Peru's government ended its anchovy fishing season early after warming Pacific waters pushed the fish into deeper, colder areas, illustrating the reach of this year's unusually powerful El Niño. Scientists say the event is forecast to become one of the strongest on record, and its effects—drought near the equator, Central America and the western Pacific, alongside heavy rain in the Horn of Africa, the western US and South America's Pacific coast—may differ from past strong El Niños because of added warming from climate change.
nature.com
· 2026-09-13
Chinese high-purity quartz maker Jiangsu Pacific Quartz, which already supplies furnace tubes and wafer boats to Lam Research and Tokyo Electron, has had its quartz components certified by a Chinese DRAM producer believed to be CXMT for 300mm wafer production. The materials meet the 4N5–5N purity level needed for semiconductor process equipment, giving China a more domestic supply chain for chipmaking consumables.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-10
The larger Pacific striped octopus, first spotted in the 1970s in the Eastern Pacific's tropical waters, still lacks an official scientific name decades after discovery. Researchers have documented that unlike most solitary, cannibalistic octopus species, this one gathers in groups of up to 40, mates face-to-face without violence, and can reproduce multiple times over its lifespan. It also displays a distinctive color pattern called 'stripe-bar-spot' that varies enough between individuals to help identify them.
en.wikipedia.org
· 2026-09-09
A NASA satellite positioned nearly one million miles from Earth photographed three powerful tropical cyclones churning simultaneously in the Pacific Ocean, including category 4 and 5 storms occurring at the same time. Scientists attribute the unusual clustering to an especially strong El Niño pattern currently warming Pacific waters.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-09-04
A commentary piece argues that if corporations enjoy legal personhood under the Fourteenth Amendment, they should also face the equivalent of capital punishment for serious wrongdoing. It traces this idea to 'judicial dissolution,' citing the 1889 New York Supreme Court case that forced the North River Sugar Refining Corporation—a 17-company sugar monopoly—to liquidate for abusing its charter through price-fixing and consolidation.
futurism.com
· 2026-08-29
Pacific Fusion has started construction on a new demonstration facility in Albuquerque designed to test whether its pulsed-power approach to fusion can achieve net facility gain, producing more energy than the entire facility consumes. The company says no other US facility under construction targets this milestone, and it aims to reach it by 2030 en route to a commercial plant in the mid-2030s.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-08-25
Pacific Fusion, a well-funded startup, has begun assembling a large fusion energy machine that uses intense electrical pulses to compress hydrogen fuel capsules, aiming to be the first device to produce more energy than it consumes. The facility, located near a major US nuclear-weapons laboratory, may also support research on maintaining the nation's aging nuclear warhead stockpile. It joins dozens of other startups racing to commercialize fusion as a clean, virtually limitless energy source.
nature.com
· 2026-08-25
Pacific Fusion has started building a fusion device near Los Lunas, New Mexico, using more than 150 truck-sized Marx generator modules that will discharge enormous electrical pulses to compress a small hydrogen fuel capsule. The company aims to reach 'net facility gain'—producing more energy than the machine consumes—by the end of this decade, while also positioning the facility to support research on the US nuclear weapons stockpile.
nature.com
· 2026-08-24
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