Science
fromEngadget
10 hours agoA comet gets destroyed by the sun, data centers endanger the Potomac River, and more science stories
NASA shared stunning images of a comet that exploded as it approached the sun, marking its first and last flyby.
"They didn't even try to fly away. They just feebly made noise," a woman told the Santa Barbara Independent on Saturday after spotting over two dozen dead or dying cormorants near Goleta Beach. "A few were on their stomachs, wings spread [and] gasping for breath.... Heartbreaking."
When light shines through water, colors with longer wavelengths are absorbed by the water, with the longest wavelengths absorbed first. Blue and violet have the shortest wavelengths of visible light, so they are able to penetrate the deepest.
When you dredge sand at that scale without a proper assessment of its environmental impacts, it destroys or wipes out certain species, which harms fisheries and, ultimately, everyone who depends on them.
East Coast oysters are known and loved over the world for the clean minerality and distinctive salinity, which is reflective of the cold Atlantic waters where they come from. Although Maine and Maryland get a lot of credit, oysters are present along the continent's entire eastern coast, as far north as Canada's Prince Edward Island all the way down to South Florida.
The haul of lobsters, Maine's best known export and a key piece of the state's identity and culture, has declined every year since 2021, and some scientists have cited as a reason warming oceans that spur migration to Canadian waters.
A massive fire broke out Tuesday morning on a barge carrying huge piles of scrap metal on the Delaware Bay near New Castle. The U.S. Coast Guard responded after 8 a.m. to reports of the fire and dispatched a helicopter and two boats, Petty Officer First Class Matthew West said. Local fire departments, including those from Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, also responded.
Generally, East Coast oysters are brinier than West Coast oysters. Eastern oysters, raised either in the Atlantic Ocean or in its estuaries, live in a much saltier environment. West Coast oysters are mostly raised in protected bays, estuaries, and tidal rivers, where there is much less salt.
If you enter the amounts of different types of plastic that you clean up into the Wildlife Impact Calculator, it will tell you how many animal lives would have been at risk, had those items made their way into the ocean and been ingested.
Approximately 243 million gallons of wastewater has overflowed from the pipe that collapsed on January 19 in Montgomery County, Md., according to a release from DC Water. That translates into 368 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of sewage. The brunt of this surge happened in the first five days, before interim bypass pumping was activated a system that reroutes sewage around the damaged section.
We want an end to the use of herbicides in our creeks. This idea that we're just going to spray, hose down these creeks and leave them dead is unacceptable. Linas and other residents have filed requests for records detailing the chemicals the county uses to control vegetation in the waterways, such as glyphosate, triclopyr and imazapyr.
Beaches, mangroves, fish, turtles and manatees. Little by little, oil has coated them all. About two weeks have been enough for the sticky black residue to permeate everything in its path. Its advance has been met with an outcry. Since the first fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico reported the discovery of chapapote (petroleum residue) in their nets on March 2, the progression has been documented by the affected communities.
Over time, the water evaporated to form the smaller, brinier Owens Lake. Indigenous Paiute people call the Owens Valley Payahuunadü, 'the land of the flowing water'. Today, Owens Lake is a 'Dusty Vestige of the Old West', as NASA described a photograph of the lake taken from space.
The question of how to protect fish and the ecological health of rivers that feed California's largest estuary is generating heated debate in a series of hearings in Sacramento, as state officials try to gain support for a plan that has been years in the making. "I am passionate that this is the pathway to recover fish," said state Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. "This is the paradigm we need: collaborative, adaptive management versus conflict and litigation."
Within a few minutes of moving down the estuary from Jack London Square, it started looking like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. Boats, big and small, sank or half-sunk along the length of the estuary. Spicer pointed out a large sailboat listing on its side, which neighbors say has been disabled for months. "It was actually anchored in the center of the channel for quite some time. A lot of our community members reported it," she said.