Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the […]
Every year, gray whales migrate from their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic to their wintering grounds off Baja California in Mexico. And roughly every other year, scientists with binoculars count them as they funnel past a point on the California coast a bit south of Monterey Bay. Scientists conduct this survey to keep track […]
New evidence for frequent large tsunamis at a remote island near Dutch Harbor, Alaska provides geological data to aid tsunami hazard preparedness efforts around the Pacific Rim. Recent fieldwork in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands suggests that a presently “creeping” section of the Aleutian Subduction Zone fault could potentially generate an earthquake great enough to send a […]
A headline in the print edition of the San Francisco Chronicle catches the eye of a visiting Alaskan: Wolves feed on calf. In a Dec. 20, 2015 story, Chronicle reporter John King reported that wolves were likely responsible for killing and eating a young beef cow from a rancher’s herd in northern California. It is […]