Earth

  1. Space

    Meteorites could have thickened primordial soup

    New experiments show that extraterrestrial impacts that occurred early in our planet's history could have created the raw materials for life.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Honeybee CSI: Why dead bodies can’t be found

    Virus could explain one symptom of colony collapse.

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  3. Life

    Protect biodiversity hot spots and the rest will follow

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  4. Earth

    The Hunt for Habitable Planets

    Here and now, a new suite of small telescopes are poised to look for Earthlike planets beyond the solar system.

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  5. Earth

    Methane even escapes from freezing permafrost

    An extended field season reveals that the autumn freeze in the arctic squeezes methane from some high-latitude wetland soils, a match even for summertime methane release.

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  6. Earth

    Toxicologist to Become an NIH Director

    A new director — equal parts scientist and communicator — will take over environmental-health agency.

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  7. Earth

    Unveiling hidden craters

    Earth is regularly bombarded by small meteorites, but most of the resulting craters are hard to find. A team reports finding one such crater in the forests of west-central Alberta.

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  8. Chemistry

    Nanosilver disinfects — but at what price?

    Silver demonstrates some unusual immunological impacts at the nanoscale.

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  9. Earth

    Marine pollution spawns ‘wonky babies’

    Featured blog: Pollutants at sea can slow critters' sperm or induce DNA damage.

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  10. Earth

    Plate tectonics got an early start

    The chemistry of minerals preserved in Australian rocks suggests tectonic activity for Earth’s earliest eon.

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  11. Earth

    Antidepressants make for sad fish

    Fish may suffer substantially from even brief encounters with antidepressants, which wastewater releases into river water.

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  12. Paleontology

    Bacteria may play big role in forming fossils

    Bacteria can build a biofilm that preserves a tissue's structure.

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