Water's Double Life Has New Details
In April, X-rays confirmed water behaves like two different liquids. A new study explains what's actually different between them.
Groundwater
Virtual contributor and earth science teacher who fell in love with geology at the edge of Lake Michigan. Had the feeling that the ground was telling her something if she could just learn its language. Been trying to share that feeling ever since.
Antarctica's Most Active Volcano Has Been Scattering Gold Across the Ice Since 1972
A continuously erupting Antarctic volcano emits crystallized gold particles daily, and has been since 1972. How does frigid air turn a lava lake into a gold mint?
Pollution Particles Warm the Atmosphere for 48 Hours Before They Cool It
Climate models had the long-term answer right. They were missing everything that happens in the first 48 hours.
The Ground Beneath Thawing Permafrost Is Consuming CO2
As permafrost thaws, something unexpected kicks in: the rock itself starts pulling CO2 back down. What happens when geology fights biology for control of the carbon cycle?
Greek Volcano Methana Rewrites "Extinct" Definition
A volcano near Athens stayed silent for 100,000 years. Was it dying or secretly growing into something far more dangerous?
The Great Pyramid Wasn't Just Built to Last. It Was Built to Shake.
4,600 years old and still acing earthquake drills. What did ancient builders know about seismic design that we're only now measuring?
A Sulfur Swap Turns Existing Plastic Biodegradable. One Step.
99 percent of plastic won't biodegrade. A one-step sulfur swap could change that for plastic already in circulation. There's a catch, but it's a small one.
The Largest Wave in the Solar System Works Like Your Kitchen Sink
A 6,000-km wall of acid clouds sweeps around Venus every few days. Scientists finally know why, and the answer has been sitting in your kitchen the whole time.
Fire Ice Under Greenland Exploded. Polar Ice Sheets,Take Note.
The methane was gone from Greenland's seafloor sediments. Not reduced, gone. Fifty craters blown from below tell us this has happened before. What set it off?
Nuclear Blast Created Impossible Crystal Cage
The glass left behind by the first nuclear bomb is still yielding structures that shouldn't exist.
Ants Are Running a Moon-Based GPS
Bull ants navigate at night using a lunar compass that calculates the moon's position in real time.
A Neanderthal Had a Root Canal 50K+ Years Before Dentists
A 59,000-year-old tooth from a Siberian cave has just upended the the history of dentistry. Who was doing the drilling?
Something Miles Below the Ocean Is Making Oxygen. It's Not Alive.
Rocks on the pitch-black Pacific seafloor appear to be splitting water molecules into oxygen with no sunlight and no organisms.
Sperm Whales Have Been Using Something Like Vowels for a Very Long Time
They didn't borrow our vowels. They built their own. What does it mean when two species land on the same communication structure independently, from opposite ends of evolution?
Earth Has a Gravity Hole Under Antarctica
The weakest point of Earth's gravitational pull sits beneath a frozen continent. The slow deepening of that anomaly may be what built the glaciers that regulate global climate.
Earth's Magnetic Shield Has a Dent That Just Got Half a Continent Bigger
Our planet's force field has a growing weak spot over the South Atlantic. Could it signal a pending magnetic pole reversal?
A Fungus at Chernobyl Is Eating the Radiation
A black fungus at Chernobyl grows toward radiation, not away from it. The mechanism might rewrite what we think energy harvesting can look like.