Planet Earth, features and articles | Educational Science

Aug 31, 2010

Network of Mics Helps Track Sea Creatures on the Move

Microphones deployed along hundreds of miles of coastline are now tracking thousands of marine animals during their journeys through rivers and in the ocean. For the past eight years, scientists have been tagging nearly 16,000 animals with acoustic transmitters that each broadcast a unique identifier. At the same time, researchers...

Aug 31, 2010

Expedition to the Fossilized Ancestor of the Great Barrier Reef

Shipiodpmaya (Image credit: ECORD/IODP.)It looks like smooth sailing for the Greatship Maya, a research vessel that headed to the waters off the edge of the Great Barrier Reef earlier this year. The large tower in the middle of the ship is the mighty drill the researchers used to retrieve ancient,...

Aug 31, 2010

Yellowstone Detectives Find Underground Column of Molten Rock

A plume of molten rock rising from deep beneath Yellowstone National Park is probably what is fueling the region's volcanic activity, as well as tectonic plate oddities across the Pacific Northwest, new research suggests. Building on a growing body of evidence, Mathias Obrebski of the University of California, Berkeley, and...

Aug 31, 2010

Secret to Continents' Survival May Be Dry Rocks

The key to enduring billions of years of hellish punishment from the crushing, searing conditions found miles underground, if you're a rock, is to get drained of any water that might weaken you, scientists now suggest. The new finding would help explain how the continents keep from being swallowed back...

Aug 31, 2010

What's Synthetic Biology?

Synthetic biology aims to use science and engineering to make or redesign living organisms. Researchers create new genetic codes that do not already exist in nature, even if they base their work on existing genetic sequences. Synthetic biology builds on earlier genetic engineering methods, and has many of the same...

Aug 31, 2010

Igor Strengthens to Major Hurricane as Julia Becomes Newest Tropical Storm

Update, 10:50 a.m. ET Monday, Sept. 13: Hurricane Igor strengthened to a Category 4 hurricane over the weekend and its highest wind speed is just 5 mph (8 kph) shy of reaching Category 5 status, the highest status on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane strength. Igor was joined by Tropical...

Aug 31, 2010

Huge Windstorm Spawns New Classification: 'Super Derecho'

A windstorm that swept across Kansas, Missouri and Illinois in May 2009 was so fierce that it has earned a brand-new name: super derecho. A derecho (from the Spanish adverb for straight) is a long-lived windstorm that forms in a straight line — unlike the swirling winds of a tornado...

Aug 31, 2010

Ocean Cruises Sample Marine Life Near San Francisco

A research cruise left San Francisco Bay this week to collect data on its ocean creatures in an effort to piece together a better picture of how conservation efforts there are working. These cruises help us gather information, which will help better the marine sanctuaries in the area, and better...

Aug 31, 2010

Skyscraper Storms: 7 Big City Tornadoes

Intro Storm damage from the night of Sept. 16, 2010 in Forest Hills, Queens. A woman was killed nearby when a tree fell on her car. (Image credit: Ker Than, TechMediaNetwork)New York City isn't immune to terrible twisters. A wicked storm tore through town yesterday (Sept. 16) and a National...

Aug 31, 2010

Earth's Measurers Say U.S. Needs More Tools for Task

Call it Mother Earth if you like, but Little Brother might be a more appropriate nickname for our messy, squirmy and unpredictable planet. The shape and orientation of Earth are constantly changing. Sometimes the transformation is dramatic, wrought by violent earthquakes and volcanoes. Sometimes, as with the minute gravitational fidgeting...

Aug 31, 2010

Arabia's Largest Volcano Field

Es Safa is a striking basaltic volcanic field located to the southeast of Damascus, Syria, seen in an image released today. It lies within the larger Harrat Ash Shamah the largest volcanic field on the Arabian tectonic plate . Harrat Ash Shamah parallels the Red Sea and extends from northeastern...

Aug 31, 2010

Three Species of "Extinct" Frogs Rediscovered

A global quest to find several lost species of amphibians has rediscovered three species that have not been seen for decades, conservation groups announced today. The so-called Search for the Lost Frogs , is attempting to find 100 species of amphibians that had been thought extinct, but that scientists believe...

Aug 31, 2010

Earth's Core Covered By Liquid Rock, Experiment Suggests

Oceans of magma may exist deep in the planet's interior, near where the Earth's mantle and core meet, researchers say. Such magma oceans could be relics from the earliest days of the planet, when it might have been almost completely molten. To reach their findings, scientists re-created the kind of...

Aug 31, 2010

New Sea Slug Species Discovered in California

A new species of sea slug, discovered in the tide pools of Carpinteria Reef in California, has just been named for its discoverer. Jeff Goddard, project scientist with the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara was working in the tide pools in 2008 when he discovered...

Aug 31, 2010

The Louder the Reef, the Better Its Health

A noisier coral reef is going to be a healthier reef, a new study finds. Researchers from Exeter University and the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, both in England, found a clear association between overall noise level generated by a reef's denizens and the amount of living coral...