news 2012

Geologist Iain Stewart will demonstrate how plants are the "silent power" that has shaped the Earth, in a new three-part series for BBC2 starting this week. How to Grow a Planet will offer a totally new perspective on the world's history, and will document the crucial role that plants have played in its evolution.

Researchers have explained the puzzling disappearing act of energetic electrons in Earth's outer radiation belt, using data collected from a fleet of orbiting spacecraft. The team shows that the missing electrons are swept away from the planet by a tide of solar wind particles during periods of heightened solar activity.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-Why is the universe magnetized? It's a question scientists have been asking for decades. Now, an international team of researchers including a University of Michigan professor have demonstrated that it could have happened spontaneously, as the prevailing theory suggests. The findings are published in the Jan.

As the reality and the impact of climate warming have become clearer in the last decade, researchers have looked for possible engineering solutions – such as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or directing the sun's heat away from Earth – to help offset rising temperatures. New University of Washington research demonstrates that one suggested method, injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere, would likely achieve only part of the desired effect, and could carry serious, if unintended, consequences.

— Coral Gables — By combining detailed chemical measurements in the ocean, oil slick, and air, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the University of Miami, and elsewhere have independently estimated how fast gases and oil were leaking during the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill in 2010.

by Catherine Zandonella A rare and exotic mineral, so unusual that it was thought impossible to exist, came to Earth on a meteorite, according to an international team of researchers led by Princeton University scientists. The discovery provides evidence for the extraterrestrial origins of the world's only known sample of a naturally occurring quasicrystal.

New research from the University of Warwick suggests the way foreign aid is distributed following a natural disaster in developing countries does little to help small firms recover. Economists are calling for a reassessment of the way aid is distributed in low-income countries hit by disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis.

Researchers from The Australian National University have used the latest earthquake-measuring technology to image the tectonic plate beneath southeast Australia and reveal for the first time the continent's geological building blocks. Scientists from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences and international colleagues conducted the research through seismometers placed throughout eastern Australia.

Dozens of giant tortoises of a species believed extinct for 150 years may still be living at a remote location in the Galápagos Islands, a genetic analysis conducted by Yale University researchers reveals. The analysis, published Jan. 9 in the journal Current Biology, suggests that direct descendants of at least 38 purebred individuals of Chelonoidis elephantopus live on the volcanic slopes of the northern shore of Isabela Island - 200 miles from their ancestral home of Floreana Island, where they disappeared after being hunted by whalers.

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is an intriguing, alien world that's covered in a thick atmosphere with abundant methane. With an average surface temperature of a brisk -300 degrees Fahrenheit (about 90 kelvins) and a diameter just less than half of Earth's, Titan boasts methane clouds and fog, as well as rainstorms and plentiful lakes of liquid methane.