Wi-Fi threatens weather forecasts
Science News, October 2015Wireless technology dangerously clutters the airwaves that meteorologists rely on to monitor thunderstorms, hurricanes and tornadoes, blacking out large swaths of weather radar maps.
Oxygen in Black Sea has declined by more than a third since 1955
Science News, October 2015The Black Sea’s toxic underside is approaching the surface, new research finds. Comparing measurements collected from 1955 through 2013, researchers discovered that the sea’s oxygen-rich top layer shrank by more than a third from 140 meters to 90 meters deep. That oxygenated layer supports a marine ecosystem and separates the atmosphere from the world’s largest reservoir of poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas.
Neutrinos’ identity shift snares physics Nobel
Science News, October 2015Capturing the identity-shifting behavior of neutrinos has won Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo and Arthur McDonald of Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics. The scientists spearheaded giant underground experiments that revealed that the elusive particles morph from one variety into another. Those crucial findings demonstrated that neutrinos have mass, which confirmed many physicists’ suspicions but defies the standard model, the framework that predicts the properties of nature’s particles and forces.
Co-written with Andrew Grant.
Hurricane reports ignore indirect deaths
Science News, September 2015Hurricanes and other tropical storms are deadlier than just surging water and howling wind. Close to half of all storm fatalities are caused indirectly, new research shows.
Shortcut math predicts tsunami height quickly
Science News, September 2015The deadly magnitude 8.3 earthquake off the coast of Chile on September 16 sent an enormous pulse of water racing away from the quake’s epicenter, prompting an evacuation of more than 1 million Chileans. This surging seawater provided an unanticipated test for a new, faster way to forecast quake-generated tsunamis.
Adapted for Science News for Students.
Earth got first whiff of oxygen 3.2 billion years ago
Science News, September 2015The first oxygen-producing life-forms appeared hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously known, new evidence suggests.
The sad magnetic state of the solar system’s rocky worlds
Science News, September 2015A powerful global magnetic field envelops Earth in a cozy blanket of protection against bursts of solar particles (see “The magnetic mystery at the center of the Earth“). But the solar system’s other rocky worlds aren’t so lucky.
Virtual twister reveals possible source of tornado longevity
Science News, September 2015A rotating updraft within this 20-kilometer-high thunderstorm sired a violent tornado. The twister, which looks quite small compared with the rest of the towering storm, packed winds at over 320 kilometers per hour and left behind a long trail of devastation. Or it would have, had the storm been real.
Volcanic activity convicted in Permian extinction
Science News, August 2015The biggest catastrophe in the history of life on Earth resulted from one of the most titanic volcanic outpourings on record, new research concludes.
Hurricane’s tiny earthquakes could help forecasters
Science News, August 2015As Sandy raged, the ground trembled. Rumbles picked up by seismometers during Hurricane Sandy’s trip up the U.S. East Coast in 2012 originated from the storm’s eye, seismologists report in a paper to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. Listening for these rumbles could help meteorologists remotely monitor air pressure changes inside hurricanes and better predict sudden increases in storm intensity, the researchers propose.