Aug 15 Black Planets, Moon Blasts and Octopus Camouflage By Jenny Marder Darkest Planet Found: Coal-Black, It Reflects Almost No Light A Jupiter-size gas giant planet so black that it is less reflective than "the blackest acrylic paint" has been discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope. This National Geographic News… Continue reading
Aug 15 Computer Simulation Brings Maps to Life on Campus For the National Science Foundation's Science Nation,* science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on a computing concept called Geo-immersion, which relies on virtual computer simulation to reflect the world around us in real-time. Cyrus Shahabi, director of the… Continue reading
Aug 11 Pregnant Plesiosaur Fossil May Shed Light on Ancient Animal's Behavior Photo by Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Editor's note added on Aug. 12 at the end of this post Scientists have pieced together the first-ever fossil of a pregnant plesiosaur, a giant Mesozoic sea reptile from the… Continue reading
Aug 11 Drought Monitor Tracks Extreme Heat Across the Nation EmbedVideo(1224, 482, 304); Record heat and dry conditions continue to plague large parts of the United States this summer. While the south central region of the United States has been hit especially hard, more than 30 percent of… Continue reading
Aug 09 Tweeting Your Health Woes Could Help Fight Disease Photo by SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images That "viral" metaphor for social media just got a little more bona fide. According to a recent slate of independent studies, Twitter can accurately track the spread of a virus or disease -- and… Continue reading
Aug 09 Watch Thelon River Explorers Battles Storms, Harsh Winds, Mosquito Swarms Nature Conservancy's Sanjayan discusses his trip along the remote Thelon River Sanctuary. Continue watching
Aug 09 Thelon River Explorers Check in from the Campground EmbedVideo(1204, 482, 304); After 16 days of battling fierce mosquito swarms and hauling heavy equipment along a poorly charted river, Nature Conservancy's M. Sanjayan and a group of young members from the Dene First Nation have completed their… Continue reading
Aug 08 Halfway to Key West, Diana Nyad Ends Her Swim US swimmer Diana Nyad jumps into the water at Ernest Hemingway Nautical Club in Havana on August 7, beginning her 103-mile journey. Photo by AFP/Getty Images. Update: August 9, 8:50 a.m. ET After 29 hours in the water, shifting… Continue reading
Aug 08 Can Seawater Solve Our Water Woes? By Talea Miller Photo by Flickr user Allan Foster. Most of the earth is covered by water, yet more than a third of the global population experiences periodic shortages of the kind used for drinking and agriculture. So why not convert seawater into… Continue reading
Aug 05 Mapping the Human Brain For this week's Science Nation, Miles O'Brien reports on a neuroanatomist who is using real brains to build three-dimensional brain maps. Neuroanatomist Jacopo Annese, director of the brain observatory at University of California, Los Angeles, collects and… Continue reading