Scientists have long sought an explanation as to why stable conditions on Earth have persisted long enough for life to evolve over millions of years. Now a team has hit upon two mechanisms, "sequential selection" and "selection by survival alone," as a possible solution to this "Gaia puzzle."
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After more than 200 years, South Georgia is rodent-free. The focus of the world's largest rodent eradication project, the almost uninhabited South Atlantic island has officially been declared free of all rats and mice by Scottish-based charity the South Georgia Heritage Trust (SGHT).
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The Pleistocene Park project is aiming to rebuild a lost Ice Age ecosystem in Siberia, and its directors, Sergey and Nikita Zimov, say it could help slow the effects of climate change. Now, the initiative is running a crowdfunding campaign to help transport a new herd of animals to the park.
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With microplastics now in the deepest ocean trenches and moving up the food chain, it’s no surprise that plastic pollution is in the crosshairs for Earth Day 2018. IBM has now released a video outlining how it's helping clean up the seas, using plankton as a kind of living water quality sensor.
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Although familiar in our own homes, scientists have for the first time discovered which insects pollinate Venus flytraps in their native environment, and why they appear to be getting away from being the plant’s next meal.
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Thorium reactors have long been proposed as a cleaner, safer alternative to nuclear energy. Now Russian scientists propose a new thorium reactor design that can burn weapons-grade plutonium, producing power and thermal energy while disposing of nuclear waste at the same time.
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A team at Columbia University has studied the health records of over ten million people across three different countries and discovered some compelling links between a person’s lifetime disease risk and the month they were born in.
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A NASA study has analyzed data gathered by the OCO-2 satellite and pinpointed the cause of an unprecedented spike in atmospheric CO2 in 2015 and 2016: the El Nino weather effect caused certain tropical regions to release far more CO2 than they normally would.
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Much study has focused on the effects these rising carbon dioxide levels could have on weather patterns and global temperatures, but could elevated atmospheric CO2 levels negatively affect the nutritional value of the food we grow?
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Sixteen years after a controversial biodegradation plan allowed 1,000 truckloads of orange peels to be unloaded onto a barren, deforested area of Costa Rican land, researchers have found a lush, overgrown forest with richer soil and more tree species than the adjacent land that was untreated.
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