
Geoff Brumfiel
Geoff Brumfiel works as a senior editor and correspondent on NPR's science desk. His editing duties include science and space, while his reporting focuses on the intersection of science and national security.
From April of 2016 to September of 2018, Brumfiel served as an editor overseeing basic research and climate science. Prior to that, he worked for three years as a reporter covering physics and space for the network. Brumfiel has carried his microphone into ghost villages created by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. He's tracked the journey of highly enriched uranium as it was shipped out of Poland. For a story on how animals drink, he crouched for over an hour and tried to convince his neighbor's cat to lap a bowl of milk.
Before NPR, Brumfiel was based in London as a senior reporter for Nature Magazine from 2007-2013. There, he covered energy, space, climate, and the physical sciences. From 2002 – 2007, Brumfiel was Nature Magazine's Washington Correspondent.
Brumfiel is the 2013 winner of the Association of British Science Writers award for news reporting on the Fukushima nuclear accident.
-
A Norwegian organization says that two seismic networks it oversees saw an explosion at the war-torn Kakhovka dam in Ukraine around the time it failed.
-
A major dam in Ukraine has collapsed. The failure is a grave blow to the region's water supply and is putting further stress on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
-
The near obliteration of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River has triggered evacuations and raised concern about Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which uses the reservoir to cool its reactors.
-
NASA is trying to bring science to the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena. A panel of top scientists and academics is trying to figure out how to systematically study UAPs.
-
NASA held a meeting of its panel devoted to studying unidentified anomalous phenomena. Government officials are hopeful it can bring a scientific approach to understanding these mysterious objects.
-
The space plane provided great views and a few minutes of weightlessness. Virgin Galactic says it hopes to begin regular flights in June.
-
Research shows some hammerhead sharks hold their breath when diving deep under water. They do it to keep their bodies from getting too cold. (Story aired on All Things Considered on May 11, 2023.)
-
Sharks are ectotherms and their internal body temperatures usually reflect the waters they swim in. Holding their breath helps them function in the frigid deep.
-
Getting Starship off the ground is costing the commercial spaceflight company billions of dollars at a time when money is tight. Some analysts think more funding will be needed.
-
Elon Musk is promising that SpaceX's newest rocket will one day take humans to Mars, but it's costing the company billions of dollars to develop. Can SpaceX afford to see the program through?