Earth science
Jimi Hendrix called it the 'Third Stone from the Sun', James Lovelock knows it as Gaia, and to us it is our home, planet Earth. The atmosphere is a relatively thin blanket of gas, held in place by the Earth's gravity. Earth science is the study of rocks and minerals in the Earth's crust and plate tectonics looks at how movements of crust cause earthquakes and volcanoes. The 'Blue Marble' photo taken by Apollo 17 is sometimes credited for starting the modern conservation movement, because it underlines how isolated and fragile our planet is.
What was the first ever 'sea' actually like?
It's not the sea as you see it – more like a primordial goo
Deadly 'fire thunderstorms' are forming across the US. And cities may be powerless to stop them
Mega-firestorms are erupting around the globe. And we’re not prepared
Why the US may be unprepared for a deadly storm season
As storm season begins, America's weather service is still reeling from sweeping cuts. And the consequences could be fatal
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Does Earth have a heartbeat?
'Microseisms' are still baffling scientists, decades after their discovery
What speed am I travelling, right now?
Turns out, it is much more difficult than you might imagine to accurately assess how quickly you're moving through space
What's the best way to measure an earthquake?
It revolutionised how we measure earthquakes in 1935 – so why have seismologists almost entirely abandoned it?
The $50m time-travelling gamble to save the Amazon rainforest
An ambitious project about to get underway intends to see how the trees will respond to the CO2 levels of the future
A global food crisis is nearing – and the warning signs are buried beneath your feet
The world's soils are degrading fast, and until now we've had almost no way of knowing what's happening underground
Something ‘unprecedented’ is now happening to Earth’s rotation, scientists say
Climate change is slowing Earth's spin – and there's nothing quite like it in 3.6 million years
What's the world's longest oil spill?
The largest oil spill on planet Earth isn't man-made and releases around 17 tonnes of oil into the sea every day for the last 500,000 years
Earth’s magnetic field is overdue a flip. Should we be worried?
From time to time, the Earth's magnetic poles flip, leaving us without a protective magnetic field for up to centuries
A mysterious Amazonian soil is making trees grow six times taller – and nobody knows why
The mysterious, nutrient-rich soil of the Amazons might hold the secret to fight climate change
A mega-building in China is now so large that it's slowing Earth's spin
It's even changing how long a day is
An ancient Maya ‘codex’ keeps predicting future events with eerie accuracy
The Maya civilisation is known for its art and architecture. But as we decipher their surviving cultural relics, we’re discovering Maya astronomy was even more advanced than we had imagined
A strange leak in Earth’s core may be pushing ancient gold upward
Precious metals may be escaping from the planet’s core. This hotly debated subject could help us understand Earth’s evolution and determine whether life exists elsewhere in the Universe
Why sinking cities may now be a bigger climate crisis than rising seas
A hidden force is causing highly populated river deltas to sink. In many cases, the subsidence is happening faster than the sea is rising
How whales, vodka and volcanic ice blocks could soon solve the carbon crisis
From living paint to injecting rocks, scientists have bizarre carbon capture ideas that could help us tackle the climate crisis
Massive climate-induced earthquakes are brewing beneath our biggest cities. Are we prepared?
Climate change isn’t just warming the planet; it’s shaking Earth’s foundations
Was the sea always blue?
Several billion years ago, tiny little creatures may have changed the colour of the ocean
Major ‘megafires’ are now primed to ignite across the US. All it needs is a spark
The US is a tinderbox, just waiting to go up in flames
Here's how scientists are rewriting the origin story of Earth & life itself
Although key details are missing from the story of how our Solar System formed, recent discoveries are helping scientists fill in the blanks and understand how rare it is.
These are science’s boldest ideas to cool our heating planet
As Earth's climate continues to warm, experts are increasingly wondering if we could, and should, take more drastic action and start tinkering with the planet in the hope of saving it
A new mega-earthquake hotspot could be forming beneath the Atlantic
Mysterious earthquakes in the region have long gone unexplained
We can't predict when a mega-tsunami will strike. Here's why
The Kamchatka earthquake in July was the sixth-largest ever recorded, yet no major tsunami materialised despite millions of evacuations
