Kyle Stout

Fossilized Lightning

Fossilized Lightning Lightning must hover near the top of any list of the most ephemeral phenomena. The discharge of static electricity during storms is so fast we use it in one of our most cliched idioms: lightning quick. On the other end of the spectrum are entities that persist for long durations, such as rocks or […]

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Etna Vortex Rings

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

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Dinanthropoides Nivalis

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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Eclipse Glasses

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,

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Kirkjufell

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

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Hubble Tension

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,

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Meteorological Seasons vs. Astronomical Seasons

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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