Doctor Who has been a morality play since its earliest days. Ever since the first Doctor picked up a couple of teachers and his young granddaughter for adventures in time and space, it has been a show seeking to educate as much as it does entertain. Last night’s episode carried on in a similar vein but had neither the time, nor the patience, to sugarcoat its message. Read More >>
The BBC's about to cash in on the whole saving-the-world thing it accidentally kicked off with the last series of Planet Earth, by... selling some t-shirts and books. Eco-friendly t-shirts and books, obviously, shrinkwrapped in the type you can compost, should you bother composting. Read More >>
It may seem fantastical, but there is a living world deep, deep beneath our feet. Go below the soil, beyond the bedrock, and you’ll find a hot, sweaty underworld teeming with life that puts the surface biosphere to shame. Read More >>
Visions of the end of the world tend to extremes—the planet fatally fracked, flooded, hurricaned, nuke-cratered. No survivors, or maybe one or two survivors, dazed and dust-grimed, roaming a wasted landscape, eating canned beans, rotted squirrels, each other. But the truth is we might be in for a slow burn, apocalypse-wise. The “end of the world” entails not just the actual end, that last gasp of human breath, but all the agony leading up to it, too. How, though—without the fire-and-brimstone theatrics—will we know that the planet is truly terminal? Read More >>
Venus might seem rather Earthly, given its similar size and presence of a thick, carbon dioxide-filled atmosphere. But the more scientists observe it, the more surprises the second planet from the Sun throws at us. Read More >>
Our planet is in a remarkably circular orbit around the Sun, but as new research points out, Earth’s orbit sometimes experiences a slight jolt, thanks to the combined gravitational influence of Jupiter and Venus. Incredibly, this cycle has been going on for at least 215 million years — and one scientist suggests it could possibly have influenced the trajectory of life on this planet, according to the new study published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read More >>
Admit it, you don’t really understand why the Earth has a magnetic field. Sure, movement inside the Earth’s outer core is creating a electric current, generating a magnetic field through it. But what’s causing this movement? Read More >>
Diamonds, the super-strong and brilliant crystals of carbon atoms produced under the Earth’s crushing pressures, are typically valued for their beauty and durability. But scientists also value them for another reason: They contain all kinds of hidden messages about the Earth’s mantle. You just need the right tools to read them. Read More >>
Perhaps there’s a life-supporting, Earth-like planet orbiting close to a red dwarf star many light years away. Perhaps this planet orbits so close to the star that only one half of it ever faces the light. Maybe some sentient species evolved during that infinite day, on some massive supercontinent. And maybe one day, the sun set on part of that continent, stranding half of the species in the dark, where they evolved under a changing atmosphere. The light and dark species, unable to survive in the other’s environs, separated forever. Read More >>
With all the fascinating planets in our solar system, it sometimes feels like the Sun gets overlooked. The Sun is amazing! People still worship the Sun, and that actually makes a certain amount of sense. So, what would happen if you took a small piece of the Sun and brought it back to Earth? Well, whoever’s left would have new reasons to worship the Sun. Read More >>
What was life really like here on planet Earth before animals were big enough to leave fossils behind? How did living things turn from dinky capsules of genetic material into the intelligent, complex organisms that do things like fart and type curse words into posts on the internet? Scientists think they’ve found the answer... in algae steroids. Read More >>
NASA's "Images of Change" features a bunch of interactive before-and-after images of locations on our humble and incredible home planet, showing change over time periods ranging from centuries to days. Read More >>
Earth’s magnetic field does way more than guide our compasses and cause occasional worry. It’s part of the reason there’s life at all on this planet—it protects us from harmful solar radiation that might otherwise blow our ozone layer away. Read More >>
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