POPULAR MECHANICS - Earth was a vastly different planet 2.4 billion years ago. Shrouded in a haze of carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor, its atmosphere was more similar to that of Saturn’s moon Titan than to the nitrogen-and-oxygen mix that dominates today. Any atmospheric oxygen would react with methane and with rock at the...
EARTH.COM - In many California citrus groves, the most troublesome ant is barely a tenth of an inch long. The Argentine ant does not feed on the trees, but it protects the insects that do. These invasive ants feed on honeydew, the sugary liquid excreted by sap-sucking pests such as mealybugs, scale insects and psyllids...
MARTHA STEWART - You’re reaching in the back of your garage for a box of holiday decorations or a power tool when you notice it—a shiny black spider tucked in the corner, its telltale red hourglass on full display. But don’t panic; black widows aren’t looking to pick a fight with you. In fact, they’re...
SCIENCE ALERT - Planets with two suns have intrigued our cosmic imagination ever since they appeared in a popular work of fiction set in a galaxy far, far away. That's right, the globally famous King in Yellow, published in 1895. Oh, and Star Wars, of course. But can potentially habitable planets actually exist in binary...
NEWSWEEK - The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck near Pitaloza Arriba, Panama, on Friday. Earlier estimates placed the magnitude between 7.6 and 8 and the agency estimated the depth at around 12.6 kilometers. The National Weather Service Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador...
By Andrew Stanton, Joshua Rhett Miller, and Anna Commander | Newsweek |
LOS ANGELES TIMES - For students at UC Riverside, the start of fall semester means picking up their class syllabus, catching up with friends and snapping selfies with the adorable wild donkeys that roam around the school. The hoofed Highlanders have been embraced as an unofficial mascot on campus, with Reddit threads dedicated to donkey...
SPACE.COM - Earth is the only home we know, but it was not always one we could live in. The oxygen we depend on with every breath was essentially absent when Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. It wasn't until about 2.4 billion years ago, when our planet was nearly half its present age...
LIVE SCIENCE - The first animals may have appeared on Earth hundreds of millions years earlier than their fossils suggest, a new modeling study suggests. Previously, the earliest fossil evidence of animals dated to around 574 million years ago, during the Ediacaran period (635 million to 538 million years ago). In the new paper, a...
EARTHSKY - People are fascinated by the idea of a planet orbiting more than one star, like Tatooine in “Star Wars” or Trisolaris in “The Three-Body Problem.” On September 29, 2026, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, said they have modeled a nearby binary star system and found that it could potentially support an...
EARTH.COM - More than 2 billion years ago, oxygen became a permanent part of Earth’s atmosphere. What happened next has puzzled scientists for decades. Somehow, oxygen levels stayed high enough for millions of years to eventually support complex life. New research finally explains how, and the answer traces back to a nutrient most people rarely...
PEOPLE - Venus may be moonless today, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it always was. A new study suggests that if Venus once had a moon, the planet’s unusually slow rotation could have eventually pulled the celestial body back toward its surface, potentially ending with a massive collision. After the collision, the fragments of the...
SCIENCE ALERT - Wildfires that ravage developed areas of the US tend to hit a particular kind of neighborhood: suburban, owner-occupied, and relatively well-off, new research has found. Wildfires in the US aren't just a problem for communities near remote forests – they are literally in people's backyards, especially for people who live on hillsides...
BBC - Scientists have come up with a surprising new theory about one of our neighbouring planets - and it involves a missing moon. They think Venus may once have had one, but that it slowly moved closer to the planet, before eventually crashing into it. The idea could help explain why Venus doesn't have...
MASHABLE - Venus' sluggish spin may be the key to why it doesn't have a moon — anymore, at least, new research says. The study, led by University of California, Riverside astrophysicist Stephen Kane, appears in The Astrophysical Journal. Kane's team built computer simulations of how gravity ties a planet to a moon in space...
REUTERS - A California-based astrophysicist presented a new theory on Monday to explain why Venus, the planet most like Earth in size, mass and structure, lacks its own moon. Call it a case of celestial cannibalism. The extremely slow speed at which Venus rotates on its axis would have doomed any natural satellite that may...
POPULAR MECHANICS - On July 30, 2025, at 11:24 a.m. local time, a massive magnitude 8.8 megathrust earthquake rattled the eastern coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. It was the largest seismic event since the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011, although thankfully it was much less deadly. The massive quake happened along the Kuril–Kamchatka subduction zone—a fault...
LIVE SCIENCE - Given that it's the closest planet to the sun, Mercury seems like it should be the hottest planet in our solar system. However, at a blistering 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius), Venus tops Mercury's 800 F (430 C) highest surface temperature, despite being an average of 31 million miles (50 million...
COMPLEX - A scientist looked at a group of tiny blonde bugs with red markings and thought of Taylor Swift. And somehow, that ended with an entire genus named after her. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside revealed Wednesday, September 9, that four newly described Australian plant bugs belong to a new genus called...
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Where many people might see a plant-eating bug with light yellow coloration and a splash of red accents, Sarah Schroeder sees, in a way, Taylor Swift. At least, that’s the scientist’s reasoning for why the names she chose for four newly described Australian insect species were inspired by her favorite world-famous...
VARIETY - Taylor Swift, the award-winning billionaire singer and songwriter, is getting a new honor: The megastar is the namesake of several recently discovered species of plant-feeding insects from Australia. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have named the new species of insect after Swift. A paper describing the 12 new species was published...