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Magazine
In the April 14 SN: Killer heat, mass insect migrations, the latest Saturn updates, rethinking the Nobel Prize, tectonics on Venus, the science of mass shootings, ancient tool trends and more.
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News in Brief
This ancient lizard may have watched the world through four eyes
04/05/2018 - 12:19 Paleontology, Earth, NeuroscienceAbout 50 million years ago, a monitor lizard in what is now Wyoming perceived the world through four eyes. Saniwa ensidens is the only known jawed vertebrate to have had two eyelike photosensory structures at the top of the head, in addition to the organs we commonly think of as eyes, researchers report April 2 in Current Biology.
The structures are called the pineal and parapineal...
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News
Efforts to contain Mississippi floods may have made them worse
04/04/2018 - 14:21 Earth, ClimateThe world’s longest system of levees and floodways, meant to rein in the mighty Mississippi River, may actually make flooding worse.
Using tree rings and lake sediments, researchers re-created a history of flooding along the lower Mississippi River extending back to the 1500s. This paleoflood record suggests that the past century of river engineering — intended to minimize flood damage...
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News
Seafloor map shows why Greenland’s glaciers melt at different rates
04/03/2018 - 13:02 Climate, Earth, OceansGreenland is melting rapidly, but some glaciers are disappearing faster than others. A new map of the surrounding seafloor helps explain why: Many of the fastest-melting glaciers sit atop deep fjords that allow Atlantic Ocean water to melt them from below.
Researchers led by glaciologist Romain Millan of the University of California, Irvine analyzed new oceanographic and topographic data...
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News
Powerful New England quake recorded in pond mud
03/27/2018 - 12:48 EarthThe history of New England’s most damaging earthquake is written in the mud beneath a Massachusetts pond. Researchers identified the first sedimentary evidence of the Cape Ann earthquake, which in 1755 shook the East Coast from Nova Scotia to South Carolina. The quake, estimated to have been at least magnitude 5.9, took no lives but damaged hundreds of buildings.
Within a mud core...
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Reviews & Previews
How past disasters can help us prepare for the future
The Big OnesLucy JonesDoubleday, $26.9503/25/2018 - 08:00 Science & Society, History of Science, EarthPeople call Lucy Jones the “earthquake lady.” For nearly 40 years, Jones, a seismologist, has been a leading voice in California on earthquake science and safety. A few months after retiring from the U.S. Geological Survey in 2016, she founded the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society to bring policy makers and scientists together to...
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Editor's Note
Why it’s great to have a geologist in the house
Science has a way of surprising us when we least expect it. Like with mud rocks.03/22/2018 - 10:19 Science & Society, Earth, PlantsWe science journalists can be a cranky lot, eternally skeptical as to whether a touted advance is really significant enough to warrant coverage. So when Science News’ managing editor Erin Wayman waxed enthusiastic about a study explaining how ancient plants may have played a key role in making Earth...
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News
False alarms may be a necessary part of earthquake early warnings
03/21/2018 - 16:20 EarthEarthquake warning systems face a tough trade-off: To give enough time to take cover or shut down emergency systems, alerts may need to go out before it’s clear how strong the quake will be. And that raises the risk of false alarms, undermining confidence in any warning system.
A new study aims to quantify the best-case scenario for warning time from a hypothetical earthquake early...
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News
Tree rings tell tale of drought in Mongolia over the last 2,000 years
03/19/2018 - 10:26 Climate, EarthA new analysis is shedding light on drought in Mongolia, both past and future.
By studying the rings of semifossilized trees, researchers constructed a climate history for the semiarid Asian nation spanning the last 2,060 years — going 1,000 years further back than previous studies.
It was suspected that a harsh drought from about 2000 to 2010 that killed tens of thousands of...
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Television
Will Smith narrates ‘One Strange Rock,’ but astronauts are the real stars
03/18/2018 - 07:00 Earth, Astronomy, Science & SocietyView the trailer
“The strangest place in the whole universe might just be right here.” So says actor Will Smith, narrating the opening moments of a new documentary series about the wonderful unlikeliness of our own planet, Earth.
One Strange Rock, premiering March 26 on the National Geographic Channel, is itself a peculiar and unlikely creation. Executive produced by Academy Award–...
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News
Diamonds reveal sign of the deepest water known inside Earth
03/08/2018 - 14:22 EarthDeep within the hot interior of the planet, ice lurks. Now, a form of super-compact ice, found embedded in diamonds, offers the first direct clue that there is abundant water more than 610 kilometers deep in the mantle.
This ice, identified by its crystal structure and called ice-VII, doesn’t exist at Earth’s surface. It forms only at pressures greater than about 24 gigapascals —...