News about planet Earth.

What's up in

Terra Daily

Earth science, climate impacts, ecosystems, agriculture, forests, and the broad environmental changes shaping life on a changing planet.

Climate Science

How did a solar storm in 1859 send currents surging through telegraph wires so strong that operators reported sparks jumping from their equipment and messages transmitting even after the batteries were disconnected?

On September 1, 1859, British astronomer Richard Carrington watched two beads of white light erupt from a sunspot group. Seventeen hours later, telegraph wires around the world were sparking, catching fire, and transmitting messages with their batteries disconnected — a masterclass in what a coronal mass ejection does to any long conductor on Earth.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Aug 10, 2026

Climate Science

Margaret Hamilton wrote the Apollo 11 guidance software so defensively that when the lunar module's computer flashed 1202 and 1201 alarms during Armstrong's descent, the system automatically shed low-priority tasks and kept the landing radar running, buying the crew the seconds they needed to touch down with 25 seconds of fuel left.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Aug 9, 2026

Climate Science

What happened when a low-lying European country shifted from higher river dikes to giving floodwater more room at 30 locations over 13 years?

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Aug 7, 2026

Climate Science

How does a spacecraft launched in 1977, now more than 25 billion kilometres from home, still transmit data back to Earth on less power than a household hallway bulb?

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Aug 5, 2026

Climate Science

A single cumulus cloud can weigh around 500 tonnes, roughly the mass of 100 elephants, yet it floats because the warm air holding those droplets aloft is measurably less dense than the cooler air beneath it.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Aug 4, 2026

Climate Science

How does a city-state of six million people meet roughly 40 percent of its water demand by putting treated sewage back through the tap, and why did it start doing this in 2003 rather than desalinate more seawater?

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Aug 3, 2026

Climate Science

Honey sealed inside Egyptian tombs more than 3,000 years ago can survive intact, dark and crystallised rather than rotten, because honey's low water content, acidic pH around 3.9, and the trickle of hydrogen peroxide produced by bee enzymes create an environment where almost no microbe can grow

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Aug 3, 2026

Climate Science

How did a dust-built plateau larger than France cut the sediment pouring into a river from 1.6 billion tonnes a year by more than 80 percent over four decades?

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Jul 31, 2026

Climate Science

Why does concrete poured beneath an emperor’s latrine 1,900 years ago keep sealing its own cracks while modern reinforced structures can begin failing within decades?

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Jul 31, 2026

Climate Science

In 1869, 24-year-old Swiss researcher Friedrich Miescher washed white blood cells out of pus-soaked surgical bandages, separated their nuclei, and isolated a phosphorus-rich substance unlike protein or fat, the first isolation of the molecule the world would later call DNA

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Jul 30, 2026

Climate Science

How does a hectare of coastal trees rooted in tidal mud store three to five times more carbon than the same area of tropical rainforest, while also blunting cyclone storm surges for the villages behind them?

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Jul 30, 2026

Climate Science

In 1846, Ignaz Semmelweis noticed the Vienna maternity ward run by doctors coming straight from autopsies had a death rate three times higher than the midwives' ward, and when he ordered handwashing in chlorinated lime, deaths fell from 18% to about 2% — a result the medical establishment rejected until he died in an asylum.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Jul 30, 2026

Climate Science

In 1908, something exploded roughly 8 kilometres above the Tunguska River in Siberia with the force of about 1,000 Hiroshima bombs, flattening 80 million trees across 2,150 square kilometres, and the first scientific expedition did not reach the site until 1927 because the region was so remote.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Jul 30, 2026

Browse terra daily by topic

Climate Science 4,808 articles Flora and Fauna 6,065 articles Farm News 6,112 articles Wood Pile 2,475 articles