Big science often requires big tools. Until recently, earth scientists have been using relatively small-scale instruments to unlock some our planet's biggest mysteries. Now, geoscientists across the country are teaming up to use an "Earth Telescope" capable of peering deep into the planet with unprecedented resolution. This new technology called USArray is helping us learn more about how the deep Earth works.

The U.S. Geological Survey's website states it in no uncertain terms: There is no such thing as "earthquake weather." Yet, from at least the time of Aristotle, some people have professed links between atmospheric conditions and seismic shaking. For the most part, these hypotheses have not held up under scientific scrutiny and earthquake researchers have set them aside as intriguing but unfounded ideas. However, in the last decade new efforts to identify effects of weather-related, or in some cases climate-related, processes on seismicity have drawn new interest.

The Arctic is getting warmer and wetter. As temperatures rise and sea ice melts, scientists suspect that system feedback cycles may further speed up the warming process. Now, a new study out of the University of Colorado at Boulder is showing how shifting patterns of humidity may bring about changes in the Arctic atmosphere.

The probability that a given natural hazard could become a natural disaster is higher today than at any previous point in history, largely because of population growth putting more people and infrastructure in harm's way. Who pays for the damage and how is value and risk assessed? Much of it comes down to insurance and reinsurance agencies, which are relying more and more on sophisticated catastrophe modeling tools to help gauge when the next disaster will strike, and how much it will cost.

Diesel-soaked clothing, 90-hour work weeks, and the constant groaning of a multimillion-dollar oil rig towering overhead: Welcome to life in Williston, N.D., home of the United States' latest oil boom. In this month's issue of EARTH Magazine, R. Tyler Powers, a young geologist thrust into the middle of the new boomtown, offers his perspective on what life is like today in the new Wild West.

"Warm" and "Antarctica" are not commonly used in the same sentence; however, for scientists, "warm" is a relative term. A team of researchers has discovered that, contrary to previous thinking, the Antarctic continent has experienced periods of warmth since the onset of its most recent glaciation.

Technology is creating a new breed of scientist. I'm talking about citizen scientists - ordinary people and volunteers from all walks of life coming together to help monitor, and possibly mitigate, the next big earthquake through an innovative program called NetQuakes.

It's not every day that lava flows through a college campus parking lot. But, since January 2010, Syracuse University has been bringing the lava to Central New York. Using commercially available basalt gravel and a coke-fired furnace, the geologists involved with the Syracuse University Lava Project are able to produce a wide range of flow morphologies and other features at a scale comparable to natural flows.

A team of researchers may have discovered a way to hear earthquakes. Not the noises of rattling windows and crumbling buildings, but the real sounds an earthquake makes deep underground as rock grinds and fails catastrophically. Typical seismic waves have frequencies below the audible range for humans, but the August issue of EARTH shows you where to find the voice of one seismic monster: March 11, 2011, magnitude-9.0 Tohoku earthquake in Japan.

December 21, 2012 - the purported last day of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican calendar has been added to an endless list of days when the world has been expected to end. But what are our real chances of being wiped out by a catastrophic event - the kind that has happened in the past and will inevitably occur again someday? In the August issue of EARTH, we explore four of the most probable global events that could change life on Earth forever.