Category Archives: Earth & environment
Feature: Have You Heard the Northern Lights?
Shane McCorristine examines the eerie sounds made by the glowing sky The aurora borealis or the Northern Lights, is a natural luminous phenomenon that occurs in the night sky at polar latitudes and is sometimes visible in the northern hemisphere. For centuries, aurora-watchers have reported hearing strange sounds of hissing and flapping during an auroral [...]
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BlueSci Film: How to Look Inside a Volcano
Cambridge University volcanology PhD student Tehnuka Ilanko takes us to the top of Mount Erebus volcano in Antarctica where studies on plume gases are helping scientists understand what goes on beneath the crater’s surface.
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Event: BlueSci at the Cambridge Science Festival – Our Fluid Earth
Fifty years ago people imagined the Earth as a solid planet, unchanged for millions of years, until plate tectonics showed continents drifting 25cm each year. Mapping continental velocities using the Global Positioning System makes land look more like a glacier than a rigid plate. See how the Earth’s vigorous movements in the mantle that maintain [...]
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A sea of possibilities for new antibiotics
The collaborative project PharmaSea aims to combat the growing problem of antibiotic resistance by looking for new drugs in our ocean trenches. Each time we use an antibiotic, the weaker strains of infection are killed off while the stronger, more virulent strains are left behind to multiply. In the past, this has not caused much [...]
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History: HMS Challenger
Amelia Penny explores the expedition of the HMS Challenger which marked the beginning of oceanography In the mid-nineteenth century, the deep ocean was a great blue blank on the surface of the globe. Naval expeditions such as the voyage of HMS Beagle in 1831-6 had brought back important observations of the oceans, but were concerned mainly with the surface waters, being [...]
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Feature: Digging for Dinosaurs
Amelia Penny discusses the importance of the fossil record, and the impact of fossil-hunters on our historical knowledge In may of this year, a dinosaur fossil hit international headlines. The specimen, a beautifully preserved Mongolian tyrannosaur called Tarbosaurus bataar, had sold at auction in Manhattan, New York for US$1.05 million. Amid an outcry from palaeontologists, Mongolian president Elbegdhorj Tsakhia intervened, alleging that [...]
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The world beneath our feet
Ecologists have used a state of the art technique known as ‘metagenomic sequencing’ to unlock the genetic secrets of the microbial underworld that lies within the world’s soils. Up until now there has been extensive research into the plants and animals that comprise the planet’s extensive range of ecosystems, however there has been comparatively [...]
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Discovery of a geological ‘sombrero’ on the Earth’s surface
Magma is a mixture of molten rock, found beneath the Earth’s surface and which often collects in chambers to feed a volcano. Magma can also build up in so-called ‘hotspots’ and intrude into overlying rocks, causing a build-up of pressure. One of the largest active magma bodies is found at the Altiplano-Puna plateau, at the [...]
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‘Super- Earth’ likely to be made from diamonds
A planet twice the size of Earth orbiting a sun-like star, 55 Cancri e has been described by researchers at Yale University as a ‘diamond planet’. The calculation of its chemical composition has major implications for the assumptions astronomers can make about planets we deem to be Earth-like. Lead researcher Nikku Madhusudhan, described the [...]
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Science and Policy: Waste of Research