From up close, the cracking sound of a thunderclap dominates. From far away, it’s more like a drawn-out rumble. Can science explain why?
Search Results
You searched for: Earth
Air currents in our atmosphere limit the resolving power of giant telescopes, but computers and artificial stars can sharpen the blur.
Thanks to observations of gravitational waves, scientists were able to settle a longstanding debate over the speed of gravity.
The cosmic scales governing the Universe are almost unbelievably large. What if we shrunk the Sun down to be just a grain of sand?
The giant impact theory suggests our Moon was formed from proto-Earth getting a Mars-sized strike. An exoplanet system shows it’s plausible.
Whenever someone waxes poetic about terraforming alien worlds, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the ethical implications of the proposal.
Learning to decode complex communication on Earth may give us a leg up if intelligent life from space makes contact.
Earth is actively broadcasting and actively searching for intelligent civilizations. But could our technology even detect ourselves?
A marine reptile fossil from Svalbard challenges ideas about evolution and Earth’s greatest mass extinction.
True north, magnetic north, and grid north have aligned. There’s also a connection to James Bond.
Every astrobiologist wants to find an alien. But the public should be skeptical when the “aliens” look like tiny humans.
An un-crewed sailing drone discovered the unusually shaped, slumbering seamount.
JWST just found its first transiting exoplanet, and it’s 99% the size of Earth. But with no atmosphere seen, perhaps air is truly rare.
Methane is a shorter-lived but more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Cleaning it up could have a quick impact on global warming.
Finding a tiny planet around bright stars dozens or hundreds of light-years from Earth is extremely difficult.
Why do so many cultures celebrate holidays at the same time of year?
▸
4 min
—
with
65 million years ago, a massive asteroid struck Earth. Not only did Jupiter not stop it, but it probably caused the impact itself.
What beavers and earthworms can teach us about working with, not against, Mother Nature.
▸
6 min
—
with
From astrobiology to geology, a Moon base could serve as a laboratory unlike anything on Earth.
In 2017, a kilonova sent light and gravitational waves across the Universe. Here on Earth, there was a 1.7 second signal arrival delay. Why?
Plagues, war, and genocide were literally frozen in time.
The Centennial State is technically a hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon.
Rocks and minerals don’t simply reflect light. They play with it and interact with light as both a wave and a particle.
A new, unexpected brightening, just 3 years after a massive dimming event, has astronomers watching Betelgeuse. Is a supernova imminent?
Earth wasn’t created until more than 9 billion years after the Big Bang. In some lucky places, life could have arisen almost right away.
This minimalist map unties Asia’s mountainous geography, centered on the “Pamir Knot.”
The world’s highest mountain is also the world’s highest cemetery, with some bodies serving as creepy landmarks for today’s climbers.
Although many of Einstein’s papers revolutionized physics, there’s one Einsteinian advance, generally, that towers over all the rest.
Human beings are tiny creatures compared to the 92 billion light-year wide observable Universe. How can we comprehend such large scales?