In mid-January 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) volcano had one of the most massive eruptions ever recorded, destroying an island, generating a tsunami, and blanketing Tonga in ash. Volcanologists Keep reading
Month: March 2025
Wave Clouds in the Atacama
Striped clouds appear to converge over a mountaintop in this photo, but that’s an illusion. In reality, these clouds are parallel and periodic; it’s only the camera’s wide-angle lens that Keep reading
“Paradolia”
In “Paradolia,” filmmaker Susi Sie plays with pareidolia, our tendency to seek patterns in nebulous data — like faces on a slice of toast. Droplets of miscible and immiscible fluids Keep reading
Inside a Big Cat’s Roar
The roars of big cats — tigers, lions, jaguars, and leopards — carry long distances. In part, this reflects the animals’ size: large lungs exhale lots of air through a Keep reading
A Mini Jupiter
Astronaut Don Pettit posted this image of a Jupiter-like water globe he created on the International Space Station. In microgravity, surface tension reigns as the water’s supreme force, pulling the Keep reading
A Magnetic Tsunami Warning
Tsunamis are devastating natural disasters that can strike with little to no warning for coastlines. Often the first sign of major tsunami is a drop in the sea level as Keep reading
Skydiving Salamanders
The wandering salamander can spend its entire 20-year lifespan in the canopy of a coast redwood. When predators come calling, they have a special skill that helps them get away: Keep reading
Trapped in Ice
On lake bottoms, decaying matter produces methane and other gases that get caught as bubbles when the water freezes. In liquid form, water is excellent at dissolving gases, but they Keep reading
Growing Flexible Stalactites
Icicles and stalactites grow little by little, each layer a testament to the object’s history. Here, researchers explore a similar phenomenon, grown from a dripping liquid. They’re called “flexicles” in Keep reading
Predicting Droplet Sizes
Squeeze a bottle of cleaning spray, and the nozzle transforms a liquid jet into a spray of droplets. These droplets come in many sizes, and predicting them is difficult because Keep reading