Stories by Meghan Bartels

Debris from Comet Encke creates two annual meteor showers, but it might also pose a small risk to Earth. Scientists are investigating

Astronomers are hustling to use interplanetary spacecraft to study the interstellar comet dubbed 3I/ATLAS while the sun is hiding it from Earth

Hurricane Melissa’s powerful winds and drenching rains devastated Jamaica. But is its wrath a sign that we need a new designation for monster storms?

After a quiet summer, bird flu cases are rising again. Scientists expected the development, but what happens next is still uncertain

Melissa is a Category 5 major hurricane and moving relatively slow—a brutal combination that will drench some parts of Jamaica with up to 40 inches of rain

Scientists suspected that Europe’s largest bats snack on migrating songbirds when they can, but a stunning newly published observation proves it

Tim Flach captures his fascination with the science of cats in stunning photographs from his new book Feline

The anthropologist was famous for her pioneering research with chimpanzees and her influence on conservation

Hurricane Humberto and a system that may become Tropical Storm Imelda in the coming days are swirling quite close to each other in the western Atlantic Ocean

The San Francisco Bay Area was rattled early this morning by a magnitude 4.3 earthquake along the Hayward fault line

A powerful magnitude 7.8 aftershock off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula that arose from July’s magnitude 8.8 earthquake is raising concerns about possible tsunami impacts, although risk appears to be waning

Three vaccines were on the agenda for this week’s meeting of ACIP, the CDC’s key advisory panel on immunization: the combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine, the hepatitis B vaccine and COVID vaccines

After nearly 40 years of global efforts, the ozone hole over Antarctica is continuing to heal

Hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin is historically at its peak on September 10—but not this year

Many questions still surround COVID vaccine access this fall, but here’s what we know so far

Everything you need to know about hurricanes explained

From Miami to Maine, the East Coast is under moderate or high rip current risk advisories because of Hurricane Erin

The first detailed observation of the bathroom habits of Streaked Shearwaters at sea leave scientists with a surprising load of questions

In some of its most ambitious work yet, the James Webb Space Telescope looked to spot a planet in a potentially habitable orbit around Alpha Centauri A, the nearest sunlike star to our solar system

Fifty-eight people have been infected—and two have died—in a New York City outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease—a severe type of pneumonia caused by a bacterium commonly associated with air-conditioning systems and cooling towers

The Krasheninnikov volcano, located less than 150 miles away from the epicenter of Russia’s July 29 earthquake, began erupting on August 3

The magnitude 3.0 earthquake that shook the East Coast came nearly a year and a half after a magnitude 4.8 quake shocked New York City and its surroundings

Winds from the northwest are blowing cool, dry air—but also wildfire smoke—into the U.S. Midwest from Canada

As Earth spins through space, its rate of rotation changes. Here’s why