Climate
31 amazing facial reconstructions, from Stone Age shamans to King Tut's father
People from the past have left behind a treasure trove of clues about their lives — from enormous monuments to fragments of personal items, as well as the bones of the people themselves. But the people who left these clues are often a mystery. Now, thanks to modern scientific techniques and technology, researchers can accurately reconstruct what those people actually looked like, helping to bring long-dead people from history back to life.
By BURN BRIGHT3 years ago in Earth
WHAT IF : THE EARTH STOPS ROTATING FOR FIVE SECONDS
What if the earth's rotation were to cease for five seconds? How much harm would this abrupt cessation do? What would you encounter in various locations around the world. Would the earth still be habitable when it starts spinning again? What if the world stopped spinning for five seconds? This is what would happen. In a single day, the earth completes one full rotation around its axis. Thus, we have day and night. When the world was forming 4.6 billion years ago, as a massive disc of gas and dust swirled around the sun, dust and rock grains clumped together and produced forces that kept the planet rotating in one direction. It is because of these collisions that the earth is spinning today.
By SREENIVEATHA 3 years ago in Earth
How much U.S. forest is old growth? It depends who you ask
Last spring, President Joe Biden surprised forest scientists when he ordered the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to inventory their holdings of mature and old-growth forests by Earth Day 2023. The order triggered a scramble for the United States to, for the first time, formally define what constitutes “mature” and “old-growth” forests and to apply those definitions across millions of hectares of land.
By BURN BRIGHT3 years ago in Earth
Cooperative sperm outrun loners in the mating race
Even sperm gotta stick together. Bull sperm swim more effectively when in clusters, a new study shows, potentially offering insight into fertility in humans. In simulated reproductive tracts of animals like cattle and humans, the behavior increases the chances that groups of cooperative bovine sperm will outpace meandering loners as they race to fertilize a female egg cell, physicist Chih-kuan Tung and colleagues report September 22 in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.
By BURN BRIGHT3 years ago in Earth
In the wake of history’s deadliest mass extinction, ocean life may have flourished
Following the most severe known mass extinction in Earth’s history, vibrant marine ecosystems may have recovered within just a million years, researchers report in the Feb. 10 Science. That’s millions of years faster than previously thought. The evidence, which lies in a diverse trove of pristine fossils discovered near the city of Guiyang in South China, may represent the early foundations of today’s ocean-dwelling ecosystems.
By BURN BRIGHT3 years ago in Earth
Greta Thunberg’s new book urges the world to take climate action now
The best shot we have at minimizing the future impacts of climate change is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Since the Industrial Revolution began, humankind has already raised the average global temperature by about 1.1 degrees. If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the current rate, the world will probably surpass the 1.5-degree threshold by the end of the decade.
By BURN BRIGHT3 years ago in Earth
50 years ago, researchers discovered a leak in Earth’s oceans
Oceans may be shrinking — Science News, March 10, 1973 The oceans of the world may be gradually shrinking, leaking slowly away into the Earth’s mantle…. Although the oceans are constantly being slowly augmented by water carried up from Earth’s interior by volcanic activity … some process such as sea-floor spreading seems to be letting the water seep away more rapidly than it is replaced.
By BURN BRIGHT3 years ago in Earth
‘Jet packs’ and ultrasounds could reveal secrets of pregnant whale sharks
How do you know if the world’s largest living fish is expecting babies? Not by her bulging belly, it turns out. Scientists thought that an enlarged area on the undersides of female whale sharks was a sign of pregnancy. But a technique used for the first time on free-swimming animals showed only skin and muscle. These humps might instead be a secondary sex characteristic on mature females, like breasts on humans, researchers report in the March 23 Endangered Species Research.
By BURN BRIGHT3 years ago in Earth
