Category science

The world’s biggest coral — an organism made up of about a billion polyps — is about three times bigger than the previous record-holder and was discovered by chance during an expedition off the Solomon Islands.

The sacrifice of at least 42 children in Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City, was an effort to calm the anger of the Aztec rain god during a devastating drought, researchers have revealed.

The discovery of potential cancer-causing agents in tap water led to the Safe Drinking Water Act — a law that continues protecting public health.

Argentina’s El Ojo is said to harbor UFOs and the ghosts of ancient deities, but as far as scientists can tell, the island is simply a fluke of nature that formed through erosion and water currents.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, a huge volcano in southern Italy suddenly, explosively woke up. Ash and gas from the eruption killed at least 1,500 people in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. That event has gone down in history as…

Some 640,000 years ago, a massive eruption rocked the land that, today, is Yellowstone National Park. The eruption spewed ash across much of the area that’s now the United States. It ejected 6,000 times the volume of the deadly 1980…

Fast radio bursts — powerful and poorly understood cosmic eruptions — tend to occur in massive galaxies that host long-dead stars known as magnetars, a new study suggests.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected possible signs of gases released by volcanic activity on a distant exoplanet.

Rocks returned by China’s Chang’e-6 mission suggest volcanic activity just 2.8 billion years ago but lack telltale heat-generating elements.

It’s rare to find gladiator memorabilia from Roman Britain, but archaeologists by Hadrian’s Wall have just found a 2,000-year-old knife handle depicting a left-handed fighter.