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<ul class="summary-list"><li>SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew has returned to Earth.</li><li><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-plan-colonize-mars-plan-unrealistic-scientists-explain-2023-10">Elon Musk's dreams of building a city on Mars</a> got a major boost from the Polaris Dawn mission.</li></ul><p><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/polaris-dawn-crew-spacex-commercial-astronauts-first-private-spacewalk-2024-9">SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew</a> successfully returned to Earth on Sunday, bringing Elon Musk one step closer to his dream of settling Mars.</p><p>The five-day mission saw the four commercial astronauts complete a list of historic firsts: They traveled further than anyone has gone in <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/moon-missions-why-astronauts-have-not-returned-2018-7">more than 50 years, since the last Apollo missions</a>. The two female crew members, in particular, set the record for the farthest any woman has traveled in space.</p><p>They donned new SpaceX spacesuits that had never been tested in orbit, opened their ship to the vacuum of space, and conducted the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/polaris-dawn-spacewalk-watch-live-spacex-crew-dragon-commercial-astronauts-2024-9">first-ever commercial spacewalk</a>.</p><p>On top of that, they exposed themselves to high levels of space radiation, much higher than what astronauts aboard the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-international-space-station-hidden-passing-sun-2023-4">International Space Station</a> undergo in the same time period. And they endured a fiery plummet back to Earth.</p><p>It was all in the name of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-invest-mars-pulsed-plasma-rocket-shorten-space-time-travel-2024-7">paving the way to Mars</a>.</p><div type="image" title="Polaris Dawn landing." height="1604" width="2852" msid="113365917" hostid="261" sizebytes="221754"></div><p>If you ask <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-isaacman-net-worth-career-spacex-polaris-dawn-2024-8">Jared Isaacman</a>, the billionaire who funded and commanded the mission, it was also in the name of raising funds for childhood-cancer research at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.</p><p>As he previously told Business Insider, before his <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-inspiration4-first-space-tourists-return-to-earth-2021-9">first flight with SpaceX</a> in 2021, he wanted to "take care of some of the problems that we have here on Earth, so we earn the right to go and explore among the stars."</p><div type="image" title="jared isaacman spacex crew dragon" height="2560" width="3840" msid="113365923" hostid="261" sizebytes="991006"></div><p>But the technical aspects of the mission — the spacewalk, the spacesuits, the laser Starlink communication, flying through a radiation belt — were critical tests of technologies SpaceX will need in order to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-havent-we-been-to-mars-yet-2024-5">fly humans to the red planet</a>.</p><p>Isaacman's future plans fit the Mars bill, too. He's planning two more Polaris missions and says the third one will ditch Crew Dragon for <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starship-flight-four-ocean-splashdown-elon-musk-plans-2024-6">Starship</a>. That's the Statue-of-Liberty-sized mega-rocket SpaceX is developing in South Texas for the express purpose of colonizing Mars.</p><h2 id="1637b34d-1546-42ca-a615-916aa98a2919">Mars trailblazers return home</h2><p>As the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-discovers-urine-leak-on-crew-dragon-spaceships-2021-10">Crew Dragon</a> hurtled back toward Earth, plowing through the atmosphere, superheated plasma roared at the edges of its protective heat shield.</p><p>Isaacman had done this before, but it was the first spaceflight for the three other crew members: a former US Air Force pilot named Scott Poteet and two <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/working-for-elon-musk-spacex-workplace-culture-twitter-jim-cantrell-2022-11">SpaceX engineers</a>, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.</p><p>They felt a jerk as the spaceship deployed parachutes to drift down into the Gulf of Mexico near Florida's Dry Tortugas. It bobbed in the waves, looking like a toasted marshmallow, until a ship hauled it on board and SpaceX workers helped the crew off.</p><div type="image" title="Screenshot of the crew and spacecraft." height="1800" width="2880" msid="113365930" hostid="261" sizebytes="100324"></div><p>Five days after launch, they had officially completed the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-launch-risky-polaris-dawn-mission-first-commercial-spacewalk-radiation-2024-8">most daring crewed commercial spaceflight yet</a>.</p><h2 id="de02c9b0-79f8-43b9-aa69-40373e49bcd1">Spacewalks and spacesuits for Mars</h2><p>The main event of the mission was its spacewalk.</p><div type="image" title="astronaut in white suit and helmet standing at the open hatch of a spaceship in space holding onto a railing looking out over earth" height="540" width="960" msid="113365926" hostid="261" sizebytes="13622"></div><p>The crew spent 48 hours slowly depressurizing their spacecraft so that they could open the hatch to the vacuum of space, sending Isaacman and Gillis out to gaze over Earth and conduct a few mobility exercises.</p><p>They were testing SpaceX's new extravehicular <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacesuit-design-history-timeline-changes-nasa-2018-3">spacesuits</a>, designed for the purpose of leaving a spacecraft to conduct maintenance or repairs — an ability that future Mars-bound people will need, since the journey takes months.</p><p>"It might be 10 iterations from now and a bunch of evolutions of the suit," but someday someone may even wear a version of these spacesuits "<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-made-oxygen-out-of-thin-air-on-mars-2023-9">walking on Mars</a>," Isaacman said in a prelaunch briefing in August.</p><div type="image" title="four people in spacesuits with their visors up smiling and pointing at a black spacex logo on a spaceship behind them" height="1500" width="2270" msid="113365919" hostid="261" sizebytes="208520"></div><p>"There's going to be an armada of Starships arriving on Mars at some point in the future," he added. "Those people are going to have to be able to get out of it and walk around and do important things."</p><h2 id="175335c0-7c23-487c-a845-a51ae47e64b7">Radiation on the way to Mars</h2><p>Polaris Dawn also tackled another big challenge for crewed Mars missions: extreme radiation exposure. People traveling to Mars would be exposed to immense amounts of space radiation for months.</p><p>So the Crew Dragon spacecraft flew through two donuts of intense radiation surrounding Earth, called the Van Allen belts. The crew conducted tests and measurements to see how it affected their bodies.</p><div type="image" title="spaceship mouth with railings in the foreground with the huge round curvature of Earth dominating the background from a distance beneath the blackness of space" height="713" width="1273" msid="113365933" hostid="261" sizebytes="31010"></div><p>"If we get to Mars someday, we'd love to be able to come back and be healthy enough to tell people about it," Isaacman said in August.</p><p>Other medical experiments on the mission checked their eyes, veins, and airways, to help SpaceX better understand the impacts of long-distance spaceflight.</p><h2 id="2a23b528-e8d9-4a1e-aa8a-c67599b035ad">Communications for Mars</h2><p>Polaris Dawn also tested <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-laser-beam-message-10-million-miles-away-streaming-mars-2023-11">laser-based communications</a> using Starlink, the network of internet satellites that SpaceX has built throughout Earth's orbit.</p><p>The commercial astronauts posted on X mid-mission, saying they'd uploaded their photos there using Starlink internet.</p><p>Those space lasers lay the groundwork for future communications with deep-space missions — that is, as the Polaris website says, "for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond."</p><p>Isaacman seems to be vested in making that happen.</p><p>"I'd certainly like my kids to see humans walking on the moon and Mars and venturing out and exploring our solar system," he said ahead of the launch.</p>

SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew returns to Earth victorious, making huge gains in Elon Musk's plans to send humans to Mars

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Decades before <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/charles-darwin-signed-manuscript-natural-selection-sells-for-900k-auction-2022-12">Darwin</a>, there was a debate over transformism, the idea that species change over time.</li><li>Two colleagues at the French natural history museum were on opposite sides of issue.</li></ul><p>Throughout the early 1800s, the question of whether animals could turn into new species was hotly debated in scientific circles.</p><p>In <a target="_blank" href="https://www.rebeccastott.co.uk/darwins-ghosts"><u>1798,</u></a> Napoleon Bonaparte <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/napoleon-egypt-invasion-scientific-breakthroughs-2023-11"><u>brought a slew of savants</u> — geologists, engineers,</a> and other scientists — on his unsuccessful attempt to take over Egypt. A collection of mummified animals that the scholars brought <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/napoleon-stranded-egypt-savants-birth-modern-archaeology-science">back from Egypt</a> seemed to hold the key to the question of species transformation.</p><p>Naturalists <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cuviers-beaked-whales-set-new-diving-record-2014-3">Georges Cuvier</a> and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, colleagues at the French Museum of Natural History, represented the two sides of the debate.</p><h2>Cuvier mocked Lamarck in his obituary</h2><p>In 1832, a mocking <a target="_blank" href="https://victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/cuvier/cuvier_on_lamarck.htm"><u>eulogy</u></a> was read before the French Academy of Sciences. The honoree, Lamarck, and the obituary’s writer, Cuvier, were both dead. </p><p>When recognizing the death of a colleague Cuvier had written, one should both commend their “useful works” while also calling attention to “more questionable” ideas that resulted from a “lively imagination.” </p><p>In this case, Cuvier was bashing Lamarck's theory of transformism. Lamarck thought that over a long period of time, the simplest animals became more complex and transformed into entirely new species. This was nonsense to Cuvier, who thought species could never change.</p><p>Naturalists Cuvier and Lamarck had first sparred three decades earlier when a mummified ibis arrived at the museum.</p><p>The ancient bird was indistinguishable from a modern one, seeming to prove Cuvier was right.</p><h2>What is transformism? </h2><p>In his elegy, Cuvier mocked Lamarck’s suggestion that a “desire” to swim creates webbed feet on an aquatic bird or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bizarre-leggy-dinosaur-fossil-redefine-bird-evolution-fujianvenator-prodigiosus-2023-9">lengthens the leg</a> of another species that prefers not to get wet.</p><p>This was nearly 60 years before Charles Darwin published his theory of natural selection. At the time, some of the biggest questions in natural history were why animals went extinct, and new ones appeared after big gaps in the fossil record.</p><p>Lamarck is probably best known for writing that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/giraffe-manor-review-nairobi-kenya-worth-it-2024-2">giraffes</a> got their long necks by stretching for leaves and passing down that trait to their offspring. It wasn’t a completely new idea, but Lamarck was unique in saying such behavior could gradually lead to a new species. </p><p>He wrote that species were a convenient way for humans to catalog living beings. Since animals were constantly changing, a species was just a temporary category. </p><p>Cuvier, one of the founders of comparative anatomy, took a different view. Species were permanent. But he couldn’t deny that at certain intervals in the fossil record, new types of animals cropped up that never existed before. </p><div type="image" title="Black and white African sacred ibis drawings by Marie Jules Cesar Savigny" height="1500" width="2023" msid="107827918" hostid="261" sizebytes="186572"></div><p>Every so often, a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-climate-change-crisis-extreme-weather-is-costing-you-2023-9">natural catastrophe</a> led to a new "epoch,” Cuvier <a target="_blank" href="https://victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/cuvier/1.html">thought</a>. Some <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ocean-animals-that-went-extinct-species-threatened-2019-6">species went extinct</a>; some suddenly appeared. If Lamarck was right, Cuvier said, there would be all sorts of in-between fossils, halfway between one species and another. </p><h2>Geoffroy finds mummies in Egypt</h2><p>Mummified animals that were thousands of years old seemed like a perfect entrypoint to look for evidence of change between ancient animals and their descendants.</p><p>Among Napoleon's savants was <a target="_blank" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160932707000804"><u>Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire</u></a>, a naturalist who dissected every mongoose, fox, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-scientific-importance-of-napole/"><u>crocodile</u></a>, and lungfish he could get his hands on. </p><p>The zoologist was enthusiastic about collecting animals, alive and dead. While descending <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Napoleon_s_Sorcerers/DftFDjYDyX4C?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=geoffroy+%22well+of+birds%22&amp;pg=PA56&amp;printsec=frontcover"><u>into</u></a> ruins, he saw his first <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mysterious-mummified-baboons-egypt-answers-gift-god-2023-11">mummies</a>: ancient birds stacked like wine bottles in a cellar. </p><div type="image" title="Three skeletons of two birds and a cat in a museum" height="2696" width="3671" msid="107827920" hostid="261" sizebytes="576976"></div><p>Ancient Egyptians revered many animals, including the ibis. To preserve the birds, they <a target="_blank" href="https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/exhibits/online/mummification/materials.html"><u>treated</u></a> them with drying salts and poured oil and resin over the remains before <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/curse-tutankhamun-king-tut-pharoah-mummy-tomb-cause-fungi-2023-8">wrapping them up</a> and placing them in pots. </p><p>When Geoffroy returned from Egypt, he brought some of the wrapped ibises, cats, <a target="_blank" href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005558"><u>jackals</u></a>, crocodiles, and other animals with him. Cuvier was eager to examine them. The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ancient-egyptian-book-dead-buried-3-500-year-mummies-2023-10">mummification process</a> worked well enough that even some of the “<a target="_blank" href="https://arcade.stanford.edu/rofl/ibis-and-crocodile-napoleon%E2%80%99s-egyptian-campaign-and-evolutionary-theory-france-1801%E2%80%931835"><u>tiniest hairs</u></a>” were still intact. </p><p>When Cuvier compared the bones of the long-dead ibises to modern birds, they were very similar.</p><p>Lamarck agreed. But the mummies were only 3,000 years old. At the time no one knew <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/remnants-life-in-rocks-rich-ecosystem-3-billion-years-ago-2024-1">how old the planet</a> was, but a few thousand years was “<a target="_blank" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3730912/"><u>infinitely small</u></a>” in the grand scheme of the Earth, Lamarck said in a lecture to his students.</p><p>It would be odd to see a new species in just a few millennia, he <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Zoological_Philosophy/el47AAAAYAAJ?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=%E2%80%9Cfor+the+position+and+climate+of+Egypt+are+still+very+nearly+what+they+were+in+those+times.%E2%80%9D&amp;pg=PA42&amp;printsec=frontcover">later wrote</a>, “for the position and climate of Egypt are still very nearly what they were in those times.” It took both time and a unique environment to lead to a new species, he thought. </p><p>Cuvier, however, felt his belief in the unchanging nature of species had been vindicated. "I have shown that it is at the present time precisely as it was in the time of the Pharaohs," he later <a target="_blank" href="https://victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/cuvier/1.html">wrote</a> of the mummified ibis. Time and climate weren't enough to significantly alter the species.</p><p>He was wrong, just as Lamarck was incorrect about the mechanics of heredity. </p><h2>Darwin’s predecessor </h2><p>The evidence from the mummies wasn’t enough to squash the <a target="_blank" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30797669/"><u>debate</u></a> over transformism, despite Cuvier’s <a target="_blank" href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo5568091.html"><u>powerful</u></a> reputation. </p><p>With the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, the whole debate flared to life again, this time backed by the naturalist’s wide-ranging observations and extensive research.</p><p>Over two decades after Lamarck’s death, Darwin <a target="_blank" href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2654.xml"><u>named</u></a> him as one of his predecessors, albeit calling his views “erroneous.” The creator of the theory of evolution by natural selection <a target="_blank" href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/darwin-s-historical-sketch-on-the-origin-of-species"><u>admitted</u></a> he was far from the first to note that “species undergo modification.”</p>

Mummified animals Napoleon's scientists brought back from Egypt sparked a pre-Darwinian debate about evolution

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Scientists identified a new species of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/over-a-billion-t-rexes-lived-on-earth-where-are-the-bones-2023-5">Tyrannosaurs</a> that's likely a predecessor to T. Rex.</li><li>The new species shows  the dinosaurs got bigger a lot earlier than scientists originally thought.</li></ul><p>Scientists recently identified a new dinosaur species that could be the closest relative to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/total-t-rex-population-study-2021-4"><u>T. rex </u></a>ever found.</p><p>Named T. mcraeensis, the new dinosaur suggests that Tyrannosaurs grew to enormous sizes millions of years earlier than experts previously thought.</p><h2>A new discovery from old bones</h2><div type="image" title="T-rex tyrannosaurus rex" height="420" width="980" msid="107120493" hostid="261" sizebytes="57766"></div><p>Interestingly, the discovery comes from a fossilized skull and jawbone that were dug up more than 40 years ago in New Mexico.</p><p>For decades, the bones were thought to belong to a T. rex. But a team of researchers decided to take a closer look when another <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/repenomamus-robustus-fossil-mammal-biting-dinosaur-psittacosaurus-2023-7"><u>fossil</u></a> tipped them off.</p><p>They found that a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dinosaurs-triceratops-had-horns-for-sexual-selection-2018-3"><u>Sierraceratops sample</u></a> from the same area was older than originally thought. This made the researchers wonder about the Tyrannosaurus sample's age, Nick Longrich, a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist from the University of Bath who led the study, told Business Insider in an email.</p><p>"We realized that the traditional assumptions about the ages of these fossils were probably wrong," Longrich wrote.</p><p>Upon reexamination, the scientists found that the bones belonged to a dinosaur that lived 6 million to 7 million years before T. rex existed.</p><p>Moreover, the fossils had a few key differences from a typical T. rex that ultimately led Longrich and his team to conclude that they belonged to a new species.</p><p>For example, the skull lacked ridges behind its eyes — a distinct feature of T. rex. And the jawbone revealed a shallower lower jaw than the T. Rex, Spencer Lucas, a paleontologist on the project, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/15/1224727136/t-rex-relative-dinosaur-new-mexico-study"><u>told NPR</u></a>.</p><p>The researchers published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal <a target="_blank" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=4bb66da1f6ee3fa0adb809d8afee458aff20b4d1f836d906a6ef2cdc93e2c4b2&amp;postID=65aeafaa7499d8d110b58983&amp;postSlug=new-dinosaur-species-closest-relative-to-t-rex-2024-1&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41598-023-47011-0"><u>Scientific Reports</u></a>.</p><h2>How Tyrannosaurs got so big</h2><div type="image" title="T. rex dinosaur bones on display." height="683" width="1024" msid="107120495" hostid="261" sizebytes="64290"></div><p>It's tough to estimate how big T. mcraeensis was simply from a skull and jawbone, but it was probably comparable in size to a T. rex, measuring about 40 feet long, Longrich said, or about the length of a US school bus.</p><p>That means that Tyrannosaurus, "also got bigger a lot earlier than we thought," Longrich said. He added that placing the T. mcraeensis fossils at this particular time in ancient history could help explain the dinosaur's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/expert-12-dinosaurs-most-dangerous-to-humans-2023-3"><u>massive size.</u></a></p><p>Around the Campanian period of the late Cretaceous Epoch, between 83 million to 72 million years ago, plant-eating dinosaurs, like hadrosaurs, were getting larger. To prey on those animals, the Tyrannosaurus family had to grow bigger, too.</p><p>These <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tyrannosaurs-last-supper-of-baby-dinosaurs-well-preserved-in-fossil-belly-2023-12"><u>evolutionary pressures</u></a> would have contributed to the Tyrannosaurus's massive size, Longrich said.</p><p>Despite what many scientists thought, the T. Rex wasn't the first Tyrannosaurus, but the last, Longrich said.</p><h2>North America v. Asia</h2><p>As famous as T. rex is, little is<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/t-rex-discoveries-hunted-walked-growth-2021-4"><u> understood</u></a> about its origins. Scientists disagree about whether T. Rex originated in North America or Asia.</p><p>But the researchers' new analysis may offer more clues on the matter.</p><p>Because T. mcraeensis's fossils were discovered in New Mexico and are the first known ancestor to the T. rex, this supports the idea that T. Rex originated in North America, not Asia, Longrich said.</p><p>"It's interesting that there are still new things to learn about an animal as seemingly well-known as T. rex," he said. "There's a lot left to discover."</p>

Scientists discovered a new dinosaur species, and it could reshape the history of T. rex's evolution

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-milton-category-five-threatens-florida-fema-funding-2024-10">Hurricane Milton</a>, now a Category 4, is expected to hit Florida's west coast Wednesday.</li><li>Milton rapidly intensified on Monday, with winds reaching up to 180 mph.</li></ul><p>The Sunshine State is bracing for more severe weather in the wake of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-real-estate-worth-it-home-prices-insurance-hurricane-helene-2024-10">Hurricane Helene</a>.</p><p>Hurricane Milton rapidly intensified to a Category 5 storm on Monday, leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to declare a state of emergency for <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.flgov.com/2024/10/07/governor-ron-desantis-issues-updates-on-state-preparedness-efforts-for-hurricane-milton-2/">51 counties</a> along Florida's western shores.</p><p>Several counties, including Charlotte, Hillsborough, and Manatee, have <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.floridadisaster.org/evacuation-orders/">mandatory evacuation orders</a>, with more expected as the storm approaches.</p><h2 id="6d7179f3-3193-4034-b4be-6e0045da1e3f">See Hurricane Milton's rapid evolution from space</h2><p>On Sunday, Milton's maximum wind speed was 65 mph. By Monday, it had increased to 155 mph as it made its way across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida, according to the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/floater.php?stormid=AL142024#tab2">National Hurricane Center</a>.</p><p>NOAA's GOES-16 satellite is tracking Hurricane Milton <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/before-after-satellite-photos-hurricane-helene-destruction-florida-2024-10">from space</a>. Here's a snapshot of the storm's evolution, beginning early Saturday afternoon as a tropical storm with 35 mph winds.</p><div type="image" title="shot of hurricane milton from noaa satellite" height="1000" width="1000" msid="114058033" hostid="261" sizebytes="211296"></div><p>Here's how it looked by Monday afternoon as a Category 5 hurricane with max winds of 180 mph. NOAA forecasters said the storm was moving erratically through the southern Gulf of Mexico.</p><div type="image" title="satellite imagery of hurricane milton over gulf of mexico" height="2000" width="2000" msid="114058030" hostid="261" sizebytes="678030"></div><p>Milton is one of the most <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricanes-intensity-climate-change-warming-water-2020-10">rapidly intensifying storms</a> within the Atlantic Basin.</p><p>"This intensification rate is third for the Atlantic basin, behind Hurricane Wilma (2005) and Hurricane Felix (2007), which intensified by 105 mph and 100 mph, respectively," Stephanie Zick, an associate professor for Virginia Tech's Department of Geology, told Business Insider in an email.</p><p>Astronauts aboard the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronaut-spend-355-days-orbit-international-space-station-2022-9">International Space Station</a> took this video Monday morning as they flew over the Category 5 storm from a safe distance of 250 miles above Earth.</p> <p>Zick said the reason for Milton's rapid intensification is partly due to the size of the storm's eyewall — the region of thunderstorms and high winds just outside of the calm, central eye.</p><p>"The storm started out with a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-hurricane-maria-bad-dreaded-pinhole-eye-2017-9">relatively small eyewall</a>," Zick said. "Additionally, the eyewall contracts as it intensifies, similar to how an ice skater's spinning rate speeds up as they pull their arms inward."</p><p>By Tuesday morning, Hurricane Milton had lost some of its strength and is now a Category 4. This isn't necessarily good news for Florida.</p><p>Even if the storm weakens, Zick said, its eye could grow larger, which would increase the overall wind field.</p><p>"The larger wind field will generate a larger surge, so it's important that Florida residents follow evacuation orders regardless of the exact intensity," Zick said.</p><p>Milton is <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-milton-airports-close-evacuation-flights-american-airlines-florida-2024-10">forecast to land over Florida</a>, near Tampa, on Wednesday night. You can see it approaching the state in one of the latest satellite images taken Tuesday morning by GOES-16.</p><div type="image" title="satellite imagery of hurricane milton" height="2000" width="2000" msid="114058032" hostid="261" sizebytes="586276"></div><p>If the storm reaches land during high tide, it could bring with it a storm surge as high as 10 to 15 feet in Tampa Bay, according to the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2024/al14/al142024.public_a.012.shtml?">NHC</a>.</p><h2 id="8a26859c-78cc-410a-a43e-05455f691e0e">Hurricane season is not over</h2><p>With Hurricane Milton following close behind Hurricane Helene, which landed over Florida on September 27, it may seem like this sudden uptick in storms is abnormal.</p><p>Matthew Rosencrans, the lead hurricane season forecaster with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, said that's not the case.</p><p>Storms forming over the Gulf are typical for the month of October, though it's slightly abnormal to see this level of activity so early in the month since it usually happens toward the latter half, he said.</p><p>Rosencrans added that Milton is probably not the last storm we'll see this season.</p><p>He advised people who are not being impacted now but live in hurricane-prone areas to double-check their supplies and be prepared. </p><p>"Unfortunately, the hurricane season is not over until November 30th, so I cannot say that this is the last one," he said.</p>

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