Look at Earth from orbit today and you see the famous blue marble: oceans, cloud swirls, green continents. Run the clock back roughly 700 million years and an observer in…
Source: Wikipedia
From ground level they are odd but unremarkable: bare, roughly circular patches of soil in dry grassland, each one somewhere between two and fifteen meters across, fringed by a…
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There's something deeply calming and awe-inspiring about a beautiful lake, its still surface reflecting the sky and surrounding landscape like a mirror. Around the world, certain lakes stand out…
Source: Wikipedia
Almost everything alive on the surface of this planet runs, ultimately, on sunlight. Plants capture light and turn it into sugar. Animals eat the plants. Other animals eat those…
Some scientific questions are hard because the subject is inaccessible. Others are hard because the subject is so familiar that everyone assumes it must already be settled. The zebra falls…
Source: Wikipedia
Some scientific mysteries involve exotic, hard-to-reach subjects: distant stars, deep ocean trenches, particles too small to see. The mystery of the eel is not like that. Eels are ordinary.…