Earth news stories

Pollution is threatening some of the world’s oldest rock carvings
12th April 2022 | nationalgeographic.com | Ancient, Earth, Humans

On a remote peninsula in Western Australia, a 16-hour drive from the nearest city, 30,000-year-old faces stare at the rare visitor to this wild location.

Image from: Marius Fenger (Wiki Commons)

The planets are prepping for an epic alignment. Here’s how to see it shape up.
12th April 2022 | livescience.com | Earth, Humans, Space

Five planets, visible to the naked eye, are poised to line up and march across the sky this summer in an unusual alignment that will be graced by the light of the moon.

The Far Side of The Moon Is Significantly More Cratered. We May Finally Know Why
12th April 2022 | sciencealert.com | Earth, Space

No matter where you’re standing on Earth, you can only ever see one face of the Moon. Its other cheek is perennially turned away from our planet, and this far side is much more pockmarked with craters than the one facing us.

Ancient Chilean tsunami scared local people away for 1000 years
8th April 2022 | newscientist.com | Ancient, Earth, Humans

A tsunami 3800 years ago devastated the coastline of Chile and encouraged hunter-gatherers to move inland, where they stayed for the next 1000 years.

Fossil of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike found, scientists claim
7th April 2022 | bbc.co.uk | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Scientists have presented a stunningly preserved leg of a dinosaur. The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota.

 

Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims
7th April 2022 | theguardian.com | Earth, Humans

Buried in forest litter or sprouting from trees, fungi might give the impression of being silent and relatively self-contained organisms, but a new study suggests they may be champignon communicators

Mo’orea’s hidden treasure trove of fungi
5th April 2022 cosmosmagazine.com | Earth, Humans

A stunning array of new fungi has been described for the first time on the Polynesian Island.

Ancient helium leaking from core offers clues of Earth’s formation
31st March 2022 phys.org | Ancient, Earth, Space

Helium-3, a rare isotope of helium gas, is leaking out of Earth’s core, a new study reports. Because almost all helium-3 is from the Big Bang, the gas leak adds evidence that Earth formed inside a solar nebula, which has long been debated.

1,000-year-old oaks used to create ‘super forest’
26th March 2022 | bbc.co.uk | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

“They’ve lived for so long; just think what they’ve seen.” Forester Nick Baimbridge is gazing fondly at a majestic oak that has stood for more than a thousand years. On this wintry afternoon, birds sing from lichen-covered branches and a deer runs through the undergrowth.

Whoa! Another asteroid whizzes past Earth hours after discovery
26th March 2022 earthsky.org | Earth, Humans, Space

Overnight on March 24-25, 2022, another small asteroid raced toward Earth, unseen until hours before its closest approach.

Digital Data Could Be Altering Earth’s Mass Just a Tiny Bit, Claims Physicist
26th March 2022 | sciencealert.com | Earth, Humans, Weird

According to calculations made a few years ago by University of Portsmouth physicist Melvin Vopson, this literal mass of visual imagery – along with half a billion tweets, countless texts, billions of WhatsApp messages, and every other bit and byte of information we’ve created – could be making our planet a touch heavier.

Sulfur from dino-killing asteroid caused way more global cooling than thought
22nd March 2022 | livescience.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

When the dinosaur-destroying asteroid collided with Earth 66 million years ago, massive amounts of sulfur — volumes more than were previously thought — were thrown high above land into the stratosphere, a new study finds.

Lunar Eclipses Have a Peculiar Effect on Migrating Swifts – But So Does The Full Moon
20th March 2022 | sciencealert.com | Animal Life, Earth

As the full Moon rises, so too does the Northern black swift (Cypseloides niger borealis). When this little bird migrates from the Rocky Mountains to the Amazon rainforest, researchers have found it uses moonlight to regain its energy.

Fears dash for wind power could cut off lost world of Doggerland
20th March 2022 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Earth, Humans

While the Conservative party’s proposed dash for wind power is good news for the climate it could be bad news for archaeology, with rapid offshore windfarm development sealing off access to some of the best-preserved and most complete evidence of early human communities in the world.

Our universe may have a twin
16th March 2022 | livescience.com | Earth, Humans, Space, Weird

A wild new theory suggests there may be another “anti-universe,” running backward in time prior to the Big Bang.

Meteorites that helped form earth may have formed in the outer solar system
14th March 2022 | eurekalert.org | Ancient, Earth, Space

Evidence suggests surface minerals of outer main-belt asteroids, proposed to have sourced building blocks of Earth’s water and life, are only stable at low temperatures. These asteroids formed in distant orbits and may help explain Earth’s composition

News stories covering the environment, plant life, and the Earth itself.