All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Planetary Science
Pluto’s cloud components verified
Newly analyzed observations suggest that particles are tiny spherules of frozen nitrogen and carbon monoxide.
- Earth
Ocean’s carbon dioxide uptake varies year to year
Data taken hourly by cargo ships show that how much of the greenhouse gas North Atlantic waters absorb varies more than thought.
- Paleontology
Major eruption cooled the climate but went unnoticed
Ice-core records suggest that a major 1809 eruption cooled Earth even before the Tambora eruption and ‘the year without a summer’.
- Earth
GPS bolsters view that big Cascadia quakes could hit inland
Satellite tracking of plate movements shows that a magnitude-9 tremor in Pacific Northwest could strike close to urban areas.
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- Life
Climate not really what doomed large North American mammals
Prevalence of a dung fungus over time suggests megafauna extinctions at end of last ice age started before vegetation changed.
- Paleontology
Small ancestor of giant sauropods unearthed
Fossils suggest that the bipedal dinosaur occasionally walked on all fours and could open its mouth wide to gather foliage.
- Earth
Asteroid impact could have stirred the ocean
Model offers one explanation for sudden change in deep-ocean chemistry almost 2 billion years ago.
- Paleontology
Pollination in the pre-flower-power era
Scorpionflies with long-reaching mouthparts may have helped plants procreate long before blossoms evolved.
- Earth
Small earthquakes may not predict larger ones
Quakes far from tectonic plate boundaries may simply be aftershocks of ancient temblors.
- Climate
Mount Kilimanjaro could soon be bald
The world-renowned ice caps could disappear by 2022, new research suggests.
- Chemistry
Aerosols cloud the climate picture
A NASA model incorporates how atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases interact, yielding better estimates of the gases' warming and cooling effects.
