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.
Earth Sciences
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.
Masaya Volcano Seems to Be Inhaling and Exhaling at Once
Beneath a popular Nicaraguan volcano, the magma may not live in one place. Satellite radar hints at two, and they seem to be heading opposite ways.
Arctic Tap Water Is Off Limits. Fool's Gold Is the Suspect.
What made this Arctic water supply undrinkable was sitting in the rock all along. Other corners of the Arctic sit on the same ingredients.
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.
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.
Forests Feed the Stratosphere Via Monsoons
In the calm years between eruptions, volcanoes have a rival for the upper atmosphere. It has roots, and it may be sending up more than they do.
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"?
Corals Spin Tiny Whirlpools to Breathe at Night
Heat doesn't just bleach coral. It can make the one trick keeping them alive at night work against them.
The Floor of Italy Is Peeling Off and Dropping Into the Earth
Italy's mountains keep stretching and squeezing at the same time. Something far below them is coming loose.
Earth's Oceans May Have Been Cooked Out of Dry Rock
The rocks that went in were bone dry. What came out, in the lab at least, was water, and possibly the recipe for filling an entire ocean.
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.
A Diamond Swallowed a Speck of Seafloor. Then It Came Back Up.
Geologists usually toss out this kind of mineral pocket as contamination. This one was sealed tight, and it may explain where some of the ocean's water ends up.
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.
The Mountains That Built Every Animal on Earth Are Buried Under Antarctica
A mountain chain larger than anything on Earth today vanished almost completely. Its mineral fingerprints point straight at one of evolution's biggest turning points.
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.
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.
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?