Planet Earth, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 30, 2012

Pollution & Debris Stirred by Sandy Threaten Coastal Waters

Oil, pesticides, PCBs: Drip by drip, year after year, pollutants are absorbed into New York City's streets, and now Hurricane Sandy's floodwaters are soaking them out. Hurricane Katrina's urban floodwaters had high levels of bacteria, lead and harmful levels of chemicals including phosphorous and arsenic, studies found. Local officials in...

Aug 31, 2012

Leslie Becomes Sixth Hurricane of 2012 Season

Tropical Storm Leslie intensified into a hurricane today (Sept. 5), beating out Michael to become the sixth hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic season. Leslie first became a tropical storm on Aug. 30 far out over the Atlantic Ocean. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued a statement at 1:45 p.m. AST...

Aug 31, 2012

Extreme Weather on Display in Glossy Color in Nat Geo

If it seems like the weather has been all kinds of crazy in your corner of the world in recent years, you probably aren't just imagining things. So says the September 2012 edition of National Geographic Magazine. The storied publication takes a hard look at the extreme weather events that...

Aug 31, 2012

Studies Show Wind Power's Massive Potential

(ISNS) -- There is enough energy for people to reap from the wind to meet all of the world's power demands without radically altering the planet's climate, according to two independent teams of scientists. Wind power is often touted as environmentally friendly, generating no pollutants. It is an increasingly popular...

Aug 31, 2012

FAA: Mysterious Roof Holes Not Caused by Falling Frozen Waste

Two Long Island families with mysterious holes in their roofs think plummeting frozen waste from overhead airplanes might be the cause of their troubles. Lois Farella awoke to a thunderous crash at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning (Sept. 9) and found that her roof had a hole the size of...

Aug 31, 2012

'Carl Sagan with Gills:' A Q&A with Bob Ballard, Discoverer of The Titanic

By his own admission, Bob Ballard is a heretic. If I were in Tunisia, I'd be toast, he said. He likes to disprove conventional wisdom, and throw out textbooks (metaphorically speaking). In graduate school in the 1960s he was part of a wave of young researchers who established the existence...

Aug 31, 2012

When Will Arctic Ice Completely Disappear?

The Arctic sea ice just hit its lowest extent since measurements began in the 1970s, raising the question of when Arctic summer sea ice will disappear for good. The answer is not yet clear, thanks to the complex variability of the sea ice from year to year. But scientists say...

Aug 31, 2012

Dramatic Video Apparently Shows Lightning Striking an SUV

A video posted to YouTube on Sept. 17 shows a few cars cruising slowly down a rainy highway in Russia before a sudden blinding flash gives way to a streak of lightning zapping the roof of an SUV. Afterward, the SUV gradually comes to a stop in a way that...

Aug 31, 2012

Childhood Interests Grow Into A Cherished Career

If Cheryl Wilga's laboratory had an official soundtrack, it might be the notorious thump … thump … thump from the soundtrack of the movie Jaws. That's because she and her research team study anatomical features and behaviors that impact the individual survival of fish — including the feeding behaviors of...

Aug 31, 2012

Key US East Coast Weather Satellite GOES-13 Fails

A major weather satellite monitoring the U.S. East Coast has shut down, prompting officials to activate a spare satellite to take its place. The GOES-13 satellite failed after days of erratic behavior, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials said Monday (Sept. 24). The replacement, GOES-14, has already...

Jul 31, 2012

Gallery: The World's Weirdest Balancing Rocks

Balancing rock (Image credit: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 | Penny Mayes)This balancing rock formation is one of the Brimham rocks, located on Brimham Moor in North Yorkshire, England. Made of millstone grit, it was carved over time through water and wind erosion. The bottom layer eroded fastest. Balancing column (Image...

Jul 31, 2012

Fracking Earthquakes: Injection Practice Linked to Scores of Tremors

Earthquakes triggered by fluids injected deep underground, such as during the controversial practice of fracking, may be more common than previously thought, a new study suggests. Fluid injections into Earth are not uncommon. For instance, in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, water, sand and other materials are injected under high pressure...

Jul 31, 2012

How Strange Twinned Rainbows Form

Double rainbows had their fifteen minutes of fame on the Internet. Now get ready for their even more mysterious cousins: twinned rainbows. New research has suggested an explanation for these exotic shows of color. Rainbows are known to form when sunlight interacts with tiny water drops in the atmosphere. As...

Jul 31, 2012

Best Earth Images of the Week - Aug. 17, 2012

Aerial eruption (Image credit: NASA)On Aug. 15, NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite caught a crystal-clear image of a small ash plume emanating from a tiny volcanic Indonesian island. The volcano, called Batu Tara, is located on the island of Pulau Komba, and has been experiencing frequent, mild eruptions since mid-2006,...

Jul 31, 2012

Quakes Beneath Antarctic Glacier Linked to Ocean Tides

Thousands of earthquakes occurring in rapid succession in less than a year under an Antarctic glacier may have been linked to ocean tides, new research suggests. Scientists investigated seismic activity under David Glacier, a large glacier in East Antarctica about 270 square miles (700 square kilometers) in size. The glacier...