Artificial Wombs Will Change Abortion Rights Forever - WIRED   

One day, human wombs may no longer be necessary for bearing children. In 2016, a research team in Cambridge, England, grew human embryos in ectogenesis—the process of human or animal gestation in an artificial environment—for up to 13 days after fertilization. A further breakthrough came the next year, when researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia announced that they had developed a basic artificial uterus named the Biobag. The Biobag sustained lamb fetuses, equivalent in size and development to a human fetus at roughly 22 weeks gestation, to full term successfully. Then, in August of 2022, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel created the world’s first synthetic embryos from mice stem cells. In the same month, scientists at the University of Cambridge used stem cells to create a synthetic embryo with a brain and a beating heart.

Ectogenesis has the potential to transform reproductive labor and reduce risks associated with reproduction. It could enable people with wombs to reproduce as easily as cisgender men do: without risks to their physical health, their economic safety, or their bodily autonomy. By removing natural gestation from the process of having children, ectogenesis could offer an equal starting point for people of all sexes and genders, particularly for queer people who wish to have children without having to rely on the morally ambiguous option of surrogacy. 

If safe and effective ectogenesis were made accessible—as opposed to being privatized, which risks further entrenching social and economic inequalities—the technology could result in a more prosperous and more equal society. Yet development of ectogenesis could also wreak havoc on the hard-fought right of women and people with wombs to access safe and legal abortion, and could significantly weaken abortion policies worldwide.

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Yes, the Climate Crisis Is Now ‘Gobsmacking.’ But So Is Progress - WIRED   

Scientists are running low on words to adequately describe the world's climate chaos. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could already say earlier this month that there was more than a 99 percent chance that 2023 was the hottest year on record. That followed September's sky-high temperatures—an average of 0.5 degrees Celsius above the previous record—which one climate scientist called "absolutely gobsmackingly bananas." When one of this summer's rapidly intensifying hurricanes, fueled by extraordinarily high ocean temperatures, leapt from a 60-knot tropical storm to a 140-knot Category 5, one scientist simply tweeted: "Wait, what???"

For many climate scientists, words are failing—or at least getting as extreme as the weather. It's part of the conundrum they face in delivering ever more shocking statistics to a public that may be overwhelmed by yet more dismal climate news. They need to say something urgent … but not so urgent that people feel disempowered. They need to be shocking … but not so shocking that their statements can be dismissed as hyperbole. But what can they do when the evidence itself is actually extreme?

"We've been trying to figure out how to communicate the urgency of climate change for decades," says Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "You have to find this balance of being both scientifically accurate—because that is your credibility and your trust and your personal comfort and self-esteem as a scientist. But you also have to be communicating in really powerful ways."

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The Tantalizing Mystery of the Solar System’s Hidden Oceans - WIRED   

For most of humankind's existence, Earth was the only known ocean-draped world, seemingly unlike any other cosmic isle.

But in 1979, NASA's two Voyager spacecraft flew by Jupiter. Its moon Europa, a frozen realm, was decorated with grooves and fractures—hints that there might be something dynamic beneath its surface.

"After Voyager, people suspected that Europa was weird and might have an ocean," said Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Spying on Beavers From Space Could Help Save California - WIRED   

For the first time in four centuries, it’s good to be a beaver. Long persecuted for their pelts and reviled as pests, the dam-building rodents are today hailed by scientists as ecological saviors. Their ponds and wetlands store water in the face of drought, filter out pollutants, furnish habitat for endangered species, and fight wildfires. In California, Castor canadensis is so prized that the state recently committed millions to its restoration.

While beavers’ benefits are indisputable, however, our knowledge remains riddled with gaps. We don’t know how many are out there, or which direction their populations are trending, or which watersheds most desperately need a beaver infusion. Few states have systematically surveyed them; moreover, many beaver ponds are tucked into remote streams far from human settlements, where they’re near-impossible to count. “There’s so much we don’t understand about beavers, in part because we don’t have a baseline of where they are,” says Emily Fairfax, a beaver researcher at the University of Minnesota.

But that’s starting to change. Over the past several years, a team of beaver scientists and Google engineers have been teaching an algorithm to spot the rodents’ infrastructure on satellite images. Their creation has the potential to transform our understanding of these paddle-tailed engineers—and help climate-stressed states like California aid their comeback. And while the model hasn’t yet gone public, researchers are already salivating over its potential. “All of our efforts in the state should be taking advantage of this powerful mapping tool,” says Kristen Wilson, the lead forest scientist at the conservation organization the Nature Conservancy. “It’s really exciting.”

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