Earth
- Agriculture
Ditching farm pollution — literally
An Indiana project shows how fighting fertilizer runoff can save farmers money, protect wild habitats and prevent harmful algae blooms.
- Environment
Scientists Say: Microplastic
Bits of plastic smaller than five millimeters are called microplastics. They can end up in the ocean, where corals might mistake them for food.
- Earth
What sent Hawaii’s mountain chain east?
A single shaft of spewing hot rock created an enormously long chain of mostly undersea mountains in the western Pacific. That chain takes an unexpected eastern curve. The reason, scientists now think, may be a gobbled-up tectonic plate.
- Environment
Tiny plastic, big problem
Unsightly plastic bottles, bags and other trash give just a hint of the largely unseen problem of plastic pollution. Scientists have found tiny bits of it throughout the ocean. The bad news: Sea life can’t tell the difference between plastic and food.
- Earth
Mornings become electric
Lightning packs a wallop in the morning. The most powerful lightning strikes in the continental United States usually peak before noon.
- Health & Medicine
Fracking wastes may be toxic, tests show
Fracking operations have been polluting the environment. Some wastes have hormonal effects. Studies in mice now show that prenatal exposures to these wastes can trigger subtle but disturbing organ impacts.
- Chemistry
Cooking up life for the first time
The basic components for life could have emerged together nearly 4 billion years ago on the surface of Earth, chemists report.
- Microbes
Life’s ultra-slow lane is deep beneath the sea
Biologists had suspected the deep seafloor would be little more than barren sediment. But they found a surprising amount of oxygen — and life.
- Earth
Explainer: Understanding plate tectonics
Plate tectonics is the process whereby Earth continually rebuilds itself — and causes destructive events like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
- Environment
Arctic warming bolsters summer heat
Rapid warming in the Arctic is sapping summer storms of their power to cool. That worsens heat waves across the Northern Hemisphere.
- Animals
Finding out why birds are out of range
Sometimes people see large numbers of birds outside of their normal range. A student examined how to predict these excursions.
- Environment
Corals dine on microplastics
Plastic in the ocean is a growing problem. New research finds that corals may eat tiny bits of plastic, prompting new concerns about the health of living reefs.
