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May 8, 2025—U.S. cities are sinking. Plus, the EPA plans to can the Energy Star program; and a Soviet-era spacecraft will soon crash to Earth. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | An artist's concept of a Soviet spacecraft on the surface of Venus. Mark Garlich/Science Photo Library/Getty Images | | - Kosmos-482, a failed Soviet mission to Venus that stalled in Earth orbit, is about to fall back to our planet. Exactly where or when it will strike, however, remain unknown. | 5 min read
- The EPA plans to end the Energy Star program, which has helped families and businesses save more than $500 billion in energy costs since 1992, by the agency's own metrics. | 3 min read
- HIV-testing and healthcare outreach in Southern U.S. states are being scaled back because of slashed federal budgets. | 10 min read
- After billions of dollars in spending and decades of planning, NASA may be forced to abandon precious samples of air, rock and soil on the Martian surface. Experts are furious. | 7 min read
- Most clicked yesterday: Being watched changes how you think. | 6 min read
| | Flooding in Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston, Tex., following Hurricane Beryl in July 2024. Mathew Risley/Getty Images | | The most populous cities in the U.S. are sinking, according to researchers who examined interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements taken from satellites. This radar system pings Earth's surfaces continually and can detect upward and downward deformations down to the millimeter scale in 28-meter-square grids. In all 28 cities examined, each with populations of at least 600,000 people, at least 20 percent of their area was sinking (in 25 of them, at least 65 percent was subsiding). Some areas are sinking at a rate of more than 10 millimeters per year. Why this is happening: The scientists found that 80 percent of the sinking they observed is because of groundwater extraction. Overpumping aquifers makes the surrounding soil compact and sink. Some cities, like New York City, are sinking in part because of the weight of the buildings on the land. What can be done: Cities need to balance the demand for groundwater with maintaining aquifers to prevent collapse. Cities in drought-prone regions, such as Texas, are particularly concerning because when drought sets in, more groundwater and aquifer use means greater chance of subsidence (sinking). Sinking cities are more susceptible to flooding from rainwater or coastal flooding. Plus, sinking land creates instability under buildings and subjects them to structural damage. Last Friday a nonprofit group called the International Code Council that writes building codes widely used in the U.S., approved new building codes for newly built hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and other structures to be constructed well above local flood levels. The new rules also expand the areas where higher elevation is required for building. | | Amanda Montañez; Source: "Quantifying Land Subsidence Impacts in U.S. Metropolises," by Leonard O. Ohenhen et al., in Nature Cities. Published online May 8, 2025 | | Annual vertical land motion (VLM) of the top 15 most populous U.S. cities, appearing in order from most populated at the top, according to 2020 Census data. They are color-coded by proximity to an ocean or river. What the experts say: Sinking has been happening by millimeters since 2015 when measurements began. Those numbers sound small. But "it's been 10 years at that rate—and that starts to add up," says Matt Pritchard, a geophysicist at Cornell University. Also, damage can occur even with small displacements. "The value here is in detecting things before they get worse or at smaller more subtle scales." | | | | |
- Nominated NASA administrator Jared Isaacman told Senators at a nomination hearing in April that the agency, "will launch more telescopes, more probes, more rovers and endeavor to understand our planet and the universe beyond." But major cuts to NASA's budget and supporting programs will gut any real chances of advancing American space missions in favor of Moon landings, writes Dan Vergano, senior opinion editor at Scientific American. He proposes instead we land a pair of cowboy boots, "the NASA 2025 Boot Lander mission," on the moon, so the space agency can then get back to science. | 5 min read
| | Ornithologist Sölvi Rúnar Vignisson screens for strains of avian influenza in species of gull whose migratory paths cross in Iceland. "All of that mixing means that Iceland is a key location for avian influenza viruses from Europe to move into North America, and vice versa," he says. "The virus can be transmitted from a bird to a human. But it's highly unlikely that it would then be transmitted from one person to another. If the virus mutates, that could change… it's all the more reason for researchers to study the spread of these viruses." (Nature | 3 min read) | | City planners, state budgeters, housing developers, insurance agencies and likely dozens more groups will need an accurate estimate of sea level rise in the remainder of this century. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has created a robust tool that you can use to see how water levels will rise in coastal towns and cities (based on 2022 data), given various scenarios, in the coming decades. I recommend watching the tutorial on how to use it and get exploring. The short version: the waters are rising fast. | | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | | |
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