All Stories by Sid Perkins
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- Earth
Ash Clouds: Severe storms can lift smoke into stratosphere
New field observations, satellite images, and computer models suggest that a severe thunderstorm, enhanced by heat from forest fires, can boost soot, smoke, and other particles as far as the lower stratosphere, an unexpected phenomenon.
- Earth
Ash Clouds: Severe storms can lift smoke into stratosphere
New field observations, satellite images, and computer models suggest that a severe thunderstorm, enhanced by heat from forest fires, can boost soot, smoke, and other particles as far as the lower stratosphere, an unexpected phenomenon.
- Paleontology
Proud paleontologists proclaim: It’s a boy!
Marine sediments deposited about 425 million years ago have yielded what scientists contend is the world’s oldest undoubtedly male fossil.
- Planetary Science
Martian sand ripples are taller than Earth’s
New data gathered by a Mars-orbiting probe suggest that large ripples found in sandy areas of the Red Planet are more than twice as tall as their terrestrial counterparts.
- Earth
Lake Retreat: African river valley once hosted big lake
The valley of the White Nile in Africa may long ago have held a shallow lake that sprawled 70 kilometers across and stretched more than 500 km along the river.
- Earth
Fill ‘er up . . . with a few tons of wheat
A new analysis suggests that the amount of ancient plant matter that was needed to make just 1 gallon of gasoline is the same amount that can be grown each year in a 40-acre wheat field—roots, stalks, and all.
- Earth
Pieces of a Pulverizer? Sediment fragments may be from killer space rock
Scientists sifting sediments laid down just after Earth's most devastating mass extinction 250 million years ago may have found minuscule fragments of the extraterrestrial object that caused the catastrophe.
- Paleontology
Northern Extinction: Alaskan horses shrank, then disappeared
Horses that lived in Alaska shrank dramatically in body size before they went extinct at the end of the last ice age.
- Earth
Attack of the Rock-Eating Microbes!
Geologists who examine mineral transformations increasingly see bacteria at work, leading the scientists to conclude that if microbes aren't driving the underlying chemical reactions, at least they're taking advantage of the energy that's released.
- Earth
Cast-Iron Foot: Undersea snail has mineral armor
An as-yet-unnamed species of snail living around hydrothermal vents deep beneath the Indian Ocean bears a suit of armor forged from the minerals dissolved in the hot fluids that spew from its seafloor environment.
- Earth
Blame the Sea? Ocean may be melting ice shelf from below
Significant portions of a large Antarctic ice shelf just south of one that suddenly broke apart in February 2002 are rapidly thinning and may suffer a similar, catastrophic demise in less than a century.
