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By Laura Paddison and Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — There’s a saying that in a big city you are never more than six feet away from a rat. It’s an urban myth, but scientists are warning cities across the globe are becoming far rattier, and the boom is primarily driven by one factor: climate change.

By Julianna Bragg, CNN (CNN) — Corals aren’t necessarily known for their fancy footwork — or even having feet. But scientists have observed a free-living mushroom coral, Cycloseris cyclolites, actively “walking” toward blue light waves in a way that’s reminiscent of the pulsed swimming motion of jellyfish, a new study has revealed. Most corals are

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Space agencies are keeping a close eye on a recently discovered asteroid that has a small chance of impacting Earth. Named 2024 YR4, the asteroid has a 1.2% chance of hitting our planet on December 22, 2032, the European Space Agency and NASA have found. But that also means

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been on an unexpectedly monthslong assignment after serving on Boeing’s Starliner crewed test flight, conducted a spacewalk Thursday. The duo ventured outside the International Space Station to remove degraded radio communications hardware and collect samples that may show whether microorganisms exist

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Archaeologists investigating a roughly 5,000-year-old tomb in southwestern Spain say the women laid to rest there were buried with a staggering number of white beads that would have been threaded together to form elaborate, shimmering outfits. Beads appear regularly in the archaeological record as a form of adornment, currency

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Researchers have detected organic compounds and minerals necessary for life in unprecedented samples collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, adding evidence to the idea that asteroids likely delivered the building blocks of life to our planet early in its history. The samples are also providing a window into understanding

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — An amateur fossil hunter has uncovered a piece of animal vomit dating back 66 million years on a beach in Denmark. Peter Bennicke noticed a “strange small cluster of lily pieces in a piece of chalk” at Stevns Klint in eastern Denmark, according to a statement from Geomuseum Faxe,

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — In a post on the social media platform X, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk claimed Tuesday that the Biden Administration left two astronauts “stranded” and said President Donald Trump has asked SpaceX to step in to rescue them. But NASA already put such a plan in place months ago when

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — New insights into bee movements and life cycles have been uncovered after researchers tracked the insects using tiny QR codes glued onto their backs. By recording when bees entered and exited their hives, scientists from Penn State University (PSU) discovered that, while most journeys last only a few minutes,

By Kristen Rogers, CNN (CNN) — Seventy-eight years ago, scientists created a unique sort of timepiece — named the Doomsday Clock — as a symbolic attempt to gauge how close humanity is to destroying the world. On Tuesday, the clock was set at 89 seconds to midnight — the closest the world has ever been

By Issy Ronald, CNN (CNN) — Momentarily pausing after eating some mealworms, an elusive shrew’s long snout pointed skywards, unaware of the historic portrait that had just been captured. Not a single Mount Lyell shrew had ever been photographed alive before, making them the only known mammal species in California to have eluded human cameras,

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — A small space rock that lingered near Earth last year and was referred to as its temporary “mini-moon” may actually be a chunk of the moon that chipped off thousands of years ago. The celestial near-Earth object, known as 2024 PT5, measures about 33 feet (10 meters) wide; however,

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Thousands of wildfires tear through southern Italy every year, fueled by scorching temperatures and the hot, dry, sirocco winds that sweep in from the Sahara. The climate crisis is pouring gasoline on these blazes, but the Mafia may be lighting the spark, according to new research. While hot, dry

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — The story of how humans evolved is a long and winding one — and it grows more complicated with each passing year. Discoveries in the past two decades have added new branches to the human family tree, including species such as the hobbit-like Homo floresiensis and the powerfully built

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN (CNN) — Just hours after his swearing-in this week, as a raft of executive orders was presented and signed at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump authorized action to end “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.” Employees in federal positions overseeing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Thousands of mysterious mounds on Mars preserve layers of evidence pointing to ancient water on the red planet that likely sculpted the towering formations. More than 15,000 mounds jut skyward from the lowlands of Mars’ Chryse Planitia, located near a natural dividing line between the planet’s southern and northern

CNN By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — Even before the Los Angeles fires, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was under assault on all fronts. Increasingly frequent weather disasters have strained its workforce and drained its Congress-funded coffers. And, since the first Trump administration, the agency has had further strain from bankrolling Covid recovery and paying

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — Even before the Los Angeles fires, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was under assault on all fronts. Increasingly frequent weather disasters have strained its workforce and drained its Congress-funded coffers. And, since the first Trump administration, the agency has had further strain from bankrolling Covid recovery and paying states

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — As more than 60 square miles Los Angeles violently burned earlier this month, then-President Elect Donald Trump placed blame on a fish. Trump falsely implied in a Truth Social post that Los Angeles lacked the water to put out the fires because Gov. Gavin Newsom chose to protect an

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — A cache of human-like fossils from China has perplexed scientists for decades, defying explanation or categorization. The skull fragments, teeth, jaws and other remains unearthed at different sites across the country are clearly remnants of archaic hominins — the formal name for species in the human lineage — who