Mount Everest is the highest point above sea level, but Ecuador's Chimborazo sits so close to the equator, where Earth bulges outward by 21 kilometres, that its summit is actually the farthest point on the planet's surface from the centre of the Earth.

Everest is the highest point above sea level, but Ecuador's Chimborazo, perched almost exactly on the equator where Earth bulges outward by 21 kilometres, is the point on the planet's surface that reaches farthest from its core.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Jul 28, 2026

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A park ranger abseiling into a hidden canyon near Sydney in 1994 stumbled onto a grove that should not have existed the Wollemi pine, known only from 90-million-year-old fossils, with fewer than 100 left, in a spot Australia keeps secret

A tree thought extinct for 90 million years was hiding in plain sight, waiting for a dangling ranger to find it and upend everything we thought we knew about survival and loss.

By Mal James · Jul 26, 2026

Terra Daily

Between five and six million years ago o the Mediterranean nearly dried up, then the Atlantic refilled it in a flood that may have raised sea levels by more than ten metres a day

When Africa and Europe collided, the Mediterranean vanished—then the Atlantic came roaring back in a catastrophic deluge that rewrote the seafloor.

By Mal James · Jul 26, 2026

Psychology

Psychology says adults who feel lonely inside a long marriage aren't falling out of love — they're discovering that being known and being tolerated look identical from the inside, and that most people never learn the difference until the house finally goes quiet

The intimacy trap: when a spouse becomes an audience rather than a witness, and the marriage survives on presence alone.

By Brendan Brown · Jul 26, 2026

Terra Daily

One of the most desert-covered nations on Earth has to buy its sand from abroad, and the reason is grain-deep wind has polished Arabian sand too smooth to bind in concrete, so Saudi Arabia imports construction sand from as far as Australia

Millennia of wind have rendered Arabia's vast deserts worthless for construction—too polished and uniform to bind concrete, forcing the kingdom to import sand from halfway around the world.

By Mal James · Jul 26, 2026

Earth

For decades, marine biologists have followed a lone whale in the North Pacific known as "52 Blue" because it sings at a frequency of 52 hertz — far higher than the great baleen whales it swims among — meaning that for its entire life it has been calling out into the dark in a voice that, as far as anyone knows, no other whale has ever answered

A whale that no one has ever seen sings in a voice no other whale seems to hear, raising questions about loneliness, identity, and what we can know about creatures we only encounter through sound.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Jul 26, 2026

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Earth science, climate impacts, ecosystems, agriculture, forests, and the broad environmental changes shaping life on a changing planet.

Terra Daily

Finland has more saunas than passenger cars: roughly 3.3 million saunas for a population of about 5.5 million people, a tradition so central that UNESCO recognises Finnish sauna culture as heritage

By Mal James

Flora and Fauna

Over its whole short life a single honeybee makes only about a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey, so the honey in one jar represents the entire life's work of hundreds of bees

By Mal James

Terra Daily

The Great Pyramid we see today is a stripped-down skeleton: it was once sheathed in polished white limestone that made it gleam blindingly in the sun, until the casing was quarried away over the centuries to help build medieval Cairo

By Mal James

Terra Daily

Three-toed sloths only poop about once a week, and to do it they climb all the way down from the safety of the treetops to the forest floor — one of the most dangerous things a sloth ever does — before hauling themselves back up

By Mal James

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Shake and Blow

Earthquakes, volcanoes, severe weather, fire, tectonics, disaster response, and the natural hazards reshaping communities and landscapes.

Disaster Management

Zaporizhzhia accident would impact neighbouring countries: Ukraine

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Weather Report

Year so far the hottest in US history

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Disaster Management

'Worse than war': trauma of Libya flood haunts survivors

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Weather Report

World sees record August heat for second year running

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

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Water World

Oceans, rivers, polar ice, water systems, marine life, and the environmental changes affecting the planet's blue and frozen regions.

Water World

We tend to think of AI as a software problem, weightless and waterless, but even a 100-word email written with ChatGPT has been estimated to require roughly a bottle’s worth of water once data-centre cooling and electricity generation are counted — and scaled to global demand, researchers project AI could withdraw 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water a year by 2027, roughly half the United Kingdom’s annual freshwater withdrawals.

By Lachlan Brown

Iron and Ice

Titan is the only moon among the 150-plus in the solar system with a thick atmosphere — its air presses on the surface about 1.5 times harder than Earth's at sea level, roughly what you'd feel at the bottom of a swimming pool

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Water World

Zimbabwean capital grapples with water shortage

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Water World

Zimbabwe city orders 'big flush' amid water rationing

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

About Terra Daily

News about planet Earth.

Terra Daily is an independent publication covering planet Earth, natural hazards, water systems, ecosystems, climate impacts, and the science behind life on a changing planet. The site pairs a deep archive with current reporting on the research, communities, policy shifts, and environmental events shaping Earth's living and physical systems. We employ modern AI technologies to support our editorial workflows; every published piece is editorially directed and reviewed.

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