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Magazine
In the Nov. 24 SN: Why mammoths went extinct, the dirt on clean drinking water, countries line up for the moon, roaches fight zombification, speedy atomic mapping, the flight physics of dandelion seeds and more.
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News
Volcanic eruptions that depleted ocean oxygen may have set off the Great Dying
12/06/2018 - 14:00 Oceans, Climate, Earth, PaleontologyA massive series of volcanic eruptions in Earth’s distant past left ocean creatures gasping for breath. Greenhouse gases emitted by the volcanoes dramatically lowered oxygen levels in the oceans, a deadly scenario that may have been the main culprit in the Great Dying, researchers report.
Earth scientist Justin Penn of the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues mapped out...
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Science Stats
Half the world’s annual rain falls in just 12 days
11/30/2018 - 13:55 Climate, EarthHalf of the world’s annual rain and snow falls on the year’s 12 wettest days. As climate change brings more intense downpours, the same amount of precipitation could take just 11 days by the end of the century, scientists report online November 4 in Geophysical Research Letters.
“Climate scientists generally have this notion that precipitation falls unevenly in time,” says climate...
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News
Here’s how much climate change could cost the U.S.
11/28/2018 - 12:29 Climate, EarthThe United States is poised to take a powerful economic hit from climate change over the next century. Heat waves, wildfires, extreme weather events and rising sea levels could cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in lost labor, reduced crop yields, health problems and crumbling infrastructure.
A report authored by hundreds of U.S. climate scientists from 13 federal agencies...
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News
A new algorithm could help protect planes from damaging volcanic ash
11/27/2018 - 08:00 Earth, Technology, ComputingFive to 10 minutes. That’s what it takes for superheated volcanic ash to shoot 11 kilometers into the sky — reaching altitudes at which commercial jets cruise and potentially harming their engines.
Now scientists have developed a new algorithm that can identify and track explosive ash clouds soon after volcanoes erupt. Using satellite imagery, the program can measure the temperature,...
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News
A massive crater hides beneath Greenland’s ice
11/14/2018 - 14:00 Earth, ClimateThere’s something big lurking beneath Greenland’s ice. Using airborne ice-penetrating radar, scientists have discovered a 31-kilometer-wide crater — larger than the city of Paris — buried under as much as 930 meters of ice in northwest Greenland.
The meteorite that slammed into Earth and formed the pit would have been about 1.5 kilometers across, researchers say. That’s large enough to...
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Say What?
These tiny, crackly bubbles are a new type of volcanic ash
Bread-crust bubble\Bred krəst ˈbəb(ə)l\ n.11/09/2018 - 12:00 EarthTiny, gas-filled beads of volcanic ash with a scaly surface.
Scientists have identified a new type of volcanic ash that erupted from a volcano in central Oregon roughly 7 million years ago. The particles are similar to larger bread-crust bombs, which form as gases trapped inside globs of lava expand, cracking the bombs’ tough exterior. Bread-...
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News in Brief
Bizarre metals may help unlock mysteries of how Earth’s magnetic field forms
11/07/2018 - 06:00 Condensed Matter, EarthWeird materials called Weyl metals might reveal the secrets of how Earth gets its magnetic field.
The substances could generate a dynamo effect, the process by which a swirling, electrically conductive material creates a magnetic field, a team of scientists reports in the Oct. 26 Physical Review Letters.
Dynamos are common in the universe, producing the magnetic fields of the Earth...
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News in Brief
Physicists measured Earth’s mass using neutrinos for the first time
11/05/2018 - 11:00 Particle Physics, EarthPuny particles have given scientists a glimpse inside the Earth.
For the first time, physicists have measured the planet’s mass using neutrinos, minuscule subatomic particles that can pass straight through the entire planet. Researchers also used the particles to probe the Earth’s innards, studying how the planet’s density varies from crust to core.
Typically, scientists determine...
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Reviews & Previews
‘18 Miles’ is full of interesting tales about Earth’s atmosphere
10/28/2018 - 08:00 Climate, Earth, History of Science18 MilesChristopher DewdneyECW Press, $17.95
How thick is Earth’s atmosphere? Sorry, that’s a bit of a trick question: Our planet’s air simply gets thinner with altitude, fading away to nothingness somewhere far above the height at which the lowest satellites orbit. It’s a fact, though, that 99 percent of Earth’s air lies below an altitude of 18 miles. Naturalist Christopher...
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News
These ancient mounds may not be the earliest fossils on Earth after all
10/17/2018 - 13:00 Earth, Paleontology, MicrobesTiny mounds touted as the earliest fossilized evidence of life on Earth may just be twisted rock.
Found in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks in Greenland, the mounds strongly resemble cone-shaped microbial mats called stromatolites, researchers reported in 2016. But a new analysis of the shape, internal layers and chemistry of the structures suggests that the mounds weren’t shaped by microbes...