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Science Archive

Archives for July 2025

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
Google calls its new AI model a “virtual satellite.”

Called AlphaEarth Foundations, the model stitches together data from actual satellite images, radar, climate simulations, and more to map Earth’s land and coastal waters.

”The Satellite Embedding dataset is revolutionizing our work by helping countries map uncharted ecosystems - this is crucial for pinpointing where to focus their conservation efforts,” Nick Murray, director of the James Cook University Global Ecology Lab and Global Science Lead of Global Ecosystems Atlas, said in a Google DeepMind blog post.

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
A tsunami advisory is in effect for the West Coast.

“Stay away from the coast!” the National Weather Service warns. A magnitude 8.7 earthquake off the east coast of Russia has triggered tsunami alerts across the Pacific. The tsunami advisory means that dangerous currents and waves are possible.

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
Suddenly, the EPA no longer thinks greenhouse gas emissions “endanger” public health.

The Trump administration proposed tossing out the landmark 2009 “endangerment finding” that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act.

Greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane cause climate change, of course. Climate change is projected to lead to roughly 250,000 additional deaths each year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat illness between 2030 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization.

The dangerously blurry line between wellness and medical tech

Whoop’s FDA notice is a reminder that it’s harder to tell what’s a medical feature and what’s “just for fun.”

Victoria Song
Trump’s AI plan is a massive handout to gas and chemical companies

The Trump administration wants to build data center projects on Superfund sites, and with as little oversight as possible.

Justine Calma
Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
Who pays for AI’s power?

Big Tech has turned to everything from nuclear reactors to coal mines to get enough power to run new data centers demanded by the pivot to AI, but utility companies want to make sure they’re not stuck footing the bill.

They’re increasingly demanding that tech giants sign longer electricity contracts and commit to paying for surplus power regardless of whether they use it, to avoid the extra infrastructure costs ending up on consumers’ energy bills.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
A crypto tycoon and a VC funded an experiment to literally block sunlight in California.

A University of Washington experiment with “a machine to create clouds” was shut down by the city of Alameda — because the scientists didn’t bother to tell the locals what they were up to, Politico writes. They were 20 minutes into the test when city officials ended the experiment.

Donors to the Marine Cloud Brightening Program include “cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen, the philanthropist Rachel Pritzker and Chris Sacca, a venture capitalist.” Can’t wait to find out what new conspiracy theories this spawns!

Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
Google’s Android early warning system severely underestimated Turkey’s lethal earthquakes.

Android Earthquake Alerts uses the network of smartphones to detect tremors, sending alerts to other phones in the affected area. But in a paper published in Science, the company admitted it had found “several limitations” in the algorithm’s performance during two 2023 quakes that killed over 55,000 people.

It underestimated the 7.8 and 7.7 magnitude quakes, and instead of sending 10 million “TakeAction” alerts, which override Do Not Disturb, it sent just 469.

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
The US could soon get a new private uranium enrichment facility.

Plans are in place to revive a shuttered plant in Kentucky. The Trump administration and Big Tech are trying to revitalize the nuclear energy industry to meet growing electricity demand from AI data centers.

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
Google’s investing in a CO2 battery.

It’s part of the company’s new push to support the development of technologies that can store renewable energy for longer periods of time than lithium-ion batteries. It’s the kind of thing that might be able to help Google meet growing data center energy demands and maybe even stop its fossil fuel emissions from continuing to rise.

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
A new satellite could help improve disaster response.

NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation plan to launch the satellite on July 30th. The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission is supposed to track ice melt and land deformation, helping scientists better understand the impacts of flooding, earthquakes, and more.