Embers fly, spreading fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles on January 7. The fire was just one of several devastating the county as high-speed winds swiftly turned sparks into infernos.
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Climate
California wildfire season should be over. So why is L.A. burning?
In some parts of California, fire season is now year-round due to rising heat and little rain. High winds and dry conditions are fueling L.A.’s infernos.
Featured Stories
Measuring conditions within supercell thunderstorms and their tornadoes (pictured) is a challenge. Subatomic particles called muons could help reveal pressure changes within storms.
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Hemiphyllodactylus geckos, like this newfound one with a distinctive orange tail, are known for their slender bodies. Dubbed the Khpoh Slender Gecko, it was found at the base of a karst cliff in Cambodia and will be described in an upcoming Zootaxa paper.
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Trending Stories
A 3-D bathymetric (seafloor) map of Axial Seamount in July 2014 shows lava flows from previous eruptions. Red indicates lava at the highest elevation above the seafloor, while dark blue at the edges shows where lava flow was thinnest.
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Velvet ants deliver a savagely painful sting, prompting their other, more colorful nickname: cow killers.
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A commonly inherited version of the PCSK9 gene may spur breast cancer cells to migrate to other parts of the body (metastasis illustrated). The gene is known for its role in raising cholesterol, and there’s already a lab-made antibody for treating it that may also stop the cancer spread.
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From the Archives
2024 in Review
These are the 5 most popular Science News stories of 2024
Science News drew millions of visitors to our website this year. Here’s a recap of the most-read and most-watched news stories of 2024.
A large stone that lies in the center of Stonehenge, called the Altar Stone (shown center with two rocks lying on top of it), was sourced from northeastern Scotland. The finding surprised scientists because other stones around the Altar Stone have Welsh roots.
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NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft (illustrated) took off for an icy moon of Jupiter in October, where it will search for signs that the moon’s subsurface ocean might be friendly to life.
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As the use of generative AI goes up, the need for more data centers and electricity also rises.
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Beluga whales like this one at Connecticut’s Mystic Aquarium sport a blob of forehead fat called a “melon.” The cetaceans contort the melon into different shapes, possibly to communicate with each other.
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Whether North America’s ancient Clovis people regularly hunted mammoths (illustrated) has been hotly debated. Now, a chemical analysis of Clovis remains suggests the megafauna were a substantial part of their diet.
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A boy in Delhi pours water on himself to cool off during a heat wave in May. The territory set a record-high temperature of nearly 122° Fahrenheit.
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A young star nicknamed the Moth plows through a dense cloud of interstellar dust and gas. That movement pushes the star’s own dust disk back into a winglike shape, as seen in this simulation, but does not affect the bubble of stellar wind the star blows around itself.
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Knit fabrics can form a variety of shapes, a phenomenon that helps the fabric to conform to the body.
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AI rivals doctors’ ability to interpret mammograms, a real-world study with nearly 500,000 participants in Germany suggests.
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These science books from 2024 are our favorites of the year.
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