Scientific American Podcast: 60-Second Earth Folgen

Soil samples taken from a 50-mile radius around the Macondo well reveal striped layers of thick goo, possibly containing oil. Christie Nicholson reports

A woman from Hancock, Maine, discovered that a tourist snapshot of a humpback whale on Flickr matched with photos documented in the Allied Whale research catalogue, providing proof that this whale had traveled 6,000 miles, the longest documented distance of any humpback. Christie Nicholson reports

Despite being the voice of the world's flora and fauna, will the delegates at the 10th meeting of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity actually bring real change? David Biello reports