Thursday, October 30, 2025
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Amazon strategised about keeping its datacentres’ full water use secret, leaked document shows | Technology | The Guardian
Amazon strategised about keeping its datacentres’ full water use secret, leaked document shows
"Executives at world’s biggest datacenter owner grappled with disclosing information about water used to help power facilities
Amazon strategised about keeping the public in the dark over the true extent of its datacentres’ water use, a leaked internal document reveals.
The biggest owner of datacentres in the world, Amazon dwarfs competitors Microsoftand Google and is planning a huge increase in capacity as part of a push into artificial intelligence. The Seattle firm operates hundreds of active facilities, with many more in development despite concerns over how much water is being used to cool their vast arrays of circuitry.
Amazon defends its approach and has taken steps to manage how efficient its water use is, but it has faced criticism over transparency. Microsoft and Google regularly publish figures for their water consumption, but Amazon has never publicly disclosed how much water its server farms consume.
When designing a campaign for water efficiency, the company’s cloud computing division chose to account for only a smaller water usage figure that does not include all the ways its datacentres use water so as to minimise the risk to its reputation, according to a leaked memo seen by SourceMaterial and the Guardian.
Amazon as a whole consumed 105bn gallons of water in total in 2021, as much as 958,000 US households, which would make for a city bigger than San Francisco, according to the memo.
Asked about the leaked document, Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan described it as “obsolete” and said it “completely misrepresents Amazon’s current water usage strategy”.
“A document’s existence doesn’t guarantee its accuracy or finality,” she said. “Meetings often reshape documents or reveal flawed findings or claims.” Callahan would not elaborate on which strategic elements of the document were “obsolete”.
The memo was dated one month before Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud computing division, debuted a new sustainability campaign in November 2022 called “Water Positive”, with a commitment to “return more water than it uses” by 2030.
In the memo, ahead of the campaign’s launch, executives grappled with whether to include public disclosures about “secondary” use – water used in generating the electricity to power its datacentres.
They warned that full transparency was “a one-way door” and advised keeping AWS’s projections confidential, even as they feared that their advice could invite accusations of a cover-up. “Amazon hides its water consumption” was one negative headline the authors anticipated.
Callaghan said efficiency savings have already been achieved and pointed out that other companies also don’t count secondary water use.
Executives opted to use only the relatively smaller figure of primary use, 7.7bn gallons per year, roughly equivalent to 11,600 Olympic swimming pools, when calculating progress towards internal targets because of “reputational risk”, fearing bad publicity if the full scale of Amazon’s consumption was revealed, the document shows. Ultimately as part of the campaign for water efficiency, Amazon aimed to cut its estimated 7.7bn gallon primary consumption to 4.9bn by 2030 – without addressing secondary use.
Using the higher of two water usage estimates, the one that would include secondary use, “would double the size and budget” of the campaign “without addressing meaningful operational, regulatory or reputational risks”, they warned, adding that there was “no focus from customers or media” on water used for electricity.
“We may decide to release water volumes in the future,” the document said. “But … we should only do so if the lack of data undermines the programme or is required by regulators.”
Scientists balked at the selective disclosure and the choice not to include secondary use of water in the total.
“In environmental science, it is standard practice to include both to more accurately capture the true water cost of datacentres,” said Shaolei Ren, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
Amazon’s Water Positive campaign is still active and does not take into account secondary use, while the company continues to keep its current overall water consumption confidential.
As US tech companies ride the wave of AI investment and pursue greater heights of computational power, the $2.4tn corporation is building new datacentres in some of the world’s driest areas, SourceMaterial and the Guardian revealed in April.
Feeling water positive
In November 2022, AWS debuted its new Water Positive sustainability campaign, with a commitment to “return more water than it uses by 2030”. The campaign only applies to AWS. The wider Amazon group, including the world’s biggest online retail business, has an overall water consumption that is far higher, 105bn gallons per year.
“The models referenced in this document were preliminary and unvetted,” said Amazon’s Callahan, who declined to provide any alternative figures.
The document’s authors advised the company not to release data about the wider company, but they also warned that selective disclosure could lead to accusations of a cover-up. There was “reputational risk of publicly committing to a goal for only a portion of Amazon’s direct water footprint”, they wrote. They even suggested negative headlines that might result including “Amazon disappoints, failing to take full responsibility for water”.
“It would be better if they could own up to it,” said a current Amazon software developer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “Even if they said it was a low priority, at least that would be honest.”
In a sustainability report in August, AWS claimed it had achieved 53% of its Water Positive goal. The division’s plan for reaching the target relies mostly on “water replenishment” projects, some in partnership with Water.org, a non-profit organisation co-founded by actor Matt Damon. The strategy document refers to these projects as “offsets”, describing initiatives like using Amazon computer technology to help utilities prioritise which pipes to fix in order to minimise leaks.
But of the $109m AWS planned to spend on offsets, around half would have been spent anyway, either to meet regulatory requirements or because the projects would help AWS operations by making water more available, the document shows. Experts said this amounted to incomplete accounting.
“Regardless of what sort of offsetting or replenishment you do, it doesn’t necessarily nullify the water footprints of your own operations,” said Tyler Farrow, standards manager at the Alliance for Water Stewardship. “Calling your operations water positive or water neutral is misleading.”
Amazon’s Callahan said that the “replenishment spending”, which other tech companies also undertake, is a voluntary, not a regulatory, requirement.
“We’ve expanded well beyond what was imagined in the document because it’s the right thing to do for the world and for the communities in which we operate,” she said.
‘Obfuscate the water footprint’
Amazon is also engineering industry standards to downplay its water use and avert scrutiny, said Nathan Wangusi, a former water sustainability manager at the company.
The corporation has funded efforts by the Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute non-profits, alongside LimnoTech, a consultancy, “to create a globally accepted methodology for quantifying the benefit of watershed restoration projects”.
Responding to questions from SourceMaterial, all three organisations defended their integrity and independence, insisting that Amazon had no undue influence on any methodologies they had created.
“They spend a lot of time creating methodologies that are used to obfuscate the water footprint,” Wangusi said, referring to Amazon.
Callahan said Wangusi’s claim was “contradicted by facts”. “Amazon’s water use reporting is based on third-party assured data from actual utility bills, not estimates or self-reporting,” she said. Wangusi’s claim, though, was not about Amazon’s water-use reporting, but about measuring the effects of water offsets.
Callahan said these efforts were “standard practice” and that Amazon’s “customers expect us to hold ourselves accountable to credible guidance and best practices”.
As well as choosing not to disclose water use from electricity generation, Amazon has estimated its larger “indirect” water footprint, the document shows. This extra usage, which falls under a classification known as “scope 3”, includes water for production and construction – in Amazon’s case, mostly irrigation of cotton plantations supplying its fashion brands, and vegetables for its grocery arm, Amazon Fresh.
Here, too, Amazon decided to keep its consumption confidential, even though “indirect water use represents roughly 90% of Amazon’s total water footprint”, according to the document.
AWS avoided establishing targets for indirect water use because that figure would be “much more significant for the rest of Amazon, especially in the agricultural supply chain, and the team does not want to establish a standard for addressing scope 3 water use that the rest of Amazon would need to follow, given the larger resource implications”, the authors wrote.
“You don’t need to obscure or obfuscate,” said Wangusi, who believes he was “hounded out” of Amazon for criticising the company’s approach. (Amazon declined to comment on his departure.)
“It doesn’t make you more profitable,” he said. “It makes you less trustworthy.”
Thursday, October 23, 2025
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Thursday, October 09, 2025
3I/ATLAS Cosmic Visitor Discovery Shocks NASA & Astronomers
3I/ATLAS Cosmic Visitor Discovery Shocks NASA & Astronomers
“3I/ATLAS, the third confirmed interstellar object, is a massive comet with a unique chemical composition, including high levels of carbon dioxide and nickel. Its discovery offers a rare opportunity to study material from beyond our solar system and could reshape theories of planetary formation. As it approaches the Sun, astronomers are closely observing 3I/ATLAS to gain insights into the early universe and the origins of planets.
Something extraordinary is racing through our solar system at 245,000 kilometers per hour—and it isn’t from around here. Meet 3I/ATLAS, the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected, and possibly the most ancient cosmic visitor Earth has ever encountered.
This is not just another comet—it’s a time traveler from the depths of space, carrying secrets that could reshape our understanding of the galaxy and the formation of planetary systems.
A Cosmic Time Traveler
The discovery of 3I/ATLAS began on July 1, 2025, when the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, reported unusual activity to the Minor Planet Center. Initially thought to be a routine comet, astronomers quickly realized this object was something far more significant.
Unlike the billions of comets native to our solar system, 3I/ATLAS originated beyond the stars. Its icy core is potentially older than our solar system itself, making it a living relic from the early universe—a cosmic messenger bringing with it clues about the formation of planets and stars billions of years ago.
James Webb Space Telescope Reveals Astonishing Findings
On August 6, 2025, the James Webb Space Telescope turned its Near-Infrared Spectrograph toward 3I/ATLAS, revealing astonishing chemical signatures. The comet appears to be unusually rich in carbon dioxide and nickel, elements not commonly observed in interstellar visitors.
NASA scientists emphasize that these discoveries could rewrite our understanding of planetary system formation. By analyzing the chemical makeup of 3I/ATLAS, astronomers hope to uncover details about the environments in which the comet formed—potentially in a distant star system billions of years ago.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime object,” says Dr. Emily Saunders, a planetary scientist at NASA. “It’s like holding a fragment of another galaxy in our telescopes.”
A Giant Among Interstellar Visitors
3I/ATLAS is not only unique chemically, it is also massive. Observations from NASA’s SPHEREx spacecraft revealed that its coma—the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the nucleus—spans up to 26,400 by 24,700 kilometers, nearly twice the diameter of Earth.
Pre-discovery data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory tracked the coma’s growth, which expanded from 13,040 km on June 21 to 18,760 km on July 2, 2025. Such scale makes 3I/ATLAS the largest and brightest interstellar visitor ever recorded in our solar system.
Racing Toward Its Solar Encounter
As 3I/ATLAS speeds toward the Sun, expected to reach its closest approach by late October 2025, astronomers continue to track its trajectory and activity. While the comet poses no threat to Earth, its passage offers scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study the chemistry and behavior of interstellar objects.
NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) suggests that 3I/ATLAS may have shown signs of cometary activity as early as May 7, 2025, when it was about 6.4 AU from the Sun. This early activity indicates the comet is actively releasing gases and dust long before its closest solar encounter, providing a rare window to study its evolving structure.
Could This Rewrite Planetary Formation Theories?
One of the most exciting aspects of 3I/ATLAS is its potential to reshape theories of planetary formation. Some scientists hypothesize that interstellar objects like this comet may act as “seeds” for planet formation, carrying organic compounds and dust that contribute to building worlds.
If true, 3I/ATLAS could offer missing pieces in our understanding of how solar systems—including our own—formed billions of years ago. Its chemical and physical properties might reveal how matter from one star system can traverse interstellar space to influence another, hinting at a galactic network of planetary evolution.
A Galactic Archaeological Discovery
Observing 3I/ATLAS is like opening a time capsule from the early galaxy. It provides a glimpse of conditions that existed before our Sun and planets were born, billions of years ago.
Interstellar visitors are rare, and each observation offers a unique opportunity to study material from beyond our solar system. Unlike meteors or asteroids from within the solar system, 3I/ATLAS carries information from an entirely different stellar environment, helping scientists compare chemical and physical properties across galaxies.
“Every comet from another star system is a lesson in cosmic history,” notes Dr. Raj Patel, astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “3I/ATLAS is perhaps the most important lesson we’ve had in decades.”
The Hunt for More Cosmic Wanderers
So far, only three interstellar objects have been confirmed: ‘Oumuamua (2017), 2I/Borisov (2019), and now 3I/ATLAS (2025). Their rarity highlights the challenges of detecting fast-moving, faint objects traveling at immense speeds through our solar system.
Improved detection systems, like ATLAS and upcoming observatories, are expected to reveal many more cosmic wanderers in the future. Each discovery helps scientists piece together the puzzle of interstellar travel and planetary formation across the galaxy.
A Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity
The Hubble Space Telescope captured 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, showing its teardrop-shaped dust tail and distinctive cocoon of gas. The image confirmed the comet’s unique structure and massive size, sparking excitement across the astronomical community.
As 3I/ATLAS races through the solar system and back into interstellar space, scientists are seizing this brief opportunity to study its composition, activity, and origins. Observations over the coming weeks will likely provide groundbreaking insights into the chemistry of the early universe.
What This Means for Humanity
The discovery of 3I/ATLAS reminds us that Earth is part of a vast galactic ecosystem. Interstellar objects like this comet may carry the building blocks of planets, chemistry, and perhaps even life itself, traversing the vast distances between stars.
While 3I/ATLAS may never return to our solar system, the knowledge it imparts during its fleeting passage could influence astronomical research for generations. Scientists and enthusiasts alike are witnessing a messenger from deep time and deep space, offering a rare chance to understand our place in the cosmos.
“This is more than a comet,” Dr. Saunders concludes. “It’s a bridge to another time, another star, and perhaps the origin of worlds beyond our imagination.”
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Monday, October 06, 2025
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Thursday, October 02, 2025
Two newly discovered comets will be visible in October
Two newly discovered comets will be visible in October
“Two comets, C/2025 R2 (SWAN) and C/2025 A6 (Lemmon), will be visible in October. SWAN can be seen in the western sky after sunset, while Lemmon is near the Big Dipper in the eastern sky before sunrise.
Have the binoculars or a telescope on hand to see two comets this week
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - Two comets are visible in October. All you need is a drive away from light pollution and binoculars or a telescope.
The comets that will be visible are the C/2025 R2 (SWAN), and C/2025 A6 (Lemmon). They both were discovered in 2025.
To see the comet SWAN, face west and look up 23 degrees (as of October 1) in the sky after sunset.
Comet Lemmon can be seen close to the Big Dipper through much of October. Look to the eastern sky just before sunrise.
According to NASA, comets are leftovers from the beginning of our solar system, around 4.6 billion years ago. They consist mostly of ice coated with dark organic material. This is why they’re often referred to as dirty snowballs.
Most comets originate from the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud region, a zone far beyond Pluto’s orbit.
When they heat up due to solar radiation, they enter the outgassing phase. This effect causes dust and ice particles to fly into space, creating the dust and ion tails
Every comet has a main body that is called the nucleus. The dust and gas create the coma around the nucleus. The type of gas present will give the coma its color.
The comets are labeled with the year they were discovered and the name associated with an aspect of the discovery.
For instance, the Comet Lemmon was named after the Mount Lemmon Survey - the automated sky survey that was conducted at the Mount Lemmon Observatory, where the comet was discovered.
The Comet Swan was named after the swan instrument on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft. Swan stands for Solar Wind Anisotropies camera.
The next comet to watch for in November is C/2025 K1 ATLAS.
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