Science & Environment

There’s a tale told about a miner who found copper cans in his garbage dump in the early days of mining. Wastewater from copper mining had flowed through his land, he said, and turned steel cans into copper. The story might be apocryphal, but the process is real, and it’s called cementation. Montana Resources, the mining company that took over …

Navin Singh Khadka Environment correspondent, BBC World Service BBC Trekking in Nepal’s Annapurna region, where haze obscures visibility of the epic mountains even at close range I grew up in Nepal’s capital watching the Himalayas. Ever since I left, I’ve missed sweeping, panoramic views of some of the highest mountain peaks on Earth. Each time I visit Kathmandu, I hope …

Gwyndaf Hughes Science Videographer and Producer SURF A vast cavern shielded from the outside world will house sensitive equipment to detect tiny changes in sub-atomic particles Inside a laboratory nestled above the mist of the forests of south Dakota, scientists are searching for the answer to one of science’s biggest questions: why does the Universe exist? They are in a …

The Agriculture Department will restore information about climate change that was scrubbed from its website when President Trump took office, according to court documents filed on Monday in a lawsuit over the deletion. The deleted data included pages on federal funding and loans, forest conservation and rural clean energy projects. It also included sections of the U.S. Forest Service and …

The Energy Department said on Monday that it was preparing to roll back energy and water conservation standards for a long list of electric and gas appliances, targeting 47 regulations that it said were “driving up costs and lowering quality of life for the American people.” The moves follow an executive order last week from President Trump directing the Energy …

If you’ve ever really looked at how flamingos eat, you know how captivatingly peculiar it is. They bob their inverted heads in the water and do a kind of waddle cha-cha as they inch their way across shallow water, filter-feeding small crustaceans, insects, microscopic algae and other tiny aquatic morsels. Victor Ortega-Jiménez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, …

An 11-foot alligator that tipped over a canoe and killed a woman in Central Florida on May 6 served as a reminder that, while alligator attacks on humans are “extremely rare,” as a state wildlife official said, they do happen, sometimes with fatal results. “This serves as a somber reminder of the powerful wildlife that share our natural spaces,” said …

Don Pettit, NASA’s oldest active astronaut, returned to Earth on April 20, the day he turned 70 years old. That concluded his fourth trip to space — a busy 220 days at the International Space Station. Like other crew members on the space station, Mr. Pettit conducted experiments, talked with students and exercised for hours to maintain his health and …

President Trump will sign an executive order on Monday aimed at lowering some drug prices in the United States by aligning them with what other wealthy countries pay, he said on Truth Social on Sunday evening. The proposal he described, which alone cannot shift federal policy, is what he calls a “most favored nation” pricing model. Mr. Trump did not …

Tens of thousands of Americans will soon be forced by their heath insurance to switch from one popular obesity drug to another that produces less weight loss. It is the latest example of the consequences of secret deals between drugmakers and middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, that are hired by employers to oversee prescription coverage for Americans. Employers pay …