atmosphere

When the skies darken and the lights flicker on, the areas of Earth we populate gain a surreal glow that traces our existence in a breathtaking way.

A new series of photos released by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's jointly-operated Suomi NPP satellite gives us a clearer view than ever before at our illuminated world during nighttime. Perhaps you could compare the view to a series of electrified blood vessels and arteries. … Read more

Live in an area prone to flash floods, hurricanes, blizzards? Smartphone users will soon get a severe-weather alert from the National Weather Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The new nationwide emergency alert system, called the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), sends 90-character text messages to smartphones of people facing extreme weather conditions. Severe weather defined by the NOAA includes tornadoes, flash floods, hurricanes, extreme wind, blizzards and ice storms, tsunamis, and dust storms. Note that thunderstorms aren't on the list because they occur so frequently. … Read more

A little known fact about the Earth is that its atmosphere generates its own light. Lines and clouds in hues of yellow, green, blue, and red reach 60 miles above the surface of the planet.

This light is created in what's known as a chemiluminescent process and is called "airglow" or "night glow," according to videographer and scientist Alex Rivest. "The colors are not reflected light, and not pollution, but rather are light generated from the components in the atmosphere itself," he wrote in a blog post.

Rivest has just released a new … Read more

Nikola Tesla would be jealous.

A group of chemists from the University of Campinas in Brazil presented research on Wednesday claiming they've figured out how electricity is formed and released in the atmosphere.

Based on this knowledge, the team said it believes a device could be developed for extracting electrical charges from the atmosphere and using it for electricity.

The team, led by Fernando Galembeck, says they discovered the process by simulating water vapor reactions in a laboratory with dust particles common to the atmosphere.

They found that silica becomes more negatively charged when high levels of water vapor … Read more

On January 23, 1960, two men, diving in a small deep-sea submersible, reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a spot about 200 miles southwest of Guam that, at 35,800 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, is the deepest point on Earth.

It was the first time humans had gone that deep, and when Navy Lt. Don Walsh and his co-pilot, Jacques Piccard, took the bathyscaphe Trieste all the way down, they surely must have felt like pioneers, the first of many who would make their way there.

On Thursday, at a gala event at the Press … Read more

In Minneapolis, you know you've truly made it when you start breaking attendance records set by the Replacements. Slug and Ant recently did just that, laying testament to the cross-generational resonance of their latest material. Rap generations, that is. Atmosphere joins thunderous late-'80s LL beats with comical disses, half of them self-directed.

Download free MP3 now!

Medical instrument sterilization is a hot, dirty, expensive business involving chemicals, ozone-depleting aerosols and hazardous waste, but a new plasma technology promises to change the way we kill germs.

Atmospheric Glow Technologies of Knoxville, Tenn., is building a portable medical device called the Steriglow Sterilization System that it says will produce no waste or heat and costs much less to operate than existing technologies.

The process takes plasma, the same stuff found in flat-screen TVs, and creates "short-lived reactive chemical species from air" that neutralizes all biocontaminants. Viruses, bacteria, fungi--it kills them all. It's so effective that … Read more

Nashville is hundreds of miles from the nearest forest fires. Recently smoke levels there were 20 times normal. Health officials in the southeastern U.S. can now look at maps showing where the smoke is, and where it's going.

This smoke forecasting is being done by the Center for Forest Disturbance Science in Athens, Ga. Both hourly forecast updates and daily peak values of smoke concentrations are available on the Internet.

The 6-week-old fires have burned a half-million acres. And they're still outta control. These fires are a record for Georgia. That's sparked debate over lack of … Read more

The 21st century is already setting records. Wall Street stock prices keep rising, and so does the amount of carbon dioxide we're putting into Earth's atmosphere. It's apparently going to get more uncomfortable for those folks clinging to the theory that global warming is a hoax.

Data released Monday by the Carnegie Institution shows we are now producing near three times as much carbon dioxide as we were during the 1990s.

The global carbon emission study was done by the Carnegie scientists using readily available data from public sources. One source was the Department of Energy's … Read more