Early Earth’s volcanoes could have spurred lightning that transformed atmospheric nitrogen, creating molecules that would have been necessary for life to emerge.
News
Posted inNews
The Best Way to Kill Trees to Create Habitat
Standing dead trees—or snags—shelter animals, store carbon, and cycle nutrients. A long-term monitoring study found that lopping off a tree’s top branches is a good way to turn it into a snag within about 20 years.
Posted inNews
Record-Breaking Temperatures Likely as El Niño Persists
Global surface air temperatures will likely remain high through early summer because of a continuing El Niño event.
Posted inNews
Mapping Sinking Land for Tribal Resilience in Louisiana
The Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi Chitimacha Choctaw Tribe has been losing land to the sea, which could hamper efforts to gain federal recognition.
Posted inNews
Last Chance Lake Harbors the Highest Known Levels of Phosphate
Bodies of water such as this might have functioned as cradles of life, given their unique biogeochemistry.
Posted inNews
Roman Plagues Struck During Cool, Dry Periods
Marine sediments from the Gulf of Taranto offer a high-resolution look at climate during ancient disease outbreaks.
Posted inNews
El Niño May Have Kicked Off Thwaites Glacier Retreat
Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” started losing mass midcentury, around the same time as its neighboring glacier.
Posted inNews
Antarctic Ice Cores Capture Heavy Metal Pollution—And History
An ice core record stretching back more than 2 millennia hints at the mining and metallurgy that waxed and waned with events such as wars and epidemics.
Posted inNews
Iceland’s Recent Eruptions Driven by Tectonic Stress
Magma flow in the magmatic dike near Grindavík was among the fastest recorded. The processes driving that flow could be at play at volcanoes in Hawaii, off the African coast, and anywhere crustal plates split apart.
Posted inNews
Commercial Lander Touches Down on Moon
The first Intuitive Machines lunar mission carries/carried six scientific payloads from NASA to contribute to the Artemis Program.