A Trio of Tropical Cyclones in the Pacific - NASA Earth Observatory

When hurricane forecasters released their seasonal outlooks in spring 2026, the El Niño brewing in the Pacific contributed to predictions of below-normal activity in the Atlantic basin but above-normal activity in the northeastern and central Pacific basins. In early September, near the climatological peak of hurricane season, those spring outlooks were on target, with the eastern Pacific buzzing with activity and the Atlantic notably quiet.

As of September 3, the Northeast Pacific had produced 15 named storms and six hurricanes, well above the norm for that point in the season. The Atlantic basin, meanwhile, laboring under unfavorable wind shear conditions, had produced just five named storms and no hurricanes. El Niño typically enhances hurricane activity in the eastern and central Pacific basins because of the unusually warm water temperatures it brings to those parts of the ocean. It tends to suppress hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin by shifting large-scale circulation patterns in a way that makes it harder to sustain storms there.

At 1:14 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (20:14 Universal Time) on September 1, NASA’s EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) on the DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) satellite captured an image of three tropical cyclones churning simultaneously in the Pacific, along with one in the Atlantic. A band of clouds and thunderstorms associated with the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is visible to the south of the storms. The spacecraft was nearly 1 million miles from Earth and just shy of 93 million miles from the Sun when the image was acquired.

The trio of storms in the Pacific were Lowell, Karina, and Marie. Of the three, Lowell became the strongest, with winds reaching category 5 strength for several hours on September 2. Around the same time, Karina, spinning a few thousand kilometers to the east, achieved category 4 strength, a rare case of category 4 and 5 hurricanes occurring simultaneously in the area. Marie, spinning southwest of Baja California, was still a tropical storm when the image was acquired but was strengthening as it moved northwest.

In the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Edouard was visible to EPIC over Louisiana and Texas, shortly after the short-lived storm made landfall. It brought torrential rains and strong winds that downed trees and power lines. Some areas received 15 to 24 inches (38 to 61 centimeters) of rain, according to National Weather Service meteorologists.

As of September 3, the Atlantic basin's total accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) index was 4.4, about 9 percent of normal for that date, according to statistics compiled by Colorado State University meteorologists. Meanwhile, the Northeast Pacific basin's ACE was 130, about 50 percent above normal. The ACE index incorporates both the intensity and longevity of storms, making it easier to compare individual storms and seasons.

Several NASA Earth-observing platforms provide data that can aid in emergency preparedness before landfall and damage assessment and response afterward. Use the “Events” tab on NASA's Worldview browser to track current hurricanes and explore related NASA data products.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using data from DSCOVR EPIC. Story by Adam Voiland. 

Source: A Trio of Tropical Cyclones in the Pacific - NASA Science 

Separating Logic and Language: What the Brain Reveals About Thinking Without Words

Do we need words to think? For centuries, philosophers and linguists have leaned toward yes, the idea that language is the scaffolding of reasoning itself. A new study from MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research says otherwise: logical reasoning and language live in separate systems in the brain, and one can function perfectly well without the other.

Testing logic without words

Led by MIT associate professor Evelina Fedorenko and postdoc Hope Kean, the research team faced an obvious problem: it’s hard to separate language from thought when your test subjects are, well, using language to think. So they teamed up with neuroscientist Rosemary Varley at University College London, who studies people with acquired language disorders.

Two stroke patients with severe aphasia, meaning their ability to understand and produce language was badly damaged, were given language-free logic puzzles. In one task, they had to spot the hidden rule linking two lists of numbers, such as reversing digits or filtering out values above a threshold, then apply that rule to new examples. In another, they had to complete a matrix of geometric patterns.

The result: both patients solved the puzzles just as well as a control group with no language impairment, communicating their answers through gestures or sketches. Logic, it turns out, doesn’t need a vocabulary.

What brain scans show

The team also scanned the brains of neurotypical volunteers while they worked through similar logic games, plus “if-then” syllogisms (“if the ball is red, it’s big. The ball is red. Is it big?”). The scans mapped each participant’s language network and their “multiple demand network,” a separate system linked to general problem-solving.

The language network stayed quiet during both inductive reasoning (figuring out a hidden rule) and deductive reasoning (checking whether a conclusion follows). Interestingly, the multiple demand network lit up for inductive tasks but not deductive ones — a distinction Kean is now digging into further.

This fits a growing pattern from Fedorenko’s lab: other high-level cognitive tasks, like categorizing objects or reasoning about social situations, also don’t appear to rely on the brain’s language centers.

Why it matters

For people with aphasia, this is more than an academic point. Clinicians have long known that losing language doesn’t mean losing intelligence, people with aphasia can still play chess, solve sudoku, or manage household finances. But it’s easy for others to mistake communication difficulties for a decline in thinking ability. This study adds hard evidence that abstract logical reasoning can stay fully intact even when language is severely impaired.

There’s also a curious angle for AI. Large language models are trained entirely on text and generate text, yet they simulate forms of reasoning fairly convincingly. If the human brain keeps logic and language on separate tracks, comparing that architecture to how language models operate could offer useful clues for building future systems.

Kean calls this a new frontier in mapping the geography of thought, and after these findings, it’s easy to see why.

Original paper: Evidence from formal logical reasoning reveals that the language of thought is not natural language (PNAS, 2026) 

Source: Separating Logic and Language: What the Brain Reveals About Thinking Without Words