earth science
We know more about the universe than what is beneath our feet. But Earth's mantle holds subtle clues about our planet's past.
Impressive but deadly physics underlie catastrophic eruptions.
On December 19 1972, astronauts Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the Apollo 17 lunar mission. They were the last people to travel […]
Venus has far more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere than Earth, which turned our sister planet into an inferno. But how did it get there?
Even if you or I will never actually visit these distant worlds, we now know they exist. They should fill us with wonder.
Driving Teslas and planting trees are nice, but methane reduction, industrial efficiency, carbon removal, and a moderate carbon tax are the most efficient ways to fight climate change.
What was this mammoth tusk doing on the ocean floor 150 miles from land?
With sea levels rising, the Dutch are pondering floating cities — while also exporting their engineering know-how to turn a tidy profit.
Purely physical and chemical processes can deceive us into thinking that life is present, when it actually is not.
Most “irrecoverable carbon” is concentrated in these tiny bits of the Earth’s land mass. Can we keep it there?
Until now, researchers believed davemaoite could never be found on Earth's surface.
From hellishly hot planets to water worlds, some distant planets are like nothing in our Solar System.
“Should they strike, each of them has an energy at impact equal to all of the nuclear weapons on Earth combined."
Surface deformation or other signs of an impending explosion may not occur. Instead, supervolcanic eruptions can be much more insidious.
The findings at L’Anse aux Meadows mark the the earliest known year by which human migration had encircled the planet.
The mediocrity principle is often used to make claims about the abundance of life across the universe, but these claims are likely unfounded.
A decade ago, scientists weren’t able to confidently connect any individual weather event to climate change, even though the warming trends were clear.
Try this: It’s about 10 times the number of cups of water in all the oceans of Earth.
Civilization is facing an existential threat from climate change. Will we humans make it? Does anyone in the universe make it?
The unconventional method could help astronomers better track meteorites that fall during the daytime.
Shocked city dwellers who stared at it were blinded instantly, then the entire city caught fire.
With the huge growth in satellites, fears of a crowded sky are coming true.
The Copernican principle states that Earth is an ordinary planet, but that does not mean that life is ordinary in the universe.
Phobos and Deimos only have two explanations, and neither one adds up.
The atmosphere’s habitable zone is so small, several mountain ranges extend beyond it.
Even with all the recent impacts we've seen, it might be more "foe" than "friend" to us.
Whenever the climate cooled, our hominin ancestors would set up shop in the Arabian Peninsula and vanish again when the planet warmed up.
Icebergs aren't just a threat to unsinkable ships. Their ability to cause underwater landslides poses a danger to coastal cities.
Scientists look to erupted sea glass — lava that erupted in the ocean and was instantly chilled by the surrounding water — to take Earth's temperature.
Scientists discover surviving viruses in 15,000-year-old glacier ice on the Tibetan Plateau in China.