Planet Earth, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 31, 2009

Sea Star Swells With Tides

A species of sea star has figured out a novel way of keeping cool on rocky shorelines. The animal literally soaks up chilly water during high tides to protect itself from the blazing temperatures that persist when the tide goes out, scientists announce today. Sea stars live at the ocean...

Oct 31, 2009

Islands Make Waves ... In the Sky

Islands don't move much, but they can still make waves. In fact they sometimes make dramatic waves … in the clouds. In a new satellite image, the South Sandwich island chain triggers a series of airborne waves. The V-shaped waves fan out to the east, visible as white clouds over...

Sep 30, 2009

Lamp Runs on Human Blood

What if, every time you wanted to switch on a light, you had to bleed? Would you think twice before illuminating the room, and in turn, using up energy? That's the idea behind the blood lamp, invented by Mike Thomspon, an English designer based in The Netherlands. The lamp contains...

Sep 30, 2009

Knuckle-Cracking Gets (Ig) Nobel Prize

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- Next week's Nobel Prizes will be the most prestigious awards given to scientists this year. Last night's Ig Nobel Prizes, on the other hand, were indisputably the funniest. They spotlighted scientists whose work walks the fine line between silly and significant -- a distinction that isn't always...

Sep 30, 2009

More Than a Storm Chaser

This summer, the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment 2 (VORTEX2) brought 80 scientists and crew members and dozens of research vehicles and platforms to the tornado-prone regions of the United States to conduct the most detailed studies to date of tornadoes. Sarah Dillingham was part of...

Sep 30, 2009

Surprising Ship 'Contrails' Seen From Space

Although ships sail on the ocean, they can leave tracks in the sky. On Oct. 5, a NASA satellite snapped a shot of this phenomenon forming in a bank of clouds off North America’s west coast. The white trails look vaguely like the condensation trails, or contrails, left behind by...

Sep 30, 2009

Brilliant! Roof Tiles Change Color to Save Energy

On a blazing summer day, a black roof gets miserably hot, while a white roof reflects the sun and keeps a home cooler. In winter, the warmth generated by a solar-radiation-absorbing black roof can save energy. That's well-known and simple enough. Unfortunately, you can't have it both ways. Well ......

Sep 30, 2009

Volcanic Eruptions Caused Ancient Warming And Cooling

Volcanic eruptions were responsible for a deadly ice age 450 million years ago, as well as — in an ironic twist — a period of global warming that preceded it, a new study finds. The finding underscores the importance of carbon in Earth's climate today, said study researcher Matthew Saltzman...

Aug 31, 2009

New Understanding of the Heart's Evolution

Humans, like other warm-blooded animals, expend a lot of energy and need a lot of oxygen. Our four-chambered hearts make this possible. It gives us an evolutionary advantage: We're able to roam, hunt and hide even in the cold of night, or the chill of winter. Now scientists have a...

Aug 31, 2009

Powerful Ideas: To Hot Rocks in Earth, Just Add Water

Researchers will inject cool water and pressurized water into a “dry” geothermal well during a five-year, $10.2 million study aimed at boosting the productivity of geothermal power plants and making them feasible nationwide. “Using these techniques to increase pathways in the rock for hot water and steam would increase availability...

Aug 31, 2009

Arctic Ice at 3rd Lowest in Recent Decades

The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the third-lowest recorded since satellites began measuring sea ice extent in 1979, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center. Scientists have been watching the ice return with less...

Aug 31, 2009

Why Autumn Begins Tuesday

The first day of autumn — Sept. 22 this year — is no guarantee of fall-like weather, but officially the season's start comes around at the same time each year nonetheless. Well, sort of. The first day of autumn arrives on varying dates in different years for two reasons: Our...

Aug 31, 2009

Flowers Help Pollinators Get a Grip

The petals of most flowers are covered with cells in the unusual shape of cones, the pointy ends jutting up. But why? Researchers in England have shown that those cells let insects get a grip on unsteady flowers while gathering nectar and pollen. Heather M. Whitney, at the time a...

Aug 31, 2009

Dead Salmon 'Responds' to Pictures of People

A dead salmon has become a scientific celebrity after its brain supposedly lit up when shown pictures of humans during a brain scan. Some bloggers last week reported that the fish was still thinking or that the research is evidence of an ethereal soul. However, the study was done to...

Aug 31, 2009

Tsunami Warning System Didn't Help Samoans

WASHINGTON -- At 6:48 a.m. local time, an earthquake shook the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Seismometers detected a magnitude 7.9 quake and alerted the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. By 7:03, the center had sent out a warning bulletin. An earthquake of this size has the potential to...