If you’re like a lot of people, you’re finding it harder and harder to stomach climate change—literally. A warming world leads to all manner of health problems, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease, exacerbation of pulmonary conditions like asthma and COPD, and mental health problems including depression and anxiety. Increasingly, however, climate change is being implicated in a range of illnesses of the gut, such as diarrheal diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, intestinal infection, and more. While the mechanism behind the increase in pulmonary disease in a warmer world is more or less direct—breathing hot, dirty, sooty air isn’t good for anyone’s lungs—the gut connection is more nuanced and multifactorial, involving crop growth, contaminated water supplies, droughts, heat waves, malnutrition, and the microbiome of the soil. None of this is good for us; all of it can affect any of us. Here’s what you need to know about the climate-gut connection. How high temperatures directly affect the gut The body is an exquisitely balanced system. We operate optimally at 98.6°F; nudge us up to just 99°F and we already start feeling unwell. It’s no wonder then that if the planet runs a fever we will pay a price. “Higher temperatures can increase stress hormones in the body, and that really affects gut physiology,” says Elena Litchman, professor of aquatic ecology at Michigan State University. The principal stress hormone is cortisol, which is produced by the adrenal gland. Cortisol affects multiple parts of the body, but can have an especially powerful impact in the gut, which is lined with immune system cells; epithelial cells, which form a barrier between the intestines and the rest of the body; and enteroendocrine cells, which help regulate the hormonal environment of the gut. All of these cells have cortisol receptors, and all of them may become dysregulated if cortisol levels climb too high. Cortisol can also speed or slow the time it takes for food to transit through the intestines, which can lead to what’s known as dysbiosis—or an imbalance in the number, type, and distribution of the trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi that make up the microbiome inhabiting the digestive tract. High temperatures are also known to increase the permeability of the intestinal lining, leading to so-called leaky gut. “Temperature has a direct effect on the intestines,” says Desmond Leddin, professor of medicine at Dalhousie University in Canada. “One of the causes of heat stroke is thought to relate to intestinal permeability.” Leaky gut can also allow organisms that make up the intestinal microbiome—which are supposed to remain in the intestines—to migrate into the bloodstream and spread infection. The microbes that remain behind, meantime, can be thrown entirely out of balance. “When the connections [in the intestinal lining] become less tight, you can have more oxygen getting into the gut,” says Litchman. “That may stimulate bacteria or other gut microbes that are not necessarily beneficial.” The microbiome within you and without you The makeup of organisms residing in the intestines is affected by climate change in other ways as well. It’s not just humans and other animals that have a microbiome; soil, air, and water do too, and higher ambient temperatures can cause less beneficial microbes—including listeria, e. Coli, and Shigella—to thrive there. What’s in the external environment quickly becomes part of your internal one too. “Soil is a big source of microbes in the gut,” says Litchen. “The microbes are in food, they get on our skin, you can even inhale the soil microbiome in the form of dust.” In the West and the rest of the developed world, that’s less of a problem because in those wealthier countries people are eating more processed food that is further removed from the soil that produced it. In developing, often agrarian countries it’s a different matter. “People in those parts of the world are in closer contact with environmental microbiomes,” says Litchen. “There is definitely a shifting pattern in global digestive health,” says Leddin. “Of particular concern are the inflammatory bowel diseases—Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Crohn’s was relatively uncommon in lower income countries, but now it’s becoming more of a problem.” Water presents worries of its own. High temperatures may increase the concentration of pathogens in the water at the same time we’re drinking more to cope with the heat, increasing the exposure to unhealthy bugs. “It’s basically kind of a positive feedback,” says Litchen. Meantime, if we don’t drink enough when it’s hot out, we can suffer from dehydration, which has gut implications of its own. “When we’re dehydrated, blood gets shifted from muscles and the gut to the vital organs, especially the brain and the heart,” says Eamonn Quigley, chair of gastrointestinal health at Methodist Hospital in Houston. “This is not good for the gastrointestinal tract, which begins to suffer.” Digestive symptoms associated with dehydration include stomach pain and cramping, constipation, and slowed digestion and nutrient absorption. Climate change can also lead to flooding, which has a direct knock-on effect in the gut. As Leddin wrote in a 2024 paper in Gastro Hep Advances, floods can contaminate ground water with Rotavirus, Cryptosporidium, Campylobacter, and Yersinia. That hits the developing world harder than the developed one. In 2004, for example, floods in Bangladesh resulted in 350,000 cases of diarrheal disease. But even in wealthy countries, there’s a real risk. In the U.S., 23 million households rely on private wells for their water supply—wells that can become easily contaminated during floods. The role of diet As much as anything, it’s what’s on your menu that most affects your gut health, and climate change plays a big role in what you’re eating—even if you don’t realize it. For starters, higher temperatures can lead to faster-growing crops. “That sounds good,” says Leddin, “but because they’re growing more rapidly they may have a lower nutritional value.” What’s more, as Litchen reported in a 2025 paper in The Lancet Planetary Health, temperatures over 86°F can reduce the levels of beneficial antioxidants in foods, while raising the absorption of environmental arsenic by rice plants, both of which adversely affect the gut microbiome. Higher levels of carbon dioxide can reduce levels of zinc, iron, and protein in wheat, rice, and maize, which could lead to 100 million more people becoming protein-deficient and 200 million more zinc-deficient by 2050. Higher ocean temperatures may also reduce the availability of fish and seafood, lowering protein intake and changing microbiota composition, especially in low- and middle-income countries. “There is a phenomenon called ‘hidden hunger,’” Litchen says. “Basically it means that you’re consuming the same amount of food but the nutritional quality of the food changes. There are fewer nutrients and the food is harder to digest.” Direct hunger—simply not getting enough to eat, whether the food is of high quality or not—is also becoming an increasing concern as an overheated climate and extreme weather cause crops to fail, often in already disadvantaged parts of the world. “As more areas of the world become inhospitable to agriculture, the problem is only going to become greater,” says Quigley. “There’s a very nice correlation between the diversity of your diet and the diversity of your microbiome, and in terms of the gut, diversity is a good thing.” If climate change gets solved at all, no one pretends it’s going to be solved anytime soon. Last year was the warmest one on record, displacing 2023, which had briefly held that distinction, and the past decade represents the hottest 10 years ever. The planet is suffering at our hands—and increasingly, our own health is too.

Marina Silva’s achievements may seem borderline miraculous. Since taking office for a second run as Brazil’s environment and climate minister in 2023, the country has quickly and dramatically reversed deforestation trends with strict enforcement of environment rules that had been abandoned by her predecessor. According to the most recent official account released last fall, Amazon deforestation had fallen to the lowest level in a decade after dropping nearly in half from two years prior. “When we took office, we had deforestation on an ascending curve that was out of control,” she told me on April 30. “We had to rebuild institutions, command and control organizations, and increase public funding.” And yet, as we met in her office in Brasília, she was careful not to linger too long on the success. The Amazon rain forest is dangerously close to a tipping point that could rapidly reshape not just the world’s most famous rainforest biome but the whole planet. Once reached, the Amazon would lose the ability to sustain itself and vast swathes would transform into savannah, resulting in the loss of biodiversity and also a massive release of carbon dioxide. To halt it, she says, leaders will need to embrace new mechanisms to stop legal deforestation and catalyze efforts to reforest degraded land—all while continuing ongoing enforcement work. But, she says, saving the Amazon will require work beyond Brazil’s borders: the world will need to slow its burning of fossil fuels. “Even if we can nullify deforestation, with climate change, if we don't reduce carbon from fossil fuel emissions, the forest will be destroyed anyway,” she says. For Silva, who was born and raised to a family of rubber tappers in the remote Amazonian state of Acre, this is the next step on a lifelong journey of Amazon protection. But it’s also a key, potentially make or break moment as Brazil occupies the center of the climate movement this year as it hosts the annual U.N. climate conference, COP30, in November. “We're already at the limit, at the changing, shifting point of the climate crisis,” she says. “There was a window of opportunity of not shooting over the 1.5 degree limit, and now it's just a sliver.” Even a seasoned climate expert would be forgiven for struggling to track all the work happening in Brazil ahead of COP30. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known simply as Lula, has made climate a top priority with ministers across the government focused on tackling the issue. Silva, a national figure in Brazil who finished third in the 2014 presidential election, has turned her ministry into a central node in the effort. While I was in Brazil, the government announced a $2 billion financing program to reforest up to 1 million hectares (about the size of the island of Hawaii) of degraded land. And in recent months Silva has doubled down on work with her counterpart in the finance ministry on a $125 billion fund aimed at protecting tropical forests around the world. Beyond the rain forest work, the government has rolled out a carbon price for domestic industries—and talked about how it might work with other countries to harmonize equivalent policies elsewhere. Silva hopes that these efforts all come together at COP30 as part of a broader effort to make the conference a pivotal moment for the implementation of climate initiatives globally. She described the emerging COP30 goal as a “global ethical stocktake”: Lula and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres will hear from a wide group of stakeholders—from philosophers to Indigenous people to political leadership—with an eye to helping the world chart a plan for putting climate solutions into action. “We can't keep pushing things off,” she says. “We need to implement.” It goes without saying that this year’s climate negotiations will be rife with challenges—perhaps none more significant than the challenge posed by the U.S. pullback from the international Paris climate engagement. Silva did not mince words on the role of the U.S. and the Trump Administration in muddying global climate discussions. Without my prompting, she criticized everything from his exiting the Paris Agreement to his decision to ice the National Climate Assessment. All of that leaves a massive gap in the necessary climate action, she says: “Things have become more difficult, especially with the decisions of the Trump Administration.” My visit to Brasilia happened to coincide with a key meeting of the BRICS countries—a group of emerging market countries that cooperate as a counterweight to U.S. and European power. In my hotel, I spotted the Chinese foreign minister walking through the lobby with his entourage along with other country delegations. But Silva says the rest of the world can't replace the actions needed from the U.S. “We can't be deniers, not with geopolitics, not with climate,” she told me. “The vacuum created by the U.S. is the U.S.’s vacuum.” She pointed to challenging geopolitics, in part, to respond to questions about Lula’s own climate leadership. Despite his focus on the issue, some environmental activists have criticized him, saying he is moving too slowly and not doing enough. One area of particular concern: new oil exploration efforts in the Amazon region currently under consideration. Asked about the pending decision, Silva first pivoted to the stone-cold geopolitical realities. Oil demand remains high and supply is strained. The U.S. position has created a sense across the globe that fossil fuels will be around for a while. The solution, she says, is a well-managed transition. “What I defend is a fair transition, a planned transition for everybody,” she says. “When I say fair and planned, it's because it's not magic.” COP30, with Brazil at the helm, is a good place to start implementing such a transition. This story is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. TIME is solely responsible for the content. The original article misstated the timeframe over which deforestation dropped nearly in half. It was over the previous two years, not in one year. The article also misstated the location of a reforestation program announced by the Brazilian government in April. It covered areas outside the Amazon, not in it.

With summer around the corner, so too are the bugs. Insects, much like their human counterparts, are more lively in the spring and summer when the weather is warmer. And climate change means that globally summers on average could get less buggy. But when it comes to some of the more pesky pests, like ticks and mosquitoes, it could feel like there are more of them as they broaden their range of habitat or timing when they emerge for the season. Our changing climate, however, stands to impact different species of insects in different ways. Studies show that globally an increasing number of insects could be at risk for extinction. Many are also emerging either earlier or later in the year than they used to as weather patterns change. While you might be hoping to put away the bug spray, experts warn that the change could have harmful impacts on ecosystems, agriculture, and in some cases, health. Some insects are adapting to changing climates by moving to regions that might have previously been unsuitable.“They are not just expanding their ranges, but they're becoming more abundant in places where maybe they weren't as abundant before,” says Anahí Espíndola, associate professor of entomology at the University of Maryland, College Park. For some species, this can be cause for concern. For example, climate change is lengthening mosquito season and expanding the areas where mosquito-borne diseases like malaria or West Nile virus may spread. “The likelihood of certain diseases being transmitted in places where those diseases weren't really a problem before are increasing, and we are expecting those problems to actually become worse as temperatures continue to increase,” says Espíndola. In the U.S., the number of “mosquito days” with warm, humid weather the insects thrive on, have increased around the country, according to an analysis by Climate Central. Climate change is also increasing the geographical range of ticks—which could increase the spread of Lyme disease. Shifts in weather patterns meanwhile are causing some insect species to emerge at different times of the year than they once did. This change in timing can impact the insect’s chance of survival—and that of the other species that might rely on it. “Right now, we're seeing increases in temperature and increases in drought, and that will have impacts on the ability of species to survive in certain places, and the ability of species to interact with the right organisms,” says Espíndola. “If you're a pollinator, and you're emerging and you are looking for a particular group of plants that you're going to be collecting pollen or nectar from, if that plant has already flowered, you have this temporal mismatch with organisms that you should be interacting with to be able to survive.” The misalignment stands to have big impacts on ecosystems—changing how a species interacts with plants and other organisms. “That's a big concern, because those insects are pollinators for crops and they are part of food chains for terrestrial animals, and are critical to a lot of ecosystems, as well as pollinators to our own food production,” says Mario Gallio, professor in the department of neurobiology at Northwestern University, whose work focuses on how temperature impacts insect behavior. Pollination changes stand to impact our food systems. Over 80% of all flowering plant species are pollinated by animals, mostly insects, with pollinators playing a role in over 35% of the world’s crop production. Wasps, for example, are reportedly declining in population in England as the country sees more rainy days and flooding—impacting pollination and ecosystems. While sometimes annoying, insects are more important than many of us give them credit for, say experts. “The biodiversity ecosystem, animals, birds, everything depends on robust food chains that often have insects as an important component,” says Gallio. “We are looking at impoverishing all sorts of ecosystems that have this one step that involves insects. For people who care about nature, it’s scary, for people who care about their food, it’s scary. There is plenty to be concerned about.”

We all have cause to take climate change personally. Not only do higher temperatures lead to such mega-events as droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and floods, they also affect human health—exacerbating asthma, allergies, cardiovascular disease, the spread of water-borne pathogens, and more. Now, it appears that a warming world affects us in one other, potentially life-threatening way. That's according to a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper presented May 18 at the 2025 gathering of the American Thoracic Society in San Francisco. Researchers found that as the heat increases, so too does the incidence and severity of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), increasing the risk of hypertension, heart attack, stroke, and death. “We were surprised at the magnitude of the association between ambient temperature and OSA severity,” said Bastien Lechat, the lead author of the paper and a senior research fellow at South Australia’s Flinders Health and Medicine Research Institute, in a statement that accompanied the recent presentation. “This study really highlights the societal burden associated with the increase in OSA prevalence due to rising temperatures.” In order to conduct their work, Lechat and his team collected data from 125,295 users of an under-mattress apnea sensor, in 41 countries, gathering readings recorded from January 2020 to September 2023. The sensor consists of an inflatable mat positioned beneath the point of the mattress that is at chest level with the sleeper. Changes in the air pressure within the mat record bodily, respiratory, and even cardiac motion. “By analyzing these signals with proprietary machine learning … the device can estimate a range of metrics, including sleep duration, sleep stages, awakenings, and periods of breathing cessation,” Lechat said in an email to TIME. Those cessations in breathing are what constitutes apnea. The researchers collected a median of 509 nights of readings from each individual, and then correlated the results with 24-hour ambient temperature models. The results were striking, showing a significant association between apnea and temperature in 29 of the countries studied, or well more than half. In those places, rising heat was associated with a 45% increase in the likelihood of an individual having at least one apnea episode on a given night. That does not come cheap. Crunching their numbers, the researchers estimated that across the sample group, the increase in apnea incidence resulted in a loss of more than 785,000 healthy life years—or years without disability or death—in 2023 alone. Loss of healthy life years has an economic cost too, with an estimated $32 billion reduction in workplace productivity in 2023. The connection between rising temperatures and OSA is not new. Climate change brings with it more extreme heat, including while we sleep. Nighttime temperatures often bring a cool relief, but in many places around the world these drops in temperature aren’t falling as low as they once did. The researchers estimate that the health and economic hit from growing heat-related apnea has increased 50% to 100% since 2000. Going forward, a rise in average global temperature of 2°C over pre-industrial levels can be expected to lead to a 1.5- to 3-fold OSA increase by 2100. Already the world surpassed 1.5°C of warming in 2024. “Our economic estimates in the paper suggest that increased OSA prevalence driven by higher ambient temperatures could lead to a multi-trillion-dollar global societal cost, along with poorer human health and well-being,” says Lechat. For now, the mechanism linking temperature and the cessation of breathing is not clear. Lechat and his colleagues speculate that heat may lead to lighter sleep—which is the stage of sleep during which apnea tends to be more severe. Behavioral factors may be at play too: when temperatures are higher, individuals may be less likely to wear their continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) masks, which are prescribed to reduce or prevent apnea. Whatever the cause, we may all feel the effect. “Sleep is the third pillar of health, alongside nutrition and exercise,” says Lechat, “[It] is essential for both physical and mental well-being.”

NASA has a funny way of framing bad news. On May 2, the White House released its topline budget numbers for fiscal year 2026 and the space agency was quick to respond—with applause. “President Trump’s FY26 Budget Revitalizes Human Space Exploration,” read a press release. In an included statement, acting NASA administrator Janet Petro said, “This proposal includes investments to simultaneously pursue exploration of the Moon and Mars while still prioritizing critical science and technology research. I appreciate the President’s continued support for NASA’s mission and look forward to working closely with the administration and Congress to ensure we continue making progress toward achieving the impossible.” The real impossibility, however, might be in figuring out how NASA will achieve much of anything at all with the draconian cuts the president proposed. Petro is right in touting a relatively modest 10% bump in funding for human space exploration, with $7 billion now proposed for missions to the moon and $1 billion for later travel to Mars. But beyond that, things get awfully bleak. The Mars Sample Return Mission, which is currently underway, with the Perseverance rover collecting and caching soil and rock samples for return by a later robot craft, will be canceled. Twenty-seven sample tubes that have been sealed and left across the Martian surface like Easter eggs for that future rover to gather will be forever untouched. Those samples could have told us about possible conditions for ancient, or even extant, life on the once-watery world—potential knowledge that will now be lost. The Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket and the Orion spacecraft, both in development in one form or another since 2006, and both intended for crewed travel to the moon, will be scrapped too. Also marked for elimination is the Gateway spacecraft, a small space station planned for lunar orbit—despite the first of its modules having already been built. Gateway was intended to provide rapid service to and from the surface of the moon for future visiting astronauts. Space science missions will be slashed by more than 50%, threatening—among other projects—the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which, like the Gateway module, is already mostly built. Roman is designed to answer deep and thrilling questions, regarding the habitability of exoplanets—or planets orbiting other stars—and the nature of dark energy, which is thought to make up 68% of the universe and holds the key to its accelerating expansion. On top of all this, research into environmentally sustainable aviation technology is one of several “climate scam programs,” as the White House referred to it in a statement, which is also slated for cancellation. Consistent with new government-wide policies, any NASA DEI programs are also to be eliminated. Overall, NASA faces a 24% budget cut, from $24.8 billion in 2025 to $18.8 billion in 2026—its lowest funding level since 2015. “No spin will change the fact that this would end critical missions, dramatically scale back the workforce, and risk our scientific leadership around the globe,” said Rep. George Whitesides, a California Democrat and Vice Ranking Member of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, on X. “It is completely irresponsible, and I will fight it every way I can.” “The proposed cuts are drastic,” says Stephan McCandliss, research professor with the department of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. “They are devastating and, well, vicious, in terms of [being] unfriendly to science in general.” The proposed cuts don’t just represent opportunity costs, but the loss of sunk costs too. The SLS has already cost nearly $24 billion, with another $20 billion having gone to Orion—money that will have been spent to no end if the two projects are cancelled. The Roman telescope, currently idling in a clean room at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, cost $4 billion. According to the General Accounting Office, $3.5 billion has been spent on Gateway, with the launch of the first module originally set for 2027. All of this penury is something of a departure for President Trump, who presided over small but steady budget increases for NASA—from just over $18 billion to just over $21 billion—during his first term. Space Agency funding rose further, to its near-$25 billion peak, under President Joe Biden, before the ax fell this week. The impending starvation rations, as always, have NASA veterans looking wistfully back at the space agency’s golden era, during the space race with the former Soviet Union. Historically, NASA’s peak funding year was 1966, when the agency was allotted $5.93 billion—or $58.5 billion in 2025 dollars. That represented 4% of the government’s overall budget. NASA’s slice of the federal pie today—before the Trump cuts? Just 0.4%. The generous funding of the 1960s yielded impressive results. The U.S. launched 10 crewed flights in just 20 months during NASA’s Gemini program in 1965 and 1966. From 1968 to 1972, eleven Apollo missions were launched—nine of them either to lunar orbit or around the far side of the moon, and six of those proceeding down to the lunar surface. That was all while NASA maintained a robust pure science program, launching more than 20 missions to the moon, Mars, and Venus during the 1960s. It’s the loss of those uncrewed science flights that worries some space experts the most. “It's mortgaging the future,” says Henry Hertzfeld, research professor at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. “It takes time to develop these programs, to build the instruments and, of course, to analyze the results.” “I see a role for government in doing the science,” says McCandliss. “That's what government ought to do—the cutting edge stuff that isn't going to be commercially viable, but will in the long run, bring some surprising results.” The matter of commercial viability—with the private sector taking over a growing share of the work now being done by NASA—seems to be driving much of the administration’s budget proposals. The aging International Space Station (ISS) is set to be de-orbited in 2030 and NASA and the White House are looking for industry to bankroll and launch the next generation outpost. “The budget reflects the upcoming transition to a more cost-effective, open commercial approach to human activities in low Earth orbit by … the safe decommissioning of the station and its replacement by commercial space stations,” said NASA in its press release. Currently, NASA spends about $3 billion per year to operate the ISS. Privatization would eliminate that outlay. Similarly, if SLS and Orion stand down, the move would clear the field for SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket. SLS and Orion have flown just once—an uncrewed mission, known as Artemis I, in 2022. Current plans call for Artemis II to carry a crew of four on a circumlunar journey late next year, and Artemis III to follow with a crewed lunar landing before the end of the decade. Artemis IV and beyond were intended to help establish a long-term human presence at the south lunar pole, but the new proposed budget cancels those plans. Starship could be a worthy successor. The biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, Starship stands 40 stories tall and puts out 16.7 million pounds of thrust at launch—nearly twice as much as the SLS’s 8.8 million pounds. The single flight SLS has managed in the 20 years it’s been in development is dwarfed by the eight uncrewed launches Starship has had just since April of 2023. None of those launches has been fully successful, but the business model for SpaceX and its boss, Elon Musk, has always been to fly fast, fail fast, and fly again until you get it right. The unalloyed success of the company’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket, which, with 467 successful flights, has become the world’s workhorse booster, stands as proof that that approach to R&D can work. “It's pretty amazing stuff that they've been doing,” says McCandliss. “When you have a devil-may-care leader who is willing to spend his own personal capital on these sorts of things, it's a different story [from what the government can do]. Musk has not been shy about trying to pursue his dreams, and he has the capital to do that.” If NASA has any hope of escaping the Trump Administration’s proposed cuts it’s in the fact that they are just that—proposed. Presidential budgets are wish lists put forth to Congress, with lawmakers calling the final spending shots, and NASA has seen this movie before—most recently and dramatically in 2010. Back then, President Barack Obama cancelled the space agency’s Constellation program—the precursor of Artemis, which was aiming to have bootprints back on the moon as early as 2015. The move pulled the plug on both Orion and the SLS—the latter of which was then known as Ares V. But legislators from space-friendly states that depend on NASA for thousands of local jobs—most notably Texas, Florida, and California—rebelled, and funding was restored for both vehicles. Today, Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat—the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology respectively—are being looked to for leadership to keep the lights on at NASA. Neither lawmaker has made a public statement yet on the proposed cuts and neither responded to a request from TIME for comment. Still, Capitol Hill will get the final word. “The president proposes and Congress disposes,” says McCandliss. “I know that there's an awful lot of NASA centers that are in red states.” NASA is accountable to Congress for its funding and Congress is accountable to the voters in those red states and all of the others for their own jobs. Ultimately, Americans will get the space program they demand.

Time was, the Soviet Union fairly owned Venus. From 1961 to 1983, the U.S.’s old space race rival launched 16 probes, Venera 1 through Venera 16, that either flew by, orbited, or landed on Venus—with three of them failing en route. It’s been decades since the Russians bothered with Venus, but this week, an artifact from that long-ago space program may very well bother us: Sometime between May 9 and May 11, an 1,100-lb Venus spacecraft known as Kosmos 482, which has been stuck in Earth orbit since 1972, will come crashing back to the ground, potentially threatening anyone on Earth living between 52° North and 52° South of the equator—which covers the overwhelming share of us. Here’s what you need to know. Kosmos 482 was originally intended to be known as Venera 9. It was launched on March 31, 1972, just four days after its sister probe, Venera 8. That ship had a brief but glorious life. It arrived at Venus on July 22, 1972, spent close to an hour descending through the atmosphere, and landed at 6:24 a.m. local Venus time. (Local time on another world is calculated the same way it is on Earth—by measuring the angle of the sun relative to the meridians, or lines of longitude.) Once on the ground, Venera 8 lived for only 63 minutes, which is about what was expected given Venus’s hellish conditions. The atmospheric pressure is 93 times greater than it is on Earth, with a sea level pressure of 1,350 pounds per square inch (psi) compared to just 14.7 psi here. The air is mostly carbon dioxide, which, together with Venus's greater proximity to the sun, means an average temperature 860°F—or more than 200 degrees hotter than the melting point of lead. That was the future that awaited Venera 9 too, but things didn’t work out for what turned out to be a snakebit ship. After reaching Earth orbit, it fired its engine to enter what is known as a Venus transfer trajectory; that engine burn went awry, however, either cutting off too soon or not reaching a sufficient thrust to send the spacecraft on its way. Instead, it remained in an elliptical Earth orbit, with an apogee, or high point, of 560 miles, and a perigee, or low point, of 130 miles. There it has remained for the past 53 years. For its pains, Venera 9 lost not only its mission but its name. Abiding by Soviet-era nomenclature rules, spacecraft that remain in orbit around the Earth are dubbed Kosmos, followed by a number—in this case, Kosmos 482. In 2022, Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archaeologist who toggled over to sky watching mid-career and now lectures on space situational awareness at The Netherlands’ Delft Technical University, completed a round of tracking Kosmos 482's orbit. In The Space Review, he wrote that the object would reenter Earth’s atmosphere sometime in 2025 or 2026, due to the steady accumulation of drag by the atmosphere’s upper reaches. Further tracking of the spacecraft’s trajectory—by Langbroek, NASA, and the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation—now “The reentry is an uncontrolled reentry,” Langbroek wrote on his website on April 24. “It likely will be a hard impact. I doubt the parachute deployment system will still work after 53 years and with dead batteries.” Ordinarily, even a spacecraft as big as Kosmos 482 would not pose much danger to people on the ground. The same atmospheric friction that causes most meteors to burn up before they reach the surface disposes of errant satellites the same way. It is mostly far larger objects, like the U.S.’s Skylab space station—which reentered in July, 1979, scattering debris across the Australian outback—that cause concern. But Kosmos 482 is different; it was intentionally designed to withstand Venus’s pressure-cooker atmosphere, and even colliding with our own atmosphere at orbital speeds of 17,500 miles per hour, it could at least partly survive its plunge. “The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero,” Langbroek writes. “With a mass of just under 500 kg and 1-meter size, risks are somewhat similar to that of a meteorite impact.” All of the land masses in Earth’s southern hemisphere are within the reentry footprint, along with the large majority of the north. Most of Russia, the U.K. the Balkans, Scandinavia, Canada, and Alaska are among the few places out of harm’s way. Still, nobody is recommending calling the pets inside and crouching in fallout shelters. More than 70% of the Earth’s surface is water, meaning a 70% chance of a splashdown as opposed to a hard landing. What’s more, the landmasses in the reentry zone include largely unpopulated areas like the Sahara, Atacama, and Australian deserts. It would, of course, be best if Kosmos 482 disintegrates entirely on reentry, but space sentimentalists are hoping that at least a bit of it survives. Venera probes, like all of the Soviet spacecraft sent to the moon and the planets, carried along with them small memorial coins, medals and titanium pennants—embossed with the hammer and sickle, the likeness of Lenin, the Earth, and more. Kosmos 482 will return to a world very different from the one it left—with the Soviet Union itself consigned to history. This week, after more than half a century, a bit of commemorative metal just may survive the empire that sent it aloft.

From vehicle exhaust to manufacturing plumes, nearly every person in the world breathes in unhealthy air on a daily basis. The impact is deadly: air pollution is responsible for 7 million premature deaths around the world per year according to the World Health Organization (WHO), making it the second leading risk factor for death behind high blood pressure. But that number could be significantly cut, researchers say, if we reduce greenhouse gases and air pollutants. A new study published in the journal Earth’s Future on May 6 found that up to 250,000 deaths from poor air quality in central and western Europe alone could be prevented by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced. The researchers, from the University of Leeds in England, looked at the health impacts in Europe in 2014 and 2050 from exposure to two types of pollution. The first is fine particulate matter, which can penetrate deep into the lungs and pose the greatest health risks. This pollution comes from sources such as wildfires or construction sites. The other is surface level ozone, which forms when sunlight interacts with certain pollutants like nitrogen oxides, and is the result of things like vehicle exhaust and factory emissions. Exposure to these air pollutants can lead to long-term health complications, including stroke, heart disease, and pneumonia. The team examined three scenarios in which policymakers took low, medium, and high levels of action to combat climate change, and created an atmospheric chemistry model to simulate the possible air quality in 2050. The researchers defined a high level of action as being one where emissions from the housing, industry, transport, and agricultural sectors are cut for 70% of the population of Western and Central Europe to below the WHO's air quality guideline for annual fine particulate matter. Doing so, they found, would improve air quality across the continent and lead to large reductions in mortality overall. And it could help tackle health inequities. Globally, poorer communities are more likely to be exposed to unhealthy air quality when compared with higher-income areas. Researchers found that disadvantaged regions of Europe currently have proportionally higher death rates compared to higher-income regions. Their findings show that a significant reduction in emissions—seen in the high action scenario—would help reduce that inequality. But under the medium and low impact scenarios health impacts would worsen, highlighting the necessity of aggressive climate mitigation practices. Air pollution in Europe has been on the decline for the last two decades, as the E.U. has adopted more comprehensive clean air policies, however more work remains to be done. There are still regions across the E.U. that have pollutant concentrations that exceed the bloc’s current standards. The researchers hope that their findings might encourage policymakers to consider not just the health impacts of air pollution, but also how emissions reduction solutions can help marginalized communities who are disproportionately impacted. “The strategies that policymakers take to mitigate climate change will have considerable implications for human exposure to air quality, not least of which are the number of deaths,” lead author Connor Clayton, a PhD student in the School of Earth and Environment and the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at Leeds University, said in a press release. “But they also urgently need to consider the persistent inequity of exposure between wealthier and more deprived populations which continues to be an issue even though air pollution has reduced across Europe.”

The weeks-long Eta Aquariid meteor shower is about to reach its peak, and people across both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres will have the opportunity to enjoy the spectacular event, which is visible to the naked eye. Here’s what people need to know in order to get the best glimpse at the Eta Aquariids. What are the Eta Aquariids? The Eta Aquariids meteor shower peaks in May of each year, per NASA. These meteors are specifically known for their speed, and Eta Aquariid meteors can travel about 40.7 miles (65.4 kilometers) per second into Earth's atmosphere, leaving trails behind them which observers can view for several seconds to minutes. The Eta Aquariids are created from space debris that originate from comet 1P/Halley—often considered the most famous comet. Each time Halley returns to the inner solar system, it sprays ice and rock, and though Halley only makes its way around the Sun every 76 years or so, its debris causes two different meteor showers each year: the Eta Aquariid meteor shower in May and the Orionids in October. When are the Eta Aquariids set to peak? While expert viewpoints differ as to the exact dates and peak times, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS), the Eta Aquariids have been active since April 15, and are expected to remain so until May 27. They are set to peak on the mornings of May 4, 5, and 6. These are the ideal mornings for those in the Northern Hemisphere to view the meteor shower, and under optimal conditions—meaning without city lights—observers should be able to see about 10 to 15 Eta Aquariids per hour. Areas in the United States that boast lower instances of light pollution—such as national parks like Big Bend in Texas or Death Valley in California—will have prime viewing opportunities. Although safety precautions should be paramount for skywatchers venturing into the great outdoors. However, those in the Southern Hemisphere will have optimal viewing opportunities, and, if lucky, could see over 50 meteors per hour. When is the best time to view the meteor shower and how can people watch? According to NASA, the best time to watch will be at 2 a.m. local time on May 6. It’s recommended that viewers give their eyes some time—around 30 minutes—to adjust to the dark. “Avoid looking at bright lights, such as your cell phone, too, as this will take your eyes off the sky and ruin your night vision,” reads the guidance from NASA. Viewers do not need telescopes or any special equipment to enjoy the event, but the darker the sky, the easier it will be to view the meteor shower, and the AMS states that even “a gain of one magnitude in sky darkness can lead to a doubling of observed meteors.” So, it is suggested for those near city lights to travel away from the brightly-lit streets.

It’s axiomatic that you can’t solve a problem if you don’t admit it exists—and the best way to admit it exists is to talk about it. That’s particularly true when it comes to climate change. For more than four decades, the state of the climate has been part of the national conversation—especially when severe weather events linked to a warming world such as droughts, floods, heat waves, and hurricanes occur. Between those emergencies, climate often retreats to a secondary issue—or less. A pair of studies—one from 2015, one from 2021— found that only 35% of Americans discuss climate change even occasionally. Since 2009, respondents to surveys have been more likely to say they discuss climate “rarely” or “never” than “occasionally” or “often.” Now, a new study in PLOS Climate explores what the authors term the “climate silence” and offers insights into how to break it. Any public discussion of a political or social issue can be subject to what’s known as a "spiral of silence.” The less people hear a topic talked about, the less likely they are to bring it up themselves, which just leads to even fewer people discussing it and fewer still to raise the issue. The opposite is also true: the more that people discuss and debate a topic, the likelier it is that other people will join the conversation. In the case of climate change, the latter leads to what the researchers call a “proclimate social feedback loop.” It’s that loop—or lack of it—that the authors of the PLOS One paper were looking for. To conduct their research, they analyzed three existing studies by different research teams conducted in 2020 and 2021 in which a total of more than 3,000 people were asked for their beliefs and feelings about climate change. Across the surveys, the subjects responded to questions about whether they believe there is a scientific consensus that global warming is happening; how certain they themselves are that global warming is real; assuming they accept that it is indeed real, whether they believe humans are responsible for it; how much they worry about global warming; how much of a risk global warming poses to themselves, their families, and their communities; whether they think global warming is a bad or good thing; how much of an effort their families and friends make to combat the problem; how important it is for their family, friends, and, significantly, themselves to take such action; and how often they hear about global warming in the media. Finally, they were asked how often they discuss global warming with family and friends. What the surveys didn’t address was whether it was all of the initial variables that led to the discussions—an important measure of causation—or if they just existed side by side. The new study conducted statistical analyses of the surveys to make that determination. “Those surveys did not analyze how much the independent variables influence climate discussion,” says Margaret Orr, a PhD student in George Mason University’s department of communications and the lead author of the paper. “They just report survey results without looking at any interactions between variables.” Across the entire sample group, the researchers found that all but three of the variables led to increased discussions about climate change. Those three that sparked little or no conversation were: how convinced the respondents themselves were that climate change is happening; belief in a scientific consensus that it is; and belief that humans are causing the problem. Those are three pretty powerful factors—ones that ought to spark concern and conversation. The researchers have some idea about why they don’t. “One potential reason for these [variables] not being significant predictors of climate discussion is the potential for indirect effects,” says Orr. Each of the three factors that don’t directly lead to climate conversations, she says, may nonetheless lead to worry, which in turn may spark conversations. The more of those conversations that happen, the better. “Previous research has shown that people are more likely to take actions if asked to do so by someone they like and respect," says Orr. “Climate conversations will help reverse the spiral of silence: the more people realize that others are concerned about climate change and support climate action, the more people will talk about it.” This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

Ateam of astronomers have found what they claim are the most promising—but also tentative—signs of possible life on a distant planet. The research, which was published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was led by the University of Cambridge and was based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope. Researchers detected chemical fingerprints of at least one, if not two, molecules—dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS)—in the atmosphere of K2-18b, a planet outside of our solar system, 124 light years away from Earth. Like Earth, this planet orbits its star in the habitable zone—an area around a star where planets with liquid water on their surfaces may exist. “On Earth, DMS and DMDS are only produced by life, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton,” a Cambridge press release said. “While an unknown chemical process may be the source of these molecules in K2-18b’s atmosphere, the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.” According to the press release, there’s a 0.3% probability that these findings were a statistical fluke. That’s not a small enough chance to reach the standard required to claim a scientific discovery—for that, there would have to be below a 0.00006% probability they occurred by chance. K2-18b has a mass 8.6 times that of Earth’s, and the planet is 2.6 times as large as Earth. Scientists have had their eye on this planet for a few years now. In 2023, researchers said they found evidence of methane and carbon dioxide in K2-18b’s atmosphere—the first time that carbon-based molecules were detected in the atmosphere of a planet outside of our solar system in the habitable zone. While astronomers said the latest results are “exciting,” they stressed that additional research needs to be conducted before making the bold claim that life has been found on another planet. “It’s important that we’re deeply sceptical of our own results, because it’s only by testing and testing again that we will be able to reach the point where we’re confident in them,” Nikku Madhusudhan, a professor at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy who led the research, said in the university’s press release. “That’s how science has to work.”