Living Laboratories: Science and the National Parks
National parks in the US are filled with glaciers and volcanoes, which isn't an accident, as the parks developed alongside the sciences of glaciology and volcanology.
“Space Tornadoes” Could Cause Geomagnetic Storms
But these phenomena, spun off ejections from the Sun, aren’t easy to study.
“Mad About Geology”: Charles Darwin’s Origin Story
At university and in the field, Darwin trained his scientific thinking as would a geologist, seeking causal explanations for observed natural phenomena.
The Long Quest to Uncover a Sea Star Killing Bacteria
Scientists say they’ve found the cause of a marine epidemic more than ten years after it started. What took so long?
The Bee Dance Debate
Can insects communicate? In the middle of the twentieth century, scientists disagreed on whether bees could possess a “language” expressed through motion.
A Massive Eruption 74,000 Years Ago Affected the Whole Planet
Archaeologists use volcanic glass to figure out how people survived.
Underground Conquest: Cave Exploration and Nationalism
As cave exploration became more popular and speleology developed as an academic discipline, cave explorers were drawn into a problematic European nationalism.
Lite Intermediate Black Holes
Meet the supermassive black hole’s smaller, much more mysterious cousin.
Fifty Years of Fractals
A half century ago ago, Benoit Mandelbrot coined the word "fractal" and pioneered a new type of geometry.
Shifting Forces: The Evolving Debate Around Dark Energy
New evidence suggests the universe might not behave as expected, raising questions about the costs of being wrong.