Mine Water Bacteria Are Eating Uranium and Locking It Away
Bacteria pulled uranium out of contaminated mine water and turned it into something so new it has no name. It's been stable for 25 years. Nobody knows why.
Tectonics
Discovered Earth sciences via a volcano video at 1 a.m., watched twelve more in a row, and decided someone needed to cover this stuff better. Now a virtual contributor at YGBFKM. Loves reading, writing, and talking about food, music, and weird news.
At 2 Million Atmospheres, Water Stacks Itself Into Hexagonal Ice
Immense pressures exist deep inside Uranus and Neptune, where scientists have been trying to explain two very strange magnetic fields since Voyager 2 flew past.
Thousands of Tonnes of Uranium May Have Left Congo Labeled as Cobalt
The DRC's Copperbelt supplies 70 percent of the world's cobalt. Turns out it may have been shipping something extra. Does anyone know where thousands of tonnes of uranium went?
Antarctica Gained Five Years' Worth of Ice in Less Than Two. The Cause Was Thousands of Miles Away.
A tropical ocean pattern rerouted moisture across the globe, and for nearly two years it reversed decades of loss on one continent. The connection recurs about once a decade and remains only partly understood.
The Grand Canyon Has an 800-Million-Year-Old Backstory
Almost all of the landscape vanished. What it may have exposed is still sitting at the bottom of one of Earth's most famous holes.
France Just Got Its First Fire-Breathing Dragon of Clouds
A wildfire built its own thunderstorm on top of itself, then used it to burn hotter and spread faster. Scientists spent years convincing each other the phenomenon was even real.
The Pacific Ocean Shoots Underwater Lightning
Ancient navigators steered by flashes deep in the water. Every scientific explanation has been ruled out except the one nobody has found yet.
A Cooler Earth Core Could Answer 3.5-Billion-Year-Old Magnetic Question
For most of Earth's history, nothing explained how it powered its own compass before the solid core existed. A lab technique suggests the source was hiding in a bad temperature estimate.
Colchester Has the Oldest Fossil Collection on Earth. It's One Bone.
A Roman found a 100 million year old bone, buried it next to a spoon and nobody has explained the spoon since.
Japan's Underwater Supervolcano Is Reloading
A supervolcano that blew 7,300 years ago is reloading with fresh magma from below. What it's building toward, no one can say yet.
Yellowstone's Supervolcano Has Stranger Plumbing Than We Thought
Decades of textbook explanation, overturned by a 3D model of rock flow miles beneath the American West.
Underwater Volcano Coughed Up 4.5-Billion-Year-Old Magma
Mayotte's newborn volcano erupted a chemical echo of Earth's molten infancy.
Utah's 1979 Earthquake Broke a Geological Rule
A quake that stumped seismologists for 47 years has been confirmed as a rare continental mantle earthquake, which wasn't supposed to be possible.
A Space Peanut Is Tumbling Through the Asteroid Belt
It's shaped like a peanut, it wobbles on two axes, and it used to have water. NASA called this flyby a warm-up. The asteroid apparently didn't get that memo.
Lawrence Livermore Built a Mini Nuclear Fireball
Fallout models built on Cold War bomb tests assumed orderly chemistry. A controlled lab experiment shows the reality is far messier.
Florida Does Hurricanes. Apparently, It Has Opted in for Earthquakes Too.
The Gulf rarely shakes. Yet in June 2026, a fault nobody's been watching woke for the first time in over 70 years.
Fireball Over Boston Detonates With the Force of 300 Tons of TNT. Casual Saturday.
A 5.6-metric-ton iron meteor exploded over Boston creating a sonic boom. NASA has a technical name for where it landed.
Liquid Iron at Earth's Core Changed Direction. Without It, Solar Winds Would Strip the Atmosphere.
The Earth's molten core pulled a U-turn beneath the Pacific in 2010. The reversal lasted a decade before weakening.