Atlantic Ocean

Quirks and Quarks17:24How documenting the disappearance of the great auk led to the discovery of extinctionWhen species cease to exist, we often say they went "the way of the dodo." But it might be more fitting to say they went "the way of the great auk" because it was the Icelandic bird's disappearance that led to the discovery that humans activities could make a species go extinct.In his book The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction, Gísli Pálsson retraces a 1858 trip two…

NASA's newest climate satellite rocketed into orbit Thursday to survey the world's oceans and atmosphere in never-before-seen detail.SpaceX launched the Pace satellite on its $948-million US mission before dawn from Cape Canaveral, Fla., with the Falcon rocket heading south over the Atlantic Ocean to achieve a rare polar orbit.The satellite will spend at least three years studying the oceans from 676 kilometres up, as well as the atmosphere. It will scan the globe daily with two of the science instruments. A third…

Every year, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) ranks the top 10 Canadian weather stories. Senior climatologist David Phillips compiles the list and this year, there was no doubt about what would take the number one position: the record-setting wildfires."There's no drum roll here," Phillips said. "The fires dominated everything.... In 28 years of putting together , it's never been a more obvious number one."Wildfire season got an early start due, in part, to the persistent drought conditions across B.C. and in…

After travelling across the Atlantic Ocean and taking an elevator hundreds of metres underground, it's hard for Jodie Defeo to put into words what it was like to be among a handful of people in Finland to take in the world's first long-term geological repository for spent nuclear fuel."It was large. It was very cavernous. There was room for large-scale trucks to manoeuvre in these tunnels," Defeo, one of four councillors in the small northwestern Ontario township of Ignace, said about the facility.Defeo was among a…

The news from the war in Ukraine tends to focus on physical battles, but there’s another front in the conflict that gets less attention: the tubes of the internet. Russia’s overall strategy involves a vast disinformation campaign, but over the last year, an army of shitposters has started fighting back. It’s a loosely organized but extremely online coalition that calls itself NAFO — short for the North America Fellas Organization — and it’sfighting a meme war against the Russian invasion. NAFO is less of a group than a…

Sea level rise is transforming the U.S. coastline across the country, but researchers have noticed that the rate of sea level rise has increased faster in the last decade around the Gulf and Southeastern coasts. Lower Drought Conditions In California | Extreme EarthIn a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers from Tulane University found rates of sea level rise of about 10 mm (0.4 inches ) per year around Gulf states and the Southeast since 2010. Theycompared a combination of field and satellite…

In the Atlantic Ocean, between the coasts of West Africa and the Caribbean, there’s a disjointed series of mats and clumps of brown, tangled algae known as sargassum seaweed. It’s supposed to be there. Or, at least, some of it is. In the Sargasso Sea—the only sea without a land border, bounded instead by four currents—sargassum offers critical habitat to marine life and is an integral part of the ecosystem.What Was Your First Experience with Super Mario Bros? | io9 InterviewBut in recent years, things have gotten off…

Two dozen geologists, microbiologists and other scientists will sail in April from Portugal aboard the Joides Resolution, a former oil drillship turned research vessel, to the Atlantis Massif, a 14,000-foot underwater mountain rising from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. They plan to deepen a 4,640-foot hole drilled nearly 20 years ago to 6,750 feet. The hole won’t be the longest in the seafloor, but it would push closer than ever to the mantle and plumb deeper layers of…

Ocean Oasis' Gaia system has been designed to use wave power to desalinate water.Ocean OasisPlans to use marine energy to desalinate water received a further boost this week, after a Norwegian firm presented a system that will be put through its paces in waters off Gran Canaria.In a statement Monday, Oslo-headquartered Ocean Oasis said its wave-powered prototype device, which it described as being an "offshore floating desalination plant," was called Gaia.The plant — which has a height of 10 meters, a diameter of 7 meters…

Elon Musk-owned SpaceX has launched 54 more of its Starlink broadband satellites in orbit and landed a rocket on a ship at sea.According to space.com, a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, carrying 54 Starlink spacecraft, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida Saturday at 11:41 pm EDT (0341 GMT) on August 28.That was about 80 minutes later than initially planned, as SpaceX waited for some bad weather to clear.A little less than nine minutes after launch, the Falcon 9's first stage came down to Earth for a…