EarthScape

A volcano erupted in the south of Iceland overnight, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate the area and diverting flights after authorities declared a state of emergency, officials said on Sunday. Shortly before midnight, the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, the island’s fifth largest, started to spew smoke and lava from several craters along a rift which is…

Spring arrived this weekend in the Northern Hemisphere. After what was a cold and snowy winter in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast US, Spring arrived and there are signs of nature awakening. The spring flowers are appearing and there are new birds in our backyards and parks. The earth smells like Spring as frozen soil thaws…

Federal limits on water that can be pumped out of a major river delta for California farmers are scientifically justified, a much-anticipated report said on Friday, a finding hailed by environmentalists in the state’s epic water wars. But the National Academy of Sciences stopped short of handing a decisive victory to environmental interests over agricultural…

Plastic bags are everywhere. Many years ago the only bags at the grocery store were paper ones. Now you have a choice of paper, plastic or bring your bag. Where have all the bags gone after they are used? Plastic bag and film recycling in the U.S. reached a record high in 2008, recovering about…

Human friends may come and go, but a horse could be one of your most loyal, long-term buddies if you treat it right, suggests a new study. Horses also understand words better than expected, according to the research, and possess “excellent memories,” allowing horses to not only recall their human friends after periods of separation,…

To the average person, the weather this winter, especially in February, has certainly been a departure from those winters of the past few years. There has been record snowfall in the mid-Atlantic region, bitter cold in the Deep South, and remarkably mild weather for the Pacific Northwest and New England. However, if the United States…

A U.S.-backed proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna prized in sushi was rejected Thursday by a U.N. wildlife meeting, with scores of developing nations joining Japan in opposing a measure they feared would devastate fishing economies. It was a stunning setback for conservationists who had hoped the 175-nation Convention on International Trade…

Czech Environment Minister Jan Dusik resigned Thursday from the caretaker cabinet, saying the prime minister had put pressure on him to decide hastily on plans to upgrade a controversial large coal-fired power plant. The ministry has yet to rule on the project, which has drawn objections from environmentalists and from Micronesia. The Pacific nation fears…

An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. There are billions of stars in our galaxy and a significant percentage of these stars are likely to have planets orbiting them. There are also planets orbiting brown dwarfs and free floating planets between the stars. As of March 2010, over 400 extrasolar…

In a world first an international team of researchers have successfully extracted ancient DNA from the eggshells of various species of extinct birds. The research, published in scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that fossil eggshell is a previously unrecognised source of ancient DNA and can provide exceptional long-term preservation of DNA…