As Earth spins faster than it has in decades, atomic clocks are catching the difference, and shorter days are on the horizon.

July 9 was unusually short thanks to changes in how fast the Earth is spinning. But two other days this summer are expected to be even shorter.

When the moon is positioned farther from Earth's equator and closer to the poles, its pull on the planet becomes weaker. With less resistance, Earth is able to spin a bit faster, which makes the day slightly shorter than usual.

Ever been late because you misread a clock? Sometimes, the "clocks" geologists use to date events can also be misread. Unraveling Earth's 4.5-billion-year history with rocks is tricky business.

Astronomers claim to have found new evidence supporting a controversial observation that our galaxy is residing in an unusually sparse region in space. If it's correct, it could rewrite cosmology.

Normally, younger rocks are deposited above older ones, forming predictable geologic layers. In the North Sea, this process is a bit more complicated.

For one, scientists observe a "cosmic fossil" called the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The first light that was free to travel the universe, the CMB, is a field of radiation that almost evenly and uniformly fills the entire cosmos.

Colossal volcanic eruptions like the kind that may have obliterated the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago are caused by mantle plumes that rise from shifting underground mountains deep within the Earth's mantle,