It's one of those things you've probably idly wondered but never really lent masses of thought: what the hell would the planet be like if humans had never existed? Fortunately, this video tries to explain. Read More >>

If you've ever wanted to visit the extreme environments used as offworld training landscapes for future astronauts—where bleak, windswept, and often highly remote locations act as surrogates for the surfaces of other planets—a new guidebook will help you find them. Assembled for the European Space Agency by scientists at the Open University, The Catalogue of Planetary Analogues (PDF) is now available for download. Read More >>

Scientists examining the collapse of other possibly life-supporting planets similar to Earth suggest we've got around 1.75bn years left to lounge about on this particular rock, before changes in the Sun make it impossible to live. Assuming we don't nuke/melt/burn/poison ourselves out of existence first, that is. Read More >>

It's nearly impossible for us to imagine how the Earth might look to someone who's only ever seen it from a local's vantage point. But thanks to the Library of Congress, we don't have to imagine, newly posted images of 19th century drawings show us exactly what humans thought the Earth looked like far before we could ever have known for sure. The Smithsonian compiled a few of them, and some of our favorites lie below. You can see the rest over at The Library of Congress here. [Library of Congress via The Smithsonian] Read More >>

With the Atlantic hurricane season about to kick into gear, plenty are wondering how this year's crop of storms with disarmingly mundane names will compare to last year's nightmarish season. This map goes even further, showing the past 170 hurricane seasons. It's beautiful and humbling, all at once. Read More >>

The image above is assembled from 1400 people waving at the Cassini spacecraft, which has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004. On July 19th, the orbiter turned back and snapped a photo of the home planet it would never see again. NASA thought it was only fair that we wave back. (See the full image below) Read More >>

When you look up at the sky, on a clear dark night, you're sometimes lucky enough to catch glimpses of other planets. They seem small, insignificant, surreal. Guess what? That's exactly how we look to them. Here's our pale blue dot, from Saturn. You might have to squint. Read More >>

The North Pole is just at the top of the Earth, right? Well, not really: there isn't really a 'top' of a sphere and, anyway, depending on how you measure things the pole can be in one of many different spots. So which one's right? Read More >>

Some people claim to have a great view from their bedroom window or work desk. Their claims are worth nothing compared to the view the astronauts onboard the ISS get. Read More >>

Every so often when the Moon is especially ginormous or we can see Venus or Mars from Earth, humans collectively freak out. So cool three-exclamation-points, we scream. Look how big with thirty i's, we yell. And it's warranted! Seeing things that don't belong in the sky pop up, well, in the sky is fun. So could you imagine if one day Earth developed rings like Saturn? It would be insane. Read More >>

After kindly asking a group of Canadian miners for a sample of some water they'd struck, a team of scientists who had been investigating similar finds discovered that the fluid they were looking at may have been sealed up for 1.5 billion years. Read More >>

A new series of measurements have revealed that the Earth's core is actually 1,000°C hotter than we previously thought — meaning the centre of our planet is actually as hot as the surface of the Sun. Read More >>

When you think of the vast emptiness of space, one of the first things to come to mind is probably violent decompression. But is the vacuum of space powerful enough that it could suck out an entire ocean through some sort of gigantic space straw? Read More >>

This ingenious website made by David Paliwoda shows how far Mars is from Earth in a metric all us Internet lovers understand: pixels. If Earth was a 100 pixels wide, how far would Mars be? To start off, the moon would be 3000 pixels away (and 27 pixels wide). Mars? Read More >>

Though we've seen plenty of our beautiful blue marble from space before, here's what Earth looks like from a hundred million miles away. That's roughly the same distance from the Earth to the Sun. Read More >>