Sid Perkins

Sid Perkins is a freelance science writer based in Crossville, Tenn.

All Stories by Sid Perkins

  1. Earth

    Not So Green? Using hydrogen as fuel may hurt environment

    Replacing fossil fuels with clean-burning hydrogen—considered to be a way to reduce globe-warming carbon dioxide—may create a different set of environmental problems, including larger and longer-lasting ozone holes.

  2. Earth

    Saltier Water: Climate change can slow ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide gas

    A decrease in precipitation over the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii in recent years has left the ocean there saltier and has diminished its ability to soak up carbon dioxide.

  3. Agriculture

    Fluid Security—Overcoming Water Shortfalls in the 21st Century

    About 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered with water, some 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of it. Too bad almost 96.5 percent of it’s salty, and another 2 percent is locked away as ice in remote places such as Greenland and Antarctica. All told, just a little more than 1 percent of our planet’s water […]

  4. Paleontology

    Three Species No Moa? Fossil DNA analysis yields surprise

    Analyses of genetic material from the fossils of large flightless birds called moas suggest that three types of the extinct birds may not be separate species after all.

  5. Earth

    High-Flying Science, with Strings Attached

    In the hands of scientists, kites do serious data gathering.

  6. Earth

    Small quake shakes up hydrothermal vents

    Long-term, post-earthquake fluctuations in the temperature and volume of water spewing from hydrothermal vents off the coast of Washington state suggest that the fluid flow feeding such vents may be much more complex than previously thought.

  7. Earth

    Large lake floods scoured New Zealand

    A volcanic region of New Zealand’s North Island experienced immense floods and severe erosion when lakes filling the craters of dormant volcanoes burst through the craters' rims and poured down the slopes.

  8. Paleontology

    A human migration fueled by dung?

    When people made their way from Asia to the Americas, the path they took may have been covered in dung.

  9. Earth

    For European lakes, how clean is clean enough?

    New research on lakes in Denmark suggests that agriculture has been affecting water quality there for more than 5,000 years.

  10. Earth

    Long-Term Ocean Venting: Seafloor system has been active for ages

    Analyses of mineral deposits in and around a unique set of hydrothermal vents beneath the Atlantic Ocean suggest that the site's tallest towers of minerals have been growing for at least 30,000 years.

  11. Earth

    Greenland ice variation appears normal

    Changes in snowfall observed in parts of southern Greenland between 1978 and 1988 appear to be normal if gauged against the variations recorded in ice cores over the past 400 years.

  12. Earth

    Cooking up a key chemical of life

    Researchers have simulated the conditions and ingredients found at hydrothermal vents to create pyruvic acid, an organic chemical vital for cellular metabolism.