Planet Earth, features and articles | Educational Science

Jan 31, 2006

Making Waves: Power Plant Would Create False Shoreline

Big ocean swells could one day be as exciting to homeowners as they are to surfers, thanks to an innovative new device that harnesses the power of waves to produce cheap, clean electricity. Pioneered by scientists at Energetech, a small alternative-energy company in Randwick, Australia, a prototype of the $1.5-million...

Dec 31, 2005

Tailpipe Test: Study Finds Worst Polluters

The make of your car makes a big difference in how much it pollutes, according to a comprehensive comparison of pollution levels by manufacturer. Age is a huge factor, too. A vehicle from 1985 emits almost 38 times more carbon monoxide than a 2001 model, on average. Researchers analyzed data...

Dec 31, 2005

Photos Show It's True: No Two Snowflakes Alike

Through rain and sleet and dead of night and all that, your letters next winter can be delivered bearing snowflakes artfully photographed by a physicist who weathers those same storms to study nature's crystal magic. Starting in October, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a set of four stamps featuring...

Dec 31, 2005

Less Pollution on City Sidewalks than Streets

Passengers in taxis, buses, and cars all inhale substantially more pollution than cyclists and pedestrians, a new study shows. Researchers measured levels of ultrafine, traffic-produced pollution particles on busy London streets using a newly developed particle counter fitted with a video recorder. The equipment allowed them to match particle levels...

Dec 31, 2005

California School Agrees to Stop Teaching 'Intelligent Design'

FRESNO, California (AP) _ A rural California school district agreed to stop teaching a religion-based alternative to evolution as part of a court settlement filed Tuesday. Frazier Mountain High School will stop teaching the course next week and will never again offer a course that promotes or endorses creationism, creation...

Dec 31, 2005

Irrigation Fuels Warmer Temps in California's Central Valley

Irrigation of California's Central Valley, which turned it from desert to productive farmland, could be to blame for warmer summer nights that have been recorded in recent years. What was once dry, light-colored soil that didn't absorb much solar warmth is now dark and damp and can absorb heat like...

Dec 31, 2005

Darker Days in China as Sun Gets Dimmer

Smog is blocking sunlight in China and making much of the country significantly darker than it was half a century ago. Using nearly 500 instruments spread throughout the country that record the amount of sunlight reaching the ground, researchers found that solar radiation has decreased by about 2 percent per...

Dec 31, 2005

Baffled Scientists Say Less Sunlight Reaching Earth

After dropping for about 15 years, the amount of sunlight Earth reflects back into space, called albedo, has increased since 2000, a new study concludes. That means less energy is reaching the surface. Yet global temperatures have not cooled during the period. Increasing cloud cover seems to be the reason,...

Dec 31, 2005

Two Large Lakes Discovered Under Antarctic Ice

Antarctica has at least 145 small lakes buried under its ice and one large one called Lake Vostok. Now scientists have found the second and third largest known bodies of subsurface liquid water there. Exotic ecosystems frozen in time may thrive in the lakes, untouched for 35 million years, scientists...

Dec 31, 2005

Ethanol Fuel More Advantageous Than Thought

Producing a gallon of ethanol gas from corn requires 95 percent less petroleum than producing a gallon from fossil fuels, a new study finds. This method might also slightly reduce the production of greenhouse gases that speed up global warming, but the results on that point are not certain. It...

Dec 31, 2005

Snowfall Scale to Rank Storms' Impact

Soon, when a snowstorm proves crippling, the government will call it exactly that. Sometimes, anyway. And in some places. The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale, or NESIS, will be used to evaluate the impact of a powerful snowstorm soon after it strikes, and give it a rank in a fashion similar...

Nov 30, 2007

In Photos: Monster Waves

Dropping In (Image credit: Getty Images / Staff)Oahu knows how to make waves. Here, surfer Noah Johnson drops into a 30-foot-high (9 meters) behemoth on the Outer Reefs on Nov. 15, 2000. Johnson was striving for the $60,000 prize in the Swell.com/Surfline Big-Wave Awards. Between Nov. 15, 2000 and March...

Nov 30, 2007

Divorce Squanders Earth's Resources

Divorce leaves more than a trail of legal documents, stinging egos and uprooted kids. The split-ups wreak havoc on the environment. A global trend of soaring divorce rates has led to a surge in the number of households with fewer people. The result: We collectively devour more space and gobble...

Nov 30, 2007

Mountains of Evidence Suggest Human Evolution Had Rocky Start

Geology may be a long-overlooked, major factor that created conditions favoring the evolution of modern humans. That's the conclusion of geologists at the University of Utah, who detail their findings in next month's issue of the journal Geotimes. It's fairly well-established that changing climate, and thus vegetation, in East Africa...

Oct 31, 2007

Life at Sea: An Oceanographer's Adventure

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Life at sea is very different from life on land . . . Or is it? It may be hard to imagine spending weeks at a time at sea, but for many in our...