Octopuses living in the deep sea off the coast of California are breeding far faster than expected. The animals lay their eggs near geothermal springs, and the warmer water speeds…
Category: Earth
Invasive grasses are taking over the American West’s sea of sagebrush
No one likes a cheater, especially one that prospers as easily as the grass Bromus tectorum does in the American West. This invasive species is called cheatgrass because it dries…
Sunlight helps clean up oil spills in the ocean more than previously thought
Sunlight may have helped remove as much as 17 percent of the oil slicking the surface of the Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. That means that…
How did we get here? The roots and impacts of the climate crisis
Even in a world increasingly battered by weather extremes, the summer 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest stood out. For several days in late June, cities such as Vancouver,…
This eco-friendly glitter gets its color from plants, not plastic
All that glitters is not green. Glitter and shimmery pigments are often made using toxic compounds or pollutive microplastics (SN: 4/15/19). That makes the sparkly stuff, notoriously difficult to clean…
50 years ago, corporate greenwashing was well under way
Environmental advertising: A question of integrity— Science News, November 27, 1971 A new report published by the Council on Economic Priorities clearly outlines facts showing that much corporate advertising on…
Deep-sea Arctic sponges feed on fossilized organisms to survive
In the cold, dark depths of the Arctic Ocean, a feast of the dead is under way. A vast community of sponges, the densest group of these animals found in…
A UN report shows climate change’s escalating toll on people and nature
Neither adaptation by humankind nor mitigation alone is enough to reduce the risk from climate impacts, hundreds of the world’s scientists say. Nothing less than a concerted, global effort to…
Freshwater ice can melt into scallops and spikes
Water’s wacky density leads to strange effects that researchers are still uncovering. Typically, liquids become denser the more they cool. But freshwater is densest at 4° Celsius. As it cools…
Satellites have located the world’s methane ‘ultra-emitters’
A small number of “ultra-emitters” of methane from oil and gas production contribute as much as 12 percent of methane emissions from oil and gas production every year to the…
