“Nicole is expected to weaken while moving across Florida and the southeastern United States Thursday through Friday,” the National Hurricane Center said this morning. Parts of the east coast of Florida were already experiencing tropical storm conditions early this morning. The state is also facing very high tides elevated by this week’s full moon, which could increase coastal flooding. Forecasters predict up to eight inches of rain, a storm surge that could rise to five feet, and high winds into Thursday....

We’ve picked our favorites, with themes that range from creating a quilt to building the Wonders of the World. 7-Wonders Duel is a two-player modification of the original, beloved civilization building game. It only takes only 30 minutes to play, and is suitable for anyone ages 10 and up. Win in one of three ways: through war, science, or amassing the most victory points at the end. Regardless of your strategy, it’s always fun to choose which Wonders of the World you wish to build....

“There’s a lot of talk about orders in the industry, a lot of talk about paper commitments, but this is the first real cash commitment,” Archer Aviation CEO Adam Goldstein said in a statement. United’s major investment into private air taxi partnerships is only one of multiple, similar deals within the aviation world. Last year, American Airlines pledged $25 million towards a team-up with Archer Aviation competitor Vertical Aerospace, while Wisk and Boeing are currently working together on their own plans for autonomous, electric vehicles....

After SpaceX’s routine Falcon 9 launch to the International Space Station yesterday afternoon, the company took a stab at the extraordinary. They tried to land the main stage of their rocket as it fell back down to Earth (a feat that has never been done before). Landing a rocket after launch would mark the first monumental step toward making reusable rockets a reality, which could drastically bring down the cost of spaceflight in the future....

Okay, that might not be completely true—but it’s certainly a distinctive experience, and one that we can thank state-of-the-art technology for. Last week the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam posted an AI-constructed, ultra-high-res image of “The Night Watch” by Rembrandt. The original piece is nearly 15 feet long and more than 12 feet high and has been under intensive restoration since the early 1900s. As the story goes, in the 1600s Rembrandt was commissioned by the Amsterdam civic guard to create a sweeping oil painting for their headquarters....

Until now. On Thursday morning, Virgin Galactic’s passenger spaceplane, SpaceShipTwo, and its two pilots managed to top out at Mach 2.9 and reach an altitude of 51.4 miles above the the Mojave Desert—just enough height to cross the atmospheric threshold into space, based on the definition used by the U.S. military and NASA (although still below the 62-mile Karman Line, used internationally and among the scientific community as the definition of the border between Earth’s atmosphere)....

So far, microplastics have been found in water sources like lake water, groundwater, and tap water, and they likely contain the even tinier nanoplastics too. In fact, studies have identified nanoplastics in tap water in China, lake water in Switzerland, and even ice samples in the Northern and Southern polar regions. However, the full extent of tiny plastic contamination of drinking water sources has yet to be known because it is challenging to detect them, which can make it more difficult to address the problem....

What is the emissions gap? The UN has produces its emissions gap report annually ahead of the Conference of the Parties (COP). The next COP will be held in Madrid this December. This conference is where the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. At that time, 196 signatories (or “Parties”) committed to reducing emissions in order to keep climate change below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming from pre-industrial global temperature levels....

Before starting at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Pavgi worked in journalism at the publications GovExec and DefenseOne, giving him some familiarity with the plane and long-running debates over its astronomical cost. To reach his calculations for the price of an F-35, Pavgi took the estimates from the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter program head, and averaged them to roughly $123 million apiece. Perhaps sensing the popularity of this calculation, and urged on by others (full disclosure: including myself), Pavgi created a simple site that takes in costs and spits them out in terms of stealth fighters....

So how to resolve the debate? In a paper published today in Nature Communications researchers announced a way to take the temperature of dinosaurs that have been dead for millions of years: look at the eggshells they left behind. Eggshells are made from calcium carbonate, a hard brittle substance that comes in subtly different variations. In this case, the researchers were looking at calcium carbonate that contained the isotopes carbon 13 and oxygen 18, which both have extra neutrons in their atomic structure, making them slightly heavier....

A robotic rover tasked with testing out an array of instruments in the Atacama Desert managed to dig up subsurface soil samples possessing incredibly specialized and unique forms of microbial life. According to the findings, published Thursday in Frontiers in Microbiology, the study is the first ever to drill beneath the surface of an extreme desert soil like Atacama and recover samples for biological analysis. Moreover, it’s the first to illustrate the ability of life to adapt to this sort of environment, and leaves the door open for the potential that we could very well find signs of similar life lurking beneath the surface of Mars....

In late September, astronauts Thomas Pesquet and Andreas Mogensen spotted a glowing blue light over Europe from up in the ISS. They recorded a timelapse and posted a frame of it on Flickr. Pesquet’s caption calls the light a “thunder strike with a ‘transient luminous event’ in the upper atmosphere,” and says this rare occurrence will be further observed by a facility outside Europe’s Columbus laboratory near Munich, Germany. Spectacular light events in the upper atmosphere are of increasing interest, and astronauts and astronomers have gotten creative naming them....

But no two sunscreens are created equal. Some provide that much-needed UV protection while utilizing chemicals that are toxic to aquatic animals and plants. On occasion, popular travel destinations have even sited oil-like slicks around beaches after sunscreen-covered tourists left for the day. As more research is done regarding how skincare chemicals affect users and the environment, products like reef-safe sunscreens are making waves on the skincare market. These products are thought to be a win-win—touting the same level of sun protection but with less environmental damage....

The hypothetical asteroid 2015 PDC, “discovered” on April 13, 2015, is on a collision course with Earth. Between 500 and 1,300 feet in diameter, the asteroid could crash into Earth as early as September 2022. What do we do? 1 Although the scenario is completely hypothetical, the conference organizers tried to make it as realistic as possible, including all the unknowns scientists would face, such as the asteroid’s size, what it’s made of, and where exactly it might hit Earth....

Although official counts put the death toll around 1,300 as of Monday morning, that’s likely an enormous understatement. According to predictions from the US Geological Survey (USGS), there’s a 75 percent chance that more than 10,000 people have died. There’s a 37 percent chance that the death toll will top 100,000. And the disaster could be quickly magnified. Tropical Depression Grace, the year’s seventh named storm in another intense hurricane season, made landfall on the earthquake zone, and is forecasted to drop about 10 inches of rain....

But if you already have a drone, just bought one for your niece for Christmas, or are thinking about getting one, here’s a simple guide to see if yours meets the weight limit. It’s by no means comprehensive, but should give you a rough idea of what types of drones people will have to register. There’s one important point before beginning, and that’s about usage. Previous drone laws required strict constraints on drones used for commercial reasons, and were very lenient for model airplane hobbyists....

Of course, there were the proper Illinoisans and Wisconsinites, but we also slung back and forth with a couple of alternatives—Cheeseheads, a derogatory term for Wisconsin residents (that they also embrace) and FIBs, an acronym for “F***ing Illinois Bastards,” which is generally used by Wisconsinites when driving on the same roadway as an Illinoisan. People from Wisconsin also call themselves Badgers, an homage to the University of Wisconsin’s mascot, and depending on where you are in Illinois, you’re also a Chicagoan....

Take your applications anywhere Portable applications are programs that can run from a USB drive—you can unplug the drive, move it to a different PC, and take all of your favorite apps with you. It’s a useful option whether you’re moving between your home and the office or just moving between different computers in different rooms. The best place to find these programs is at PortableApps.com. As you’ll see, there’s a wide selection to pick from, including web browsers, productivity tools, and games....

Several factors have contributed to declining honeybee populations—higher temperatures from climate change, pesticides, and drought to name a few. “Bee health is a multifaceted problem and many factors play into the survival or perishing of a beehive,” says Dalial Freitak, associate professor at the University of Graz in Austria and senior author of the study. “As in any organism, diseases can cause havoc, especially if other stressors are at play....