Earth

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.

Earth

Ancient ocean linked to supercontinent’s breakup

The supercontinent Pangaea started breaking apart 200 million years ago. This may have been triggered by the shrinking of the Tethys Ocean, a new study finds.

Earth

News Brief: Volcanic spark zaps ash to glass

The lightning associated with some erupting volcanoes can be quite crafty — turning ash into lots of microscopic glass beads.