Now a team reports pushing these lattices to their ultimate limit, generating a ceramic material that’s as strong as theorists believe to be physically possible. The material is stronger than diamond while being up to 70 percent air. … While earlier lattices were made up of cylindrical beams, the new design uses connected ceramic plates. This design makes it 639% stronger and 522% stiffer than the best beam-based lattices.

A slow-moving emergency is lapping at California’s shores— climate-driven sea-level rise that experts now predict could elevate the water in coastal areas up to 10 feet in just 70 years, gobbling up beachfront and overwhelming low-lying cities.

And while the fire season is traditionally considered to begin in June, researchers at UC Irvine found in a study published in Nature last month that the “start of the wildfire season has also advanced to May.” The study also determined that in this extended fire season, the “overall fire frequency of all wildfires” has increased over the past two decades due to poor wildfire management and “the drying of forest fuels due to human-induced climate