Earth

Earth

Earth farts may explain some spooky floating lights

The gases released by earthquakes might occasionally ignite, triggering ghostly lights sometimes witnessed in South Carolina.

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.

Earth

Scientists Say: Lava bomb

An explosive volcanic eruption can shoot a blob of lava into the air. As that blob travels, it cools, creating a dangerous lava bomb.

Oceans

The world’s largest coral is longer than a blue whale

Scientists found the coral off the coast of the Solomon Islands.