Earth Science

Ellis Emmett, diving between two continents in Silfra.

Dive Between Two Continents in This Frigid Fissure in Iceland

Filled with pure glacier water, Silfra is the only place on Earth where divers can touch two continental plates at once

Sakurajima spews ash in this undated photo.

Watch a Japanese Volcano Put on a Spectacular Show

Lightning and lava? No biggie

Journey to the Center of Earth

Drill deep into the mysteries of our home planet, from the surface all the way down to the core

The drill bit that the Atlantis Bank expedition broke near the start of operations. Three of the four "cones" used to dig the hole have snapped off.

A Decades-Long Quest to Drill Into Earth's Mantle May Soon Hit Pay Dirt

Geologists have had to contend with bad luck, budget cuts and the race to the moon in their efforts to drill deep into our planet

Rocky bodies that slammed into early Earth might have been integral in setting up the conditions for our magnetic field.

Humble Magnesium Could Be Powering Earth's Magnetic Field

The common element could have been driving the planet's dynamo for billions of years

Antarctica as viewed from space. The world's largest ozone hole—now shrinking—opens over Antarctica every year during local summer and shrinks in the winter.

The Ozone Hole Was Super Scary, So What Happened To It?

When the ozone hole was discovered, it became a worldwide sensation. Thirty years later, what's become of it?

None

Ask Smithsonian: What Is Wind?

Whether arriving on a gentle breeze or a stiff gale, air moves like water responding to high and low pressures around the Earth

Is Global Warming Changing How Fast the Earth Spins?

New research suggests that as glaciers melt, the planet's axis is shifting

Stanford Scientists Create an Algorithm That Is the "Shazam" For Earthquakes

The popular song-identifying app has inspired a technique for identifying microquakes in the hopes of predicting major ones

The volcanic plume responsible for the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano in Iceland has also brought up bits of Earth's ancient mantle from deep inside the planet.

Earth’s Water May Be as Old as the Earth Itself

Ancient volcanic rocks may have preserved tiny samples of the planet’s original moisture

An artist’s rendering shows a white dwarf star shredding a rocky asteroid.

Dead Star Shredding a Rocky Body Offers a Preview of Earth's Fate

The stellar corpse spotted by a NASA telescope backs up a theory that white dwarf stars eat planetary remnants

Did Life on Earth Really Start 4.1 Billion Years Ago? Not So Fast

Don’t rewrite the Earth’s history just yet

A color composite image highlighting pluto's brilliant diversity of color and texture. The western lobe of the heart—an area rich with nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ice—is brightly displayed in the right of the image.

First Official Data From the Pluto Flyby Reshapes the Dwarf Planet’s History

“The ‘little spacecraft that could’ is making a lot of big discoveries,” says Alan Stern

Earth’s Gravity Is Reshaping the Moon

Leaving cracks on the surface as it slowly contracts

"The Nut," an ancient volcanic plug on Tasmania in Australia

Scientists Recently Realized That 1,240 Miles of Volcanoes Were Connected

Now the Cosgrove Volcano Track is the longest on Earth

Dancing with the flames.

What the Evolution of Fire Can Teach Us About Climate Change

This Generation Anthropocene podcast looks at the history of fire and the ways the world changed once humans harnessed its power

Early marine arthropods called trilobites disappeared—along with 90 percent of species in the ocean and 75 percent of those on land—at the end of the Permian period.

Massive Volcanic Eruptions Triggered Earth’s "Great Dying"

Geologists nailed down the timing of the ancient event and confirmed that it is a likely suspect in the Permian extinction

An aurora glows near Australia in a photo taken from the International Space Station. Auroras are products of charged particles from the sun interacting with Earth's magnetic field.

Earth’s Magnetic Field Is at Least Four Billion Years Old

Tiny grains of Australian zircon hold evidence that our magnetic shielding was active very soon after the planet formed

Lake Jökulsárlón shimmers with the reflection of a magnificent iceberg. This lake, located at the edge of Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest ice cap, formed slowly when part of the glacier began to recede in the 1920s. The glacier continues to calve (split), releasing more icebergs into the expanding lake.

A New Photo Exhibition Depicts Just How Dramatic Mother Earth Can Be

Iceland, the land of fire and ice, brings vivid focus to the raw power of a geophysically active Earth

Not a movie still: Fire rages on a flooded street following the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California.

What Will Really Happen When San Andreas Unleashes the Big One?

A major earthquake will cause plenty of destruction along the West Coast, but it won’t look like it does in the movies

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