Over the past few years, we've seen multiple volcanic eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland at Fagradalsfjall. These eruptions have been a tourist boon, with lava fountains and lava flows pouring out over a mostly barren landscape not far from the nation's capital city. A third eruption might be starting soon, but the playing field is suddenly much different. The focus of earthquakes, cracks in the landscape and inflation is underneath the town of Grindavík, a fishing village with a p ...read more

This story was originally published in our Nov/Dec 2023 issue. Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.Astronomical websites and press releases brim with pictures of swirling gas giants, watery terrestrial worlds, and strange planetary systems with exotic suns. But just how realistic are these artist’s concepts? Do they truly show newly discovered worlds, or are they simply fanciful pictures meant to draw you into reading about the latest addition to the exoplanetary mena ...read more

Water pollution is a growing concern globally, with research estimating that chemical industries discharge 300-400 megatonnes (600-800 billion pounds) of industrial waste into bodies of water each year.As a team of materials scientists, we’re working on an engineered “living material” that may be able to transform chemical dye pollutants from the textile industry into harmless substances.Water pollution is both an environmental and humanitarian issue that can affect ecosystems and ...read more

Timing is everything. For early risers and late-nighters alike, listening to your internal clock may be the key to success. From the classroom to the courtroom and beyond, people perform best on challenging tasks at a time of day that aligns with their circadian rhythm.Circadian rhythms are powerful internal timekeepers that drive a person’s physiological and intellectual functioning throughout the day. Peaks in these circadian rhythms vary across individuals. Some people, known as larks or ...read more

The days of having a dictionary on your bookshelf are numbered. But that’s OK, because everyone already walks around with a dictionary – not the one on your phone, but the one in your head.Just like a physical dictionary, your mental dictionary contains information about words. This includes the letters, sounds and meaning, or semantics, of words, as well as information about parts of speech and how you can fit words together to form grammatical sentences. Your mental dictionary is also li ...read more

The Caspian tiger's (Panthera tigris virgata) story is a tragic tale. Once a dominant predator of Asia's diverse landscapes, its disappearance testifies to the darker sides of agricultural development. And though its demographic traits distinguished it as a unique subspecies within the tiger family, those traits didn’t last long, and the cat was lost to extinction in the late 20th century. So, why don't we see any of these tigers in the world today?What Was the Caspian Tiger?With a wide habita ...read more

Fossils provide important insights about the existence and adaption of living organisms — over millions of years. Ancient plant fossils provide clues about climate conditions and environmental change. Among the most interesting are Glossopteris leaf fossils, which have been found in Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, and parts of Asia — mostly India. With more than 70 identifiable species, this once prevalent plant is a valuable information source on Earth’s conditions, lo ...read more

Old Tom, a particularly long-lived orca that participated in whale hunts in the early 1900s, may have sounded a call-to-arms early in the morning, or even in the middle of the night — a loud slapping of tail fins off the surface of the water.In a small town called Eden off the coast of southeastern Australian, orca pods would alert whalers and heard humpback whales that swam through these waters every year towards the Twofold Bay area. The whalers would then get out on the water as quickly as ...read more

For tens of millions of years, the asteroid Bennu traveled through the vacuum of space, likely originating from our own solar system. But one small hunk of debris from the sample brought back to Earth — the first piece of an asteroid ever obtained by NASA — took its most recent trip on a subway car in Washington, D.C.“The good people at [the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority] can say they transported a piece of Bennu,” says Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian ...read more

There’s an academic exercise in psychology classes that asks students to take Sigmund Freud’s concept of the id, ego, and superego and apply it to characters from The Simpsons. Homer’s impulsiveness typically casts him as the id, Marge’s down-to-earth mentality makes her the ego, and Lisa’s conscientiousness represents the superego.The activity helps students learn about the history of psychology, and although Freud’s theory directed the discipline for decades, scholars now debat ...read more