Earth & Space
Danger! Glacial lake outburst floods ahead!
Knowing where GLOF danger is highest globally is key for preventing future disasters. Over the last 30 years as the climate has warmed, glaciers across the world have retreated and water from the melting glaciers has collected, forming glacial lakes. These glacial lakes can burst,... click to read more
Dust in the wind & the snowy Alps: a cautionary tale
Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are elongated and narrow bands of clouds and high-water vapor content which advect warm and moist air masses from the tropics toward the poles. ARs are believed to account for most of the annual moisture transport from the tropics into mid and... click to read more
The Lingering Shadow of Redlining: Fossil Fuel Power Plants and Air Pollution
Why are some communities more burdened by air pollution than others? People of color including Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans are more likely to live in neighborhoods with poor air quality. Breathing dirty air aggravates asthma and heart disease and is estimated to cause 100,000... click to read more
Thunderstruck! A quasicrystal made by lightning
Quasicrystals are materials with a quasiperiodic atomic arrangement, meaning that their atoms are in an ordered structure, like normal crystals, but this structure does not repeat itself at regular intervals. Such atomic configuration has strong impacts on the physical properties of these materials. Quasicrystals are... click to read more
A mysterious object in our Galaxy pulses every 76 seconds
Neutron stars are extremely dense remnants of massive star explosions (supernova). They measure about 20 km in diameter and a teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh 4 billion tons on Earth. We currently know of about 3,000 of these in our own Galaxy. Neutron... click to read more
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