(Credit: allou/Shutterstock)
If we broke it, then we can probably fix it, too. That’s the logic behind geoengineering, the broadly-defined set of techniques proposed to artificially reverse climate change.
The most popular method involves pumping the atmosphere full of sulfur aerosols, a compound that would reflect more of the sun’s incoming radiation, bouncing heat back into space and cooling down the planet.
Too Good to Be True
It sounds seductive, but there are any num ...read more
The twin MarCO CubeSats launched May 5th with NASA’s larger InSight mission, making them the first pair of miniature probes to ever venture into deep space. Many other mission concepts are in the works for CubeSats that could follow these pioneers beyond Earth’s orbit. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
When NASA’s InSight lander began its journey to Mars on May 5th, two tiny satellites tagged along for the ride — CubeSats called MarCO-A and MarCO-B.
CubeSats are a small and re ...read more
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photo of a towering pyrocumulus cloud rising from the Ferguson Fire near Yosemite National Park. Make sure to click on the image and then click again to view close-up details. (Source: NASA Earth Observatory)
When California’s 2018 wildfire season is over — if it actually ends — it may well be remembered as the summer of the “new normal.”
That is, of course, the meme that has exploded across news a ...read more
A new review of evidence for the peopling of the Americas suggests both coastal and interior routes, such as through this Alaskan landscape, were possible. (Credit: Ben A. Potter)
Exactly how and when the peopling of the Americas took place has long been one of the hottest debates in science. For every new paper that emerges with evidence of an interior or coastal route, it seems another team publishes contradictory conclusions. Authors of a new review of archaeolo ...read more
Human land use changes are bringing trees to regions where they’ve long been absent, even as other areas are rapidly deforested. (Credit: SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE)
Scientists like simplicity as much as anyone. Elegant equations take up less room, well-designed experiments reduce clutter and Occam’s razor generally advises to keep things simple (within reason).
But how far can you take it?
Say you want to know the exact amount of tree loss Eart ...read more
Asian elephants are commonly used in the timber industry. (Credit: Muellek Josef/shutterstock)
New research into captive elephant lifespans reveals that wild-caught animals live shorter lives.
Elephants are critical to the logging industry across Southeast Asia, even though the animals are endangered. And in Myanmar, a country long largely cutoff from the world, the animals are an especially integral part of the workforce. For centuries, Myanmar kings employed the beasts in their armies. And s ...read more
The immortal jellyfish, Turritopsis. (Credit: A. E. Migotto/CEBIMar-USP)
Once we turn 30, our odds of dying doubles every eight years. The formula that churns out that grim statistic is known as the Gompertz–Makeham law, named after the pair of nineteenth-century actuaries who worked it out, and those odds have remained about the same even as modern medicine has advanced
Humans aren’t the only ones whose mortality can be summed up by the equation. Although that key age will di ...read more
(Credit: pathdoc/shutterstock)
The microbiome, it’s so hot right now. A newly published paper in Cell Host & Microbe is adding to the hotness, looking at how people’s idiosyncratic collection of gut flora can influence the way our bodies respond to vaccines.
A team of researchers in the Netherlands, led by Vanessa C. Harris, found that certain antibiotics seem to shift our microbiome in such a way that makes the vaccination for the rotavirus (RV), or the stomach flu, more effec ...read more
Upper jaw bone and tusks of a walrus used in the study. It can be dated to c.1200-1400 A.D. based on the characteristics of a runic inscription in Old Norse.(Credit: Musées du Mans)
The disappearance of Norse colonists from Greenland is somewhat of a mystery. Norse settlers colonized Greenland during the Viking Age in the late 900s and lived there for several centuries before their colonies declined in the 1300s and 1400s A.D.
Climate change could have driven the Greenland Norse to aban ...read more
