Planet Earth

By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. But biomaterials may be the solution.

Hurricanes are becoming more powerful — can scientists engineer a way to weaken them and save lives?

Indian startup CODE Effort has developed a process for recycling cigarette butts, the world’s most littered objects.

Scientists have engineered E. coli bacteria to convert plastic waste into vanillin, an in-demand compound used in vanilla flavoring and more.

We now know about how much space dust — micrometeorites that may have seeded Earth with the ingredients for life — hits the planet every year.

A new light-driven levitation technique can lift objects large enough to carry sensors to the understudied mesosphere near the edge of space.

Bina Venkataraman, author of The Optimist's Telescope, believes that modern society’s shortsightedness is the root of many avoidable catastrophes.

In 2010, an earthquake killed 222,570 people in Haiti, injuring 300,000 and displacing over a million. In an attempt to discover how to predict earthquakes, these researchers are using machine learning to analyze the acoustic data from tectonic plates.

The eruption of Mount Tambora pushed humanity to the brink of extinction. Today, active supervolcanoes still have the power to nullify our future. What can we do to prepare?

The Earth’s interior may be the last wild frontier, but not for long. These underwater drones are scanning the ocean to create a 3D model of its internal dynamics.