Human engineering appears to have moved the planet, literally. According to new research published this month, the global boom in dam construction over the past two centuries has caused measurable ...

How does the Earth’s orbit influence our daylight and temperatures? As the Earth orbits the sun, it spins around an axis – picture a stick going through the Earth, from the North Pole to the South ...

Earth rotates once in about 24 hours with respect to the Sun, but once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds with respect to other distant stars. Scientists call this difference crucial to ...

As polar ice melts, water moves from the poles toward the equator — making our Earth bulkier and rotate slower. Think humans play a relatively small role in how Earth moves in space? It turns out ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

We all know the Earth is round. Not perfectly so but close enough. We live on an oblate spheroid, a slightly squashed sphere that's wider at the equator than around the poles. The difference between ...

Last Word is New Scientist’s long-running series in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions, ranging from the minutiae of everyday life to absurd astronomical hypotheticals. To ...