[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
The earth’s crust is old. Billions of years old. So old that it’s nearly impossible to imagine. And now scientists have discovered what may be the oldest whole rocks ever known. Geologists at Carnegie Melon University published the results of the research in the September 26th issue of the journal Science. [More]
[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
The earth’s crust is old. Billions of years old. So old that it’s nearly impossible to imagine. And now scientists have discovered what may be the oldest whole rocks ever known. Geologists at Carnegie Melon University published the results of the research in the September 26th issue of the journal Science. [More]
Glaciers at the earth’s poles are melting, calving and surging toward the seas at alarming speeds. With few exceptions, global glaciers have been getting smaller since the early 20th century, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. The suspected cause of all this shrinkage, of course, is warming temperatures. The consequences are not surprising: a warmer world could mean melting ice, rising seas and flooded coastlines.
To learn more about what is happening, researchers in the bursting field of glacier seismology are refining techniques to track changes inside the ice in real time. Specifically, they are using seismic instruments to listen to ice movements, like physicians use heart rate monitors to learn about a patient’s health. With such information, these ice doctors could better determine how glaciers are changing over short periods--a sharp contrast to more traditional methods in which glaciologists relied on photographs, satellite images and direct measurements to document large-scale, long-term ice movements.
[More]Glaciers at the earth’s poles are melting, calving and surging toward the seas at alarming speeds. With few exceptions, global glaciers have been getting smaller since the early 20th century, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. The suspected cause of all this shrinkage, of course, is warming temperatures. The consequences are not surprising: a warmer world could mean melting ice, rising seas and flooded coastlines.
To learn more about what is happening, researchers in the bursting field of glacier seismology are refining techniques to track changes inside the ice in real time. Specifically, they are using seismic instruments to listen to ice movements, like physicians use heart rate monitors to learn about a patient’s health. With such information, these ice doctors could better determine how glaciers are changing over short periods--a sharp contrast to more traditional methods in which glaciologists relied on photographs, satellite images and direct measurements to document large-scale, long-term ice movements.
[More]Africa is splitting apart at the seams--literally. From the southern tip of the Red Sea southward through Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, the continent is coming unstitched along a zone called the East African Rift.
Like a shirtsleeve tearing under a bulging bicep, the earth’s crust rips apart as molten rock from deep down pushes up on the solid surface and stretches it thin--sometimes to its breaking point. Each new slit widens as lava fills the gap from below.
[More]Africa is splitting apart at the seams--literally. From the southern tip of the Red Sea southward through Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, the continent is coming unstitched along a zone called the East African Rift.
Like a shirtsleeve tearing under a bulging bicep, the earth’s crust rips apart as molten rock from deep down pushes up on the solid surface and stretches it thin--sometimes to its breaking point. Each new slit widens as lava fills the gap from below.
[More][The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
[More][The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
[More][The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
[More][The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
[More]According to recent statistics, U.S. motorists have responded to record-high prices at the pump by driving less. Any hope that this cutback will significantly restrain global oil prices is misplaced, however: fundamental factors of supply and demand in the world economy will keep oil costly for years to come. The hope that a cutback in driving by U.S. motorists will significantly restrain global oil prices is misplaced. Although U.S. drivers are a major force in the world oil market--they account for around 14 million barrels per day (mbd) out of 85 mbd of worldwide demand--the growth in driving in China, India and other developing countries will easily outstrip any cutback in U.S. demand. Drilling in protected areas would provide little relief, and at horrendous environmental risks. Only a concerted move to new transport and energy technologies will relieve the pressures.
The greatest irony about the Bush Administration is that it correctly focused on energy needs at the start of its first term, but then got everything wrong in the strategy. Viewing the world through the eyes of Texas oilmen, it focused on gaining concessions to Iraqi oil fields and opening U.S. protected areas to drilling, while scorning fuel economy standards, renewable energy sources, and climate change mitigation. But the simple arithmetic of oil and carbon was always against the strategy.
[More]According to recent statistics, U.S. motorists have responded to record-high prices at the pump by driving less. Any hope that this cutback will significantly restrain global oil prices is misplaced, however: fundamental factors of supply and demand in the world economy will keep oil costly for years to come. The hope that a cutback in driving by U.S. motorists will significantly restrain global oil prices is misplaced. Although U.S. drivers are a major force in the world oil market--they account for around 14 million barrels per day (mbd) out of 85 mbd of worldwide demand--the growth in driving in China, India and other developing countries will easily outstrip any cutback in U.S. demand. Drilling in protected areas would provide little relief, and at horrendous environmental risks. Only a concerted move to new transport and energy technologies will relieve the pressures.
The greatest irony about the Bush Administration is that it correctly focused on energy needs at the start of its first term, but then got everything wrong in the strategy. Viewing the world through the eyes of Texas oilmen, it focused on gaining concessions to Iraqi oil fields and opening U.S. protected areas to drilling, while scorning fuel economy standards, renewable energy sources, and climate change mitigation. But the simple arithmetic of oil and carbon was always against the strategy.
[More]
OCTOBER 1958 [More]
OCTOBER 1958 [More]
Dinosaurs' long reign on Earth may have had more to do with lady luck than with superiority, according to a study published today in Science. The study challenges the old notion that dinosaurs out-competed their reptilian contemporaries. [More]
Dinosaurs' long reign on Earth may have had more to do with lady luck than with superiority, according to a study published today in Science. The study challenges the old notion that dinosaurs out-competed their reptilian contemporaries. [More]
If it's September, it's time for creationism in schools. That's how some would like it, anyway. [More]
If it's September, it's time for creationism in schools. That's how some would like it, anyway. [More]
Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard that increasing eco-awareness around the world has now extended itself to the afterlife, whereby burials can even be “green.” Is that true? -- Mary Lewis, Duxbury, MA
[More]Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard that increasing eco-awareness around the world has now extended itself to the afterlife, whereby burials can even be “green.” Is that true? -- Mary Lewis, Duxbury, MA
[More]Three decades ago researchers discovered what are essentially enormous saltwater lakes in the Atlantic Ocean. These “lakes,” called meddies, are gently spinning lenses of water up to 100 kilometers across and one kilometer thick. They float a few hundred meters below the surface of the ocean. Such large, warm bodies, which turned out to come from the Mediterranean Sea, should have an impact on heat exchange in the ocean--and on the planet’s climate. But efforts to study meddies--conventionally by dropping probes that directly measure the ocean’s temperature, salinity and velocity--have proved too costly, infrequent and spread out to reveal how the meddies dissipate their heat.
Now researchers have demonstrated that a tool adapted from the oil industry can take rapid, high-resolution snapshots of the meddies. The technique, first used to find oil deposits under the seafloor, exploits sound reflections. Prospectors on ships fire air guns just below the sea surface; the acoustic waves then propagate down through the seafloor and bounce back to a towed array of microphones. The timing of sound waves’ return reveals the density of the material through which they passed.
[More]Three decades ago researchers discovered what are essentially enormous saltwater lakes in the Atlantic Ocean. These “lakes,” called meddies, are gently spinning lenses of water up to 100 kilometers across and one kilometer thick. They float a few hundred meters below the surface of the ocean. Such large, warm bodies, which turned out to come from the Mediterranean Sea, should have an impact on heat exchange in the ocean--and on the planet’s climate. But efforts to study meddies--conventionally by dropping probes that directly measure the ocean’s temperature, salinity and velocity--have proved too costly, infrequent and spread out to reveal how the meddies dissipate their heat.
Now researchers have demonstrated that a tool adapted from the oil industry can take rapid, high-resolution snapshots of the meddies. The technique, first used to find oil deposits under the seafloor, exploits sound reflections. Prospectors on ships fire air guns just below the sea surface; the acoustic waves then propagate down through the seafloor and bounce back to a towed array of microphones. The timing of sound waves’ return reveals the density of the material through which they passed.
[More]In 1925 British adventurer Colonel Percy Fawcett disappeared into the wilds of the Amazon, never to be heard from again after going there in search of a lost city he called Z. But decades later, a city of sorts--actually a series of settlements connected by roads--has been found at the headwaters of the Xingu River where Fawcett went missing in an area previously buried beneath the dense foliage in what is now Xingu National Park.
View slideshow here. [More]
In 1925 British adventurer Colonel Percy Fawcett disappeared into the wilds of the Amazon, never to be heard from again after going there in search of a lost city he called Z. But decades later, a city of sorts--actually a series of settlements connected by roads--has been found at the headwaters of the Xingu River where Fawcett went missing in an area previously buried beneath the dense foliage in what is now Xingu National Park.
View slideshow here. [More]
Dear EarthTalk: What is “community based tourism” and how does it purport to safeguard pristine places? -- Erin O’Neill, Tukwila, WA
[More]Dear EarthTalk: What is “community based tourism” and how does it purport to safeguard pristine places? -- Erin O’Neill, Tukwila, WA
[More]PALO ALTO, CALIF.--It was perhaps the most highly touted press conference of the week, but it didn't reveal much in the way of evidence: Three bigfoot enthusiasts announced today that a series of genetic tests performed on samples taken from a carcass they claim is a Sasquatch came back as a mixture of human and opossum.
In addition to the mixed DNA results, Tom Biscardi, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer showed the audience two blurry photos, one of a solitary figure in mixed hardwood forest and another of the mouth of what appeared to be the tongue and teeth of a primate.
[More]PALO ALTO, CALIF.--It was perhaps the most highly touted press conference of the week, but it didn't reveal much in the way of evidence: Three bigfoot enthusiasts announced today that a series of genetic tests performed on samples taken from a carcass they claim is a Sasquatch came back as a mixture of human and opossum.
In addition to the mixed DNA results, Tom Biscardi, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer showed the audience two blurry photos, one of a solitary figure in mixed hardwood forest and another of the mouth of what appeared to be the tongue and teeth of a primate.
[More][The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
Neandertals were our closest relatives. And now we know a lot more about them. Because researchers have for the first time sequenced a complete Neandertal genome--that of their mitochondrial DNA. The study appears in the August 8th issue of the journal Cell.
[More][The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
Neandertals were our closest relatives. And now we know a lot more about them. Because researchers have for the first time sequenced a complete Neandertal genome--that of their mitochondrial DNA. The study appears in the August 8th issue of the journal Cell.
[More][The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
[More]
[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
[More]
Listening to the music of the Austin, Tex.–band Shearwater, you get the sense that it has a bird fetish. In general, the group's lyrics are distinctly naturalist--painting pictures of wildlife and untouched ecosystems--but birds tend to appear in these narratives more often than other animals. In fact, the majority of the group's album covers are avian-themed, and the band's name itself refers to a seabird with especially long wings.
Almost all of this bird business is the work of the group's singer/songwriter, Jonathan Meiburg. A tall, skinny, unfailingly polite guy with a gentle voice--both speaking and singing--he powers both Shearwater's soaring songs and its avian aesthetic. But, Meiburg is no fetishist when it comes to birds--he doesn't just walk around town with binoculars and a copy of The Sibley Guide to Birds looking for feathered friends aloft in the sky or perched in trees. Meiburg has had fully immersive experiences, tracking birds on remote islands where he--or any other human, for that matter--is a rarity.
[More]Listening to the music of the Austin, Tex.–band Shearwater, you get the sense that it has a bird fetish. In general, the group's lyrics are distinctly naturalist--painting pictures of wildlife and untouched ecosystems--but birds tend to appear in these narratives more often than other animals. In fact, the majority of the group's album covers are avian-themed, and the band's name itself refers to a seabird with especially long wings.
Almost all of this bird business is the work of the group's singer/songwriter, Jonathan Meiburg. A tall, skinny, unfailingly polite guy with a gentle voice--both speaking and singing--he powers both Shearwater's soaring songs and its avian aesthetic. But, Meiburg is no fetishist when it comes to birds--he doesn't just walk around town with binoculars and a copy of The Sibley Guide to Birds looking for feathered friends aloft in the sky or perched in trees. Meiburg has had fully immersive experiences, tracking birds on remote islands where he--or any other human, for that matter--is a rarity.
[More]Editor's Note: This story was originally published in the May 2003 issue of Scientific American.
The world lost the creators of two of its most celebrated biohoaxes recently: Douglas Herrick, father of the risibly ridiculous jackalope (half jackrabbit, half antelope), and Ray L. Wallace, paternal guardian of the less absurd Bigfoot. The jackalope enjoins laughter in response to such peripheral hokum as hunting licenses sold only to those whose IQs range between 50 and 72, bottles of the rare but rich jackalope milk, and additional evolutionary hybrids such as the jackapanda. Bigfoot, on the other hand, while occasionally eliciting an acerbic snicker, enjoys greater plausibility for a simple evolutionary reason: large hirsute apes currently roam the forests of Africa, and at least one species of a giant ape--Gigantopithecus-- flourished some hundreds of thousands of years ago alongside our ancestors.
[More]Editor's Note: This story was originally published in the May 2003 issue of Scientific American.
The world lost the creators of two of its most celebrated biohoaxes recently: Douglas Herrick, father of the risibly ridiculous jackalope (half jackrabbit, half antelope), and Ray L. Wallace, paternal guardian of the less absurd Bigfoot. The jackalope enjoins laughter in response to such peripheral hokum as hunting licenses sold only to those whose IQs range between 50 and 72, bottles of the rare but rich jackalope milk, and additional evolutionary hybrids such as the jackapanda. Bigfoot, on the other hand, while occasionally eliciting an acerbic snicker, enjoys greater plausibility for a simple evolutionary reason: large hirsute apes currently roam the forests of Africa, and at least one species of a giant ape--Gigantopithecus-- flourished some hundreds of thousands of years ago alongside our ancestors.
[More]An ancient Greek astronomical calculator that showed the positions of the sun, Earth and the moon, and outshined any known device for 1,000 years after it, also kept track of something more mundane: when the next Olympics would take place.
And its design just might have sprung from the skull of the brilliant scientist Archimedes.
[More]An ancient Greek astronomical calculator that showed the positions of the sun, Earth and the moon, and outshined any known device for 1,000 years after it, also kept track of something more mundane: when the next Olympics would take place.
And its design just might have sprung from the skull of the brilliant scientist Archimedes.
[More]