nature

When you think of quiet, you probably think of somewhere far away from the city: a dense national park, a wildlife preserve, or somewhere similar. While it's true that a weekend spent in a cabin in some remote place will likely be more peaceful than a night in a big city, it's unlikely you'll experience a true lack of human noise. This is becoming an increasingly concerning reality, and one that doesn't show any signs of reversing. A newly published study has found that humans have doubled the background noise volume in 63-percent of the nation's protected wildlife regions.

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A team of researchers in Canada have found what might be the oldest set of fossils in the history of the world. These fossils have been found inside a rock which has been dated at 3.7-billion years old. This set of life forms is rather unique in their age relative to that of the Earth's formation at 4.5-billion years ago.

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A random robot rolling around the wild would be enough to spook anyone, human or animal, but it could also be a great way to catch intimate and candid moments from the animal kingdom. To get that benefit without the side effect of startling animals, PBS is using an unusual contraption as part of its “Spy In The Wild” series — a rolling pile of dung with a robotic camera nestled inside.

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A 12-millimeter-long frog has been found in India amongst a total of 7 new species reported by scientists. Four of the new species of frog can fit comfortably on a penny. All seven of the new frog species are part of a group that live only in the Western Ghats mountain range in western India. This group of animals are collectively called Night Frogs.

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It’s mankind’s dirty secret that its garbage eventually find their way to the open seas. Given the vastness and almost unimaginable depths of the world’s oceans, man might assume that some parts of the ocean remain safe from human indifference. Scientists are proving, however, that it is sadly not the case. By studying amphipods leaving at the world’s deepest trenches, scientists discovered worrying levels of “persistent organic pollutants” inside the crustaceans’ bodies. This means that our toxic waste has already reached places where man itself has barely set foot. To add insult to injury, these are pollutants that have been banned for decades already.

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The Trump administration's executive order on Federal Regulations has delayed the listing of the Rusty Patched Bumblebee as an endangered species in the United States. Because listing a bumblebee as an endangered species would extend federal protection to said bee, a federal regulation would be put in place. Because of Trump's January 20th executive order on federal regulations, a 60-day freeze was put in effect for all regulations published in the official register at the time of the order's signing.

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A mere 7,100 cheetahs remain the wild, a new study has confirmed, putting the wild cats perilously close to extinction and spurring demands that they be officially classed as "endangered". The striking big cats, which hold the record as the world's fastest land animal, are currently considered "vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. That, the authors of a new study insist, paints the actual situation in too rosy a way.

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Campi Flegrei, a volcano that has long been dormant, could be heating up once again. Located near Naples, this super volcano made quite an impression back in the early 1500s — it erupted, and then continued to erupt for the better part of 8 days. That was only the most recent of many past eruptions, though, which date back thousands of years. In fact, the eruption that happened 35,000 years ago left a 7-mile-wide crater…and now researchers think Campi Flegrei may be gearing up for another super-eruption.

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Google has announced a new Google Earth Timeplapse feature, created in partnership with Time, that presents satellite imagery from 32 years of the Earth's surface in animations to show in detail how our planet is changing. Google Earth has added an additional four years of maps to what was available before, and now makes use of higher-resolution images that offer greater surface details, as well as animations with consistent color and quality.

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Space World theme park has shut down its first-ever 5,000-fish frozen in ice attraction, apologizing for breaking Japan's weird boundary. While strange, odd, or otherwise disgusting attractions aren't at all unheard of in Japan over the past several decades, it would seem that partially-protruding fish heads in ice aren't up to code. Space World's ice skating rink has been temporarily closed to remove the fish.

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Tongtianlong limosus, the Mud Dragon, was caught in sticky mud in China over 66 million years ago - and died there. Of course it wasn't called China back then, and this was when our planet looked a lot different from what it looks like today. But back between 66 and 72 million years ago, the Mud Dragon gasped its last. Not long after the death of the Mud Dragon, our Earth changed drastically.

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Research released this week suggests that human lifespan expectancy has reached its limit. Scientists lead by Xiao Dong, Brandon Milholland, and Jan Vijg have concluded that improvements in survival with age "tend to decline after age 100." These researchers have concluded that maximum lifespan of humans "is fixed and subject to natural constraints." Sorry, Ricky Bobby. You're not going to live to be 245 or 300 years old.

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