Of all the hazards that hurricanes bring, storm surge is the greatest threat to life and property along the coast. It can sweep homes off their foundations, flood riverside communities miles inland, and break up dunes and levees that normally protect coastal areas against storms.As a hurricane reaches the coast, it pushes a huge volume of ocean water ashore. This is what we call storm surge.This surge appears as a gradual rise in the water level as the storm approaches. Depending on the size and ...read more

As Earth’s closest neighbor in space, we know a lot about the moon. We know that the Moon is less than a third of the size of Earth. We know that every 27 days, the Moon rotates around Earth and spins at the same time. This means that the same portion of the Moon is always facing Earth, and the side that isn’t is often referred to as the Dark Side of the Moon.All of this being said, there’s still a bunch of things that we’re learning about the Moon, and in fact, researchers are unravelin ...read more

Products intended for the treatment of acne and other skin conditions could break down into cancer-causing substances when improperly stored, according to a report in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.Topical treatments for both acne and rosacea that contain benzoyl peroxide (BPO) can degrade into the known carcinogen benzene if they are stored at room temperature or higher. Exposure to ultraviolet rays, including those found in sunlight, can also trigger the products' transformation into ...read more

The word magic is not often used in the context of science. But in the early 1930s, scientists discovered that some atomic nuclei — the center part of atoms, which make up all matter — were more stable than others. These nuclei had specific numbers of protons or neutrons, or magic numbers, as physicist Eugene Wigner called them.Maria Goeppert Mayer won the 1963 Nobel Prize in physics. Argonne National Laboratory, CC BY-NC-SAThe race to figure out what made these nuclei so stable began. Under ...read more

Wildfires are becoming increasingly destructive across the U.S., as the country is seeing in 2024. Firefighters were battling large blazes in several states from, California to and North Dakota in, early October 2024, including fires burning near homes and communities.Research shows wildfires are up to four times larger and three times more frequent than they were in the 1980s and ‘90s, with some consuming hundreds of thousands of acres in a single blaze.Lightning strikes are one cause, but th ...read more

Our home star, the sun, is a middle-aged main sequence star. That is to say, it is roughly halfway through its lifecycle and is an average-sized star compared to the spectrum of stellar types that can be found elsewhere in our galaxy and beyond. Life, in its 4.5 billion-year journey on Earth, has had an intimate relationship with the sun. It provides life with its main source of energy via photosynthesis, it keeps temperatures within a balmy range, and its energy drives many of Earth's cycles o ...read more

Hurricane Milton became one of the most rapidly intensifying storms on record as it went from barely hurricane strength to a dangerous Category 5 storm in less than a day on a path across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida.With sustained winds that reached 180 mph on Oct. 7, 2024, and very low pressure, it also became one of the strongest Atlantic storms.Milton’s winds dipped to Category 4 strength early on Oct. 8, but forecasters warned that it would still be an extremely dangerous hurricane a ...read more

NASA plans to send humans on a scientific round trip to Mars potentially as early as 2035. The trip will take about six to seven months each way and will cover up to 250 million miles (402 million kilometers) each way. The astronauts may spend as many as 500 days on the planet’s surface before returning to Earth.NASA’s Artemis program plans to return humans to the Moon this decade to practice and prepare for a Mars mission as early as the 2030s. While NASA has several reasons for pursuing su ...read more

Hurricane Helene caused deadly and destructive flooding when it swept through the Southeast on Sept. 26-29, 2024. Across a broad swath of western North Carolina, where the worst flooding occurred, the amount of rainfall exceeded levels that would be expected on average only once every 1,000 years.But this wasn’t the first 1,000-year rainstorm in North Carolina this year. In mid-September, an unnamed slow-moving storm produced more than a foot of rainfall closer to the Atlantic coast. This stor ...read more

On the arid and seemingly sterile surface of the Atacama Desert lies an invaluable treasure of history and culture: thousands of ancient geoglyphs etched on the slopes of the hills, silent witnesses to the caravan routes of pre-Hispanic peoples.Gonzalo Pimentel, archaeologist and president of the Atacama Foundation, describes them as accurate maps leading to the Pacific Ocean and records of memories, habits, and customs. Colossal human figures, llamas, birds, and enigmatic geometric shapes have ...read more