Imagine going to the store, returning home with three full bags of groceries. You pause before entering your house and toss one of the bags into a garbage can, which is then carted away to a landfill. What a waste of time. That is precisely what we are doing today as a group. Around the…
The drop stones found in tropical rocks were one of the first signs that something unusual had occurred on Earth. Drop stones are pebbles that land on the seafloor with enough power to distort the sediment. However, no drop stones should have been present in these rocks. The most common source is glaciers; ice sheet…
If substantial global warming continues, the North Atlantic jet stream, a fast-moving air current that circles the Northern Hemisphere, may travel northward in the next decades. Changes in rainfall patterns in the midlatitudes, as well as a rise in droughts, heat waves, floods, and other extreme weather events across Europe and the eastern United States,…
Fresh eyes can transform the world, and a world beset by pandemics, climate change, and unfairness is primed for change like none we’ve ever seen. That’s why, after a five-year hiatus, Popular Science is reintroducing the Brilliant 10: an annual list of early-career scientists and engineers who are coming up with novel solutions to issues…
Wade into the gently lapping waves late at night Wade into the gently lapping surf at Boca Chica Beach, a pristine stretch of beach about 20 miles east of Brownsville, Texas, and you’ll see nothing but Gulf seas meeting sky—endless, dark but for the stars and lazy whitecaps. A contemplative, antique vista that makes you…
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is working on an interdisciplinary project to recreate the scents of plant species that have been lost due to human colonial destruction of their habitat. Whereas others might try to reconstruct a woolly mammoth from centuries-old sequences, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is working on recreating the scents of plant species that have been…
Since 2002, biologist Jeff Sikich has been employed at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. He’s dealt with a variety of strange situations, including a call to bring his dart gun to tranquilize what turned out to be a three-foot-tall statue of a mountain lion rather than a real mountain lion on one memorable…
I stood in front of the Career Services building near the conclusion of my senior year at Dartmouth, watching my classmates line up. Everyone seemed to be dressed the same as they waited for their corporate job interviews, the men in navy jackets and the women in dark skirts. I remembered my first day on…
The rapid evolution of Hurricane Ida from category 1 status in the Gulf of Mexico to category 4 classification at landfall was a frightening element of the storm, which devastated Louisiana on Sunday. The storm’s sustained winds accelerated from 85 miles per hour on Saturday to 150 miles per hour the next day as it…
The Shasta Valley, nestled between two mountain ranges in Northern California’s Siskiyou County, is as intricate as it is beautiful. Nearly four years after initially visiting the area, hydrogeologist Brad Gooch is still awestruck by the scenery. It’s not because of Mount Shasta, a 14,000-foot volcano that towers over forest and farming. Gooch, on the…