Nature rarely does straight lines. If you look at a forest, a rock, or a coastline, you see all sorts of shapes and chaos. But visit the coast of Northern Ireland or the high deserts of Oregon, and ...

The fragile-looking filaments of cooled lava known as Pele’s hair can form when pockets of bubble-rich lava pull apart rapidly, experiments suggest 1. Among all the ways that molten rock can solidify ...