Tag: science

  • Arctic Chill

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    The Arctic air mass that has frozen the Midwest continues to spread and so today will be a tad chilly in Philadelphia. Yesterday, however, the Guardian had a piece that used data from NASA to show how the air masses over the Northern Hemisphere have been disturbed by unusually warm air. One theory to how this…

  • Cold, Dangerous Cold

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    It’s cold out in Chicago. And not just the usual winter cold, but record-setting cold. And when the temperature gets that low, when you mix in a little bit of wind, it can become dangerous very quickly. In an article about the weather conditions in the Midwest, the BBC included this graphic at the end.…

  • Asteroids on the Moon

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    I hope everybody enjoyed their holiday. But, before we dive back into the meatier topics of the news, I wanted to share this serpentine graphic from the Guardian I discovered last week. Functionally it is a timeline charting the size of 96 known large asteroid impact craters on the Moon, between 80ºS and 80ºN. The…

  • The Atom

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    We made it to the end of the week, everyone. And that is worth celebrating. Today’s post is for all the scientists out there and anyone who has ever been interested in the atom. You know, the little things that make up matter. xkcd put together a chronological history of several different models of the…

  • New Plans for Old Subways

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    The New Yorkers among my readers know about the whole planned shutdown of the L train for repairs owing to Hurricane Sandy (tangentially mentioned in the graphic I commented upon yesterday). For those of you who don’t know, basically the salt water from the storm seriously damaged the tunnels and a whole lot of work…

  • Anak Krakatau

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    During my winter holiday to London the volcano Anak Krakatau erupted, sending enormous amounts of material sliding into the ocean. The displaced water had to go somewhere and travelled as a tsunami that devastated the Indonesian coastline. Of course Anak Krakatau is one of several remnants of the much larger volcano of Krakatoa that erupted several…

  • Dry Heat Is Only Part of California’s Problem

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Wildfires continue to burn across in California. One, the Camp Fire in northern California near Chico, has already claimed 77 lives. But why has this fire been so deadly? FiveThirtyEight explained some of the causes in an article that features a number of charts and graphics. The screenshot below features a scatter plot looking at…

  • Pulling Gene-ies Out of Bottles

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    I don’t always get to share more illustrative diagrams that explain things, but that’s what we have today from the Economist. It illustrated the concept of a gene drive by which a gene modified in one chromosome then modifies the remaining chromosome to insert itself there. Consequently it stands an almost 100% chance of being…

  • First Florence, Now Michael

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    You may recall a few weeks ago there was a hurricane named Florence that slammed into the Carolina before stalling and dumping voluminous amounts of rain that inundated inland communities in addition to the damage by the storm surge in the coastal communities. At the time I wrote about a New York Times piece that…

  • Longest Lunar Eclipse of the Year

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    For those of my readers in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America, you are in for a treat tonight as you get to experience the longest lunar eclipse of the year. For those of us in North America, i.e. Canada, the United States, and Mexico, we get nothing. So for a reminder, we turn to…