(Credit: Shutterstock)
Many forces shape the planet’s rugged features: wind, water, fire, and, of course, salmon sex.
That’s the conclusion from Washington State University researcher Alex Fremier and colleagues in a study that’s billed as one of the first attempts to quantify the earth-shaping power of spawning salmon. They titled their study, in part, “Sex That Moves Mountains,” and it’s a new take on the ways living things transform habitats.
Take Me to t ...read more
I’ve spent the last few days at the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Seattle. What I’ve learned is that geology has definitely left the planet and there are some great questions and locations for studying geologic problems on other planets in our solar system.
This got me thinking about some of my favorite geologic sites in the solar system. Some of them are like features on Earth, others are like terrestrial deposits on steroids and others are like nothing we can find ...read more
Jane Goodall at Gombe with Hugo van Lawick and his omnipresent camera. (Credit: Jane Goodall Institute)
During the 1960s, humanity’s place in the universe changed dramatically as Soviet and American astronauts ventured off the planet and (for the Yanks, at least) onto the surface of the Moon. During those same years, humanity’s place on Earth changed rather dramatically, too, as scientists took a closer look at our primate relatives and discovered that they are a lot more like us&n ...read more
Never fear, self-driving snowplows are here. (Credit: Daimler, Mercedes-Benz )
We hate to break it to you, but winter is coming. And with winter comes snow, which tends to spoil people’s travel plans. But a group of self-driving snowplows could clear the tarmac faster and more efficiently, helping make winter-weather delays a thing of the past.
Four autonomous Mercedes-Benz Arocs tractor’s recently hit the the tarmac at a former airbase in Germany, showcasing the tech and use-c ...read more
(Credit: Javier Lazaro)
Creating shrunken heads—small, severed human heads that are widely associated with Voodoo and tribal rituals—is a gruesome process, apparently much more than what’s shown in Beetlejuice. But leave it to the animal kingdom to prove there’s a natural, less sinister way to shrink a head.
Red-toothed shrews’ heads seasonally reverse sizes once they’re adults, something called the Dehnel phenomenon, which was first discovered in 1949. ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
