PCC STEM's Posts

A favorite theme of science fiction is "the portal" -- an extraordinary opening in space or time that connects travelers to distant realms. A good portal is a shortcut, a guide, a door into the unknown. If only they actually existed. It turns out that they do, sort of, and a researcher has figured out how to find them.
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The world has gotten smaller and more accessible since applications like Google Earth became mainstream, says an expert. However, there is still a long way to go, and there are important steps to take to get there.
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Curvy mountain belts

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Mountain belts on Earth are most commonly formed by collision of one or more tectonic plates. The process of collision, uplift, and subsequent erosion of long mountain belts often produces profound global effects, including changes in regional and global climates, as well as the formation of important economic resources, including oil and gas reservoirs and ore deposits. Understanding the formation of mountain belts is thus a very important element of earth science research.
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Scientists in working in Western Greenland have found evidence of an asteroid or comet impact early in the Earth's history. At three billion years old, the crater is a billion years older than the previously oldest known crater.
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"Green rust" played a key role in making the Earth habitable and may now have an equally important role to play in cleaning it up for the future. Green rust is a highly reactive iron mineral which experts hope could be used to clean up metal pollution and even radioactive waste.
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Data flowing from a new generation of instruments onboard the Suomi NPP satellite, a joint NASA/NOAA mission, are being used in NOAA's global numerical weather forecast system a record seven months after launch, nearly three times faster than previous missions. After a rigorous and accelerated evaluation period, meteorologists began using the new data in operational weather models on May 22, 2012. These models are the foundation for all public and private weather forecasts in the United States.
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ESA astronaut André Kuipers is running experiments on the International Space Station that are shedding light on conditions deep inside Earth. Orbiting some 400 km above us, Geoflow is offering insights into the inner workings of our planet.
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Mineral evolution posits that Earth's near-surface mineral diversity gradually increased through an array of chemical and biological processes. A dozen different species in interstellar dust particles that formed the solar system have evolved to more than 4500 species today. New work demonstrates that the creation of most minerals containing mercury is fundamentally linked to several episodes of supercontinent assembly over the last 3 billion years.
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You can freeze it, thaw it, vacuum dry it and expose it to radiation, but still life survives. Research on the International Space Station is giving credibility to theories that life came from outer space -- as well as helping to create better sunscreens.
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The Rio+20 summit on promoting jobs, clean energy and a more sustainable use of our planet's resources closed today after three days of talks. During the summit, the role of Earth observation in sustainable development was highlighted.
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Intense warm climate intervals -- warmer than scientists thought possible -- have occurred in the Arctic over the past 2.8 million years. That result comes from the first analyses of the longest sediment cores ever retrieved on land. They were obtained from beneath remote, ice-covered Lake El'gygytgyn in the northeastern Russian Arctic.
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First analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the Arctic provide dramatic, "astonishing" documentation that intense warm intervals, warmer than scientists thought possible, occurred there over the past 2.8 million years. Further, these extreme inter-glacial warm periods correspond closely with times when parts of Antarctica were ice-free and also warm, suggesting strong inter-hemispheric climate connectivity. The Polar Regions are much more vulnerable to change than once believed, they add.
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