Earth - The Atlantic

Earth

Apocalypse, Constantly

February 2025 Issue

collage illustration with images from disaster movies including Planet of the Apes, Don't Look Up, and Dr. Strangelove, along with smokestack billowing smoke, comet entering atmosphere, nuclear warhead

Time-Travel Thursdays

A Nonreligious Holiday Ritual

John Hendrickson

December 19, 2024

An illustration of the Earth rotating around the sun during the winter solstice

To Find Alien Intelligence, Start With the Mountains

November 11, 2024

A collage of mountains, magma, lava, plant life, and igneous rock

A Defense of the Leaf Blower

October 27, 2024

Photo from ground level of a man blowing fallen leaves

Point Nemo, the Most Remote Place on Earth

November 2024 Issue

A vast expanse of water with whitecaps, with a single albatross flying and casting a shadow at lower left

For How Much Longer Can Life Continue on This Troubled Planet?

October 3, 2024

A shadowy Earth against a starscape

The Christian Radicals Are Coming

Stephanie McCrummen

October 1, 2024

A color photograph of a white pointed tent top with a red "Trump 2024" flag on top

The Mystery of Greenland’s Nine-Day Tremor

Robin George Andrews

September 21, 2024

Black-and-white photograph of barren mountains

How to Cool the World Without Blocking the Sun

September 20, 2024

Collage of images of microbes, ocean waves, and a dial

The Corals That Survive Climate Change Will Be Unrecognizable

August 28, 2024

A bright orange corla and a bright blue one stand out on the foreground of a picture of a blue-green reef

The Decline of America’s Public Pools

August 12, 2024

An image of a pool with a lot of people swimming and milling around

The Search for Alien Life Starts on Earth

July 17, 2024

An ice shelf gleams bright white in the sunshine on the Weddell Sea, off the coast of Antarctica

The Awkward Truth About Extinction

July 9, 2024

A graphic illustration of a cephalopod drawing overlaid on a landscape mutating from natural (sepia-toned) to human-influenced (color)

We Ruined Rain

June 20, 2024

A resident walks along a flooded street after rainstorms slammed northern California, in the coastal town of Aptos, on January 5, 2023

Noon

April 28, 2024

a sheer curtain with a blue night seen through it

Totality Is Worth It

April 8, 2024

The silhouette of two people watching a partial solar eclipse in a deep-orange sky

The Most Dazzling Eclipse in the Universe

April 1, 2024

Composite image of nine stages of a total solar eclipse

Don’t Miss This Eclipse

March 21, 2024

A photograph of the total solar eclipse in 2017, with the sun's corona glowing brightly against a dark sky

The Oceans We Knew Are Already Gone

March 7, 2024

An illustration of the ocean, rendered in deep blues and greens, with two spheres of orange overlayed on top of it

An Existential Problem in the Search for Alien Life

December 5, 2023

Illustration of a flower in space

An Exoplanet Discovery Akin to Finding an ‘Ostrich Egg in the Chicken Coop’

Suvrath Mahadevan, Guðmundur Kári Stefánsson, and Megan Delamer

December 3, 2023

An illustration of a small sun shining on a large, reflective planet in space

Humans Are Ready to Find Alien Life

October 21, 2023

a ufo floating across space leaving dirty clouds behind

The Next Supercontinent Could Be a Terrible, Terrible Place

September 25, 2023

The sun shines brightly over the Earth's atmosphere

The Origin Revisited

October 2023 Issue

illustration with photographs of forest with hill and cloudy sky, text from poem, overlaid with red translucent rectangle on yellow background

We’re Gambling With the Only Good Oceans in the Universe

August 2, 2023

A large ship travels across a stretch of ocean that appears red in the sunlight

Earth Is a Potato

July 10, 2023

A spinning, 3-D representation of the geoid, the shape that Earth would take if it were subject only to the planet's gravitational field

Conservation Tends to Ignore the Most Common Type of Life

April 12, 2023

a collage of various microbes

‘Notice All That Disappears’

The Wonder Reader

The Power of Low-Stakes Humor

April 1, 2023

The Search for Earth Look-Alikes Is Getting Serious

March 29, 2023

An illustration of the seven planets around a small star 40 light-years from Earth

The ‘Small Self’ Effect

Shannon Stirone

February 14, 2023

A green leaf floating on water, over which a blue-and-gold image of a galaxy has been laid

Woman in Labor

January 22, 2023

The top half of a woman in a hospital gown with her hand on her forehead, in front of a red square on a beige background

Today I Love Being Alive

January 15, 2023

A sunflower against a blue background

The Ice Age Has Nothing on ‘Snowball Earth’

January 2, 2023

Earth covered in ice as seen from space

‘The Universe Doesn’t Care That We Have Holidays’

Caroline Mimbs Nyce

December 27, 2022

In this handout provided by NASA, then–NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan looks through a telescope with a solar filter at NASA headquarters to see Mercury as it transits across the face of the sun, while Kelly Fast of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate looks on.

Seeing Earth From Space Will Change You

January/February 2023 Issue

photo of astronaut on spacewalk isolated over luminous curved horizon of Earth against black