Bees Take a Break During Total Solar Eclipse
On August 21st, 2017 a total solar eclipse traveled a north-west to south-east path across the United States. Some even called the event the “Great American Eclipse”. A number of researchers from various scientific disciplines used the occasion to conduct experiments. Researchers at the University of Missouri, led by Candace Galen, Ph.D., a professor of […]
Light Pollution Increasing; No Flowing H20 on Mars; Keeping Cows Happy
Light Pollution Continues to Ruin View of Night Sky More of us are becoming unable to witness the full breathtaking beauty and majesty of the sparkling Milky Way because of a growing problem called light pollution. According to oxforddictionaries.com, light pollution is defined as the brightening of the night sky caused by street lights and […]
New Report Predicts Possible Dip in Global CO2 Emissions
An international collaboration of scientists, in a new report, predicts the percentage of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels may actually dip slightly in 2015 compared to 2014 levels. “In 2014, global CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels grew by just 0.6 percent,” said the report’s lead author Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth […]
New Sunspot Index Breaks Link Between Solar Activity and Climate Change
A newly updated analysis of sunspot numbers over the last 400 years suggests solar activity has nothing to do with climate change, a discovery that eliminates a key argument used by those who question human caused climate change. Some of those who suggest that climate change is not anthropogenic in nature contend that changes in the […]
Astronomers Spot Square-shaped Hole in Sun
NASA astronomers recently noticed an odd looking, square shaped hole in the sun. What they saw is called a coronal hole, something that occurs on a regular basis. Dean Pesnell, project scientist for the Solar Dynamics Observatory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, says the coronal hole is an area within the corona […]
Scientists See Processes Behind Major Solar Events
Over the past several years, NASA spacecraft studying the sun have sent back some spectacular images of it exploding with solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Now, scientists say that two of these spacecraft — the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) — have detected a phenomenon […]
Third Radiation Belt Discovered Around Earth
NASA scientists have discovered a third radiation belt briefly surrounded Earth for about a month before being blasted away by an interplanetary shock wave from the sun. Experts had long thought there were only two distinct regions of trapped radiation. But the third ring was spotted by twin Van Allen radiation probes NASA launched in 2012 […]