Earth's Systems

  1. Physics

    Explainer: Radiation and radioactive decay

    Like clockwork, radioactive forms of some elements shed parts of themselves as they attempt to become nonradioactive.

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  2. Physics

    Explainer: Radioactive dating helps solve mysteries

    Knowing the decay rate of radioactive elements can help date ancient fossils and other artifacts.

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  3. Earth

    Fossil-fuel use is confusing some carbon-dating measurements

    Carbon-14 dating of recent artifacts will soon give scientists confusing results. That’s another price society pays for its reliance on fossil fuels.

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  4. Climate

    Greenland’s inland ice is melting far faster than anyone thought

    Inland melting of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream is accelerating — and may contribute far more to sea level rise than earlier estimates suggested.

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  5. Earth

    Scientists Say: Drought

    A drought is a shortage of rain or snow in a particular area.

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  6. Earth

    Analyze This: Wildfires are pumping more pollution into U.S. skies

    Researchers wanted to study the health effects of wildfire smoke. But they realized they didn’t know where it was and how much exposure people had.

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  7. Physics

    Scientists Say: Neutron

    Neutrons are one of the main building blocks of atoms and have no electric charge.

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  8. Physics

    Cosmic timeline: What’s happened since the Big Bang

    Energy, mass and the cosmos' structure evolved a lot over the past 13.82 billion years — much of it within just the first second.

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  9. Chemistry

    Scientists Say: Salinity

    The higher the salinity, the saltier a body of water.

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  10. Earth

    One 2022 tsunami may have been as tall as the Statue of Liberty

    A massive volcanic eruption in the South Pacific, earlier this year, appears to have triggered one tsunami that was initially 90 meters (nearly 300 feet) tall.

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  11. Climate

    Heat waves appear more life-threatening than scientists once thought

    This is bad news as a warming planet leads to growing numbers of excessive heat waves — and millions more people facing potentially deadly temperatures.

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  12. Physics

    Scientists used lasers to make ‘smoke rings’ of light

    Physicists had a bright idea: Make light into swirling, ring-shaped vortices, similar to smoke rings or bubble rings.

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