Planet Earth, features and articles | Educational Science

Jul 31, 2010

What's the World's Biggest Airplane?

With a wingspan of 290 feet (88.4 meters) almost the length of football field and a maximum take-off weight of 1.3 million pounds (600,000 kilograms), the Antonov-225 is the world's largest airplane. This giant among planes was built in the 1980s to carry the Russian spacecraft Buran the country's first...

Jul 31, 2010

Deep Ocean Diving Just a Click Away

With the click of a mouse, anyone can follow oceanographers as they journey hundreds of miles off the Washington and Oregon coasts and dive with robots nearly a mile under the ocean's surface to explore some of the most extreme environments on Earth. The expedition, called Enlighten '10, will explore...

Jul 31, 2010

Rare Fire Tornado Seen in Brazil

A rare fire tornado was spotted recently in the Brazilian city of Aracatuba. The flaming dust devil, known colloquially as a fire devil, was captured on video, as reported by the U.K. Telegraph. A three-month drought in the region has led to brush fires across Brazil, and when combined with...

Jul 31, 2010

Relics from Tragic Race to South Pole Up for Sale

Skis worn by a member of English explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole will be auctioned off next month at Christie's in London. The auction of the skis and other equipment that belonged to Canadian scientist Charles Seymour Wright was reported by Discovery News. A...

Jul 31, 2010

Flying Into the Storm: NASA Hurricane Study Takes Off

This week, NASA conducted the first of many flights slated to soar near,through and above tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico during the 2010 hurricane season. The inaugural voyage was part of the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP experiment. The study aims to unlock the secrets...

Jul 31, 2010

Computers Take a Closer Look Inside the Earth

More detailed pictures of the processes that continuously reshape theEarth from the inside out are being generated by new, more sophisticated computer models, yielding new insights into the hidden world beneath our feet. The added resolution that these models provide — down to a single kilometer from a minimum of...

Jul 31, 2010

What's Sea Ice?

The term sea ice has been sending shivers down many spines with the growing threat of global warming, but many non-scientists still misunderstand what sea ice really is. Sea ice is a thin, fragile, solid layer of frozen ocean water that forms in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans. Not to...

Jul 31, 2010

Trekking the Coastal Mountains of Colombia

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Image credit: Jesse Lewis)The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the tallest mountain range in Colombia. Isolated from the long chain of the Andes running south like a great snake along South America, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta pokes its head up like an...

Jun 30, 2010

Pollution, Algae Mar Beautiful Lake

Algae bloom in Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, November 2009. (Image credit: Eliska Rejmankova)Editor's Note: This story has been changed to reflect the correct location of Lake Tahoe and the formation of Lake Atitlan. Guatemala's Lake Atitlan, long considered a beautiful tourist destination, has been beset by dense, slimy algae blooms...

Jun 30, 2010

Infographic: Earth's Atmosphere Top to Bottom

The air you breathe is precious, and the farther from Earth's surface you go, the less there is. But Earth's atmosphere extends farther into space than you might realize, affecting the orbits of spacecraft more than 200 miles high. OurAmazingPlanet looks at what's in the atmosphere, from way out there,...

Jun 30, 2010

Trekking to a Treacherous Glacier

Melting Mountain (Image credit: Freeport McMoRan.) To find clues about the Earth's past climate, sometimes you have to get extreme. That's why scientists recently traveled to Indonesia's Puncak Jaya, the Earth's highest island peak and the tallest mountain between the Andes and the Himalayas. It's here that the last glaciers...

Jun 30, 2010

How Big Was the Biggest Hailstone Ever?

On June 22, 2003, chunks of ice the size of softballs rained down on Aurora, Neb. One, a jagged behemoth with a 7-inch (17.8-centimeter) diameter, entered the record books as the largest U.S. hailstone ever. Although large in size, it didn't unseat the champion by weight, which fell in Coffeyville,...

Jun 30, 2010

Tracking a Retreating Glacier

Columbia Glacier (Image credit: Shad O'Neel/USGS.) Scientists set up camp where the Columbia Glacier meets the ocean in this photo from August 2009. The scientists' orange tents are seen on the cliff in the lower left-hand corner of the image. Glacier Camp (Image credit: Shad O'Neel/USGS.) Only accessible by helicopter,...

Jun 30, 2010

Finding Hope, Adventure Deep Within the Amazon Rain Forest

If asked to compile a list of careers that offer old-fashioned thrills, one might say archeologist (Indiana Jones), or perhaps ship captain (Jack Sparrow). But geographer? Enter Robert Walker, a professor of geography at Michigan State University (MSU), and a scientist whose South American exploits lend his rather stuffy-sounding profession...

Jun 30, 2010

Cages Change Mice Brains, Lab Studies Questioned

Scientists rely on lab rats and mice as models to shed light on the human condition. But a new study suggests researchers will have to rethink the whole process. The type of cage a mouse is housed in affects that mouse's brain, in a breakthrough that may require scientists to...