A giant glider-like aircraft has completed the first night flight propelled only by solar energy, organizers said on Thursday. Solar Impulse, whose wingspan is the same as an Airbus A340, flew 26 hours and 9 minutes, powered only by solar energy stored during the day. It was also the longest and highest flight in the…

Upper atmospheric lightning or upper atmospheric discharge are terms sometimes used by researchers to refer to a family of electrical breakdown phenomena that occur well above the altitudes of normal lightning. The preferred current usage is transient luminous events (TLEs) to refer to the various types of electrical discharge phenomena in the upper atmosphere, because…

I have to bite my tongue when I hear people claim how progressive Europe is when it comes to sustainability and consumerism. Take Amsterdam, where in May I worked and traveled for two weeks. True, bicycles are everywhere, public transport works, and you can find great locally grown food. But step into an Albert Heijn…

The surest sign of a warming Earth is the steady melting of its ice zones, from disappearing sea ice in the Arctic to shrinking glaciers worldwide. Now, scientists are using increasingly sophisticated satellite technology to measure the extent, thickness, and height of ice, assembling an essential picture of a planet in transition.

Leading climate scientists on Thursday welcomed a British report that cleared researchers of exaggerating the effects of global warming and said they hoped it would restore faith in the fight against climate change. The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, launched an inquiry after more than 1,000 emails hacked from its climate research unit…

Deep down in the earth are tremendously high pressures. What happens under high pressure is not the same as what happens at lower pressures. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicists are using an ultra fast laser based technique they dubbed nanoshocks for something entirely different. In fact, the nanoshocks have such a small spatial scale that…

Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India’s chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing “e-waste” industry. Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys.

Polar bears, walruses, sea otters, and other endangered species are all set to benefit from a Russian decision to boost its national protected areas to nearly 3 percent of its territory by 2020, a move which helps the country to meet its international obligations to protect biodiversity. The Russian government’s decision establishes 9 new nature…

BP’s boss met officials from an Abu Dhabi state fund on Wednesday as hopes for fresh investment and progress toward closing a leaking U.S. oil well lifted the company’s battered shares. A United Arab Emirates official said Chief Executive Tony Hayward had met officials from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) during a routine visit. He…

Over 10,000 years ago in the Americas, there were many more large mammals than today epitomized by the mammoth. The extinction of woolly mammoths and other large mammals more than 10,000 years ago may be explained by the same type of cascade of ecosystem disruption that is being caused today by the global decline of…