NextEra Energy Inc. plans to restart a nuclear power plant in Iowa, primarily to supply Google data centers.

The Duane Arnold Energy Center is expected to start delivering power by 2029 following agreements with Google, according to a statement Monday. The 615-megawatt plant shut down in 2020, well before the AI boom that’s stoked demand for ...Read more

It’s the annual naming day for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Scientists at the New England Aquarium have unveiled a new slate of named North Atlantic right whales — a tradition that helps researchers in the field identify the animals in real time.

This year’s whales include Lasagna, Scorpion, Dandelion, Athena ...Read more

In an ancient star system expected to be stable and dormant, scientists found a 3 billion-year-old white dwarf star still tearing apart massive quantities of rock.

“The rate we’ve seen rock consumed by this star is very high,” said John Debes, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and a co-investigator on a...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — A string of mild winters and scarce deer may have taken their toll on northern Minnesota’s wolves.

The wolf population in and around Voyageurs National Park dropped to roughly 100 this year, its lowest point in more than a decade, according to an annual survey from the Voyageur’s Wolf Project.

Researchers estimated there ...Read more

For many Californians, crab bakes, crab cakes and crab feeds are traditional holiday fare.

But the need to protect humpback whales in California’s coastal waters combined with widespread domoic acid contamination along the North Coast have put the brakes on the Dungeness commercial fishery and parts of the recreational fishery this fall.

...Read more

Qualcomm on Monday announced the release of a new series of artificial intelligence chips to compete with the market leader Nvidia, as the race to cash in on the massive AI datacenter buildout heats up.

If successful, Qualcomm, a San Diego-based tech giant, could win a spot in the data centers powering AI as customers look for alternatives to ...Read more

The government shutdown has not had much effect on the human visitors at the Cosumnes River Preserve, but it may have a lasting impact on sandhill cranes and other birds that pass through this fall: Federal water bird counts in October were canceled.

“That is a critically important piece of data that gets entered usually twice a month,” ...Read more

The Space Coast hosted its 89th orbital launch of the year with another SpaceX Starlink mission on Sunday morning.

A Falcon 9 on the Starlink 10-21 mission carrying 29 satellites lifted off at 11 a.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40.

The first-stage booster made its 24th flight with a recovery landing ...Read more

As a young wildlife biologist, Adam Mortensen has worked in the mountains of New Mexico, the high desert of northern California and the wilderness of Isle Royale, where he lived out of a tent and backpacked daily to study wolves.

Now he will ride a snowmobile through the forests of far northeastern Minnesota to help solve the mystery of ...Read more

Despite the ongoing government shutdown, NASA did manage to complete a major milestone in its effort to send astronauts back to moon.

Teams completed the stacking of the Orion spacecraft atop the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building this week.

The fully stacked rocket is slated to fly as early ...Read more

California wildlife officials euthanized four gray wolves in Sierra Valley and plan to relocate three more to a wildlife sanctuary, after months of nonlethal efforts failed to prevent livestock attacks that cost ranchers tens of thousands of dollars and terrified residents.

The dramatic steps will have the effect of moving the entire Beyem Seyo...Read more

MIAMI — The marine heatwave that gripped Florida in 2023 was hotter than anything Florida has seen in 150 years, and claimed at least two victims — species of corals now marked "functionally extinct" from Florida’s reefs.

That finding comes from a newly published scientific paper that reads more like an obituary for two of the most ...Read more

Two earthquakes were recorded within hours of each other near Marion, North Carolina, and witnesses report they felt shaking miles away, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quakes registered as a 2.2 around 1:20 a.m. and a 2.1 around 6:35 a.m., and both were centered about two miles north, northwest of the popular tourist town in ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — On an evening 10 years ago, Porter Ranch resident Matt Pakucko stepped out of his music studio and was walloped by the smell of gas — like sticking your head in an oven, he recalled.

Pakucko called the fire department. It turned out crews had already been up to the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility in the Santa Susana ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is readying a proposal to open almost all U.S. coastal waters to new offshore oil drilling despite opposition from state governors and the president’s previous efforts to close off some of the territory.

The draft plan for selling oil leases includes waters near the southeast U.S. that President Donald...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is opening the entire coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing, reversing a Biden administration decision that put the pristine wilderness area off limits.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced Thursday the agency was opening the 1.56-million-acre expanse of ...Read more

Hunters will soon be allowed to kill mute swans as part of an effort to cull the "destructive, non-native" species statewide, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Starting Jan. 1, anyone with a valid hunting license will be able to kill the invasive waterfowl at any time, according to an agency news release. Landowners ...Read more

Amazon reportedly has a plan to replace more than half a million U.S. workers with “cobots,” and avoid hiring at least 160,000 human workers by 2027.

Despite hoping to double the number of products Amazon sells by 2033, executives are said to believe robotic automation could save them the trouble of hiring 600,000 people in the long run, ...Read more

Meta is slashing roughly 600 jobs in its artificial intelligence unit as the tech giant aims to move faster to compete with its rivals.

The company declined to comment on the job cuts, but confirmed an earlier report by Axios, which cited a Wednesday memo that Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang sent to employees.

"By reducing the size of our ...Read more