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Pilot study finds plastics in poo samples from eight countries. Nick Carne reports.

Three relatively strong earthquakes that began Sunday night in the Pacific Ocean off Vancouver Island didn’t trigger a tsunami because they happened along a fault line where sections of the Earth’s crust are moving sideways, says an earthquake seismologist with Natural Resources Canada. .

These are bleak times — but a lot of things are improving.

Seismologists from from the Australia National University (ANU) have found the first conclusive proof that the Earth’s innermost core is solid after 80 years of searching.

Aristotle called it the fifth element. Alchemists thought it was the key to the philosopher’s stone. Scientists believed it was the stuff light moved through. But it never existed at all.

Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity was born from this very question, and the answer is as weird as you’d expect.

Ice shelves perform a vital function in slowing down the rate of glacier melt in Antarctica, so scientists keep an eye on them for signs of collapse. And as the continent’s largest, the Ross Ice Shelf is particularly important. After monitoring seismic activity over a few years, researchers noticed that the Ross Ice Shelf is “singing” – and listening out for changes in that song could be an early warning system for potential problems.