Geochemistry News

November 12, 2026

Top Headlines

NASA Reveals Earth's Ozone Hole Has Grown to a Size Not Seen in a Decade

Nov. 11, 2026 The Antarctic ozone hole expanded to its seventh-largest size on record in 2026, driven by unusual weather conditions that pushed it close to its historic maximum. Scientists say international restrictions on ozone-destroying chemicals prevented ...

Global Fossil Fuel Emissions Set to Fall in 2026, but Total CO2 Keeps Rising

Nov. 10, 2026 Global fossil fuel emissions are projected to fall in 2026 as renewable energy and electric vehicles gain ground, but rising emissions from deforestation threaten to push total CO2 emissions to a new ...

Hidden Climate Superpower: Why Some Ocean “Snow” Carries Six Times More Carbon

Nov. 8, 2026 Scientists have discovered that the stickiness of underwater “marine snow” plays a surprisingly important role in how much carbon reaches the deep ocean. Gooier particles resist bacterial ...

Human Bodies Produce 2 Billion Metric Tons of CO2 a Year Just by Staying Alive

Nov. 7, 2026 Humans collectively produce more than 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually just by turning food into energy, a 74% increase over three decades largely driven by population growth. Unlike ...

Five-inch-long Beetle Larvae Are Quietly Destroying Blueberry Roots

Nov. 6, 2026 Scientists have solved a mystery surrounding destructive beetles attacking blueberry bushes in North Carolina, identifying a species whose massive larvae can grow up to five inches long and destroy plant roots. Although farmers have reported damage ...

Scientists Confirm Global Warming Is Accelerating Faster Than Ever Recorded

Oct. 29, 2026 Earth is warming faster than ever recorded, with scientists detecting a major acceleration in global temperatures since around 2015. A new study reveals that the warming rate has surged to approximately 0.35°C per decade, nearly double the average ...

128,000-year-old Ice in Tibet Could Rewrite Climate History

Oct. 29, 2026 Ancient ice discovered high in Tibet may be more than 128,000 years old, preserving an extraordinary record of Earth's climate that scientists previously thought had been lost. The discovery reveals a rare glimpse into the last ice age and could ...

Earth's Ice Ages May Have Been Driven by a Hidden Ocean Chain Reaction

Oct. 28, 2026 Scientists have uncovered a surprising connection between Earth's opposite poles that may help explain how the planet plunged into past ice ages. New research suggests that as massive ice sheets expanded across the Northern Hemisphere, they cooled ...

40 Years Later, Chernobyl's Nuclear Fallout Is Not What Scientists Expected

Oct. 22, 2026 Forty years after the Chornobyl disaster, tiny radioactive particles still linger in the soil, carrying a dangerous legacy. Using powerful X-rays, scientists discovered that some of these particles have remained surprisingly stable, trapping ...

NASA Discovers Hidden Fires Burning Beneath the Amazon Rainforest

Oct. 17, 2026 El Niño is fueling a dangerous cascade of wildfires across the tropics, with the Amazon rainforest now experiencing widespread burning and scientists warning that the worst may still be ahead. NASA researchers are uncovering dozens of previously ...

Scientists Discover a Plastic-eating “Pac-Man” Enzyme with a Surprising Secret

Oct. 16, 2026 Scientists have discovered a remarkable “Pac-Man enzyme” that helps bacteria devour certain types of plastic and may offer new hope in the fight against plastic pollution. Researchers found that ...

Arctic Sea Ice Hits Another Troubling Low in 2026

Oct. 15, 2026 Arctic sea ice is shrinking in both winter and summer, with satellite records revealing that the region's remaining ice is becoming thinner, younger, and more vulnerable to melting. Despite a recent slowdown in summer losses, scientists warn that ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:20pm EST

A New Treasure Map Reveals Where Earth's Lost Prehistoric Life May Be Hiding

Nov. 12, 2026 A sweeping analysis of 540 million years of marine fossils has revealed surprising gaps in our understanding of Earth's ancient life. Scientists ...

Comets May Have Destroyed Life's Ingredients Instead of Delivering Them to Earth

Nov. 10, 2026 A century-old theory about the origins of life on Earth may be wrong. New research from the University of Cambridge suggests that comets traveled too ...

The Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs. Why Did Crocodiles Survive?

Oct. 30, 2026 Scientists may have solved a 66-million-year-old mystery: how crocodiles survived the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. A sweeping analysis of fossils and ancient climates suggests that their ...

Scientists Discover a Hidden Oxygen Reservoir Deep Inside Earth

Oct. 28, 2026 Scientists have discovered that magma deep inside Earth can store surprising amounts of extra oxygen, potentially revealing a hidden contributor to our planet's oxygen-rich atmosphere. The findings ...

A 2,700-Year-Old Solar Eclipse Just Revealed Something Surprising About Earth

Oct. 26, 2026 A solar eclipse recorded more than 2,700 years ago is revealing surprising secrets about Earth's rotation and the Sun's ancient behavior. By ...

One of Earth’s Most Powerful Supervolcanoes Is Refilling With Fresh Magma

Oct. 23, 2026 Deep beneath Japan’s Kikai caldera, a massive magma reservoir is refilling 7,300 years after one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in Earth's recent geological history. Scientists used ...

A Rock Plunged 90 Kilometers Into Earth and Revealed Something Unexpected

Oct. 21, 2026 Scientists discovered a rock in Papua New Guinea that plunged more than 90 kilometers beneath Earth's surface, revealing a bizarre temperature pattern that challenges established theories of Earth's ...

NASA Captures Strange Waves High Above Hurricane Simon

Oct. 16, 2026 As Hurricane Simon unleashed destructive winds and flooding along Mexico’s coast, NASA satellites captured an extraordinary sight: massive atmospheric waves rippling high above the storm. The rare ...

A Fungus Is Threatening the World’s Food Supply. Scientists Just Found a New Defense

Oct. 15, 2026 Scientists have discovered a potential new weapon against a devastating fungus that threatens rice, wheat, and barley worldwide. By engineering a ...

Europe's New Sentinel-3C Satellite Just Sent Back Spectacular Images of Earth

Oct. 12, 2026 Europe's Sentinel-3C satellite has returned breathtaking images of Earth just two weeks after launch, revealing the snowy Alps, frozen Arctic ...

NASA Spots a Giant Patch of Moon-Like Rock on Earth

Oct. 11, 2026 An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed a remarkable formation in Madagascar that looks surprisingly similar to the Moon’s bright highlands. Made of anorthosite, a rock ...

Animals May Have Evolved 200 Million Years Earlier Than We Thought

Oct. 6, 2026 New research suggests animals could have evolved as early as 800 to 700 million years ago, roughly 200 million years earlier than some previous estimates. If so, the first animals may have lived ...

Scientists Uncover the 2.3-Billion-Year-Old Secret That Helped Keep Earth Habitable

Oct. 12, 2026 Scientists may have solved a 2.3-billion-year-old mystery about how Earth maintained enough oxygen to support life. Ancient rocks reveal that phosphorus recycling in the oceans created a ...

A Meteor Hit Oklahoma 100 Million Years Later Than Scientists Thought

Oct. 4, 2026 A meteor crater buried beneath Oklahoma has turned out to be nearly 100 million years younger than scientists thought. Zircon crystals show the Ames impact occurred about 370 million years ago, ...

Scientists Just Found a New Way to Make Hydrogen from Water

Oct. 4, 2026 A new light-activated material can efficiently produce hydrogen from water without requiring an additional expensive metal catalyst. Researchers say its unusual sulfur-based chemistry could point ...

Pompeii’s 2,000-Year-Old Eruption Just Gave Scientists a Better Clock for Earth’s Past

Sep. 30, 2026 Mount Vesuvius’ famous 79 CE eruption has given scientists a remarkably precise benchmark for dating events deep in Earth’s past. The improved technique could sharpen the timelines of volcanic ...

Earth’s Day Isn’t Exactly 24 Hours. The Reason May Lie Deep Inside the Planet

Sep. 29, 2026 Scientists may have solved why the length of Earth’s day changes by a few milliseconds over decades. Subtle shifts in the inner core appear to tug on the mantle, revealing a surprisingly dynamic ...

The End of Humanity? What Would Happen If the Yellowstone Supervolcano Erupted Now

Sep. 22, 2026 A Yellowstone super-eruption would begin not with a sudden surprise, but with weeks of increasingly alarming warning signs such as migrating earthquake swarms, rapid ground uplift, changing geysers, ...

Amazon Study Reveals the Best Strategies for Protecting Biodiversity and Carbon

Sep. 21, 2026 A large Amazon study suggests the most powerful conservation move may be protecting the forests that are already standing. Preventing damage from wildfires and logging delivered the greatest ...

Billions in Rare Earth Elements May Be Hiding in America’s Coal Ash

Sep. 18, 2026 Scientists are looking to diatoms, sea sponges, and plants for a cleaner way to recover rare earth elements and other valuable minerals hidden inside coal ash, red mud, and mine tailings. The ...

Earth’s Center Is Moving, and NASA Just Measured It

Oct. 7, 2026 Earth’s center of mass is constantly on the move, shifting by a few millimeters as enormous amounts of water, ice, and even air migrate around the planet with the seasons. NASA scientists have ...

This Deep-Sea Enzyme Survives Heat That Destroys Most Proteins

Sep. 19, 2026 A deep-sea microbe uses an exceptionally heat-resistant enzyme to turn atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia at temperatures that would destroy most proteins. Its unusual structure and a newly observed ...

Irrigation’s Climate Benefit Could Equal 363 Years of Its Own Emissions

Sep. 16, 2026 U.S. irrigation produces some greenhouse gas emissions, but new research suggests it prevents vastly more by allowing farmers to grow more food on less land. Without irrigation, replacing lost crop ...

Indonesia’s Most Dangerous Fires Are Burning Underground

Sep. 6, 2026 Indonesia’s dangerous peat fires are surging early in the 2026 fire season as a strengthening El Niño and severe drought dry out wetlands that can burn underground for months. These slow ...

Antarctica Gained a Record 695 Billion Tons of Ice. Scientists Found the Surprising Reason

Sep. 6, 2026 East Antarctica gained an astonishing 695 billion tons of ice between 2021 and 2023, temporarily slowing Antarctica’s long-term decline. Researchers found that warming thousands of miles away in ...

One of Earth’s Driest Places Was Just Covered in Snow

Sep. 1, 2026 Rare storms covered huge stretches of Chile’s Atacama Desert in snow and dumped extraordinary amounts of rain on one of the driest regions on Earth. The extreme weather shut down observatories, ...

Why Scientists Asked 1,000 People to Bury Their Underwear

Aug. 28, 2026 More than 1,000 volunteers buried cotton underwear across Switzerland to help scientists measure how active different soils are. The faster the fabric disappeared, the more biological activity was ...

Earth May Have Lost the Sun’s Protective Shield Millions of Years Ago

Sep. 2, 2026 NASA-funded studies suggest Earth’s climate has been influenced by both the Sun’s travels through dense regions of the Milky Way and the violent superflares of its youth. Those events may help ...

This German Submarine Sank in 1917. It’s Still Leaking TNT

Sep. 14, 2026 A World War I submarine wreck off Denmark is leaking TNT into the surrounding water, seabed, and marine life more than a century after it sank. Scientists warn that thousands of similar wrecks could ...

This Total Solar Eclipse Looked Strangely Golden — Here’s Why

Aug. 20, 2026 Spain’s total solar eclipse delivered an unexpected sight: a corona glowing gold instead of its usual pearly white. Because the Sun was setting, its light passed through more atmosphere, while ...