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The highly transmissible Omicron COVID-19 variant has now been detected in the country’s second-largest city, in addition to New York. A person who traveled to LAX from South Africa before Thanksgiving tested positive for the new mutation, Los Angeles County officials announced Thursday. The adult’s symptoms are improving in self-isolation without medical care, officials announced. The California patient’s plight mirrors that of a 67-year-old Long Island woman, who had recently returned from South Africa before testing positive for the variant earlier this week, New York officials said Thursday.

The Lambda COVID variant has spread across the U.S. with hundreds of cases being recorded by doctors this month. C.37, also known as the Lambda variant, was first detected in Peru in December 2020 and it has since spread to dozens of countries, including the U.S. While it has quickly spread across South America since it was first detected, it's unclear whether it poses more of a threat than other variants, including Delta.

Another new COVID-19 variant has been detected in the US, UK and other countries, according to scientists. The B1525 variant is similar to B117 — the highly contagious strain found in Britain in mid-December that’s since made its way to the US, the Guardian reported. The new variant has popped up in 10 countries so far, including Denmark, the US, Nigeria and Australia. Thirty-two cases have been reported in the UK. No cases of the new mutant have so far been reported in the US.

On 26 December 2015, LIGO detected gravitational waves from two black holes spiraling together.LIGO/T. Pyle LIGO detects another black hole crash By Adrian ChoJun. 15, 2016 , 1:15 PM The biggest discovery in science this year--the observation of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves--was no fluke. For a second time, physicists working with the two massive detectors in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) have detected a pulse of such waves, the LIGO team reported on 15 June at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego, California. Once again the waves emanated from the merger of...

Reuters) - Underground sensors have detected excessive radiation levels inside a nuclear waste storage site deep below New Mexico's desert, but no workers have been exposed and there was no risk to public health, U.S. Department of Energy officials said on Sunday. An air-monitoring alarm went off at 11:30 p.m. local time Friday indicating unsafe concentrations of radiation inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in what DOE officials said appeared to be the first such mishap since the facility opened in 1999. As of Sunday, the source of the high radiation readings had yet to be determined, and a plan...

Network of stations with seismometers and air pressure sensors detected the blast waves A network of seismographic stations recorded spectacular signals from the blast waves of the meteor that landed near Chelyabinsk, Russia, as the waves crossed the United States. The National Science Foundation- (NSF) supported stations are used to study earthquakes and the Earth's deep interior. While thousands of earthquakes around the globe are recorded by seismometers in these stations--part of the permanent Global Seismographic Network (GSN) and EarthScope's temporary Transportable Array (TA)--signals from large meteor impacts are far less common. The meteor explosion near Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15,...

LOS ANGELES – Air pollution regulators in Southern California say they have not detected increased levels of radiation from the damaged Japanese nuclear reactors. The South Coast Air Quality Management District said Friday radiation measured at its three sites are not higher than typical levels.

A ball of gas more massive than a billion suns is hurtling like an enormous comet through the interior of a distant galaxy cluster. The massive structure is held together by mysterious dark matter, astronomers said today, but it is steadily breaking apart and becoming fuel for new stars. "This is likely a massive building block being delivered to one of the largest assembly of galaxies we know," said study team member Alexis Finoguenov of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The finding is detailed in the June 6 issue of Astrophysical Journal. Great ball of fire The gas blob...

Tremors deep inside the Earth are usually produced by magma flowing beneath volcanoes, but a new study suggests they can also be produced by the shifting and sliding of tectonic plates. Scientists have recorded vibrations from underground tremors at a geologic observatory along the San Andreas Fault, an 800 mile scar in the earth that runs through California. The fault marks the boundary between the Pacific Tectonic Plate and the North American Plate. Tectonic plates are large pieces of the Earth's crust that bump and grind like chunks of sea ice floating atop the ocean. The Earth's surface is made...

SAN DIEGO - The glow of planets outside our solar system have been spotted in the first direct detections of light emitted by alien worlds. The two planets were detected in infrared light, an emission of heat that is not visible to the human eye. There are no conventional photographs, but astronomers are ecstatic nonetheless. The gas giant worlds, each around a different star, were discovered previously by noting the gravitational wobbles they induce in their host stars -- an indirect method. Both are roughly Jupiter-sized and hot, orbiting very close to their stars. Each completes a "year" in less...

Searchers 'may have detected flight recorder' Searchers hunting for the wreckage of a charter jet that crashed into the Red Sea have detected a signal that could be the plane's black box flight data recorder. The signal was detected by a radar on a robotic arm used by searchers in the area where Flash Airlines' Flight FSH604 crashed on Saturday. "It's a positive sign but nothing conclusive," said a French Embassy official, on condition of anonymity. There was no indication of how deep the signal was coming from. Experts had said the deep waters would slow recovery efforts. Most of...

Sunlight's gentle nudge on asteroids detected 19:00 04 December 03 NewScientist.com news service Astronomers have detected the delicate force of sunlight on an asteroid's orbit for the first time. The long-predicted effect has been blamed for propelling some asteroid fragments from the Solar System's main asteroid belt into the region near Earth, where they can threaten the planet. But its subtle action on asteroid orbits has been difficult to measure with optical telescopes. Instead, Steve Chesley, Steve Ostro and colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, used the radar range finder at Arecibo in Puerto Rico. They used...