![lightning and purple sky over Monument Valley in Arizona](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/060724_cm_50ya-lightning_feat.jpg?fit=1030%2C580&ssl=1)
Earth
50 years ago, the sun’s influence on Earth’s lightning was revealed
The solar wind and sunspots seem to give lightning a boost. But exactly how solar activity stimulates strikes is an enduring mystery.
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The solar wind and sunspots seem to give lightning a boost. But exactly how solar activity stimulates strikes is an enduring mystery.
The stomp rocket–like mechanism is a newly observed type of eruption.
Oxygen ratios in ancient zircon crystals suggest that the planet’s water cycle got started hundreds of millions of years earlier than thought.
The salty water, just 3.6 degrees Celsius above the ice’s melting point, is undermining the foundation of the Antarctic glacier.
The book explains how the race for ocean resources from fish to ores to new medicines — the Blue Acceleration — is playing out.
Decreased protection from cosmic radiation may have increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere and oceans, allowing animals to grow larger.
A volcanic eruption at Yellowstone is unlikely anytime soon, but evidence is growing that a violent hydrothermal, or steam, explosion is possible.
Experiments in mini greenhouses show how the tiny organisms lurking underground in a "sleepy biome" could be a contributor to climate change.
Land managers in the western United States are using potential operational delineations, or PODS, to prepare for — and take advantage of — wildfires.
Giant hail that pummeled northeast Spain in August 2022 could not have formed without climate change, computer simulations suggest.
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