water

A particle accelerator that slams electrons together here on Earth has achieved temperatures colder than those of outer space.Using the X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory  –  part of an upgrade project to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), called LCLS II  – scientists chilled liquid helium to minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 271 degrees Celsius), or 2 kelvins.  That is just 2 kelvins above absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature at which all…

A water tower with a silhouette of Johnny Cash is currently taking a leak over his Arkansas hometown of Kingsland after an assailant with impressive aim recently shot the tank. Last week, a bullet struck the late country artist’s image right in his nether regions, and it seems his bladder was no match.Although it has made for a good photo op, with people from nearby towns making a special trip to pay homage to the urinating country legend, Kingsland is losing about 30,000 gallons of water a day, according to Mayor…

Lake Whillans is a strange body of water, starting with the fact that there is liquid to fill it at all. Though buried under more than 2,000 feet of Antarctic ice, its temperatures climb to just shy of 0 degrees Celsius, thanks to a combination of geothermal warmth, intense friction from ice scraping rock, and that thick glacial blanket protecting it from the polar air. Given the immense pressure down there, that’s just balmy enough to keep the lake’s water watery. Stranger still, Lake Whillans is also teeming with life.…

A major consideration is the kind of crop you’d grow to feed a wide-scale BECCS system. That would probably be switchgrass or Miscanthus, another kind of grass, neither of which need as much water or added nutrients as a crop like corn. “They’re quite efficient,” says David Lawrence, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and coauthor of the new paper. They’re also perennial crops, so you don’t need to plant and till the ground all the time. “But in the context of the study, we found that…

Engineers at the University of Tokyo have developed a new type of desalination membrane that they claim is faster, and requires less pressure and energy than existing tech. The new membrane is made up of a series of nanoscale tubes lined with a Teflon-inspired material that repels salts while allowing water to flow through with little friction.Many regions around the world face a scarcity of clean drinking water, and the problem is only going to worsen with a changing climate. Desalinating brackish water or seawater is…

3d rendering of the meteorite investigated by researchers. Neutron and X-ray tomography showed that the meteorite had limited exposure to water. Credit: Josefin MartellA research team led by Lund University in Sweden has investigated a meteorite from <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Mars</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Mars is the second smallest planet in our solar system and the fourth planet from the sun. Iron…

How sea turtles and other aquatic life find their way across the open ocean, far from any real navigation aids or natural signposts, has long intrigued biologists. Now, a new study reveals that turtles have basic geomagnetic steering built in – but they're still mostly relying on luck and perseverance to find a destination.  Scientists fitted 22 hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) with GPS trackers to see the routes they would take back to their original foraging grounds after mating and breeding. Those trackers…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Forested lands across the U.S. provide 83 million people with at least half of their water, according to a broad new study of surface water sources for more than 5,000 public water systems. 125 million people, or about 38% of the country's population, receive at least 10% of their water from forests. In the arid western U.S., 39.5 million people get more than half of their surface drinking water from…

Bottled purified water for households in the Philippine. Analysis shows lack of access to safe water or adequate infrastructure, coupled with health concerns, drove up sales of bottled water worldwide during the pandemic. Credit: Brian Evans, (CC BY-ND 2.0) Families in some of the poorest parts of the world turned to buying bottled water as the pandemic sent countries into lockdown, with larger chunks of incomes being spent…

Historic forest on Telegrafenberg in Potsdam as part of a heritage site and scientific campus. The study shows that large-scale afforestation has implications beyond country borders and even continents. Credit: Josef Zens/GFZ How would afforestation and restoration of large areas worldwide affect water-fluxes world wide? A new study led by Wageningen University researcher Anne Hoek van Dijke with contributions from Martin…