You are browsing the archive for SciCom Archives - Page 2 of 3 - GeoSpace.
12 December 2013
What to expect when the sun’s ejecting: forecasting space weather from coronal mass ejections
When whorls of plasma clouds erupt away from the sun in events known as coronal mass ejections, the portions that reach Earth can create terrestrial spectacles. These sun storms fuel stunning auroras in the night sky, but they can also foul up communication networks and Global Positioning Systems. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a method to better forecast these storms before they hit Earth.
NASA’s new LVIS sensor to map polar regions with ‘return to sender’ technology
NASA’s Land Vegetation and Ice Sensor has yet to leave the atmosphere, but that’s the long-term plan for this high-flying mapping technology. In the nearer future, LVIS will produce high-resolution, three-dimensional maps of Earth’s unexplored polar regions, allowing scientists to follow changes in ice cover more accurately than ever before. Since 1998, LVIS has mapped rainforest canopies in Costa Rica, surveyed Gulf Coast ocean topography, and even tracked ivory-billed woodpeckers …
Smartphone app could decipher mysterious gamma-ray bursts from thunderstorms
Amid flashing lightning and booming thunder, storms emit a very powerful but little understood form of energy — gamma radiation. These terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) produce short-lived but immensely powerful bursts of energy that could zap airplane passengers with unhealthy doses of radiation. Now, researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz think they might be able to use a smartphone app to learn more about these mysterious bursts.
11 December 2013
Seismologists showcase model for profiling underground nuclear blasts
Since the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) opened for signatures in 1996, there has been a growing interest in monitoring for underground nuclear test explosions. When a nuclear bomb goes off underground, it produces enough force for seismographs to detect it.
‘Butterflies of the sea’ record ocean conditions in their shells
The shell of a tiny marine mollusk carries evidence of the ocean conditions that formed it, researchers have found. These “butterflies of the sea” could be used to determine the temperature and carbon dioxide levels of ancient oceans, they said this week at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting
Buoyant rover records Arctic ice from beneath
Researchers have developed a rover that floats beneath the surface of the ice and photographs it from underneath. The upside down images could help scientists understand the source of methane bubbles trapped in Arctic ice, and how much of this powerful global warming gas is seeping from the permafrost.
Magnetic patterns give away the oldest ocean fragment’s age, origins
Continents have re-shaped and seas have parted, but one fragment of the ocean floor has remained locked in place for more than 200 million years. The Ionian basin – a patch of seafloor under the Mediterranean – is the oldest-known section of the seabed to have remained static, held by irregular-shaped continental joints that prevent its motion. The Ionian Sea carries its years well – scientists have debated its true …
10 December 2013
Trawling is a drag for continental shelf’s sediments
While GPS is normally deployed to home in on lost cell phones or navigate tricky driving routes, satellite tracking may help ocean researchers better understand how fishermen’s trawls scrape away the sediment compositions of the continental shelf.
Airborne viruses implicated in algal die-offs
Researchers think they might know one of the reasons why microscopic ocean-dwelling creatures get sick and die: they sneeze, spraying droplets containing a virus into the air. Algal blooms cover massive swathes of the ocean, converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, and playing an important role in nutrient regulation. Scientists know that a virus is often responsible for the die-off of a common algal species, a single-celled coccolithophore known as Emiliania …
Hey, it’s weird up here – there must be an earthquake in the atmosphere
Months before the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, warning signs could be detected hundreds of miles above the Earth’s surface, according to new data presented Monday at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting. There were strange disturbances in a layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere up to one month before the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, according to Pierre-Richard Cornely, an atmospheric …
GeoSpace is a blog on Earth and space science, managed by AGU’s Public Information staff. The blog features posts by AGU writers and guest contributors on all sorts of relevant science topics, but with a focus on new research and geo and space sciences-related stories that are currently in the news.