Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Ecosystems
Fewer worms live in mud littered with lots of microplastics
The environmental effects of microplastic pollution are still hazy, but new long-term, outdoor experiments could help clear matters up.
- Life
Engineered honeybee gut bacteria trick attackers into self-destructing
Tailored microbes defend bees with a gene-silencing process called RNA interference that takes on viruses or mites.
- Earth
Tiny meteorites suggest ancient Earth had a carbon dioxide–rich atmosphere
Simulations of reactions between 2.7-billion-year-old micrometeorites and atmospheric gases hint Archean Earth’s atmosphere had high levels of CO2.
- Archaeology
Mount Vesuvius may have suffocated, not vaporized, some victims
A new study suggests people living near Pompeii who hid in stone boathouses died a slower death when the volcano erupted in A.D. 79.
- Earth
Fed by human-caused erosion, many river deltas are growing
Deforestation and river damming are changing the shape of river deltas around the globe.
- Earth
A 2.2-billion-year-old crater is Earth’s oldest recorded meteorite impact
The newly dated Yarrabubba crater in Western Australia extends Earth’s impact record by more than 200 million years.
- Earth
Volcanic gas bursts probably didn’t kill off the dinosaurs
A new timeline for massive bursts of volcanic gases suggests the Deccan Traps eruptions weren’t the real dinosaur killer 66 million years ago.
- Earth
2019 was the second-warmest year on record
2019 was the second-warmest year on record, ending a decade that topped 140 years of heat records.
- Life
The ‘Blob,’ a massive marine heat wave, led to an unprecedented seabird die-off
Scientists have linked thousands of dead common murres in 2015–2016 to food web changes caused by a long-lasting marine heat wave nicknamed the Blob.
- Archaeology
After the Notre Dame fire, scientists get a glimpse of the cathedral’s origins
Researchers will tackle the scientific questions behind rebuilding Notre Dame, and learn more about its history.
- Animals
Australian fires have incinerated the habitats of up to 100 threatened species
Hundreds of fires that are blazing across the continent’s southeast have created an unprecedented ecological disaster, scientists say.
- Earth
Wildfires could flip parts of the Amazon from a carbon sponge to a source by 2050
Climate change and deforestation could double the area burned by fire in the southern Amazon by 2050, flipping the forest from carbon sponge to source.
