Sid Perkins

Sid Perkins is a freelance science writer based in Crossville, Tenn.

All Stories by Sid Perkins

  1. Earth

    Icebergs can be biological hot spots

    Icebergs carry nutrients from the land and shed them into the sea, nourishing life in the frigid waters near Antarctica.

  2. Chemistry

    A sweet way to replace petroleum?

    Thanks to a new chemical process, many products now manufactured from petroleum could one day be made from sugar molecules.

  3. Earth

    A Gemstone’s Wild Ride

    Diamonds may be carried to the surface in explosions of gas and rock fizzing up from deep within Earth's mantle.

  4. Paleontology

    Winged dragon

    A quarry on the Virginia–North Carolina border has yielded fossils of an unusual gliding reptile that lived in the region about 220 million years ago.

  5. Earth

    Tree rings tell tale of megadroughts

    Tree rings in ancient timber show that the Colorado Plateau experienced a 60-year drought in the 12th century.

  6. Earth

    Storm Center

    Scientists aboard planes that flew into the cores of Katrina and other hurricanes in 2005 collected unprecedented data on the structure and development of the massive storms.

  7. Paleontology

    Big and Birdlike: Chinese dinosaur was 3.5 meters tall

    Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of a gigantic birdlike dinosaur, 3.5 meters tall, that lived 70 million years ago in what is now China.

  8. Earth

    Trouble for forests of the northern U.S. Rockies?

    Climate change over the coming decades may cause forests in northern portions of the U.S. Rockies to stop absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and instead become net emitters of the gas.

  9. How sea turtle hatchlings know where to crawl

    Newly hatched sea turtles use a variety of senses, not just sight, to find their way to the ocean.

  10. Earth

    Darker days during Arctic summer

    Satellite observations indicate that Arctic regions reflected less sunlight into space in the summer of 2006 than in other recent years, a change that may exacerbate the warming of Earth's climate.

  11. Earth

    Dust Bowl affected midwestern climate

    During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, immense clouds of airborne soil blocked so much sunlight that much of the Great Plains region was significantly cooler than normal during summer months.

  12. Earth

    Storm Norms: Caribbean corals and sediments yield clues to hurricane frequency

    The recent increase in hurricane activity in the North Atlantic, a phenomenon that some scientists blame on climate change, actually reflects a return to normal after a lull in the 1970s and 1980s.