ENVIRONMENT

On a cloudy spring day, a little spider scales a tall blade of grass. At the peak, the spider arches up, points its abdomen up to the sky and begins releasing strands of silk from its silk glands. Tens of thousands of strands fill the air, fanning out and

No matter how things look from the ground, these events look drastically different, even surprisingly peaceful, from above.

On April 22, 1990, the Muppets celebrated Earth Day with Carl Sagan, Neil Patrick Harris, Downtown Julie Brown, and many, many more.

Earth Day is here again, serving as an annual reminder of the need to reduce, reuse, and recycle our way to a better planet.

There are plenty of intrepid scientists doing strange-sounding field work. Here are two.

Last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that if water in Lake Michigan drops below the level of the Chicago River, the River could reverse course and begin flowing backward to its source. Has an American river ever done an about-face like t

New Madrid seismic zone. Red circles identify earthquakes that occurred between 1974 and 2002 with magnitudes 2.5 and larger. Green circles denote earthquakes that occurred before 1974. The larger the circle, the larger the earthquake. Source: USGS In 18

Wikimedia Commons “It was in the month of February, 1814, that I obtained the first sight of this noble bird, and never shall I forget the delight which it gave me.” That’s John James Audubon, the American naturalist and artist, writing in The Birds of

Every once in a while, an environmental disaster makes big news, but the effects remain years after the headlines have faded. Here are six stories of what human activity did to mess up Mother Nature. 1. Mossville,

The possibility of life on Mars and other planets and moons has been debated for as long as we have known about those planets. Now that water has been found on the Mars, that possibility is more believable than ever. Sure, conditions are fierce on Mars, b

Update: the entire documentary is now available online for free! A new PBS* documentary, The Botany of Desire, premieres Wednesday night (tonight!) at 8pm on PBS stations throughout the US. It's based on the popular Michael Pollan book of the same name

Playgrounds have come a long way since the early days of hot, steel slides and open-backed infant swings. Here's some that are more than just seesaws and monkey bars