CITIZEN SCIENCE SALON

Help scientists track extreme weather this week!

Tropical storms loom large over different parts of the globe, while extreme heat and droughts wreak havoc on other areas. Flash floods and landslides plague parts of India, as dust storms make it difficult to drive and breathe in the southwestern United States.

Extreme weather. We may feel powerless, but there are ways we can help scientists better predict these events and help provide warning systems. That’s empowering.

Stay safe.

The SciStarter Team

ISeeChange

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D-BRIEF

Scientists Propose Dumping Absurd Amounts of Snow On Antarctica To Curb Sea Level Rise

A photo of Thwaites Glacier taken during a reconnaissance flight. (Credit: U.S. National Science Foundation)

Climate change is melting the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A recent swell in warm ocean water on the western side of the continent is eating away at two predominant glaciers, Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier. And the retreating glaciers mean the entire larger ice sheet could disintegrate, leading to a 10-foot rise in sea level around the world. This surge in water levels imperils …

D-BRIEF

SpaceX’s Starhopper Engulfed by Fireball During Test

Starhopper sits at a test site in Texas earlier this year. (Credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX)

On Tuesday, SpaceX ran its second test of Starhopper, the prototype
for their enormous future passenger spacecraft. The static fire test was meant
to measure the Raptor engines that power the craft. But at the end of the five
second test, Starhopper was instead surrounded by an enormous fireball, as
shown in a video from the rural Texas test site gathered by Everyday Astronaut.

https://www.youtube.c …

D-BRIEF

Scientists Start Developing a Mini Gravitational Wave Detector

Gravitational waves can be detected from the collision of massive objects in the universe, but also from much smaller objects like dark matter particles. (Credit: EPA/R. Hurt / Caltech-JPL)

In 2015, scientists made history by detecting the first gravitational waves — ripples in space-time predicted by Albert Einstein a century earlier. The waves were created by the merger of two black holes, each one much larger than the sun. And since then, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Obse …

D-BRIEF

Earthquakes Will Rock Central U.S. a Decade After Oil Extraction Ends

An Oklahoma home damaged in 2011 during an earthquake that was likely spawned by injecting wastewater during fossil fuel extraction. (Credit: USGS)

Earthquakes used to be uncommon in Middle America. But in the last decade, quakes numbers have skyrocketed in Oklahoma and Kansas. The major uptick in seismic activity has risen alongside the growth of oil and gas production in the area. When fossil fuel companies dispose of wastewater by injecting it into underground wells, the increased pressur …

THE CRUX

If the Apollo 11 Astronauts Died, Here’s the Speech Nixon Would Have Read

President Nixon greets Apollo 11 astronauts, left to right, Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, shoulders only, and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. (Credit: NASA/Apollo)

It’s easy, amid the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, to see it as an inevitable success. NASA had been preparing for the task for years, ever since President John F. Kennedy made his famous speech at Rice University in 1962, declaring America would “go to the moon in this decade.” When Neil Arms …

THE CRUX

How Humans’ Unique Cooking Abilities Might Have Altered Our Fate

(Credit: Petr Bonek/Shutterstock)

If you cooked dinner today — even a Cup O Noodles — you did something extraordinary and uniquely human. While the rest of the animal kingdom subsists on raw food, we Homo sapiens cook our chow.

And according to some researchers, this distinction made all the difference: When our ancestors mastered cooking roughly 2 million years ago it changed the course of human evolution, they say. Because cooked food provides more energy, the habit led to substant …

D-BRIEF

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Unveils Mind-Reading Implant that Could Be Ready for Humans by 2020

Neuralink’s chip implantation machine, which is designed to insert the company’s N1 chip into people’s heads with extreme precision. (Credit: Neuralink)

He’s pioneered several multi-billion dollar companies, launched one of his cars into space, and now Elon Musk wants to hack your brain.

On Tuesday night, the CEO and co-founder of Tesla and SpaceX lifted the veil of secrecy on a new venture, called Neuralink. The company launched in 2016 promising to create cutting-edge brain-machine i …

D-BRIEF

Human Wastewater Runoff is Killing Corals in the Florida Keys

Corals stressed by heat and other environmental conditions can bleach, or kick out their life-giving algae companions. (Credit: sabangvideo/Shutterstock)

It’s been said time and time again that climate change is killing coral reefs. Rising ocean temperatures cause bleaching, which damages huge chunks of coral ecosystems from Australia to the southern United States.

But heat isn’t the only reason reefs are dying. Nitrogen runoff from human activities could be damaging corals around th …

D-BRIEF

SpaceX Says It Knows Why Crew Dragon Exploded

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft opens its nose cone before docking with the International Space Station on March 3. (Credit: NASA)

Almost three months after SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule blew up during a test on April 20, the results of the investigation place blame on a leak and a faulty valve.

According to a report
released by SpaceX, the “anomaly”
in the test occurred about 100 milliseconds prior to ignition of the last
thrusters. The leak let nitrogen tetroxide, a combustible com …