Nuclear Blast Created Impossible Crystal Cage
The glass left behind by the first nuclear bomb is still yielding structures that shouldn't exist.
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.
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.