Wonders of Nature: The Egg-Laying Cliff in China

For centuries, the Sui people of China’s Guizhou province have gone to Mount Gandeng to collect rocks for good luck. What makes these rocks special? Every 30 years, the mountainside lays dozens of smooth and almost perfectly spherical rock “eggs.” Guizhou …

Ancient Bricks’ Iron Oxide: A Strange History of the Earth’s Electromagnetic Field

The Earth’s magnetic field surged mysteriously in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) from 1050 to 550 BC, new research shows. Several factors combine to create this invisible magnetic field around our planet, including the molten rock at its core. This flow …