Category Archives: Earth Sciences

Earth’s global thaw has reached Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak, researchers said today (May 14) at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico. Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 … Continue reading →

Tiny 1,900 million-year-old fossils from rocks around Lake Superior, Canada, give the first ever snapshot of organisms eating each other and suggest what the ancient Earth would have smelled like. The fossils, preserved in Gunflint chert, capture ancient microbes in … Continue reading →

Scientists have determined the temperature near the Earth’s centre to be 6000 degrees Celsius, 1000 degrees hotter than in a previous experiment run 20 years ago. These measurements confirm geophysical models that the temperature difference between the solid core and … Continue reading →

Thanks to Natasha This variant form of cauliflower is the ultimate fractal vegetable. Its pattern is a natural representation of the Fibonacci or golden spiral, a logarithmic spiral where every quarter turn is farther from the origin by a factor … Continue reading →

Russian scientists have claimed the discovery of a new type of bacterial life in water from a buried Antarctic lake. The researchers have been studying samples brought up from Vostok – the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica. Last year, the … Continue reading →

What you’re seeing here is a cloud formation so rare that it defies classification. Meteorologists suspect that these are undulatus asperatus clouds — an entirely new cloud type that was proposed only three years ago by the Cloud Appreciation Society. … Continue reading →

This is a Brinicle, a brine icicle, which can form in the waters of both the Arctic and the Antarctic. The icy phenomenon, also known as the “Icicle of Death”, is caused by cold sinking brine. In winter, the air … Continue reading →

Los Angeles-based photographer Felix Salazar takes an up-close look at the mesmerizingly radiant colors and textures found in underwater corals. Normally we expect coral to be a plant-like marine life that is typically found in varying shades of pink (or … Continue reading →

Iridescent clouds aren’t too rare, but they are very pretty. And these particular clouds let you see exactly how they work, by showing where the sun is, and what clouds do and do not turn into rainbows. Iridescence in rainbow … Continue reading →

Accurately determining the relative percentages of the elements comprising the Earth’s core and mantle which formed early – that is, within 30 Ma (megaannum, or million years) after the solar system itself formed – are extremely difficult for a range … Continue reading →

A physicist and researcher who set out to develop a formula to protect Apollo sites on the moon from rocket exhaust may have happened upon a way to improve weather forecasting on Earth. Working in his backyard during rain showers … Continue reading →

A New Zealand researcher Monday claimed to have solved the riddle of a mystery South Pacific island shown on Google Earth and world maps which does not exist, blaming a whaling ship from 1876. The phantom landmass in the Coral … Continue reading →

There have been several recorded times in history when the sun has suddenly turned blue. The scientific explanation for them is even better than the legends people created to explain them long ago. A blue sun allows you to see … Continue reading →

In the grasslands of Namibia are millions of strangely bare circles. They’re called “fairy circles.” Although we know, roughly, what happens during their lifespan, no one knows why they crop up, or why they eventually fade. The term “fairy ring” … Continue reading →