This image shows mound fields. The mounds are found in dense, low, dry forest caatinga vegetation and can be seen when the land is cleared for pasture. (Credit: Roy Funch)
Two hundred million mounds of dirt dot an area about the size of Great Britain in a tropical forest in northeastern Brazil. The cone-shaped dirt piles are roughly twice as tall as the average American man and stretch 30 feet across at the base. The mounds, the work of countless generations of termites, rise from the earth ev ...read more
A composite image of the Sun taken by ASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). (Credit: NASA/SDO)
Didn’t we all have that “Parent Trap” fantasy, where we’d come across a long-lost sibling that was separated at birth? That dream didn’t go beyond a movie plot for the most of us, but it’s just come true for the Sun.
In a rare discovery, an international team of astronomers has found a star that was likely born in the same stellar nursery as our Sun. A ...read more
Meteors are both common and beautiful. But larger impactors can cause devastating harm. (Credit: NPS)
We don’t need to be scared of everything that falls from space. In fact, literal tons of space rocks rain down daily, though that’s mostly in the form of minuscule dust grains. But every 100 million years or so, catastrophe strikes in the form of a rock spanning miles.
The last one killed not just the dinosaurs, but three-quarters of all life on Earth. The effects on huma ...read more
Damage from the August 31, 1886 earthquake near Charleston, South Carolina. John Karl Hillers/USGS
Most people who live in the eastern United States likely don’t worry too much about earthquakes. Most of the shaking that goes on across the country happens on the west coast, running up and down the San Andreas fault zone or in the Cascades of Oregon and Washington. Occasionally, an earthquake will rattle Yellowstone or Oklahoma feels an temblor brought on by waste water being pumped into t ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
