The Missing Piece
11/22/2009 10:21:52 AM
Ten years ago, Maya Lin wrote that she was officially retiring from "the monument business." After completing the landmark Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Washington, D.C., 1982), the artist and architect designed three major civic works commemorating significant American passages: the Civil Rights Memorial (1989), commissioned by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.; the Women's Table (1993) in honor of coeducation at Yale University, her alma mater; and the continuing Confluence Pro...

Planetary Matters
11/22/2009 10:21:52 AM
A day isn't just a standard measure, all the same size so each fits on a calendar page. A day is a period of light, an astronomical event.

German Geothermal Project Leads to Second Thoughts After the Earth Rumbles
11/22/2009 10:21:52 AM
German officials are reviewing the safety of a plant that extracts heat from below the earth's surface, an operation that scientists say set off an earthquake last month.

The Earth's Paunch
11/22/2009 10:21:52 AM
The earth bulges at the Equator. Does this include the oceans?

Our Planet, Pole to Pole, Cold to Hot
11/22/2009 10:21:52 AM
Leave it to Disney to make global warming as soothing as a full-body massage with "Earth."

New method to measure snow, vegetation moisture with GPS may benefit farmers, meteorologists
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST
Scientists have found a clever way to use traditional GPS satellite signals to measure snow depth as well as soil and vegetation moisture, a technique expected to benefit meteorologists, water resource managers, climate modelers and farmers.

Research challenges for understanding landscape changes identified
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST
Nine research challenges and four research initiatives that are poised to advance the study of how Earth's landscapes change were unveiled by the National Research Council.

Using Darwin in helping to define the biological essentiality of silicon and aluminium
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST
In this year, 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of ‘On the Origin of Species’ a UK scientist has used Darwin’s seminal work on Natural Selection in helping to define the biological essentiality of the second (silicon) and third (aluminium) most abundant elements of the Earth’s crust.

Lightning strike in Africa helps take pulse of Sun
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST
Scientists have developed a more definitive and reliable tool for measuring the Sun's rotation when sunspots aren't visible ---- and even when they are -- based on observations of common lightning strikes on Earth.

Earth's Early Ocean Cooled More Than A Billion Years Earlier Than Thought
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:00:00 EST
The global ocean covering the Earth 3.4 billion years ago was far cooler than has been thought, according to researchers who analyzed isotope ratios in rocks formed on that ancient ocean floor. Instead of a hot primordial soup, much more tepid temperatures prevailed. Cooler temperatures may have had effects on the evolution of the early atmosphere and could have opened the door to an earlier spread of photosynthetic life forms across the planet.