Using fossil fuels has led to climate change; however, trees can erase some damage. By maximizing forest coverage on Earth, scientists predict that the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be reduced by a quarter—back to levels from a hundred…
Seaweed are usually beneficial to ocean life, but now scientists have observed enormous masses of algae in the Atlantic Ocean that can harm the environment. Read Ben Andreone's article to learn more!
by Franklin Wolfe
figures by Abagail Burrus
Over the past half-century, earthquakes have been the leading cause of death from natural disasters and have imposed dramatic cultural, economic, and political impacts on society. Compounding their inherent…
In the Canadian town of Squamish, there’s a small building with a massive fan on its purple roof. The fan is rapidly pulling outside air into the facility. The air enters the outdoors again, but it’s not quite the same. About 75% of the carbon dioxide…
The frozen desert of Antarctica is not exactly a place you would want to call home. But under its surface lies an unexplored, watery world of subglacial lakes and rivers stretching for millions of square miles, the ice above exerting enough pressure to…
You’ve probably heard that cigarettes are bad for you, and it has always been a safe bet to assume that they’re bad for the environment too. A comprehensive analysis of the entire tobacco supply chain by researchers at the Imperial College of London…
If you travel into deep space and look back at Earth through a sophisticated telescope, you could measure what’s called the vegetation red edge (VRE). The vegetation red edge is a mixture of red and infrared light that is reflected by plants on Earth’s…
Since the first exoplanet discovery in the 1990s, scientists have learned of the diverse and abundant nature of exoplanets, having now found more than 3700. With such a large and disparate sample set, ESA (European Space Agency) has set its sights on…
On February 6th, 2017, four detectors surrounding a nuclear power station in Niigata, Japan simultaneously observed a striking signal. An hour before dawn, the detectors recorded a short burst of light from a lightning strike, which quickly decayed in…