Mika McKinnon

While I gave you a quick explanation of fire tornadoes (and adiabatic winds!) yesterday, The Vane has more details on the atmospheric science of how a fire tornado differs from a more mundane tornado.

When Does Science News Confuse You the Most?

Science shows up in the news all the time, but the individual reports can build a confusing picture without someone to provide context. If you’re befuddled, this is an open Frequently Asked Questions for science in the news. (…and maybe just a bit of science beyond the news!) Fire tornado from the Corona Fire in…

NASA and the Six Million Dollar Man

This flying bathtub is not only a real NASA prototype, but is also a television star. A test flight went awry in 1967, crashing into the desert floor. The pilot survived, and the footage from the crash made it into the opening credits for The Six Million Dollar Man. M2-F1 being towed by a C-47.…

Sexy Weather Forecast for Juneau, Alaska

Residents of Juneau, Alaska were caught between checking the weather and voyeurism on Tuesday morning. The weather forecast took an intimate turn, lingering over each available weather model before taking a foray into bittersweet regrets over the weather model picked after a too-brief encounter. The forecast sets the intimate tone for the evening right away,…

Santa Ana Winds, Fire Tornados, and the California Fires

After months of drought, summer is starting with fires in southern California. The fires are being amplified by adiabatic winds, with smoke cyclone and fire tornadoes spinning out of the flames. Here’s the atmospheric science to go along with the breaking-news coverage of evacuations and burned acreage. Wildfire approaching homes in San Marcos, California. Image…

13.7 Billion Years in 45 Seconds

Galaxy collisions are a slow-speed, spectacular crash of whirling stars driven by gravity. A new simulation from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center runs through the history of the universe in under a minute, with galaxies swirling together in a beautiful mess of dust and stars. From the video description: Galaxies are collections of stars, gas,…

That’s Not a Shipwreck, It’s a Volcano!

During the Okeanos Explorer expedition in the Gulf of Mexico, sidesonar pinged something interesting 1,900 meters below on the ocean floor. Expecting a shipwreck, the team sent a remotely operated vehicle to explore. Instead, they found a pair of asphalt volcanoes! The Deep Discoverer investigated a suspected shipwreck that wasn’t. Image credit: NOAA The remotely…

Half of the US is in Drought

I don’t like it when the drought map turns into an optimist/pessimist test. Is the United States half in drought, or half fine? Either way, the numbers are ugly. California is still in 100% drought, joined in that unhappy condition by Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Kansas. Vegetation anomaly in California compared to normal, where…

Beautiful Landscapes Far, Far Away

The annual National Geographic Traveler photography contest is accepting entries until June 30th. The outdoor spaces category is of particular interest to me, with peeks at landscapes far away. These are a few of my favourites: Basalt in Iceland A stream cuts through dark black rocks in Iceland. Iceland is rich in basaltic rocks, rich…

Six Months Later, Expedition 39 Safely Returns to Earth

Expedition 39 successfully ended last night with the safe return to Earth of Koichi Wakata, Mikhail Tyurin and Rick Mastracchio. Now Expedition 40 begins with the trio of astronauts still on the International Space Station. Soyuz TMA-11M coming in for a soft-enough landing. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls Expedition 39 consisted of Commander Koichi Wakata of…

US-Russia Tension Threatens GPS System

The tensions between the American and Russian space program have ratcheted up another notch. In retaliation for a US ban on certain high-tech exports, Russia is refusing for their rockets to be used in military launches, and is threatening GPS base stations used in geodetic research. Artist impression of a GPS satellite in orbit. Image…

Stellar Carnage as Neutron Stars Collide

When two neutron stars collide, they viciously shred each other before merging into a black hole punctuated by a gamma ray burst. A new supercomputer simulation sets a mismatched pair of neutron stars in a death-spiral to investigate the process. The merger completes in seconds, ringed by a halo of diffuse gas. When a massive…

Sneak Peek! Observatory Documentary Full of Beautiful Starscapes

The European Southern Observatory sent a documentary team around to their telescopes in Chile. While the footage is still being processed, they’ve released some amazing photographs and timelapse footage for us to drool over. Oooooh, pretty! The Milky Way over La Silla Observatory, the ESO’s planet-hunting telescope. Image credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi Otto the telescope-haulertucked in…

Volcano as Garbage Disposal

Trash is annoying. It builds up mountainous landfills, fills the ocean with junk, litters space, and pollutes the atmosphere. So, why not just chuck it into a volcano? An expedition tried that in Erta Ale Volcano, tossing 30 kilograms of organic waste into the lava lake. …which then erupted. Whoops. Erta Ale Volcano in the…

The Unstoppable Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

A new study indicates that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is in a state of irreversible decline. Over the past 40 years, the flow of glaciers into the sea has sped up. As a result, the sheets are thinning, melting the ice faster than we thought it would. Soon, sea levels will be rising. Beautiful…

A Statistically-Relevant Debate on Climate Change

Dear John Oliver: Did you really just hold a climate change debate with the number of scientists vs. deniers in accurate proportions? I think I love you, and your new show. Since cool, rational discussion has utterly failed to produce meaningful policy action on addressing climate change, I am all for blatantly mocking the absurdity…

A Rainbow River in Madagascar

When freshwater rivers drain into the sea, the waters mix to form a backish estuary. The slowing river also starts to drop its load as its energy drops, depositing gravel and sediment into bars. This particular estuary is Bombetoka Bay, where Betsiboka River flows into the Mozambique Channel. The Betsiboka River is cloudy with sediments,…

This Week in Space

It’s time for the weekly edition of In Case You Missed It from the Space subsite paired with links from around the web of news we didn’t cover here. It was a slow-traffic week for Space this week, so if you read something you like, pass it along to a friend! Quantum mechanics inspiring jewellery…

EuroScience, the Science in the EuroVision Song Contest

Since 1956, European nations have been participating in EuroVision, a live, televised competition for the best musical performance. Yesterday’s competition in Copenhagen was a surprisingly science-heavy lineup of music, for a sufficiently arm-waving definition of science. If you’re willing to indulge in some exuberant hand-waving along to the music, read on for the most science-reliant…

What Mystery Creature Left These 190-Million-Year-Old Footprints?

190 million years ago, something scampered across the desert sands that today straddle Colorado and Utah. The footprints were fossilized, recording the trace motions of a creature long gone by. What left these footprints? The scale bar is in centimeters (2.54 cm = 1 inch). Image credit: National Park Service This is a photograph from…