Most of the World's Languages May Have Died Without Leaving a Word
If the languages still spoken are only the survivors, what did the lost ones sound like, and what could they do that ours can't?
Deep Time
Virtual contributor and essayist writing about the Earth for four decades without ever taking a geology course. Semi-retired but continues to write long essays about the philosophy of Earth time, human scale, and, of course, all things weird.
A Rock Sank 56 Miles. Halfway Down, the Thermostat Was Wrong.
Partway into the Earth, a sinking stone ran hotter than the models allow. Deeper down, it fell back in line. What cranked up the heat remains an open question.
Oklahoma's Buried Crater Was Filed Under the Wrong Age
Fossils tied this impact to one era of cosmic bombardment. Buried crystals moved it into the middle of a mass extinction. What part it played there, the study left unsettled.
Canada's Last Lake Dammed by Ice Took Millennia to Form. It Drained in a Season.
Sensors left alone in the Arctic kept recording through a canceled field season. When researchers finally reached them, the water they were measuring was no longer the same.
A Padlock on Her Toe Wasn't Enough. Her Village Came Back With a Sickle.
A padlock, a sickle and possibly something in her mouth. Her neighbors reopened the grave to add the blade. What she did to frighten them, nobody knows.
Two Piles of Blacksmithing Waste Complicated the Lost Colony Mystery
The colonists told everyone where they were going, then vanished. The argument over whether they got there turns on a pile of iron waste.
A Woman in Ashes and Soot Stopped a Boston Sermon in 1677. The Court Called Her a Devil.
She warned Boston that a plague was coming. The magistrates whipped her through the streets. Then the smallpox arrived.
A Bottle of Six Pins Buried to Fight Witches
Someone on the Delaware River in the 1740s believed a witch was behind their suffering. The remedy came with a return address.
The Sun Got the Byline on Earth's Iron. Microbes May Have Ghostwritten It.
Earth may once have iced over pole to pole, yet its seas kept stacking up iron. Whatever did the work never needed daylight, and something like it may still be on the job.
A Dingo Was Laid to Rest. The Shells Kept Arriving for 500 Years.
Healed bones, worn-down teeth and a grave that kept growing for centuries. What did this dog mean to the people who would not stop visiting?
The Whole Planet Has Tipped Four Times. It's Tipping Now.
The record was sitting in ancient shorelines, not in the rocks everyone had been checking. What does it do to every assumption downstream from "the ground is stable"?
Something More Than 3,000 Miles Down Keeps Adjusting the Length of Your Day
Days have been running a few milliseconds long or short for decades. The culprit is a lopsided ball of iron that keeps drifting out of line and getting dragged back.
2,000-Year-Old Cliff Paintings in Southern China Are Still Bleeding Red
Monsoons, typhoons and 2,000 years of heat couldn't strip these paintings from the cliffs. The ingredient that may have held them there came from somewhere far more personal.
Earth’s Building Blocks Are Local, Not Imported
Jupiter may have blocked almost everything from the outer solar system. Somehow, Earth still ended up with the ingredients that mattered.
84 Objects Are Hiding in Nearby Galaxies. They Vanish When You Look Too Hard.
Something in six galaxies is pouring out ultraviolet light and low-energy X-rays in a combination no known object produces. Nobody knows what it is yet.
A Trebuchet Left 160 Fractures in a Medieval Skeleton. The Closest Modern Match Is a Car Crash.
A forensic pattern so specific it crosses seven centuries. What leaves that kind of signature on a medieval skeleton buried under a Scottish castle?
The Magnetosphere's Safety Ceiling Might Not Exist
Scientists came up with roughly 10 explanations for why Earth's magnetic response stops getting stronger. A new study says they may all have been explaining the wrong thing.
Asteroid Stitched Together Like a Cosmic Frankenstein
A century of observations, and we were off by two. What else out there is three things pretending to be one?