Oceans
- Earth
Plastics at sea create raft of problems
About 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic float in the world's oceans, a new study finds. That's a problem. This 269,000 tons of plastic can choke, entangle and poison a wide variety of sea creatures.
- Animals
Teen shows salty lionfish are getting fresh
Lauren Arrington kept spotting lionfish in rivers near her Florida home. Her science fair project probed how much fresh water these ocean fish could stand — and led to a published research paper.
- Oceans
Digging a trench to stop a tsunami
Boyd Kane built his own wave tank to study tsunamis and how he might change the seafloor to stop their advance.
- Earth
Mining metals amidst seafloor animals
Miners may need to get their feet — and everything else — wet as they carefully seek out loads of copper and other valuable natural resources.
- Earth
Hacking the planet
The big backup plan: Scientists reluctantly consider altering Earth’s climate to head off the catastrophic effects of global warming.
- Microbes
Mystery microbes of the sea
Biologists find archaea a true curiosity. They make up one of life’s three main branches. The two better known branches are bacteria and eukaryotes (u KARE ee oatz). That last branch includes animals, plants and fungi. But archaea have remained mysterious. Very little is known about them. In fact, their unique status wasn’t even recognized until relatively recently, in 1977.
- Earth
Nature’s coast guards
Barrier islands aren’t just for beach vacations — they protect coasts from storms and flooding.
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- Earth
Ahead of the wave
Scientists are working to predict — and tame — the tsunamis that can threaten some coastal communities
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- Climate
Climate’s troublesome kids
The recurring climate events El Niño and La Niña trigger long-lived changes to weather around the world.
