Saline lakes around the world shrinking at alarming rates

Saline lakes around the world shrinking at alarming rates

Saline lakes around the world are shrinking in size at alarming rates. Lakes like Utah's Great Salt Lake, Asia's Aral Sea, the Dead Sea in Jordan and Israel, China's huge Lop Nur and Bolivia's Lake Popo are just a few that are in peril. These lakes…

Life goes on for marine ecosystems after cataclysmic mass extinction

Life goes on for marine ecosystems after cataclysmic mass extinction

An international team of scientists, including Dr. Alex Dunhill from the University of Leeds, has found that although the mass extinction in the Late Triassic period wiped out the vast proportion of species, there appears to have been no drastic changes to the way…

Environmental impact of Amazonian hydropower significantly underestimated

Environmental impact of Amazonian hydropower significantly underestimated

The environmental impact of hydropower generation in the Amazon may be greater than predicted, according to new University of Stirling research. The study suggests that estimates of biodiversity and carbon losses associated with tropical hydropower may be higher…

Gamma rays will reach beyond the limits of light

Gamma rays will reach beyond the limits of light

Researchers have discovered a new way to produce high energy photon beams. The new method makes it possible to produce these gamma rays in a highly efficient way, compared with today's technique. The obtained energy is a billion times higher than the energy of…

Spinning comet rapidly slowed down during close approach to Earth

Spinning comet rapidly slowed down during close approach to Earth

Astronomers at Lowell Observatory observed comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak last spring and noticed that the speed of its rotation was quickly slowing down. A research team led by David Schleicher studied the comet while it was closer to the Earth than it has ever…

Volcanic eruptions linked to social unrest in Ancient Egypt

Volcanic eruptions linked to social unrest in Ancient Egypt

Around 245 BCE Ptolemy III, ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt, made a decision that still puzzles many historians: After pursuing a successful military campaign against the kingdom's nemesis, the Seleucid Empire, centered mainly in present-day Syria and…

New study analyses volcanic fatalities in more detail than ever before

New study analyses volcanic fatalities in more detail than ever before

Building on existing information and databases relating to volcanic fatalities, scientists from the University of Bristol have, for the first time, been able to classify victims by activity or occupation and look at the distance of their death from the volcano. It…

Scientists determine source of world’s largest mud eruption

Scientists determine source of world’s largest mud eruption

On May 29, 2006, mud started erupting from several sites on the Indonesian island of Java. Boiling mud, water, rocks and gas poured from newly-created vents in the ground, burying entire towns and compelling many Indonesians to flee. By September 2006, the largest…

The missing mass — what is causing a geoid low in the Indian Ocean?

The missing mass — what is causing a geoid low in the Indian Ocean?

The Earth’s interior is still a mystery to us. While we have sent missions to probe the outer reaches of our solar system, the deepest boreholes on Earth go down to only a few kilometers. The only way to learn what’s going on deep inside our planet, in…