ScienceIQ.com

Poincare's Chaos

Over two hundred years after Newton published his laws of planetary motion the King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway sponsored a most unusual competition that would discover a whole new science. ...

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PoincaresChaos
Geology

Plate Tectonics

In geologic terms, a plate is a large, rigid slab of solid rock. The word tectonics comes from the Greek root 'to build.' Putting these two words together, we get the term plate tectonics, which ... Continue reading

PlateTectonics
Astronomy

The First Starlight

Imagine being able to see our Universe 14 billion years ago when it was just a baby. If we had a time machine, we could go back and watch how its infant features emerged after the Big Bang. There are ... Continue reading

FirstStarlight
Medicine

Ultrasound In Medicine

In medical testing, ultrasound equipment is used to produce a sonogram, or a picture of organs inside the body. Ultrasound scanners do not use X-rays. They use waves of such high frequency that they ... Continue reading

UltrasoundInMedicine
Astronomy

It's Dusty Out There

There is no lower limit to the size of the solid particles that move around the Sun. Small asteroids grade downward into large meteoroids and then into smaller pebbles and so on down to the tiniest ... Continue reading

ItsDustyOutThere

Is Earth Getting Fatter Around the Belt?

EarthBeltBesides being used for transmission of this email message to you, communication satellites are used for some neat science. By shooting a laser beam onto them and measuring how long it takes for light to bounce back, scientists at NASA measure precise orbits of a number of satellites and hence the Earth's gravitational field as a function of longitude and latitude. NASA has been making these measurements for the last 25 years and it turns out the results are quite interesting.

According to the satellite data, prior to 1998, Earth's gravitational field had been decreasing at the equator and increasing at the poles. Since Earth is shaped like a pumpkin, wider at the equator and narrower at the poles, this means that our planet was getting more spherical or thinner at the equator. This is consistent with how the melting of large ice mass from the poles since the last Ice Age would affect the Earth's shape. Namely, once the pressure from the ice was gone, the ground at the poles actually expanded outward.

Data since 1998 shows an abrupt change in this trend. Earth's gravitational field is increasing now at the equator! Is the Earth getting fatter around the belt? Only significant movement in ocean water, polar and glacial ice, or atmosphere could account for these changes. Scientists are still not sure what the answer is, but some early research findings suggest it may be the movement in ocean water. Somehow, ocean currents gather large quantities of water around the equator every once in a while. Some scientists suggest that this is a cyclic event, but data is still inconclusive.