Scientists are excited over an inadvertent discovery using instruments aboard the new Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, or Suomi NPP, a joint venture between NASA and NOAA. The satellite is actually sensitive enough to detect clouds and other objects in the nighttime sky from space, what to the human eye would simply be complete darkness. Such a discovery
The Tibetan Plateau is the planet’s highest and largest plateau and has been the focus of scientific study for decades. In a new study, published online in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers have discovered that the growth of high topography such as the Tibetan mountains and plateau began much earlier than was previously understood. “Most researchers
Scientists have long believed that planet Earth is the only planet in our solar system where plate tectonics existed, but new research out of the University of California Los Angeles has reversed this position, showing that Mars in fact also hosts this geological phenomenon. “Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics. It gives us
Scientists from the University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences have announced a major breakthrough in a decades old debate, the understanding of our planet’s climate machine, by reconstructing a highly accurate record of changes in ice volume and deep-ocean temperatures over the last 1.5 million years. The results of this study offer insights into a
Scientists have discovered the cause for rapid sea level rise in two specific historic events using climate and ice sheet models. The process, known as saddle-collapse, was at the heart of two specific sea level rise events: the Meltwater pulse 1a (MWP1a) around 14,600 years ago and the ‘8,200 year’ event. The research, published in the
An engraving of a reindeer discovered in 2010 in South Wales has finally been confirmed to be the oldest example of rock art in Britain, dating back at least 14,505 years. Discovered by Dr George Nash from the University of Bristol’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology while he was exploring the rear section of Cathole Cave,
A massive 100 kilometre-wide crater has been discovered in Greenland and redefined the record books by being the remains of an impact that is a full billion years earlier than any other known collision on Earth. It’s a fascinating story and one that will continue to evolve and should help shed light on a
You would expect that the Discovery Channel would get the story straight on global warming and climate change, wouldn’t you? Well, it did, overseas, but when bringing its Frozen Planet episode “On Thin Ice” to the US, it decides to edit out mention of human-caused global warming. “The show’s producer told the New York Timesshe didn’t want people saying
The continuing exploration of the Southern Ocean for deep-sea vents has once again rewarded results, as scientists about the Royal Research Ship James Cook of the National Oceanography Centre have discovered a new set of deep-sea volcanic vents in the frigid southern waters. This is the fourth discovery made by the team in three years,
A collaborative genetic analysis between civilian entomologists and military scientists has at last revealed the true cause of Colony Collapse Disease which has been decimating honeybee hives in the US, Europe and Asia since 2006.
Animal Planet’s Blood Dolphins continues the story of The Cove beginning August 27.
A team of geoscientists working on a separate geological project in South Australia accidentally stumbled upon the oldest evidence of animal life yet found. Previously, the oldest fossil evidence of non-unicellular, “hard bodied” life forms dates to about 550 million years ago. This new discovery pushes back the clock on animal life by 80 to 90 million years.
Schooling fish and their interaction with one another has inspired a Caltech professor to rethink how wind energy can be created. [social_buttons]Head of Caltech’s Biological Propulsion Laboratory John Dabiri and two of his graduate students have turned to schools of fish to further our knowledge of how wind turbines work best and how to combat
New sediment cores taken from the seabed in Antarctica may give us clues as to our planet’s future climate. [social_buttons]Scientists participating in the Wilkes Land Glacial History expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program have recently returned home with 2,000 metres of sediment cores from Wilkes Land, directly south of Australia, in an effort to
Ocean currents are one of the driving forces behind our planet’s climate, and according to Japanese and Australian scientists a new current has been discovered in the Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean. [social_buttons] In a paper published in Nature Geoscience the researchers describe an ocean current, approximately 4,200 kilometres south-west of Perth, Australia,
One of the biggest problems facing meteorologists and climate scientists is the fact that we simply don’t have long term climate data. Sure, we’ve seen our planet get hotter and nastier in the last few decades, but, did it happen the same time a hundred years ago? What we’ve needed are data from the past,
