Environment
New water treatment process removes pollutants most now don’t
The two-step water treatment process could cut not only excreted drugs flowing into waterways but also some nutrients that feed harmful algal blooms.
Earth
More Stories in Earth
- Plants
Could trees ever get up and walk away?
In fantasy, trees can walk, climb and even fight. Real trees move, too. It just happens in extreme slow mo.
- Earth
Analyze This: Smartphone data may help improve GPS
Data from millions of phones helped fill in maps of the ionosphere, an atmospheric layer that can muddle radio signals key for navigation systems.
- Earth
Scientists Say: Dark lightning
We don't see it, but rare gamma-ray lightning can bolt from stormy skies like regular lightning.
- Animals
A changing Arctic current seems to be impacting bowhead whales
A teen researcher investigated bowhead whales and found their migrations may be responding to a changing sea current.
- Earth
This long-buried glacier ice is at least 770,000 years old
Thanks to climate change, thawing permafrost in the Canadian Arctic has revealed this glacier remnant that could be more than a million years old.
- Planets
So many wondrous moons — just a spaceship ride away
Scientists are studying extraterrestrial moons for clues to how planets form, how life began — and whether there’s life out there right now.
- Chemistry
Some bacteria in wastewater can break down a common plastic
These microbes can break the carbon bonds that make PET plastics so hard to degrade. This type of plastic makes up almost one-third of plastic waste.
- Climate
2024 set new record for hottest year, passing a dangerous heat threshold
For the first year in recorded history, Earth’s average temperature topped 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
- Earth
Scientists Say: Avulsion
As rivers seek out easier routes to the sea, path reroutes can transform our world. This is ‘avulsion’ refers to in geology. In medicine, the word can describe injuries.
