science wire

Belgian-born Wim Malfait is a trained geologist who once searched for gold on behalf of a mining company. Today, he heads the Building Energy Materials and Components laboratory, which develops, among other things, super-lightweight aerogel insulation materials and materials with heat exchange capabilities.

The damage was visible all the way from space-254 miles above the Earth. That's where NASA astronaut Robert Hines, onboard the International Space Station, snapped then tweeted a photo of the shoreline erosion Hurricane Ian had inflicted on Florida's southwest coast.

Curtin researchers studying molecular fossils or 'biomarkers' from deep beneath the Chicxulub impact crater have found evidence of how microorganisms changed in response to fluctuations in the Earth's climate, offering clues about how the planet and life forms may respond to climate change in our modern world.

Dr. Chris Fletcher is part of a scientific consortium developing satellite technology to better understand climate change By Jon Parsons University Relations A major funding announcement by th

Tenaya Canyon (center) and part of Yosemite Valley (foreground) as seen from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park.

The UK will need to step up research and deployment of new offshore carbon storage wells if it is to achieve the capacity required to deliver its net zero emissions plans, a new report says.

Writing in The Conversation, Dr Alex Krause (UCL Earth Science) and Benjamin J. W. Mills at University of Leeds explain how using the James Webb Space Telescope to look for oxygen in the universe could help scientists discover evidence of extra-terrestrial life. Are we alone in the universe? This is a question that has intrigued humans for centuries and inspired countless studies and works of fiction.

Curtin University is home to a new state-of-the-art instrument which will provide researchers and industry with access to world-class microanalytical infrastructure to help discover the next generation of critical mineral resources and unravel the mysteries of the universe.

Center for Earth System Observation and Computational Analysis and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts team up The University of Bonn, the University of Cologne and Forschungszentrum J

A study reveals how the Sigillaria brardii species —a fossil plant typical of peatlands and abundant in the flora of Europe and North America during the Upper Carboniferous— colonised new areas in the riverbeds of the great European mountain range known as the Variscan mountains, far from their natural habitat.

Newly published research by scientists with the Solid Carbon project shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) taken from the atmosphere and injected into the deep subseafloor off Vancouver Island may turn into solid rock in about 25 years.

An online learning platform which aims to help researchers working in the earth and biological sciences develop new skills, share knowledge and build experience launches today (Tuesday 11 October 2022).

Climate modeling shows that this summer's devastating European heat wave may indeed be a harbinger of the future for that region.

Editor's note: A composite image of a Twin Otter International plane carrying the Modular Aerial Sensing System was added on Oct.

"The Hunt for Planet B" follows Seager and others on their search for extraterrestrial life; three other nominated films feature MIT affiliates.

The miles-wide asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago wiped out nearly all the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the planet's plant and animal species. It also triggered a monstrous tsunami with mile-high waves that scoured the ocean floor thousands of miles from the impact site on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, according to a new University of Michigan-led study.

Writing in The Conversation, Professor Andrew Coates (UCL Space & Climate Physics) explains why sending humans to land on Earth's 'evil twin' Venus might not be such a good idea.

2022 was a disastrous year for Swiss glaciers: all ice melt records were smashed by the great dearth of snow in winter and continuous heatwaves in summer.

Shuyi Chen , a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, was traveling to a conference in Boston as Hurricane Ian approached the Gulf of Mexico. During breaks at the conference, she provided her thoughts on the closely watched catastrophic storm system that made landfall in Florida on Sept. Q: What are your thoughts on Hurricane Ian? How does it compare to other storms? SSC: Each hurricane is unique in many ways.

A new European Space Agency (ESA) mission involving UCL researchers will 3D map Earth's "cooling blanket" of low-lying ocean clouds that may be at risk of disappearing due to climate change. The 10 Earth Explorer mission, known as Harmony, has been approved by the ESA Programme Board on Earth Observation, meaning it can move from the preparatory phase into the design consolidation and implementation phase, with a launch scheduled for 2029.

Two female University of Michigan scientists are among 54 earth and space researchers named AGU Fellows today by the American Geophysical Union.

New research , models the impacts on the Antarctic Ice Sheet of several different global warming scenarios and the resulting effects on global sea levels. The study was led by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and included a researcher from McGill University. The scenarios that were considered range from meeting the Paris Agreement target of 2°C warming and an aspirational 1.5°C scenario to our current course which, if not altered, will yield three or more degrees of warming.

To make sure our buildings and infrastructure are earthquake-safe, we must understand how seismic activity affects different structures.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow are part of a team who have received new funding from the European Research Council.

Lava fountaining above the volcanic fissure of the Holuhraun flood lava eruption in Iceland in September 2014, a small-scale analog to the eruptions in the Deccan Traps, 66 million years ago.

During the first year of the pandemic, and amid protests for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd, tech companies such as Google, Yelp and DoorDash started -Black-owned- labelling campaigns to encourage customer support for restaurants and other businesses. But new research, using cellphone location data, shows that visits to restaurants that identify as Black-owned, compared to those without a label, dropped off after some initial spikes and were inconsistent across 20 U.S cities.

Tropical Storm Imelda causes closure of Interstate 10 in Houston, Texas due to high water. Photo credit: iStock / Sean Hannon. A research team at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has found that flood damages triggered by atmospheric river storms may triple from $1 billion a year to over $3 billion a year by the end of the century unless action is taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Tim Barnett, Scripps Geophysicist Who Led First Wave of El Niño Forecasting and Foretold Demise of Western Reservoirs, Dies at 83 Tim Barnett, a research marine geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego who made climate models become reliable as predictive tools, died Aug.

Oxford researchers are playing a key role in the first systematic survey of ocean life in the Maldives, from the surface to 1000 metres deep.

Of over a thousand lakes studied worldwide, about one in ten shows strange behaviour. In general, there is an increasing tendency for aquatic ecosystems to tip over.

The violent winds and that "terrible howling sound” had subsided by dawn, a clear indication to Hans Graber that the small but powerful storm had passed.

Physics connects seismic data to properties of rocks and sediments A new analysis of seismic data from NASA's Mars InSight mission has revealed a couple of surprises.

While funding is pumped into preventing low-probability scenarios such as asteroid collision, the far more likely threat of a large volcanic eruption is close to ignored - despite much that could be done to reduce the risks, say researchers.

Watch: Researchers Brad Lipovsky and Marine Denolle explain how fiber-optic cables can be used to sense ground motion. Credit: Kiyomi Taguchi/UW The fiber-optic cables that travel underground, along the seafloor and into our homes have potential besides transmitting videos, emails and tweets. These signals can also record ground vibrations as small as a nanometer anywhere the cable touches the ground.

As glaciers worldwide retreat due to climate change, managers of national parks need to know what's on the horizon to prepare for the future.

The biologically productive North Sea impacts the global climate through exchange of carbon and nutrients with the Atlantic Ocean.

It's a summer morning at La Jolla Shores and Robert O'Brien, a junior at Princeton University who is spending his summer at UC San Diego, is surfing—for science.

In August 2022, two research aircraft equipped as airborne laboratories will fly over the Arctic Ocean on the lookout for polar cyclones.

The inspiration for one of marine ecologist Neil Hammerschlag's most intriguing studies on sharks came not during a research cruise to Tiger Beach in Grand Bahama nor in his laboratory at the Univers