Remember learning about America’s "amber waves of grain?" Well, it turns out that the United States’ bread basket—a.k.a., the Corn Belt—is even more productive than previously thought. In fact, during its growing season, it’s the most productive land on Earth, according to new NASA data.
     |
As the microbrew industry has become increasingly crowded, brewmasters are becoming more and more creative with their ingredients and techniques. The latest trend, Outside magazine says, is spiking batches with foraged ingredients, from sassafras to kudzu. Sound delicious?
| |
In the debut issue of a new journal called The Anthropocene Review, University of Leicester geologist Jan Zalasiewicz leads a team of five writers in discussing the gradual fossilization of human artifacts, including industrial machines, everyday objects, and even whole cities. They refer to these as "technofossils," and they’re destined to form a whole new layer of the earth’s surface.
| |
Plants that eat metal sound like a biological impossibility. But these hungry little guys exist, sucking tiny bits of toxic metal from the soil. They don’t just clean the Earth, either—they can actually mine bits of gold and nickel for use by humans.
| |
Dramatic sunsets are undeniably gorgeous, but they portend something ominous: millions of fine particles polluting the air. Researchers are now studying sunsets painted over the past 500 years to find clues to how our air got dirtier after the Industrial Revolution.
| |
Armed with a shovel and a camera with a super-high shutter speed, photographer Claire Droppert made her way around a series of Dutch beaches and created these crazy Sand Creatures. The airborne formations look like the Sandman‘s brethren caught in the act of transformation.
| |
In a story that united geologists with rare car enthusiasts last month, a massive sinkhole opened up
| |
There’s something about looking at these photographs of Australian salt mines that… I don’t know, they’re like a visual chill pill or something. Photographer Emma Phillips snapped these beautiful shots in the Nullarbor Plain of Western Australia, but they look like a landscape from outer space.
| |
A team of chemical engineers and biochemists has managed to change how plants work. Well, to be exact, they’ve made plants work better by embedding carbon nanotubes into the plants’ leaves so that they absorb more light. Put simply, they’ve created bionic plants.
| |
Like a landscape of the undead, the woods outside Chernobyl are having trouble decomposing. The catastrophic meltdown and ensuing radiation blast of April 1986 has had long-term effects on the very soil and ground cover of the forested region, essentially leaving the dead trees and leaf litter unable to decompose. The result is a forest full of "petrified-looking pine trees" that no longer seem capable of rotting.
| |
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
