Science & Earth

A January 2026 white paper proposes a new integrated water regulator, preventative regulation and other changes to oversight; environmental groups, industry and scientific bodies have offered differing responses.

Applications are open for the PEI 2 Billion Trees program, which will plant native seedlings on private property at no labour cost and is administered by the P.E.I. Watershed Alliance.

Seven winning warming hut designs were unveiled at The Forks and will be built and placed along the Nestaweya River Trail; judges selected finalists from more than 200 international submissions.

Hugging Face is an open platform for hosting and sharing machine learning models, datasets, and applications, supporting NLP, computer vision, and audio use cases. The platform combines community-driven open-science practices with enterprise-ready tooling to promote transparency and reproducibility.

Hubble observations of 3,419 blue straggler stars across 48 globular clusters show a higher blue straggler frequency in lower-density regions, and the fraction of binary systems in a cluster correlates with blue straggler counts.

Sunita Williams has retired from NASA after a 27-year career; she logged 608 days in space and 68 hours of spacewalk during her service.

A large-scale study comparing 100,000 people with leading generative models found some AI systems exceed average human performance on defined creative language tasks, while the most creative humans continue to outperform all tested AI.

Elon Musk said his companies aim to extend consciousness beyond Earth and that AI and robotics could create widespread abundance while also posing risks that require careful attention.

A PLOS Biology paper reports that bacteriophages evolved on the International Space Station developed mutations that made them more effective at killing certain antibiotic-resistant urinary tract infection bacteria when returned to Earth.

A team led by Dr. Tony Gargano analyzed Apollo lunar samples with high-precision triple oxygen isotopes and concluded that meteorites since the Late Heavy Bombardment could only have supplied a small fraction of Earth's water; the paper was published in PNAS.

Astronomical images highlight the Lupus 3 dark molecular cloud about 500 light-years away, showing young T-Tauri stars, dense dust filaments, and a reflection nebula created by two hot young stars. A 2006 study identified two age groups of T-Tauri stars in Lupus 3, near 1 million years and between 5 and 27 million years old.

Astronauts evacuated from the International Space Station said a portable ultrasound was helpful during a recent medical crisis; the crew declined to identify who was treated and NASA called it its first medical evacuation in 65 years of human spaceflight.

A 72-page UN report, produced with the Government of Canada, states the world is in an era of 'global water bankruptcy' and says freshwater systems have been pushed outside safe planetary boundaries.

A University of Toronto course by Brent Berry examines how long work hours, digital life, managed play and social inequalities shape leisure so that free time can feel more like work.

The ALMA ARKS survey imaged 24 exo‑Kuiper debris disks and found a wide range of substructures — multiple rings, halos, asymmetries — and signs that some disks retain gas longer than expected.

A Canadian study finds that climate change will sharply reduce the number of reliably snowy host sites for future Winter Olympics and Paralympics — estimating about 16 of 93 locations could reliably host the Paralympics in March by 2080 — and it highlights timing shifts and snowmaking as key adaptation options.

An arXiv study models Earth–Moon very long baseline interferometry and finds that placing radio dishes at five lunar sites could, under favorable geometry, let an Earth–Moon array resolve nearly 30 additional supermassive black hole shadows at sub-microarcsecond scales.

Indonesia will revoke permits held by 28 resource companies after authorities linked alleged forest misuse to December floods that killed more than a thousand people, and the government plans to restore around 900,000 hectares of seized land to conservation forest.

North Carolina State University researchers developed a modified fiber‑reinforced polymer that uses 3D‑printed EMAA and embedded heaters to re-bond layers, and lab samples were intentionally broken and repaired more than 1,000 times; the university has licensed the technology to a startup, Structeryx Inc.

A new documentary about the volunteer-run Okanagan Forest Task Force debuts on YouTube Wednesday as the group nears its 10th anniversary. The film, produced by Eli Coburn, highlights backcountry illegal dumping, impacts on waterways and wildlife, and a planned government-backed cleanup project.

CBC's The Nature of Things episode 'Survival of the Slowest' profiles slow-moving animals such as sloths, tortoises and gastropods and reports that slowness supports camouflage, low metabolism and long-term survival.

Nk'Mip Forestry reported planting over 1 million trees on Osoyoos Indian Band lands in 2025; the group's annual report also notes wildfire-risk treatments, cultural seed collection and other restoration work.

A Japanese study used laboratory simulations of frozen plume deposits and Raman spectroscopy to identify carbonate minerals and distinguish pH differences, suggesting the method may be used to estimate the alkalinity of Enceladus' subsurface ocean.

The provincial government signed four ministerial orders to implement the Gwa'ni Land Use Planning Project with the Namgis First Nation, affecting about 166,000 hectares in the Nimpkish Valley on northern Vancouver Island. The move drew support from the Namgis, local officials and some industry groups, while the B.C. Conservatives criticized the government for proceeding amid concerns tied to DRIPA and public consultation.

Hubble released infrared images from the SOFIA Massive (SOMA) Star Formation Survey showing massive young protostars and their surrounding nebulae, including the 16-solar-mass protostar HW2 in Cepheus A.

DeepTime Science Explorer links astronomy, geology, biology and neuroscience to trace connections from the formation of the universe to human consciousness and emphasizes long-term systems thinking.

An unusually warm January in British Columbia has led to early blooming in parts of Metro Vancouver and Victoria, and experts warn a subsequent cold snap could damage plants.

University of Toronto researchers published a paper in Advanced Materials describing a lightweight triboelectric sensor that detects ice forming, melting and detaching on surfaces in real time.

A decade-long Journal of Animal Ecology study found Antarctic Gentoo, Adélie and chinstrap penguins have shifted their breeding earlier by about 10–13 days, based on observations from 77 time-lapse cameras across 37 colonies.

Officials announced a Memorandum of Understanding between NASA and the Department of Energy to pursue a lunar fission reactor with a target date of 2030, and agencies have awarded three $5 million contracts to industry teams. The next formal procedural step under the MoU was not specified.