Super sized electromagnetic coils are helping explain how aquatic life might be affected by renewable energy devices being considered for placement along America’s coastal waters and in the nation’s rivers. An electromagnetic field is a physical field produced by electrically charged objects. It affects the behavior of charged objects in the vicinity of the field.…

There are mountains on land and there are mountains under the sea. The vast ocean seems flat but under that water are mountains, valleys and plains. These mountain chains rival the Alps, the Andes and the Himalayas in size and little is known about seamounts, the vast mountains hidden under the world’s oceans. Now in…

Weather is always an easy topic of conversation. The first eight months of 2010 tied the same period in 1998 for the warmest combined land and ocean surface temperature on record worldwide. Meanwhile, the June–August summer was the second warmest on record globally after 1998, and last month was the third warmest August on record.…

Data from the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s Terra spacecraft have been used in a groundbreaking new university study that examines the concentration, distribution and composition of aerosol pollution over the Indian subcontinent. The study documents the region’s very high levels of natural and human-produced pollutants, and uncovered surprising seasonal shifts in the…

Reducing the delivery of nutrients to the Chesapeake Bay is one of the most important components of restoration efforts to achieve a healthy Bay ecosystem. The United States Geologic Service (USGS) has developed a new method for tracking the progress toward reducing nitrogen and phosphorus delivery from the watershed to the Bay. When evaluating the…

Looking down upon the Earth gives one the big picture. Up high in the sky are many man made satellites that are designed to look down and send information to various places. NASA is currently designing a pair of robotic probes to keep tabs on how the planet is changing and to help forecasters predict…

The sky is not quite unchanging, just slow and far away. Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, catches a lot of the meteors, comets and other sky debris and in that way protects the inner planets such as Earth. Amateur astronomers working with professional astronomers have spotted two fireballs lighting up Jupiter’s atmosphere…

A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma (a thin, fuzzy, temporary atmosphere) and sometimes also a tail. Occasionally, they will collide with planets such as the Earth. New research from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists shows that comets that crashed into Earth…

Yellowstone Park is a somewhat dormant super volcano site full of fuming vents and hot geysers. A plume of molten rock rising from deep beneath Yellowstone National Park is probably what is fueling the region’s volcanic activity, as well as tectonic plate oddities across the Pacific Northwest, new research suggests.

There has been much already said about how being physically fit promotes better health and long life. Apparently such positive benefits can be seen in much smaller every day activities. People who are better at simple physical acts such as gripping, walking, rising from a chair and balancing on one leg are more likely to…