OK4me2

ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2010) — Take a bunch of fast-moving electrons, place them in orbit and then hit them with the shock waves from a solar storm. What do you get? Killer electrons. That's the shocking recipe revealed by ESA's Cluster mission.

Earth's magnetosphere and radiation belts. (Credit: ESA)
Killer electrons are highly energetic particles trapped in [...]

The world's crude oil production, which comes from sources like this oil field, may peak a decade earlier than some scientists had predicted.

In a finding that may speed efforts to conserve oil and intensify the search for alternative fuel sources, scientists in Kuwait predict that world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014 — [...]

If 2012 marks the start of the apocalypse, it will be our own fault, not nature’s or God's

Matt Collins
I don’t know how many e-mails I have received from children who are terrified that 2012 will somehow involve the end of life as we know it, all because of an unfounded fringe religious prophecy that has [...]

Unmanned aircraft for polar science, such as the Meridian (shown during a test flight in Antarctica), are less expensive and safer to operate than ordinary airplanes.
Courtesy of University of Kansas Aerospace Engineering Flight Test Team

To study hard-to-reach places, scientists in Antarctica are relying on remote-controlled planes, including those from the hobby shop

A multinational, robotic [...]

A survey in the area is required (scale-bar is 10km) ©2010 Terrametrics Inc.

Deforestation has revealed what could be a giant impact crater in Central Africa, scientists say.

The 36-46km-wide feature, identified in DR Congo, may be one of the largest such structures discovered in the last decade.
Italian researchers considered other origins for the ring, but say [...]

A new research project investigates how Earth's atmosphere affects our planet's shape, its rotation and its gravitational field.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 10, 2010) — Researchers at the Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics at Vienna University of Technology (TU) are investigating the effects of the Earth's atmosphere on our planet's shape, its rotation and its gravitational field.

The Earth's [...]

Installation of a Creepmeter of the Plate-Boundary Observatory Chile, which meassures a hundredth milimeter of tektonic motions along a fault zone. (Credit: Copyright GFZ)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 9, 2010) — The extremely strong earthquake that struck Chile Feb. 27 was a complicated rupture process, as scientists of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences found out. Quakes [...]

The magnitude 8.8 quake that struck near Maule, Chile, Feb. 27 moved the entire city of Concepcion 10 feet to the west.

Precise GPS measurements from before and after the earthquake, the fifth largest ever recorded by seismographs, show that the country’s capital, Santiago, moved 11 inches west. Even Buenos Aires, nearly 800 miles from the [...]

Inge Ten Kate prepares to take a sample of gas from a volcanic vent on Mauna Kea. (Credit: Daniel Glavin)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2010) — Some scientists will go anywhere for a proper test, including the mouth of a (sleeping) Hawaiian volcano. Dr. Inge Ten Kate, a University of Maryland Baltimore County research assistant, led an [...]

An extra-tall wave struck a cruise ship off the Mediterranean coast of Spain this week, claiming two lives and injuring one person on board. Though the wave may not qualify as a “rogue wave,” it could have been created by the same forces.

To officially be rogue, the wave’s height must be more than double the [...]