Houchin and his colleagues studied dozens of zircon crystals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. These are the oldest ...

There are many open questions about how our planet formed 4.55 billion years ago: When did plate tectonics start? When did the Earth's mantle begin to vigorously circulate in a process called ...

The “gravity hole” formed at least 70 million years ago after convection in Earth’s mantle. The weak gravity could impact our oceans.

The last backwards idea is that a Venus-Jupiter conjunction is a once-in-a-lifetime miracle. On average, the pair comes close about once a year, though not always in a friendly spot. Many meetings are ...

By treating their vision of AI as inevitable rather than a choice, big tech leaders seek to pull the ultimate con job.

For the past three decades, glaciologist Helen Amanda Fricker has been investigating polar regions — the fastest changing ...

Snow leopards live in the high mountains of Central Asia. Discover key facts about their habitat, behavior, threats, and ...

More extreme weather and shifting growing seasons are putting pressure on school meal programs, which serve nearly half a billion children worldwide. Jennifer Burney, a professor of Earth system ...

Without the right oxygen balance, phosphorus and nitrogen vanish — and life can't take hold. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Astronomers have discovered what appears to be an exoplanet that could be a distant Earthly paradise. Or it could be a frigid realm even chillier than Mars, incapable of supporting life. The margins ...

Picture a shiny, blackish pebble no bigger than a golf ball, lying buried beneath the scorching Egyptian sand. It’s not much to look at, right? Yet this tiny fragment has scientists across the world ...

io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Death Echoes Overlapping” by Megan Chee. Enjoy!