CNN – World

By Kate Golembiewski, CNN Diplodocids were a family of dinosaurs with long necks and, often, even longer tails — some species’ tails reached 50 feet in length. They were wide-ranging, but especially flourished in what’s now the western US around 152 million years ago. For decades, scientists have debated whether these dinosaurs could whip their

By Ashley Strickland, CNN The first mission to survey nearly all of the water on Earth’s surface has launched. The international Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission, known as SWOT, lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 6:46 a.m. ET on Friday. The first stage of

By Ashley Strickland, CNN When NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft slammed into the tiny asteroid Dimorphos, the impact certainly left a mark. The intentional collision, which took place on September 26 as a test of asteroid deflection technology, displaced more than 2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of rocks and dust from the asteroid

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN The world’s largest whales are more than just astonishing creatures. Much like the ocean, soil and forests, whales can help save humanity from the accelerating climate crisis by sequestering and storing planet-heating carbon emissions, researchers say. In a paper published Thursday in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, climate researchers

By Katie Hunt and Madeline Holcombe, CNN Scientists have discovered that female snakes have a clitoris — a previously overlooked or dismissed part of their anatomy (and that of many other animals), according to a new study. “It’s quite a taboo area. Female genitalia is not an easy subject to bring up sometimes and I

By Ross Levitt, Katia Hetter and Ashley Strickland, CNN A planned spacewalk by the Russian space agency Roscosmos has been called off following the discovery of a coolant leak coming from the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which is currently docked to the International Space Station. NASA’s Rob Navias, speaking on a late Wednesday evening NASA TV

By Ashley Strickland, CNN A NASA spacecraft is gearing up for the first of a series of close encounters with the most volcanic place in the solar system. The Juno spacecraft will fly by Jupiter’s moon Io on Thursday, December 15. The maneuver will be one of nine flybys of Io made by Juno over

By Ashley Strickland, CNN The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a unique perspective of the universe, including never-before-seen galaxies that glitter like diamonds in the cosmos. The new image, shared on Wednesday as part of a study published in the Astronomical Journal, was taken as part of the Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and

By Jack Guy, CNN Humans’ ability to walk upright on two legs may have evolved in trees, rather than on the ground, according to scientists studying wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. This contradicts the widely accepted theory that prehistoric human relatives evolved to walk on two legs because they lived in an open savanna environment, according

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN The best chance to see the strongest meteor shower of the year is on its way this week. The Geminids, known for bright, intensely colored meteors, have been streaking across the night sky since late November, and the shower will peak the night of December 13 through December 14, according to

By Katie Hunt, CNN The battle against the single-use plastic bag may not be won but it’s definitely under way. Restrictions on their use are in place in almost a dozen US states and in many other countries around the world. And in many cases, these efforts have been successful at eliminating new sales of

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN Resting at the bottom of Mjøsa, the largest lake in Norway, a shipwreck from hundreds of years ago is in almost perfect condition, frozen in time. The vessel, with its unique stem posts and overlapped planks, reveals a moment in the lake’s maritime history and is estimated to date between the

By Jackie Wattles, CNN The Artemis I mission — a 25½-day uncrewed test flight around the moon meant to pave the way for future astronaut missions — came to a momentous end as NASA’s Orion spacecraft made a successful ocean splashdown Sunday. The spacecraft finished the final stretch of its journey, closing in on the

By Jackie Wattles, CNN The Artemis I mission — a 25½-day uncrewed test flight around the moon meant to pave the way for future astronaut missions — is coming to an end as NASA’s Orion spacecraft is expected to make an ocean splashdown Sunday. The spacecraft is finishing the final stretch of its journey, closing