Boomerang earthquakes reverse direction and ripple back the way they came

Why starquakes may explain various phenomena associated with neutron stars

Fast radio bursts—repeated millisecond-long pulses of enormous energy from neutron stars—are emitted with a timing that resembles the earthquakes and aftershocks seen on Earth when geological activity releases energy from within the planet. Although pulsars should gradually spin more slowly as they lose energy from emitting jets of radiation, sudden increases may result from interior matter moving during starquakes.

Earthquakes of identical magnitudes are unlikely to cause equal damage

The severity of earthquakes depends on factors beyond the energy released in a region, including local architecture and geological conditions, such as water-saturated soil behaving like quicksand. Secondary effects, such as landslides, floods, and fires, may also contribute.

Magnetic material in rocks provides evidence of flips in Earth's magnetic field

Volcanic rocks can lock in the direction of Earth's magnetic field as they cool, making them natural recorders of magnetism. Dating rocks and seeing the changing orientation of their magnetic field helps construct a timeline of Earth's magnetic field history.

View a map of the world’s major earthquakes from 1956-2022

Such maps can help identify tectonic plate boundaries. The most significant earthquakes are characteristic of converging plates, such as those in the Circum-Pacific Belt and the Alpine-Himalayan Belt, where the Himalayas continue to grow.

The movement of seismic waves reveals the structure of Earth’s interior

Changes in temperature, density, and composition alter the path of primary and secondary waves, impacting where they are detected along Earth’s surface. These deflections create shadow zones 104 degrees to 140 degrees away from the epicenter, where no waves are directly detected.

If, not when: An earthquake is destined to destroy the Pacific Northwest.

When the Cascadia fault line ruptures, it could be North America’s worst natural disaster in recorded history. Read a deep dive into the history of the region and the potential impact of the eventual seismic boom.

Sharp wave ripples in the brain tag experiences for long-term memory storage

These ripples were known to quickly replay neuronal sequences during sleep for consolidation. While awake, they help the brain prioritize memories to remember, and their disruption can impair memory formation.

The flow of electricity in AC circuits flips back and forth, unlike DC circuits

Alternating currents in the US change the flow direction 120 times every second, allowing for efficient transformation and transmission of energy across power grids by sending energy at lower currents. This is changed into one-way direct currents when powering electronics.

During glacier surging, these bodies of ice can move over half a football field a day

The movement of these glaciers, which repeatedly speed up and advance for months or years after stalling or moving backward for a time, results from melting ice that reduces friction between them and the ground, allowing them to slide more quickly. Scientists note that this effect is becoming more frequent due to climate change.

How the Turkish earthquake created a 100-mile rupture

A February 2023 earthquake devastated parts of Turkey and Syria destroying entire blocks, with more than 50,000 people killed. A scientific analysis revealed a fault line with a 100-mile-long rupture, where separate tectonic plates moved more than...

Hurricanes spin due to differences in air and ground speed as they move across Earth

The movement of an object across latitudes causes it to take a curved trajectory because its speed no longer matches that of the ground beneath it. This phenomenon, called the Coriolis effect, explains why hurricanes spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

Tree rings can reveal centuries of environmental change and natural events

The width and shape of tree rings reflect yearly growth conditions like rainfall or snowfall. Scars in the rings can record disruptions such as fires, avalanches, or earthquakes, explaining when and how those events occurred.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Experts reconstruct Pompeii’s daily life—and whether disaster could strike again

This documentary utilizes archaeology, X-rays, and 3D reconstructions to reconstruct what the streets, homes, and rituals of Pompeii looked like before 79 CE. Scientists also use satellite imaging to track landslide risks that could damage the site today.

Supervolcanoes can eject enough material to fill one-fourth of the Grand Canyon

Although extremely rare, their released material can trigger winters by blocking the sun and cooling the Earth’s surface for years. The Toba supereruption 74,000 years ago disrupted food chains and reduced the human population to a few thousand.

An inverted yield curve has preceded every recession that’s occurred in the last 50 years

Prolonged yield curve inversions can predict recessions, but even brief inversions can cause investors to react with knee-jerk reactions.

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

Why do flash floods occur?

Flash flooding can be more dangerous than traditional floods, occurring within the span of hours and exhibiting rapid currents. Here's how atmospheric conditions and geography combine to make some locations ripe for the disaster.

Branching timelines are allowed and resolve grandfather paradoxes in physics

According to quantum physics, traveling back in time to kill one's grandfather would not cause a paradox because time travel would bring one to a new timeline, where the person killed is not one's grandfather. Alternatively, causality would not be violated because the universe would prevent the murder from occurring.

The origin of chaos theory, colloquially known as the 'butterfly effect'

The theory explains that systems following well-understood physical laws can still produce unpredictable outcomes due to small variations in their initial conditions. Originally identified in weather data, elements of chaos have been observed in stock market fluctuations, cardiac arrhythmias, and the evolution of online social movements.

Why roller coaster loops are never circular

The beloved looped roller coaster rides used to be shapes as perfect circles and constructed with wood, resulting in wobbly machinery that gave people whiplash. After the invention of steel and further scientific understanding, Six Flags debuted The Great American Revolution—a modern, oval loop with steel that offered a safer and smoother experience.

Explore a visualization of curved spacetime under general relativity

While depictions involving bends in elastic fabrics are common to illustrate gravity, they are circular representations that rely on gravity in the real world to depict gravity in the model. The river model instead shows how bends in spacetime convert speed through time into speed through space, producing acceleration.

Relative motion between a source and an observer shifts the color of observed light

The phenomenon, known as the Doppler effect, is the result of experiencing an increase in the frequency of observed waves when approaching a source and a decrease when moving away. Because this property corresponds to color, approaching objects appear bluer than normal—blueshift—and receding objects appear redder than usual—redshift.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

Niagara Falls is slowly eroding backward toward Lake Erie

At its current erosion rate of roughly one foot per year, Niagara Falls is expected to retreat all the way to Lake Erie in about 50,000 years.

Explore the effects of tornadoes of different scales

In this simulation, users can adjust the tornado's diameter and rotation speed to see its impact as it passes through a series of trees and a one-story home.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

Climate tipping points are irreversible changes to Earth's environment

Earth's natural systems have prevented these events—including the mass death of coral reefs, loss of the Amazon rainforest, and shutdown of Atlantic currents—but scientists believe they are unlikely to withstand continued stressors from climate change.

Fracking brought short-term wealth and long-term collapse to Rock Springs, Wyoming

In the early 2000s, the fracking boom transformed the quiet mining town into a hub of oil field laborers with plentiful job opportunities. Once the boom faded and industry left, unaffordable housing, unsafe working conditions, and drug epidemics left many residents with no prospects amid a disappearing way of life.

Watch how viruses like Ebola can spill over from animals to humans—and vice-versa.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Dirty lightning is a thunderstorm created from friction between rising and falling flows of ash and smoke during volcanic eruptions.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight