All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Earth
The Fires Below
Underground coal fires help shape the landscape on many scales and in many ways, some transient and some long-lasting.
- Earth
Sensing a vibe
A sprawling network of seismometers that covers the Los Angeles area could be adapted to provide warning of damaging ground motions from earthquakes in the seconds before those seismic vibes arrive.
- Chemistry
HArF! Argon’s not so noble after all
Researchers have for the first time coerced argon into forming a stable and neutral compound with other elements.
- Earth
Harbor waves yield secrets to analysis
New findings by ocean scientists may help port officials in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, predict potentially destructive waves in the city's harbor.
- Earth
Seismic waves resolve continental debate
New analyses of seismic waves that have traveled deep within Earth may answer a decades-old question about the thickness of the planet's continents.
- Earth
Feel the Heat: Rain forests may slow their growth in warmer world
During a long-term research project in a Central American rain forest, mature trees grew more slowly in warm years than they did in cooler ones.
- Earth
Eye of the Tiger
Recent research has upended a 130-year-old, previously unchallenged theory about how the semiprecious stone called tiger's-eye is formed.
- Paleontology
Feathered fossil still stirs debate
More than 2 years after scientists first described 120-million-year-old fossils of a feathered animal, a new analysis seems to bolster the view that the turkey-size species was a bird has-been and not a bird wanna-be.
- Paleontology
Fertile Ground: Snippets of DNA persist in soil for millennia
Minuscule samples of sediment from New Zealand and Siberia have yielded bits of DNA from dozens of animals and plants, including the oldest DNA sequences yet found that can be traced to a specific organism.
- Earth
Solving one mystery of polar wander
Long-term fluctuations in pressure at the ocean's bottom may be the driving force for the Chandler wobble, which causes the North Pole to wander about 20 feet every 14 months or so.
- Earth
Early web-footed bird made impression
Researchers have discovered the fossil tracks of an otherwise unknown bird in 110-million-year-old sediments, which pushes back evidence of web-footed birds by at least 25 million years.
- Earth
Where’s Waldo . . . and 6 billion others?
Scientists have combined satellite imagery and detailed census data to develop a worldwide database that can provide estimates of the number of people located in areas on a grid that has boxes with areas of 1 square kilometer or less.
