Planet Earth, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 31, 2010

Another Iceland Volcano Under Watch

News reports earlier today that another volcano on Iceland had erupted just as Eyjafjallajokull was beginning to calm down turned out to be false. But scientists are warily keeping their eye on one of Eyjafjallajokull's neighbors, which has been known to erupt following its sister. An MSNBC Twitter feed and...

Mar 31, 2010

Can Cell Phones Get Viruses?

The popularity of smart phones is growing at a breakneck speed, raising concerns over cell phone viruses. Cell phone viruses first broke onto the scene in 2005 when hackers learned how to utilize Nokia's Symbian Series 60 phone's text messaging system. When a user of this phone received a text...

Feb 28, 2010

Mine Grows, Valleys Disappear

Below the densely forested slopes of southern West Virginia's Appalachian Mountains is a layer cake of thin coal seams. To uncover this coal profitably, mining companies engineer large, sometimes very large, surface mines. A new pair of images from NASA shows the growth of one of the largest surface mines...

Feb 28, 2010

'Doomsday' Seed Vault Stores 500,000 Crops

A mold-resistant bean, a German pink tomato and a wild strawberry plucked from the flanks of a Russian volcano are just some of the crops whose seeds are being tucked away this week in a giant vault dug out of a mountainside of the Norwegian island Svalbard. With these new...

Feb 28, 2010

A Disastrous Year: 2010 Death Toll Already Abnormally High

Just a few months into 2010, and Mother Nature has delivered a slew of costly and deadly natural disasters. From the catastrophic Haiti and Chilean earthquakes to the U.S. blizzard that descended on Washington, D.C., last month, which was mostly just inconvenient by comparison, 2010 is already above average in...

Feb 28, 2010

What Triggers an Avalanche?

The most common and deadly type of avalanche is called a slab avalanche, in which a cohesive plate of snow shatters like a pane of glass and slides as a unit off the mountainside, according to the Utah Avalanche Center. The event is typically triggered not by loud noise, as...

Feb 28, 2010

Can You See a Sonic Boom?

The breaking of the sound barrier is not just an audible phenomenon. In fact, Mach 1 can be beautiful. The visual counterpart to a sonic boom, which sometimes but not always accompanies the breaking of the sound barrier, has also been seen with Apollo 11 moon-landing mission rocketed skyward in...

Jan 31, 2010

Snowpocalypse Seen from Space

The results of the weekend storm that buried many Eastern U.S. locations in 2 feet or more of snow stands out starkly in a new satellite image. The image from space reveals how the storm swept through Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia but largely spared New York City. The landscape is...

Jan 31, 2010

Less Fog in California Could Stress Redwoods

Significantly less fog is drifting in along the Pacific Coast these days, a new study finds. The shift force a decline in redwood trees, which rely on the fog to keep them supplied with water during the arid summer months. Climate models have predicted that with the warming caused by...

Jan 31, 2010

Cheap Solar Cell Could Be Incorporated Into Clothing

A new solar cell can produce the same amount of energy as the best conventional solar panels while using less expensive material. The novel flexible device could help make solar cells far more practical for products ranging from sunroofs to clothing, scientists say. It could be extremely rugged – you...

Jan 31, 2010

Energy-Saving Tips

{{adsense|premier|right}} Put Your Computer to Sleep March 29, 2010: Learn to love your computer's power management tools, which include automatically turning off the monitor, turning off the hard drives, and putting the entire system into sleep or hibernate mode (preferably after half an hour of inactivity). Microsoft says that hibernate...

Jan 31, 2010

How Long it Takes a Tsunami to Travel Across the Ocean

Estimated travel time for the tsunami generated by the 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile. The location of the earthquake is shown as a yellow star. Officials with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the times are estimates, and that waves can continue for an hour or more after the initial wave...

Dec 31, 2009

Water Drops Magnify Sunlight and Burn Leaves

Many gardeners swear you should not water in the midday because water droplets on plants can magnify the sun's rays and burn leaves. But the idea has never been rigorously tested, until now. This is far from a trivial question, said biophysicist Gabor Horvath at Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary....

Dec 31, 2009

Past Decade the Warmest Since 1880

When an unusually cold stretch of weather grips much of the world, as one did in December, it can leave people wondering what ever happened to global warming. The gradual inching up of temperatures popularly known as climate change is alive and well, according to NASA. The decade 2000 through...

Nov 30, 2011

Fiscal Crisis Failed to Curb Global Warming Emissions

Believe it or not, there is a potential upside to the global financial crisis that began in 2007. However, it now appears that benefit — namely, putting the brakes on greenhouse gas emissions, and, as a result, global warming — never fully materialized, according to an analysis of two important...