Michael D. Lemonick, National Geographic

Michael D. Lemonick

National Geographic

Princeton, NJ, United States

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • National Geographic
  • ClimateCentral
  • TIME.com
  • Bloomberg

Past articles by Michael:

It's Official: Pluto Is Even Weirder Than We Thought

The dwarf planet’s mountains, glaciers, and atmosphere can’t be fully explained, says the first scientific paper from New Horizons probe researchers. → Read More

It's Official: Pluto Is Even Weirder Than We Thought

The dwarf planet’s mountains, glaciers, and atmosphere can’t be fully explained, says the first scientific paper from New Horizons probe researchers. → Read More

Why Comet 67P Looks Like a Rubber Ducky

The cosmic visitor owes its bizarre shape to a collision that welded two smaller objects together 4.6 billion years ago. → Read More

If You Think You're Safe From Earthquakes, You May Be Wrong

It’s no surprise that Californians are in danger, but scientists have also flagged residents of Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois and South Carolina. → Read More

Spacecraft Sees What a Comet Is Made Of

The Philae probe, which bounce-landed on a comet last year, has phoned home its findings. → Read More

Alien Hunting Could Go High-Definition With Giant Space Telescope

A new study makes the case for building a supersize space telescope that would create images five times sharper than Hubble's. → Read More

What Do Florida and a Comet Have in Common? Sinkholes

Mysterious pits on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may have formed when the ground beneath them collapsed, say Rosetta mission scientists. → Read More

Ancient Man Had Neanderthal Great-Great Grandfather

Analysis of the jawbone of a man who lived about 40,000 years ago reveals the closest direct descendant of a Neanderthal who mated with a modern human. → Read More

Chimps Can't Cook, But Maybe They'd Like To

New research shows that our closest evolutionary relatives have all of the cognitive capacities required for cooking—except an understanding of how to control fire. → Read More

Brightest Galaxy Yet Shines With Light of 300 Trillion Suns

A gigantic quasar creates a beacon that can be seen across the cosmos. → Read More

Bad News Keeps Flowing From Antarctica

The massive shelves of ice that ring Antarctica have been shrinking, leaving glaciers on the move. → Read More

With Climate Change, Ticks Marching Farther and Earlier

In a warming world, the black-legged tick (a.k.a. deer tick) is peaking in mid-May instead of June. → Read More

Discovered: Quartet of Quasars, a 10-Million-to-One Find

It gets stranger: the four quasars are nestled in a gigantic cloud of cold hydrogen gas that theories say shouldn’t exist either.               → Read More

Astronomers Spot the Most Distant Galaxy Seen So Far

The star cluster, only 15 percent the size of the Milky Way, dates to just 670 million years after the big bang—not long after the first stars turned on. → Read More

Astronomers May Have Found Volcanoes 40 Light-Years From Earth

Wild temperature swings on a distant exoplanet called 55 Cancri e could be evidence of gigantic eruptions on a super-Earth. → Read More

The Surprising Link Between Fjords and Carbon

Deep ocean inlets account for about 11 percent of the carbon locked away in marine sediments each year. → Read More

Graveyard of Stars May Lie at Milky Way's Center

An unidentified blast of powerful X-rays suggests something violent is happening at the core of the galaxy—but astronomers aren't sure what it is. → Read More

T. rex's Oddball Vegetarian Cousin Discovered

A newly discovered dinosaur from South America doesn’t fit easily into any known category. → Read More

Blooming Algae Could Accelerate Arctic Warming

A new study says waning Arctic sea ice could lead to algae blooms that will trap extra heat from the Sun → Read More

Extreme Heat and Heavy Rain Events Expected to Double

About 18 percent of heavy precipitation events worldwide and 75 percent of hot temperature extremes can already be attributed to human activity, says a new study. → Read More