All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Earth
Oil Booms: Whales don’t avoid noise of seismic exploration
Field tests in the Gulf of Mexico suggest that sperm whales there don't swim away from boats conducting seismic surveys of the seafloor, but the noise generated by such activity may be subtly affecting the whales' feeding behavior. With video.
- Paleontology
Remains may be an evolutionary relic
Fossils recently found in southwestern China may be of a lineage that originated long before the Cambrian explosion of biodiversity, when most major groups of animals first appeared in the fossil record.
- Earth
Three Gorges Dam is affecting ocean life
Oceanographic surveys suggest that China's Three Gorges Dam is already influencing biological productivity in the East China Sea, even though the structure is still under construction.
- Earth
Blast Survivors: Fragments of asteroid found in ancient crater
Pieces of an asteroid that blasted a 70-kilometer-wide crater in southern Africa millions of years ago may have been found intact inside the thick layer of once-molten rock that the impact left behind.
- Earth
Seismic Speed Traps: Iron-rich regions may slow deep-Earth vibes
Large quantities of iron-rich minerals may be responsible for the sluggishness of seismic waves traveling through certain regions deep within Earth.
- Paleontology
Dinosaur neck size reaches new extreme
Scientists have unearthed remains of a massive, plant-eating dinosaur whose neck may have been twice as long as its body.
- Earth
Greenland glacial quakes becoming more common
The number of earthquakes that occur beneath surging glaciers in Greenland has doubled in the past 4 years.
- Earth
Buried Treasures
Geologists have long understood the chemical processes that sculpt many cave formations, but they've only recently come up with a physical model that explains some of their shapes.
- Earth
Limited Storage: Lack of nutrients will constrain carbon uptake
Even though the carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere acts as a fertilizer for plants, the planet's vegetation won't be able to sequester large amounts of that greenhouse gas in the long term because it will quickly run out of other nutrients.
- Earth
Region at Risk
Scientists are still analyzing the magnitude 7.9 quake that struck San Francisco a century ago and, at the same time, are scrambling to estimate when the next large quake will strike the Bay Area.
- Earth
Coral Clues: Rise and fall of reefs record quakes’ effects
Shallow coral reefs around islands west of Sumatra chronicled the uplift and subsidence that resulted from the massive quakes that struck that region in 2004 and 2005.
- Tech
Device rids homes of sounds of rap
Woodpeckers cause millions of dollars of damage to homes and buildings each year, but a battery-operated, sound-activated, spider-shaped device installed beneath a home's eaves can help prevent this avian scourge.
