Nikk Ogasa

Nikk Ogasa

Staff Writer

Nikk Ogasa is a staff writer who focuses on the physical sciences for Science News, based in Tucson, Arizona. He has a master's degree in geology from McGill University, where he studied how ancient earthquakes helped form large gold deposits. He earned another master's degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His stories have been published in Science, Scientific American, Mongabay and the Mercury News, and he was the summer 2021 science writing intern at Science News.

All Stories by Nikk Ogasa

  1. Chemistry

    How to make tiny metal snowflakes

    In a pool of molten gallium, researchers grew symmetrical, hexagonal zinc nanostructures that resemble natural snowflakes.

  2. Paleontology

    This dinosaur may have had a body like a duck’s

    Natovenator polydontus may have been adapted for life in the water, challenging the popular idea that all dinos were landlubbers.

  3. Ecosystems

    Tiger sharks helped discover the world’s largest seagrass prairie

    Instrument-equipped sharks went where divers couldn’t to survey the Bahama Banks seagrass ecosystem.

  4. Climate

    Greenland’s frozen hinterlands are bleeding worse than we thought

    An inland swath of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream is accelerating and thinning. It could contribute much more to sea level rise than estimated.

  5. Earth

    Catastrophic solar storms may not explain shadows of radiation in trees

    Tree rings record six known Miyake events — spikes in global radiation levels in the past. The sun, as long presumed, might not be the sole culprit.

  6. Chemistry

    Mixing gold ions into whiskey can reveal its flavor

    By changing the spirit’s color, the formation of gold nanoparticles can reveal how much flavor a whiskey has absorbed from its wood cask.

  7. Humans

    Here’s where jazz gets its swing

    Swing, the feeling of a rhythm in jazz music that compels feet to tap, may arise from near-imperceptible delays in musicians’ timing, a study shows.

  8. Chemistry

    A way to snap molecules together like Lego wins 2022 chemistry Nobel

    Click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry allow scientists to build complex molecules in the lab and in living cells.

  9. Planetary Science

    Robin Wordsworth re-creates the atmosphere of ancient Mars

    Robin Wordsworth studies the climates of Mars and other alien worlds to find out whether they could support life.

  10. Earth

    Here’s how olivine may trigger deep earthquakes

    Olivine’s transformation into another mineral can destabilize rocks and set off quakes more than 300 kilometers down, experiments suggest.

  11. Tech

    50 years ago, genes eluded electron microscopes

    In the 1970s, scientists dreamed of seeing genes under the microscope. Fifty years later, powerful new tools are helping to make that dream come true.

  12. Earth

    Not one, but two asteroids might have slain the dinosaurs

    A craterlike structure found off West Africa’s coast might have been formed by an asteroid impact around the same time the dinosaurs went extinct.