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Science / Our Planet

The 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption, one of the largest in recent history, is dwarfed by the scale of supervolcano eruptions

Can Supervolcanoes Erupt More Suddenly Than We Think?

Enormous magma reserves may sit quietly for just thousands or even hundreds of years

Will extraterrestrial caves house unusual life forms, as the Katafiki Cave in Greece does?

What Will We Find in Extraterrestrial Caves?

Scientists hope to look for extraterrestrial life in a new place: recently discovered caves in places like the moon, Mars and Titan

A slime mold is used to design an efficient U.S. interstate system.

If the Interstate System Were Designed by a Slime Mold

How a brainless, single-celled organism created a startlingly efficient route map for U.S. highways

Some scientists have suggested the weight of water in the lake created by the Zipingpu Dam in China triggered the 2008 Sichuan earthquake

UPDATED: How Humans Cause Earthquakes

Fracking is just the latest cause to make the news for its link to quakes

The Glaucus atlanticus sea slug, or blue dragon, feeds on toxins from much larger species.

Glaucus Atlanticus: Science Picture of the Week

Atlanticus Pokemon, er, Sea Slug: What is this far-fetched ocean creature and why is it so poisonous?

Madelia, Minnesota is a small town with a big plan to produce fuel made from local materials for local markets.

A Little Independent Energy Experiment on the Prairie

If you can fight your way through the dirt storms of Madelia, Minnesota, you may be able to find the future of renewable energy

Chart Sources: Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens III, W.W. (1972)

Looking Back on the Limits of Growth

Forty years after the release of the groundbreaking study, were the concerns about overpopulation and the environment correct?

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Using Space Satellites to Spot Ancient Cities

Computer analysis of satellite imagery has revealed what could be a record number of archaeological sites

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Bizarre Bee-havior in the Battle Against the Giant Hornet

To protect their hive from an invading hornet, Asian honeybees gang up and surround it, forming a “hot defensive bee ball”

Could we ever have just one time zone?

One Time Zone for the World?

An astrophysicist and an economist want to fix our clocks and our calendars

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Is it Too Late for Sustainable Development?

Dennis Meadows thinks so. Forty years after his book The Limits to Growth, he explains why

A microbiologist collects a manure sample

Mysterious Exploding Foam is Bursting Barns

One explosion raised a barn roof several feet in the air and blew the hog farmer 30 or 40 feet from the door

Outdoor ice skating is deeply ingrained in Canadian culture.

Climate Change’s Latest Victim: Ice Hockey

For outdoor ice rinks, hockey season has gotten shorter in the past 50 years

Ice cores from a lake in Norway. Image from Science/AAAS

Trees Weathered the Ice Age

Pine and spruce trees managed to survive in certain spots in Scandinavia, according to DNA analyses

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Svalbard Global Seed Vault Turns Four

Four years ago this week, researchers opened the “Doomsday Vault” to store frozen seeds in case of disaster

The Islamic Empire (top) and Baghdad (bottom), circa 770-910 AD

Arabic Manuscripts: It Used To Snow in Iraq

Baghdad was the bustling capital of the vast Islamic Empire a thousand years ago, when the city’s climate was much different than today

A photograph (A) and outline (B) of the human-like drawing

Oldest American Rock Art Found in Brazil

The petroglyph, with a head, hands and “oversized phallus” is around 10,000 years old

The microwave field around the objects without (left) and with the cloaking material (right).

Scientists Move Closer to Creating an Invisibility Cloak

As far as the microwaves were concerned, the 7-inch-long tube did not exist — is true invisibility that far away?

To go backward in time, start at the far right side of this Cosmic Web poster, which represents the universe as it is today, scattered with galaxies. As you move to the left, you see earlier stages of the universe in which dark matter—a mysterious substance astronomers can detect only indirectly—was structured as webs and filaments. Before that, closer to the Big Bang, dark matter was dominated by tides and voids.

The Best Science Visualizations of the Year

Browse through the winning images that turn scientific exploration into art

The Caldera of Santorini is today a ring of islands in the Aegean.

What Happens Before a Volcano Blows?

Volcanologists thought that the buildup to an eruption would take centuries. But this report adds to a suspicion that it can happen faster than expected

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