Our early solar system was a wild place. Dust grains grew into pebbles, and pebbles became world-building planetesimals. These rocks spun around and bumped into each other in a chaotic dance that left a trail of debris in its wake. The remnants of these festivities remain strewn about our cosmic backyard. Many rocky and metallic bodies now orbit in what’s called the Main Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter.
More than just leftovers, asteroids offer clues to the earliest days of our sol ...read more
Atop Earth’s largest active volcano, an alarm bell has tolled unheeded for six decades. In 1958, Scripps Institution climatologist Charles Keeling began making precise measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa Observatory. Back then, Earth’s atmosphere clocked roughly 310 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. It took just a year for Keeling to spot a now-familiar upward trend.
“You can think of it as taking planetary vital signs,” says Ra ...read more
Even before we’re born, human beings are sensitive to face-like shapes, according to a paper just published in Current Biology.
British researchers Vincent M. Reid and colleagues of the University of Lancaster used lasers to project a pattern of three red dots onto the abdomen of pregnant women. The lasers were bright enough to be visible from inside the womb. The dots were arranged to be either “face-like”, i.e. with two “eyes” above one “mouth”, or in ...read more
Have you heard of the idea that smiling actually makes you joyful? Perhaps you know of the experiment where researchers got people to hold a pen in their mouth, so they had to smile, and it made them find cartoons funnier.
If you’re familiar with this idea, then you’re familar with the work of German psychologist Fritz Strack, who carried out the famous pen-based grinning study, back in 1988.
Now, Strack has just published a new piece, called From Data to Truth in Psychological Sci ...read more
This article was originally posted on August 21, 2013 but we thought this project provided a great way to celebrate World Oceans Day even if you can’t make it to the beach!
Calling all citizen scientists! It doesn’t matter where you are. You can still be an ‘honorary’ diver to help with this project. The idea is simply to look at seafloor photos on your computer and catalogue what you find.
Explore the Sea Floor is part of the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) usi ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
SecondMuse, an agency that collaborates with organizations to help solve complex problems, looked to the latest drone and 360 video technologies to help showcase aquaculture — the farming of aquatic life-forms — in Tanzania.
Last year, the Blue Economy Challenge awarded 10 projects for their creative uses of aquaculture. Led by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s InnovationXchange, in partnership with SecondMuse, the goal was to awa ...read more
What’s so bad about wetlands? These mucky, sometimes mosquito-ridden landscapes have a bad reputation, but they offer benefits to their neighborhoods too. Researchers say “accidental” wetlands—pockets of cities that have turned into swamps through flooding and neglect—might be a valuable resource to both the environment and the humans around them.
It’s hard to guess exactly how many accidental wetlands there are, say Monica Palta of Arizona State University an ...read more
(Credit: Kai Gradert/Unsplash)
Recent weather conditions in Europe have been a boon to the renewable energy grid there, pushing prices briefly negative overnight as high winds forced turbines into overdrive.
Energy prices in the U.K. dipped into the negatives for five hours on June 7, according to Argus, an industry analytics firm, and Danish wind farms supplied more than 100 percent of the country’s needs, both situations indicating a need for utility companies to sell off excess p ...read more
You probably haven’t eaten this fruit before, but you may have one of its ancestors in your house right now. (Credit: petrOlly/Flickr)
In the wilds of Kazakhstan, there’s an unassuming tree that bears an unassuming fruit. Like many plant species, development encroaches on its usual territory while climate change makes it harder for the tree to thrive and bear healthy yields of fruit.
You probably haven’t eaten this fruit before, but you may have one of its ancestors in your h ...read more
