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— Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, tweeted that a "big rock" is going to hit Earth, and that we "currently have no defense." But NASA, seems to disagree. Musk's tweet was a response to another by comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan, who shared an article reporting that NASA has begun preparations for the 1,100-foot-wide asteroid Apophis, which is scheduled to pass by Earth on April 13, 2029. Apophis named after an Egyptian god of death. Musk isn't wrong when he tweeted "Wouldn't worry about this particular one," though. Apophis is going to miss us by 19,000 miles. It's...

How often do whales clean their ears? Well, never. And so, year after year, their ear wax builds up, layer upon layer. According to a study published Monday, these columns of ear wax contain a record of chemical pollution in the oceans. The study used the ear wax extracted from the carcass of a blue whale that washed ashore on a California beach back in 2007. Scientists at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History collected the wax from inside the skull of the dead whale and preserved it. The column of wax was almost a foot long. "It's kind...

The Canadian military is sending a long-range Aurora aircraft to investigate reports of a mysterious explosion along Canada's Northwest Passage that may have killed several whales. The drama apparently began in the early-morning hours of July 31, when an Inuit hunting party at an outpost camp at Borden Peninsula on northeastern Baffin Island was alerted to the sound of an explosion, followed by a cloud of black smoke. An Inuit member of the Canadian Rangers, a military reservist unit stationed in the far North, reported the incident, and said a hunter at the camp saw several dead whales on shore...

Three young adult killer whales — members of the family groups that spend their summers chasing salmon around Washington's San Juan Islands — have not been seen in weeks and are feared dead, researchers said Tuesday. One of the orcas leaves a 4-month-old orphan, whose care apparently has been taken over by another female. The three salmon-eating orca families that frequent the state's inland waters are J, K and L pods. J-pod spends virtually the entire year in the waters north of Puget Sound, while the other two groups head out to the open ocean in winter. The pods, called...

A Spanish company claimed on Thursday to have developed a method of breeding plankton and turning the marine plants into oil, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of clean fuel. Vehicle tests are some time away because the company, Bio Fuel Systems, has not yet tried refining the dark green coloured crude oil phytoplankton turn into, a spokesman said. Bio Fuel Systems is a wholly Spanish firm, formed this year in eastern Spain after three years of research by scientists and engineers connected with the University of Alicante. "Bio Fuel Systems has developed a process that converts energy, based on three...

Japan plans a new group for nations that support commercial whaling in a bid to end a 20-year ban on the activity, officials said, reiterating threats to leave the International Whaling Commission if it didn't lift the ban. The threat to quit the IWC, which meets later this month, could shatter the group originally set up to manage hunting of whales. "If things go on like this, the raison d'etre of the IWC as a whaling management organization disappears," said Hideki Moronuki, head of the whaling section at the Fisheries Agency. "Without normalization over the next two or three years,...

At Wal-Mart's 1992 general meeting, founder Sam Walton asked shareholders to sing God Bless America. The 15,000 Wal-Martians responded to Sam's call - even though Walton had been dead for two months. Walton's request to the shareholder-cum-revival meeting in rural Arkansas - channelled through a spotlit executive crouching on bended knee to speak to the departed Deity of Retail - was scarcely surprising. Wal-Mart is America's most patriotic, flag-waving company. But look under the flags. Stores are decked out like a war rally. Stars and Stripes hang from the ceiling. Cardboard eagles shriek 'Buy America!' But one independent group sampled...

Anyone who doubts that the tone of the debate over environmental policy in this city is in serious need of improvement need only look at the reaction to last week's release of the Environmental Protection Agency's first "Draft Report on the Environment." This report, the product of more than two years' work collaborating with more than two dozen federal departments and agencies and state and private-sector contributors, is designed to help answer a question I posed at my confirmation hearing 2 1/2 years ago: Are America's environmental policies making our air cleaner, its water purer and its land better protected...