The Earth historian’s new book illustrates the long and winding road that brought our planet into the current moment of global change.
early Earth
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Watering Down the Mantle
The cooling of planet Earth over time increased the water carrying capacity of the mantle and could have shrunk the oceans.
Posted inNews
Half of Earth’s Nitrogen May Be Homegrown
A new analysis of iron meteorites reveals a distinct isotopic signature that suggests nitrogen was present around early Earth.
Posted inScience Updates
Habitability and the Evolution of Life Under Our Magnetic Shield
Earth’s global magnetic field likely dates back billions of years and is a barrier against cosmic radiation. What roles has it played in the planet’s biosphere?
Posted inNews
Looking Back at Our Pale Blue Dot
Astronomers model changes in Earth’s chemical signature over the past 4 billion years to improve the search for Earth-like exoplanets.
Posted inNews
Antarctic Ice Cores Offer a Whiff of Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere
Bubbles of greenhouse gases trapped in ice shed new light on an important climate transition that occurred about a million years ago.
Posted inEditors' Vox
How Chemical Processes Influence Fracture Pattern Development
Many tools of chemical analysis, experimentation, modeling, and theory have the potential to increase our understanding of how fracture patterns develop at different geological time scales.
Posted inNews
Did Bacterial Enzymes Cap the Oxygen in Early Earth’s Atmosphere?
A new theory suggests that nitrogenase from cyanobacteria could be the reason oxygen levels remained low after the Great Oxidation Event.
Posted inNews
Moon Sheds Light on Early Solar Spin
Lunar samples reveal that the Sun spun relatively slowly in its first billion years and blasted the Earth and Moon with coronal mass ejections.
Posted inNews
Newly Discovered Fossil Species Named After Star Wars Starship
The 500-million-year-old species is a distant relative of today’s crabs, spiders, and insects.