Earth

Asteroids can devastate the planet in an instant – just ask the dinosaurs. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have now demonstrated a proof of concept method to deflect a potential Earthbound asteroid using a blast of X-rays.

Saturn’s rings are iconic, but new evidence presented by researchers from Monash University suggests Earth might once have sported one of its own. This ring would likely have caused climate chaos on the surface.

Solar eclipses don’t just look cool – they can send gravity waves rippling through Earth’s atmosphere like dropping a stone in a pond. An international team of students has measured these gravity waves for the first time.

Stumbling on a giant gold nugget and never working again is something we’ve all daydreamed about, but how exactly do they form? A new experiment has found that earthquakes and electricity might be key ingredients.

NASA scientists have discovered a third global energy field around Earth. Known as the ambipolar electric field, this force drives charged particles into space above the poles and joins the known gravity and electromagnetic fields.

Geologists have drilled deeper than ever into material from the Earth’s mantle – more than three quarters of a mile. The sample gives a glimpse into the geology and even life in a deep world normally beyond our reach.

Earth’s seasons change as we orbit the Sun – but can the climate also be affected by the solar system’s changing position in the Milky Way? A new study suggests an ice age about two million years ago may have been triggered by an interstellar winter.

If you’re planning to see the aurora soon, keep an eye out for a brand new type of sky glow that’s just been discovered. This short-lived phenomenon only appears after midnight and seems to be the inverse of something just spotted a few years ago.

A new study of ancient detrital zircons from inland Australia has found the first evidence that the Earth has had fresh water and dry land four billion years ago, much longer than previously thought. In fact, 500 million years further back in time.

The Earth’s magnetic field is vital for life – without it, the Sun’s radiation would sterilize the planet. But a new study suggests we wouldn’t be here at all if that magnetic field hadn’t almost completely collapsed half a billion years ago.

In 2029, a large asteroid will whizz past Earth so close it’ll be visible to the naked eye. But could collisions with other asteroids bounce it off-course into us? To find out, astronomers have now crunched the paths of 1.3 million known asteroids.

The hot interior of planets isn’t somewhere you’d expect to find snow, but “iron snow” could fall on Earth’s core. A new study has modeled the dynamics in the lab and found that iron snow could make magnetic fields switch on and off in some planets.