The greatest earthquake ever recorded struck off the coast of southern Chile on May 22, 1960. Denis Garcia, a resident of the adjacent port town Corral, observed something strange after the shaking ceased. When he saw Corral Bay, he was looking for his family, not thinking they were safe and on high ground. The water…
Raul Puente-Martinez has been punctured by cacti needles on numerous occasions. He’s been studying prickly pears and chollas, which are known for their barbed spines, for decades as a research botanist and curator of living collections at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. The worst cholla attack he’s ever seen happened while he was hiking…
Since its inception in 1983, Kilauea’s Pu‘u‘‘ cone has risen and fallen as magma levels in the volcano’s active East Rift Zone varied. However, Pu‘u‘‘ announced its retirement with a rumble on April 30, 2018. Like an unclogged sink, the once-brimming basin trickled down into the earth. Newly freed lava crept eastward from the summit…
Imagine going to the store, returning home with three full bags of groceries. You pause before entering your house and toss one of the bags into a garbage can, which is then carted away to a landfill. What a waste of time. That is precisely what we are doing today as a group. Around the…
The drop stones found in tropical rocks were one of the first signs that something unusual had occurred on Earth. Drop stones are pebbles that land on the seafloor with enough power to distort the sediment. However, no drop stones should have been present in these rocks. The most common source is glaciers; ice sheet…
If substantial global warming continues, the North Atlantic jet stream, a fast-moving air current that circles the Northern Hemisphere, may travel northward in the next decades. Changes in rainfall patterns in the midlatitudes, as well as a rise in droughts, heat waves, floods, and other extreme weather events across Europe and the eastern United States,…
Fresh eyes can transform the world, and a world beset by pandemics, climate change, and unfairness is primed for change like none we’ve ever seen. That’s why, after a five-year hiatus, Popular Science is reintroducing the Brilliant 10: an annual list of early-career scientists and engineers who are coming up with novel solutions to issues…
Wade into the gently lapping waves late at night Wade into the gently lapping surf at Boca Chica Beach, a pristine stretch of beach about 20 miles east of Brownsville, Texas, and you’ll see nothing but Gulf seas meeting sky—endless, dark but for the stars and lazy whitecaps. A contemplative, antique vista that makes you…
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is working on an interdisciplinary project to recreate the scents of plant species that have been lost due to human colonial destruction of their habitat. Whereas others might try to reconstruct a woolly mammoth from centuries-old sequences, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is working on recreating the scents of plant species that have been…
Since 2002, biologist Jeff Sikich has been employed at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. He’s dealt with a variety of strange situations, including a call to bring his dart gun to tranquilize what turned out to be a three-foot-tall statue of a mountain lion rather than a real mountain lion on one memorable…