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...
PEOPLE - Taylor Swift has received an unlikely new honor recognizing her prolific career. She has become the namesake of a recently discovered insect species. On Wednesday, Sept. 9, the Insect Systematics and Evolution journal released a new study, “New genera and species of Australian sheoak-associated plant bugs,” announcing the discovery of 12 new plant-eating...
EARTH.COM - Nobody can tell you exactly when an earthquake will hit. But a team of scientists has gotten remarkably good at answering a different question: where. Their new method, developed at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), flags the specific stretches of major earthquake faults where stress has been quietly piling up for years...
GIZMODO - Earthquakes may strike without warning, but the ground beneath us is rarely completely still. Current systems can measure these tiny movements with remarkable precision, but until now, they have been used mainly to understand how faults behave rather than to predict where an earthquake might strike. Now, a new approach is challenging that...
USA TODAY - Meet the newest members of the Swiftie universe. They're blonde, accented in red and have names like "Lover," "Fearless" and "Poets." They've also been hiding out in Australia for decades. Scientists have named a newly discovered genus of plant-feeding insects "Swiftiephylus" in honor of Taylor Swift. Sarah Schroeder , a doctoral student...
HUFFPOST - Hopefully, Taylor Swift won’t be bugged by this news, but a doctoral student in entomology at UC Riverside has just named a new genus of plant-feeding insects from Australia after the singer. Sarah Schroeder just co-authored a paper in the journal Insect Systematics and Evolution where she describes 12 new species of insects...
KTLA 5 LOS ANGELES - Scientists at the University of California-Riverside have developed a way to identify where the biggest earthquakes are likely to occur. UC Riverside researchers say that their methodology identifies where stress has been building along major faults, so scientists can determine where a rupture will take place. It does not predict...
ZME SCIENCE - Venus has no moon today. But it may not always have been alone. A new study suggests that if a giant impact gave early Venus a substantial moon, tidal forces could eventually have reversed the satellite’s path and dragged it back toward the planet. Venus would then have torn the moon apart...