Author: Derrick Lester

The Gulf of Cadiz has always been an odd body of water. It serves as a sort of underwater intersection between the Moroccan coast and the Iberian Peninsula, where the cooler Atlantic meets the warm, salty Mediterranean outflow and vanishes downward in slow, looping plumes that are invisible to satellites. It has been studied for decades by oceanographers. For the most part, they used the traditional method of studying it, lowering probes from research vessels one slow descent at a time. Therefore, there was no immediate excitement when a team processing eight seismic reflection sections—which had been shot in the…

The scenery starts to change about thirty miles west of Houston’s downtown. The billboards get thinner, the freeways get flatter, and what was once cattle land is now home to industrial parks called Empire West. It’s the type of location that rarely makes headlines. That’s going to change. According to most accounts, Tesla has quietly started establishing a solar panel manufacturing facility in Brookshire, a small Texas city nestled along Interstate 10. The location is adjacent to the company’s Megapack Megafactory, which is currently being built. It seems intentional to combine the two on one campus. Placing the electricity-generating panels…

When you take a humid morning drive south from Cambridge, Maryland, you begin to notice things you had not previously noticed. A row of corn at a field’s edge, with shorter, paler stalks that appear nearly translucent in the sunlight. a roadside ditch that shouldn’t be filled with water. A tractor that is parked far enough away from the damp ground so that the farmer is obviously aware of something that a casual visitor is not. These subdued signals are common along the Eastern Shore, and they don’t make for striking images. In a sense, that is the entire issue.…

The National Science Foundation is currently experiencing an odd silence, the kind that descends upon an organization when its leadership is unclear. The agency has been without a confirmed director and deputy director for over a year. The number of employees has decreased by over thirty percent. Once-predictable grant decisions have slowed, stalled, or just stopped. Additionally, a nomination is sitting on a desk in Washington, awaiting an unspecified hearing date. James O’Neill is the Trump administration’s nominee to lead an organization that has covertly funded some of the most significant scientific wagers in American history for eight decades. The…

In areas that don’t typically receive much astronomical attention, a quiet kind of buzz is growing. Months ago, hotels in A Coruña began to fill up. I was casually informed by a friend who works for a small tour operator in northern Spain that they sold out of their August inventory before the previous summer was even over. On August 12, 2026, people want to be standing somewhere, anywhere, beneath the path of totality. Because of the peculiar geometry, astronomers describe the eclipse itself with a small smile. About 2.2 days after perigee, the Moon will pass between the Earth…

The Rockies’ refusal to adhere to a calendar has an almost theatrical quality. The first official backyard get-together of the year, charcoal smoke, and sunburned shoulders are all expected during Memorial Day weekend. Rather, a large portion of the West is witnessing yet another round of winter, and the forecast does not appear to be making an apology. The timing is what causes people to hesitate, even though the system itself is not very unusual in shape. While a second trough further south is unwilling to let go, an upper trough that is sliding down from western Canada is dipping…

As she usually does on weekdays, Marianne Nelson left her Rawlins home at 5:15 a.m. It typically takes her ten minutes to get to the Wyoming State Penitentiary. By eleven, she was still in her car, with a quarter tank of gas remaining, three semitrucks obstructing her view, and snow falling so heavily that she was unable to see past the windshield. That’s the problem with a May blizzard in Wyoming. Unlike a January storm, it doesn’t make an announcement. People anticipate that winter will be over by now, which contributes to the danger of a storm like this. By…

When the subject of North Sea oil comes up in Westminster these days, there’s an odd silence. It’s not quite silence, but rather a tense quiet, as though everyone in the room is aware that the dispute is far from resolved. With the same conviction he has held for years, Ed Miliband presented the case once more in front of Labour MPs this week. He maintains that the UK can only attain energy sovereignty by eschewing fossil fuels. On paper, the position seems straightforward. It’s not at all like that in reality. At a difficult time, the decision was made…

Early in May, there’s a certain quiet on the Richardson Highway that makes you think the season has finally changed. Glennallen has a gravel-like scent. The lowlands are loosening, but the Wrangells continue to wear their snow. Every few years, a Bering Sea low determines that spring can wait. It appears that this weekend is one of those occasions. On Thursday, May 7, the National Weather Service Anchorage office issued a Winter Storm Watch in addition to advisories and high wind warnings that were already in effect from Bristol Bay into the eastern Aleutians. The Eastern Alaska Range backcountry may…

Driving along the E11 highway and observing the endless stretch of sun-bleached, level coastline is almost surreal. Suddenly, four massive concrete domes emerge from the haze of the desert. Unlike oil refineries with their tangled steel and blazing flares, the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant doesn’t make an announcement. It produces about 25% of the electricity used daily in the United Arab Emirates while remaining silent and almost monastic. That’s an odd and subtly radical thing for a nation whose modern identity was based on hydrocarbons. The story of the plant started in December 2009 when a coalition led by Korea…