EarthDate

For billions of years, there was no fire on Earth.

There was heat to ignite it, like volcanic eruptions and lighting strikes. But fire lacked two very crucial ingredients: fuel to burn, and oxygen to feed the flames.

Ironically, plants would provid... more

Here’s a fun experiment you can try at home to make miniature cold lightning using rocks from your yard, or candy.

First, look for some quartz pebbles. Preferably milky white ones.

Next, find some wintergreen Life Savers—or white sugar candies will... more

Some of the loudest sounds in the ocean are air guns, fired by ships doing seismic studies of the seafloor.

The blasts can interfere with the communication of whales for a thousand miles around. So, scientists thought, what if they could use whales ... more

In another EarthDate, we talked about Earth’s magnetic polarity reversing.

But sometimes the poles don’t flip, they just go on an excursion—with potentially drastic consequences.

A polar excursion happens when the pole moves more than 45 degrees fr... more

For decades, Death Valley held a mystery that scientists could not solve.

Large rocks were slithering across the valley floor, traveling hundreds of meters, leaving long tracks behind them.

But no one had seen them do it or could figure out how it ... more

If your birthday is in August, your birthstone is peridot. And if you have one, you can be sure it came from deep within the Earth—or deep in outer space!

Peridot is the gem name for a gem-quality example of olivine.

Olivine is very common inside t... more

Compasses point north. Until one day, they’ll all point south—as they have before.

In 1905, a French geologist discovered a lava field with some very strange properties. Iron within it was magnetized in reverse. What should have been north was south... more

How would medical researchers build the perfect needle, for sensitive injections or brain-tissue sampling? Of course, they’d look to nature.

And where in nature would they find the perfect needle? On the sharp end of a mosquito!

Mosquitoes are the ... more