The Solar Orbiter just completed its commissioning phase while en route to the Sun. It has already provided valuable looks at solar campfires and Venus’s magnetic fields, and it promises much more.
Science Updates
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New Perspectives on the Enigma of Expanding Antarctic Sea Ice
Recent research offers new insights on Antarctic sea ice, which, despite global warming, has increased in overall extent over the past 40 years.
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Rethinking the Search for the Origins of Life
Early Earth conditions and the chemistry that led to life were inextricably interwoven. Earth scientists and prebiotic chemists are working together in new ways to understand how life first emerged.
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Mapping a River Beneath the Sea
A recent expedition mapped one of the world’s longest submarine channels, revealing previously undiscovered physical features and raising questions about its unusual origin and shape.
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Sensing Iceland’s Most Active Volcano with a “Buried Hair”
Distributed acoustic sensing offered researchers a means to measure ground deformation from atop ice-clad Grímsvötn volcano with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions.
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Planetary Dunes Tell of Otherworldly Winds
On Earth and throughout our solar system, ripples and dunes in sand and dust offer insights into how winds blow, liquid currents flow, and solid particles fly and bounce over the terrain.
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Arctic Unicorns and the Secret Sounds of a Glacial Fjord
The successful deployment of a seafloor seismometer near the calving front of a Greenland glacier has opened a new avenue to study hidden glacial processes and the behavior of fjord-dwelling wildlife.
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Forecasting Compound Floods in Complex Coastal Regions
Coastal communities face more frequent floods in which rain, rivers, and ocean storm surge combine forces. A reliable system that accurately predicts inundation from these events is urgently needed.
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A Simple Recipe for Making the First Continental Crust
Laboratory experiments serendipitously revealed a rock-forming process that might explain how the first continental crust formed on Earth—and possibly on Mars.
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Tree Rings Reveal a 700-Year Record of Flooding in Bangladesh
Trees tell of a wetter past along the Brahmaputra River and, combined with climate modeling, suggest heightened future flood risks in one of the world’s most densely populated areas.