3 . In the summer of 2021, the Pacific Northwest experienced a severe heatwave that caused widespread panic and destruction. Temperatures reached record levels, including 114℉ in Portland.

A heatwave, born over the Pacific, drifted inland and grew in intensity, creating a heat dome. Ice was the first victim, and as snowpacks melted, glaciers released fast flowing muddy water that flooded towns. Salmon, sensing the water temperature change, began migrating early. But then they struggled to breathe as the rivers warmed. Vegetation was next—unable to escape the heat, it struggled to hold water. Bighorn sheep moved to higher ground, doves panted like dogs, baby eagles jumped to their deaths in an attempt to fly to escape overheating with their siblings.

In 72 hours, the official number of human deaths was 1,000—but the actual number is likely higher, especially among the elderly, poor, and medically vulnerable. The town of Lytton, British Columbia was burned down when temperatures there hit 121℉. Over a billion sea creatures met their deaths over the three days.

Such a heatwave in the Pacific Northwest had been thought to be as likely as snow in the Sahara. But then it happened. Right now, scientists can’t predict where or when such heat will appear next, but they do know that occurrences such as this are a direct result of human activities. As fossil-fuel burning increases levels of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide, the planet warms. Heat is the prime mover of climate chaos, melting ice, . drying soil, , and even reviving ancient bacteria from thawed permafrost (永冻土解冻).

Humans might be able to engineer their way out of anything—cities like Los Angeles and Paris are already working to deflect (使偏斜) sunlight and have more shade trees. But there are limits to adaptation for Earth’s population of nearly 8 billion. Parts of the Middle East and South Asia are already too hot for humans in summer.

4 . Our ship sailed on the sea into the Earth’s night. Here, there was no visible light from the Sun or the Earth Engines. But as we looked up, we children saw the starry sky for the first time in our lives. How breathtakingly beautiful it was!

Ms Xing put an arm around us while pointing at the sky with her other hand. “Look, children! That is Proxima Centauri (比邻星), our new home!” With these words, tears ran slowly down her face. Before long, we were all in tears—even the captain and crew. We all looked in the direction that Ms Xing was pointing. There was only one point of light among the twinkling stars that shined constantly: Proxima Centauri—the only source of hope and comfort for a hundred future generations. “Whatever risks we might take, we will finally make it there!” said the captain, in an assured voice.

On our way back from the sea, we saw the first sign that Earth had begun its journey. In the night sky, a huge comet had appeared. It was the Moon, abandoned by humankind. Lunar Engines had been installed to the Moon to force it out of its orbit so that a disastrous crash could be avoided as the Earth sped up and moved away. As it progressed, the gravitational tide of the Moon caused the ocean to swell, creating gigantic waves. We quickly got off the ship to our destination in the Southern Hemisphere. The next few days were the countdown to our departure.

Finally came the big day! As Earth Engines was set at a full power, we got immediately blinded by the bright light from it. This acceleration created massive tsunamis hundreds of meters high that crashed onto the coasts of every continent. Burning hot hurricanes roared through the boiling waves, screaming with wild fury and pulling up almost every tree on Earth.

Our Earth, with its blue tail cutting through the darkness of space, had set out on its long journey, and with it went all of humankind.

6 . Begus is a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley. He got the chance, last summer, to observe sperm whales in their wild Caribbean habitat. With him were marine (海洋的) biologists and roboticists. There were also cryptographers and experts in other fields. All have been working together to listen to sperm whales and figure out what they might be saying. They call this Project CETI. Project CETI’s team is not the only group turning to AI for help decoding animal talk. Researchers have trained AI models to sort through the sounds of prairie dogs, dolphins, naked mole rats and many other creatures.

Long before AI came into the picture, scientists and others have worked toward understanding animal communication. Some learned that vervet monkeys have different calls when warning of leopards, eagles or pythons. Others discovered that elephants communicate in rumbles too low for human ears to hear. Bats chatter in squeaks too high for our hearing. Still other groups have explored how bees communicate through dance.

“It took us a long time to measure all these things,” says researcher Karen Bakker. AI, she notes, has the potential to greatly speed up this type of research. Perhaps one day we’ll be able to use AI to build a futuristic chat box that translates animal sounds into human language, or vice versa (反之亦然).

“Al could eventually get us to the point where we understand animals,” says Bakker. What’s interesting to her is what we can learn from how bats and other creatures talk among each other. We should listen to animals for better protection, she argues. For example, a system set up to record whales or elephants can also track their locations. This can help us avoid whales with our boats or prevent elephants from illegal hunters.

9 . The colorful anemonefish (海葵鱼), also known as clownfish, possesses a cheerful and carefree image among humans. However, their actual behavior might not always align with the family-friendly portrayal seen in a Pixar film. They can aggressively defend their territory against other anemonefish they perceive as threats.

To investigate how these fish identify group members, a team from Japan conducted two experiments with lab-raised common clownfish that had never encountered any other species.

In the first experiment, researchers introduced different species of anemonefish, distinguishable by the number of white bars on their bodies, into a tank in small cases. They observed that the common clownfish were particularly hostile toward members of their own species that displayed three white bars. These fish fought 80 percent of their specific-targeted fish for up to three seconds. In contrast, invaders from other species, like the orange skunk clownfish with no side bars and a white line along its back, were barely attacked. The two-barred Clarke’s clownfish and three-barred saddleback clownfish were “mildly bullied”, according to the team.

During the second experiment, the researchers exposed a colony of clownfish to various plastic discs. The discs were painted with anemonefish coloration and measured the level of aggression towards these artificial models. Similar to reactions to live fish, models with two bars were less frequently attacked, and those without any bars saw the least aggression. According to study co-author and ecologist Kina Hayashi, the findings “suggest that clownfish is capable of counting the number of bars to recognize the species of the invader”.

The team also found that a rigid hierarchy (社会等级) within clownfish colonies determines which specific fish attack the invader. Earlier studies have shown that the social position of the clownfish is determined by very slight differences in size. This study used fish that had not matured and were in a lab setting, but the team still observed the same size-based hierarchy. The largest clownfish led the charge against the invader.

10 . The corn eaten around the world today originated in Mexico nearly 10,000 years ago. From the ancient rituals of the Mayans to modern-day dishes like tortillas, corn is central to culture, cuisine, and identity in this region.

To protect this heritage, Mexico is fighting to phase out genetically modified (GM) U. S. — grow n corn this year. The Mexican government claims that banning GM corn will protect the country’s native corn varieties. Yet the announcement aroused strong objections from the U. S., whose largest annual customer for GM corn is often Mexico. The U. S. claims that the GM ban breaks the trade agreement between the two countries.

Mexico insists that modified seeds threaten Mexico’s agricultural traditions and cultural identity. In the U. S., most corn is grown with seed produced by large companies, which create just a handful of genetically identical corn varieties grown at mass scale. In Mexico, however, seeds come from seed-sharing practices among small-scale farms, which facilitates more diversity and allows farmers to grow corn that ranges widely in color and size.

“Traditional varieties maintain a substantial amount of genetic diversity,” says Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, an ecologist at the University of California, but he doesn’t think banning GM corn will help preserve these varieties, and points to adec line in small-scale farms as the greater threat to native corn. “If traditional farmers abandon subsistence farming, we’re potentially losing diversity whether that crop is GM or traditionally bred, so economic policy has a much bigger impact on the risk of corn diversity than an adoption of GM corn.” Since Mexico began importing U. S. corn, small-scale farms have been declining.

Mauricio Bellon, a research professor at the Swett Center for Sustainable Foods Systems, believes that while threatened species are often stored in gene banks, the relationship between a farmer and their crop plays a crucial conservation role. “Evolution at scale continues with corn in Mexico through millions of farmers,” says him.