While two-thirds of the earth is covered in water, a full third of the remaining land (that’s one-ninth of the total!) is nearly uninhabitable desert. All of the world’s hottest places lie in that harsh environment.Timbuktu, Mali – 54,5C (130.1 F) degreesThe
A southern Italian airport was on Saturday closed due to ash from Mount Etna, forcing traffic to be diverted to Palermo, the ANSA news agency said. Catania airport on the east coast of the island of Sicily was not expected to re-open before Sunday morning while the
Strong 7.0 magnitude earthquake hits Japan at 10:57 a.m. The epicenter was 212 km (131 miles) E of Sendai, 239 km (148 miles) ENE of Iwaki, 250 km (155 miles) E of Fukushima, Honshu at depth of 18 km (11.2 miles) according to USGS. EMSC’s seismographs recorded 7.2
Heavy monsoon rains and floods left four people dead and two missing in South Korea, a news agency said Saturday, citing local officials who reported landslides across the country.A 68-year-old woman and her grandchildren aged 15 and four were killed when a
During the early hours of July 9th, a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) billowed away from new sunspot 1247. A preliminary analysis of data from NASA's twin STEREO-A and -B spacecraft suggests that the flank of the CME could hit Earth's magnetic field sometime on July
A massive flood of meltwater poured out of Iceland’s Myrdalsjoekull glacier Saturday, raising fears of an eruption from the powerful Katla volcano underneath, but experts said a large blast was unlikely.The flooding sparked fears of an eruption at Katla, known to
Sunday marks the anniversary of when Death Valley, Calif. set the all-time record high for not just the United States, but also the Western Hemisphere. Temperatures in Death Valley (at Greenland Ranch, which is now known as Furnace Creek Ranch) soared to 56,6
Tropical Storm Calvin, the third named storm of this year’s eastern Pacific hurricane season, gained strength off Mexico’s west coast while the U.S. National Hurricane Center monitored another system in the Atlantic. Calvin, which formed yesterday, was about 345
On July 7th, the sun produced a series of strong shortwave radio bursts. Click on the dynamic spectrum below to play a 21 MHz sample recorded by amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft in rural New Mexico. The action begins about 18 seconds into the 2-minute…
Plate tectonics has been on the curriculum for a while now. Most people are fairly familiar with the theory; the Earth's crust – or lithosphere – is broken up into different plates which move around on the very hot, viscous substance beneath.This movement is driven
