1+ week, 2+ day ago  (865+ words) When the U. S. Geological Survey released its new interactive national geologic map, it closed a chapter that began more than two centuries ago. The story of mapping the rock beneath an entire continent stretches back to a single Scottish immigrant working…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago  (807+ words) Climate change shows up as a number on a thermometer. The hottest summer, a record-breaking year, or a figure on the news ticking up another notch. Air temperature is the part we feel, so it's the part we watch. That…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago  (809+ words) A ruby-throated hummingbird weighs about as much as a nickel, yet it carries one of the most extreme metabolisms in the animal kingdom. To keep that engine running, the bird must refuel almost constantly. That single biological fact explains why…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago  (932+ words) Far below the surface of the southeastern Indian Ocean, the seafloor holds something no one expected to find. Scientists have located a whale necropolis " the largest and deepest collection of cetacean remains known anywhere on the planet. The site sprawls…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago  (900+ words) For decades, dengue fever has been viewed as a disease that belonged somewhere else. It was a problem for tropical and subtropical regions, not for California. That assumption is starting to look less certain. A new study suggests that rising…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago  (797+ words) For five years, NASA's Perseverance rover has sealed Martian rock cores inside titanium tubes, building a cache bound for Earth. So far, none of it is Mars mantle rock. Every core tells a surface story of lava, lake mud, and…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago  (897+ words) For decades, scientists assumed the land beneath coastal areas sinks at a steady, predictable rate. New research shows that assumption is wrong." The ground doesn't subside smoothly, but moves in irregular phases, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, shaped by human activity…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago  (901+ words) Saliva sweeps through your mouth constantly, washing over teeth, tongue and gums, carrying whatever bacteria it picks up along the way. Nothing stops a microbe from traveling from one side of the mouth to the other. Somehow, the bacteria do…...

2+ week, 3+ day ago  (892+ words) When geologists find unusually thick oceanic crust, they usually reach for the same explanation. A mantle plume, which is a column of hot rock rising from deep within Earth, melts its way upward and builds vast volcanic plateaus. The idea…...

2+ week, 5+ day ago  (540+ words) Taken as the Orion spacecraft traveled toward the Moon, the image shows our planet suspended among several striking features of the solar system." Earth appears bright and fully illuminated, yet the sunlight we usually associate with such a view is…...