2+ day, 14+ hour ago   (697+ words) A massive dust storm swept across West Africa in early September, sending a plume over Mali and eventually toward the Atlantic Ocean. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory shows a massive cloud of dust sweeping across West…...

4+ day, 13+ hour ago   (654+ words) California’s Vasquez Rocks have stood in for alien worlds for decades. A NASA satellite image reveals the famous landscape from space. Southern California is home to a landscape so unusual that Hollywood has spent decades pretending it belongs on other…...

5+ day, 7+ hour ago   (956+ words) A 324-million-year-old fossil suggests early insects lived between water and land as their bodies gradually changed over time. Life on Earth changed greatly when animals began moving from water onto land. It happened in stages, and some early animals, including…...

5+ day, 14+ hour ago   (1019+ words) Psilocybin changes how brain activity is organized, revealing patterns linked to a person’s surroundings and subjective experience. People describe a psychedelic trip as everything coming apart. For a decade, neuroscientists have described it the same way. A new study reports…...

5+ day, 15+ hour ago   (723+ words) Scientists in Germany used high-powered X-rays to scan tissue samples from four donated bodies to see where tattoo ink goes after it enters the skin. Researchers have spent nearly a decade assembling the case that tattoo ink does more than…...

5+ day, 13+ hour ago   (701+ words) A rare satellite view reveals the persistent lava lake inside Mount Michael, an active volcano on remote Saunders Island near Antarctica. At first glance, Saunders Island looks locked in winter. Sea ice crowds the dark water, snow covers the land,…...

6+ day, 11+ hour ago   (961+ words) The skull may do more than protect the brain. Mouse research found immune structures inside its marrow that respond directly to brain tumors. The skull is part of the skeleton people treat as armor, a curved plate whose whole job…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (913+ words) New research shows that shifting urban populations can change how efficiently sewage plants operate, revealing a potential way to cut emissions without new infrastructure. Every year, hundreds of millions of people flood out of Chinese cities for the Lunar New…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (978+ words) Weather forecasts improved up to five days out when researchers added water vapor isotopes to models, especially in the midlatitudes. Weather forecasts are built from temperature, humidity and wind. Mixed into the air is a fourth signal forecasters don’t use:…...