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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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Earlier this year, the 8.8 quake that hit Chile did more than level homes. It raised the ocean floor so much that undersea regions broke the surface of the water. Here are pictures of Chile's incredible new coastline. More »
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The devastating 8.8 quake that hit Chile last week was a rare "megathrust" earthquake, among the most powerful known, and it affected the very shape of the planet. How did it do that, and will you notice the difference? More »
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Conventional wisdom among geologists has always been that the first several million years in Earth's 4.5 billion-year history were an age of lava and fire. Nothing could possibly live in on the burning planet until at least 3.2 billion years ago - or so scientists thought. A new study of 4 billion-year-old rocks (at left above) published in Nature reveals the early Earth (right) may have been fairly chilly, and also packed with life. More »
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Click to viewThis 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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Armed with a gigantic, spinning steel ball, researchers hope to simulate the Earth's magnetic field and discover how likely it is that our planet's magnetic polarity will flip sometime soon. Our magnetic field has reversed polarity in the past many times, though not in the last 780,000 years. So it's unclear what might happen. Science writer Clive Thompson speculates that it could be "pretty nasty." More »
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Ever since the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to a dwarf planet (does it even deserve a capital "P"???) in 2006, astronomers around the world have been at odds to describe just what they mean when they say the word "planet." For the moment, the solar system is holding steady with eight of them, but late last week evidence returned from the Mercury MESSENGER mission showed that the smallest planet left is shrinking. One has to wonder: how long will it be before Mercury gets plutoed? More »
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Mount St Helens, a volcano long believed to be dormant in Washington State in the U.S., freaked people out back in 1980 when it suddenly erupted and spewed tons of lava and boiling mud into the air (as you can see in this picture). It calmed down for a few years, but in 2004 it started slowly erupting, and has been oozing sticky clumps of lava continuously since then. As it erupts, it also unleashes constant small earthquakes in the areas nearby. Now a Michigan Tech researcher has braved the lava-slicked slopes of Mount St Helens do do some of the most detailed seismic research on the volcano ever. And he thinks he knows what's causing all the shakes. More »
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