Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Sky Lights
Devoted to atmospheric optics, this Web site offers beautifully illustrated explanations of spectacular phenomena ranging from rainbows to ice haloes. Created by physicist Les Cowley, it features amazing images, along with explanations of how the imaged effects were created by nature. The ice halo section offers downloadable software for simulating various types of halos. Go […]
- Earth
Sprawl’s aquatic pollution
A new study links the traffic associated with urban sprawl to an unexpectedly large rain of air pollutants entering local waters.
- Earth
New database describes all the marbles
Analyses of the isotope ratios of carbon and oxygen in hundreds of samples of Greek marble may help researchers identify the quarries that supplied the stone for some of Europe's most famous statues and architecture.
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- Earth
Long dry spell
Falling reservoir levels in the western United States are just one symptom that the region is suffering through a drought that may be the worst to strike in the past 500 years.
- Earth
Cost of protecting the oceans
Operating an extensive global network of marine parks in which fishing and habitat-stressing activities are restricted would probably be more affordable for governments than continuing to subsidize struggling fisheries at current levels.
- Earth
Blueberry Hills: Utah nodules resemble some found on Mars
Analyses of small iron oxide nodules found within certain sandstones of the U.S. Southwest could shed light on how similar spherules may have formed on Mars.
- Agriculture
Coming Soon—Spud Lite
A new variety of baking potato has about 25 percent fewer calories and 30 percent fewer carbohydrates per unit weight than the typical brown-skinned Idaho potato.
- Earth
Newspaper’s Footprint: Environmental toll of all the news that’s fit to print
The environmental impacts of getting a newspaper dropped on your doorstep each morning vastly outweigh those of receiving the same information via a handheld electronic device.
- Earth
Limiting Dead Zones
To limit algal blooms and the development of fishless dead zones in coastal waters, farmers and other sources of nitrate are investigating novel strategies to control nitrate runoff.
- Earth
Geyser Bashing: Distant quake alters timing of eruptions
A powerful earthquake that struck central Alaska on Nov. 3, 2002, changed the eruption schedule of some geysers in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park, more than 3,100 kilometers away.
- Earth
Killer weather on Mount Everest
An analysis of weather patterns around Mount Everest in May 1996, when eight climbers died, suggests that a sudden drop in barometric pressure may have played a significant role in the deaths.
