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Feb 28, 2019

Ice Samples Reveal a Massive Sun Storm Hit Earth in Ancient Times...And It Could Happen Again

A gigantic solar storm hit Earth about 2,600 years ago, one about 10 times stronger than any solar storm recorded in the modern day, a new study finds. These findings suggest that such explosions recur regularly in Earth's history, and could wreak havoc if they were to hit now, given...

Feb 28, 2019

Bonanza of Bizarre Cambrian Fossils Reveals Some of the Earliest Animals on Earth

A newfound fossil site in China is teeming with bizarre, primitive species that have never before been found any place on Earth. The bounty of creatures includes a spiny, segmented animal known as a mud dragon, and several jellyfish with preserved tentacles. Paleontologists discovered this treasure trove of fossils, which...

Feb 28, 2019

Melting Mount Everest Ice Is Exposing a Grisly Sight: Scores of Dead Bodies

Melting glaciers are revealing dozens of dead bodies on the world's tallest mountain, according to news reports. The treacherous journey to the summit of Mount Everest is riddled with obstacles — falling ice, ragged terrain, biting temperatures and incredible heights that cause altitude sickness. While nearly 5,000 people have successfully...

Feb 28, 2019

Ancient Microbes Ate Each Other's Corpses to Survive Beneath the Dead Sea

On its salty surface, the Dead Sea is famous for making giddy tourists float like beach balls. Hundreds of feet below the water, however, life is a little less fun. There, choked by some of the saltiest water on Earth, single-celled microorganisms called archaea struggle to carry out life's basic...

Jan 31, 2019

Snowball Earth: When the Blue Planet Went White

It's difficult to imagine now, but at certain points in Earth's history, ice covered the entire planet. This frozen Earth, nicknamed snowball Earth, was a setting so severe, that the Earth's entire surface, from pole to pole, including the oceans, completely froze over, said Melissa Hage, an environmental scientist and...

Jan 31, 2019

Photos: Craters Hidden Beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet

Two hidden craters (Image credit: NASA Goddard)In 2018, scientists reported the discovery of the first-ever meteor impact crater under the Greenland Ice Sheet. It didn't take long for them to find another. Reporting Feb. 11, 2019, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers led by NASA Goddard glaciologist Joseph MacGregor...

Jan 31, 2019

Why Does Earth Have an Atmosphere?

Earth's atmosphere is enormous, so far reaching that it even affects the International Space Station's route. But how did this giant gaseous envelope form? That is, why does Earth have an atmosphere? In short, our atmosphere is here because of gravity. When Earth formed, about 4.5 billion years ago, the...

Dec 31, 2018

Rainbow-Hued Rivers Transect Globe Like Veins in Gorgeous Maps

Rivers get the rainbow treatment in a gorgeous series of maps from a Hungarian cartographer. Available for download on Etsy, the maps are both beautiful and scientifically accurate. Their creator, Robert Szucs, has a background in geographic information systems (GIS) but was bored by standard river maps with all the...

Dec 31, 2018

More Than 250,000 People May Die Each Year Due to Climate Change

In the coming decades, more than a quarter-million people may die each year as a result of climate change, according to a new review study. In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that climate change would lead to about 250,000 additional deaths each year between 2030 and 2050, from...

Dec 31, 2018

The Polar Vortex Is Collapsing — Here's What That Means for Your Winter Weather

The blast of Arctic weather headed for the United States this weekend could be a first sign of still worse things to come this winter, with signs that a circular low-pressure system of swirling winds that normally keeps frigid air locked up at the North Pole has been disrupted and...

Dec 31, 2018

The Greenland Ice Sheet Is Melting at Astonishing Rate

Last week, a cauldron of concerning news articles made two things very clear: The ocean is warming and Antarctica's ice is melting. Now, a new study shows how much global warming is pounding another area: Greenland. Greenland's ice sheet is not only melting, but it's melting faster than ever because...

Dec 31, 2018

North Dakota Will Get Colder Than The North Pole Tonight — Here's Why

The polar vortex has returned to the United States, bringing historic cold and wind chills to a region spanning much of the Upper Midwest and the Dakotas. Temperatures close to minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 degrees Celsius) are possible in the Twin Cities region today (Jan. 29) and tomorrow...

Nov 30, 2020

How will sea levels change with climate change?

Sea level rise is not a new phenomenon. For much of the 20th century, the global mean sea level has been inching upward — about 0.05 inches (1.4 millimeters) per year, according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Global mean sea level is an average of all...

Nov 30, 2020

Ötzi the Iceman may have scaled ice-free Alps

Ötzi the Iceman, a Copper Age wanderer found mummified in the Alps nearly three decades ago, may have lived at a time when the glaciers were advancing down from the highest peaks to the lower slopes of the mountains. The ice that preserved Ötzi upon his death in about 3300...

Nov 30, 2020

Our most popular science stories of 2020

The biggest science news this year, by far, was anything to do with the novel coronavirus and the ongoing pandemic. Stories about COVID-19 received exponentially more views on Live Science than any other science news we shared. Related: Coronavirus outbreak: Live updates But despite the hardship of the pandemic, there...