Why giant sequoias need fire to grow

The ginkgo tree is a living fossil that has not changed in over 200 million years

Having outlived the dinosaurs, the tree has no living relatives as the only surviving species of the genus Ginkgo. Its growth in undisturbed environments, pollution resistance, and foul-smelling seeds may have contributed to its survivability.

Without dinosaurs, plants could produce fleshy fruits with bigger seeds

Previously disturbed by massive herbivores, denser and darker forests shifted plant evolution, reaching the greatest diversity of seed sizes, fruit sizes, and fruit types about 50 million years ago.

The ritual burns of California forests

Many ecosystems around the world have adapted to regularly occurring wildfires. Some human cultures saw the advantage of such fires and integrated them into their community rituals. Learn about similar tribal traditions looking to better manage California's forests today.

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.

The ‘humongous fungus’ may be the largest organism on Earth at more than 2,300 acres

Discovered in 1988, when it was only covering 400 acres, this massive colony of Armillaria ostoyae, based in Oregon, has taken hold among the tree roots of the Malheur National Forest. It consists of a vast network of unique long black filaments of fungal tissue called rhizomorphs that grow under the soil and infect tree roots, nourishing the fungus but killing the trees. Researchers believe this fungal growth dates back more than 8,000 years and currently weighs approximately 35,000 tons.

How fighting wildfires works

Firefighters use sophisticated strategies to control wildfires that sometimes cover thousands of acres. This video breaks down how teams set up fire lines to isolate the fires by cutting down brush and trees around the existing fire, among other...

Earth is the only planet in our solar system with fire

And while the sun seems like fire, and other planets have volcanoes, the sun and lava aren't the same thing as fire. To produce fire, a planet needs three ingredients: oxygen, fuel, and heat. No other planet has all three.

The surprising world of coal seam fires

Hundreds of coal seam fires are actively smoldering around the world at any given time, including some that have stayed lit for centuries. These fires have occurred naturally for millions of years, lit atop deposits of coal in the earth. Dive into...

Carbon sinks absorb more greenhouse gases than they produce

The largest on Earth are oceans, which capture 25% of all carbon emissions and 90% of excess atmospheric thermal radiation while generating half of the world's oxygen. Wildfires and deforestation have reduced forests' net sink capacity, though fungi are believed to capture and store over a third of global carbon emissions.

Lightning may kill as many as 320 million trees each year

Ignoring the effects of tree loss resulting from lightning-induced wildfires, researchers at the Technical University of Munich developed a quantitative model to estimate the loss of these organisms due to cloud-to-ground strikes, based on global lightning data and forest structure. They expect the estimate to rise due to increased strikes resulting from climate change.

The Geysers is the largest geothermal power complex in the world

Despite the Mayacamas Mountains area north of San Francisco lacking geysers, the name given by a grizzly bear hunter stuck after the construction of The Geysers Resort Hotel to accommodate tourists. Natural steam vents in the region are funneled into more than 12 geothermal plants, each capable of powering about 40,000 homes.

The world's largest Torrey pine is in Santa Barbara County

Torrey pines are extremely rare—believed to be endemic to just two pockets of California coast. In Carpinteria, to the southeast of Santa Barbara, stands the Woodholme Torrey pine, the world's tallest at 126 feet, first planted in 1883.

Cells cannot grow forever due to escalating inefficiency in transporting chemicals

As cells get larger, their volume grows much faster than the surface area through which nutrients and waste products pass, creating a bottleneck that eventually causes cells to die. This forces nearly all organisms visible to the naked eye to comprise enormous numbers of smaller cells, such as the approximately 30 trillion found in the average adult human.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

Scientists testing how climate change affects plants found, in a years-long simulation study, that poison ivy grew 70% faster with the resulting extra carbon dioxide.

The girl who lived in a tree for years

Julia Butterfly Hill lived in a redwood tree outside Stafford, California, for two years to prevent a lumber company from cutting it down, subsisting on rainwater and other provisions hoisted up by other volunteers.

There are over 20,000 trees on the National Mall

Nearly 4,000 of the Mall's trees are cherry trees, all maintained by a small National Park Service arborist team that provides year-round, science-based care to address soil compaction, root damage, and heavy visitor traffic.

How big is a supernova explosion?

Supernovas are the biggest explosions in the universe, often obliterating the area surrounding them. So what would happen if one exploded near Earth? If the sun went supernova it'd be like getting hit by a nuclear explosion every second for weeks. Of course, that's not happening anytime soon. This animated video shows how distance is the key factor, and how you shouldn't be worried.

Why is the Amazon rainforest important?

Watch this five-minute video from National Geographic to learn about the importance of the Amazon rainforest and the risk of what's to come if humans continue to deforest it. The Amazon rainforest is about the same size as the continental United...

Nearly all natural rubber comes from cloned trees in Southeast Asia

Synthetic rubbers have been unable to mimic the strength and tolerance to heat and pressure provided by natural rubber. This makes rubber trees essential to major global infrastructure, despite being vulnerable to disease due to a lack of genetic diversity.

What was the Great Fire of Rome?

In the hours between July 18 and 19 in 64 CE, the glittering capital of ancient Rome became engulfed in flames. This 46-minute podcast details the Great Fire of Rome that destroyed much of the city, according to historical literary sources. The fire burned for nine days after starting at market stalls near the Palatine Hill and the Circus Maximus, one of the city's largest chariot racing stadiums. The fire's cause remains unknown.

Why tardigrades are a model extremotolerant species rather than an extremophile

By expelling most of the water from their bodies, water bears assume a state resembling a dried-up cyst and can withstand extreme environments, such as arid deserts. But in this state and these environments, tardigrades cannot grow, reproduce, or perform other functions associated with life, unlike extremophiles like dry-loving xerophiles.

Fireworks usage on Independence Day comes from their celebratory use in ancient China

Burning bamboo stalks produces a small explosion that was believed to ward off evil spirits. As knowledge of fireworks, which initially used these stalks, carried over into other cultures, so did their use to promote good luck and celebration.

A timelapse of sprouting seeds

Germination is the process where an organism sprouts from a seed or spore. This timelapse captures the process in an inspiring, two-minute video so you can see the whole story of the seed quickly.

Scientists have demonstrated IVF to help critically endangered rhinos

Scientists have used the technique to create embryos from eggs harvested from captive southern white rhinos and implanted into a southern white rhino. They hope to use this proof of concept to eventually use IVF to revive the population of northern white rhinos, which are extinct in the wild and have no living males left, using a precious reserve of frozen embryos and a surrogate southern white rhino mother.

Watch a traditional Aztec fire-serpent dance rooted in Mexica mythology

This video captures a performance of a Xicauhuatl—or fire-serpent—dance, rooted in Mexica beliefs that these serpents carried the sun across the sky. The performance highlights the fire serpent’s central role in Aztec ritual and storytelling.

Burning Man hosts roughly 70k attendees each year

Since 1986, the Burning Man organization has shared a census tracking growth, fluctuations, demographics, and burners' attitudes each year. Part of the organization's motivation is to monitor and reduce carbon emissions at the event.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

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.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

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

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

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.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

See how Ebola tore through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 2014-2016.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

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

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.

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.