Earth

  1. Earth

    Science finds many tricks for traveling to the past

    Our editor in chief discusses what science can tell us about the past.

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  2. Earth

    New scenario proposed for birth of Pacific Plate

    The Pacific tectonic plate formed at the junction of three other plates and above of the remains of a submerged plate, geophysicists propose.

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  3. Earth

    Iron-loving elements tell stories of Earth’s history

    By studying geochemical footprints of rare elements, researchers get a glimpse of the planet’s evolution.

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  4. Oceans

    Sea ice algae drive the Arctic food web

    Even organisms that don’t depend on sea ice depend on sea ice algae, a new study finds. But Arctic sea ice is disappearing.

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  5. Earth

    Ancient air bubbles could revise history of Earth’s oxygen

    Pockets of ancient air trapped in rock salt for around 815 million years suggest that oxygen was abundant well before the first animals appear in the fossil record.

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  6. Earth

    How dinosaurs hopped across an ocean

    Land bridges may have once allowed dinosaurs and other animals to travel between North America and Europe around 150 million years ago, a researcher proposes.

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  7. Climate

    Phytoplankton’s response to climate change has its ups and downs

    In a four-year experiment, the shell-building activities of a phytoplankton species underwent surprising ups and downs.

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  8. Oceans

    Underwater city was built by microbes, not people

    Submerged stoneworklike formations near the Greek island of Zakynthos were built by methane-munching microbes, not ancient Greeks.

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  9. Animals

    Lionfish invasion comes to the Mediterranean

    Scientists had thought that the Mediterranean was too cold for lionfish to permanently settle there. But now they’ve found a population of the fish off Cyprus.

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  10. Chemistry

    Nuclear bomb debris can reveal blast size, even decades later

    Measuring the relative abundance of various elements in debris left over from nuclear bomb tests can reveal the energy released in the initial blast, researchers report.

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  11. Climate

    Warming alters mountain plant’s sex ratios

    Global warming has different effects on male and female plants. Tracking sex ratio shifts could be a fast signal of climate change, researchers say.

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  12. Climate

    Despite volcanic setback, Antarctic ozone hole healing

    The September extent of the Antarctic ozone hole has shrunk by about 4.5 million square kilometers since 2000, thanks in large part to the Montreal Protocol.

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