Earth Science
Hurricanes and the Color of the Oceans
Little kids draw the ocean as blue, but the seas are more complex in color than that. They can be a rich turquoise, like the shallow waters of the Bahamas, or a dark greeny blue, nearly black, out in the middle of the deep oceans. Depth and life, specifically phytoplankton, both influence the ocean...
August 16, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Searching for Bad Poetry About Geology
Some days my job takes me in strange directions. Last Friday afternoon it found me in the grand Main Reading Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, paging through a slim volume, The Poetry of Geology, searching for the worst couplets I could find. (It links tangentially t...
August 10, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Problem with Space Junk
There's a lot of space junk—or, as NASA calls it, "orbital debris"—circling high above our heads: around 19,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters, 500,000 between 1 and 10 cm in size, and tens of millions of pieces smaller than 1 cm. Generally, all that junk isn't much of a problem. If it falls to...
August 05, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Jellyfish: The Next King of the Sea
As the world's oceans are degraded, will they be dominated by jellyfish?
August 2010 |
By Abigail Tucker
A Coral Reef Constructed From Yarn
This fall, a different kind of coral reef will be on display in the National Museum of Natural History's Ocean Hall. It's not made out of the calcium carbonate skeletons of living coral. It's made out of wool. And acrylic, and cotton, and whatever other fibers local yarn artists get their hands on....
July 29, 2010 |
By admin
More Heat Waves on the Horizon
You know you're in a heat wave when a high of 92 degrees comes as a relief. But at least heat waves this hot—temperatures reached an official high of 102 degrees last week here in Washington—don't happen every year. Right?Well, that break between years of extremely high-temperature summers may get ...
July 12, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Wealth of New Species
An alien world lies just beyond the seashore. Only in the last century or so have technologies like SCUBA and submersibles allowed us to explore the oceans far below the surface. Until then, exploring underwater sea life was like trying to study a forest by dipping a bucket from a helicopter. The C...
July 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Oceans of Plastic
One of my best memories from college is the time I spent on a SEA Semester, sailing around the Caribbean and conducting research from on board a magnificent 134-foot brigantine, the SSV Corwith Cramer (even though I was seasick much of the time and sleep deprived all of the time—there are good reas...
July 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Italian Scientists May Face Trial for Not Predicting 2009 Earthquake
Earthquakes are scary for many reasons. They can be devastating, leveling whole cities and killing millions. They can cause massive tsunamis. And though scientists can make predictions of where earthquakes are likely to occur, we never know when the Big One will happen.That last bit, however, hasn'...
July 06, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Map of Earth's Gravity
In physics class we're taught that Earth's gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared. That's just a general estimate, however, good enough for schoolroom problems but not nearly precise enough for scientists studying things like how climate change is affecting sea level. But scientists have now crea...
July 02, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Dolphins Are Efficient Eaters
If you had to catch all of your food, would you go after anything and everything that came across your path? Or would you wait for the bigger payoff? Squirrels and bunnies or deer and bear?Dolphins go for the marine version of option B, preferring to eat only high-energy fish, according to a new st...
June 28, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Planes Punch Holes in Clouds and Create Rain
Look up in the sky near an airport and you might see some unusual cloud formations. The one on the left is called a "hole-punch," and meteorologists have been speculating on the cause. They suggested that the holes may have been the result of shock waves from jets or warming of the air by jets.Rese...
June 18, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Five Myths of the Gulf Oil Spill
With oil spilling from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico for nearly two months now, it's not shocking that there's plenty of misinformation and wrongful assumptions passing over airwaves and in conversations with friends and colleagues. Here are five myths I've heard lately:Oil spills are rare: There...
June 17, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Should Oiled Birds Be Cleaned?
Dead birds smothered in icky, gooey brown oil are the iconic images of most any oil spill, including the ongoing one in the Gulf. Even a small amount of oil can kill a bird. Oil sticks to feathers, destroying their waterproofing ability and exposing the bird to extremes of temperature. And ingested...
June 11, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
How Sharks Sniff Out a Meal
A shark's sharp teeth aren't the only reason we find them so scary---their ability to smell blood in the water, even from a long distance, is also a big factor. We know they'll find us. But how do they know what direction to swim in order to find a wounded fish (or person)? Conventional wisdom says...
June 10, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Crazy Crab Migrations
I've been slowly watching the 11 episodes of the BBC/Discovery series Life over the last few weeks, and I've been amazed by much of it. While many of the segments focus on small groups of animals, and sometimes just one---like the bouncing pebble toad---huge migrations and gatherings of creatures a...
June 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Ocean Currents are Highways for Crocodiles
Ocean currents have carried a huge variety of things around the world, from trash to shipwrecked Japanese sailors. And crocodiles, according to a new study in the Journal of Animal Ecology.The estuarine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) lives in rivers, estuaries and mangrove swamps throughout much of...
June 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Rare Meteor Event Inspired Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass includes the poem "Year of Meteors, (1859-60)" in which he documents many events in those years—including the hanging of abolitionist John Brown and the election of Abraham Lincoln. He also includes descriptions of a comet and meteors:Nor the comet that came unannounc...
June 07, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Hurricane Grazes the Arabian Peninsula
These are storms that go by many names. Scientists call them "tropical cyclones," but they are also known as "typhoons," "severe cyclonic storms" and, of course, "hurricanes." The storm in the image above is Tropical Cyclone Phet, which earlier this week grazed the coast of Oman as it headed toward...
June 04, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Coral Atolls Rise With the Seas
The plight of Pacific Islanders has been the center of the debate over the human toll of climate change. Last month, the Federated States of Micronesia filed an objection against one the dirtiest power plants in Europe, arguing that unchecked carbon emissions could eventually drown this nation of 6...
June 03, 2010 |
By Brendan Borrell
