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.
Earth Sciences
A Tsunami That Wasn't Just a Flood. It Was a Moving Wall of Mud.
When a huge wave crosses soft farmland, it doesn't stay a wave for long. Japan felt that force as floodwaters ate the land.
In a Deep Ocean Trench, Creatures Dine on Sulfur
Eight kilometers down, the rocks say methane. The living organisms say sulfur. Life in the deepest ocean didn't get the memo (or didn't care).
Drought Concentrates Natural Antibiotics in Soil. Resistant Bacteria Are Taking Notes.
The dirt under us has been running antibiotic selection trials. A Caltech study across 116 countries traces real impact to resistance rates in hospitals.
The North Sea Is Hiding a Whole Country Beneath It
Ancient DNA pulled from North Sea sediments is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about Ice Age Europe — and filling in a conspicuous gap in human prehistory.
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?
Something Noisy Below Tuscany Turned Out to Be on Fire
Beneath Tuscany's vineyards and medieval hill towns, a surprise the size of Yellowstone waits.
Water Is Both a Liquid and a Liquid. The Wording is Not a Mistake.
After 130 years, super fast xray technology allowed scientists to confirm a strange fact they suspected about water.
Lightning That Forgot Which Way Is Down
There's lightning that shoots upward toward space — and scientists are still piecing together how it works. What else is the sky hiding above the clouds?
The Amazon Has a River That Boils. No Volcano Required.
A river in the Amazon nearly reaches boiling point — with no volcano anywhere nearby. Scientists have a theory. They'll admit it's not quite an answer.