First, what is an ice age? It’s when the Earth has cold temperatures for a long time – millions to tens of millions of years – that lead to ice sheets and glaciers covering large areas of its surface.

Earth’s climate is influenced by far more than weather patterns and greenhouse gases. Scientists have discovered that long-term orbital shifts known as Milankovitch cycles slowly change the planet’s ...

Mars is half the size of Earth, with one-tenth of our planet’s mass, and at the nearest point in its orbit is over 33 million miles away. Yet new research highlights the extraordinary influence the ...

A seemingly small planetary neighbor may play a larger role in Earth’s climate than previously thought. Mars is only about ...

A light microscope image of a planktonic foraminifera collected from the water in the Southwest Indian Ocean. (Photo by Tracy Aze, University of Leeds via Courthouse News) (CN) — Carbon is one of the ...

They don't cause ice ages, but they do control the volume of things like glaciation and the factors that can trigger ice ages. Kane's simulations show that without Mars the frequent and intense ...

Cosmic dust can tell scientists about how ice covered Earth during the last ice age. This dust is leftover debris from asteroids and comets... What space dust reveals about Earth's ice age Around ...

Planet Earth used to be something like a cross between a deep freeze and a car crusher. During vast stretches of the planet’s history, oceans from pole to pole were covered with a blanket of ice a ...

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. How many ice ages has the Earth had, and could ...