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In the summer of 1997, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration picked up a sound from deep beneath the Pacific. The sound seemed to come from an animal far larger than any we've ever seen. This was the Bloop. More »
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In the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date, scientists have used NASA satellites to gauge just how much of the world's ice has been lost to the oceans. Their results? Data collected over eight years of the past decade indicates that melting ice raised sea levels worldwide by an average of 1.48 millimeters. More »
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The United States hasn't always had the closest relationship with China or Russia. But give us a few hundred million years, and we could be a lot more unified: A new prediction for the motion of the continents suggests that the Americas and Asia will smoosh together at the north to form the supercontinent dubbed Amasia. More »
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This beautiful image [hi-res available here] was recently recognized by National Geographic as one of the best photographs of 2011. Two of the magazine's photo editors appreciated it for its cryptic quality. Is the subject of this photograph a sprouting fungus? A microscopic photo of a leaf? A snowy landscape? More »
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This is devastating news. The BBC is reporting that ExoMars — a joint program between NASA and the European Space Agency with Martian missions scheduled for 2016 and 2018 — is on the ropes, owing to America's budgetary woes. More »
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Seriously. This map suggests that unless you live in California, a smattering of states out East, or a small handfull of other states sprinkled across the country, you're looking at a very grave problem when it comes to scientific illiteracy in your community's youth (and, presumably, its population in general). Come to think of it, this map should really concern you, no matter where you live. More »
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We can't predict a volcanic eruption more than a few days or months in advance. But one of the most devastating eruptions in human history could give us a huge boost in predicting the next massive volcano. More »
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The first, moss-like plants emerged on land about 470 million years ago. In just 25 million years, they stripped the planet of vital minerals, wrecked Earth's carbon cycle, started an ice age, and caused a mass extinction of marine life. More »
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You don't need to be an eccentric billionaire or rugged survivalist to take up residence in a cave. All around the globe, living in an rocky recess is just a fact of life and can be way more homey than any manmade structure. Here are some real estate destinations to investigate should you attempt to cultivate that post-modern caveman chic.

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If you've ever visited California's Yosemite National Park, then you have an appreciation for how absurdly majestic its scenery is. You also know how difficult it can be to encapsulate that majesty when describing it to others; somehow, adjectives like "breathtaking" don't even begin to describe it. More »
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Are you big on science and science communication? If you are, do yourself favor and check out ScienceOnline2012 (or scio12 to those in the know), the sixth annual international meeting on science and the internet. More »
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The Crystal Cave — known to many as La Cueva de Los Cristales — is buried 300 meters below the Earth's surface, sequestered away in the Naica ore mines of Chihuahua, Mexico. Bursting from the top, bottom, and sides of the cavern's walls are otherworldy outcroppings of gypsum crystal. Many are too big to wrap your arms around. Others extend over thirty feet in length. More »
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You're looking at a once-in-a-lifetime scientific discovery. A team of experts announced today that these fragments of space rock, discovered last month near Foumzgit, Morocco, are in fact meteorites from Mars. More »
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Hydrothermal vents are epicenters to some of the most extreme geochemical processes on the planet. The hot spots of geological activity make their home on the ocean floor, where jets of scalding hot, mineral-rich water spew forth into the depths of the near-freezing ocean. More »
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You're looking at just one print from a collection that comprises dozens of spellbinding maps and charts based on the results of the 1870 US census — the ninth census ever conducted, and the first to be performed in the years following the Civil War. More »
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This geologic time spiral cake — which was baked by a group of geologists at Oxford University — took 32 eggs, 3 kg of marzipan, 7 people, 30 hours of labor, and several billion years of evolution. Watch how they constructed it in the above how-to guide. That K-T boundary looks scrumptious. More »
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Antarctica is the coldest, most desolate place on Earth, and the Southern Ocean that surrounds it is much the same...with one pretty massive exception. The hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor are hot, dark oases, full of previously unknown species. More »
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In the 1980s, Daniel Schechtman theorized the existence of quasicrystals, bizarre materials between crystals and glasses that could never exist except in the laboratory. But now his impossible crystals have turned up in a Russian mountain. More »
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Virginia's Luray Caves are a mix between a geological feature, an organ, and an electric guitar. In Luray Caves, there is the body of an organ set against a far wall. It looks more like a piano, as it's missing one of the defining parts of a pipe organ: the pipes. Instead, this organ has "stalacpipes." More »
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Want to vacation like a scientific explorer would? We've put together the ultimate travel guide for people who want to journey back to the earliest ages of the Earth. This guide to North American prehistory will take you to valleys full of fossils, mountains carved by ice ages, and petrified forests that are millions of years old.

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At first glance, the image up top resembles a vast, gleaming oceanscape with a snow-capped island looming in the distance. But if you look closely (click here for a much better view), you'll see that the rippling surface in the foreground is not liquid water, but ice; and that the three dark figures are actually riding snowmobiles. More »
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In August of 2012, NASA's biggest, baddest, and most scientifically capable rover ever, Curiosity, will touch down on the surface of Mars. More »
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The Pacific Ocean's Mariana trench is so deep, it could accomodate the entirety of Mt. Everest with thousands of meters to spare. Now, the most precise measurements of the trench to date indicate that it's even deeper than we once thought. More »
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Everyone knows about The Mobius Strip, the loop of paper with a twist in the middle that has only one surface. Now imagine taking a disk and gluing its edge to the edge of the Mobius strip. This will give you a Boy Surface, and one of the weirdest planets conceivable. More »
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While predicting the next big earthquake is probably impossibility, there's still a lot we can learn about what causes severe earthquakes. We've now identified the trigger for some of the most destructive recent earthquakes, including the 2007 quake in Haiti. More »
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On August 15th, this 200-foot-tall hunk of ice fell from the face of the gargantuan Hubbard Glacier in a process known as "calving," crashing into Yakutat Alaska's Disenchantment bay with an ear-splitting crack and a borderline unbelievable degree of force. More »
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The Gamburtsev Mountains are over 750 miles long and nearly 9,000 feet tall, making them roughly the same size as the Alps. But nobody has ever even seen these mountains, because they're located deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. More »
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How the dinosaurs died is maybe the most well-known story in all paleontology, but the dinosaurs' origins are more obscure. Dinosaurs might well have gotten their chance to rule the planet from the very thing that later killed them off. More »
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Twenty-two thousand years ago, a lake was formed, burst its dam, and washed away. Recently, two sciences came together to re-discover this short-lived chunk of water. Find out how even a brief rush of water and rock left genetic and geological traces that were picked up millenia later. More »
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There are volcanoes all over the world, but while some trickle out the sides, some burst high into the sky. To find out why, you can do a demonstration in your own kitchen. If you have a mop. More »
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Don't worry—if we do find evidence of Martians, it will still be on Mars, we'll probably just have to dig a little deeper to find it. A new NASA study has concluded that if life ever thrived on the Red Planet, it probably did so underground, just below the planet's surface. More »
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This map shows areas on the globe where there are disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field. Here, red indicates a stronger magnetic tug, and blue a weaker one (white lines are the edges of tectonic plates). As you can see, disturbances are fairly regularly distributed, but that doesn't stop UFO enthusiasts from saying aliens have a hand in these magnetic fluctuations. Science, however, has a slightly different explanation for why certain objects (including submarines) create a shift in the magnetic field. More »
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We know that there are small deposits of water on the Martian surface, and there's evidence of plenty more water both below the surface and in the planet's past. Now we've gained a powerful tool for exploring Mars's watery history. More »
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Now known as one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, the giant arctic island of Greenland might actually hold the birthplace of all life on Earth. Yes, all life on Earth might well have sprang from Greenlandic mud volcanoes. More »
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Over at Ars Technica, Brian Switeck has a hilarious article about the story from earlier this week about giant, prehistoric krakens creating self-portraits of themselves using the bones of their prey. I know this may come as a surprise to you, but this theory may not have been based on the most reasonable explanation for the evidence at hand: More »
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Supervolcano eruptions are the most devastating natural disasters on the planet, unleashing destruction that can level entire continents and kick off new ice ages. We've long struggled to understand what causes these unimaginable eruptions... but now, there might be an answer. More »
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South America's Atacama Desert gets less than a millimeter of rain a year, and some areas have probably never received rainfall. Yet there are rocks in the desert that seem to have been eroded by water. What's going on here? More »
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Back in August, we told you about a free course on artificial intelligence being offered by Stanford University, and co-taught by two world-renowned AI experts. The class officially started today, so if you managed to register for it on time, then good on you. More »
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In the ultimate cosmic cataclysm, two ultra-dense bodies collide. For less than a second, incredible amounts of super-charged particles explode forth. These blasts could wipe out most life on Earth...and it's probably happened dozens of times already. More »
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Feast your eyes on this stunning map of the Lower Mississippi's evolving floodplains, lifted from cartographer Harold Fisk's 1944 report, Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River. More »
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