In 1859, British astronomer Richard Carrington saw a blast of white light on the surface of the sun. This was the Carrington Event, as scientists now call it, and it is the largest recorded solar storm ever recorded. It was linked with extraordinary auroras — the Northern and Southern Lights — that were visible in … Read more
In Liu Cixin’s short story “The Wandering Earth (opens in new tab)” (first published in Chinese magazine Science Fiction World in July 2000), Cixin portrays a scenario in which the planet’s leaders agree to propel Earth out of the solar system to escape an imminent solar flare that is expected to decimate all of the … Read more
All life on Earth owes its existence to the sun’s radiant heat. But what happens when that radiation surges out of control, and billions of tons of charged solar material suddenly barrel our way at thousands of miles a second? What happens when Earth takes a direct hit from a solar flare — and could … Read more
The sun moves in such a predictable way across the sky that you might never suspect that its relationship with Earth is changing all the time. In fact, the average distance between Earth and the sun is not static year over year. So do we know if Earth is getting closer to or farther from … Read more
There are nearly 8 billion people (opens in new tab) living on Earth today, but our planet wasn’t always so crowded. Around 300,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens likely first appeared, our total population was small, between 100 and 10,000 people. There were so few people at the start, that it took approximately 35,000 years … Read more
Whether you call our planet the Earth, the world or a terrestrial body, all of these names have an origin story deep in history. Like many names of solar system objects, Earth’s original namer is long lost to history. But linguistics provide a few clues. Ertha is an approximate spelling for “the ground” (meaning, … Read more
When mountaineers climb Mount Everest, they routinely carry oxygen cylinders, devices that allow them to breathe freely at high altitudes. This is necessary because the closer you get to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, the less oxygen there is available compared with the plentiful amounts found at sea level. This is just one example of … Read more
Earth’s inner core may be filled with a weird substance that is neither solid nor liquid, according to a new study. For more than half a century, scientists believed that Earth’s deepest recesses consist of a molten outer core surrounding a densely compressed ball of solid iron alloy. But new research, published Feb. 9 in … Read more
