From the ground, the daytime sky seems to be a blue dome wrapped around Earth. Astronauts looking through a spacecraft window see something very different: a thin blue line at…
Why does Earth have a magnetic field? The answer begins more than 2,000 kilometres below our feet, in a layer of liquid iron and nickel that is constantly moving. Heat…
Earth has seasons because its axis is tilted by about 23.4 degrees. As the planet travels around the Sun, one hemisphere leans toward the Sun while the other leans away.…
From the rim of Jezero Crater, Earth is only a bright point in the sky. On July 2, NASA’s Perseverance rover watched that point vanish behind Phobos, Mars’ larger moon,…
Jupiter dominates the Solar System’s architecture. At about 318 times Earth’s mass and orbiting far beyond Mars, it acts as a gravitational gatekeeper, tugging on asteroids and comets that might…
If Earth disappeared instantaneously, the first thing that would not happen is a crash. The Moon is not “hanging” over Earth. It is in constant free fall, moving sideways fast…
Mass extinctions have shaped life on Earth for millions of years, erasing dominant species and paving the way for new life to thrive. From the asteroid that ended the reign…
What if the Earth is more than a passive backdrop for life—what if it’s a dynamic, living system actively shaping the conditions that allow life to flourish? This is the…
Today, we know Antarctica as a land buried beneath vast sheets of ice, one of the most extreme environments on the planet. But this icy wilderness hasn’t always existed in…
Looking beyond the billions of stars that make up the Milky Way, could our solar system (and specifically Earth) be nestled inside something even more phenomenal, like a black hole?…
Stephen Hawking’s comments about the future are often collected as if they were prophecies: five terrifying things he said would happen, five deadlines for humanity, five reasons to panic. That…
Researchers have found that around 13,000 years ago, unprecedented volcanic activity caused the climate on Earth to cool down drastically, probably changing the history of early civilizations and cultures around…
There is a geographical area in the shape of an equilateral triangle in the Atlantic Ocean between the Bermuda Islands, Puerto Rico, and Miami in, Florida. If one joined these…
What if thousands of years ago, long before the first ancient civilizations developed and walked the surface of our planet, there was a highly advanced ancient civilization on Earth? It…
Ask for the deepest hole on Earth and the answer depends on what you mean by a hole. Are you asking about the deepest shaft drilled by people, the lowest…
Vile Vortices are specific places on Earth home to the strange and paranormal, where mysteries are more common than anywhere else. Any of twelve purported particular geographic areas arranged in…
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was,…
A hypothesis debated by researchers suggests advanced civilizations may be observing Earth while avoiding contact, reframing the long-running Fermi paradox as a problem of choice rather than distance. For more…
The boundary between Earth and space is usually taught as a clean line: cross it, and you are “in space.” New analyses of ultraviolet observations challenge that tidy picture by…
The Sahara climate cycle isn’t just a theory — it’s a pattern written into the Earth itself. Roughly every 20,000 years, the world’s largest desert shifts gears, transforming from a…
The universe is an incredible and dangerous place. The more we explore it, the more we are left awestruck by it. More than 2.6 million years ago, Earth may have…