Earth

  1. Earth

    Asteroids boiled young Earth’s oceans, remnant rocks suggest

    Giant asteroid impacts may have boiled Earth’s oceans around 3.3 billion years ago, snuffing out near-surface life.

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  2. Oceans

    Mysterious form of phosphorus explained

    Mysterious form of phosphorus may be used as shadow currency by marine microbes, potentially upending scientists’ understanding of nutrient exchanges.

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  3. Animals

    An island in the Maldives is made of parrotfish poop

    Coral-eating parrotfish create much of the sediment that a reef island is made of, a new study finds.

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  4. Earth

    Another strong quake strikes Nepal

    A magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit eastern Nepal on May 12, just 17 days after one that killed more than 8,000 people in the region.

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  5. Climate

    Flood planners should not forget beavers

    Beaver dams can reduce flooding downstream, new research shows.

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  6. Microbes

    Pig farm workers at greater risk for drug-resistant staph

    Pig farm workers are six times as likely to carry multidrug-resistant staph than workers who have no contact with pigs.

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  7. Climate

    Rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide rise unprecedented

    The current rate of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere is unprecedented over at least the last 66 million years, new research shows.

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  8. Astronomy

    Wandering planets, the smell of rain and more reader feedback

    Readers consider how hard it would be to fashion Paleolithic tools, discuss what to call free-floating worlds and more.

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  9. Physics

    Scientists take first picture of thunder

    Scientists precisely capture thunder sound waves radiating from artificially triggered lightning.

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  10. Animals

    Lazy sunfish are actually active predators

    Ocean sunfish were once thought to be drifting eaters of jellyfish. But they’re not, new research shows.

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  11. Physics

    Explanation for G’s imprecision stumbles

    A surprising new result seems to suggest that subtle changes in Earth’s rotation rate could account for physicists’ difficulty in measuring Newton’s gravitational constant. But some confusion with dates appears to derail the finding.

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  12. Earth

    Cosmic rays illuminate lightning

    Radio waves emitted by particles zipping through thunderstorms allow physicists to probe thunderclouds and, perhaps eventually, learn what triggers lightning strikes.

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