A typhoon brewing
Warming ocean waters because of human-caused local weather exchange are spurring extra hurricanes to unexpectedly accentuate, Carolyn Gramling reported in “Why hurricanes accentuate so hastily” (SN: 10/7/23 & 10/21/23, p. 10).
The tale made reader Barry Maletzky surprise why hurricanes take a spiral form.
A typhoon’s spiral shape is because of a phenomenon known as the Coriolis impact. Earth continuously spins on its axis from west to east. Gadgets now not firmly rooted to the bottom, together with air currents, airplanes and hurricanes, curve as they commute during the air as a result of they preserve the momentum of the planet’s rotation.
Tropical cyclones, equivalent to hurricanes, most often shape close to the equator, the place heat ocean waters and air create the precise stipulations for the storms to happen. Every cyclone is composed of a low-pressure heart, referred to as the attention, which sucks within the surrounding high-pressure air. The Coriolis impact deflects that air reasonably to the east because it rushes towards the typhoon’s eye.
On the identical time, air from the equator strikes towards the poles and could also be deflected east by means of the Coriolis impact. All in combination, this reasons the entire typhoon gadget to spin — counterclockwise north of the equator and clockwise south.
Microscopic marvels
A adventure during the mysterious international of protists finds how a lot we nonetheless have left to be informed about existence on Earth, Susan Milius reported in “Charismatic microfauna” (SN: 10/7/23 & 10/21/23, p. 18).
The tale reminded reader Michael Steinfeld of the paintings of scientist, photographer and cinemicroscopist Roman Vishniac.
Well-known for his snapshots of Jewish communities in pre-Holocaust Europe, Vishniac spent a lot of his occupation zoomed in at the existence sciences. On the top of his occupation within the Nineteen Fifties during the ’70s, he studied, photographed, filmed and wrote about animals, crops and microorganisms, together with protists (SN: 9/15/62, p. 172). Vishniac’s paintings on tiny life-forms considerably formed the sphere of photomicroscopy.
Reader Kurt Sroka shared a self-written poem about microorganisms, entitled “Hierarchy”: With out Micro-Beings / Human-Beings couldn’t be right here / to “dominate” Earth.
Chicken mind
Songbirds with advanced vocal abilities clear up issues quicker than their much less vocally adept friends, Darren Incorvaia reported in “Some songbirds excel at brainteasers” (SN: 10/7/23 & 10/21/23, p. 14).
“The word ‘fowl mind’ steadily will get a nasty rap, however science tells us that fowl intelligence is a long way from missing,” @factfrontier_ wrote on X, previously referred to as Twitter. “Take the African gray parrot, for instance, in a position to figuring out the idea that of 0 — a feat … shared with people and a couple of primates. Then there’s the New Caledonian crow, which makes use of gear to extract bugs from tree bark, appearing problem-solving abilities that rival the ones of small children.… So, calling somebody a ‘fowl mind’ would possibly simply be underselling the intricate cognitive skills that birds possess.”
X consumer @PhillSher additionally remarked at the intelligence of crows: “Crows are exceptionally sensible. I as soon as noticed a crow select up a morsel of meals, stack it on most sensible of any other that used to be a few toes away, then select up each and fly off.”