Register now for 2026! A discussion of Earth and space on Earth Day, with Frank White, me, and other great guests!
EarthSpace 2026 brings together leaders, thinkers, and builders to explore one core idea: the future of Earth and the future of space are not separate conversations.
From climate solutions to space infrastructure, from policy to culture, the choices we make today will define how humanity lives on this planet—and beyond it.
This is not a passive webinar. It’s a focused, high-signal conversation with people actively shaping the frontier.
Space has become critical infrastructure for climate monitoring, disaster risk reduction, connectivity, navigation, education, and long-term planetary resilience. Even more important, space is an open horizon for new industrial development and settlement, starting with Earth orbit, the geo-lunar system, and the near-Earth asteroids. The Space 18th SDG initiative proposes a non-regulatory, enabling framework that strengthens the existing 17 SDGs by recognizing outer space as both an enabler of sustainable development and an environment requiring stewardship. THE PANEL: Prof. Sergio Marchisio, Space Law Expert, La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy. Ms. Fikiswa Majola, Deputy Director Space Systems, Department of Science and Technology (DST) South Africa. Prof. Guoyu Wang — Space Law Center, China National Space Administration. Dr. Claire Nelson, The Future Forum, Giamaica. Adriano V. Autino, SRI CEO & Founder. Maria Antonietta Perino, Thales Alenia Space, Italy. Stefano Antonetti, D-ORBIT SpA, Strategy Director, Italy. Antonio Stark, iSpace, Japan. MODERATES: Dr. Gülin Dede, SRI Director of Relations, Chair of the Space 18th SDG Coalition.
The halomethane compound bromoform (CHBr3) has devastating effects on the ozone layer. In the upper layers of the atmosphere, bromoform reacts with UV radiation, releasing bromine molecules which destroy ozone molecules. This reaction, however, has long puzzled scientists; the molecules involved seem to wander relative to each other in a way that energetically does not make sense. Scientists at European XFEL have now revealed structural evidence for this roaming mechanism for the first time, establishing it as a universal characteristic of photochemical reactions.
The study, published in Nature Communications, provides key insights into the field of atmospheric photochemistry and how halomethane compounds such as bromoform impact the ozone layer.
The ozone layer envelops Earth some 15–30 km above the planet’s surface. Ozone gas absorbs ultraviolet light as it enters the atmosphere, thereby protecting life on Earth from the effects of the harmful radiation. Ozone, however, reacts readily with other compounds also found in the stratosphere, leading to ozone depletion, and ultimately the creation of the ozone hole.
A new IIASA-led study finds that expanding street green space can reduce urban heat stress in cities worldwide, but even ambitious greening efforts are unlikely to offset a significant share of the additional heat expected under climate change. Instead, the research shows that street greenery should be part of a broader portfolio of urban adaptation measures.
Cities are on the front line of climate change, with rising temperatures and heat stress posing growing risks to health, productivity, and livability. Street green space, such as trees and vegetation along streets, is often promoted as a practical nature-based solution because it can provide shade, cooling, and other positive benefits, for example, improving the mental health of citizens. Yet, evidence on how much cooling street greenery can deliver, to which extent the amount of vegetation can be increased, and how much cooling can be expected in future climates has remained limited, particularly when taking a global view across very different urban forms and climate zones.
In the new study published in Environmental Research Letters, a team of researchers from IIASA and VITO Belgium combined high-resolution street greenery data with 100-meter urban microclimate model outputs for 133 cities worldwide, providing a neighborhood-scale assessment with global coverage. Rather than relying on satellite-based surface temperature alone, the team assessed how street green space relates to air temperature and wet-bulb globe temperature —a measure that captures heat stress more appropriately than temperature alone because it accounts for humidity, wind, and radiation.
From solar power stations in space to stabilising melting glaciers, some researchers are proposing extremely ambitious and risky projects to fight climate change. Could they work?
Summer weather is arriving earlier, lasting longer and packing more heat than it used to—and it’s happening faster than scientists had previously measured. A new study by UBC researchers has found that between 1990 and 2023, the average summer between the tropics and the polar circles grew about six days longer per decade. That’s up from roughly four days per decade found in past research investigations up until the early 2010s.
For many cities, the numbers are even more striking. In Sydney, Australia, summer temperatures now last about 130 days, up from 80 days in 1990, adding 15 days per decade. Toronto summers are expanding by eight days per decade.
The researchers didn’t use the calendar definition of summer (June through August in the Northern Hemisphere and December through February in the Southern Hemisphere). Instead, they defined summer based on the weather: the stretch of days each year when temperatures rise above what was historically typical for a given location during the warmest part of the year—a threshold set using climate data from 1961 to 1990.
A new “energy-multiplying” solar breakthrough could push efficiency beyond 100% and transform how we capture sunlight.
Solar energy is widely seen as a key tool in reducing reliance on fossil fuels and slowing climate change. The Sun delivers a vast amount of energy to Earth every second, but today’s solar cells can only capture a small portion of it. This limitation comes from a so-called “physical ceiling” that has long been considered unavoidable.
Breakthrough spin-flip technology boosts solar efficiency.
Cycles in the growth and decay of Antarctica’s ice sheets once shaped marine biological productivity thousands of miles away in the subtropical ocean, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the obliquity cycle—a 40,000-year astronomical cycle tied to changes in Earth’s axial tilt—influenced ocean productivity in subtropical latitudes about 34 million years ago, when the Antarctic ice sheet was first expanding.
The finding surprised researchers because the 40,000-year cycle, while an important factor in the conditions at Earth’s poles, typically has a more limited influence on climate and ocean conditions near the equator.
“We generally expect other astronomical cycles to have a greater influence,” says Stephen Meyers, a professor of geoscience at UW-Madison and one of the study’s lead authors.
Scroll through social media long enough and a pattern emerges. Pause on a post questioning climate change or taking a hard line on a political issue, and the platform is quick to respond—serving up more of the same viewpoints, delivered with growing confidence and certainty.
That feedback loop is the architecture of an echo chamber: a space where familiar ideas are amplified, dissenting voices fade, and beliefs can harden rather than evolve.
But new research from the University of Rochester has found that echo chambers might not be a fact of online life. Published in IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, the study argues that they are partly a design choice—one that could be softened with a surprisingly modest change: introducing more randomness into what people see.
