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April 24, 2025—A devastating coral bleaching event, the Hubble Space Telescope's 35th anniversary and a twin primes puzzle harnessed by Magic: The Gathering fans. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Firefighters try to extinguish a fast-moving brush fire on November 19, 2024 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images | | - A forest fire that erupted this week in New Jersey highlights the major wildfire risk faced by urban areas. | 4 min read
- The world is witnessing the most intense global coral bleaching event on record, with 84 percent of reefs experiencing heat stress from warming oceans since January 1, 2023. | 3 min read
- In 2021, Elon Musk funded a $100-million competition for climate technologies to remove carbon pollution from the air and sea. Now he is slashing climate research. | 6 min
- A popular fantasy card game called Magic: The Gathering has a new card related to prime numbers. Now fans are trying to use it to tackle one of the biggest problems in mathematics. | 5 min read
| | NGC 7635, nicknamed the Bubble Nebula, is located about 7,100 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula is about seven light-years wide; at its heart is a star 45 times as massive as our sun that is spitting gas into space at speeds as high as four million miles per hour. NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) (CC BY 4.0)
| | | Hubble Telescope Turns 35 | Thirty-five years ago today, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery, entering Earth's orbit the next day and ultimately ushering in a "revolutionary new era of astronomy," writes Scientific American senior news writer Meghan Bartels. As many space watchers know, the telescope's 2.4-meter-wide light-gathering mirror required mission-saving repairs by spacewalking astronauts before it could yield scientific findings as well as iconic photographs of nebulas, star nurseries, globular clusters and deep space fields. All told, the telescope has made 1.6 million observations and gathered 430 terabytes of data. Why it matters: Beyond its iconic "Pillars of Creation" and other stunning space photographs, the telescope has revealed, yielded or discovered: - moons orbiting Pluto
- signs of water plumes shooting from Jupiter's moon Europa
- conclusive evidence of supermassive black holes' existence
- Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's impact at Jupiter
- evidence of a future galactic collision between the Milky Way and our closest large neighbor Andromeda
What the experts say: Hubble's hardware failures are piling up, and the telescope is being pulled inexorably closer to Earth. A fiery reentry into our atmosphere is expected in the next decade. Fortunately, Hubble and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), both might dodge anticipated cuts to NASA's budget. JWST is in good health, having launched in 2021. It is set to study the universe's first stars and galaxies. | | NGC 1999, located about 1,350 light-years away from Earth, is a reflection nebula created by debris from the newborn star V380 Orionis, visible at the center of the image. The image relies on data gathered by Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2—the replacement camera installed during the first servicing mission—in 1999.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, K. Noll (CC BY 4.0)
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- If planned NASA budget cuts go through, jeopardizing the Mars Sample Return mission and much of the agency's scientific research, the U.S. will be settling for mediocrity, writes Louis Friedman, who co-founded the Planetary Society with Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray. The next generation could conclude that "we have given up on ambition and growth and understanding the universe," adds Friedman, who was the Planetary Society's executive director for 30 years. | 4 min read
| | Juan Carlos Navarro is Panama's environment minister. He works with scientists and national park rangers to safeguard his country's biodiversity and fight climate change. "All conservation in the future must be science-based, have community support and be done with private-sector involvement," he says. "We need to commit to making real change now; the time to act was yesterday." (Nature | 3 min read) | | Some kids are "helping out" today at Scientific American, as part of National Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. As you probably know, this annual event gives young people an opportunity to directly envision their own futures and also offers children insights into the mysterious places where many adults spend daytime hours. I have fond memories of visiting "the plant" and other sites where my father worked on instant cameras, film and medical devices. I also spent time at campuses and offices where my mother studied and worked, including one where she wrote a newsletter, as I am doing today. | | We love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or favorite career-inspiring moments to: newsletters@sciam.com. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | | |
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