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A demonstration of the icebreaking testing taking place at the National Research Council of Canada in St. Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador. Credit: CNW Group/National Research Council Canada Imagine your childhood bathtub playtime magnified into large model ships plowing through an ice-filled tank with a length that rivals the Statue of Liberty’s height. That 300-foot ice tank in the Canadian city of St. John’s is currently helping the U.S. Coast Guard cond ...read more

Solar eclipse. Credit: Luc Viatour (CC-BY-SA) On August 21st, millions of people across the U.S. will have the opportunity to witness a total solar eclipse. But we won’t be the only ones taking notice—there is a good chance animals, and even some plants, will be affected by the event, too. It is not as farfetched as you might think. Many animals and plants respond to daily changes in light and temperature. Birds sing at dawn while fireflies come out at twilight.  Flowers like m ...read more

A collection of helminth eggs seen under a microscope. (Credit: By Jarun Ontakrai/Shutterstock) In Germany, treatments for disease may entail adding a vial of parasitic worms to a meal or beverage. The country’s food and consumer safety organization is set to weigh in on the relative merits of parasitic worms as a treatment for a range of autoimmune disorders. So called “helminthic therapies” have been slowly gaining ground in the past two decades or so, although the scientif ...read more

The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only. Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with: The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future ...read more

Long before recent political turmoil across the pond came to a head, Britain made a literal break for it and physically separated from mainland Europe. Now, researchers have an idea of how the process went down some 450,000 years ago. A new study from Imperial College London and other European institutes supports the claim that before the English Channel existed, a large chalk ridge connected Britain and France. The ridge acted as a dam, holding back a lake that had formed in front of a nearby g ...read more

On Aug. 21, the dark inner part of the moon’s shadow will sweep across the United States, creating a total solar eclipse for regions in 14 states. But, you may ask, the sun is so much larger than the moon, so how does this work? While our daytime star has a diameter about 400 times larger than that of the moon, it also lies roughly 400 times farther away. This means both disks appear to be the same size, so at certain times from certain locations, the moon can completely cover the sun. Be ...read more

There, off in the distance: It’s a mountain … it’s a hill … it’s a pingo! These mounds may appear mundane, but beneath their earthy exterior is a core of ice. Sometimes called hydrolaccoliths, pingos typically form in arctic regions, like Siberia and northern Canada. In such frigid climates, groundwater collects and freezes, amassing ice beneath the surface that eventually forces the ground up. They can reach heights of over 170 feet, and if the core melts, they c ...read more

Lava melts ice, right? It seems like a no-brainer, but it’s not quite that simple. Benjamin Edwards, a geologist at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Penn., has explored scores of volcanoes in British Columbia, Iceland, South America and Russia. His specialty is studying what happens when flowing lava meets ice and snow.Figuring out this interaction helps Edwards and his team understand a volcano’s climate history and better estimate flooding in nearby communities when snowcapped volcan ...read more

The full text of this article is available to Discover Magazine subscribers only. Subscribe and get 10 issues packed with: The latest news, theories and developments in the world of science Compelling stories and breakthroughs in health, medicine and the mind Environmental issues and their relevance to daily life Cutting-edge technology and its impact on our future ...read more