- Melting Of The Greenland Ice Sheet Mapped: Will all of the ice on Greenland melt and flow out into the sea, bringing about a colossal rise in ocean levels on Earth, as the global temperature rises?
- Patterns In Mars Crater Floors Give Picture Of Drying Lakes: Networks of giant polygonal troughs etched across crater basins on Mars have been identified as desiccation cracks caused by evaporating lakes, providing further evidence of a warmer, wetter Martian past.
- First Solid Evidence For A Rocky Exoplanet: The longest set of High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph measurements ever made has firmly established the nature of the smallest and fastest-orbiting exoplanet known, CoRoT-7b
- Rock Solid Planet: New measurements provide the first solid evidence for a rocky extrasolar planet and CoRoT-7b has a composition similar to that of Earth’s interior.
- Moonquake Mystery Deepens: Seismometers placed on the moon by Apollo astronauts have recorded hundreds of moonquakes even though the moon was believed to be seismically dead. It turns out that moonquakes may have more in common with earthquakes than once thought.
- Re-examining The Burgess Shale: A hundred years after it was discovered, the world’s most famous fossil site still holds surprises.
- Geologists Assess Yosemite Hotel Rockfall Risk: The Ahwahnee Hotel, a landmark Yosemite lodge, closed following a series of landslides that peppered the storied building's parking lot with boulders - one the size of two SUVs.
- Prehistoric Tail Swingers Had Sweet Spot: Both glyptodonts and dinosaurs wielding spiked tails possessed a lethal tail sweet spot, technically known as the centre of percussion.
- Runway Reveals How Pterodactyls Land: Palaeontologists have just identified the world's first known landing runway for a pterosaur. It reveals nearly every move the pterosaur made after it returned from Late Jurassic skies - 161 to 145 million years ago.
- New Finds From Germany's Messel Pit: Some astonishingly well-preserved fossil finds recently recovered from the Messel shales, laid down in a former volcanic lake, add exotic colour and diversity to the Eocene world of 47 million years ago.
- Kamikaze Planet: Astronomers have found a giant planet orbiting so close to its parent star that it's bound to spiral inward to its doom or else be ripped to shreds by the star's gravity.
- Extrasolar Planets At Full Tilt: The presence of advanced life on Earth may be contingent on our planetary system having avoided the brunt of planet-planet scatter.
- Mars, Methane and Mysteries: The discovery of methane means that either there is life on Mars, or that volcanic activity continues to generate heat below the martian surface. Either outcome is big news.
- Meteorite Found On Mars Yields Clues About Planet's Past: Mars Rover Opportunity is investigating a metallic meteorite the size of a large watermelon that is providing more details about the Red Planet's environmental history.
- Pterosaur Features Defy Comparison: A well-preserved pterosaur with soft tissues reveals this flying reptile had hair, claws and wings that were unlike anything seen on today's living animals.
- Exoplanet CoRoT-7b Has Rocky Surface: The smallest planet yet detected outside our Solar System appears to have a solid surface.
- Super-Earths?: Astronomers have found a handful of "Super-Earths" - possibly terrestrial planets with masses two to 15 times that of Earth. But will super-Earths turn out to be much like Earth at all?
- Planet-Hunting Spacecraft Shows Its Stuff: The Kepler orbiting observatory's mission is to seek out smaller worlds more like our own, ideally in comfortable, life-enabling orbits in their respective stars' so-called habitable zone.
- Mapping The Globe's Soils: The lack of good information on global soils is hampering efforts to improve agriculture and combat climate change.
- Surface Features On Titan Form Like Earth's: Titan looks more like the Earth than any other body in the Solar System, despite the huge differences in temperature and other environmental conditions.
- Long Debate Ended Over Cause, Demise Of Ice Ages?: Researchers have largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years.
- Chicken-Hearted Tyrants: Were Predatory Dinosaurs Baby Killers?
- Latest Case For Martian Life May Just Be Hot Air: Scientists have discovered that methane in the martian atmosphere, one of the primary signals that biological processes may be at work today on the red planet, is behaving in unexplainable ways.
- Titan May Host Prebiotic Brew: Evidence from flybys suggests the Saturnian moon’s environment is similar to that of the early Earth.
- The Southwest's Best-Kept Secret: Ditch the city for a week and enjoy the forgotten natural landscape of America at Canyonlands National Park, a haven for rockhounds in southeastern Utah.
- Asteroid Belt Home To Displaced Comets: Many of the primitive bodies wandering the asteroid belt are actually former comets, tossed out of orbit by the giant outer planets.
- Fossilized Dung Balls Reveal Secret Ecology Of Lost World: A new study of 30-million-year-old-fossil 'mega-dung' from extinct giant South American mammals reveals evidence of complex ecological interactions and theft of dung-beetles' food stores by other animals.
- 'Invisibility Cloak' Could Protect Against Earthquakes: A new technology controls the path of surface waves which are the most damaging and responsible for much of the destruction which follows earthquakes.
- Geothermal To Deliver Clean Power Generation?: A new method for capturing significantly more heat from low-temperature geothermal resources holds promise for generating virtually pollution-free electrical energy.
- Ancient Climate-Change Event Puzzles Scientists: An unexplained warming 55 million years ago haunts the paleoclimate record.
- Redefining Quaternary: The Quaternary Period - the geologic time period that includes human evolution up to the present - is now a bit longer than it used to be.
- Radioactive Countertops?: Nothing says class like a thick slab of polished granite. The stone is so durable. So chic. So modern. So...radioactive?
- Green Power Saved Earth From Iceball Fate: Vegetation helped save Earth from runaway cooling that would have encased the planet in ice.
- Scientists Discover Three New Aussie Dinosaurs: Palaeontologists have unveiled three new Australian dinosaur skeletons. The research puts Australian back on the palaeontology map and describes Australia's fauna before it separated from the supercontinent Gondwana.
- Ice Volume Of Switzerland’s Glaciers Calculated: Switzerland's glaciers have lost twelve percent of their ice volume since 1999.
- Mummified Dinosaur Skin Yields Up New Secrets: Scientists have identified preserved organic molecules in the skin of a hadrosaur dinosaur that died around 66 million years ago.
- Did An Ancient Volcano Freeze Earth?: One fine day about 74,000 years ago, a giant volcano on Sumatra blew its top. The volcano, named Toba, may have ejected 1000 times more rock and other material than Mount St. Helens in Washington state did in 1980.
- Finally, An Average Black Hole: Heavyweight and lightweight black holes abound in the universe, but nobody had detected a middleweight - and some scientists argue they don't exist. Now, astronomers have found the first conclusive evidence for one of these elusive objects at the fringe of a distant galaxy.
- Volcanic Blasts Kicked Off Modern Ice Ages: A series of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions gave the planet its polar ice caps, and started a freeze-thaw cycle of ice ages that persists to this day.
- Evidence Found Of Lake On Mars: A long, deep canyon and the remains of beaches are perhaps the clearest evidence yet of a standing lake on the surface of Mars.
- Can Captured Carbon Save Coal-Fired Power?: Extracting carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust and storing it underground may be the only hope to avoid a climate change catastrophe caused by burning fossil fuels.
- Dinosaurs May Have Been Smaller Than Previously Thought: Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.
- Ice Sheets Can Retreat 'In A Geologic Instant': Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat.
- Martian Lightning: Scientists have seen the first direct evidence of lightning on Mars, in the form of electrical discharges during a Martian dust storm.
- Bird In The Hand: Fossilized fingers strengthen evolutionary link between dinosaurs and avian relatives.
- New Element For Periodic Table: Scientists around the world are celebrating the latest entry to the periodic table. It's taken more than a decade for element 112, the biggest and heaviest atom yet, to be officially recognised.
- Space Trash To Blast Moon In Search For Water: A spent rocket stage from the LCROSS probe launch will crash into a shadowed crater at the lunar south pole, whose surface has not seen sunlight in two billion years. A plume of debris will puff into space and be analyzed by the probe's cameras and spectometers.
- New Definition Could Further Limit Habitable Zones Around Distant Suns: Scientists believe liquid water is essential for life. But a planet also must have plate tectonics to pull excess carbon from its atmosphere and confine it in rocks to prevent runaway greenhouse warming.
- Planet-Forming Disk Discovered Orbiting Twin Suns: Binary star system V4046 Sagittarii provides strong evidence that planets can form around binary stars, which expands the number of places we can look for extrasolar planets. Somewhere in our galaxy, an alien world may enjoy double sunrises and double sunsets.
- Fossil Bone Bed Helps Reconstruct Life Along California's Ancient Coastline: Sharktooth Hill near Bakersfield, Calif., is the home of the most extensive marine bone bed in the world, a 100-square-mile layer of shark, seal, ray, whale, turtle and fish bones.
- Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-Bird Links: Researchers have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.
- Alien Visitor From Afar: Even the most unassuming neighbor can hide a giant secret. New calculations of the orbit of a dim, extremely low-mass star just 300 light-years from the solar system suggest the body may be a runaway from another galaxy.
- Solar System's Future Could Be Bumpy: It’s happened before, and it could happen again: Planets in the inner solar system may collide if gravitational interactions substantially disturb now-stable orbits.
- Unlikely Suns Reveal Improbable Planets: Astronomers are finding planets where there were not supposed to be any.
- Evidence Mounts For Liquid Interior Of A Saturn Moon: Swooping within 25 kilometers of Enceladus, the Cassini spacecraft has obtained additional evidence that the interior of this tiny, icy moon of Saturn may contain liquid water.
- A More Organic Meteorite: Some meteorites may contain more formic acid, a precursor to life, than previously thought.
- Early Modern Human Ate Neanderthal Child: The evidence, which includes teeth and a carefully butchered jawbone from a site in France, could represent the world's first known biological proof of direct contact between the two groups.
- Asteroid Attack 3.9 Billion Years Ago May Have Enhanced Early Life On Earth: The bombardment of Earth nearly 4 billion years ago by asteroids as large as Kansas would not have had the firepower to extinguish potential early life on the planet and may even have given it a boost.
- Earth's Hadean Era Not So Bad For Life: Analyses of chemical and isotopic records preserved in tiny rock crystals have shown that conditions as early as a couple of hundred million years after the moon's formation were relatively mild and possibly conducive to life.
- "Revolutionary" Fossil Fails to Dazzle Paleontologists: No proof the much-hyped "Ida" find is a missing link between humans and early primates say experts.
- Coal Supply May Be Vastly Overestimated: The world's coal supply suggests reserves may be vastly overestimated and we could be facing an unprecedented global energy crisis.
- Our Planet's Leaky Atmosphere: As Earth's air slowly trickles away into space, will our planet come to look like Venus?
- Melting Threat From West Antarctic Ice Sheet: While a total or partial collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a result of warming would not raise global sea levels as high as some predict, levels on the U.S. seaboards would rise 25 percent more than the global average and threaten cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.
- Termites And Protozoa Discovered Together In Ancient Amber: The analysis of a termite entombed for 100 million years in an ancient piece of amber has revealed the oldest example of "mutualism" ever discovered between an animal and microorganism.
- Competition May Have Led To New Dinosaur Species: The discovery of a gruesome feeding frenzy that played out 73 million years ago in northwestern Alberta may also lead to the discovery of new dinosaur species there.
- Recent Rivers On The Red Planet: Young valley networks indicate water coursed not long ago on Mars.
- Fossil Fuel Use Must Fall To 25%: The world will have to reduce its use of fossil fuels to less than a quarter of the proven reserves by 2050 if it wants to stay within 'safe' climate change limits.
- The Contradictions Between The Creationist Movements: A skeptic engages three types of creationists who claim science supports their beliefs.
- Analysis Finds Strong Match Between Molecular And Fossil Data In Evolutionary Studies: For more than two decades, debate has waxed and waned between biologists and paleontologists about the reliability of their different methods. Until now, attention has focused on the dramatically different evolutionary history of certain lineages as determined by fossils or by genetics.
- Lake Tahoe Region May Be Due For Major Earthquake: New studies suggest a magnitude 7 earthquake occurs every 2,000 to 3,000 years in the basin, and that the largest fault in the basin, West Tahoe, appears to have last ruptured between 4,100 and 4,500 years ago.
- Did Mars's Magnetic Field Die With A Whimper Or A Bang?: Giant asteroids may have wiped out Mars's magnetic field, the energy released by massive collisions upsetting the heat flow in the Red Planet's iron core that once generated a magnetic field.
- A Limit For Carbon Emissions: To reduce risks of severe damage from climate change, humans should burn no more than 1 trillion tons of carbon in total.
- Messenger’s Second Pass: Another Mercury flyby reveals details about the planet’s magnetic field and geology.
- Despite Forecast, Quake Predictions On Shaky Ground: A scientist little known in earthquake circles made a bold prediction of a destructive earthquake in the Abruzzo region of central Italy based on spikes in radon gas.
- Twin Spacecraft To Explore Secret Of Moon's Origin: Two places on opposite sides of Earth may hold the secret to how the moon was born. NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft are about to enter these zones, known as the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points.
- Nickel Down, Oxygen Up: A decrease in the amount of dissolved nickel in ocean waters beginning 2.7 billion years ago could have stifled methane-producing bacteria and set the scene for oxidation of the Earth’s atmosphere.
- Mount Redoubt Erupts 5 Times: Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano erupted five times overnight, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles into the air in the volcano's first emissions in nearly 20 years.
- Fossil Fragments Reveal 500-Million-Year-Old Monster Predator: Hurdia victoria was originally described in 1912 as a crustacean-like animal. Now, researchers reveal it to be just one part of a complex and remarkable new animal that has an important story to tell about the origin of the largest group of living animals, the arthropods.
- Giant Ice Sheet Is Safe... For Now: Historical data and a new model show a long, slow slide for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
- Brines on Mars: Unusually high concentration of perchlorate salts found in Martian soil suggests that the Red Planet may harbor shallow, extremely briny oceans just below its surface. The existence of these brines may explain a host of puzzles on Mars.
- Mars Rover Spirit Faces Circuitous Route: Loose soil piled against the northern edge of a low plateau called "Home Plate" has blocked NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit from taking the shortest route toward its southward destinations for the upcoming Martian summer and following winter.
- Kepler Mission Rockets To Space In Search Of Other Earths: Kepler is designed to find the first Earth-size planets orbiting stars at distances where water could pool on the planet's surface.
- The Catastrophe That Wasn't: New sedimentary analyses suggest the great Permian extinction dragged on.
- Fossil Fish Reveal Prehistoric Lovemaking: Fish have been doing it for more than 380 million years and palaeontologists now know how.
- Controversy Over World’s Oldest Traces Of Life: The argument over whether an outcrop of rock in South West Greenland contains the earliest known traces of life on Earth has been reignited.
- Solar System Pinball: Large gaps in the main asteroid belt reveal that outer planets have altered their orbits.
- Archaeopteryx Heard Like A Bird: The earliest known bird, the magpie-sized Archaeopteryx, had a similar hearing range to the modern emu, which suggests that the 145 million-year-old creature - despite its reptilian teeth and long tail - was more birdlike than reptilian.
- How Martian Winds Make Rocks Walk: Figuring out how pebble-sized rocks organize themselves in evenly-spaced patterns in sand seemed simple at first...
- The Flashiest Dino of Them All: In what may be the first example of a peacocklike display, researchers are reporting the earliest evidence of a creature that used feathers for showing off. The animal, a 125-million-year-old long-necked bipedal dinosaur named Beipiaosaurus, may have employed the plumage to attract mates or defend its territory.
- Dinosaur Fossil Reveals Creature Of A Different Feather: Paleontologists have discovered a fossil partially covered with broad, unbranched filaments - a type of structure previously theorized to exist on primitive feathered dinosaurs but not found until now.
- Swarm Of Small Earthquakes Rattles Yellowstone National Park: A notable swarm of earthquakes has been underway since December 26, 2008 beneath Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park. A total of more than 250 events large enough to be located have occurred in this swarm. Reliable depths of the larger events are up to a few miles.
- Did A Comet Hit Earth 12,000 Years Ago?: Roughly 12,900 years ago, massive global cooling kicked in abruptly, along with the end of the line for some 35 different mammal species. Nanodiamonds found across North America suggest this major climate change could have been cosmically instigated.
- Beyond The Shadow Of A Doubt? Dark Energy Independently Confirmed: The gravitationally repulsive presence, thought to make up most of the universe, shows its effect on the development of galaxy clusters.
- Dark Energy Pushing Universe Apart: New findings boost the theory that dark energy is pushing apart all the matter in the universe and will continue doing so until no other galaxies except the nearby Andromeda galaxy will be visible from Earth.
- Moon’s Polar Craters Could Hold Lunar Ice: Data from the Lunar Prospector space probe shows that hydrogen on the moon is concentrated into polar craters. If the hydrogen is present as water ice, then the average concentration in some craters corresponds to ten grams of ice in each kilogram of moon rock.
- Life On Mars? Elusive Mineral Bolsters Chances: A research team has found evidence of carbonates, a long-sought mineral that shows Mars was home to a variety of watery environments - some benign, others harsh - and that the acidic bath the planet endured left at least some regional pockets unscathed.
- Polygamy, Paternal Care In Birds Linked To Dinosaur Ancestors: Researchers connect the evolutionary dots linking the polygamous, paternal reproductive patterns of extant birds to the behavior of their extinct dinosaur kin.
- Dinosaur Dads Took Care Of Nest: Surprising finding shows paternal care in birdlike dinos.
- Scientists Abandon Global Warming 'Lie': A United Nations climate change conference in Poland is about to get a surprise from 650 leading scientists who scoff at doomsday reports of man-made global warming - labeling them variously a lie, a hoax and part of a new religion.
- Hubble Spots CO2 On Extrasolar Planet: Carbon dioxide has been found in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star, a finding that could help astronomers pinpoint the location of extraterrestrial life.
- Titan's Volcanoes Give Cassini Spacecraft Chilly Reception: Data collected during several recent flybys of Titan by the Cassini spacecraft have put another arrow in the quiver of scientists who think the Saturnian moon contains active cryovolcanoes spewing a super-chilled liquid into its atmosphere.
- As Ice Melts, Antarctic Bedrock Is On The Move: As ice melts away from Antarctica, parts of the continental bedrock are rising in response - and other parts are sinking - a finding that will give much needed perspective to satellite instruments that measure ice loss on the continent, and help improve estimates of future sea level rise.
- NASA Delays Next Mission to Mars: Technical glitches have forced a two-year delay to 2011 for the scheduled launch of the Mars Science Lab, a landmark mission which aims to assess whether microbial life ever existed on the red planet and whether it still exists today.
- Rock and Roil: A new study suggests that extreme chemical reactions fired up by meteorite impacts may have jump-started life in the early oceans, rather than delivering its building blocks preformed.
- Meteorites Could Have Thickened Primordial Soup: In recent geological ages, large extraterrestrial bodies colliding with Earth have been associated with worldwide extinctions, but new experiments show that massive impacts that occurred early in our planet's history could have created the raw materials for life.
- Carbon Dioxide Helped Ancient Earth Escape Deathly Deep Freeze: The planet’s present day greenhouse scourge may have played a vital role in helping ancient Earth to escape from complete glaciation.
- New Giant Toothless Pterosaur Species Discovered: A new species of pterosaur has been identified, the largest of its kind to ever be found. It represents an entirely new genus of these flying reptiles that ruled the skies 115 million years ago.
- Another Big One for Indonesia?: Bad news for the survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami: Neither the giant earthquake that triggered the killer wave nor the hundreds of smaller temblors that followed have exhausted the area's pent-up seismic energy.
- Lasers Uncover Craters: New technology pinpoints previously unknown meteor impacts.
- Martian Stairs Suggest Predictable Ancient Climate: Several outcrops of Martian rocks do resemble stairs, showing a regular pattern that suggests the ancient climate on the Red Planet wasn't always a hellish amalgam of cataclysmic floods, volcanic eruptions and crater-gouging impacts.
- Marine Organisms Found In Ancient Amber: Scientists have discovered a menagerie of perfectly intact marine microorganisms trapped in tree resin at least 100 million years ago, pushing back by at least 20 million years the period when a type of single-cell algae called diatoms are known to have appeared on Earth.
- From Bad To Worse: The 38 countries that pledged to restrain their emissions of climate change inducing greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide, are failing.
- Billions Of Particles Of Anti-matter Created In Laboratory: Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear.
- Gamma-Ray Evidence Suggests Ancient Mars Had Massive Oceans: An international team of scientists who analyzed data from the Gamma Ray Spectrometer onboard NASA's Mars Odyssey reports new evidence for the controversial idea that oceans once covered about a third of ancient Mars.
- Earth's Minerals Evolved, Too: From the copper-stained rocks of the Grand Canyon to the newly discovered 10-meter-long crystals of calcium sulfate under Naica Mountain in Mexico, the vast majority of Earth's minerals owe their existence to life.
- Astronomers See Exoplanets For First Time: For 13 years, astronomers have inferred only the presence of planets circling other stars. Now, they have finally spotted them with their own eyes.
- Subglacial Lakes Flood, Glaciers Speed Up: Scientists link increase in Antarctic ice flow rate to water movements deep below.
- Dusty Shock Waves Generate Planet Ingredients: The Spitzer Space Telescope has detected crystals of the quartz polymorphs cristobalite and tridymite around young stars just beginning to form planets.
- Could Rocks Sponge Carbon Dioxide From Air?: Studies reveal the mantle rock peridotite could be harnessed to soak up huge quantities of globe-warming carbon dioxide.
- Stalagmite Is Scribe For Monsoons, Society: A volleyball-sized stalagmite taken from a cave in northern China has given scientists insight about how the region’s precipitation has varied - and possibly influenced the rise and fall of various dynasties - for the past 1,800 years.
- Eight-Armed Animal Preceded Dinosaurs: Scientists have discovered what they believe is an eight-armed creature, which colonised a large section of the world's oceans over 300 million years before the first dinosaurs emerged.
- Messenger Glimpses Mercury’s Western Hemisphere: The results are in from the Messenger spacecraft's second flyby of Mercury, one of the least-explored planets in the solar system.
- Stone Age Innovation Out Of Africa: Researchers have dated two innovative Stone Age tool industries in southern Africa that may have helped spur human migrations out of Africa.
- Oldest Evidence For Complex Life In Doubt: Chemical biomarkers in ancient Australian rocks, once thought to be the oldest known evidence of complex life on Earth, may have infiltrated long after the sediments were laid down.
- First Planets Lived Fast And Died Young: Surprising findings from some of the oldest known meteorites suggest that our solar system was once chock-full of miniature planets, complete with metallic cores and rocky crusts.
- Opals On Mars Reveal Red Planet's Wet Past: Opal-like deposits spotted on Mars indicate the planet may have been wet for a billion years longer than previously thought.
- Mars Held Its Water: New satellite data suggest a much longer wet spell for the Red Planet.
- A Disaster Spelled Out In Sand: Geologists find clues to earlier Southeast Asian tsunamis embedded in soil.
- Rock Shows Earth Got Off To A Hot Start: There are two opposing theories on the origin of komatiites, a rare magmatic rock that formed during the first half of the Earth's history. The controversy over how komatiites formed has been solved using synchrotron technology.
- New Fossil Reveals Primates Lingered In Texas: More than 40 million years ago, primates preferred Texas to northern climates that were significantly cooling.
- Waterless Concrete Seen As Building Block On Moon: A new article demonstrates a concept of creating concrete structures on the lunar surface without the use of water.
- Brain Structure Provides Key To Unraveling Function Of Bizarre Dinosaur Crests: Paleontologists have long debated the function of the strange, bony crests on the heads of the duck-billed dinosaurs known as lambeosaurs.
- Volcanoes May Have Provided Sparks Of First Life: New research suggests that lightening and volcanoes may have sparked early life on Earth.
- Primordial Soup Lives Again: Newly analyzed vials hosted contents of an experiment testing whether life could originate in a volcano’s local environment.
- How Tiktaalik Got Its Neck: New details on how fish got tough enough for land.
- Earliest Animal Footprints Uncovered: Scientists have found the oldest fossilised tracks of a tiny legged animal, providing further evidence that complex creatures existed on earth 570 million years ago.
- Not-So-Permafrost: New estimates show that frozen Arctic soil contains far more potential greenhouse gas than previously recognized - and could speed climate change as it melts
- Yellowstone's Ancient Supervolcano 'Lukewarm': New research indicates the Yellowstone hotspot is 'only' 50 to 200 degrees Celsius hotter than its surroundings.
- Did Rumbling Give Rise To Rome?: Thirteen of fifteen major ancient civilizations clustered mostly along tectonic boundaries.
- Firm Evidence That Earth's Core Is Solid : Long-sought seismic waves confirm models of Earth's structure.
- Time To Chill: New fossil finds from an ancient lake indicate when Antarctica dipped below freezing.
- Titan Has Liquid Surface Lake: The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer on the Cassini orbiter reveals that a 7,800 square mile lake-like feature in the south polar region of Saturn's moon Titan is truly wet.
- Clarity, Color, Cut, Carat and Chromosomes?: Billions of years ago, the surface of diamonds may have provided just the right conditions to foster the chemical reactions believed to have given rise to life on Earth.
- Take A Deep Breath - And Thank Mount Everest: Next time you pause to view a scenic mountain vista, consider that the oxygen your lungs are taking in resulted from the same process that raised those peaks.
- Where There's Smoke, There's Ice: Smoke transported to the Arctic from northern forest fires may cool the surface for several weeks to months at a time, according to the most detailed analysis yet of how smoke influences the Arctic climate relative to the amount of snow and ice cover.
- Come On In, The Water's Fine: From a sweltering Jacuzzi to a tepid bath. When the world's oceans experienced such a drop in temperature almost a half-billion years ago, life exploded.
- Dinos: Ahead Of The Evolutionary Curve?: A new analysis challenges the idea that dinosaur diversity boomed at the same time flowering plants began taking root across Earth.
- Sahara Desert Dust Storms Sustain Life In Atlantic Ocean: The dust fertilises the North Atlantic with minerals that allow phytoplankton to recyle organic phosphorous, a highly reactive chemical that is scarce in sea water.
- Volcanic Eruptions May Have Wiped Out Ocean Life 94 Million Years Ago: Undersea volcanic activity triggered a mass extinction of marine life and buried a thick mat of organic matter on the sea floor about 93 million years ago, which became a major source of oil.
- Moon Walkers Face Dust Health Hazard: Lunar astronauts reported irritation and discomfort from exposure to ubiquitous sharp-edged, chemically active moon dust, with symptoms ranging from sneezing, watery eyes and a peculiar smell resembling gunpowder.
- Saturn Moon May Host An Ocean: Enceladus' geysers could have delivered sodium from its underground ocean and into Saturn's E ring.
- Could Global Warming Increase The Incidence Of Kidney Stones?: A new study warns that as many as 2.3 million more people may develop these mineral deposits in their kidneys by the year 2050 as the result of a warming world.
- Extinct Flying Reptiles Were Gliders And Parachutists: Archaeopteryx is famous as the world's oldest bird, but reptiles were flying about some 50 million years earlier than that (225 million years ago), even before large dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
- Cut Not Sink: We would be better off reducing our greenhouse emissions rather than trying to sink them into the sea using ocean fertilisation.
- Solar Shades Not Cool: A proposal to place mirrors in the sky to reverse global warming by reflecting sunlight away from Earth won't give back the climate we had before.
- Out of Sight, Out of Clime: Burying Carbon In A Vault Of Sea And Rock: The best place to store all that carbon dioxide from power plants might turn out to be volcanic formations off the U.S. west coast.
- Phoenix Lander Has An Oven Full Of Martian Soil: The lander's robotic arm delivered a partial scoopful of clumpy soil from a trench informally called "Baby Bear" to the number 4 oven on TEGA 12 days after landing.
- Phoenix Gets Shake-up After Failing Test: The Phoenix Mars Lander has flunked its first test with dirt scooped from the planet's surface failing to fall through a protective screen into an analysing chamber below.
- Dispatch from Mars For Sol 4: It was a good news/bad news day on Mars, with a tentative sighting of ice by the Mars Phoenix Lander, but also a newly discovered glitch in the oven system that will analyze soil samples.
- Phoenix Mars Lander Takes A Look Around: Images from Mars's newest inhabitant document its quest for water.
- Undersea Volcanic Rocks Offer Vast Repository For Greenhouse Gas: Deep ocean-floor drilling experiments show that volcanic rocks off the West Coast and elsewhere might be used to securely imprison huge amounts of globe-warming carbon dioxide captured from power plants or other sources.
- Answer To Carbon Emissions May Lie Under The Sea: Scientists may have found a way to chemically lock up a trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide by injecting the greenhouse gas into huge formations of the porous volcanic rock basalt that lie on the sea floor.
- Extreme Rain Causes Mountains To Grow: Researchers studying a section of the Andes mountain range in Colombia have found that the more it rains the faster they grow.
- Intensified Ice Sheet Movements Do Not Affect Rising Sea Levels: Predictions of rising sea levels based on increasing melt water and increasing rates of ice sheet movement may not be seeing the big picture.
- One-third Of Reef-building Corals Face Extinction: Built over millions of years, coral reefs are home to more than 25 percent of marine species.
- Flatfish Fossils Fill In Evolutionary Missing Link: Hidden away in museums for more that 100 years, some recently rediscovered flatfish fossils have filled a puzzling gap in the story of evolution and answered a question that initially stumped even Charles Darwin.
- Fair Warning From Earthquakes?: Predicting earthquakes is the Holy Grail of seismology, but despite intensive research, not a single warning sign has proved reliable.
- Moon Once Harbored Water, Lunar Lava Beads Show: The early moon wasn't such a dry place after all.
- Phoenix Spacecraft Commanded To Unstow Arm: Scientists leading the Phoenix Mars mission from the University of Arizona in Tucson sent commands to unstow its robotic arm and take more images of its landing site.
- Phoenix Descends Onto A Strange Land: Rock-strewn but safe 'polygonal' terrain was just what the Phoenix team predicted.
- Trickle On The Moon: A new type of chemical analysis has spotted the telltale signs of water molecules inside tiny beads of volcanic glass brought to Earth decades ago by the Apollo astronauts.
- Lunar Liquid: A new analysis of moon rocks has revealed that the moon isn’t as bone dry as researchers had thought, whetting the appetite of scientists who seek a deeper understanding of how Earth's natural satellite arose and evolved.
- Life May Have Existed 700 Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought: The accepted timeframe for the beginnings of life on Earth is now being questioned by after finding a key indicator to the earliest life forms in diamonds.
- Carbon Specks Push Back Origins Of Life: Tiny traces of carbon trapped inside the oldest diamonds ever found, suggest life started on Earth 700 million years earlier than previously thought,
- Georgia Court Halts Construction of New Coal-Fired Plant: Decision marks the first-ever thumbs-down by a court based on greenhouse gas as a pollutant and the first that hinges on a Supreme Court ruling that the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the power to regulate carbon dioxide.
- Loud And Clear: Fossil finds suggest it may be time to rethink the stereotype of grunting, wordless Neandertals.
- Planetary Line-up Excites The Sun: Australian astronomers may have found a solution to how far-away Jupiter and Saturn drive the sun's solar cycle.
- Voyager 2 Finds Lopsided Solar System: Hurtling through space 31 years after its launch, the Voyager 2 spacecraft has sent back the most detailed view yet of the shock wave that marks the thinning of the solar wind, the charged particles streaming from the sun.
- Rain On The Martian Plain?: A new soil analysis suggests a drizzly past for the Red Planet.
- Huge Impact Caused Mars's Split Personality: After more than 30 years, space scientists may have resolved one of the greatest enigmas in the solar system: why does Mars have two faces?
- Fossils Of Extremely Primitive 4-Legged Creatures Close The Gap Between Fish And Land Animals: New exquisitely preserved fossils from Latvia cast light on a key event in our own evolutionary history when our ancestors left the water and ventured onto land.
- Rising Seas Threaten West Antarctic: There's a big gorilla hiding the closet whose collapse could have a dramatic effect on sea levels.
- Plan To Build Telescopes From Moon Dust: Rather than flying one there, a NASA scientist believes we should build a telescope on the moon using the lunar soil.
- Mars Air Once Had Moisture: A new analysis of Martian soil data suggests that there was once enough water in the planet's atmosphere for a light drizzle or dew to hit the ground, leaving tell-tale signs of its interaction with the planet's surface.
- Largest Crater In Solar System Revealed: New analysis of Mars' terrain using Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor observations reveals what appears to be by far the largest impact crater ever found in the solar system.
- Impact May Have Transformed Mars: New mapping of planet unveils the solar system’s largest known impact structure.
- Ancient Mineral Reveals Earth's Watery Past: An analysis of elements in ancient mineral crystals suggests liquid water existed on Earth as long as 4.3 billion years ago.
- Diamonds Offer Cool Computer Solution: Quantum computers made using diamonds are a practical way to achieve a massive boost in computing power without generating more heat.
- Ocean Review Finds Warming On The Rise: A long-standing difference between climate models and observations has been resolved with researchers finding that the world's oceans have been warming faster than previously thought.
- Large Hadron Collider Probably Won't Destroy Earth: Our planet is not at risk from the world's most powerful particle physics experiment, a report has concluded. The document addresses fears that microscopic black holes produced by the Large Hadron Collider could have unforeseen consequences.
- Ice Core Reveals How Quickly Climate Can Change: Weather patterns can permanently shift in as little as a year, according to the records preserved in an ice core from Greenland.
- Britain's Last Neanderthals Were More Sophisticated Than We Thought: An archaeological excavation at a site near Pulborough, West Sussex, has thrown remarkable new light on the life of northern Europe’s last Neanderthals.
- Scientists To Mimic Earth's Spinning Core: A 26-ton steel sphere will be filled with boiling metal and spun, attempting to create a miniature version of the Earth's core and in the process discover why its effect is waning.
- One in Three Stars May Have "Super" Earths: The most detailed survey yet of planets orbiting nearby stars indicates that a full 30 percent of them may harbor jumbo versions of our own planet.
- Phoenix Landing Is Out Of This World: An ambitious effort to determine whether Mars' arctic region once harboured life has begun with the successful landing of NASA's Phoenix probe near the Red Planet's north pole.
- Phoenix Spacecraft Reports Good Health After Mars Landing: The landing ends a 422-million-mile journey from Earth and begins a three-month mission that will use instruments to taste and sniff the northern polar site's soil and ice.
- See How It Lands: A camera on a Mars-orbiting spacecraft caught an image of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suspended from its parachute just before it descended onto the Red Planet’s northern plains.
- NASA Holds Breath For Phoenix Mars Lander's Touchdown: Phoenix is designed to dig into the cementlike layer of ice that researchers believe lies buried a few inches below the surface in the planet's polar regions, scanning for signs of past liquid water and organic compounds, the carbon-rich molecules that make life on Earth possible.
- Nasa Aims To Unveil Secrets Of Red Planet: The unmanned Phoenix spacecraft must complete a breathtaking sequence of manoeuvres after crashing into the planet's thin atmosphere at almost 13,000mph if it is to touch down on the icy ground intact.
- Were Meteorites The Origin Of Life On Earth?: A new study finds that a pair of chemical building blocks similar to those in genetic material was present in a meteorite before it fell to Earth.
- NASA Finds New Mineral In Comet Dust: The mineral, a manganese silicide named Brownleeite, was discovered within an interplanetary dust particle that appears to have originated from comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup.
- Life Cooked Up In Outer Space?: The odds are improving that life exists beyond Earth. A meteorite that formed billions of years ago and eventually crashed on Earth harbors two important components of RNA and DNA, the fundamental molecules of life.
- Green Reapers: Fledgling farmers in the Middle East treasured ornamentation as much as irrigation. These ancient villagers traveled great distances to obtain green stone for making beads and pendants that held special meaning for them in a brave new agricultural world.
- Diamonds On Demand: Lab-grown gemstones are now practically indistinguishable from mined diamonds. Scientists and engineers see a world of possibilities. Jewelers are less enthusiastic.
- Are Arctic Sea Ice Melts Causing Sea Levels To Rise?: Recent NASA photos showed the opening of the Northwest Passage and that a third of the Arctic's sea ice has melted in recent years. Are sea levels already starting to rise accordingly?
- Life's Raw Materials May Have Come From The Stars: Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin.
- Mysterious Mountain Dinosaur May Be New Species: A partial dinosaur skeleton from a remote British Columbia site is the first ever found in Canadian mountains and may represent a new species.
- Satellite Network To Predict Earthquakes: A future network of satellites orbiting the earth may be able to detect an impending earthquake by monitoring our planet's ionosphere.
- Technology Enrolled In Hunt For Life On Mars: A team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has created a device for use on the European ExoMars rover mission scheduled for launch in 2013.
- Sea Ice Melt Could Thaw Permafrost, Too: Scientists tracking a dramatic shrinkage in Arctic sea ice over the past few years have come to a worrisome conclusion: If the trend continues, it could speed up the melting of Arctic permafrost as well.
- From Planet To Plutoid: Pluto now has a family of its own, after astronomers have struggled for years to give it a place among its celestial brethren.
- Mountains Could Have Growth Spurts: Findings suggest that current theories about plate tectonics - the process that creates and moves continents, giving rise to mountain ranges - may need updating.
- Fossilized Burrows Suggest Lizard-like Creatures In Triassic Antarctica: For the first time paleontologists have found fossilized burrows of tetrapods - land vertebrates with four legs or leglike appendages - in Antarctica dating from the Early Triassic epoch, about 245 million years ago.
- Something's Shaking In Antarctica: Scientists have discovered massive, slow-motion "ice quakes" trembling twice a day through the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, an Alaska-sized swath of Antarctica.
- Monitoring Antarctic Ice Movement Is A Sticky Business: Scientists discover an important clue in predicting future consequences of climate change: the mechanism that moves ice streams.
- Tunguska, A Century Later: A century later, scientists are still debating the cause of the Tunguska blast. Through the years a variety of scenarios have been proposed, many of them involving the explosion of an unusual extraterrestrial object, everything from a small black hole or a chunk of antimatter to a UFO.
- New Geomorphological Index Created For Studying Active Tectonics: To build a hospital, nuclear power station or a large dam you need to know the possible earthquake risks of the terrain.
- Small Planet Discovered Orbiting Small Star: At three Earth masses, the planet, referred to as MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, establishes a record for the lowest mass planet yet discovered.
- Melting Methane Thawed Frozen Planet: The rapid release of methane into the Earth's atmosphere 635 million years ago caused runaway global warming, and may happen again in the near future.
- Big Earthquakes Spark Jolts Worldwide: Until California's magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake set off small jolts as far away as Yellowstone National Park, scientists did not believe large earthquakes sparked smaller tremors at distant locations.
- World's Fastest Growing Mud Volcano Is Collapsing: The world's fastest-growing mud volcano is collapsing and could subside to depths of more than 140 metres with consequences for the surrounding environment.
- Domain Of The Dead: Stonehenge served as an elite medieval cemetery for more than 500 years.
- Rocky Microbes Push Back Life's Origins: A rich mix of microbes living in partially submerged rocks provide new evidence that life on our planet had a much earlier start than previously thought.
- Australians Find A Mother Of A Fossil: The world's oldest mother and her baby have been found fossilised in north-western Australia, pushing the known record of live birth back by about 200 million years.
- Salty Mars Looking Bad for Life: New calculations suggest the Red Planet was too briny to harbor microbes.
- Mars Rover Eyes Hot Spring-Like Deposits: Deposits of near pure silica on Mars were formed by volcanic vapours or hot-spring-type events crossing through soil and could contain traces of past life.
- Life Reaches Deeper Beneath Seabed: Signs of life have been found at a record depth of 1.6 kilometres beneath the seabed. The discovery of microbes in searing hot sediments under the Atlantic seabed off Newfoundland, Canada, doubles the previous depth record of 842 metres.
- The Beginning of a Star's Explosive End: In a stroke of unprecedented good luck, an international team of astronomers has caught a stellar explosion called a supernova at the very beginning of the blast.
- Chinese Researchers Take Stock After Quake: Massive temblor may shift priorities for geologists, ecologists, and others.
- New Edition of Free Climate Change Booklet Available: The National Academies have released the 2008 edition of Understanding and Responding to Climate Change, a free booklet designed to give the public a comprehensive and easy-to-read analysis of findings and recommendations from our reports on climate change.
- Martian Canyons By A Trickle Or A Gush?: Geologists are re-evaluating valleys long interpreted as signs of a warm and wet early Mars.
- Is Indy Chasing A Fake?: As Indiana Jones races against time to find an ancient crystal skull in his new movie adventure, he should perhaps take a moment to check its authenticity.
- They're Fake Indy!: Two allegedly pre-Columbian crystal skulls turn out to be counterfeits.
- Death Toll May Climb In China Earthquake Aftermath: The Chinese government announced that the death toll from the devastating Sichuan Province earthquake could climb to more than 50,000 people. Nearly 20,000 have died to date, with an estimated 40,000 missing.
- Climate Clues In Ice: A kilometers-long ice core from Antarctica has recorded climate information for the past 800,000 years and has revealed a three millennia long period when carbon dioxide levels in the air were lower than any previously measured.
- Vast Chile Volcano Ash Cloud Partially Collapses: A towering cloud of hot ash, gas and molten rock spewed miles into the air by a volcano in southern Chile has partially collapsed, raising fears it could smother surrounding villages.
- Hot Climate Could Shut Down Plate Tectonics: A new study of possible links between climate and geophysics on Earth and similar planets finds that prolonged heating of the atmosphere can shut down plate tectonics and cause a planet's crust to become locked in place.
- Chinese Quake Likely A Mega-Catastrophe: Researchers fear that the magnitude-7.9 earthquake that struck near the major city of Chengdu will easily be China's biggest killer since 1976's Tangshan quake, conservatively estimated to have taken 250,000 lives.
- From Bountiful to Barren: In a finding that may help scientists better predict the pace of climate change, new research shows how the Sahara Desert went from bountiful to bone-dry over a period of several thousand years.
- Iron 'Snow' Keeps Mercury's Magnetic Field: New scientific evidence suggests that deep inside the planet Mercury, iron "snow" forms and falls toward the center of the planet, much like snowflakes form in Earth's atmosphere and fall to the ground.
- Blame It on the Beetles: Voracious insects ruined a whole lot of dinosaur fossils.
- When Did Dinosaurs Go Extinct?: Scientists have pinpointed the date of the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary more precisely than ever with refinements to the argon-argon isotopic method of dating rocks and fossils.
- Earth Hums While Making 'Love' Waves: A subtle and mysterious global hum has been detected by seismologists studying records from earth's most boring seismic stations.
- Darwin's Theory Of Evolution Goes Online: The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online project makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free.
- Signs of Hidden Ocean Underneath Titan's Crust: Slippage in Titan's rotation suggests water between its surface and core, and a higher likelihood of ancient life on Saturn's biggest moon.
- Hopes Fade For Tanzanian Miners: About 65 miners are feared dead after rainfall triggered the collapse of mines in Tanzania, Africa, the source of tanzanite, a valuable blue gemstone found only in a small area near Arusha.
- Google Earth User Discovers Meteorite Crater: The discovery of a meteorite crater in Western Australia's Pilbara has sparked a huge search on the internet for similar geographical features.
- Cassini Tastes Organic Material At Saturn's Geyser Moon: The Cassini spacecraft tasted and sampled a surprising organic brew erupting in geyser-like fashion from Saturn's moon Enceladus during a close flyby.
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