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 path around the Sun is not a fixed racetrack but a slowly shifting orbit, and those subtle changes have a long history of reshaping the planet’s climate. As astronomers refine how these ...

Ice ages occurred long before this as well, hundreds of millions of years ago, but here the focus is on the past 2.6 million ...

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 [email protected]. How many ice ages has the Earth had, and could ...