What to know about Fourth of July holiday origins and traditions
4 July 2025 - The Fourth of July is Americana at its core: parades, cookouts and, of course, fireworks. Here are five things to know about July Fourth, including the origin of the holiday and how fireworks became part of the tradition. The holiday celebrates the Second Continental Congress' unanimous adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, a document announcing the colonies' separation from Great Britain. (more)

Solar minigrid brings light and hope to a Goma neighborhood, offering blueprint for rest of Congo
2 July 2025 - Street lights erase the shadows where attackers once hid. Noisy, polluting diesel generators have gone silent. New businesses are taking root. In several Goma neighborhoods where almost nobody had electricity just five years ago, a small solar network is offering a flicker of hope despite widespread poverty and the city's violent takeover by Congolese rebels early this year. (more)

India: Meet Kerala's 'rainforest gardeners' creating a Noah's ark for endangered plants
1 July 2025 - In one of the world's 'hottest hotspots' of biodiversity, an all-female team have turned a patch of forest into a haven for orchids, ferns, succulents, and carnivorous plants. (more)

Unsung observatory worker was UK's first professional female astronomer, experts say
30 June 2025 - For more than a century, astronomers assumed she had simply 'computed' complex calculations for the Victorian men who had exclusive use of Cambridge Observatory telescopes. But researchers now say that Annie Walker - a Victorian woman who began working at the observatory in 1879, when she was only 15 - actually observed thousands of stars herself. (more)

Astronomers discover strange new celestial object in our Milky Way galaxy
28 June 2025 - Astronomers have discovered a strange new object in our Milky Way galaxy. An international team reported Wednesday that this celestial object -- perhaps a star, pair of stars or something else entirely -- is emitting X-rays around the same time it's shooting out radio waves. What's more, the cycle repeats every 44 minutes, at least during periods of extreme activity. (more)

Enigmatic Carnac megaliths reveal Europe's earliest monuments
27 June 2025 - A groundbreaking archaeological study has determined that the renowned Carnac stone alignments in Brittany, France, may be one of Europe's oldest megalithic landscapes, dating back to ca. 4600 BCE. (more)

New light on the stone alignments in the Carnac region
27 June 2025 - The enigmatic stone alignments in the Carnac region of Brittany, France, are among the most famous megalithic monuments in Europe -- alongside Stonehenge, Menga, and the megalithic temples of Malta. For the first time, it has now been possible to date parts of these alignments with a higher precision and gain new insights into their function. (more)

These Canadian rocks may be the oldest on Earth
26 June 2025 - Scientists have identified what could be the oldest rocks on Earth from a rock formation in Canada. The Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt has long been known for its ancient rocks -- plains of streaked gray stone on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in Quebec. But researchers disagree on exactly how old they are. Work from two decades ago suggested the rocks could be 4.3 billion years old, placing them in the earliest period of Earth's history. (more)

James Webb telescope captures direct images of Saturn-sized exoplanet
25 June 2025 - The James Webb space telescope has captured unprecedented direct images of a planet beyond our own solar system, in its first exoplanet discovery. The observations reveal a planet, which has been called TWA 7b, carving its way through a disc of glowing dust and rocky debris in orbit around a star 110 light years from Earth. (more)

US: Two Wisconsin researchers part of global team that discovered a new object in space
25 June 2025 - When students open their science textbooks in the future, there's a chance they'll be reading about a cosmic discovery made by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their discovery 'may hold the key to unlocking a new kind of star that we don't yet understand,' said UWM physics professor David Kaplan. Kaplan and others, including Akash Anumarlapudi, a recent UWM doctoral graduate, were part of a global team that discovered an unknown object emitting both radio waves and X-rays. (more)

This photo of the nearby Sculptor galaxy spans 65,000 light years
24 June 2025 - Astronomers have revealed a nearby spiral galaxy in all its brilliant glory, shining in thousands of colors. The dazzling panoramic shot released Wednesday of the Sculptor galaxy by a telescope in Chile is so detailed that it's already serving as a star-packed map. (more)

See the stunning first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory
23 June 2025 - The first spectacular images taken by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have been released for the world to peruse: a panoply of iridescent galaxies and shimmering nebulas. 'This is the dawn of the Rubin Observatory,' says Meg Schwamb, a planetary scientist and astronomer at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. (more)

The largest digital camera ever built has released its first shots of the universe
23 June 2025 - The largest digital camera ever built released its first shots of the universe Monday - including colorful nebulas, stars, and galaxies. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located on a mountaintop in Chile, was built to take a deeper look at the night sky, covering hidden corners. Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy, it will survey the southern sky for the next 10 years. (more)

This observatory's first images are stunning - and just the start
23 June 2025 - A powerful new observatory [the Vera C. Rubin Observatory] has unveiled its first images to the public, showing off what it can do as it gets ready to start its main mission: making a vivid time-lapse video of the night sky that will let astronomers study all the cosmic events that occur over ten years. (more)

'One Earth, One Health': Yoga Day provides respite in a tumultuous world
21 June 2025 - In an age marked by conflicts, disease, dysfunction, and mental health challenges, yoga offers a steady, time-trusted path to help find calm and harmony within - and without. This powerful message of International Yoga Day, observed annually on 21 June, reverberated through UN Headquarters in New York on Friday as hundreds gathered to embrace the ancient, holistic practice. (more)

AP PHOTOS: Highlights of International Day of Yoga
21 June 2025 - Tens of thousands of people across India stretched in public parks and on sandy beaches Saturday to mark the 11th International Day of Yoga. (more)

Indian Embassy in Nepal organizes series of events to mark 11th International Day of Yoga
21 June 2025 - The Indian Embassy in Nepal and the Consulate General of India in Birgunj on Saturday organized a series of engaging events across 10 cities and municipalities in Nepal, including Kathmandu, Pokhara, Lamjung, Lumbini, Janakpur, Chitwan, Birgunj, Hetauda, Rautahat, and Bariyarpur to mark the 11th International Day of Yoga. (more)

Indians stretch, breathe, and balance to mark International Day of Yoga
21 June 2025 - Tens of thousands of people across India stretched in public parks and on sandy beaches Saturday [21 June] to mark the 11th International Day of Yoga. The mass yoga sessions were held in many Indian states, where crowds attempted various poses and practiced breathing exercises. Indian military personnel also performed yoga in the icy heights of Siachen Glacier in the Himalayas and on naval ships anchored in the Bay of Bengal. (more)

The summer solstice is here. What to know about the longest day of the year
20 June 2025 - Peak sunshine has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere -- the summer solstice. Friday [20 June] is the longest day of the year north of the equator, where the solstice marks the start of astronomical summer. It's the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is the shortest day of the year and winter will start. (more)

Indian-origin professor wins Godel prize for breakthrough in computer science research
19 June 2025 - Indian-origin professor Eshan Chattopadhyay, along with David Zuckerman, won the 2025 Godel Prize for their 2016 paper, 'Explicit Two-Source Extractors and Resilient Functions'. The IIT-Kanpur alumnus solved a major open problem in his field. The Godel Prize honours groundbreaking research in theoretical computer science and is one of the field's most prestigious accolades. (more)

Two major US food producers to remove artificial dyes from products sold domestically
18 June 2025 - Two major food producers say that they will be pulling artificial dyes from their U.S. products starting in 2027. The shift comes nearly two months after U.S. health officials said that they would urge foodmakers to phase out petroleum-based artificial colors. (more)

A long-standing puzzle of 'missing' ordinary matter in the universe may be solved, astronomers say
17 June 2025 - Astronomers have used mysterious fast radio bursts, or millisecond-long bright flashes of radio waves from space, to help them track down some of the missing matter in the universe. ... 'If you add up all the stars and planets and cold gas that you see with your telescopes, it only amounts to less than 10 percent of ordinary matter in the universe,' said Liam Connor, assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard University. (more)

Scientists find universe's missing matter while watching fast radio bursts shine through 'cosmic fog'
16 June 2025 - Half of the universe's ordinary matter was missing -- until now. Astronomers have used mysterious but powerful explosions of energy called fast radio bursts (FRBs) to detect the universe's missing 'normal' matter for the first time. (more)

The women at the center of Somalia's construction boom
13 June 2025 - Construction is booming in Somalia's capital city ... giving unexpected opportunities to women like Fathi Mohamed Abdi and Saadia Ahmed Omar. The two young female engineers have been overseeing the construction of a 10-floor apartment complex in Taleh in the city's Hodan District. ...The two are among the most recognised female engineers in Mogadishu, having overseen more than 30 multimillion-dollar projects. (more)