Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell dies
In a post on X, NASA said: "We are saddened by the passing of Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13 and a four-time spaceflight veteran.
"Lovell's life and work inspired millions. His courage under pressure helped forge our path to the Moon and beyond-a journey that continues today."
Please refresh the page for the latest version.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Light pollution causes urban birds to stay awake longer each day, study finds
Urban birds stay up significantly later than their rural counterparts, according to research that highlights the impact of light pollution on wildlife. The study, based on recordings submitted by bird enthusiasts to a popular species identification and mapping website, showed that light pollution caused birds to sing for an average of 50 minutes longer each day, with some species waking up an hour earlier and settling down for the evening an hour later. 'We were shocked by our findings,' said Dr Brent Pease, an assistant professor of biodiversity conservation at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. 'Under the brightest night skies, a bird's day is extended by nearly an hour.' Light pollution now affects 23% of Earth's surface and is rapidly growing in extent and intensity, data suggests. There is already evidence for detrimental effects on human health and concerns that many species are affected, with negative consequences including die-offs of insects and the disruption of migration patterns in bats and sea turtles. The latest study used bird recordings submitted to BirdWeather, a citizen science project that allows users to submit recordings from birds in their local area to produce a global live library of birdsong and which uses AI to allow users to identify birds in their gardens. In total the scientists analysed 2.6m observations of onset (morning) bird vocalisation and 1.8m observations of cessation (evening) bird calls, for hundreds of species. This data was combined with global satellite imagery measurements of light pollution. 'BirdWeather unlocked behavioural research at large geographic and timescales,' said Pease. 'We could start to learn at a scale never [done] before how birds were responding behaviourally to human forces.' The analysis found that for birds in light-polluted areas, the waking day was extended by 50 minutes on average. Species with large eyes, relative to their body size, had the strongest response to artificial light. 'The American robin, Northern mocking bird and European goldfinch all extended their day by more than average,' said Pease. 'Small-eyed species such as sparrows didn't have as much of a response.' The impact of a longer day for birds was not yet clear, the researchers said. 'We know that sleep loss is not great for humans, but birds are different,' said Pease. 'They have developed interesting strategies to cope with loss of sleep during migratory periods.' A disturbance of natural behaviour patterns was of concern, Pease added, although there is evidence, in some species, that artificial lighting may increase foraging and mating time and improve the survival rate of fledglings. The findings are published in the journal Science.
Time Out
2 hours ago
- Time Out
New York will have to wait even longer for next year's springtime cherry blossoms, says Yale
If you thought climate change meant spring would keep sneaking in earlier each year—surprise! A new Yale study says New Yorkers will be cooling their heels for cherry blossoms, lilacs and all those leafy Instagram backdrops. Turns out, the city's trees are hitting the snooze button. The culprit is warmer winters that mess with the trees' internal clocks. Trees in temperate regions, including those in New York City, need a proper cold spell to reset for spring. Without that chill, they don't know when to wake up. So instead of bursting into bloom, they stall—resulting in delayed leaf-outs, shorter green seasons and less shade when we need it most. Researchers analyzed more than two decades of NASA satellite images from 346 city parks. They defined spring's start as when at least 15% of the trees in a park leafed out. The results flipped expectations: Spring is actually coming later, not earlier and the effect is most pronounced in medium-sized parks like Bryant Park and City Hall Park. These spaces—too big to fully blend into the urban grid, too small to buffer against it—are caught in a heat trap. On average, their spring debut is three to five days late. Large parks like Central Park and Prospect Park are only two days late, while tiny pocket parks under two acres take about a day longer. But in a city where every day of shade and oxygen counts, even small delays ripple outward. 'It's going to be really disruptive for a lot of wildlife that depend on these trees for food, for shelter,' Novem Auyeung of NYC Parks told Gothamist. Humans lose out, too, with less shade, hotter streets and fewer leafy canopies to soften the city's concrete edges. Over the past 50 years, NYC winters have warmed by more than three degrees Fahrenheit. That means less photosynthesis, weaker growth and native trees like oaks and maples losing ground to hardier invaders like the notorious Tree of Heaven. Park managers are already battling abnormal branching, earlier leaf drops and outbreaks of disease. Solutions include more trees, denser canopies, green roofs and heat-taming building materials. Otherwise, your spring picnic might look a lot more skeletal. After all, 'it's more pleasant to walk underneath trees that are lush and green than it is to walk under these kinds of skeletal structures,' Jeffrey Clark, of the Natural Areas Conservancy, said to Gothamist.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Forget Oppenheimer... the real brains behind the atom bomb were BRITISH: 'Hidden' history of WWII's deadly weapon revealed
It was two years ago that the Oscar-winning blockbuster ' Oppenheimer ' sent the message that it was the Americans, or rather one American in particular, who was responsible for the atomic explosion that brought the Second World War to an explosive close. The man in question was native New Yorker Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project's top-secret programme of nuclear bomb-making deep in the New Mexican desert. By August 1945 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' were ready to be loaded on to B-29 bombers, flown halfway across the world and dropped on two of Japan 's major cities to devastating effect. Not so fast, writes Gareth Williams. In this myth-busting book, he reveals that, without the involvement of British physicists at an early stage, the all-American 'Manhattan Project' would never have got off the ground. And the consequences of that would have been catastrophic, leaving the USA and most of Europe at the mercy of German scientists who were rushing to develop their own weapons of mass destruction. In which case it could so easily have been London or Washington rather than Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were engulfed in a giant mushroom cloud. The world's first atomic bomb (above) was detonated in New Mexico in July 1945. In the second afterwards, Oppenheimer said: 'I am become death, destroyer of worlds' Williams is a retired university professor and, as he explains, a member of CND, who was first alerted to Britain's forgotten contribution when he encountered declassified papers that referred to a mysterious 'MAUD committee'. Digging further he discovered that MAUD had been set up in 1940 to investigate the feasibility of Britain producing an atomic bomb in the immediate future. The nudge had come from a memo written by two German-Jewish physicists who had escaped from Nazi Germany and were now working at the University of Birmingham. In their document, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls hypothesized that by using an isotope called Uranium-235 they would be able to build a 5 kg bomb with the explosive power of thousands of tons of TNT. Ironically as 'enemy aliens ' the pair were not allowed to sit on MAUD, which was staffed by British scientists, including several Nobel Laureates. Even so, it didn't take long for the committee to excitedly confirm their findings. From now on it was all systems go on a project that would henceforth be known by the deliberately dull name of 'The Tube Alloys Directorate'. Initially Prime Minister Winston Churchill was insistent that Britain should go it alone. At this stage the Americans were dragging their feet on the nuclear option, complacently believing that their stockpile of conventional weapons would be enough to defeat the Germans. This was despite Albert Einstein, the world's pre-eminent physicist, writing urgently to President Roosevelt as early as 1939 to warn that America needed to throw everything behind the atomic bomb if it were to have a hope of beating the Germans to the finish line. Just in time, the Americans came to their senses and started to play catchup. Simultaneously, British scientists were realising that, while they had the theoretical knowhow, they lacked the material resources to build a bomb: plutonium and uranium were astronomically expensive. Eventually, the two countries agreed to co-operate, and 84 British scientists made the dangerous journey across the Atlantic to turbo charge the Manhattan Project. The rest, as they say, is History. Gareth Williams understands every detail of the science, from 'heavy water' to 'cyclotron' by way of 'gaseous diffusion'. There's a helpful cheat sheet of terms in case you get stuck but, luckily, Williams writes with the clarity and pace of John Le Carré. So even the most scientific dullard will be able to follow along. Strip out the science and what you are left with is a thrilling human drama, told in pacey chapters like 'Whoddunit' and 'On the Run'. It's all underpinned by the terrifying sense of how different Britain's fate might have been if it hadn't been for what Williams stirringly describes as 'the most significant international collaboration of the 20th Century.' The Impossible Bomb: The Hidden History of British Scientists and the Race to Create an Atomic Weapon, by Gareth Williams, is published by Yale University Press.
