All Categories

Stepping into the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, last week felt like crossing into a dream. As an MS student in environmental engineering and sub-editor at Nature Insights, I expected inspiration, but the sheer majesty of the artifacts hit me like a rocket launch. Gleaming fuselages hung suspended mid-flight, Apollo capsules gleamed under spotlights, and futuristic mockups whispered promises of Mars and beyond. Amid buzzing crowds, these machines

The universe is enormous, beautiful, and very mysterious and full of questions that are yet to be answered by science. There are things about the real world that simply cannot be understood by means of powerful telescopes and excellent theories. These puzzles are referred to as puzzles that contradict logic and observation. We will be discussing five interesting paradoxes that still puzzle our concept of the universe. Why Is the Night Sky Dark? Why does the universe appear t

Stephen Hawking at his time travelers' party In 2009, Stephen Hawking hosted a party for time travelers and mailed the invitations after it ended. Nobody showed up. If you like your science with a clean punchline, you could stop there. Case closed: no guests, no time travel. But physics rarely gives you a satisfying ending on the first page. Hawking’s stunt is better read as a thesis statement: if time travel exists, it is not going to behave like a tourist attraction. It is

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them. N When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick! Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself. In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the

Image generated wit AI Whenever we think of nature, our perspective is limited to terrestrial environments like oceans, forests, and deserts. We rarely consider what lies beyond Earth’s atmosphere, forgetting that space is part of nature too, despite lacking Earth's biological richness. Therefore, our discussions revolve around the existing climate crisis on Earth. But, in this 21st century, the future battleground for climate justice is not confined within the territory of E

The Introduction: The Day the Sky Went Out At 4:31 a.m. on January 17, 1994, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake shattered the before-dawn silence of Los Angeles. Darkness swept through the city after the electricity grid refused to work for the first time in a century. In the hours that followed, local emergency centers and the Griffith Observatory received a flurry of panicked phone calls. In addition to reporting the tremors, residents were terrified by a giant, silver cloud hangin

For this issue’s interview, we are honored to have Dr. Rashed Chowdhury, Applications Scientist - Water, Climate, and Society. Dr. Rashed Chowdhury is a climate scientist and research faculty member at Arizona State University (USA) who works at the intersection of water, climate, and society. His research is driven by a strong interest in applying climate science to real-world challenges. He is a 2021 U.S. Fulbright Teaching Scholar and a postdoctoral researcher at the I

Danmarks Naturfredningsforening has actively contributed to the creation of national parks like National Park Thy (pictured), the first of its kind in Denmark. Over the decades, the Society’s campaigns also led to the protection of iconic landscapes such as Møns Klint and Mols Bjerge Denmark’s Danmarks Naturfredningsforening, or Danish Society for Nature Conservation, was founded on April 21, 1911, in Copenhagen with a pioneering vision. Unlike earlier scientific circles that

Image created by Author Climate change and food insecurity are two of the most pressing sustainable development challenges of our time. Yet agricultural policy keeps chasing long-term climate change targets while the real threat to farmers and rural communities goes largely unaddressed. That threat is the wild swings in weather: sudden floods wipe out the season’s rice, heatwaves scorch wheat before it ripens, and droughts turn soil to dust almost overnight. These shocks dest

The Climate Finance Vulnerability Index ranks 188 countries according to both their vulnerability to hazards and their financial resilience. There was a time when my small talk began with: “The weather is nice today, no?” I don’t say it so casually anymore. I think I am privileged, so my weather is still “nice.” I can regulate it with fans, heaters, or AC or simply step indoors. But is the weather nice for everyone? Back in my childhood I remember that Bangladesh’s summers me

Glaciers play a foundational role in sustaining ecosystems, regulating hydrological cycles and supporting livelihoods, particularly by supplying fresh water to downstream populations. Yet this natural system is now under severe threat. Climate change, largely driven by human activity, is accelerating glacier melt at an unprecedented pace. Over the past two decades, global glacier mass has declined sharply, with the most rapid losses recorded in five of the last six years. Sci

Weather is usually discussed through forecasts and figures, yet for millions of people it is something far more immediate. It determines whether work happens or stops, whether food reaches markets, and whether a family feels secure or vulnerable. For those who spend their lives outside climate-controlled spaces, weather is not background noise—it is a daily negotiation. Having lived and worked across different regions of India and Southern Africa for over thirty years, I have

Monsoon in the Pakistani Valley The ongoing floods send a clear warning that the South Asian monsoon, which has shaped life in this region for centuries, is undergoing fundamental changes. In Pakistan, monsoon rains no longer follow familiar calendars, locations or levels of intensity. What was once broadly predictable has become irregular and destructive. This shift is steadily reshaping the country’s flood landscape and placing severe strain on institutions, infrastructure,

Director: Fisher Stevens We (the science community) have not done the best job, frankly, of communicating this threat (climate change) to the public. Amidst hundreds of compelling words, I chose a quote from astronaut Dr. Piers Sellers in “Before the Flood” to start the review. Frankly speaking, these often-overlooked words reveal why, even today, people are not properly sensitized to the effects of climate change on Earth. Presented by Leonardo DiCaprio, the United Nat

The most disruptive forces of climate change are not always spectacular. They often emerge in silence, inscribed in the slow corrosion of metal, the crumbling of concrete, and the decay of once-stable infrastructure. Beneath the headlines of extreme weather events lies a subtler crisis: the accelerated weathering of the materials that sustain global industry and commerce. Across coastlines and cities, environmental shifts in temperature, humidity, and salinity are transformin

Photo by Adib Ashhab Ankon Bangladesh is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world due to its geographic location, low-lying deltaic terrain, dense population, and dependence on climate-sensitive livelihoods. Home to nearly 180 million people, the country is regularly exposed to a wide range of weather-related hazards including severe thunderstorms, floods, heatwaves, cold waves, cyclones, storm surges, lightning, and sea-level rise. Approximately 19 out of 64

Pakistan sits at the top of an extraordinary geological endowment. Underneath its soil, more than 90 different minerals have been identified, ranging from copper, gold, lithium and cobalt to critical rare earth elements (REEs) required for the 21st-century economical, digital, energy and defense architecture. Various estimates have placed the potential value of Pakistan’s minerals between USD 50 trillion and USD 68 trillion. Yet mining contributes only 3.2 per cent to Pakista

To walk across the Earth is to walk across a battlefield. We tend to view our planet as a static stage—solid rock, immovable mountains, permanent coastlines. But this is an illusion of time. To a geologist, the Earth is a churning, volatile entity caught in a state of  dynamic equilibrium . Every valley and peak you see is the result of an ancient, silent war between two colossal forces. From below, endogenic forces (driven by the planet’s internal heat) shove the crust upwa

“We've got this one beautiful blue and green planet, and we have to get together and do something to protect it before it's too late.”- Jane Goodall (1934-2025) Credit: UN Photo/Michos Tzovaras The Pursuit of Climate Action Since its inception in 1995, the Conference of the Parties (COP) has become the stage for global climate diplomacy under the UNFCCC member states. Through negotiations, framework agreements, and discussion, COP has slowly turned big promises into polici

In this interview, Shahin , a young climate activist from Bangladesh, shares his reflections on attending last year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP). Speaking from firsthand experience as a youth activist and also a victim of climate change-induced adversities, he highlights the gap between global discussions and local realities - and what must change to make climate conferences truly impactful. Era: When you went to the last COP, what do you think was the outcome of

Figure: Tohoku Earthquake of Japan Earth holds the record of all violent things it has gone through. Disasters do not occur in a normally tranquil planet; rather, they are geologic chapters. Valleys are raised by earthquakes, islands are formed by volcanoes, shorelines are redrawn by tsunamis, and mountainsides are cut along landslides. These abrupt breaks, which have been piled up over millions of years, are what have formed the landscapes that we recognize nowadays. Learnin

Figure: Aerial Photograph of the Damage of the Atomic Bombing in hiroshima Land normally changes with patience. Mountains rise slowly, rivers wander inch by inch, and forests thicken over centuries. The Earth edits itself in small strokes. War ignores that rhythm. In moments of violence, landscapes are remade with a speed that feels unnatural, as if time itself has been forced to sprint. Wherever armies move and bombs fall, the land becomes a witness and a casualty. Imagine

The atmosphere will be one of urgency and symbolism when the world convenes in Belém, Brazil, to COP30. The Amazon, also known as the lungs of the planet, serves as a reminder as well as the backdrop of what is at stake. It is a victim and an essential ally in combating the climate crisis. With the world leaders, scientists, activists, and communities coming together, the demands are evident: this must be the summit, which will go beyond the promises and start acting. A Clim

Climate change poses growing risks to the world’s landscapes, deeply influencing economic opportunities and community resilience across regions. Rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns have led to dramatic effects on landforms—altering growing seasons, increasing wildfire risk, and reducing ecosystem services in drylands and coastal zones. For example, reductions in crop and livestock productivity are already being observed, with projections showing worsening