Search Results for: ocean

Quake researchers ’look’ deep inside fault with cold war-era gravity sensor

Using classified technology developed by the military during the Cold War, a team of geoscientists led by Rice University’s Manik Talwani is conducting a first-of-its-kind experiment on California’s famed San Andreas fault this week. The researchers will gather data that could give scientists a much clearer picture of the fault’s “gouge zone,” a region 2-3 kilometers beneath the eart

Hurricanes are one of those forces of nature that can only fully be captured by satellite imagery. For Hurricane Frances, currently thundering towards the United States coast, ESA’s Envisat is going one better, peering through the hurricane from top to bottom, even helping to ’see’ under the waves to map hidden forces powering the storm.

As its 235-km-per-hour winds passed the Bahamas, Frances was heading for landfall on the Florida coast some time on Saturday, and three quarters

One of the Sun’s greatest mysteries is about to be unravelled by UK solar astrophysicists hosting a major international workshop at the University of St Andrews from September 6-9th 2004. For years scientists have been baffled by the ’coronal heating problem’: why it is that the light surface of the Sun (and all other solar-like stars) has a temperature of about 6000 degrees Celsius, yet the corona (the crown of light we see around the moon at a total eclipse) is at a temperature of

Were E.T. really interested in getting in touch with home, he might be better off writing than phoning, according to Christopher Rose, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Rose contends that inscribing information and physically sending it to some location in deep space is more energy-efficient than pulsing it out on radio waves, which disperse as they travel.

“Think of a flashlight beam,” Rose says. “Its intensity d

The smudges of dark blue on this Envisat-derived ozone forecast trace the start of what has unfortunately become an annual event: the opening of the ozone hole above the South Pole.

“Ever since this phenomenon was first discovered in the mid-1980s, satellites have served as an important means of monitoring it,” explained José Achache, ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes. “ESA satellites have been routinely observing stratospheric ozone concentrations for the last decade. “

Dark-colored river runoff includes nitrogen and phosphorus, which are used as fertilizers in agriculture. These nutrients cause blooms of marine algae called phytoplankton. During extremely large phytoplankton blooms where the algae is so concentrated the water may appear black, some phytoplankton die, sink to the ocean bottom and are eaten by bacteria. The bacteria consume the algae and deplete oxygen from the water that leads to fish kills.

For the first time, scientists may now de