Things we don not know for sure – how it’s happening, how was created, how it is. Questions that people do not know the answer!
The 1970’s Viking mission to Mars provided much of our information about the geology and weather of the red planet. Viking had two orbiters which remotely mapped the surface of Mars, and two landers which analyzed rocks and soils. The Viking mission did not return a Mars rock sample to Earth. Further crucial information about …
Martian meteorites: How Did a Piece of Mars Get to Earth? Read More »
Native Americans called it “Trickster.” The coyote has a knack for adapting and surviving almost anywhere. People have been persecuting the coyote for more than a hundred years — but it just won’t die out. In the past 50 years, some four million coyotes have been either poisoned, trapped, snared or shot. And not just …
Nanotechnology involves working with extremely small things — things that can be measured in nanometers. A nanometer is one millionth the size of a pinhead. That’s also about the width of ten hydrogen atoms laid out side by side. Scientists in many fields — from medicine to computing to materials science — are attempting to …
About nanotechnology with Ralph Merkle – What exactly is it? Read More »
If a substance is biodegradable, it means it can be broken down into its basic chemical building blocks in soil or water. The prefix “bio” means that the job is done by living things — primarily microorganisms such as bacteria. Everything natural — from rocks to paper — will biodegrade eventually. Crude oil, for example, …
Glaciers in the mountains of India, Nepal, and Tibet are melting . . . Lakes sometimes form on top of the glaciers. When they grow too rapidly, they burst over natural rocky dams and surge down river valleys — with the potential to destroy villages below. Japanese scientists spotted this hazard in the Himalayas in …
My question is, why are the clouds white? At midday, when the sun is high in the sky or the clouds, light scattered off the water droplets in clouds is composed of all the colors of the rainbow. When you mix every color of visible light — all the reds and greens and yellows and blues — …
On clues to the pattern of future rainfall in the Middle East — that might be buried in the past. Scientists at the Geological Survey in Israel hope to determine the last 4,000 years of rainfall in the Eastern Mediterranean region — by dissecting cave formations. When rainwater soaks into the Earth, it percolates downward, …
Big, bright sunflowers are beautiful every summer in fields all over the world. But behind the tall stalks lie some unanswered questions about the development of human civilizations. The question is how long do sunflowers live? Even though sunflowers can easily grow taller than 18 feet – about five and a half meters – they never …
Sunflower helps trace the history of human civilization Read More »
In 1776, Ben Franklin left Philadelphia by ship for France. By carefully measuring water temperatures along the way, he was able to map the Gulf Stream. The motion of waves just moves a column or molecule of water up and down. Wouldn’t that mean that some water never hits a shore? All water — even …
