Category: Nature
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Lightning strikes twice. Life. Death. A storm still raging…
Scientists have used the LOFAR radio telescope to study the development of lightning flashes in unprecedented detail. Their work reveals that the negative charges inside a thundercloud are not discharged all in a single flash, but are in part stored alongside the leader channel at Interruptions, inside structures which the researchers have called needles. This…
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Proud. Digging the river. Dying.
It's a resource used in global construction and mined from rivers and coasts across the world. Now new research has shown sand mining is causing river beds to lower, leading to riverbank instability and increasing the likelihood of dangerous river bank collapse, damaging infrastructure and housing and putting lives at risk. (1) We used to…
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Big data… Plants… Planets… Universe…
A group of Florida Museum of Natural History scientists has issued a "call to action" to use big data to tackle longstanding questions about plant diversity and evolution and forecast how plant life will fare on an increasingly human-dominated planet. In a commentary published today in Nature Plants, the scientists urged their colleagues to take…
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Ice loss. From above…
Decades of satellite monitoring reveal Antarctic ice loss. (1) People sitting in the warmth of their home. Never to step on ice at all. Knowing all there is to know about ice… Detecting ice changes from above… Heidegger once said it pretty eloquently. The problem with technology is not that it doesn’t work. But that…
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Active mountains… Small flowers…
New research helps explain why the structure of some mountains continues to evolve long after the tectonic forces that formed them cease. (1) Mountains remaining active for millions of years. Seemingly eternal. But in fact, as fragile as the smallest flower. Look at it. It is more important. It is stronger. Because, unlike the mountain,…
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