Science/Technology

This powerful solar flare on Oct. 25, 2002 sent a storm of high-energy particles (protons and electrons) racing toward Earth at a million or more miles per hour. Such flares can garble terrestrial communications links, black out power grids, cause navigation errors, even confuse homing pigeons. Astronauts and satellites in orbit are at special risk.

Reduced solar activity leads to fewer sunspots, storms

This is the height of the 11-year solar cycle, the so-called solar maximum. The face of the sun should be pockmarked with sunspots, but it has been almost spotless.

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Archive by category ''Science/Technology

SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

Oldest lizard-like fossils found

Two new fossil jaws discovered in Germany provide the first direct evidence that the ancestors of lizards, snakes and tuatara were alive around 240 million years ago.
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

There's a lot of science behind fall leaf coloration

The miracle of fall foliage is a special punctuation mark in the seasonal story of trees. Throughout the temperate forests of North America, red and yellow hillsides appear almost magical each autumn.
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

Tracking the migration of the American oystercatcher – with tiny transmitters

A tracking transmitter powered by a solar battery in a 1-inch-by-1/2-inch backpacks attached to six North Carolina oystercatchers inform orbiting research satellites every couple of days of the birds’ whereabouts.
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

Science Briefs

Noise from traffic and artificial night lighting cause birds in a city center to become active up to five hours earlier in the morning than birds in more natural areas. These were the findings from an investigation conducted on 400 blackbirds in Leipzig, Germany. Scientists from the Helmholtz Centre...
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

Whales get sun tans, burns too

We’re not the only ones who get summer tans. So do whales – and their DNA gets damaged in the process too, scientists say.
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

Researchers debate whether overpopulation is inevitable

Some so-called neo-Malthusians believe we may still be heading for some kind of population crash, perhaps triggered or exacerbated by environmental factors related to climate change. But others are less concerned given projections that world population will likely start to decline once the world...
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

Blogger studies the science behind our food supply

Growing up in a small rural town outside Athens, Ga., Kathleen Raven and her sister crafted restaurant menus for fun.
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

UNCC professor explores still-theoretical concept of invisibility

An associate professor in the Department of Physics and Optical Science at UNC Charlotte, Greg Gbur's Ph.D. research, completed in 2001, was on crude forms of theoretical invisibility that people were considering at the time. "I was a hipster physicist, doing this stuff before it was cool!" he said...
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

Ig Nobel awards? Real scientific research at its goofiest

Among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes were scientists who discovered that alcohol makes people think they're attractive and that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely she is to stand up.
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

Science Briefs

In the search to find new sources of clean, low-cost power, slow and steady might win the race – slow-moving currents and tides, that is. Just as wind turbines tap into the energy of flowing air to generate electricity, hydrokinetic devices produce power from flowing water.