Jul 16 Why 96 million plastic ‘shade balls’ dumped into the LA Reservoir may not save water By Amanda Grennell In 2015, officials poured 96 million "shade balls" into the Los Angeles Reservoir to improve water quality and save water. The video went viral, but those shade balls may have used more water than they saved, MIT scientists reported Monday. Continue reading
Jul 12 What is a blazar? Its high-energy flares could unlock the foundations of the universe By Amanda Grennell How 300 scientists in 12 countries across four continents detected one of the universe's most elusive particles. Continue reading
Jul 11 Watch 8:49 NASA scientists track climate-changing methane leaks from the air By Miles O'Brien Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins us from the atmosphere above Southern California, where NASA engineers leverage state-of-the-art technology to measure methane. Released through oil and gas production, livestock emissions, and organic waste, methane is about 85 times more potent at… Continue watching
Jul 06 What happened to Zika? By Amanda Grennell Two summers ago, Zika virus infected more than half a million people and caused more than 3,700 birth defects in the Americas. Then, the virus nosedived. With the weather warming and mosquitoes out, how much do we need to worry… Continue reading
Jul 05 Spiders fly on the currents of Earth’s electric field By Amanda Grennell Spiders don’t have wings, but they can fly across entire oceans on long strands of silk. For more than a century, scientists thought it was the wind that carried them, but a new study shows the Earth’s electric field can… Continue reading
Jun 22 To beat Vegas bookies at the World Cup, these statisticians turned to artificial intelligence By Amanda Grennell After cleaning up at the 2014 World Cup, statistician Andreas Groll is enlisting machine learning to keep his lucky streak going… Continue reading
Jun 18 Laze, vog and other volcano vocabulary inspired by Kilauea By Nsikan Akpan, Julia Griffin Kilauea's eruptions have exposed the guts of our planet in ways previously unseen, and along the way, inspired a number of volcanology terms. Continue reading
Jun 17 Watch 4:32 Sea levels could rise three feet by 2100, study projects By PBS News Hour Antarctica is losing ice three times faster than it was in 2007 as greenhouse gas emissions by human activity contribute to global warming. A study in Nature says that sea levels could rise between three and six feet by 2100,… Continue watching
Jun 13 Antarctica is losing ice twice as fast as anyone thought By Amanda Grennell Over the last 25 years, melting Antarctic ice has added nearly 3 trillion tons of water to the ocean, enough to fill Lake Erie six times over. Continue reading
Jun 04 What made Guatemala’s Fuego Volcano eruption so deadly? By Nsikan Akpan Guatemala's 12,000-foot Volcano of Fire has erupted on and off since 2002. Despite active monitoring, Sunday's eruption caught residents by surprise. Here's why. Continue reading