THE NEW YORK TIMES - If you look around Waukesha County in Wisconsin today, it can be difficult to imagine a tropical coastline teeming with trilobites, the oldest known scorpions and jawless vertebrates. But 437 million years ago, during the Silurian period, these creatures lived and died there, some getting washed into a salty cove...

EARTH.COM - Earth has never stood still when it comes to climate. For billions of years, our planet has cycled between heat and cold, shaping the environment where life evolved. But new research from UC Riverside (UCR) reveals that the story of Earth’s carbon balance is more complicated than once believed. The findings suggest that...

INTERESTING ENGINEERING - Gravitational waves, tiny ripples in spacetime caused by cosmic collisions like merging black holes, are almost impossibly faint. Detecting them requires LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), one of the most sensitive instruments ever built. However, there’s a catch. To see farther and catch weaker signals, LIGO needs more powerful lasers, but stronger...

STUDYFINDS - New modeling shows that global warming events can, under certain conditions, trigger long-term cooling strong enough to resemble ice age conditions, according to researchers at the University of California, Riverside. When the planet experiences large-scale carbon emissions and warming, natural cooling processes can sometimes overshoot and send global temperatures plummeting far below their...

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - Just decades after the first exoplanets were identified, our database of the distant worlds—monitored by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute—has breached a new threshold. Now, astronomers have officially identified more than 6,000 planets outside our solar system. “This milestone represents decades of cosmic exploration driven by NASA space telescopes—exploration that has completely...

FORBES - NASA reports that its official tally of extrasolar planets has hit the 6,000 mark. This thirty-year milestone has been in the works since two little known Swiss astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didiez Queloz, first detected 51 Pegasi b. The first of the so-called “hot Jupiters” to be detected, “51 Peg” is a gas...

SFGATE - Described by researchers as one of the most serious wood-destroying pests in the world, subterranean termites cause an estimated $32 billion in damage globally per year, and California is a battleground where both native and non-native species flourish. Now, unfortunately for squeamish homeowners, researchers at UC Riverside said there may be even more...

POPULAR MECHANICS - For the past several years, dozens of rivers throughout the Arctic watershed have been undergoing a shocking transformation: They’re turning orange. When rivers sport these troubling hues, humans are usually the culprit—whether through mining operations, agricultural runoff, or criminally dumping hazardous materials into waterways. With these rivers mostly tucked away in northern...

QUANTA MAGAZINE - enus is arguably the worst place in the solar system. A cloak of carbon dioxide suffocates the planet, subjecting its surface to skull-crushing pressure. Sulfuric acid rains down through the sickly yellow sky but never reaches the lava-licked ground. Venus is so hot — hot enough to melt lead — that the...

DAILY GALAXY - In Alaska’s far north, something strange is happening. Rivers that once ran crystal clear are now turning a rusty orange, and scientists say the shift is permanent. A new study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has uncovered the hidden force behind this transformation, one that is quietly...

SFGATE - When John McPhee and his ragtag crew first kayaked into the pristine Alaskan wilderness in 1975, they were awestruck. The author, who chronicled his reconnaissance trip in the literary classic “Coming into the Country,” was surrounded by an abundance of untouched flora and fauna. Beneath them, Arctic grayling, chum salmon and Dolly Varden...

DISCOVER MAGAZINE - In the northern Alaskan wilderness, a bizarre symptom of climate change is emerging: The rivers there are turning unnaturally orange. This phenomenon paints a worrisome picture for watersheds all across the Arctic, now faced with toxic metals being released by melting permafrost. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National...

ENTOMOLOGY TODAY - In southern California, subterranean termites in the genus Reticulitermes are a common scourge, responsible for significant economic damage in that part of the state. Early studies of these termites indicated that only two pest species existed—Reticulitermes hesperus and Reticulitermes tibialis. However, a 2023 study by Chow-Yang Lee, Ph.D. , endowed presidential chair...

LIVE SCIENCE - Imagine a planet twice as wide as Earth, covered in an ocean that smells like sweet cabbage. Every day, a faint red star warms this ocean world and the uncountable masses of hungry, plankton-like creatures that inhabit it. They rise to the surface by the billions, joining together in a living, floating...

SCIENCEALERT - Giant worlds beyond the Solar System could be the probe we need to figure out how dark matter manifests in the Universe. According to a new study, one particular dark matter model could see the mysterious mass accumulating in the cores of giant planets, collapsing into tiny black holes destined to consume the...

EARTH.COM - or years, one rule in chemistry class seemed simple: certain high-energy carbon species, like vitamin B1, fall apart in water. That’s why many reactions take place in specialized organic solvents instead of the most common solvent on Earth. A new study puts a crack in that rule. It shows that a reactive carbon...

UNILAD - A worrying new study has found that some planets might develop black holes from within that go on to destroy them. The research, which was published on August 20, found that dark matter may gather over time in the center of some planets which creates a black hole that ultimately goes on to...

LOS ANGELES TIMES - For anyone wondering whether intense dust storms, such as the haboob that enveloped Phoenix this week, are possible in Southern California, the answer is yes. They’ve hit in the recent past and are a growing issue over much of Southern California and the Central Valley, thanks to the drying associated with...

EARTHSKY - The mysterious substance known as dark matter makes up most of the mass in the universe. But there is a lot we don’t know about it. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have suggested using exoplanets – planets orbiting distant stars – to study and better understand dark matter. They said on...

EOS - Gale Sinatra and her husband fled their Altadena, Calif., home on 7 January with little more than overnight bags, taking just one of their two cars. “We thought we were going to be gone overnight,” Sinatra said. “We thought they’d get the fire under control and we’d get back in.” When the couple...