Humanity’s impact on the climate is clear and devastating. Over the last two hundred years or so, we have pumped enough greenhouse gas into the atmosphere to significantly increase its temperature and raise the frightening prospect of much of the Earth becoming uninhabitable. The current plan to avoid this fate is to reduce net carbon emissions to zero within the next 20 years. That will surely help, provided Earth has not moved beyond any significant tipping points by then.But there is anothe ...read more
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
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine