A sixth of the way to the center of the Earth, things get goopy. Using variations in the planet’s gravitational tug, geophysicists have discovered that the viscosity of Earth’s mantle rapidly increases about 1,000 kilometers below ground.
Society’s oversized carbon footprint shrank slightly in 2015, a new bookkeeping of greenhouse gas emissions suggests. If confirmed, the 0.6 percent reduction marks the first drop in carbon emissions since the 2008–2009 financial crisis and the first decrease ever during a period of economic growth, researchers from the Global Carbon Project report December 7 in Nature Climate Change.
In a cold corner of the world, carbon dioxide is doing something surprising. Instead of causing warming, rising CO₂ levels over central Antarctica produce a net cooling effect, new research suggests.
Adapted for Science News for Students.
As snowflakes gently meander past your living room window this winter, take a break from your hot cocoa and consider nature’s ice-cold architecture. When water molecules chill down, they assemble into a myriad of spectacular shapes from simple hexagons to star-shaped dendrites. Inspect these frozen fractals and you’ll find a recurring theme: the number six. Six sides, six edges, six branches — ice crystals seem six obsessed.
Earth is not heading toward a doomsday reversal of its magnetic field, new research assures.
Even when the Arctic goes dark and cold, thinning ice could keep the North Pole from cooling off.
Good news, foodies: Truffles are not dangerously radioactive.
The plans sound like something out of the handbook of a James Bond villain: generate artificial volcanic eruptions, seed colossal clouds that shade the planet, cover the oceans in immense algal blooms visible from space. Despite seeming outrageous, such Earth-altering schemes, some argue, may be the only viable way to stave off threats posed by climate change.
Molecules entombed inside pristine magmas suggest that Earth’s water came from soggy dust, not icy comets.
The greatest extinction in Earth’s history might not have been so great after all. A suspected colossal die-off of roughly 75 percent of land species didn’t accompany the Permian extinction around 252 million years ago, a team of geologists contend.