business

Astute skywatchers may have already seen the striking line of planets across the night sky in January. This week Mercury joins the queue. Now every other world in our solar system will be visible among the stars at the same time — if you know where to look. According to Gerard van Belle, director of … Read more

Rum, a diamond-shaped island off the western coast of Scotland, is home to 40 people. Most of the island — 40 square miles of mountains, peatland and heath — is a national nature reserve, with residents mainly nestled around Kinloch Bay to the east. What the Isle of Rum lacks is artificial illumination. There are … Read more

A private company is aiming to heave a microwave oven-size spacecraft toward an asteroid later this week, its goal to kick off a future where precious metals are mined around the solar system to create vast fortunes on Earth. “If this works out, this will probably be the biggest business ever conceived of,” said Matt … Read more

It was 45 seconds too late, but the teacher had a plan. A gunman had just barraged her classroom with an AR-15, killing two students and injuring four others before turning to a classroom across the hall. The bullet-riddled walls were crumbling. Ceiling tiles were falling. If the shooter came back to kill more of … Read more

Elon Musk threw federal workers into further confusion and alarm on Saturday when he ordered them to summarize their accomplishments for the week, warning that a failure to do so would be taken as a resignation. Shortly after his demand, which he posted on X, civil servants across the government received an email from the … Read more

Outbreaks of measles in parts of Texas and New Mexico have sickened nearly 100 people, according to state health officials who warned that the number of cases was expected to rise. An outbreak has been spreading through the South Plains region of Texas since late January, the Texas Department of State Health Services said on … Read more

Tyler Nelson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, studies the neurobiology of pain, a choice partly motivated by his own frustrations with a neuromuscular disability. Last October, he applied for a grant at the National Institutes of Health that, if awarded, would support his dream of someday running his own lab. But, earlier … Read more

The science journalist and author Ed Yong likes to joke that during the first wave of Covid-19 in 2020, the impact and reach of his reporting for The Atlantic turned him into “a character in the season of ‘Pandemic.’” Indeed, his Covid journalism — which documented the earliest stages of the pandemic and made him … Read more

As the reality sets in that the United States is drastically diminishing its foreign assistance to developing countries, an urgent conversation is starting among governments, philanthropists, and global health and development organizations. It is centered on one crucial question: Who will fill this gap? Last year, the United States contributed about $12 billion to global … Read more

The Trump administration has blocked key parts of the federal government’s apparatus for funding biomedical research, effectively halting progress on much of the country’s future work on illnesses like cancer and addiction despite a federal judge’s order to release grant money. The blockage, outlined in internal government memos, stems from an order forbidding health officials … Read more