Martin Finucane

Aug 22, 2023 | bostonglobe.com | Martin Finucane

New Englanders didn’t have the science available to them two and a half centuries ago. They were left to wonder. Abigail Adams wrote that on the morning of May 19, 1780, “such a darkness took place as appears in a total Eclipse. By Eleven oclock candles were light up in every House, the cattle retired to the Barns, the fouls to roost and the frogs croaked.”“I hope some of our Philosophical Geniousess will endeavour to investigate so unusual an appearence. It is matter of great consternation to many.

Aug 1, 2023 | bostonglobe.com | Martin Finucane

Wendy MaedaAn estimated $1.1 billion Mega Millions jackpot will be up for grabs Tuesday night. But your chances of winning it are mega-small. The odds are about 1 in 302 million, said Tim Chartier, a professor of math and computer science at Davidson University. That’s the equivalent of someone picking one of the seconds that has ticked past over the past 9.5 years and asking you to guess which one, Chartier said. It’s also the equivalent of flipping a coin and getting 28 heads in a row, he said.

Jul 27, 2023 | bostonglobe.com | Martin Finucane |John R. Ellement

Scientists estimate in a new study that 800 great white sharks visited the waters off Cape Cod between 2015 and 2018. “We have generated the first estimate of abundance for the white shark at a new seasonal aggregation site” in the Western North Atlantic, said the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. The study “required the development of a novel modeling framework to accommodate the species’ migratory behavior,” the study said.

Jul 24, 2023 | bostonglobe.com | Martin Finucane

At 60 public beaches in Massachusetts, tests have determined that swimming is unsafe and can cause illness, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Monday. That includes 53 that have exceeded bacterial levels, six where warnings have been posted for algae/cyanobacteria, and one beach closed as a precaution due to “rainfall/severe weather”, according to the DPH website. It might seem harmless just to jump in on one of these hot days. But officials say you’d better think twice.

Jul 21, 2023 | bostonglobe.com | Martin Finucane

A person tries to cool off in the shade in Phoenix. Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressThe Southwest is expected to continue to sizzle under a “dangerous, long-lived and recordbreaking heat wave” well into next week, the National Weather Service says. The mid-South, Southeast, and Gulf Coast will also stifle under a combination of heat and humidity that will make it feel like 105 to 110 degrees through early this weekend before returning closer to the averages.