Little changes can make a big difference It’s not too late. DepositPhotos Back in 2016, Gina McCarthy—the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency at the time—sat down with PopSci to talk about why Earth Day still matters. When...

Happy birthday to the best space telescope ever! Love, PopSci. A visible light image of the Lagoon Nebula (aka Messier 8 or M8) with the bright star Herschel 36 at the center. NASA, ESA, and STScI On a clear summer night in the northern...

And that could mean trouble. We know that at the end of the last major ice age, rapid fluctuations in the circulation led to extreme climate shifts on a global scale. Natalie Renier/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Author provided The ocean...

Dinosaurs stomped all over this remote Scottish island and left the prints to prove it. A sauropod footprint found on Skye. Paige dePolo Amidst the wild sloping hills and picturesque lochs that dominate the landscape on Scotland’s Isle of Skye,...

Happy Easter! Don’t freak out, but do look up. DepositPhotos Back in the fall of 2017, outlets started reporting that a defunct Chinese space station—Tiangong-1—was set to return to Earth in an uncontrolled crash at any time.

There are many members of the animal kingdom that rival our own wits. No other member of the animal kingdom can ace an algebra test or write an A+ essay. But that doesn’t mean other species aren’t highly intelligent.

As geo-engineering projects soar, the declassified project is newly relevant. Troops wade through a river in Vietnam. Wikimedia Commons It was a seasonably chilly afternoon in 1974 when Senators Claiborne Pell, a Democrat from Rhode Island, and...

What do we actually know about ancient astronomy? How did Egyptians know how to build the pyramids? Ricardo Liberato/wikimedia, CC BY-ND Ever since humans could look up to see the sky, we have been amazed by its beauty and untold mysteries.

Because it sure isn’t here. … no way to tell until they finally hail us. All we know is how far our strongest signals could travel. Here’s where we’re searching—and where we fall short. Don’t blink To keep an eye out for...

And we might be in for another one. … the East with wet snow and power outages. It turns out that having three storms so close together isn’t that unusual—it happened just a few years ago—but we are having more storms these days. If you...

Very little—even if it’s very big. Size isn’t everything. Radio Researchers used to think brain-to-body-size ratio revealed intelligence because it showed how a species devoted energy to its cranium. They were utterly wrong.

The whole world is drying up. Cape Town’s water reservoirs are drying up. NASA Earth Observatory Day Zero: that’s the ominous label officials in Cape Town have bestowed on the day that water will run out.

Temperatures in the Arctic could help drive extreme weather in the United States. Can we blame it on the Arctic? PJ Hanse via Flickr Last October, experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a fairly mild winter for...

They’re windows into the heart of the Earth. … of the planet. Petra Diamonds Diamonds have been in the news quite a lot this week, and not because of any celebrity engagement news. Instead, it’s what’s inside that counts. In separate...

Meanwhile in space: dusty donuts, 50 launches, and pizza storms on Jupiter. An artist’s illustration of the Parker Solar Probe near the Sun. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Send your name to the Sun You’re probably not...