The Same Shells, 20,000 Years Apart
Neither species needed these to survive. Both collected them anyway, in the same cave, thousands of years apart. What passed between them is still an open question.
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.
The Same Molecule in Your Raspberry Jam Turned Up Near the Center of the Galaxy
The same sugar molecule in raspberries just turned up near the galactic center, in quantities nobody expected. What that means for life on Earth is still wide open.
The Words Jefferson Borrowed From the Vikings
A Viking word for "luck" sits at the center of American democracy. Jefferson didn't know. The language kept that secret for a thousand years.
One Bag of Cheetos Nearly Broke a Cave That Took Millions of Years to Build
A cave that survived millions of years of geological time met its match in a dropped snack bag. What does it take to break an ecosystem this old?
America's Deadliest Shipwreck Happened in a River. 20 Feet From the Dock.
The Titanic is legend. The Eastland killed more passengers and vanished from memory. The difference? Who was on board.
The Universe's First Stars Were Monsters. We Just Found Their Fingerprints.
They burned for a few million years, then vanished. But these universe-scale monsters left something behind, and it took 13 billion years and the right telescope to read it.
An Earthquake's Echo Moved an Entire Country
A 15-year-old ghost signal in Japan's earthquake data finally has an answer and it leads straight to the center of the Earth.
A Cave Full of Strangers, and Not One of Them Is Male
20 Homo naledi fossils. One cave. Zero males. Was a small-brained human relative practicing sex-specific burial rites hundreds of thousands of years before we were?
We Moved the Planet. Slightly. With Irrigation.
Researchers needed 2,150 gigatons of missing groundwater to make their models match reality. What they found when they added it in was the planet itself, quietly keeping score.
Woman Buried With Her Own Bones Turned Into Tools
Her brain was removed, her bones sharpened into tools, then carefully reassembled and buried. Was this reverence, ritual, or something else entirely?
Fire Tornado Set to Clean Oil Spills
The old fix for an ocean oil spill was to burn it and live with the smoke, soot, and sludge. What if the problem wasn't the fire, but the shape of it?
The Planet Bombed Itself Into a Cradle
Asteroid impacts were supposed to be the enemy of life. New research suggests the early Earth's craters made life possible.
Two Sheets of Carbon, One Tiny Twist, and Suddenly Electricity Flows for Free
Researchers discovered superconductivity can be switched on and off by changing a material's surroundings, not the material itself. What does that mean for everything built on electrons?
Physics Sorted Magnets into Two Bins for a Century. The Third Bin Has 200 Entries.
A third magnet type has been hiding in plain sight. A flawed diamond might be what finally proves it exists.
The Sun's Interior and Its Surface Are No Longer Telling the Same Story
Scientists have listened to acoustic waves inside the Sun since 1987. What they're hearing in the current cycle diverges significantly from what four centuries of surface observation would predict.
This Galaxy Has No Spin
A massive early galaxy stopped forming stars and lost its spin before the universe was 2 billion years old. How does a galaxy grow old so fast?
Hidden Traps in Antarctic Ice Shelves Supercharge Melting
The underside of Antarctica's ice shelves is riddled with hidden channels that are doing something the climate models didn't predict.
Sugar Maple Has Defined Michigan's Forests for Centuries. Its Own Seedlings Are Replacing It.
Michigan has more sugar maples than any state in the country. Something is already replacing them. It's been growing in the understory for 25 years.