4 billion years ago, the Earth was composed of a series of magma oceans hundreds of kilometres deep.
Larich/Shutterstock
The rocks provide rare evidence of a time when Earth’s surface was a deep sea of incandescent magma.
A tiny speck of asteroid dust, circled, can only be manipulated by a glass needle.
ISAS JAXA
A minuscule particle of asteroid dust has helped reveal how celestial rocks like Earth might have sprouted life.
Where do the hydrogen and oxygen that make up the earth’s water come from?
NASA Goddard/Flickr
A recent study shows that the Earth’s water could come directly from the oxygen and hydrogen present in the rocks that formed it, and not from a late supply by asteroids.
The greenhouse effect and plate tectonics are essential for maintaining water on the Earth’s surface.
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Reto Stöckli
The presence of water on the Earth’s surface is the result of a subtle balance between different mechanisms in the atmosphere and below the surface.
Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
If all of humanity was wiped out tomorrow, it’s estimated that the natural world would take at least five million years to recover from the damage humans have done to the world.
shutterstock Aphelleon
Research shows that when people feel insecure and anxious they become more concerned with identity values such as nationalism, status and success.
Light from our setting sun reflecting off storm clouds can give off a some vivid shades of pinks, purples and oranges.
Jake Clark
It’s all to do with the light from the Sun and a blanket of air wrapped around Earth called the ‘atmosphere’.
The Piton de la Fournaise in eruption, 2015.
Greg de Serra/Flickr
The study of neutrinos produced within the Earth’s interior provides a better understanding of the radioactivity of our planet.
An artist’s rendering of the surface of Venus.
(Shutterstock)
A severe climate change event on Venus may have transformed an Earth-like climate to the current uninhabitable-to-humans state.
Fossil remains indicate these birds had a wingspan of over 20 feet.
Brian Choo
Paleontologists have discovered fossil remains belonging to an enormous ‘toothed’ bird that lived for a period of about 60 million years after dinosaurs.
Photo of a nearly full Moon shining brightly on the Earth’s atmosphere, taken from the International Space Station.
NASA
The Earth’s magnetic field was most likely weaker when life evolved on our planet than it is today.
NASA’s Curiosity Rover takes a selfie on Mars in June, 2018.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The clouds of Venus may harbour alien life. But where else?
Strict physical distancing restrictions have resulted in cleaner air, but atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise.
PeteLinforth/Pixabay
Despite clear air as a result of the pandemic reducing human activities, our emissions still soar.
Artist’s rendition of NASA’s 2020 Mars rover collecting rocks with its robotic arm.
NASA
Martian meteorites allow scientists here on Earth to decode that planet’s geology, more than a decade before the first missions are scheduled to bring rocks back home from Mars.
Earth and Moon as seen by the Galileo spacecraft.
NASA
From the Moon’s size to the first calculator, the ancients made some jawdropping discoveries without modern technology.
Two planetary bodies colliding.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Earth and the Moon were long thought to be virtually identical in composition. Now we know they are not.
Shutterstock
These scientists identified the five most severe crises the planet faces in a new report, Our Future on Earth 2020.
In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon.
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Many people are still upset that Pluto was demoted from being a planet. But definitions of various celestial objects are fairly fluid. So whether it is an asteroid or moon or planet is up for debate.
In the future, people may be able to go to Mars.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com
The first Martian might just be a human being.
NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
Kepler-452b is sometimes called ‘Earth 2.0’, but there’s a lot we still don’t know about it.