36+ min ago   (722+ words) For years, critics have argued that encouraging people to recycle distracts from the harder work of pushing for real climate policy. They say it lets governments and companies off the hook for systemic change. A new four-year study tracked thousands…...

3+ hour, 28+ min ago   (876+ words) A Christmas tree worm spends much of its existence hiding in plain sight on coral reefs. At the slightest disturbance, its brightly colored, spiral-shaped crown snaps back into its tube in an instant. That reflex is what makes its behavior…...

5+ hour, 11+ min ago   (889+ words) For a century, a simple metric called cooling degree days has helped utility companies, grid operators, and financial markets estimate how much electricity air conditioning and refrigeration will require. New research shows that the old metric has been missing something…...

8+ hour, 15+ min ago   (1295+ words) The world’s transport networks are about to undergo one of the biggest building booms in history. Growing populations and economies will require vast amounts of new roads, railways, bridges, and airports. Meeting that demand could consume hundreds of billions of…...

9+ hour, 9+ min ago   (1097+ words) For decades, scientists have warned that soil degradation threatens the world’s food supply. But proving exactly how much crop production it costs has been surprisingly difficult. A new global study has now put a number on that hidden cost. Researchers…...

10+ hour, 22+ min ago   (749+ words) The Arctic is changing, and one of the clearest signs is the disappearance of its sea ice. The phenomenon has been studied for years, but estimating the exact amount of ice present has proved challenging. Some of the biggest challenges…...

1+ day, 7+ hour ago   (711+ words) Since the first major bleaching event hit Hawaiian waters in 1996, coral reefs across the islands have faced escalating heat stress and increasingly frequent bleaching. The trend has only accelerated in the decades since. New research offers a rare piece of…...

1+ day, 21+ hour ago   (811+ words) For most of Earth’s history, nutrients left the sea for the land in small, slow installments. Seabirds carried them ashore as guano. Salmon carried them upriver inside their own bodies. Storms tossed kelp onto beaches. Seals hauled out on rocky…...

2+ day, 47+ min ago   (767+ words) A plastic bottle cap pulled from the waters off southern Japan turned out to be hiding an entire miniature ecosystem inside it. It contained 307 organisms spanning nine different groups, including a worm species that had never been recorded in Japanese…...

2+ day, 4+ hour ago   (975+ words) A new study has found that the recent slowdown in Arctic winter sea ice loss is over. Ice cover fell to record lows in the winters of 2025 and 2026, after the steepest one-year drop ever measured. The result changes how scientists…...