Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Don’t blame the cities
Urban sprawl is sometimes blamed for skewing weather data and creating a false signal of global warming, but a new study suggests this idea is just a lot of hot air.
- Earth
Mammoth migrations
Ancient DNA shows North American woolly mammoths migrated back to Asia and displaced Siberian mammoths.
- Earth
Mighty hurricanes get mightier
Peak winds in North Atlantic hurricanes and similar storms elsewhere in the world have gained speed during the past three decades, thanks to a warming trend in many of the ocean basins where such storms are spawned.
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- Earth
Past gasps
Earth’s atmosphere during some past geological ages wasn’t as oxygen-deprived as previously thought, new experiments suggest.
- Chemistry
Popular plastics chemical poses further threat
The chemical bisphenol A may raise the risk of heart attacks and type 2 diabetes by suppressing a protective hormone.
- Chemistry
Turning CO2 into chalk and sand
Removing carbon dioxide from smokestacks and storing it permanently is one of the possible solutions to global warming, but remains expensive to do. A new technique could make carbon sequestration economical on a large scale, while producing useful materials on the side.
- Earth
Deep sea viruses are an unexpected ringer
Deep-sea vent waters harbor high numbers virus-carrying bacteria. The viruses may actually help the bacteria survive the harsh vent environments.
- Earth
Carbon caveat
Adding carbon compounds to some ocean systems may lead to a counterintuitive drop in their overall carbon content — and how much carbon dioxide the ocean could store.
- Earth
Carcinogens from car exhaust can linger
Free radicals similar to those in cigarette smoke may form when car exhaust cools off, and may persist indefinitely in the air.
- Ecosystems
Coastal dead zones expanding
The number of coastal areas known as dead zones is on the rise. A new tally reports more than 400 of the oxygen starved regions worldwide.
- Earth
Firm evidence that Earth’s core is solid
Faint yet distinct ground motions recorded by a large network of seismic instruments in Japan in early 2006 are the strongest, most direct evidence that Earth’s inner core is solid.
