Earth articles from June 1997

Earth archives from June 1997

EarthChronicles.(significant events from January 15 to March 10, 1997)
June 1, 1997... This dateline covers the period from January 15 to March 20, 1997. January 20 -- Scorching temperatures in Melbourne, Australia, promote major brush fires, which are fueled by strong winds. January 21 -- A magnitude 5.8 earthquake hits...

Courtship and carbon: miniature lobsters follow tiny wakes to the perfect mate. Oceans depend on their success.
June 1, 1997... In Rudi Strickler's laboratory on the shores of Lake Michigan, two ecologists intently watched a dark tank of seawater. With the flip of a switch, a blue laser light stabbed through the middle of the tank. Hundreds of tiny animals swarmed...

Matching tops and bottoms: continents didn't fit their foundations. Until now.(research on convection of Earth's mantle)
June 1, 1997... The surface of our world, cool and blue and limpid, has long been the bane of geophysicists. It's not that they don't love their planet, they just wish it were arranged differently. The continents are too big. So are the oceans. Much too...

Rocky Mountain why.(factors that created the Rocky Mountains)(Special Report: Mountain Mystery)
June 1, 1997... Somewhere along the North American Cordillera, the vast region of mountains, basins and plateaus stretching from Alaska to Mexico like the backbone of some giant, half-exhumed dinosaur, an invisible line divides the West. Road maps don't...

Joining forces.(geology of the Ural Mountains)(Special Report: Mountain Mystery)
June 1, 1997... It opened with a bang and two gigantic plumes of groundwater shooting high above the Russian steppe. The force of two tons of high explosives slammed into the earth and through the crust and upper mantle to the mysterious layer beneath, the...

From Lucy to language: a family portrait of human ancestors.(fossil man)(Cover Story)
June 1, 1997... There seems to be magic in fossilized bones that transcends time. We want to know what the fossils have to say to us. The fossils of hominids (upright-walking primates with relatively large brains -- our forerunners) touch a responsive chord...

Tubeworm travels.(movement of tubeworm populations)(includes related information on the origins of life)
June 1, 1997... It's hell on Earth for some creatures. But for the three-foot tubeworms that live in it, an undersea hot vent is heaven. Tubeworms bask near the scalding 600-degree-Fahrenheit water that spews from these holes in the ocean floor; they...

The real Jurassic Park: the blood of a Tyrannosaurus rex won't bring the dinosaur back to life. But it could come close.
June 1, 1997... A thin slice of T. rex bone glowed amber beneath the lens of my microscope. Blood vessel channels snaked through a bone matrix, and tiny chambers known as lacunae, which house bone-forming cells, appeared as small ovals. One by one my...

Orbit: NASA Astronauts Photograph the Earth.
June 1, 1997... Ever since John Glenn convinced NASA to let him carry a camera on the first U.S. flight into orbit, no astronaut has gone up without one. For years, the people lucky enough to see Earth from space have captured it on film. Thankfully for the...

Carving out life in Turkey.(homes carved out of rock in central Turkey)
June 1, 1997... People who live here call them peri bacalar -- fairy chimneys," said a young woman from Ankara. We were lunching on goezleme (a kind of Turkish pizza) in the town of Goreme in central Turkey. Surrounding us were weathered spires of...