Planet Earth, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 30, 2004

Oct. 31: A Bad Day for Freezing Drizzle and Flying

Today is an anniversary of sorts for the Denver International Airport. It's not a celebration of the installation's long-delayed opening back in 1995, however, but a studied observance of a recurring bad weather system and the damage it has wrought over the last two years. Heavy freezing drizzle on Oct....

Dec 31, 2003

The New Nature: Cities as Designer Ecosystems

PHOENIX, AZ - Urban and suburban growth has exploded in the Valley of the Sun over the past five decades, creating a playground for the rich, an attractive oasis for families, and a brand new ecosystem for plants, animals and the humans who interact with it all. If ecosystem and...

Dec 31, 2003

Ancient Sunken Islands Found Off California

Sandy beaches are plentiful along the California coast, but not many are found below the ocean. Scientists just added three to the list. What were once volcanic islands off the coast of California now sit at the bottom of sea. With the help of a robotic submersible, a team of...

Dec 31, 2003

Billion Dollar Disasters: A Chronology of U.S. Events

How good is your weather memory? In what year did the so-called Storm of the Century sweep the country and pound the entire Eastern Seaboard? How many tornadoes struck the Midwest in a record-setting one-week period of May, 2003? And do you remember the thousands of deaths caused by heat...

Nov 30, 2005

Rare December Hurricane Caps Record Year

Hurricane season may be officially over, but nature is paying no attention. Overnight, a tropical storm named Epsilon turned into a hurricane out in the Atlantic. Update: Still a Hurricane 2 p.m. ET Monday, Epsilon is the 14th Atlantic-basin hurricane of the record-setting 2005 season, which started June 1 and...

Nov 30, 2005

World's Tallest Building Possibly Causing Earthquakes

TAIPEI, Taiwan - The weight of the world's tallest skyscraper -- specially built to withstand Taiwan's frequent earthquakes -- could be causing a rise in the number of tremors beneath it, a professor from the island wrote in a scientific journal. Lin Cheng-horng, an earthquake specialist at the National Taiwan...

Nov 30, 2005

When Humans and Chimps Split

A new study of genes in humans and chimpanzees pins down with greater accuracy when the two species split from one. The evolutionary divergence occurred between 5 million and 7 million years ago, an estimate that improves on the previous range of 3 million to 13 million years in the...

Nov 30, 2005

Study: Guppies Have Menopause, Too

For female guppies, there's more to life than making babies. A new study finds that guppies experience menopause just like humans and other animals. The study is the first demonstration of menopause in fish and raises the question of why some female animals live beyond their fertile years at all....

Oct 31, 2005

Town Vote Seen as Referendum on 'Intelligent Design'

DOVER, Pa. (AP) -- A battle over a policy requiring that ninth-graders in this rural community learn about intelligent design'' in biology class is being fought on two fronts -- one political, one legal. In a federal courtroom in Harrisburg, 20 miles away, a judge is hearing arguments in the...

Oct 31, 2005

Huge Iceberg Breaks Apart in Antarctica

Capping a 5-year-long saga of destruction, an iceberg about the size of the Hawaiian island of Maui has split into three pieces in the frigid Antarctic, scientists said Friday. The larger iceberg, named B-15A, calved into three smaller icebergs — B-15M, B-15N and B-15P. Two of the larger icebergs (B-15M...

Oct 31, 2005

New England Rivers Melting Sooner in Spring

Winter in New England just isn't what it used to be. And now scientists have a released new numbers that illustrate the change. The total number of days of ice on the region's rivers has declined significantly in recent decades and particularly in the spring. The study examined the number...

Oct 31, 2005

New Earthquake Warnings: Enough Time to Dive Under a Desk

The magnitude of an earthquake can be roughly predicted as the shaking begins, according to new research that promises to provide several seconds of warning before the brunt of a catastrophe strikes. Earthquake prediction has proved tricky. Scientists can't pinpoint the timing of a rupture to within days or even...

Oct 31, 2005

University to Teach 'Intelligent Design' as Myth

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) -- Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution. A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent...

Oct 31, 2005

Seas Rising at Twice the Rate of 150 Years Ago

Earth's oceans are rising twice as fast today compared to 150 years ago, according to a new study. The rise is nearly 2 millimeter per year. At that rate, sea level will be 1 inch higher in 13 years compared to today. The increased pace is evidence for human-induced climate...

Sep 30, 2005

New Hurricane Forecast Calls for Busy October

Updated 12:15 p.m. ET A longtime guru of hurricane forecasting said today that October is likely to be another busy month. William Gray, a Colorado State University scientist who has been predicting seasonal hurricane activity for many years with remarkable accuracy, issue a statement today. We project that October will...