Earth and Human Activity
- Animals
Adult corals have been frozen and revived for the first time
Living corals could be frozen for safekeeping. Scientists could later revive them to restore reef ecosystems that are withering in warming seas.
- Environment
Ultrasound waves can help remove polluting microplastics in water
The innovative process concentrates microplastics within a flowing liquid. A two-step process then removes the potentially toxic bits.
- Ecosystems
The Amazon is in trouble. Here’s why — and why it matters
Challenges from human-caused climate change, deforestation and degradation leave the fate of this vast forest uncertain.
- Space
Four researchers on Earth are spending a year on ‘Mars’
A crew of four entered Mars Dune Alpha in Houston, Texas. They will remain isolated inside for a year, living and working as if on the Red Planet.
- Agriculture
Crops are being engineered to thrive in our changing climate
Plants are already the best carbon catchers on Earth. New research could make them even better.
- Earth
Take candy core samples with this science activity
Act like a geologist as you drill ‘core samples’ from candy bars using a straw. Can you identify the type of candy bar just from a sample?
- Agriculture
Cow dung spews a climate-warming gas. Adding algae could limit that
But how useful this is depends on whether cows eat the red algae, a type of seaweed — or it gets added to their wastes after they’re pooped out.
- Climate
Let’s learn about why summer 2023 was so hot
Human-caused climate change has played a big role in this summer’s historic heat.
- Oceans
Summer 2023 is when the ocean first turned ‘hot tub’ hot
Unfortunately, scientists worry that this atypical sea warming may actually be the beginning of an unwelcome new ‘normal.’
- Tech
Gravity ‘batteries’ might help a weighty renewable-energy problem
To store the energy generated by wind and solar power, researchers are looking at mammoth systems that raise and lower weights.
- Tech
High-tech solar ‘leaves’ create green fuels from the sun
Chemists make a liquid alternative to fossil fuels from carbon dioxide, water and the sun. Their trick? They use a new type of artificial leaf.
- Earth
Canada’s Crawford Lake seems to mark when the Anthropocene began
Mud at the bottom of this lake holds a record showing how humanity has been changing our planet. But the Anthropocene isn’t an official new epoch yet.
