Etna Vortex Rings One of the planet’s most famous and active volcanos sits on the island of Sicily, where the African and Eurasian Plates converge. Mt. Etna currently rises 11,014 feet (3,357 meters) above the Ionian Sea. It gains this altitude in under 12 miles from the water! The word “currently” must reside in the […]
Dinanthropoides Nivalis It showed up dark against the snow, and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes. –N.A. Tombazi, Royal Geographical Society photographer Many ancient Tibetans worshipped a being known as mi rgod, a term that translates to “wild man.” The Lepecha people of the Himalayas called him chu mung, which means
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The Great North American Eclipse Preview Perhaps the most anticipated natural or scientific event to occur since the advent of this project will cast shadows on Earth on 8 April 2024. Dubbed the Great North American Eclipse by many, on the afternoon of the second Monday in April, the moon will move between the sun and the
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Eclipse Glasses In North America, we’re on the precipice of a total solar eclipse. On 8 April 2024, a swath of the continent, from Mexico, through the heart of the United States, and a small part of Canada, will experience one of the natural world’s great expositions. In some places, for up to four minutes,
Kirkjufell If mountains were celebrities followed by alpine paparazzi, a few crags would garner A-list status. These top-tier megastars usually feature both eye-popping height and flash-popping resplendence. The same mountains appear constantly: Everest, K2, Mt. Fuji, Denali, and Kilimanjaro, among others. Some pop up often mostly for their looks, though I’d argue many pack serious elevation, too. The Matterhorn is the definition
Hubble Tension Our current cosmological history begins with the Big Bang. The model suggests that if one could go back far enough in time, the discernible universe would be packed into a highly dense and hot quantum, which then exploded into the dynamo reality we experience today. First proposed by Catholic priest and physicist Georges Lemaître,
The Migration of the Sequoia When he returned to camp, and there related the wonders he had seen, his companions laughed at him and doubted his veracity, which previously they had considered to be very reliable. He affirmed his statement to be true, but they still thought it “too much of a story” to believe—thinking
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Meteorological Seasons vs. Astronomical Seasons In our investigation of the development of Leap Day, we learned the seasons would drift on our calendars if the intercalary date didn’t exist. One could argue that seasons – the result of axial tilt – are the most important planetary aspect of human existence. For millennia, in many places, people have planned
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Taters, the Space Laser Cat “Everyone loves Taters.” –Ryan Rogalin, Jet Propulsion Laboratory In our current understanding of the cosmos, nothing travels faster than light. All the incarnations of the electromagnetic spectrum move at 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum, which is approximately 186,000 miles per second or 671 million miles per hour. That’s some serious
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Mocha Dick Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick Instead of projecting his spout obliquely forward, and puffing with a short, convulsive effort, accompanied by a snorting noise, as usual with