On September 15, NASA will launch a laser 310 miles above the Earth to scan our planet’s ice sheets like never before, recording changes in the elevation of these frozen landscapes down to the width of a pencil.
Our oceans are brimming with microscopic phytoplankton—plant-like organisms that contribute significantly to marine diversity. Tiny though they are, these sea critters, when infected with a particular virus, may influence atmospheric processes such as cloud formation, according to new research.
Parts of the Earth’s mantle might be loaded with diamonds, if a new model turns out to be correct. But no, you can’t mine them—they’d be almost a hundred miles below the surface.
It turns out that 8,000 tiny plastic disks in a rotating drum could help scientists develop a technique to forecast avalanches or earthquakes through sound.
By combining satellite radar with seismic data, an international team of researchers has re-assessed the effects of North Korea’s most recent nuclear test at Mount Mantap, offering disturbing new estimates for the strength of the device used and its influence on the mountain itself.
New research connects a powerful volcanic eruption—and a medieval poem that conjured memories of the dreaded event—to Iceland’s conversion to Christianity.
It wasn’t scientists who discovered the thin, purple, east-to-west traveling glow in the northern night sky. It was people with cameras and a nerdy passion for auroras.
Diamonds, the super-strong and brilliant crystals of carbon atoms produced under the Earth’s crushing pressures, are typically valued for their beauty and durability. But scientists also value them for another reason: They contain all kinds of hidden messages about the Earth’s mantle. You just need the right tools to…
Perhaps there’s a life-supporting, Earth-like planet orbiting close to a red dwarf star many light years away. Perhaps this planet orbits so close to the star that only one half of it ever faces the light. Maybe some sentient species evolved during that infinite day, on some massive supercontinent. And maybe one day,…
Earlier this week, a storm spawned by the former Cyclone Gita swept across New Zealand, damaging buildings, knocking out electricity, and creating floods. But along the Rakaia River, the storm triggered a bizarre natural phenomenon known as granular flow—essentially a raging river of rocks.
For hundreds of millions of years, life on Earth was a purely aquatic phenomenon. The jump from the oceans to the continents was a monumental event, one that would irrevocably change the face of our plant. A new study suggests the first plants to make this evolutionary leap appeared much earlier than we thought.
A powerful earthquake struck Taiwan today, causing damage and a partially collapsed hotel building, sources report.
It’s not often that science can answer questions with an easy “yes” or “no.” Usually it’s more of an “evidence suggests” or “this correlation proposes” sort of situation, even if the public’s understanding is generally a little less nuanced. So USGS Seismologist Susan Hough found the right question:
Scientists knew something strange happened when they heard reports of a raft of floating rock near New Zealand back in 2012. That raft eventually grew to around 150 square miles—remains of the largest underwater volcanic eruption in the 20th or 21st century to date, bigger even than Mount St. Helens.
Slow waves meander westward out in the deep ocean south of Australia. Sometimes they carry with them carry large eddies, whirlpools over 100 miles across. But every so often, these whirlpools combine into double whirlpools and travel across the ocean 10 times faster than the rest of the whirlpools, moving in sync for…
Even if you’re aware that glaciers are melting and sea levels are climbing, these facts can be difficult to connect with on an emotional level. A sound artist at the University of Virginia is hoping to change that by turning scientific data into music, and, well, the result is pretty damn cool.
In news that is sure to inspire some action-packed disaster movies, scientists have determined that the time between explosive volcanic ‘super eruptions’ is actually much less than previously thought. But, while this sure sounds like another reason to like awake at night wallowing in existential dread, scientists say…
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate, reads the gates to the Inferno. “Abandon all hope, you who enter,” which is a pretty nice way of saying “welcome to Hell.” But there’s a real underworld, albeit one with fewer dogs and less being blown around by the wind or wading through shit. Scientists are working on a…
The largest mud volcano eruption has been raging in Indonesia since May 29, 2006. At its peak, 180,000 cubic meters of mud flowed daily from a site near a heavily populated region of Java—enough mud to completely fill the Empire State Building every six days. Almost 60,000 villagers have fled since then, and it’s…
Coal, that ancient dead plant stuff responsible for electrifying the world and blackening the lungs of millions, is basically synonymous with global warming these days. But when all that plant corpse concentrate was first locked away in the ground, it took a lot of carbon out of the air. A new climate modeling study…
