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12 August 2008
The Chinese "Weather Manipulation Missile" Olympics
One thing is for certain, the Chinese cannot be accused of being subtle when it comes to insuring good weather for the biggest party on Earth. Sounding like a military operation, the Chinese government authorized the use of 1,104 cloud seeding missile launches from 4:00-11:39pm on Friday night to remove the threat of rain ahead [...]
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19 June 2008
When Cloud Seeding Goes Wrong: Cement Chunk Falls From the Sky
The Russian Air Force, during a mission to clear the skies of potentially rain-filled clouds, dropped a mixture of silver iodide, liquid nitrogen and cement powder in an attempt to seed the clouds. This form of climate modification is common practice in Russia, when attempting to engineer dry days on public holidays and special events [...]
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01 June 2008
Harvesting Solar Power from Space
In a new report, the viability of sending solar panels into space to collect a vast quantity of uninterrupted energy has been re-investigated. Although the idea has been around since the 1970's, space solar power has always been viewed as prohibitively expensive. In the current energy climate down here on Earth with spiralling oil prices [...]
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27 May 2008
The A-Train: Using Five Satellites as One to Analyze Polluted Clouds
This is one of the finest examples of satellite collaboration. Five Earth-observing orbiters, four from NASA and one from France, are working together to provide the deepest analysis of cloud cover ever carried out. The satellites orbit in a close formation, only eight minutes apart, and create what is known as the "Afternoon Constellation" (or [...]
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03 April 2008
There is No Sun-Link with Global Warming
The connection between solar activity and global warming has been a contentious issue for a long time. The idea that cosmic rays create global cloud cover just doesn't seem to be working out; even the highest estimates of cloud cover variation caused by cosmic ray flux predict the effect to be very small. Now UK [...]
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28 March 2008
Darkness Washes Around The Globe As Earth Hour Descends
35 countries, 26 major cities, 370 towns and literally tens of millions of people… What do they all have in common? They're all switching off their lights for one hour at 8:00 pm local time in a now staggering global event known as Earth Hour. From around the world, Universe Today readers [...]
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20 March 2008
Could Cosmic Rays Influence Global Warming?
The idea goes like this: Cosmic rays, originating from outside the Solar System, hit the Earth's atmosphere. In doing so these highly energetic particles create microscopic aerosols. Aerosols collect in the atmosphere and act as nuclei for water droplet formation. Large-scale cloud cover can result from this microscopic interaction. Cloud cover reflects light from the [...]
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19 March 2008
Gravity Waves in the Atmosphere can Energize Tornados (Video)
Gravity waves are global events. Much like the ripples on a massive pond, these large-scale waves can propagate from an atmospheric disturbance over thousands of miles. These waves are maintained by the gravitational force of Earth pulling down and the buoyancy of the atmosphere pushing up. Until now it has been hard to link atmospheric [...]
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19 March 2008
Arctic's Oldest and Thickest Ice is Melting Away
It's been a strange year for the Arctic. During the summer, high temperatures melted away vast regions of the Arctic sea ice, opening up the Northwest Passage for the first time. But then this winter has been unusually cold, bringing back large large areas of sea ice. So what's going on? Is the Arctic recovering, [...]
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05 March 2008
Measure Light Pollution and Help Save Our Dark Skies
It's a stunning photo… And one we all recognize. At this point in time, more than half of the Earth's population lives in or near a city and the results shine clearly from space. The crime is not energy consumption, over-population or even global warming. It's the loss of one of our [...]
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18 February 2008
World Needs to Aim for Near-Zero Carbon Emissions
If we really want to combat climate change, how much carbon can we reasonably generate? How much will still push temperatures up? The current presidential candidates are all calling for serious carbon reductions over the next 40 years, but according to researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science, it's not enough. To really stabilize our [...]
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14 February 2008
Human Damage to World Oceans Mapped, 40% "Strongly Impacted"
If we needed any more proof that we as a race are damaging the worlds oceans, for the first time, our impact has been mapped by new study to be published in Science. It makes for uncomfortable viewing. Taking 17 known types of human impact on marine ecosystems, this new research suggests that only 4% [...]
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01 February 2008
Microbes Make the Best Climate Engineers
With the rising threat of global warming, you'd think humans are the best (or worst) climate engineers to arrive on planet Earth. But you'd be wrong. Tiny microbes have been modifying our climate for billions of years, and unless we learn how to work with them, we could be fighting a losing battle to get [...]
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30 January 2008
Recovering from a Mass Extinction is Slow Going
With the diversity of life on Earth, and its ability to exploit every niche, you would think planet could bounce back from a devastating extinction event. Or maybe not. According to researchers from the University of Bristol, life took a full 30 million years to recover from the Permian extinction.
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17 January 2008
Regulating Traffic in the Final Frontier
October of last year was the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first spacecraft to be launched into orbit. Since then, we've come a long, long way. Think of all the stuff that's floating around our planet right now: GPS, television, and military satellites, the International Space Station and the Hubble telescope, and a host of [...]
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