earth science
Temperatures in the Sun's core exceed 10 million degrees Celsius. But how on Earth did we actually come to know that?
Many impact craters on Earth have been erased thanks to wind, water, and plate tectonics. But scientists have clever ways to find them.
All human development, from large cities to small towns, shines light into the night sky.
The Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas are the last surviving fragments of a body of water that stretched from Austria to Turkmenistan.
Two populations that are geographically separated today once mated a very long time ago.
Catastrophes are difficult to predict because they are so rare. But AI using active learning can make predictions from very small data sets.
According to Peter Ward's "Medea hypothesis," photosynthesizing organisms regularly doom most life on Earth by over-consuming carbon dioxide.
What do you call it when the Earth shakes for three decades?
Slimy biofilms made up of bacterial and eukaryotic life forms have taken over an abandoned, flooded uranium mine in Germany.
Air currents in our atmosphere limit the resolving power of giant telescopes, but computers and artificial stars can sharpen the blur.
Out of sight, but not out of mind.
What we've learning from the world’s coldest, most forbidding, and most peaceful continent.
Size matters, but it's not the only thing.
The Centennial State is technically a hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon.
Each year, several trillion pounds of microscopic silicon-based skeletons fall down the water column to pile up into siliceous ooze.
Why would the Earth suddenly start vomiting forth huge quantities of mud?
Passing chunks of ice can fertilize ocean waters and play a role in the planet’s carbon cycle.
In 2020, scientists took more than a kilo of moon rock and soil back to Earth for testing.
These were the stories you clicked on the most.
"A modern five-day forecast is as accurate as a one-day forecast in 1980."
It’s like radar, but with light. Distributed acoustic sensing — DAS — picks up tremors from volcanoes, quaking ice and deep-sea faults, as well as traffic rumbles and whale calls.
Hawaii is the most isolated volcanic hot spot on Earth, far away from any plate boundary.
Maybe bring an umbrella just in case.
When battles raged in ancient cities, their rocks blazed so brightly that they could be reoriented according to Earth's magnetic field.
It's on a 100,000-year timescale, though, so the next few centuries might not be so comfortable.
We cannot afford to dream about living on other worlds while we continue to destroy ours.
Methane is a shorter-lived but more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Cleaning it up could have a quick impact on global warming.
True north, magnetic north, and grid north have aligned. There's also a connection to James Bond.