To understand why some sea ice melts and other sea ice survives, researchers tracked millions of floes over decades. This herculean undertaking combined satellite data, weather reports, and buoy data Keep reading
Month: February 2025
Tar Pit, Sweet Tar Pit
The La Brea Tar Pits have delivered countless creatures to their doom over tens of thousands of years. But the sticky quagmire of the pits’ natural asphalt is a comfy Keep reading
“Magic of the North”
Fires glow above and below in this award-winning image from photographer Josh Beames. In the foreground, lava from an Icelandic eruption spurts into the air and seeps across the landscape Keep reading
Dry Plants Warn Away Moths
Drought-stressed plants let out ultrasonic distress cries that moths use to avoid plants that can’t support their offspring. In ideal circumstances, a plant is constantly pulling water up from the Keep reading
Soaring Through the Pillars of Creation
The Pillars of Creation are an iconic feature nestled within the Eagle Nebula. For decades, the public has admired Hubble’s images of this stellar nursery, and, in this video, we Keep reading
Active Cheerios Self-Propel
The interface where air and water meet is a special world of surface-tension-mediated interactions. Cereal lovers are well-aware of the Cheerios effect, where lightweight O’s tend to attract one another, Keep reading
Revealing Gravity Waves
Severe weather — like thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes — can push air upward into a higher layer of the atmosphere and trigger gravity waves. Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Keep reading
Beneath a River of Red
A glowing arch of red, pink, and white anchors this stunning composite astrophotograph. This is a STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) caused by a river of fast-moving ions high Keep reading
Inside the Squirting Cucumber
Though only 5 cm long, the squirting cucumber can spray its seeds up to 10 meters away. The little fruit does so through a clever combination of preparation and ballistic Keep reading
Glacial Tributaries
Just as rivers have tributaries that feed their flow, small glaciers can flow as tributaries into larger ones. This astronaut photo shows Siachen Glacier and four of its tributaries coming Keep reading