Recent News

A slowing Atlantic Ocean current is projected to intensify powerful storms in California while reducing snowfall over Greenland, according to a new University of California, Riverside study. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, works like a giant conveyor belt...

Scientists have identified the two biggest reasons that once-pristine rivers across the Arctic are growing cloudy with toxic orange iron particles that smother insects and suffocate fish. A new study published in Communications Earth & Environment builds on earlier research...

For decades, the search for life beyond Earth has revolved around a key question: What molecules should scientists be looking for on other planets or moons? A new study, published in Nature Astronomy, suggests the more revealing clue may not...

A newly named asteroid is carrying a bit of UC Riverside into deep space. The International Astronomical Union, which is responsible for naming celestial objects, has honored UCR professor of planetary astrophysics Stephen Kane by naming asteroid (711599) “Kane” after...

At half the size of Earth and one-tenth its mass, Mars is a featherweight as far as planets go. And yet, new research reveals the extent to which Mars is quietly tugging on Earth’s orbit and shaping the cycles that...

A new study has unexpectedly discovered that a common parasite of modern oysters actually started infecting bivalves hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs went extinct. The research, published in iScience, used high-resolution 3D scans to look inside 480-million-year-old...

A newly described fossil reveals that leeches are at least 200 million years older than scientists previously thought, and that their earliest ancestors may have feasted not on blood, but on smaller marine creatures. “This is the only body fossil...

n Alaska’s Brooks Range, rivers once clear enough to drink from now run orange and hazy with toxic metals. As warming thaws formerly frozen ground, it sets off a chemical chain reaction that is poisoning fish and wreaking havoc on...