Brine pools—hypersaline, low-oxygen waters deadly to many forms of ocean life—can experience waves hundreds of meters high when hit by a landslide, potentially overspilling their deep-sea basins.

Katherine Kornei
Katherine Kornei is a freelance science journalist covering Earth and space science. Her bylines frequently appear in Eos, Science, and The New York Times. Katherine holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Next Olympics Marathon Course Has Dangerous “Hot Spots” for Spectators
Spectators’ health may be jeopardized by high heat loads along the 2020 Olympics marathon course in Tokyo, a bicycle-mounted meteorological survey found.
Modeling the Climates of Worlds Beyond Earth
Scientists are applying climate models to distant planets to determine their habitability.
Icebergs Reveal Contours of the Ocean Bottom
Using satellite imagery of grounded icebergs near Greenland, researchers estimate the drafts of these ice masses and therefore water depth, measurements that shed light on future sea level rise.
NASA Space Telescope Spots Its Third Planet
A planet 3 times as large as the Earth was detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite in a relatively leisurely orbit—the longest yet detected by this telescope—of 36 days.
One-Pixel Views of Earth Reveal Seasonal Changes
By averaging satellite images of the Earth down to a single pixel, researchers trace how the planet’s mean color varies over time, results that inform observations of distant exoplanets.
Huge Global Tsunami Followed Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Impact
The cataclysmic Chicxulub impact roughly 66 million years ago spawned a tsunami that produced wave heights of several meters in distant waters, new simulations suggest.
One Fifth of Los Angeles’s CO2 Rises from Lawns and Golf Courses
Measurements of carbon-14 show that roughly 20% of carbon dioxide emissions in the Los Angeles Basin are likely due to the decay of plants in managed landscapes.
Enormous Impact Crater Spotted in Greenland Under Glacial Ice
Ice-penetrating radar revealed a 31-kilometer impact crater—one of the world’s largest—in northwestern Greenland that might have been formed fewer than 20,000 years ago.
Black Carbon Not the Primary Cause of Historic Glacial Retreat
Ice cores and glacial records reveal that European glaciers retreated before the rise of industrialization in the 1870s, suggesting that soot deposition did not primarily drive the shift.