Haustein said. “And it wouldn’t have hit Libya with such ferocious strength.”

We all know couples who, on the surface at least, seem incompatible. One person is an introvert, the other an extravert; one likes fine wine, the other never drinks; one is deeply religious, the other doesn’t believe. It’s those pairs who give rise to the idea that opposites attract. But that notion appears to be mistaken. According to a new study in the journal Nature Human Behavior, most partners tend to be profoundly similar—sharing up to 89% of the traits the researchers analyzed, including not just religiosity, alcohol consumption and introversion or extraversion, but also political values, IQ, level of education, openness to new experiences, susceptibility to depression, age at which each partner became sexually active, and more.

“Positive correlations between both members of a couple are the rule, not the exception,” says Matthew Keller, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and one of the paper’s authors. “The degree of spousal similarity can be really high.”

The sample group the researchers surveyed was both wide and deep. First, they conducted a meta-analysis of 22 traits couples may or may not share which were studied in 199 published papers going back as far as 1903. Collectively, those papers contained information on 8.5 million people. Next, they turned to the UK Biobank, a British data bank that contains the genetic, health and behavioral information of over half a million U.K. residents who volunteered to contribute to the project. The researchers used information from nearly 80,000 of those volunteers, surveying them for 133 traits, such as substance use and level of education. (In this paper, all of the people studied were male-female pairs. The authors are currently at work on a new paper on same-sex couples that they hope to publish next year.)

The metric the investigators used to crunch the numbers they got from the biobank and the meta-analysis uses what are known as 95% confidence intervals, a statistical tool that allows researchers to conclude with 95% certainty that a particular fact they’re seeking is true. The authors of the paper plotted their results on a scale that ran from 1.0 at the top, down to -0.5 at the bottom, with 1.0 representing perfect convergence (all of the people studied had a particular trait in common with their partner) and -0.5 representing perfect non-convergence (none of the couples did). Zero, which lies between the 1.0 and the -0.5 represents randomness, with no particular correlation one way or the other.

Of all of the traits the researchers studied, so-called passive traits—ones that are more demographic than personal—tended to be the ones partners had most in common. Year of birth, for example, had a convergence score of 0.9. Where the partners met was not covered by the new paper, but would likely show convergence as well. “If you’re in a city,” says Keller, “you’re more likely to select a partner from the same city.”

Other measured traits are more actively chosen by individuals. In an extremely partisan era, it’s little surprise that political values scored high, with couples having a 0.6 convergence on what their views on political and social issues are. Religiosity and educational level scored a 0.6, too. Sexuality—specifically, the age they first had sex—had a relatively high correlation of about 0.4. Bad habits, especially drinking to excess and smoking, also showed convergence, with over-drinking scoring 0.28 and smoking coming in at 0.5. Having a substance abuse disorder scored 0.43. In these cases, the unhealthy behavior may have a contagious quality to it, with one partner picking up a habit from the other.

“This convergence can be a very rapid process,” says Keller. “If a spouse smokes or drinks when you’re around, you’re exposed to it more and you may begin to mimic your partner.”

Read More: The Science Behind Happy Relationships

Physical traits did not correlate quite as closely as behavioral ones do, but they were solidly above the zero line too. Height had a correlation of 0.25, with tall people tending to choose a tall mate and short people choosing a short mate. Something similar is true of weight—with a 0.23 convergence. Emotional and psychological conditions correlated as well—but the numbers were relatively low. A predisposition to depression was about 0.2 and neuroticism was 0.1 

“The degree of spousal similarity is really high for things like social attitudes, educational attainment and substance use,” says Keller. “It’s lower—but still positive—for psychiatric traits and personality traits.”

Only three traits—hearing difficulty, a tendency to worry, and chronotype (whether someone is a morning person or a night owl)—had a negative value, falling just below the zero line and indicating a more-than-random non-convergence. In every other case, the convergence was either at or above zero.

Such two-of-a-kind pairing, or assortative mating, can come at a cost, said Tanya Horwitz, a predoctoral trainee at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and lead author of the paper. If people sort themselves by height, for example, it can lead to a next generation of more people at the low and high end of the height spectrum and a gulf in the middle. Negative psychiatric and medical traits can be more easily passed on to children if both parents suffer from them. And when highly educated—often wealthy—people cluster together, the socioeconomic divide can widen. Choosing a mate may be a very personal thing, but it can have a very big impact.

Back in 2014, Omar Yaghi, a chemistry professor at the University of California, noticed something unusual about a new water-absorbing material his lab was developing. Pulling water out of the air is useful for a lot of things (think about the silica beads that come in packaging to keep things dry) but drying out desiccants in order to reuse them generally means heating them to very high temperatures, often around 400°F, which uses a lot of energy. But Yaghi’s material, an atomic-scale lattice work replete with billions of tiny pores, known as a metal-organic framework (MOF), was giving up its water at a much lower temperature, around 113°F, equivalent to that of a tepid cup of coffee. “I immediately thought I could take this into the desert, and at night it extracts the water from the air,” Yaghi says. “During the day when it’s hot and sunny I can harvest the drinking water.”

Yaghi, 58, is something of a one-man phenomenon in the world of chemistry. He is known for his work over the past three decades pioneering a field known as reticular chemistry, which involves precisely engineering MOF crystals with molecular-level pores. Those materials can have some interesting properties. If you’re trying to store gaseous CO2, for instance, a container containing a MOF with pores tailored to fit CO2 molecules can actually store more of them than an empty container: the MOF attracts those CO2 molecules like bees to honey. Such materials have dozens of potential applications, from electronic sensors to drug delivery. Yaghi’s work founding and developing the field has made him one of the most cited chemists in the world, and he has been showered with awards and citations for his work, including a nomination for the Nobel Prize in chemistry (his name featured prominently in predictions for the 2022 winner). 

Out of all the potential routes for further exploration, though, Yaghi has in recent years been primarily focused on two potential uses for reticular chemistry: fighting climate change, and expanding access to drinking water. In 2020, he started a company called Atoco to carry out those aims (the company’s existence has not previously been reported). 

Yaghi is sensitive to how vital drinking water can be. He grew up in Amman, Jordan, in the 1970s, a time when the city only supplied water for a few hours every week or two. As a child, he would wake up early in the morning to wait by the faucet with containers to store a week’s supply of water for the family. After the 2014 experiment, he felt he had the basis for an invention that could free families around the world from that sort of struggle forever. “You can have water harvesters that are operating off-grid anywhere,” Yaghi says. “You have control over your own water. I call it water independence.”

Read more: The Ocean is the Next Frontier for the Carbon Removal Industry

It’s possible today to pull water out of the air (the humble dehumidifier does so, for instance) but Yaghi says that machines making use of MOF materials, with pores precisely tailored to capture water particles, could produce a steady supply of water with very little energy, and in drier environments than anything available today. They can even produce water using only passive energy from the sun’s heat. In a July 2023 paper published in Nature Water, Yaghi and a group of collaborators demonstrated a material dubbed MOF-303 that was able to produce a steady drip of water in Death Valley, Calif., one of the driest places on earth, just from being left out in the sun.

Yaghi launched Atoco in order to scale up production of reticular materials like MOFs. While Yaghi has worked with other companies attempting to scale up the technology for water harvesting in the past, Atoco says it aims to use newer, more advanced reticular materials, and to develop novel devices like water harvesters that work without electricity (other companies are working to develop electrically-powered water harvesters using reticular chemistry, as is Atoco). Samer Taha, Atoco’s CEO, says that their machines will be able to function in drier environments than anything available today, and with about half the energy on average. Among the devices the company wants to develop is an electrically powered machine the size of a large desktop computer that will be able to produce about 100-200 liters of drinking water per day, Taha says. The company declined to share when the devices will become available.

“This is something that the world needs,” Yaghi says. “Almost one third of the world is experiencing water stress almost every month of the year. The U.N. is projecting that by the year 2050 almost 5 billion people will be experiencing water stress.” 

Yaghi’s technology won’t just be able to draw water out of the air—he says his materials will also be useful for absorbing carbon dioxide. That could be useful for removing carbon dioxide from industrial smokestacks, or for extracting the greenhouse gas directly from the atmosphere. 

Both industries are still in their infancy, though they’ve recently been gaining more traction. Tax credits passed in the Inflation Reduction Act last summer have spurred investment in carbon capture for industrial facilities, and a $1.2 billion investment by the U.S. Department of Energy for two large projects in Texas and Louisiana last month has given the direct-air carbon capture a major boost as well. (No direct air capture facilities currently being planned will be large enough to meaningfully offset humanity’s emissions, though proponents of the technology say it’s important to invest in it now so that we will have facilities that are large enough to make a difference one day.)

Read more: California Sunshine Could be Key to Combating Drought

A major impediment to the carbon capture sector is the tremendous amount of energy that it generally takes to draw CO2 out of the air, or even to filter it in higher concentrations from smokestacks. Most of the carbon capture projects in use today use filters or chemical solutions like potassium hydroxide to trap CO2, but Taha says that using materials made using reticular chemistry could lower that power input substantially. (Other companies are already using reticular materials for carbon capture, but Atoco says that it will be able to offer more effective chemistries and produce them cheaply). “It’s really hard to give a figure now, because we are in the process of building these systems,” Taha says. “But we expect something between 30 to 50% [efficiency] improvement [over today’s standard carbon capture technology], if not more.” It’s a claim that has yet to be borne out. If successful though, that kind of power reduction could make a huge difference in the feasibility of scaling up large-scale carbon capture systems.

Making good on them, however, will be no easy feat. Production of the reticular materials they’re attempting to use has been limited to the laboratory scale, and one of Atoco’s main difficulties will be in trying to scale up that production process. “We don’t claim that from day one, we’re going to make it very scalable, very cheap,” Taha says. “But if we look at the starting materials, they are available and not expensive. So that’s the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Yaghi, for his part, says Atoco is oriented around a social mission. “Quite frankly, originally I was not interested in [starting a company].” Yaghi says. “I wanted to be in the lab. But I’m the inventor of this field of research, and it falls upon me to push these technologies to the next level so that they reach society.”

A landmark United Nations assessment of global progress on cutting emissions shows countries are largely failing to meet their commitments, putting the planet on course for catastrophic global warming.

The UN’s climate change secretariat calculated the progress every country in the world has made on their pledges to reduce emissions and assessed how much it’s helping to tackle global warming. The answer is not enough.

The report released Friday says governments must rapidly find a way to cut billions of tons of carbon dioxide if they want to stop the world from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the decade.

Time is running out. The world is on track to breach 1.5C of warming in the near term without immediate action, according to scientists on the UN sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This summer was already the warmest on record globally by a large margin as extreme heat waves gripped North America, Europe and Asia, according to Europe’s Earth observation agency Copernicus.

Read more: The Window to Adapt to Climate Change Is ‘Rapidly Closing,’ Warns the IPCC

Further warming would lead to more extreme weather events, wildfires and storms, which in turn can destroy communities, forcing people to flee their homes or countries. It can also ruin crops, creating further food shortages, while warming the seas and threatening species.

“There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all,” the report said.

Today’s UN report has been written to underpin upcoming global climate talks, known as COP28, which are due to take place from the end of November in Dubai. In that meeting, countries will check in for the first time on the progress that has been made since the 2015 UN climate talks in Paris, where countries agreed to work toward capping global temperature increases since pre-industrial times to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and acknowledged the need to strive for 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.

While emissions have already peaked in developed and some developing countries, they must stop rising globally before 2025 to achieve a warming limit of 1.5C, the report said. It also called for a scaling up all renewable energy, phasing out all unabated fossil fuels and an end to deforestation and forest degradation, alongside an increase in tree planting. Transport and buildings also need to decarbonize.

“This report is a wake-up call to the injustice of the climate crisis and a pivotal opportunity to correct course,” said Ani Dasgupta, president and chief executive of the World Resources Institute. “We already know the world is failing to meet its climate goals, but leaders now have a concrete blueprint underpinned by a mountain of evidence for how to get the job done.”

The UN’s assessment is the first-of-its kind released and comes as leaders from the 20 largest economies prepare to gather in New Delhi for their annual G-20 summit. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit host, is pushing for the group to agree a target to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. However, the draft text also seeks to allow for more burning of fossil fuels, albeit with technologies that can capture emissions.

A Japanese rocket bound for the moon took off early Thursday, offering relief to a battered national space program following a string of weather delays, major setbacks and high-profile failures.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s H2-A rocket lifted off around 8:42 a.m. local time from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan. It was originally scheduled to launch in August but was delayed three times on concerns over bad weather.

The heavy payload rocket was launched carrying an advanced imaging satellite and a lightweight lander that was scheduled to reach the moon as early as January.

Around 9:30 a.m., the lander separated from the rocket and successfully began its journey to the lunar surface. 

Developed and built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., the H2-A is the agency’s most reliable rocket with just one failure out of 42 launches since 2001.

On Thursday it was carrying the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, among other things. Standing less than 3 meters (9.8 feet) tall, the lander could pave the way for other probes with high navigational accuracy.

The rocket is also carrying the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, a satellite that will help scientists observe plasma in stars and galaxies.

The H2-A’s successor, the H3, was supposed to inherit the mantle earlier this year. Instead it failed twice to launch — the first time refusing to budge from its launch pad and the second time in more dramatic fashion, when a system malfunction forced operators to transmit a self-destruct code, rendering it inert before it fell carrying a satellite into the Philippine Sea.

The space race is heating up after India on Aug. 24 became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole. A Russian attempt at a lunar touch down in the same area a few days before ended in failure following an engine malfunction.

The U.S. plans to send the first humans to explore the area near the south pole later this decade, in a mission called Artemis III. China is also seeking to build a research station near the region and place astronauts on the moon by 2030.

(GENEVA) — Earth has sweltered through its hottest Northern Hemisphere summer ever measured, with a record warm August capping a season of brutal and deadly temperatures, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

Last month was not only the hottest August scientists ever recorded by far with modern equipment, it was also the second hottest month measured, behind only July 2023, WMO and the European climate service Copernicus announced Wednesday.

August was about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial averages. That is the threshold that the world is trying not to pass, though scientists are more concerned about rises in temperatures over decades, not merely a blip over a month’s time.

The world’s oceans — more than 70% of the Earth’s surface — were the hottest ever recorded, nearly 21 C (69.8 F), and have set high temperature marks for three consecutive months, the WMO and Copernicus said.

“The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “Climate breakdown has begun.”

So far, 2023 is the second hottest year on record, behind 2016, according to Copernicus.

Scientists blame ever warming human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas with an extra push from a natural El Nino, which is a temporary warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide. Usually an El Nino, which started earlier this year, adds extra heat to global temperatures but more so in its second year.

Climatologist Andrew Weaver said the numbers announced by WMO and Copernicus come as no surprise, bemoaning how governments have not appeared to take the issue of global warming seriously enough. He expressed concern that the public will just forget the issue when temperatures fall again.

“It’s time for global leaders to start telling the truth,” said Weaver, a professor at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria in Canada. “We will not limit warming to 1.5 C; we will not limit warming to 2.0 C. It’s all hands on deck now to prevent 3.0 C global warming — a level of warming that will wreak havoc worldwide.”

Copernicus, a division of the European Union’s space program, has records going back to 1940, but in the United Kingdom and the United States, global records go back to the mid 1800s and those weather and science agencies are expected to soon report that the summer was a record-breaker.

“What we are observing, not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” Copernicus Climate Change Service Director Carlo Buontempo said.

Scientists have used tree rings, ice cores and other proxies to estimate that temperatures are now warmer than they have been in about 120,000 years. The world has been warmer before, but that was prior to human civilization, seas were much higher and the poles were not icy.

So far, daily September temperatures are higher than what has been recorded before for this time of year, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer.

While the world’s air and oceans were setting records for heat, Antarctica continued to set records for low amounts of sea ice, the WMO said.

“Antarctic sea ice extent was literally off the charts, and the global sea surface temperature was once again at a new record,” WMO’s secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, said in a statement released to the media. “It is worth noting that this is happening BEFORE we see the full warming impact of the El Nino event, which typically plays out in the second year after it develops.”

A strong El Nino coincided with the all-time high temperatures in 2016. The U.N. weather agency earlier this year rolled out predictions that suggest Earth would within the next five years have a year that averages 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than in the mid 19th century. Each year at or near 1.5 matters.

It also predicted 98% chance of breaking the 2016 record between now and 2027.

The new readings on high global temperatures came as WMO released Wednesday its latest bulletin on air quality and climate, noting that extreme heat, compounded by wildfires and desert dust, has had a measurable impact on air quality, human health and the environment.

WMO scientific adviser Lorenzo Labrador lamented the deteriorating air quality around the globe and cited “record-breaking wildfire season” in many parts of the world, including western Canada and Europe.

“If heat waves increase as a result of El Nino, we may probably expect a further degradation in air quality as a whole,” he said.

NEW DELHI — India’s moon rover has completed its walk on the lunar surface and been put into sleep mode less than two weeks after its historic landing near the lunar south pole, India’s space mission said.

“The rover completes its assignments. It is now safely parked and set into sleep mode,” with daylight on that part of the moon coming to an end, the Indian Space Research Organization said in a statement late Saturday.

The rover’s payloads are turned off and the data it collected has been transmitted to the Earth via the lander, the statement said.

The Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover were expected to operate only for one lunar day, which is equal to 14 days on Earth.

“Currently, the battery is fully charged. The solar panel is oriented to receive the light at the next sunrise expected on September 22, 2023. The receiver is kept on. Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments!” the statement said.

There was no word on the outcome of the rover searches for signs of frozen water on the lunar surface that could help future astronaut missions, as a potential source of drinking water or to make rocket fuel.

Last week, the space agency said the moon rover confirmed the presence of sulfur and detected several other elements. The rover’s laser-induced spectroscope instrument also detected aluminum, iron, calcium, chromium, titanium, manganese, oxygen and silicon on the surface, it said.

The Indian Express newspaper said the electronics on board the Indian moon mission weren’t designed to withstand very low temperatures, less than -120 C (-184 F) during the nighttime on the moon. The lunar night also extends for as long as 14 days on Earth.

Pallava Bagla, a science writer and co-author of books on India’s space exploration, said the rover has limited battery power.

The data is back on Earth and will be analyzed by Indian scientists as a first look and then by the global community, he said

By sunrise on the moon, the rover may or may not wake up because the electronics die at such cold temperatures, Bagla said.

“Making electronic circuits and components that can survive the deep cold temperature of the moon, that technology doesn’t exist in India,” he said.

After a failed attempt to land on the moon in 2019, India last week joined the United States, the Soviet Union and China as only the fourth country to achieve this milestone.

The successful mission showcases India’s rising standing as a technology and space powerhouse and dovetails with Prime Minister Narendra Modi desire to project an image of an ascendant country asserting its place among the global elite.

The mission began more than a month ago at an estimated cost of $75 million.

India’s success came just days after Russia’s Luna-25, which was aiming for the same lunar region, spun into an uncontrolled orbit and crashed. It had been intended to be the first successful Russian lunar landing after a gap of 47 years.

Russia’s head of the state-controlled space corporation Roscosmos attributed the failure to the lack of expertise because of the long break in lunar research that followed the last Soviet mission to the moon in 1976.

Active since the 1960s, India has launched satellites for itself and other countries, and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014. India is planning its first mission to the International Space Station next year, in collaboration with the United States.

Lyme disease was first identified in 1975, in Lyme, Conn., but scientists still have more questions than answers about how the bacteria responsible for the condition that wreaks such havoc for some people, leaving them with debilitating symptoms for years, while causing relatively mild disease for others. Tests for Lyme have high false negative rates, especially early in the infection, so even detecting the disease is challenging.

In a paper published in PLOS Pathogens, an international group of researchers report on the most comprehensive analysis of the Borrelia burgdorferi genome to date, which provides clues about what’s causing more severe forms of the disease, and lays the foundation for developing better diagnostic tests and treatments. The data come from samples painstakingly taken from 299 Lyme patients in the northeastern and midwestern U.S., and central Europe, mostly extracted from skin biopsies of the bullseye-shaped rashes that are a hallmark early sign of infection. The scientists first isolated the bacteria from the biopsied skin samples, then correlated genetic signatures of the bacteria with the patients’ health outcomes. That allowed them to identify genes that were associated with more severe symptoms as well as understand why U.S. patients tend to have different symptoms than those in Europe.

“This information is foundational for developing diagnostics, vaccines, and therapies,” says Pardis Sabeti, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard University, and a senior author of the paper. “Knowing the genes that are there, we can start seeing the diversity that exists, and characterizing their function. It’s like the Human Genome Project—this genetic information is what’s needed before we can even begin to develop better diagnostics and treatments.”

In the paper, the scientists confirmed previous, smaller genetic studies of B. burgdorferi that correlated genetic markers on the bacterial genome to disease symptoms in people. They found specific genetic changes associated with more severe disease, which could in the future be used to determine whether a particular infection involves a strain of the bacteria that is likely to lead to more serious illness.

They also found specific proteins on the surface of the bacteria that were associated with the ability to spread beyond the initial site of infection (i.e. a tick bite) via the blood to affect other tissues and organs. “That’s when most of the problematic aspects of Lyme disease begins,” says Dr. Jacob Lemieux, from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and first author of the study. “The bacteria may go to the nervous system, causing neurological Lyme disease, or if it goes to the joints, it can cause Lyme arthritis. Dissemination is a watershed event because it could mean the difference between a mild and severe case.”

Whether these markers are also associated with post Lyme disease syndrome, in which people continue to experience lingering symptoms months or years after their infection, isn’t clear yet. But it could help to demystify what’s causing the syndrome. “Patients who have disseminated Lyme disease do have higher rates of post Lyme disease syndrome,” says Lemieux. “We hypothesize that certain strains of Lyme are more likely to lead to post-treatment Lyme syndrome, and we’d like to identify what those strains are. So knowing which patients are infected with strains that are more likely to disseminate could help us to study new therapeutics and interventions for post Lyme syndrome.”

Read more: How Climate Change Affects the Spread of Lyme Disease

By highlighting possible genetic markers associated with the bacteria’s ability to roam the body after infection, the scientists hope to catalyze additional research into testing and responding to these markers to reduce serious symptoms.

The extensive genetic information gathered in this study also provides clues about why people in the U.S. experience different Lyme symptoms than those in Europe, and why tests in the U.S. may not detect infections picked up overseas. “We found that the genetics [of the bacterial strains] vary by regions,” says Lemieux. In the U.S., especially in the northeastern parts of the country, strains tend to be more invasive and disseminate through the body after infection, which could contribute to more severe disease. Versions of the bacteria more common in Europe tend to cause chronic skin conditions and neurological symptoms,

“We’re only scratching the surface of this,” says Lemieux of the knowledge represented by this genetic database, which he and his team uploaded to the public genetic research database GenBank, from the National Institutes of Health, for other scientists to study and analyze. “This paper is one brick in the foundation, and a valuable tool for the field.”