The former hurricane known as Laura has so far been the most intense and dangerous storm of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, according to the U.N.’s weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization.Laura is now just a tropical depression, spreading heavy rain and thunderstorms across the east-central United States, forecasters said. But as the storm crossed the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, it strengthened from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 4 in less than 24 hours. Forecasters recorded wind speeds as high as 240 kph.As Laura came ashore …

A study published this week offers evidence regarding how water originated on Earth, and the clues come from some of the oldest rocks in the solar system. Earth’s abundance of water makes it unique in the solar system, but scientists have never been sure how it got here. Some believed the water – or chemical compounds that make up water – was here all along, embedded in the original rock that formed the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago.  A piece of an enstatite chondrite meteorite, which contains about 0.5 weight …

In May, facing urgent international demands for action after a string of massive wildfires in the Amazon, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro put the army in charge of protecting the rainforest.   Instead, The Associated Press has found, the operation dubbed as “Green Brazil 2” has had the opposite effect. Under military command, Brazil’s once-effective but recently declining investigation and prosecution of rainforest destruction by ranchers, farmers and miners has come to a virtual halt, even as this year’s burning season picks up.   The Brazilian army appears to be focusing …

President Donald Trump said Thursday the U.S. will have a vaccination for the coronavirus “before the end of the year or maybe even sooner.”The announcement was part of Trump’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination, delivered from the South Lawn of the White House as part of the party’s national convention.   Experts say vaccines can sometimes take decades to develop, test, and be proven safe before they are administered to patients. However, hope has been high that a concerted international effort will produce an effective vaccine sometime next year. “In recent months our nation and the entire planet has been struck by a new and powerful invisible enemy,” …

Water covers 70% of the Earth’s surface and is crucial to life as we know it, but how it got here has been a longstanding scientific debate.The puzzle was a step closer to being solved Thursday after a French team reported in the journal Science they had identified which space rocks were responsible, and suggested our planet has been wet ever since it formed.Cosmochemist Laurette Piani, who led the research, told AFP the findings contradicted the prevalent theory that water was brought to an initially dry Earth by far-reaching comets …