Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Environment
New desalination tech could help quench global thirst
Designed with better, more energy-efficient materials, next-generation desalination plants may offer a way to meet the world’s growing need for freshwater.
- Climate
India’s monsoon winds trace back nearly 13 million years
The intense monsoon winds that carry torrential rain to India each year first started blowing around 12.9 million years ago, new research suggests.
- Science & Society
Sea life stars in museum’s glass menagerie
See Leopold and Rudolf Blaschkas’ delicate glass jellyfish, anemones, sea worms and other marine invertebrates at the Corning Museum of Glass.
- Earth
China’s mythical ‘Great Flood’ possibly rooted in real disaster
Folktales of an ancient flood that helped kick off Chinese civilization may reference a nearly 4,000-year-old deluge.
- Paleontology
Woolly mammoths’ last request: Got water?
Woolly mammoths survived on an Alaskan island thousands of years after mainland mammoths went extinct. But they died out when their lakes dried up, thanks to a warming climate and rising sea levels.
- Animals
Pup kidnapping has a happy ending when a seal gets two moms
A female fur seal kidnapped another seal’s pup. But this turned out to be a positive the young seal, scientists found.
- Oceans
50 years ago, humans could pick the oceans clean
Scientists have long recognized that we might overfish the oceans. Despite quotas, some species are paying the price of human appetite.
- Earth
Science finds many tricks for traveling to the past
Our editor in chief discusses what science can tell us about the past.
- Earth
New scenario proposed for birth of Pacific Plate
The Pacific tectonic plate formed at the junction of three other plates and above of the remains of a submerged plate, geophysicists propose.
- Earth
Iron-loving elements tell stories of Earth’s history
By studying geochemical footprints of rare elements, researchers get a glimpse of the planet’s evolution.
- Oceans
Sea ice algae drive the Arctic food web
Even organisms that don’t depend on sea ice depend on sea ice algae, a new study finds. But Arctic sea ice is disappearing.
- Earth
Ancient air bubbles could revise history of Earth’s oxygen
Pockets of ancient air trapped in rock salt for around 815 million years suggest that oxygen was abundant well before the first animals appear in the fossil record.
