Penguins’ poop may be making Antarctica cloudier — and helping mitigate the regional impacts of climate change. Gases emitted from the birds’ guano are supplying key chemical ingredients to form the seeds of clouds — the tiny particles that clouds coalesce around, researchers report May 22 in Communications Earth & Environment. What penguin guano primarily…
I confess: If I think about skeletons, it’s around Halloween. I especially enjoy the yard displays of larger-than-life skeletons engaging in mundane activities, like walking skeleton dogs. But our own skeletons are something we should be thinking about year-round, especially as we age. Heading into midlife and beyond, bones can lose their heft. A drop…
Senior physics writer Emily Conover has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. She is a two-time winner of the D.C. Science Writers’ Association Newsbrief award and a winner of the Acoustical Society of America’s Science Communication Award.
The collision of two lightning-bolts-in-the-making spawned an exceedingly brief but extremely energetic flash of gamma rays. This first-of-its-kind observation may help explain an origin of some of the most energetic radiation on Earth. Researchers have for years linked the production of gamma rays to the acceleration of electrons by strong electric fields in thunderstorms. Yet…
Weather forecasting is getting cheaper and more accurate. An AI model named Aurora used machine learning to outperform current weather prediction systems, researchers report May 21 in Nature. Aurora could accurately predict tropical cyclone paths, air pollution and ocean waves, as well as global weather at the scale of towns or cities — offering up…
Scientists used a levitating magnet to hunt for dark matter