News

(NEW YORK) — Could a recently discovered “super-Earth” have the potential temperature and conditions to sustain life?

The new exoplanet is situated “fairly close to us” — only 137 light-years away — and orbits within a “habitable zone,” according to NASA.

Astronomers say the planet, dubbed TOI-715 b, is about one and a half times the width of Earth and orbits a small, reddish star. The same system also might harbor a second, Earth-sized planet, which, if confirmed, “would become the smallest habitable-zone planet discovered by TESS [the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite] so far,” NASA said in a Jan. 31 press release.

Due to the super-Earth’s distance from its parent star, it could be in a conservative “habitable zone” and harbor the right temperature for liquid water to form on its surface, which is essential to sustain life, according to the agency, which also added that “several other factors would have to line up, of course.”

NASA said the measurements of the habitable zone — “a narrower and potentially more robust definition than the broader ‘optimistic’ habitable zone” — put the newly discovered planet, and possibly the smaller Earth-sized planet, in “prime position” from its parent star.

The agency said that because of the short distance the super-Earth orbits from its parent star, a red dwarf that’s smaller and cooler than our Earth’s sun, a “year” for the planet is equal to 19 Earth days.

The tighter orbits mean the “planets can be more easily detected and more frequently observed,” NASA said.

Since its launch in 2018, TESS has been adding to astronomers’ stockpile of habitable-zone exoplanets, such as TOI-715 b, that could be more closely scrutinized by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the agency said.

The Webb telescope is designed to not only detect exoplanets but “explore the composition of their atmospheres, which could offer clues to the possible presence of life,” NASA said.

The super-Earth research and discovery was led by Georgina Dransfield at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and published in the “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” journal in January.

The findings mark another step forward in astronomers’ mission to understand what atmospheric conditions are needed to sustain life and further explore the characteristics of exoplanets beyond our solar system, NASA said.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Reality TV star Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino and his wife, Lauren Sorrentino, jumped into action recently when their son started choking.

The Sorrentinos shared video footage of the incident on Instagram Sunday as a warning to other parents.

Mike Sorrentino said the scary moment started as a typical, everyday dinner for his family last Thursday, but he grew alert when he heard his 2-year-old son, Romeo, starting to make choking noises.

“If I hear a cough during dinner, I assume it’s a problem. So I immediately jumped up,” the “Jersey Shore” alum recalled to “Good Morning America.”

Sorrentino said he picked up Romeo and started patting him on the back while his wife walked to the kitchen to retrieve an anti-choking device they kept in a drawer.

“I knew I didn’t want to hit him too hard when he was upright because I thought maybe that could maybe lodge the food even further,” the father of two said. “So that’s why I had got him upright and ready for when my wife had gotten the anti-choking device.”

In the video clip, taken by a security camera, Lauren Sorrentino is then seen using the anti-choking device on their son successfully.

Sorrentino told “GMA” that he’s still processing what happened, and called the incident “the scariest moment” of both his life and his wife’s.

“To be honest with you, I’ve tingles right now talking about it because everything was kind of textbook and we didn’t even know it,” he said.

Today, Sorrentino said Romeo is doing “amazing.”

“It was definitely a very, very scary close call for sure,” Sorrentino said. “We worked in synergy as a team and I couldn’t be prouder of my wife. I’m gonna break down. But she’s a superhero.”

Experts say when a baby is choking, you should place them belly-down over your forearm or thigh, supporting their head with one hand and delivering sharp blows to their back between their shoulder blades with the other, according to the National Institutes of Health. For an older child, you should give them an abdominal thrust or use the Heimlich maneuver, placing a fist above the belly button and then thrusting it inward and upward in a J shape.

“Crying after an event like this is a really good sign,” Dr. Jade Cobern, a board-certified pediatrician, said of the child’s reaction. “But it doesn’t mean you’re out of the clear. Getting an exam by a medical provider is really important after an episode like this so they can really listen to all the parts of the lungs, examine the child and be confident that they’re good to go.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Earth may have already passed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and could be soon heading for 2 degrees of warming, researchers have found after studying sea sponges in the Caribbean.

The study of 300 years of ocean temperature records kept preserved within sea sponges in the Caribbean indicate that global mean surface temperatures may have already exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius and that a 2-degree Celsius rise could be possible by the end of the decade, according to a paper published in Nature Climate Change on Monday.

While limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution was outlined when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change created the Paris Agreement, the exact figure is less important than keeping global warming as far below that figure as possible. The likelihood of doing so is waning, though, according to climate scientists.

Samples of sclerosponge skeletons found in the eastern Caribbean, where the natural variability of temperatures is less than at other locations, indicate that the pre-industrial period can be defined by stable temperatures from 1700 to 1790 and from 1840 to 1860, with the gap defined by cooling related to volcanic activity, according to the study. The sea sponges revealed that warming related to human activity commenced from the mid-1860s, with clear emergence by the mid-1870s, about 80 years before the period indicated by instrumental sea surface records.

The sclerosponge is a long-lived species that records chemical changes in its calcium carbonate skeleton, serving as a natural archive of ocean temperatures, according to the paper.

The sponges only exist in the Caribbean off the east coast of Brazil, Amos Winter, a professor at Indiana State University’s department of earth and environmental systems, told reporters at a news conference on Friday. Divers ventured up to 100 meters below the sea surface to obtain the sponges, Winter said.

The findings have implications for current projections of global warming, the researchers said. The authors estimate that 1.5 Celsius of warming may have been reached and that a mean surface warming of 1.7 Celsius could have occurred between 2018 and 2022.

“The industrial era of warming commenced earlier than we then was thought — in the mid 1860s,” Malcolm McCulloch, a professor of isotope geobiochemistry at the University of Western Australia and lead author of the study, told reporters during a news conference on Thursday. “Since then, the increasing global mean surface temperatures, which means global warming, has been half a degree greater than the current accepted estimates.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — When her firstborn child estranged herself from the family after getting married, Glenda Boone, 61, thought her daughter’s new husband was to blame for turning her child against her.

It took Boone’s second daughter, Lauren, 32, to explain to her that even though their mother and father were always physically present and provided for their children, they never felt she was emotionally present. Her children felt alienated from her, and their mental health suffered because of it, according to Lauren.

“I never thought about taking care of my mental health because my generation was taught when you talked about mental health, you automatically thought mental illness,” Glenda, a marketing executive, told Deborah Roberts during a “Good Morning America” interview. “So, for me, it was more of a suppression. From [my time as] a small child, even my emotions, you suppress them. You suck it up.”

Black women in America are disproportionately burdened with the mental health syndrome known as superwoman schema, or SWS. It involves the perceived obligation to quell emotion, convey strength, suppress dependence and vulnerability, and to prioritize caregiving over self-care, according to the National Institutes of Health. SWS can cause severe mental distress, but African Americans are less likely to receive mental health services compared to their white counterparts, according to 2022 data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

“’Everything that comes my way, I should be able to handle it,’” Dr. Zoeann Finzi-Adams, a licensed psychologist and assistant professor at Howard University, said when describing the typical thought process of a person dealing with SWS. “And that’s exhausting because no one is able to do everything. No one is able to, and that is such a big barrier for getting any kind of support.”

Former Destiny’s Child singer Michelle Williams, who speaks openly about her history of depression, said mental health struggles can look different in women of color.

“Irritability is a missed symptom of depression. Because we think depression is just sadness,” Williams said. “Once I started getting in therapy more consistently, it started giving me language to everything that I internalize.”

Glenda Boone said that her daughters suggested she find support by scheduling her first meeting with a mental health therapist. If she didn’t, Glenda knew she was at risk of losing Lauren, too. She said it took a while to find the right therapist, and to let her guard down during therapy sessions. But once she did, Glenda said she felt a freedom that she had never before experienced.

“I learned how to remove the mask,” she said. “I was allowed to free myself, release myself. The mask of superwoman was mine. I could be all things to all people …. But my daughters let me know, and Lauren in particular … ‘You were there. But you weren’t present.’”

For her part, Lauren Boone says she began to see a change in her mother that she’d longed for nearly her entire life.

“I felt like the little girl in me was getting what she always wanted from her mom, which was the emotional connection,” said Lauren, who is also a mental health care clinician.

Williams said she can relate to the liberation felt after seeking help from a mental health expert.

“There is strength in vulnerability. I can’t tell you how strong you are when you can say, ‘I need help,’ versus thinking your strength is acting out,” Williams said. “The quality of life is so much better when you’re not triggered all the time.”

Lauren Boone saw so much improvement in her mother that she even convinced her to share her progress on Lauren’s YouTube channel. Though Glenda Boone is still estranged from her oldest daughter, she hopes one day that her firstborn will see the progress that she’s made and feel comfortable enough to have a conversation with her.

“We think that everything’s fine with our child,” Glenda said. “So, when stuff happens, normally, it’s a crisis, so we think it’s that event that caused it when in actuality, it wasn’t. Our children might have been trying to communicate something to us before and we weren’t listening.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Three migrants were arrested in the Bronx overnight Monday for a citywide crime spree that included stealing women’s phones off the street, police said.

The New York Police Department executed a search warrant at the suspected safe house and made the arrests.

They are expected to be charged with multiple robberies and grand larcenies and more individuals are being sought.

The suspects are all believed to be from Venezuela, authorities said.

The men were linked to a pattern of at least 62 incidents of women having their pocketbooks and phones snatched, police said.

Detectives believe the suspects were snatching the phones to access the Apple Pay feature, and using credit cards linked to the phones to buy items.

“Most migrants come to NYC in search of a better life. Sadly, some come to commit crime,” NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “Today we made tremendous progress in the largest robbery pattern plaguing our city. Our message is simple — commit a crime in our city and we will find you and bring you to justice!”

The arrests are the second prominent case involving migrants in the city in as many weeks. Last week, at least six asylum-seekers were arrested for assaulting police officers in Times Square in a case caught on video. More suspects involved in the attack are still being sought, officials said.

Police and prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office are also investigating whether the first four defendants, who were released without bail, subsequently boarded a bus to California using fake names.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.