Earth articles from October 1996

Earth archives from October 1996

Fixing global warming.
October 1, 1996... The cover of this issue features two stories that cover a controversial subject: technical fixes for global warming. In "The Iron Hypothesis," Caroline Dopyera describes a landmark experiment designed to test a simple idea: Iron controls...

Is Popocatepetl ready to pop: volcano near Mexico City has history of destroying settlements.
October 1, 1996... A killer volcano near Mexico City is awakening. Popocatepetl, Valcano has been erupting since 1994, periodically dropping ash on nearby towns and alarming the 30 million people living within view of the volcano, popularly known as Popo. But...

Floodwaters of 1993 still moving.
October 1, 1996... The Mississippi River floods of the summer of 1993 had far-reaching effects. Recently researchers at the University of Miami learned how the huge volume of water made it across the Gulf of Mexico, through the Straits of Florida and up the...

Mystery of selective extinctions: why dinos didn't make it but crocs did.
October 1, 1996... The extinction of the dinosaurs and two-thirds of life on Earth 65 million years ago was one of the most important events in the history of life. Somehow, though, certain plants and animals, such as the crocodiles, made it through this event....

They came from outer space: asteroids may have ferried the building blocks of life to Earth.
October 1, 1996... As the saying goes, we're all made of star dust--all the atoms in our bodies and everything else on Earth were forged in the centers of stars billions of years ago. Some scientists have taken this idea further by suggesting that the organic...

Antarctic lake on the rocks (lake the size of Lake Ontario lies 2 miles beneath ice).
October 1, 1996... In the heart of Antarctica lies a freshwater lake as big as Lake Ontario. But you won't find it on any map: It lies two and a half miles beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet. A radar instrument on the ERS-1 satellite detected subtle but...

River ran through it: an ancient river system in the Appalachians rivaled the Amazon.
October 1, 1996... Look at a map of U.S. rivers today, and the Mississippi dominates. But 300 million years ago, the landscape was very different. Great rivers may have run down from the ancient Appalachian Mountains. Flowing through valleys 20 miles wide and...

Heavy metals stress out trees: toxins in the air are killing eastern forests.
October 1, 1996... Clouds form above the industrial Midwest, carrying a toxic load of acids and other pollutants from refineries, smelting plants and the like. Then the clouds roll onto the Adirondack Mountains of New York, where red spruce and balsam fir trees...

Crossing the bridge (ancient Beringia could not sustain much life).
October 1, 1996... North America was a little slow in getting populated by humans: It wasn't until about 14,000 years ago that modern humans migrated across a land bridge between Asia and Alaska to move into this continent. Just how difficult was that trip? ...

Buried pillars of salt.
October 1, 1996... This three-dimensional computer image simulates underground salt structures resembling walls and pillars. It represents a continental slope dipping at 2 degrees away from the land in the upper left-hand corner of the image. Salt deforms more...

Uncanny navigators: how turtles fnd their way home.
October 1, 1996... The roadmap of life for a loggerhead turtle is simple enough: After hatching on a dark beach in Florida, swim around in the Atlantic Ocean for several years to feed and grow. Then return to the same beach and lay the eggs that will start the...

Century-long droughts in California.
October 1, 1996... Californians may have thought the record six-year drought of the late 1980s and early 1990s was bad, but geologists know better. Chemical traces in the shells of fossil clams from northern San Francisco Bay suggest that the state has...

Shorter days on Earth.
October 1, 1996... Earth has been slowing down, but you may not have noticed. That's because it takes millions of years for the tides between Earth and the Moon to drag with enough friction to slow down our planet's spin. Going back farther in the rock record...

Rise of the mammals.
October 1, 1996... Mammals filled the void left after the dinosaurs went extinct. New genetic clues suggest that the roots of this grand diversification lay much earlier, during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea. The early history of the mammals goes...

Flood of '96: the federal government recently poured 117 billion gallons of water into the Grand Canyon ...
October 1, 1996... Just after dawn on March 26, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt turned a lever and opened the first of four water conduits through Arizona's Glen Canyon Dam, sending a frothy white arc of water out into the Colorado River below....

Iron hypotheses: fixing global warming: ... fertilizing the sea with iron might cool the climate.
October 1, 1996... The Columbus Iselin was still a ways off when Ken Johnson saw it pass through the Panama Canal and chug toward him. He tensed with a feeling of desperation. The ship was supposed to carry the ocean experiment of the decade, one that could...

Engineering a cooler planet: fixing global warming.
October 1, 1996... Whether it's reforesting vast tracts of land or sending thousands of mirrors into space, scientists are considering a number of ways to help slow the pace of global warming. It's hard to argue with the most familiar advice for combatting...

Pitfalls of geoengineering.
October 1, 1996... Looking for a quick fix for global warming? Better think carefully before you think big. Of all the approaches to environmental protection, perhaps the most controversial idea is "geoengineering" -- the deliberate, large-scale...

Planetary cyber art: portraits of Earth.
October 1, 1996... The long ridge in this image is the underwater East Pacific Rise, west of South America. The ocean floor is spreading apart here as fast as eight inches per year. As this occurs, molten rock wells up along the crest of the ridge and cools and...

Himalayan high tension: deep beneath the Himalaya, Earth's crust is winding up like a spring for the next great earthquake.
October 1, 1996... The great Assam earthquake of 1897 began with an ominous rumbling. The ground started to undulate like a wind-tossed sea. Stones bounced off the road, one observer said, "like peas on a drum," and geysers of sand and water spouted from the...

Jewels of the sky: the interplay of sunlight and ice crystals in the sky can produce spectacular displays of halos and other phenomena.
October 1, 1996... Many people have seen a ring of light around the Sun or Moon -- a halo that forms when light passes through ice crystals in the air. But on occasion, halos, arcs and pillars of light can fill the sky, creating bright geometrical patterns....

Big water (waves).
October 1, 1996... Few natural and dangerous realms remain in this mostly tamed world. The surf zone is one. If you've ever been knocked off your feet by a pounding wave, you understand the might of the sea. Waves are a power born of wind, water and land...

Dino-trekking.
October 1, 1996... In search of dinos Dino-Trekking is a handy book in that it packs loads of information into its 206 pages and organizes it intelligently. It rates 300 museums, nature preserves, amusement parks and traveling exhibits in the United States...

Dinosaur digs: a fossil finder's tour.
October 1, 1996... Dinosaur Digs: A Fossil Finder's Tour and America's Dinosaur Parks are two 30-minute videos that take you to sites across the country, showing where you can dig for fossils, trace fossilized footprints or explore the hightech animatronics of...

America's dinosaur parks.
October 1, 1996... Dinosaur Digs: A Fossil Finder's Tour and America's Dinosaur Parks are two 30-minute videos that take you to sites across the country, showing where you can dig for fossils, trace fossilized footprints or explore the hightech animatronics of...

Information station: The Observer Meteorological Station.
October 1, 1996... The Observer Meteorological Station Fascinating Electronics, Inc., 31525 Canaan Rd., Deer Island, OR, 97054-9610, (800) 683-5487. Requires IBM or Macintosh computer with serial interface. EGA or better graphics desirable. Kit $499.90....

Chile's Torres del Paine National Park.
October 1, 1996... Before setting foot in South America, I did what most travelers do when about to explore a new landscape: I pored over maps and charts, imagining how the land would appear. I thought the long chain of the Andes would slope unceremoniously...

Weathering the storm: tornadoes, television, and turmoil.
October 1, 1996... Weathering the Storm: Tornadoes, Television, and Turmoil, by Gary A. England (University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), ISBN 0-8061-2823-2, 225 pages, hardcover, $26.95. Americans need their weather forecast. They watch it; they talk about...

Braving the elements: a stormy history of American weather.
October 1, 1996... Braving the Elements: A Stormy History of American Weather, by David Laskin, (Doubleday, 1996), ISBN 0-385-46955-1, 256 pages, $23.95. In this entertaining book, writer David Laskin, a life-long weather enthusiast, retraces the history of...

Texas weather.
October 1, 1996... Texas Weather, by George W. Bomar, 2nd edition, (University of Texas Press, 1995), ISBN 0-292-70811-4, 275 pages, softcover, $17.95; hardcover, $37.50. Texas is a land of meteorological excesses with yearly floods, tornadoes, hurricanes,...