Environment

Is Earth Alive? Scientists Seek Sulfur For An Answer

May 16, 2012

Researchers at the University of Maryland have discovered a way to identify and track sulfuric compounds in Earth’s marine environment, opening a path to either refute or support a decades-old hypothesis that our planet can be compared to a singular, self-regulating, living organism — a.k.a. the Gaia theory.

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Chaos and Education at 120,000 feet for Camilla the Rubber Chicken

May 1, 2012

In my travels, I’ve had the pleasure of regularly meeting up with Camilla the Rubber Chicken, the social media maven and mascot for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. But lately I’ve been seeing here virtually everywhere — on television, splashed across all sorts of websites, and even in my local newspaper. What Camilla does is try [...]

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Go an Hour Without Power: Earth Hour 2012

March 30, 2012

You’ve seen all the videos and images we’ve been featuring lately that astronauts on the International Space Station have taken of Earth from orbit. The one ubiquitous feature is the amount of lights showing up from cities and towns around the world. But will you be turning off the lights this weekend for Earth Hour [...]

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Mexican Lake Bears Witness To Ancient Impact

March 6, 2012

Exotic sediments found beneath the floor of Lake Cuitzeo in central Mexico support theories of a major cosmic impact event 12,900 years ago, report a 16-member international research team. The impact may have caused widespread environmental changes and contributed to the extinctions of many large animal species.

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NASA’s Going Green

February 10, 2012

NASA announced yesterday that it’s looking for new technology proposals using environmentally friendly fuels to launch payload. The space agency is hoping to move away from hydrazine, the fuel that currently launches anything that travels beyond the atmosphere from commercial satellites to private spaceflight and exploration probes. 

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Ancient Antarctic Ice Sampled In Lake Vostok Drill

February 8, 2012

Sealed off for millions of years beneath an almost impenetrable layer of ice, Lake Vostok has kept a vast archive of ancient history waiting for just the right moment to reveal itself. Here is a unique closed ecosystem captured in time below four kilometers of ice. Saved from environmental contamination, its water has been isolated [...]

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How Plants May Have Helped Create Earth’s Unique Landscapes

February 3, 2012

According to conventional thinking, plant life first took hold on Earth after oceans and rivers formed; the soil produced by liquid water breaking down bare rock provided an ideal medium for plants to grow in. It certainly sounds logical, but a new study is challenging that view – the theory is that vascular plants, those [...]

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New Study Reveals Little Ice Age Triggered By Volcanism

February 1, 2012

In a study led by the University of Colorado Boulder with co-authors at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other organizations, researchers may have possibly found evidence the “Little Ice Age” may have had ties to an unusual era of volcanic activity… one that lasted for about 50 years. In just five decades, [...]

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The Van Allen Belts and the Great Electron Escape

January 31, 2012

During the 1950s and just before the great “Space Race” began, scientists like Kristian Birkeland, Carl Stormer, and Nicholas Christofilos had been paying close attention to a theory – one that involved trapped, charged particles in a ring around the Earth. This plasma donut held in place by our planet’s magnetic field was later confirmed [...]

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Earth’s “Missing Energy”

January 29, 2012

Like many of us, Earth works on a budget – an energy budget. However, this energy isn’t the type that powers our automobiles or electric lights. It’s the energy that empowers our living planet. When it comes to input and output, the Earth is a huge throughput system. The most massive source of incoming energy [...]

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Citizen Science: GLOBE at Night

January 19, 2012

Are you a fan of Citizen Science? Do you enjoy participating in projects that help researchers and possibly the environment? GLOBE at Night is one such program! By taking naked-eye observations of the night sky in your area, you can help a world-wide effort to track the effects of light pollution. Here’s all the info [...]

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Earth’s Magnetic Pole Reversal – Don’t “Flip Out”!

December 5, 2011

Have you heard or read stories about how Earth will some day reverse its magnetic poles? If you have, then chances are very good you’ve also heard this perfectly normal function of our planet could spell disaster. Before you buy into another “end of the world as we know it” scenario, let’s take a look [...]

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Ancient Zircons Help Reveal Early Earth Atmosphere

December 1, 2011

Roughly 2.4 billion years ago, Earth’s atmosphere underwent a huge change known as the “Great Oxidation Event”. This switch from an oxygen-poor to an oxygen-rich environment may be accountable for giving rise to life. However, scientists are extremely curious about what our atmosphere may have been like not long after our planet formed. Now researchers [...]

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“Star Wars” Laser Methods Tracks Greenhouse Gases

November 29, 2011

It may have looked like a futuristic scene from Star Wars, but ESA’s latest technique for aiding space exploration might shed some “green light” on greenhouse gases. A recent experiment involving the Spanish Canary Islands was conducted by shooting laser beams from a peak on La Palma to Tenerife. The two-week endeavor not only increased [...]

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As the World Burns: Satellites Watch Fires Around the World

October 26, 2011

NASA put out this video last week and we missed covering it, but this is a very interesting little video that takes you on a narrated global tour of tens of millions of fires detected from space between July 2002 and July 2011. Yes, that’s right, tens of millions of fires on Earth, and these [...]

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From the Land of Ice and Snow

October 26, 2011

Views from the window of NASA’s DC-8 reveal sweeping expanses of ice and rock as part of the ongoing 2011 Operation IceBridge survey of Antarctica’s ice cover.

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Meteorite Impact Sites Treated To CSI Techniques

October 19, 2011

Over the last several years, we’ve been treated to television programs which have awakened us to how a crime scene is investigated. It’s a very precise science and one that could very well deepen our understanding of other types of occurrences. Now, new research done by Mike Branney, of the University of Leicester’s Department of [...]

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Life In A Slice Of Ice

October 12, 2011

Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, a University of Washington doctoral student named Adam Campbell has been conducting a research on photosynthetic algae. While this simple, light-loving form of life might not seem very important, it very well could have survived the global ice age by hiding in an area similar to [...]

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Deadly and Destructive Path of Hurricane Irene seen in NASA Videos and Images

August 30, 2011

NASA Video Caption: The Life of Hurricane Irene from the Caribbean to Canada from August 21 through August 29 seen by NASA/NOAA satellites. Credit: NASA/NOAA/GOES/MODIS The new NASA animation above shows the birth and subsequent destructive and deadly path followed by Hurricane Irene from August 21 through August 29, 2011 starting in the Caribbean, and [...]

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Model Lighting Ordinance Means Preservation Of Future Dark Skies

June 21, 2011

For every astronomer everywhere – and even naturalists – the need to preserve dark skies has been an issue tackled by the International Dark Skies Association for over two decades. It’s more than just asking your neighbor to turn off their porch light while you’re observing. It’s about light pollution as a whole – from [...]

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