Category Archives: The Planet

Chile Announces Protections for Massive Swath of Ocean With Three New Marine Parks

Easter Island is home to at least 142 endemic species, including the Easter Island butterfly [...]

King of the Mud Dragons

Kinorhynchs (aka mud dragons) range in size from about 0.13 to one millimeter. Like other [...]

Inside the Colorado Vault That Keeps Your Favorite Foods From Going Extinct

Illustration by Hillary Bonhomme The New Food Economy is a non-profit newsroom using independent, deep, [...]

How to Calculate the Danger of a Toxic Chemical to the Public

Neil Hall/EPA The recent attempted poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his [...]

How California’s Giant Sequoias Tell the Story of Americans’ Conflicted Relationship With Nature

/ A stand of giant sequoias at Sequoia National Park in California. Library of Congress [...]

Why Canada Wants You to Know You’re Eating Crickets

Thanks to its neutral taste, cricket flour hides well in oatmeal and baked goods. But [...]

How a Team of Submersible-Bound Scientists Redefined Reef Ecosystems

Curasub commissioner/owner Adriaan Schrier and lead DROP scientist Carole Baldwin aboard the custom-built submersible. Barry [...]

The Real Science Behind Your Favorite Nerd Culture at Awesome Con

Awesome Con provided an opportunity for science fiction and real-life science to play off of [...]

How a Legendary Storm Chaser Changed the Face of Tornado Science

The tornado that touched down near El Reno, Oklahoma plowed through the region. The violent [...]

Illuminating the Ocean’s Teeming Twilight Zone, Before It Disappears

Everyone knows about shallow coral reefs like this one, which Shepherd captured during a decompression [...]

Diver’s magical ‘date’ with octopus leads to the discovery of a ‘mysterious’ underwater shrine

The octopus wrapped its giant tentacles around her arm, carrying her along with it as [...]

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Earth’s Past Climates

Digging Into Earth’s Climate Past to Chart Our Future Watch on In Silent Spring, Rachel [...]

A Daring Journey Into the Big Unknown of America’s Largest National Park

Nizina Glacier became more accessible to paddlers around 2000, when melting ice formed a lake [...]

Britain’s Lake District Was Immortalized by Beatrix Potter, But Is Its Future in Peril?

The books of Beatrix Potter will endure as long as there are children. Masterpieces of [...]

What the Longest Known Whale Shark Migration Ever Tells Us About Conservation

Guzmán and his team were only able to pinpoint the whale shark’s whereabouts when it [...]